Marlow sat at his desk putting the finishing touches to a case of butterflies he had carefully mounted. The walls of his room glinted and sparkled with similar cases containing collections from all over the world. Shelves were crammed with apparatus, jewel blue bottles of cyanide, cotton wadding, and glass phials with intriguing traps set inside their seals. The long, drooping form of a net stood in a corner, like a ghostly hood without a body. An occasional glance at the clock on the mantel suggested that he was waiting for something to happen, that he was merely passing the time. Despite his impatience, he gave the delicate creatures which he caught and poisoned great respect, teasing out their varicoloured, venous, sometimes iridescent wings with minute, calculated movements. It was five to eleven. “Only five more minutes” he thought to himself, and, returning to his work, noticed that his hands were shaking slightly, his breath coming to him less easily.

Marlow had taken the flat in the tower block only five months before. Though ugly, it was cheap, had room enough for his work, and had the added bonus of a rough balcony made of concrete. The thought of summer days reading and dreaming on the balcony appealed to him and an outdoor light, would attract moths in the evenings, making collecting expeditions a matter of a brief step outside.

The balcony looked out acros the well tended gardens of a small 18^C manor house. “Strange”, thought Marlow, “there’s no way of knowing this was here from the street”.

“Who lives there?” he’d asked the landlord.

“An academic, I think, a recluse. No one’s seen him in years. He wrote a book which was highly praised some years ago”.

Marlow developed a passion for the garden. There were rose arches, classical niches containing lichen crusted benches, a miniature maze of box (Marlow found its centre many times with a dreaming eye, his elbows on the lip of the balcony acquired the outlines of the stone), long soft lawns shaded by an ancient yew. There were parts of the garden forbidden to his curious eye. Paths and passageways occluded by ornate foliage; secret, enchanting. He found that whole days would vanish inside the garden, and when the sun set, the cold shook him from his dreams with a shiver, a wonder of fatigue, the keen call of hunger.

Even at night Marlow would dream of the garden, floating down from his high perch to explore those parts lush and hidden during the day. The dreams would trouble him and he would wake and go to the balcony to look out over his garden.

It was on one of these nights that he first saw her. He was dreaming of the maze, feeling his way to the centre in the gloom of the moon shadows, when he hesitated, his hand faltered, heartbeat quickening. He questioned his dreaming self. The air in the garden had changed; some imperceptible shift alerted Marlow to the presence of someone else nearby. It was the feeling of observation, perhaps, the beating of a moth’s wings in the darkness, a subtle, exquisitely gentle transformation. His instincts proved correct, for a short way off, a stone arch framed for an instant the pale outline of a woman and the shock woke him with a cry. There had never been anybody else in the garden before, in his dreams or otherwise. Resentment mixed in with irritation bloomed momentarily in his soul. The garden, he felt, belonged to him alone. Fearful, he went to the balcony to look out for the intruder. But the reassurance he sought was in vain for stretched out underneath the yew and bathed in moonlight lay a beautiful woman. He couldn’t help but stare, drink her in, explore her as he had done the garden, tracing with his eye every exquisite curve, every scented pit and limb.

Every month, when the moon was at its brightest, Marlow sat in vigil on the balcony, satisfied merely to watch. Cloudy nights, nights of storms, and the times she simply did not appear affected him deeply with an ache, a solemn yearning. On these nights he remained awake until the haze of dawn when the dew settled on his clothes and drove him inside.

“Why don’t I just go and introduce myself to her?” It was such an obvious idea, he laughed aloud at his own stupidity. “She is only ever about at night” he reasoned, “and so I will knock on the door of the academic at 11 tomorrow night”.

Marlow lifted the iron ring held in a lion’s jaws on the black front door at one minute to eleven. How he was to broach the subject of the beautiful daughter and his desires for her were the focus of his thoughts. Fragments of sentences, explanations, and apologies whirled through his head. There was no sound from within, so he raised the knocker again, but before it fell for the fourth time, the door opened.

Marlow rapidly began his explanations, but the handsome old man who had answered held a gnarled finger to his lips. The man spoke in a gentle voice: “welcome, come in, I think I know why you are here”.

Marlow found himself in a sparsely furnished entrance hall. Just below the ceiling, a series of mysterious brass pipes ran along the coving, disappearing through a hole in the plaster near an inner door. This was a house of earie noises. The wind in the chimney, notes forced from bottles by blowing over their openings, the sound of air leaking from the pipes of an organ. “Follow me, and on the way you may tell me why you have come here.” The old man said nothing while Marlow talked, but maintained a steady pace; looking down at the ornate patterns of the thick runners over which they walked.

With a sigh the old man came to a halt and pushed at a panelled door. “These two gentlemen arrived shortly before you. This is Matthias, an artist”. A young man with blonde hair rose briefly and nodded at Marlow.

“And this is Malcolm, a dancer.” Malcolm, an equally fine young man, but with dark hair and green sparkling eyes, rose gracefully and gave Marlow a brief bow. They settled in to an uncomfortable silence.

“My name is Penrose, and the woman that you have all been lusting over is, you have all correctly concluded, my daughter” began the old man. “I have known that this day would arrive, but the story is a sad one. The truth is, my daughter can welcome no man to her bed. Others have tried, but their attentions are too rough for her infinitely sensitive form. All who try to touch her are sadly disappointed, for she is so delicate that no one can please her. If the hands of men are like the bark of ancient and monstrous trees, then the caresses of women are to her like being tumbled by rough and angry seas on beaches of coarse shingle. How can a lustful man please a woman who cannot bear a single touch? It is truly tragic that one as well made as her should remain as if she was statue or an ideal for men to gaze on, but never enter. It is a tragedy for her too, who worships the fine forms of men” His eyes rested meaningfully in the dancer as he said this. Marlow felt piqued and thrust out his chest.

“I have tried everything I can to please her, while always maintaining the proper relations of a father”

He paused, gathering his thoughts...

“What I mean is the system of pipes you may have observed around the house. I have been studying the forms made by the wind for many years, and I know only too well that the feel of a breeze is both gentle and arousing. I manufactured a system that would gather breezes, winds, of different speeds and directions that would lead directly in to her chamber, and produce a pleasing play of sensations over her delightful form. In this endeavour, I have failed; the caresses of Aeolius himself are too rude. And now gentlemen, may I give a formal introduction to my daughter, Eva Penrose”.

At this, he turned around and began to work a tiny brass handled wheel that was set in to the wall. The wall farthest from the assembled gentlemen, just a partition, split open to reveal a vast couch upholstered in a soft, shimmering material. There Eva lay in cushioned splendour. In this intimate situation, her beauty inspired the lust of the men to heights they had never reached before. Her hair was an inky black. Those lips, too tender for kisses, were a fresh agony every time Marlow caught sight of them. Her delicate white thighs were a torment. She was very white; the moon had burnished her skin to luminous silver. Looking closer still (how could he not), he saw that she lay on a bed of morning glory petals.

While the three gentlemen explored her with hungry eyes, her own were not idle, and it pleased her greatly to see the changing silhouettes of the company’s trousers. Tracing those swellings with her eyes, she licked her lips with longing and wondered if any of them would prove to be the genius of gentle pleasures that she craved.

“Now gentlemen”, Penrose began, “I propose that which so ever of you manage to pleasure Eva this evening, without doing her harm, will be welcome here whenever he chooses, to the exclusion of the others”.

The artist, the dancer and the lepidopterist flipped a coin. First to the challenge was the artist. Again the coin sparkles in the air...the second challenger will be...the dancer. Marlow at least had time to think. All were given time to return to their homes, prepare, imagine, and focus on the task ahead.

When they returned, Penrose had closed the partition once again. “First up, the artist Matthias” he announced loudly, and cranked the little wheel in order to admit him.

They waited. Silence, nothing stirred behind the screen. Silence once more, with the exception of the ever present moans from the wind pleasure organ. An hour dripped by. Then, the most awful cry of pain shook the room horribly awake. The wheel spun, and Matthias re-entered the chamber, looking tired and drawn. “I spent an aeon in approaching her in order to be as gentle as possible, but at the last moment, her wonderful smell overcame me, and I touched her so briefly with the tip, the very tip of one of my finest sable brushes”. He left the room looking crestfallen.

The dancer Malcolm next, and the same routine, the tiny brass wheel spub, the partition parted, and in he went. Only a brief ten minutes this time, and no shriek. Malcolm emerged, flushed and embarrassed. “She is so beautiful! I approached her with poise, strength, lightness, grace-all of the power of my art. And just the slightest, the merest, the most imperceptible look in her eye of wanting me (for I saw her eyes upon my groin), bought me all too soon to the warm gush of conclusion”. He sat down sadly. A melancholy sight, thought Marlow as he collected himself, took a deep breath and picked up the small bag he had bought from home.

Penrose spun the wheel, and Marlow entered the chamber. Outside Malcolm and Penrose waited. The clock marked out the minutes. Ten, Twenty, Thirty. After thirty-one minutes in Eva’s chamber, the tense, patiently waiting men heard an unusual sound. At first they thought it was a new tone that the organ had acquired. It was the sound of a woman sighing, not in pain, but in the midst of an exquisite ecstasy. Intrigued, Malcolm motioned to Penrose to open the partition slightly so he could see in. Penrose shrugged his shoulders and complied. The noises grew more intense from within, and as they did, so the shape of the dancer’s trouser changed once more. Malcolm twisted round in order to get a better view. Marlow, his face ruddy with concentration and arousal, held an object infinitely close to Eva’s flushed pudenda. Malcolm couldn’t quite make it out, shifted again to get a better view, and began to rub his stiffness through the thin material of his tights. “ah ha!” he shouted, leaping up from his vantage point. “The lepidopterist is an erotic genius”.

Marlow held in his trembling hands a glass collecting tube. Inside fluttered the form of a moth, beating its tiny wings against the sides, giving them the faintest, slightest, infinitely subtle vibration. The vibration of this miniature death pitched at precisely the right frequency to pleasure the most fragile of women.

Again the sighs, the moans from inside the chamber grew in intensity, steadily louder, more communicative, deeper, and guttural. Until, of course, the poor pent up girl, came.

Postscript:

The problem, of course, of Marlow’s own pleasure was never resolved, and he soon grew bored of this fragile mistress, this unattainable ideal, whose only thoughts were of her self. His fondest memories of this period in his life were of his nocturnal wanderings in the garden, collecting moths and butterflies, and the relative ease of his existence. Understandably, he later pursued more robust mates, and reached many satisfying conclusions through the magical alchemy of mutual attentions.

As for Eva, she found happiness in the even more gentle caresses of an impotent storyteller. However, when he was away peddling tales in Europe, her elderly father was a common sight in the walks of the garden, a lantern swinging in his left hand, and the drooping but unmistakable silhouette of a collecting net held ready in his right.