Read Online The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani - Free Book Online

fish, she would have swum in its water and grown up concealed in cold fish scales – yellow and blue and red – which gradually flaked off, revealing her beauty, her seaweed skin. Ivan imagined all the coloured fish in the tank as so many Katias-to-be. Soon they would all be utterly transformed, would emerge from the water in their glorious new incarnation and enfold him in their velvety caresses, in their cool, dripping embrace.
    While the Vostyach was exploring her flesh, Katia carried on with her wiggling, emitting false little giggles as she did so. She had lifted her head and was nervously observing Ivan’s hands as they explored her body, then finally parted her thighs. She was beginning to lose patience. It was bad enough having to put up with the man’s stench. She certainly wasn’t going to put on an erotic performance in order to excite him. He’d better undress and get on with it. She tried to slip two fingers into his underpants to get them down, but Ivan pulled them out of her grasp with a blow from one paw-like hand. He then became extremely agitated. His heart was beating violently under the heavy, laced up skins. Hot beads of sweat were falling from his eyebrows into his eyes, his ears were burning, his legs were trembling, the veins in his temples, taut as bowstrings, throbbed to the rhythm of his breath. He leant forward over the black shape, which had now become one with the shadow of the sheet, and pressed his whole hand down on it. It felt warm, damp and sticky, like the torn belly of a hare when you put in a hand to pull out the innards. He touched flesh as tender and smooth as entrails. He was expecting to smell their bitter stench, the sweetish aroma of blood. But his nostrils met with a different smell entirely, one which took his breath away and caused his eyes to mist over, leaving him unable to move. The woman turned over on her back and pulled him up on to the pillow beside her. She began to touch his lips and caress his forehead, sinking her fingers into his hair. Ivan half-closed his eyes. No one had ever caressed him before, no hand had ever been placed so gently on his forehead. Katia slipped her fingers slowly into the neck of his jacket. She was breathing through her mouth, trying to undo the leather knots so that she could ease him out of those foul skins. But Ivan was on his guard, and when he felt her pulling on the knots he pushed her hand away. The scent of that skin, which smelt of sugar, the sight of that spotless body beneath his own, made his head swim, as it did when he had spent a sleepless night drumming for his wolves to come to him. A melting feeling stole over him, a swooning sense of sweet abandonment. Still dressed from head to foot in his putrid skins, his feet still in his sodden boots, he threw himself upon the woman, clasping her to him, clutching her as though he wanted to claw the flesh from her every limb, tear her to shreds and stuff the pieces into his mouth. Katia tried to calm him, to regain the initiative, but Ivan was now seized with a fury there was no assuaging. He unlaced what had to be unlaced and thrust himself brutally between her thighs with a hoarse moan. A scream sent the fish scurrying off to a corner of the tank. Ivan tensed his muscles and slammed her down on to the bed, tightening his grip, rejoicing in his exploration of every last nook and cranny of that white body, digging his nails into the yielding flesh, watching her veins swell and her breasts quake. His body was burning, drops of his sweat were falling on to Katia’s chest in greasy globules. But he could not stop himself: he clung to her grimly, crushing her beneath him, breathing in her sweetish smell, mingled with the stench of animal fat and mud from his own rough skins. Suddenly the bed collapsed on to the bedside table, knocking off the lamp, which did not shatter, but rolled off in the direction of the fish-tank. There on the ground, in the tangle of sheets,