Emmanuelle (25 page)

Hundreds of them were hanging from several other trees. Wax candles had been placed here and there, in wooden candlesticks, all through that penis orchard. Most of them were extinguished, but numerous sticks of incense, identical to those which one lights before the image of Buddha or on the altar of one’s ancestors, were burning in the garden, giving off their heady, tenacious odor. Their glowing ends dotted the night with little points of red.

Emmanuelle saw with anxiety that several of these sticks were moving. The night was so light that it did not take a great effort for her to ascertain that they were held by human hands. It was not one man who was there, but four, five, six, at least ten men. Sitting on their heels, like the first one she had encountered. One of them stood up. She saw him approaching. When he was a few steps away, he crouched again. His eyes expressed calm, steady interest. Almost immediately, two, then four others joined him and squatted beside him. One of them looked very young, nearly a child. The others were older. None of them said anything. They continued holding their fragrant sticks between their joined fingers.

“Here’s a sympathetic audience,” Mario said jokingly. “What shall we perform for them?”

He plucked a phallus, of relatively modest size, from the nearest tree.

“I don’t know if I’m committing a sacrilege,” he said, “but if so, I’m committing it boldly. In any case, they don’t seem offended.” He handed the carved wood to Emmanuelle. “Isn’t it pleasant to touch?” She felt it. “Show them how you would use your hands to do honor to it if it were alive.”

She complied without protest, and even with a certain relief, because for a moment she had been afraid he might ask her to use it as a dildo and put it inside herself. She was revolted by the thought of its roughness and dirtiness.

Her fingers caressed the religious effigy as though they really hoped to make it ejaculate. She herself was finally taken in by that parody. She almost regretted not being able to use her lips, but the instrument was really too dusty!

She was aware that the men’s eyes had begun to glow. Their faces were rather tense. Mario made a movement. Almost immediately she saw his erect penis, larger and redder than the wooden phallus.

“It’s now time for illusion to yield to reality,” he said. “Let your hands be as tender to flesh as they were to inanimate matter.”

She put the article of worship in the hollow of a branch—she did not dare drop it on the ground—and obediently took hold of his member. He turned to face the squatting men so that they could see better.

Time stopped. No one made a sound. She remembered the “humanism” Mario had preached to her in his house on the
khlong,
and she concentrated to the point of dizziness. She no longer knew if the pulsations in her hand were his or those of her own heart. She also recalled his precept—
endlessly!
And she made miraculously artful efforts to
make it last.

Finally he murmured, “Go!” At the same time, he turned toward the tree from which the priapic fruit was hanging. A spurt of uncommon length and density traversed the night and sprayed some of the wooden phalluses, making them swing and turn at the ends of their vines.

“Now you must do something for our spectators,” he said immediately. “Which of them appeals to you most?”

Terror made her speechless. No, no! She could not touch those men, she did not want them to touch her . . .

“Isn’t the bambino adorable?” said Mario. “I myself wouldn’t mind being tempted . . . But tonight I’ll leave him to you.”

Without consulting her any further, he motioned to the boy and addressed a few words to him. He stood up slowly and with dignity and came over to them, not at all intimidated; he seemed, in fact, rather disdainful.

When Mario had said something else to him, he took off his shorts. Naked, he was more beautiful, and this comforted Emmanuelle in the midst of her agitation. A still-juvenile penis was thrust out horizontally in front of her.

“Suck and drink,” Mario ordered in a matter-of-fact tone.

She had no thought of refusing. She was, moreover, in such a state of confusion and turmoil that her acts themselves no longer seemed to have any great importance. She merely told herself that she would have preferred the naked man they had passed earlier, on the bridge of planks . . .

She knelt on the soft, thick grass and took the boy’s member in her hand, pushing back the skin that half covered its end, which quickly grew larger. She put it between her lips, as if she first wanted to taste it. She kept it there for a moment while her hand slid along the rest of his penis. Then, with sudden resolution, she took all of it in her mouth, so deeply that her lips touched his bare belly and her nose sank into his sparse down. She remained motionless for a time, then, conscientiously, skillfully, without trying to cheat or hasten the end, she began moving her mouth back and forth.

This test, however, was an ordeal for her, and for the first minute she had to struggle against a nausea that rose in her throat. It was not that she felt it was degrading, in itself, to perform that act of love with an unknown boy. The same game would have pleased her greatly if Mario had imposed it on her with a blond, elegant boy who smelled of
eau de cologne,
in the bourgeois drawing room of a Parisian friend. She had, in fact, come very close to deceiving Jean for the first time—without the feeling of deceiving him, because with a child it would have seemed like a joke—just before she left Paris, by giving in to the advances of the precocious little brother of one of her mistresses! They had been disturbed a minute too soon, but she had already given her consent, not only mentally but very physically . . . The opportunity had not been repeated; she thought of it now, and reflected that, all things considered, she was rather naturally dissolute. Since then, she had made imaginary love at least a dozen times with that little boy who had known nothing of her but a moist, offered sex, and had begun to penetrate it. But with this one it was not the same. He did not excite her at all. On the contrary, he frightened her. Furthermore, she had at first been repelled by the thought that he might not be clean; fortunately she was now reassured, and she belatedly remembered, with relief, how thoroughly the Thais wash themselves several times a day. Even so, this experience gave her no pleasure. She was going through with it to obey Mario, but her senses and her inclinations refused it.

“Do a good job anyway!” she told herself almost violently. A kind of pride urged her to treat the boy in a way that would leave him an indelible memory. Jean had told her that there was no other woman in the world who could make her mouth serve love so well . . .

Little by little, she let herself be caught up in her own game. She forgot to whom that penis belonged and began loving its warmth and strength, letting its glans probe her throat and seek, to suit itself, the place where it would climax its excitement. She felt her lips and her clitoris becoming sensitive; she finally closed her eyes and let her sensations take hold of her. When her caresses reached their goal, the flood of sperm on her tongue gave her as much pleasure as if it had been Jean’s. It had a different taste; she found it very good. It did not matter that all those men were looking at her; she wanted to bring her own excitement to fruition. Before the boy had withdrawn his penis from her mouth, she began stroking the bud of her sex with her fingertips, and a short time later she abandoned herself to orgasm in Mario’s arms while he kissed her lips for the first time.

“Didn’t I promise to let you give yourself bit by bit?” he said when they had climbed back over the ruined wall. “Are you happy?”

She was. But she was still not delivered from her embarrassment. She remained silent.

“It’s very important for a woman,” he commented thoughtfully, “to drink sperm often, and from many and varied sources.” His voice suddenly became ardent: “You
must
do all that because you’re beautiful.”

“Isn’t it possible to be pretty and remain decent?” she sighed.

“It can be done, of course, but at one’s own expense. Is it forgivable for a pretty woman not to use the power of her beauty to obtain what homely women vainly long for all their lives?”

“You seem to think that all women dream of nothing but debauchery.”

“Is there any other good?”

No one had stolen her skirt. She put it on and missed her previous comfort. They again took a direction different from the one she knew. She wondered if they were going to walk much longer. As she was getting ready to complain, they came to a real street.

“We’ll take a
sam-lo,
if we can find one,” said Mario.

She had never used that means of transportation, which had become rare, and she liked the idea of trying it. It would be more enjoyable to let herself be carried along by the indolent rhythm of a tricycle rickshaw under the luminous sky than to risk death at every turn in a taxi. They walked several hundred yards along the street before they found an available
sam-lo
. Its driver—also called a
sam-lo
, as if he were an integral part of his vehicle, explained Mario—was meditatively sitting on the ground. As soon as he saw them, he made a gesture of invitation toward the narrow seat covered with red oilcloth.

Mario had a brief discussion with him, probably to agree on the amount of the fare, then motioned Emmanuelle to get into the
sam-lo
and sat down beside her. Although they were both remarkably slender, they were squeezed in tightly. He put his arm around her shoulder and she pressed up against him, happy. In sitting down, she had pulled her skirt up to the tops of her legs, because he had told her he liked them. The
sam-lo
began pedaling his rickshaw. She suddenly had an idea that she herself judged to be fantastic and insane. She had never done such a thing of her own accord, and, still worse, in public, out in the street! But she was going to do it. She gathered up all her courage.

She turned sideways a little, toward Mario. With one hand, which she tried to make firm, she undid one of his buttons, then, hastily, all the others, moving downward. She slipped her hand inside his trousers and took hold of his sleeping penis. Only then did she begin breathing again.

“That’s good, Emmanuelle!” he said. “I’m very proud of you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Your act deserves to be admitted into the kingdom of eroticism, because convention requires men to take the initiative and women to follow their lead. A woman who makes the first move, at a time when a man isn’t expecting it at all, creates an erotic situation of the highest value. Bravo!”

She felt in her hand that his approval was not purely moral.

“Remember that principle in other circumstances,” he went on, “and you’ll always find it to your advantage. Needless to say, however, it’s subject to the clause of novelty, according to the rule.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. She began caressing him gently.

“If you’re a gentleman’s habitual mistress and you take off your clothes in front of him, even if he hasn’t asked you to, there’s nothing unexpected in it. And therefore there’s no eroticism in it. But if your ambassador introduces you, during lunch, to a diplomat who’s passing through Bangkok, and asks you to take him to see the temple of the Reclining Buddha; and if, afterward, having invited him to have a cup of tea in your parlor, to refresh himself after his guided tour of the city, you sit down beside him on your best white silk sofa and casually take off your blouse, shaking your hair in a perfectly natural way, that spontaneous act will leave an imperishable mark in his memory. On his deathbed, his last thoughts will be of you, and it will be your image that comes to haunt him and console him. After that beginning, of course, a whole range of possibilities is open to you. Or you can provisionally stop there and, with your breasts bare, ceremoniously pour him a cup of tea, without neglecting to ask how many lumps of sugar he usually takes. There’s a good chance that he won’t be able to remember. That, moreover, is how you’ll know what’s most appropriate to do next. If he answers ‘eight,’ or ‘fourteen,’ or ‘an inch,’ don’t expect him to take the next step; give him two lumps and move closer to him. Then proceed as you’ve just done with me and ask him whether he prefers to ejaculate before or after drinking his tea, and where—in your hand, your mouth, or his cup. What happens from then on doesn’t matter much. The climate has been created. And the masterpiece, as you like to say, is off to a good start. If, on the other hand, your visitor still has some semblance of composure, leave it to him to do the right thing, that is, to grab you and behave like the wild beast that you’ve unleashed in him; it will be entirely to your benefit.

“On another occasion, for the sake of variety, you’ll take off not only your blouse, but all your other clothes as well, without ever losing your urbane manner or showing even the most fleeting emotion. When you’ve taken hold of your skirt with your left hand, stepped out of it with your long ballerina legs and sedately dropped it onto a footstool, and when you’ve taken off your panties, if you’re wearing any, and safely tucked them away in the vase of orchids, you’ll sit down again to the left of your visitor and lean back on the cushions of the sofa with a gracious smile. If he turns out to be paralyzed with astonishment, you’ll tell him, to put him at ease, how you were raped the day before by two plumbers armed with wrenches, and how much pleasure you got from it. Give him a long description of your tormentors’ organs and the liberties they took with your body. If he still doesn’t move, masturbate in front of him.