Lila's Husband

Don Aldo, who remained a little whimsical, although he had given up drinking altogether, still slept in the room with the young women and fucked both of them in turn. The initial pleasure, which made the serious Anna Maria less and less comfortable, slowly wore off, as did Don Aldo's strength. He sometimes still let himself be artfully seduced by Lila, but mostly preferred Anna Maria's quiet manner.

She had become willowy and attractive again after Pico's birth and gave herself shyly to the old man, for he had become very quiet and affectionate. Lila was always touched and moved when she watched night and night Anna Maria and Don Aldo made love shyly and tenderly — it was like a mutual consolation in the pain of the climax that the two reached gently and restrainedly. Lila was considered by connoisseurs as a sinfully expensive noble whore who was really worth her money, and now often lived with her lovers for months at a time; nevertheless, she she actively supported Anna Maria financially from afar, who had remained alone with the two small children and Don Aldo. He now slept only with Anna Maria, even when Lila stayed with them for a night. Lila respected this relationship and was happy for Anna Maria that she had gotten a good man after all.

During the eight years they lived together, Anna experienced a romantic and fulfilling love life with the old man, who, despite his increasing frailty, was better to her than anyone before. Right from the beginning he taught her to increase mutual excitement together, so that the act came almost by itself. Since she came to trust Don Aldo greatly and no longer had to keep secrets from him, she realized that masturbating was her true obsession, her true fulfillment. In his presence she felt free and without sin; her excitement sometimes spilled over to him when she masturbated. Understandingly, he guided her development and honestly encouraged her the more he himself fell. He freed her from the foolishness of waiting for him old man like a self‐sacrificing nun and taught her to the desire of her urges as often as she needed it. Anna Maria thanked him and gave him all her love; to the last she gave him him the wonder and warmth of her orgasms, when all he had left were gentle embraces and astonished excitement as he watched. She held him in her arms all night, warming him like a child as he died.

After Uncle Aldo died, Lila and Anna Maria again shared the large apartment on Elizabeth Street. Lila was about 30, Anna Maria about 28. Anna Maria was reflecting on her skills in sewing, which she had learned from her mother as a young girl, and earned a little money doing it, or at least food or fabric when the clientele had no cash.

Anna Maria had told Lila her decision right after Don Aldo's funeral. She would never marry again, never meet a man again, never fuck with a man again. With Don Aldo she had experienced the most beautiful love of her life and wanted to keep this memory forever. She now belonged only to Riccardo's children, Lila and Uncle Aldo had done everything to make this legal. Now and then, when she felt very lonely, she would scurry into Lila's room at night and snuggle up to her naked, lying aroused and lascivious in the arms of her friend and let Lila, who loved lesbianism above all else, bring her to climax to the point of exhaustion. Now and then she would also stand in the bathroom to watch the girlfriend and her lover make love. But this happened less and less often, because Anna Maria became more and more twisted and bigoted, praying a lot and teaching her children strict faith and deep fear of God — she had completely lost again the freedom she had gained with Don Aldo, and grieved terribly at the compulsiveness of her sin. The estrangement between her and Lila increased, her relapses into voyeurism became more and more infrequent, and she withdrew secretly and dejectedly into her obsessive addiction with masturbating, to which she fell completely into, despite her desperate remorse. The widow Rizzi would never have understood if anyone had suggested that the paradoxical discrepancy between her lustful, sinful addiction and the bigoted popery had, from the beginning, brought Monika and Pico's attitude toward sexuality to a crooked, pinched level on which they would one day slide along as confused and addictively fixated as their mother.

Lila had only sold herself for money since the end of the war, or almost always, but she loved the changing love affairs with women more than anything, and felt freer to come and go when she and did not have to discuss it with the humorless Anna Maria. So she had her room at the other end of the apartment and lived her own life. No, that's not true, because she took care of little Monika and little Pico just as Anna Maria did, not only sharing the money and the generous gifts she received from her lovers with Anna Maria and the little ones, but also gladly sacrificing her time when Anna Maria went to work. Her evenings, however, belonged to the "Contraband‐Dolce‐Vita" of Vienna, the nightlife that flourished openly or secretly, where whores, Nazis, and racketeers hung out and Lila, who often fell in love with rich men, gallant black marketeers, and bankers rich as rocks, or their wives. One evening she met her future husband Erich.

She was thunderstruck when she first met this serious war returnee, who seemed completely out of place in the establishment. Whatever might have triggered this love, she would never have been able to name the reason later. For he was so completely different from her that no one but she herself would have thought that these two people were meant for each other. After the misery of the war and the long imprisonment, which had left him wounded in body and soul, he had no zest for life, no sense of humor, no sensuality. All he wanted was to get his job back at the university, but no longer as a minor student assistant, but as a full professor. In the turmoil of the post‐war period, it was sometimes enough to have knowledge and a confident demeanor were enough to be appointed. This is how Lila met her university professor and later husband. Lust for life, sensuality and sex slowly returned to his life with Lila.

She had to tell Anna about her infatuation, and this somehow had an infectious effect, and Anna followed her into bed in the evening, hesitantly at first, but full of curiosity, where Lila told her everything in great detail. In particular, she described Erich's fabulous sex in such detail that she herself became highly aroused again and made love to Anna Maria to the point of exhaustion. It may sound crazy, but during this time of engagement Lila loved her Erich during the day, at night she lay with Anna and seduced her, although Anna, contrite the other day because of her sinful actions, prayed down one Avemaria after another. The happy, enamored Lila laughed at the remorseful, bigoted Anna and seduced her again and again. The lesbian relationships she sometimes secretly entered into when she met and fell in love with a beautiful woman had met and fallen in love, Lila concealed her Erich probably wisely.

With Erich's meager income, moving into his meager apartment was something she never really wanted to do. There was plenty of room in the Rizzis' large apartment. The wedding ceremony took place after a few weeks, and so she lived with her husband in Elisabethstraße. What Erich did not know, of course, was the relationship between Lila and Anna Maria before their marriage and the strange agreement that the two women had made at some point.

Since Erich came to live with them, Anna Maria could not well slip into bed with Lila when she felt lonely or horny. Her inner distress and inability to feel pleasure became so pressing that one day she talked to Lila about it, bashfully and full of qualms. Lila, who loved life and sex, was completely in love with her Erich and loved the whole world; she completely overlooked the fact that it was actually in ruins. Lila laughed brightly and said, "Gee, Anna, that's no problem — the hatch in the bathroom, you do remember?!"

Anna Maria had not expected it, but now she breathed a sigh of relief. Lila helped her immensely with this, and in the following time Anna's distress completely disappeared, although at the same time her religious scruples about her sinful actions grew alarmingly. The course of events might have been different if Anna Maria had not carelessly raised her quiet moaning one night. Erich jumped up as if stung by a tarantula and ran with his stiff hard‐on into the adjoining bathroom, where he found Anna Maria lying on the floor next to the hatch, naked and excitedly masturbating. He screamed at her until she was just a blubbering little wretch, and he probably would have kept screaming if Lila hadn't intervened.

Calmly and with iron control, she tried to explain things to him. But Erich was actually not the gentleman who would have understood these things either, but just a nasty little philistine. That his wife should have given permission to her friend, that did not go at all into his brain, not even into his ear, he did not want to hear that! The whore was simply a mean voyeur, a morbid masturbator, fie! and that was that! He gave Lila the choice of moving into his former pad with him, or breaking up with him. Lila, well, Lila was experienced in many things in life and would certainly have made the right decision if she hadn't been blinded by love for Erich, so she chose him, him and his musty little world. For the time being, at least.

One day she stood again in front of Anna's door, tried to excuse her teary eyes with migraine and asked for admittance. After they had drunk coffee and gossiped a bit of superficial stuff, Lila got to the point. She couldn't stay with Erich any longer, he was such a miserable small‐minded person, neglected her because of his career and wouldn't tolerate her going her own way in return. He was a failure in bed, rough and without imagination and constantly threatened with separation, but she had enough now.

But it didn't go quite that easily. Just a few days later, Lila went back to Erich. Shortly thereafter she stood again before Anna Rizzi's door and howled. This went on for several weeks until she came to her very special compromise: she would stay with Erich, but she would take a lover now and then and use her former room in the Rizzis' apartment, if Anna Maria agreed. Anna Maria probably had some scruples, actually it was a grave sin, but then she took pity on Lila and nodded godly. And perhaps also in the hope of escaping her joyless everyday life through a little voyeurism and lustful sinning here and there.

Shortly after that they divorced.

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