“The main feature of intercourse in Spain is that it is always a duel between a man and a woman, and the duel is hidden. The game, consisting of silence, half hints, half hope and half barriers, brings the heat of passions to the highest point - and then ... "

(From some book)

***

In one of the October evenings of 20 ***, the film director Riccardo Munoz was sitting on the veranda of his house near Cadiks.

With him was the young actress Lea Velar, in the recent past - a wild little schoolgirl from the Cantabrian backwoods, and now "a living embodiment of the screaming libido of modernity, a fetish of the male subconscious", as they wrote about her in reviews.

The evening was cool, serene, with a transparent pink sunset and a quiet breeze blowing over Riccardo and Lea. Their mood was in tone with nature: sunset, tired-solemn, like “travelers, long and hard to reach their goal, and once realized that their path is behind,” as they wrote in other reviews.

They had glasses in their hands: Riccardo and Lea noted the unprecedented success of the film “The Lark”, which instantly brought Lea world fame.

Behind were exhausting filming in the desert, in the mountains, on the water and under water, the premiere, solemn speeches, receptions, receptions, buffets - a year of life on people, a year of slavery - first in the cinema, then in society and good form. And when she returned “just life” (no matter how hard it was to believe in her), Riccardo invited Lea to his place - his discovery, his pearl, his pride - to drink wine with him and celebrate the result of the great work.

Leah sat across from him. The breeze stirred her wavy hair, loose on her shoulders, and tickled the oval, piercingly young and vivid face that stung a “lark” in the heart of every spectator. Riccardo asked her to come the way he saw her in the village of Costa Alondra * on the banks of Biscay. Lea even put on an old dress with appliqués that her mother sewed to her.
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* Lark Coast (is) - approx. auth.

A golden lamp burned above them, gleaming in Lea’s blue eyes and honey locks. On the table lay a printout of reviews of "The Lark", which Riccardo and Lea took turns reading aloud - with an expression, with comments and glances:

“... And this is the old mouflon Filippo Alcazar, my long-time friend and long-time flatterer, you know him,” said Riccardo. - No, you just listen! The old skeleton is headlong like Sheherazade, but - damn it, take it with me! - I am ready to subscribe to his every word. Just listen:

“Riccò went to the Lark for many years, for many years he had been looking for Beatrice, HER Beatrice - a creature that would become the heart of his film. He needed not an actress, but a soul, a perfect soul of a woman, embodied in a perfect body. He saw thousands of girls - and when he found, he did not believe himself. What he found was more than what he was looking for. More than beauty, and more than sexuality; it was life. "* Well? How do you? And here's another:
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* The name "Beatrice" means "life." - approx. auth.

“Lea’s face is a bottomless vessel. The whole fate of Beatrice - in this face ... "So, okay, this is water ... but listen -" God helped Ricco, having thrown him at the right time in the right place, because the girl who played Beatrice could be only sixteen . This is the age when in the face of equally childlike purity and female maturity; when the body is already perfect, and the eyes are still clear, and the face is fresh, open and defenseless, like the opened depth of a flower - so much so that it is afraid to breathe on it. A year later, Lea is no longer the same. ” Yeah: you will soon be eighteen. Hopelessly aged, my girl!

They laughed, and Ricco continued:

“... they were faced with difficult tasks. Riccò was to make a film about love, life and death, where a sixteen-year-old girl remains naked for at least a third of the entire tape. He had to remove her body and her love openly, without silence, because silence kills the truth.Lea had to step over herself and realize that the genitalia exposed in front of the camera was part of the game, as was the whole body and the whole soul. She had to feel the line between eros and debauchery - and walk along the razor's edge. The slightest bias would have responded to falsehood in the film.

And Riccò and Leah could. Riccò created an atmosphere of reverence for Leah on the set, and in the film her body, passionately devoted to life, is life itself; no blemish, nothing forbidden - only the shocking frankness of life. That is why the finale of the Lark, where vultures devour this amazing body alive, cuts down the audience's souls like an ax ... "

“... But you turned red, girl,” Riccò suddenly added. - You have not forgotten how to blush? After all that was? and after WHAT did you see yourself on the screen?
“And the truth is, why should we blush,” the crimson Lea replied. - But I'll read you right now ... "TRAX, COVERED BY PHILOSOPHY." Already cool, right? Someone Muert Aldonsa, from his blog. Where is it? ... now ... yeah, here it is. Listen to:

“Senor Riccardo Munoz presented us with another porno, half dressed in seductive postmodern laces. We are used to fucking on the screen, like exhaust fumes; but here Munoz crossed all the borders, putting a naked schoolgirl on public display, who was slobbering, squeezing, tits and fucking, and exquisitely and diversely fucking throughout the film ... ”

- Not true. No one for you boobs not bent. Ha! In the film, only two sex scenes - clean editing, by the way ... I let Diego come to you when you were naked, only on a leash ... well, you remember?

- "... throughout the entire film. What is the name of a person who pushes a child (for sixteen is still a child) into fucking, which has not been dreamed of and who have seen kinds of whores? What is the name of the person who turned the shooting into the corruption of a minor? ... "

- ... That's a bitch lying! There was no sex on the set, not even a hint ... I climbed out of my skin so as not to scare, not to shame you, to leave you in your ... Alcazar is right. Do you remember that? remember?

- “... in the cinema style, such a person is called an innovator, conceptualist, shocker, philosopher, and so on. In our opinion, he is called a pimp. The whole crazy world rejoices in the new "masterpiece"; and we will think that a child with eyes as blue as Biscay has become a whore, and we will pray that he will have enough strength to get out of the pit into which ... ”

Lea read ironically expressively, stretching words and wrinkling crimson cheeks. Ricco listened to her, then closed his eyes ...

***

He recalled how he first met Leah on a stony shore, on a windy August day - in this same dress, with the same hair, disheveled and gilded by the sun. He remembered her eyes, radiant, incredulously wide-open at Riccò; I recalled how I entered with her, stunned by his offer, into the room in the attic - and told her:

- Undress Please.

Her eyes still glowed in his memory. Ricco thought then - “damn, what a find! What a look, what stuff! If only the body would fit ... ”

- What?!..
- Lea, listen to me. Try to understand me. On the set you have to undress in front of the camera. Fully. There is nothing wrong with that - this is art. But I need to know what your body is. Do you understand? I will do nothing to you - neither here nor later. No one will touch you with a finger. Please try to believe, understand me ... and show me your body.

He did not know then that she was sixteen. Lea began to undress, clumsily dropping things, and he was shaking with excitement, as at the first premiere. He unbuttoned his collar ...

- ... Completely, Lea, completely. And a bra and panties. I have to see your chest and your hips. And pipisku too.
- But I ... I have never ...
- Want to play a movie? Everything happens for the first time, Lea ....