The Godfather - Puzo Mario - Страница 82

Now, sitting at the side of the pool with Jules’ blond head in her lap, she felt an overwhelming tenderness for him. Her loins ached and without realizing it her fingers sensuously stroked the skin of his neck. He seemed to be sleeping, not noticing, and she became excited just by the feel of him against her. Suddenly he raised his head from her lap and stood up. He took her by the hand and led her over the grass on to the cement walk. She followed him dutifully even when he led her into one of the cottages that held his private apartment. When they were inside he fixed them both big drinks. After the blazing sun and her own sensuous thoughts the drink went to her head and made her dizzy. Then Jules had his arms around her and their bodies, naked except for scanty bathing suits, were pressed against each other. Lucy was murmuring. “Don’t,” but there was no conviction in her voice and Jules paid no attention to her. He quickly stripped her bathing bra off so that he could fondle her heavy breasts, kissed them and then stripped off her bathing trunks and as he did so kept kissing her body, her rounded belly and the insides of her thighs. He stood up, struggling out of his own bathing shorts and embracing her, and then, naked in each other’s arms, they were lying on his bed and she could feel him entering her and it was enough, just the slight touch, for her to reach her climax and then in the second afterward she could read in the motions of his body, his surprise. She felt the overwhelming shame she had felt before she knew Sonny, but Jules was twisting her body over the edge of the bed, positioning her legs a certain way and she let him control her limbs and her body, and then he was entering her again and kissing her and this time she could feel him but more important she could tell that he was feeling something too and coming to his climax.

When he rolled off her body, Lucy huddled into one corner of the bed and began to cry. She felt so ashamed. And then she was shockingly surprised to hear Jules laugh softly and say, “You poor benighted Eye-talian girl, so that’s why you kept refusing me all these months? You dope.” He said “you dope” with such friendly affection that she turned toward him and he took her naked body against his saying, “You are medieval, you are positively medieval.” But the voice was soothingly comforting as she continued to weep.

Jules lit a cigarette and put it in her mouth so that she choked on the smoke and had to stop crying. “Now listen to me,” he said, “if you had had a decent modern raising with a family culture that was part of the twentieth century your problem would have been solved years ago. Now let me tell you what your problem is: it’s not the equivalent of being ugly, of having bad skin and squinty eyes that facial surgery really doesn’t solve. Your problem is like having a wart or a mole on your chin, or an improperly formed ear. Stop thinking of it in sexual terms. Stop thinking in your head that you have a big box no man can love because it won’t give his penis the necessary friction. What you have is a pelvic malformation and what we surgeons call a weakening of the pelvic floor. It usually comes after child-bearing but it can be simply bad bone structure. It’s a common condition and many women live a life of misery because of it when a simple operation could fix them up. Some women even commit suicide because of it. But I never figured you for that condition because yon have such a beautiful body. I thought it was psychological, since I know your story, you told it to me often enough, you and Sonny. But let me give you a thorough physical examination and I can tell you just exactly how much work will have to be done. Now go in and take a shower.”

Lucy went in and took her shower. Patiently and over her protests, Jules made her lie on the bed, legs spread apart. He had an extra doctor’s bag in his apartment and it was open. He also had a small glass-topped table by the bed which held some other instruments. He was all business now, examining her, sticking his fingers inside her and moving them around. She was beginning to feel humiliated when he kissed her on the navel and said, almost absentmindedly, “First time I’ve enjoyed my work.” Then he flipped her over and thrust a finger in her rectum, feeling around, but his other hand was stroking her neck affectionately. When he was finished he turned her right side up again, kissed her tenderly on the mouth and said, “Baby, I’m going to build you a whole new thing down there, and then I’ll try it out personally. It will be a medical first, I’ll be able to write a paper on it for the official journals.”

Jules did everything with such good-humored affection, he so obviously cared for her, that Lucy got over her shame and embarrassment. He even had the medical textbook down off its shelf to show her a case like her own and the surgical procedure to correct it. She found herself quite interested.

“It’s a health thing too,” Jules said. “If you don’t get it corrected you’re going to have a hell of a lot of trouble later on with your whole plumbing system. The structure becomes progressively weaker unless it’s corrected by surgery. It’s a damn shame that old-fashioned prudery keeps a lot of doctors from properly diagnosing and correcting the situation, and a lot of women from complaining about it.”

“Don’t talk about it, please don’t talk about it,” Lucy said.

He could see that she was still to some extent ashamed of her secret, embarrassed by her “ugly defect.” Though to his medically trained mind this seemed the height of silliness, he was sensitive enough to identify with her. It also put him on the right track to making her feel better.

“OK, I know your secret so now I’ll tell you mine,” he said. “You always ask me what I’m doing in this town, one of the youngest and most brilliant surgeons in the East.” He was mocking some newspaper reports about himself. “The truth is that I’m an abortionist, which in itself is not so bad, so is half the medical profession; but I got caught. I had a friend, a doctor named Kennedy, we interned together, and he’s a really straight guy but he said he’d help me. I understand Tom Hagen had told him if he ever needed help on anything the Corleone Family was indebted to him. So he spoke to Hagen. The next thing I know the charges were dropped, but the Medical Association and the Eastern establishment had me blacklisted. So the Corleone Family got me this job out here. I make a good living. I do a job that has to be done. These show girls are always getting knocked up and aborting them is the easiest thing in the world if they come to me right away. I curette ‘em like you scrape a frying pan. Freddie Corleone is a real terror. By my count he’s knocked up fifteen girls while I’ve been here. I’ve seriously considered giving him a father-to-son talk about sex. Especially since I’ve had to treat him three times for clap and once for syphilis. Freddie is the original bareback rider.”

Jules stopped talking. He had been deliberately indiscreet, something he never did, so that Lucy would know that other people, including someone she knew and feared a little like Freddie Corleone, also had shameful secrets.

“Think of it as a piece of elastic in your body that has lost its elasticity,” Jules said. “By cutting out a piece, you make it tighter, snappier.”

“I’ll think about it,” Lucy said, but she was sure she was going to go through with it, she trusted Jules absolutely. Then she thought of something else. “How much will it cost?”

Jules frowned. “I haven’t the facilities here for surgery like that and I’m not the expert at it. But I have a friend in Los Angeles who’s the best in the field and has facilities at the best hospital. In fact he tightens up all the movie stars, when those dames find out that getting their faces and breasts lifted isn’t the whole answer to making a man love them. He owes me a few favors so it won’t cost anything. I do his abortions for him. Listen, if it weren’t unethical I’d tell you the names of some of the movie sex queens who have had the operation.”