I think it was the rumble of the engines of the Air France S.O.30 Bretagne commercial airliner flying into African airspace, reaching out for a landing in Bamako, Mali, that brought up the memory as I dozed. Or maybe it was my returning to Africa for the first time since departing from Morocco for the Anzio Invasion eight years previously. Or the images surfaced by looking at the animated slender hands of the Italian businessman sitting beside me. Of maybe it was all three.
The rumble was the sound of the German tanks grinding by too close to us as we hid beside the road. And the chatter was Tony, another GI of Italian origin, egging me on to rise from our hiding place when the tanks were abreast of us. "Come on, Lieutenant; they won't be able to see us from inside those tin cans," I heard him saying, waving his hands in front of me. The sound of someone standing in the aisle of the plane, opening and closing a briefcase in the overhead bin—snap, snap, snap—translated into the machinegun fire that mowed us both down.
After that I was in an entirely different world, a world of white and red and moaning and pain. A hospital ward in Naples. Of pain and more pain—in my thigh and torso and shoulder—and the maddening repeat of "You were the lucky one," when I damn well knew that Tony wasn't the lucky one if I was still alive and he wasn't. And of Miranda, the nurse, with smiles and encouragement, laughter, cheery English accent, and kisses and more when I regained my mobility. And of Tom, the orderly, understanding, flirting in his own way. The Australian Tom of the "No worries" at my involuntary hardening during the bed baths and massages. Tom of the slender, relief-giving hand. Tom of the magic hand and introduction of the fist.
"What river is that down there?"
"Excuse me?" I asked, coming out of my remembrance doze.
"Oh, sorry. Were you asleep?"
"Just dozing," I answered. "What did you ask?" He was a handsome man. Maybe in his forties. Dark and sensual looking, the graying sideburns only adding to his attractiveness. Trim, but well muscled, expensive Italian suit—and those slender, expressive hands with the long, groomed fingers. He had a hand on my thigh as he leaned over to look out of the window. It was all so casually done, but it was as if he knew I wouldn't mind having it there—or higher even. We had eyed each other as early as the departure lounge in Paris, and I'd felt a jolt of electricity go up my spine when I saw that we would be first-class seatmates.
"I asked if you knew what river that was down there."
"It's the Niger. We'll use it as a landmark as we fly into Mali and land at Bamako."
"Oh. Have you been here before? Do you have business in Mali? Sorry, my name is Antonio Corti. I'm a mining engineer. Here on business. My first time here."
"Kyle Kendrick," I answered. "I'm an archeologist, here to consult on a Mali Empire dig. And, no I haven't been to Mali before. I was in Morocco a few years past."
"The Mali Empire? There's history here?"
"Oh, yes, there was quite a powerful empire here—based on the gold trade—for a good eight hundred years starting about AD 800. Not my specialty. But my former professor at Oxford believes there are enough similarities with the Incas and what he's found here for me to be useful."
"Oxford? But you're not English, are you? Or French?" He was giving me a warm smile. He'd taken his hand off the top of my thigh, but it lay against the side of the thigh on the low console between us, the fingers spread out against my leg. I looked down at the hand, and so did he. He didn't take it away and I made no move to move my thigh away from it. I knew he was signaling, and I strongly suspect he knew that I knew.
When I didn't move my thigh away, I was signaling too.
I smiled back. What can I say? He was a handsome man, with slender, expressive hands. Even though Miranda and I knew the score between us and what both of our preferences were, when I was at her family's country estate in York and even more at the family townhouse in London, I was on a pretty tight leash. I was in the wild of Africa now, and I'd come when Sir Geoffrey Bentham, my mentor at Oxford, had called because of what he had been to me and had initiated me in. I had come for more of an adventure than consulting on an archeological dig on the banks of the Niger forty miles outside of Bamako.
I keyed in on this man's signals because I had been revved up for it since I'd received Geoffrey's letter of invitation.
The fingers of his hand spread and acquired more pressure. I moved my thigh into them, thus spreading my legs a bit. I looked at his hand again, then up into his face, and, finally, lowered my eyes, dipping my head a bit. A signal of submission. His grip tightened in recognition of my acquiescence.
"No, I'm American. My graduate studies were at Oxford."
"Ah, American. I see that you have a cane and walked with a limp when you climbed the stairs into the plane. A war wound, perhaps?"
"Yes," I answered.
"Does it—?"
"It doesn't keep me from functioning in any way I want," I answered, anticipating the question.
"Good," he said, moving his had to on top of my thigh. Again, I permitted him that intimacy. It was enough to signal that I'd permit him other intimacies, should the opportunity arise. He was signaling domination. He was a top.
"I was in Southeast Asia—Thailand—for the duration of the war," he said. "I'm Italian, from Brindisi," he added.
He wanted me to know he wasn't in Europe for the war. The Italians were Axis; the Americans were Allied. I didn't want to tell him that I'd been in the Italian campaign, marching from the tip of the peninsula, at Anzio, as far as the monastery at Monte Cassino, before I was wounded and taken to Naples, where my war ended. We had bombed the shit out Monte Cassino, an Italian historical treasure. He wouldn't want to know that. I picked up the hand he had laying on my thigh and gently squeezed the fingers together with my hand, running my fingers over the span of the knuckles.
Another signal—a very special signal. I wondered if he would recognize it and would still be interested. Not every man was.
"You have very nice hands," I said. "Slender. I'll bet there is less than a nine-centimeter span from knuckle to knuckle." That would be no more than three-and-a-half inches in American and British terms. I looked into his eyes, wondering again if he would pick up on, correctly interpret, and respond to the signal.
He smiled back. "Yes, I believe the span is no wider than that. I can make that useful."
When I put his hand back, it was on the inside of my thigh and I closed my thighs on it. He left it there, opening and closing his grip on the inside of my thigh rhythmically.
"Are you staying at a hotel in Bamako or heading directly to your dig?" he asked.
"I'm being met. I have been given the option of staying the night in Bamako, though, and am tentatively booked at the Le Grand Hotel."
"Aren't we all?" Corti asked, with a winning smile. "Do stay the night in Bamako. I'm sure you'll find it very satisfactory. You're an unusually handsome young man. I'm sure you will find the servicing at Le Grand quite satisfying. Perhaps we could take dinner together if you didn't have other plans."
He'd called me a young man. He had me at that. It perhaps was for no other reason than I was within two months of losing my youth—turning thirty—that I was answering Geoffrey's call to come to him in Mali. I was scared of what I would become after thirty. I'd always been the desirable, handsome young man. What was there after thirty?
"Dinner would be very pleasant, if my reception party doesn't insist I go out to the camp tonight."
"Ah, tonight," Corti said, giving me another sunny smile. His hand moved up to brush my basket and then he pulled it away, both of us seeing the stewardess starting down the aisle to announce that we were descending into Bamako.
Corti helped me descend the stairway onto the Bamako tarmac, his support as much hindrance as help, but I sensed that he wanted demonstrate possession by having an excuse to put an arm around my back, and, as long as I would get what I wanted out of him, I could feel the arousal of being the submissive.
Geoffrey had written me that I wouldn't have any trouble identifying the reception party at the airport, and he was right. He'd already told me that he'd hired Mandinka tribesmen for the dig because of their long association with the area and unbroken line of connection the Mali Empire. I'd looked the name up to discover that, along with the Masai of Kenya, the Mandinka were the tallest peoples on earth, ranging up to seven feet tall. Two ebony men, looking very dignified and swathed in cloth, stood head and shoulders above everyone else in the reception hall. I knew even before I saw the sign with "Kendrick" on it that the taller of the two—reaching possibly six feet ten inches—was holding up that they had come for me.
They were handsome creatures in their own way. Seemingly beanpoles, with elongated features, until you stood next to them and found that they were as muscular as most men—just that everything was stretched out.
The taller of two, and obvious leader, identified himself as Tejon Darany. He was quite dignified of carriage—and reserved, although perfectly civil. He spoke impeccable English. His French also probably was impeccable, but since mine wasn't, I couldn't assess him on that. The other, shorter—if something around six feet eight could be considered shorter—and younger man was identified only as Modibo. He spoke no English and only broken French, so our exchanges were awkward, brief, and rare. He obviously was under the wing of Tejon, as he looked to the older tribesman in all matters and only shyly at me. Of the two, he was the more handsome in Western terms, but these two men were so exotic that I couldn't think of them in Western terms.
Tejon didn't seem the least bit upset when I told him I wanted to extend my touch with civilization by spending my first night in Mali at Le Grand Hotel. He said that he and Modibo had places they could stay and families they could visit that evening, and, with very little other verbal exchange, he drove me to the hotel in a dusty Land Rover and said they would pick me up there at 10:00 the next morning.
* * * *
I was huffing and puffing—but in seventh heaven, albeit its pain wing—as Corti's knuckles rubbed against the rim of my ass entrance. He'd taken several minutes getting to this point, aided by gobs of the vegetable grease lubricant I had gotten from a market near the hotel. We were both naked and stretched out against each other on my hotel bed—on rubber matting I'd also found in the market.
