Sari's Bargain

I made no comment and simply extended my invitation.

“That would be lovely, David,” she beamed. “I don’t go very often. Most of my friends don’t like that sort of music and it’s not much fun going on your own; but I didn’t know you were interested.”

I decided to be a bit more honest with her than I had been with father. “As a matter of fact I’m not all that keen, but I know you are so I thought…”

“David! That is so…so…considerate of you.”

She was sitting on a sofa with her legs drawn up under her; her skirt had ridden up to expose her thighs. I felt a twinge in my testes foreshadowing an erection. I quickly arranged the time with her, and fled, leaving her to her reading.

There were two days to go before we were due to go out. In that intervening period I found myself getting as excited about being with her as I had been on my first ever date. I was like a child waiting for Christmas, counting the days, hours, even the minutes to the concert.

“I shall have her to myself for at least three hours,” I thought, totally ignoring the fact that there would be a lot of other people at the concert, and in any case, I could often have her to myself at home.

I had still not chosen a new sex partner, having become somewhat engrossed in the developing relationship with Sari. As a result my testes were crying out for the release of the banked up sperm. I had to deal with that on my own, but when I gained relief it was Sari who reared before me as my fantasy.

I was not unaware of the dangers inherent in the situation. Even over all the time we had been virtual strangers living in the same house, I had been aware of her sexual attraction. Now as we drew closer and the barriers we had erected between us began to crumble, that attraction pressed in upon me with ever increasing strength.

The concert did not bore me as I thought it would, but I think I was hearing the music through Sari as she sat beside me. Her presence added a finer edge, a thrill to what I was hearing. During the interval as men turned to look at her, I felt a surge of pride in being the one to escort her, and rejoiced at the palpable envy I drew from them.

Our conversation on the way home and on our arrival centred only on the music we had heard until Sari decided it was time for her to change her clothes. It was then for the first time she kissed me on the lips and said, “Thank you David, it was delightful.”

At dinner that night I joined father and Sari at the table.

“Enjoy the concert?” asked father, addressing neither of us in particular.

“Yes, very much,” I answered.

“It was very enjoyable,” echoed Sari.

I got the feeling we were both understating what we had felt for safety’s sake.

“Glad to see you two getting on so well,” rumbled father, then turning to me, “Take her out more often, haven’t got time for that sort of thing myself.” I wondered how Sari felt being brushed off so brusquely. “My God, I thought, I wouldn’t be so cavalier in my treatment of a wife like her.”

Chapter 10. Boating, Lust and Revelations

Father’s offhand treatment of Sari worked in my favour in that we did start going out together with increasing frequency. Given the pressure of my studies it was the Sunday afternoon concerts that were our main diet. We clearly had an ever growing friendship, but still Sari did not talk about what Adrienne had called the “hell” she had been through. That is, until there was the short semester break at the university.

I still had plenty of catching up to do in my studies, but did allow myself some time to relax.

Just before the break began Sari came to me and said, “David, you’ve got a couple of weeks free, if the weather is fine, why don’t we go out in the launch one day? We could do some swimming and fishing.”

The wedding present motor launch seemed hardly to be ever used. I think Sari might have had a few of her girl friends out in it occasionally, but that was about all. I suppose they all had their boyfriends or husbands, and as Sari seemed to reject their menfolk, it was not often these friends would join her. Yet like the concerts, it was no fun being out on a boat by your self.

So it was agreed that we spend a day on the boat, weather permitting.

On the day in question the weather did permit. It was warm with a light offshore breeze and near cloudless sky. The boat was kept in a marina where it was serviced and cleaned courtesy of father’s money.

The boat was a nine metre cabin cruiser that sat rather ostentatiously amid the more modest recreational fishing boats. We were met by the man who oversaw the maintenance of the boat who exclaimed, “Taking her out then, Mrs. Brook! She needs a bit of a run. She’s all fuelled up and ready to go.”

Sari had adopted her remote manner and simply said, “Thank you Mr. Carver.” He left us to it.

I had never been on the boat and therefore knew nothing of its layout, and confronted with the array of buttons and lights on the control panel, I left it to Sari to get us under weigh. The motor throbbed into life and we cruised slowly out of the marina and into the gulf. Once in the gulf Sari opened up the engine and the boat surged forward.

The two arms of land that constituted the gulf, stretched out until they turned to join the main coastline, and were about six kilometres apart as we began our trip and gradually moved away from us as we progressed.

We were heading for one of the fishing grounds about five kilometres distant. Once started Sari handed the helm over to me. I had no idea where the fishing ground was, since my only interest in boating was close inshore water skiing, but Sari said, pointing to the compass, “Just stay on that heading, I won’t be long, just going to change.”

The three metre cabin was situated slightly ahead of midships, leaving a foredeck of about two metres and a stern deck that included a sheltered area just behind the cabin where the control panel and helm were situated.

Shortly Sari emerged from the cabin having changed. I nearly lost control of the boat at the sight of her. She had put on a swim suit that might have been described as a modest one piece, except for the material it was made of. It seemed to be some sort of thin white see through net that clung to her body, clearly revealing her breasts and a little dark patch of pubic hair where her mons pushed against the material.

At the sight of her my heart began to pound and I felt slightly nauseous as I fought to beat down the lust I was feeling for her and tried to control my shaking limbs.

Seemingly unaware of the effect she was having on me, Sari said, “I’ll take over if you’d like to go and change.”

“No need,” I said, “I put my swimming trunks on under my shorts before we left.” I made no move to remove my shorts as my swimming trunks and shorts between them, managed to partially conceal my erection.

Sari perched on the seat beside me and stared ahead. “What the hell is she trying to do to me,” I inwardly wailed. Her close proximity was driving out of my mind. I could smell the slight perfume of her body and from the corner of my eyes see her hair ruffling in the offshore breeze.

I sought desperately for a way out of my dilemma and suddenly had a bright idea. “Have you got anything to drink on board,” I asked as casually as I could.

“Yes, I keep some whisky and brandy in the cabin. What would you like; I’ll get it for you.”

She had almost headed me off at the pass. I protested and said, “No, you take over, I’ll do it.”

She shrugged and smiled, “Okay.”

I clambered down the short ladder into the cabin. There were twin bunks and I lay on one and masturbated. I was so worked up it was all over in a flash. I found a cloth and cleaned up my emission and then hurriedly poured a brandy and dry for Sari and a whisky for myself.

Back on the deck Sari took the drink from me and said, “You took your time, couldn’t you find the drink locker?”

My erection diminished I replied, “Oh yes, but I’ve never been on the boat before, so I took a look around.”

Sari cut the engine revs and said, “This is the place, let’s drop anchor here.” She slowed the engines to a stop and cut them. We moved to the rhythm of the slight swell coming up the gulf from the open sea.

The anchor was forward so I went to the bow and dropped it over the side. The boat drifted for a few moments, then the anchor caught and the bow swung round to face the breeze.

“A swim first,” Sari announced, and made her way to the stern where there was a short swimming ladder standing upright. She released a fastener and lowered the ladder into the water, then climbed down it.

I felt it safe to remove my shorts now, but did not feel so safe about swimming. I had always been told there were sharks around in the gulf. However, not prepared to look scared in front of Sari, I followed her into the water.

We swam around for a while, and then clambered back on to the boat. If Sari’s swim suit had been virtually transparent before, it was doubly so now it was wet. It clung to her more tightly then ever, and the pink nipples of her large breasts thrust out like small acorns. I concluded this was not going to be a very comfortable day for me.

“Let’s do some fishing,” Sari declared, and from a locker produced hand lines and bait.

Happy to be distracted by any means, I took one of the lines, baited the hook, and dropped it over the side. On the other side of the boat Sari did the same.

At first we stood alert ready for the fish to bite. As it became clear that the fish did not share our enthusiasm we relaxed. From another locker Sari produced two air mattresses and a pump. She proceeded to blow up the mattresses, and when inflated they were laid on the deck side by side.

“Relax,” she said, indicating the mattresses. I knotted my fishing line round the hand rail and flopped down onto a mattress. Sari dropped down beside me.

I lay on my back gazing up at the sky. There came to mind a verse from Omar Khayyam where he describes the sky as an inverted bowl. As I watched the few puffs of cloud sail slowly across the vast sky, I could agree with his description. I had never been more intensely aware of the beauty of the heavens, and like my experience the first time I went with Sari to a concert, the moment was made more potent by her presence a hand touch away from me.

The slight motion of the boat and the peace that seemed to enfold us must have led me to doze off. I was awakened by Sari rising to enter the cabin. She re-emerged shortly carrying two more drinks.

“You’ve been asleep,” she said. “Did you have nice dreams?”

I was hardly aware that I had been asleep and certainly could not remember any dream. Then I thought, “Perhaps there is a dream and this is it, being here with Sari.”

I sipped my drink tentatively. “I’d better not get too relaxed,” I thought, “Or God knows what I might do, or try to do.”

Sari had seated herself on the mattress, her knees drawn up under her chin. From where I lay I could see the cloth of her swim suit pressing into the cleft of her vagina to clearly delineate its firm outer lips. The dream began to turn into another nightmare of longing for her. I sought for some excuse to escape back to the cabin to relieve myself.

Sari was staring straight ahead not looking at me as she began to speak.

“David, you want to know about me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted, “I am very curious.”

“I’m ready to tell you, if you wish to hear.”

“I’m listening.”

“David, you live in a country at peace with itself. My country seemed to live in peace for a long time, but it was a false peace. Underneath there was discontent and this discontent finally boiled over. There was revolution that quickly became civil war. My country was made up of two large ethnic groups and a number of smaller ones. My family belonged to one of the smaller.”

“Have you any idea what a civil war is like, David?”

“I only know what I read in the papers or see on the television news.”

“David, however realistically they try to present it, it can never match the horror of the reality. People you have lived in peace with for as long as you can remember, neighbours, friends, people you trust all become something else.”

“I learned about the angers, hatreds, envies and lusts that a veneer of civilisation hides. Strip away that veneer and you see all the prejudices and bitterness. It rises to the surface like scum.”

“While the two main ethnic factions fought each other, everyone took advantage of the chance to get their revenge for all the real and imagined wrongs that they had stored up within them.”

“My own small ethnic group was a particular target. They came and looted our homes then set fire to them. People on whose knee I had sat as a child spat on me screaming their venom. Those of us they did not kill they dragged away into their concentration camps. Men and women separated, children torn away from their mothers. Men executed at random, and the women…”

I had been watching her as she spoke. Her eyes had been wide open, staring as if seeing the scenes she described. Now she closed her eyes and from beneath the lids tears began to fall.

“The women were systematically raped. Over and over again they raped us. Some of the women, the very religious ones, committed suicide. They saw themselves as defiled, impure, and they could no longer face themselves or their people.”

“Some of us were more fortunate. We were selected as what they called, ‘Officer’s meat’. If we behaved nicely and pretended to enjoy what they did to us, we were not subject to the appalling things that were being done to the other women. If you did made objections, you were thrown to the ‘other ranks’ for them to enjoy.”

“I played the game and survived. Then came the foreign troops, coming to ‘liberate’ us, they said. They came with their bombs and shells and added to the destruction we had already inflicted on ourselves.”

“When it was all over some of us were allowed to leave the country as refugees; I was put on an early flight out. I was given that privilege because I was prepared to spend the night with the man who was in charge. Then I arrived in your country. I was pregnant and I had the pregnancy terminated.”

She stopped speaking and lay down on the mattress and turned her back on me.

So that was it! The remoteness, the coldness towards people, especially men; then as if picking up my thoughts she went on in a muffled voice: “Don’t imagine David that it is only in faraway places this can happen. It is here too, lurking beneath that veneer we call ‘civilisation’. The passions and envies, the lusts and prejudices are all here. It wants but an incident to let it all boil to the surface.”

She was silent again and I was at a loss to know what to say. Suddenly she rolled over to face me. Her face was streaked with tears and she shook with silent sobs.

“Am I defiled, David? Do you think I’m impure, tainted? See what sort of a stepmother you have; ‘Officer’s meat’.”

“Don’t Sari, please,” I murmured.

I reached out to touch her arm and she came to bury her face in my chest.

“Hold me David, please hold me. It’s so hard to trust...please hold me.”

I was on the verge of tears myself, and felt a sense of shame that I had lusted for her, that I might have tried to seduce her. My veneer of civilisation had been ready to crack not long before. I might have tried to have sex with my father’s wife.

Now, as I held her in my arms, sexual desire had gone and I simply wanted to comfort her, to try and convey to her that I had no negative image of her.

Gradually she calmed and tried to smile through her tears. “Have I told you what you wanted to know, David?”

“Yes, Sari.”

“Is there anything else you want to know while I’m in the mood?”

There was, but I was not prepared to push the matter further at that time. She had come to trust me to such an extent that she had confided her deep secret, I would build on that trust.

Since I was silent Sari took off on one of her tangents that I had come to see as part of her. She gave a wan smile and said, “We haven’t looked at our fishing lines.”

We rose and began to haul our lines in. I felt instantly that I had a bite. I pulled the flapping creature on to the deck and looked at it, and then taking it from the hook I dropped it back into the water saying, “I don’t need your life, little one.” The fish flashed away into the depths.

Sari was exhausted by her emotional exposures and I felt little better. We decided to up anchor and return to the marina and home.

Sari, perhaps all unknowingly, had challenged me to look at myself. Would I, given the circumstances that had prevailed her country, have been one of the rapists? Would what she called the “veneer of civilisation” have fallen away from me and all the hidden passions come boiling to the surface? I did not know, but I did know that my view of Sari had changed dramatically and whatever it had been, it could never be the same again.

One thought that puzzled me was why, given what she had been through, had she worn that provocative swim suit? She must have known the effect it would have on me. Was it a way of punishing men through me? Or, was it to test me, to see whether I would also treat her as a piece of “Officer’s meat”? I thanked God I had managed to find a way round that one, even if it was by masturbation.

I still had questions in my mind about her. How had she come to meet and marry my father? Why, given her rejection of other males, had he won her? I knew this was not the time to ask, and if the time ever came for her to tell me, it would have to be of her own volition.

Despite the fact that we had taken some food with us on the boat, neither of us had eaten. I think we were both too wound up to feel pangs of hunger, but as we neared home in the car I stopped on the brow of a hill and said, “Shall we try eating something?”

Chapter 11. Speaking of Love

Sari who had been silent most of the time during our journey back, nodded. We got out of the car and sat on the grass to eat a couple of chicken legs and some salad.

Sari sat close, leaning against me as if the physical contact would protect her from something. After a while, and speaking very low, she asked; “David, do you think it is possible anyone could love me if they knew my story?”

I began, “Of course Sari, there are many people who…”

She cut me off; “I mean a man and not one who just wanted my body, but someone who really loved me.”

“There’s father…” I began.

“That’s different,” she interrupted quickly; “Completely different.”

I wanted to pursue that, but was afraid I might hear something I did not want to hear, so I said; “I’m, sure there are many who could love you sincerely.”

She rose and said, “Thank you David, and thank you for today. I feel as if I have been somehow cleansed inside. Shall we go?”

We went the few remaining kilometres to the house. I dropped her off at front of the house and garaged the car. I sat for a few minutes in the car feeling utterly drained. When I went inside father was just finishing dinner and asked, “Have a good time? Catch any fish?”

I avoided his query about a “good time” and said, “didn’t catch anything; they weren’t biting.” I passed on to shower and go to bed. I saw nothing more of Sari that evening.

I suffered a series of nightmares that night. They nearly all involved watching Sari being raped, and when I saw the rapist’s face, it was me. When I woke in the morning I felt as if I had not slept at all.

Sari made no appearance at breakfast time but just as I was finishing father came into the room. He looked gloomy and only grunted when I said good morning.

I hunted out our Dalmatian and together we took a long walk across fields and through some woods. My thoughts were not connected. I recalled my nightmare, the revelations of Sari and also I recalled there was some studying I had to get on with.