Dolorosa Soror (6 page)

Notes

1. Here was inserted a long scatological scene in which the narrator pulled out from her lover's ass enough shit to smear herself all over with, then rubbed against her until they formed a single odiferous body. I thought it wise to suggest to Florence to cut these excesses lest she try her reader's patience. In fact, I wanted to keep these particularly delicious moments to myself.

Chapter VII

December: Continuation

There was a short period when Nathalie and I nearly tried to live together.

We would sleep together—her breathing was so slight that twenty times over I thought she was dead. We used to share sumptuous breakfasts—she had converted me to tea and a very lightly sugared orange marmalade we found in an English shop. We would leave together for the university, meet again between classes. Once in the elevator, we met by accident—I had run to catch it just when the doors were about to close, and there she was, jammed between five or six students. She winked, smiling, and between the mezzanine and the fourth floor, taking advantage of the multiple stops, entrances, and exits, she slipped next to me, her back against my belly, and with a mischievous hand gliding outside of my skirt, caressed my thighs and sex without anyone noticing. In maybe one minute, she brought me to the brink of orgasm. Then we separated, each of us going to her own classroom, and the sensation of my empty cunt and wet underpants kept me from hearing what was said that hour, so full was I with the need, barely checked, to finish with a rapid stroke of my index finger what she had so nicely begun.

During this period, another girl was flirting with her—a frustrated-virgin type. She was irritating, brushing up against

her, her insinuations as subtle as a whore's makeup. One day Nathalie took me by the hand and introduced us:

"Do you know Florence?" she asked. Then immediately afterward, she added: "She's the one I love."

Good God, I almost believed her.

***

One Saturday, a beautiful and cold day, she told me she needed to get out of the city, that Paris was weighing upon her. She had a paper to write on seventeenth-century theater. She would go to Versailles, take a closer look at the magnificent theater the king had built to his scale. She was especially enthusiastic to see the performance hall designed by Gabriel. "The theater in the theater," she said, with the delighted air of having been the first one to come up with this banality.

We stopped to talk at the rear of the Grand Trianon, leaning our elbows against the balustrade that overlooks the French gardens and, farther off, the great canal.

In the semicircle that connects the gardens to the esplanade, a group of about fifteen Japanese tourists were listening attentively to the commentary of their charming guide. She was one of those Japanese women—I'd known one or two of them at school—who adroitly mixes a traditional way of life with excursions into French culture, and who lives, and rather comfortably at that, off of little jobs like this one, connecting her hurried compatriots on the Grand Tour to the fleeting countryside.

Nathalie was holding my hand, so we must have been the spitting image of the lovers of Pont Mirabeau. I was having a good day so feeling a bit ridiculous, instead of killing my love for her, only strengthened it.

I released her hand, letting mine fall between us, then distractedly touched her thigh. I glided my hand down the front of her coat's low neckline, then rolled the fabric of her skirt between my fingers.

Still on our elbows above the balustrade, just above the
Japanese group, we appeared not to have budged an iota. My hand moved along the length of her stockings—I had forbidden her to wear pantyhose from the very first day—and slipped under that pretext for panties called a Brazilian thong.

She started when my icy fingers came into contact with her thighs and buttocks.

There was a short pause, during which I warmed myself with the heat of her body.

The vision of my hand plucking the little bit of fabric (which I had chosen myself that morning) excited me, and I abandoned myself entirely to it.

As usual, she was wet.

My hand slid along the furrow of her gorgeous thighs, then across her supple labia. My wrist softly rubbed against her sex, then dove deep to her clitoris, as if nothing particularly important were happening. She spread her legs slightly.

There was nearly no one else on the terrace of the chateau; in any case, the vague folds of her coat hid my handiwork.

Below us, the Japanese guide cheeped on, her compatriots nodding their heads like mechanical dolls, marking less their acceptance than the fact that they were following the commentary.

One of them, evidently audacious enough to stop listening to the guide's no-doubt illuminating remarks, began to stare at the beautiful blond just above him, leaning on her elbows with her girlfriend. He quickly focused his camera and photographed us.

At the very moment when he depressed the button, I shifted my hand backwards and thrust my index and middle fingers into Nathalie's vagina. Surprised, she widened her eyes and parted her lips, just for an instant.

This was precisely what the click of the shutter captured on that cold day in mid-December. As if slightly disconcerted, the Japanese man lowered the camera for an instant; perhaps he wanted to verify with the naked eye what his lens had revealed to him. Again he raised his camera and aimed.

Nathalie stared at him, hiding nothing of her ascent into pleasure, though I knew her capable of coming intensely with- out batting an eyelash. As my fingers groped about inside her, I buried my thumb in her asshole and rubbed it against the slender partition of flesh separating it from my index finger. She presented the Japanese man with a singular recital of flaring nostrils and open mouth. One spasm, then another. Her chin moved with each ecstatic sigh; her tongue passed slowly over her lips, dry with desire. At each pause, the Japanese man took a photograph. Merely by watching Nathalie's oh-so-changeable face, one could guess the moment at which the click would resound.
¹

Her game did not remain private for long. One after the other, the guys in the group turned their heads and whispered to each other, full of excitement. Finally the guide stopped talking and stared at us.

Nathalie played her orgasm as if she were a piano beneath my fingers.

The cameras went off in a noisy chorus.

I felt her ass contract around my thumb; she leaned her face towards me, hungry for my mouth.

I kissed her. Her lips were as cold as the air, her tongue a ball of wet fire.

A new burst of clicks.

Then everything returned to normal. We were again leaning against the balustrade, standing next to each other like good little girls. On the lichen-stained stone, Nathalie's hands, which had been clenched so tightly they were almost white, relaxed. She softly squeezed my hand, still soaked with her wetness. The Japanese group returned to their guide.

Only the man who had noticed us first still stared, and only for a brief instant. Stone-faced, he nodded his head slightly, with an infinite deference, as if to thank us.

Nathalie turned towards me. "Shall we go back?" she suggested.
Her face reflected the same enigmatic, indecipherable light
as the waxy face of the Japanese man.

On the way back—I was driving, she was playing with my hair—she asked:

"What's on your mind, Florence?"
"Nothing," I said.
I was thinking of the strange pleasure I had taken in
exhibiting her to the group and the complacency with which she had participated. She could very well have assured our total privacy. I told myself I did not have a woman's libido, but a man's, or at least, what I imagined a man's to be. I had been as hard and tense as a stone. As if I had had a hard-on.

Notes

1. I remember a similar performance. One day Florence was playing Hamlet with the same spirit, if not the same pertinence, as Sarah Bernhardt did long ago. Somewhere in the first rows, an audience member was taking photos. In the silence of the room his camera made a horrible racket, and I could foresee the particular times when, with this hand movement, that facial expression, the fatal click would go off. It was very funny and also very annoying.

Chapter VIII

December: Conclusion

I have a present for you," he says.

Pretty paper, a small box made from expensive wood.
"For a would-be mistress," he says. Not to be joked about.
And inside, a straight razor made from ivory and nickel.

The implement of our ancestors.

He shows me how to hold it so as not to cut my fingers. Slides it into the cups of my bra and slices them open with a simple flick of his wrist. Turns me around, glides the blade against my back (my God, how can something be so cold?) and cuts the band of elastic fabric.

My bra falls to my feet like a fruit paring. So much for Christian Dior.

With two clean and precise razor blows at my hips, he rids me of my underpants, their pale chiffon opening like a Saint Andrew's cross on the light-colored floor.

He is still behind me, his arms tightening around my back. He passes the razor slowly across my cheek, throat, breasts.

Pause. Just enough time to put on the handcuffs: pretty nickel-plated ones bought from a porno shop on the Rue Saint-Denis.

Sleight of hand. The blade plays with my skin, stops when just about to wound me. It slides across my chest, skims over my belly, coils in the slit of my sex.

Pure terror. He must have pushed a little too hard, because he nicks me, a half-inch chunk: a beautiful cut that bleeds a lot right away.

"Stop!"

Nasty game. He holds me by the hair, my head raised like a stubborn horse's. Takes his time opening his fly. I simultaneously feel his cock, hard with desire, against my buttocks, and the razor, with which he grazes me.

A burning sensation. He drives the blade into my left but- tock.

"No!"
I cry out.
He leans me over, spreads my tensed buttocks, caresses my
sex with the razor handle, raises me up, penetrates me slightly, and then, with a thrust, completely. The polished ivory opens me like a small, cold penis, while the blade, charting an obtuse angle, pushes against the slit of my sex.

He need only push down a little more to mutilate me forever.

A catastrophe seems imminent.

His right hand passes in front of me and masturbates me gently, while the razor's handle skims over my pussy.

***

Ten o'clock in the morning. I am working on the Sophocles scenario, which is coming along very slowly, by which I mean not at all.

Somebody rings, but Nathalie enters with her key before I can get to the door. She is wearing the smile she wears on the days I love her. She kisses me, then says suddenly:

"Flo?" "Yes?"

"Would you get undressed, please?"
I feel myself blush.
She does not seem to notice.
She goes to the window and closes the thick doubled green
velvet curtains. Then she turns on all the lights.
"Please," she repeats, turning towards me.
I had seen J. P. the night before and he had, if I may say
so, lavished me with innumerable marks of love.
"Very well," I say.
A striptease at that hour seems somehow indecent,
especially since Nathalie keeps on her big sweater with the large, loose collar, as well as her snug pair of pants, which make her ass look as if it belongs on the Venus.

I take off my underpants last and stand in front of her. She scrutinizes me with curiosity.

"Turn around," she says.

My buttocks are creased like taffeta. First he had hit me with a crop, tidily; then he had whipped me every which way, until he had erased the clean, straight stripes of the crop. The work of a slaughterer. The skin had been broken in many places, and little superficial scabs had formed. By that morning, the marks had turned to bruises, as usual.

Nathalie draws near.
"It's very pretty," she says.
With her fingers she traces the embossed meanderings. "It might as well be me," she adds.
She kneels behind me. Her hands fall on my hips; her
mouth skims over my buttocks, from track to track, with the lightness of a bird.

Titmouse, I think, because the sound of the word pleases me. Her tongue traces the blurry scars one by one. Turtle dove.

Robin redbreast when her hands gently spread my buttocks. Skylark when she licks me, smoothes her lips over my asshole.

Sweet skylark.

Her tongue hollows out my anus; she twists her torso and puts her whole face between my thighs, held open with both hands, the very caress I specialize in.

Skylark, I will pluck you.

Her hair streams against my skin; her lips bite mine. Her tongue buries itself in my sex; she searches and drinks, then goes back around front. I am nearly astride her now; her breasts are between my thighs. She plays with my clitoris, and her hands move toward my belly, sculpt my cunt, hips, buttocks, and back, scratch me, restore my form, give me new life.

I come standing up, shaking with spasms, my knees wob- bling, my sex glued to her mouth.

She gets up again and pulls me to her—my breasts lie against her black sweater. She kisses me, licks my ear, my neck, and the bridge of my nose, then buries her face in my shoulder. Her hand descends towards my groin, brushes against my sex...

"No!"

I nearly cry aloud. The idea of even the slightest arousal repulses me.

She couldn't care less. With her hand, she forces open my thighs and masturbates me violently, as violently as I have sometimes seen her flail away at herself, gritting her teeth, her crotch jumping under her fingers. She folds and unfolds the surface of my groin, thrusts her fingers inside me, jabs me again and again as a clumsy boy would.

I cry out and come again. Never, I think, have I had two orgasms so close together.

She undresses quickly and lays me down on the bed.

She embraces me, her groin against mine, mound against mound. She leans all of her body between my spread legs and I come again.

She does not let me caress her—not really, in any case. She makes me come eight or ten times—but I can no longer even speak of having individual orgasms, for all of me has become erogenous, from my hair to my fingernails. She sucks my toes,
and I come; she licks the insides of my knees, her fingers plunging in me more deeply than any man ever has, and I come. I come. I come.

Men thrust inside you as if they were going to tear your vagina from your body, or else they curl up the tips of their fingers. Her fingers give. At one moment, I nearly have the impression that my hand is in her vagina at the same time as her hand is just as deeply lodged in mine.

I am annihilated. I reach out as if to caress her but she stops me, and I am too exhausted to insist. She puts my head in the crook of her shoulder and I curl up against her warmth, one hand on her breast. She pulls the red-and-black quilt over us.

I fall asleep briefly in the heat of her skin. When I wake up, she again sucks and licks and forces me open until I cry out.