"In this book Kalyana Mai explains that there are four orders of women. The three highest orders he calls the Lotus Woman, the Art Woman, and the Conch Woman. The rest he dismisses as Elephant Women."
Hawksworth took the book and examined its pages for a time. There were many paintings, small colored miniatures of couples pleasuring one another in postures that seemed astounding. Finally he mounted his courage.
"I think I must be the third order, the Conch Woman. The book says that the Conch Woman delights in clothes, flowers, red ornaments. That she is given to fits of amorous passion, which make her head and mind confused, and at the moment of exquisite pleasure, she thrusts her nails into the man's flesh. Have you ever noticed me do that?"
Hawksworth felt the scratches along his chest and smiled. Only in India, he thought, could you make love so many ways, all kneeling before a woman rather than lying with her. So she scratches you on the chest.
"And it says the Conch Woman's love cleft, what the
Hindus call her yoni, is always moist with _kama salila_, the woman's love seed. And its taste is salt. Does that also remind you of me?"
Hawksworth was startled with wry delight when he realized he actually knew the answer. Something he'd never had the slightest desire to know about a woman in England.
In England. Where baths were limited to the face, neck, hands, and feet--and those only once every few weeks. Where women wore unwashed petticoats and stays until they literally fell off. Where a member of the peerage was recently quoted as complaining "the nobler parts are never in this island washed by the women; they are left to be lathered by the men."
But Kali was scrubbed and perfumed each day like a flower. And she had taught him the pleasure in the taste of all her body.
"I guess that makes you a Conch Woman. But what are the others supposed to be like?"
"Let me tell you what it says." She reached and took back the book. "The next one, the Art Woman, has a voice like a peacock, and she delights in singing and poetry. Her carnal desire may be less strong than the Conch Woman, at least until she's properly aroused, but then her _kama salila _is hot, with a perfume like honey. And it's abundant, producing a sound with the act of union. She is sensuous, but for her lovemaking is always a kind of art."