Emmanuelle (3 page)

His presence suddenly became agreeable to her again. She smiled and closed her eyes. She had a vague yearning for something, but did not know what. She found no other diversion than to resume rejoicing at being beautiful; her own image lingered in her head like a favorite refrain. Her heart beat faster as she sought in her mind the invisible cove that she knew to be buried under its promontory of black grass, where the two brooks came together, and she felt their current licking at its edges. When the man raised himself on one elbow and leaned toward her, she opened her eyes and let him kiss her. The taste of his lips on hers had the freshness of sea salt.

When he began pulling off her sweater she sat up and lifted her arms to make it easier for him. She relished the excitement of seeing her breasts emerge from under the russet garment, looking even rounder and larger in the near-darkness than in daylight. To leave him the whole pleasure of undressing her, she did not help him when he groped for the zipper of her skirt, although she did raise her hips so that he could slide it down without difficulty. This time her narrow skirt did not remain twisted around her knees—she was completely free of it.

His active hands rid her of her thin panties. When he had unhooked her garter belt, she rolled down her stockings herself and dropped them to the floor in front of her seat, where they joined her skirt and sweater.

Only when she was entirely undressed did he take her in his arms and begin caressing her from her hair to her ankles, forgetting nothing. She now had so powerful a desire to make love that her heart hurt and her throat was constricted. She thought she would never be able to breathe again, to return to daylight. She was afraid, she felt like calling out, but the man was holding her too tightly, putting one hand between her buttocks, widening the quivering little crevice, with one whole finger buried in it. At the same time he kissed her avidly, licking her tongue, and drinking her saliva.

She whimpered softly without knowing the exact cause of her distress. Was it the finger that was probing so deeply inside her, or the mouth that was feeding on her, swallowing each breath, each gasp? Was she tormented by desire or ashamed of her lasciviousness? She was haunted by the memory of the long, arched form that she had held in her hand, magnificent and erect, arrogant, hard, unbearably hot. She moaned so loudly that the man took pity on her. She at last felt his bare penis, as big as she had expected, touch her belly, and she pressed against it with all the softness of her body.

They remained like that for a long time, without moving; then, seeming to make up his mind abruptly, he lifted her in his arms, drew her over him, and put her down beside him in his seat, on the aisle.

She was less than three feet away from the English children. She had forgotten they even existed; she now realized that they were not asleep and that they were looking at her. The boy was nearer to her, but the girl had huddled against him to see better. Motionless and breathless, they were staring at her with widened eyes in which she could see nothing but fascinated curiosity. At the thought of being possessed in front of them, of abandoning herself to that excess of debauchery, she felt a kind of dizziness. But at the same time she was eager to begin and let them see everything.

She was lying on her right side with her legs bent forward while the man held her by the hips from behind. He slipped one leg between hers and entered her with a straight, irresistible thrust that was made easy by the absolute rigidity of his penis and the moistness of her flesh. It was not until he had reached the deepest point of her vagina and stopped there long enough to sigh with pleasure that he began moving his member back and forth with long, regular strokes.

Delivered of her anxiety, she panted, became warmer and more liquid with each onslaught of his phallus. Through the mist of her ecstasy, she marveled at the thought that her organs had not atrophied during all the months when they had not been stimulated by a male goad. Now that she was rediscovering that pleasure, she wanted to enjoy it as long and completely as possible.

The man showed no sign of being about to tire. For a moment she wondered how long he had been in her, but there was no way for her to guess the time that had gone by.

She held back her orgasm, effortlessly and without frustration, because she had trained herself since childhood to prolong the pleasure of waiting. Even more than the final spasm itself, she loved that growing sensitivity, that extreme tension of her being, which she knew so well how to give herself when she was alone, and her fingers stroked the trembling stem of her clitoris for hours, with the lightness of a violin bow, refusing to yield to the supplication of her own flesh, until at last the pressure of her sensuality broke through. The explosion was as terrifying as the convulsions of death, but she was always reborn from it immediately, fresher, and more alert than ever.

She looked at the children. Their faces had lost their haughtiness; they had become more human. They were neither excited nor snickering, but attentive and almost respectful. She tried to imagine what was going on in their heads, the bewilderment they must be feeling at the event they were witnessing, but her thoughts unraveled, her brain was seized with spells of faintness, and she was much too happy to care about anyone else.

When the acceleration of her partner’s movements, a certain stiffness of his hands as they gripped her buttocks, and the sudden expansion and pulsation of the organ that was piercing her made her realize that he was about to ejaculate, she let herself go. The spurting sperm whipped her pleasure to a frenzied pitch. During the whole time he was emptying himself in her he stayed deep in her vagina, pressed against her cervix, and even in the midst of her spasm she still had imagination enough to enjoy the mental image of his penis disgorging creamy torrents that were lapped up by the oval opening of her uterus, as greedy and active as a mouth.

He finished his orgasm and she too became calm, filled with a sense of well-being without remorse, increased by his sliding motion as he withdrew, the contact of the blanket that she felt him spreading over her, the comfort of the reclining seat, and the warm, increasing opacity of the sleep that was covering her.

The plane had passed through the night as though crossing a bridge, blind to the deserts of India, to the bays, estuaries, and rice paddies below. When Emmanuelle opened her eyes, the mountains of Burma were iridescent in the light of a sunrise that she could not see, while inside the compartment the purple glow of the night lights left her unaware of the exotic landscape and the time of day.

The white blanket had slid off her lap and she was lying naked, curled up like a cold child. Her conqueror was asleep.

Awakening by degrees, she lay still. Nothing of what she might have been thinking could be seen on her face. She slowly stretched her legs, drew back her shoulders, and rolled over on her back, groping for the blanket. But her hand stopped in midair—a man was standing in the aisle, looking at her.

From his position above her, he seemed gigantic and she told herself that he was also incredibly handsome. That was no doubt why she forgot her nakedness, or at least was not embarrassed by it. “He’s a Greek statue,” she thought. A fragment of a poem, which was not Greek, flashed into her mind: “Deity of the ruined temple . . .” She wished there were primroses and yellowed herbs strewn at the feet of the god, and foliage twined around his pedestal. Her gaze moved from the short, soft hair that curled above his ears and forehead down the straight bridge of his nose, to his delicately curved lips, and his marble chin. Two firm tendons sculpted the lines of his neck down to where they met his shirt, half-open over a hairless chest. Her eyes continued to study him. There was an enormous bulge beneath his white flannel trousers, near her face.

The apparition bent down, picked up her clothes scattered over the floor—skirt, sweater, panties, garter belt, stockings, and shoes—then straightened up and said, “Come.”

She put her feet down on the carpet and took the hand he was holding out to her. Then, having stood up with a lithe effort, she walked forward, naked, as though altitude and the night had brought her into a different world.

The stranger led her into the lounge where she had already gone with the stewardess. He leaned his back against the silk-padded wall and placed her so that she was facing him. She nearly cried out when she saw the reptile that had risen before her from its patch of golden underbrush. Because she was much shorter than he was, the blunted triangle of his glans touched her between her breasts.

He took her by the waist and lifted her effortlessly. She clasped her fingers over the back of his neck and felt his muscles harden beneath her palms, then, when he lowered her onto his penis, she spread her legs so that it could penetrate her. Tears flowed down her cheeks while he entered her cautiously, tearing her. Pressing her knees against his hips and the wall, she did her best to help the herculean serpent crawl into the depths of her body. She writhed, clawed his neck as she clung to it, sobbed, moaned, and cried out unintelligible words. In her frenzy she was not even aware that he was ejaculating, quickly, with such a savage thrust of his pelvis that he seemed determined to force his way through her till he reached her heart. When he withdrew, with his face radiant, he kept her standing against him. His wet phallus cooled her smarting skin. “Did you like it?” he asked.

Emmanuelle put her cheek on the Greek god’s chest. She felt his semen moving in her. “I love you,” she murmured. “Do you want to take me again?”

He smiled. “I’ll come back,” he said, “Get dressed now.” He bent down and kissed her on the hair so chastely that she did not dare to say anything more. Before she had realized that he was leaving her, she found herself alone.

With slow gestures, as though she were performing a rite (or because she had not yet entirely recovered the rhythm of reality), she turned on the shower and let the water flow over her, covered her body with lather, carefully rinsed herself, rubbed her skin with warm, fragrant towels, sprayed her neck, armpits, and pubic hair with a perfume that evoked the greenery of a forest, and brushed her hair. Her image was reflected on three sides by long mirrors. It seemed to her that she had never been so fresh or aglow with more beauty. Would the stranger return as he had promised?

She waited till the loudspeaker announced that the plane was approaching Bangkok. Then, resentfully, with her heart in turmoil, she dressed and returned to her compartment. She took her bag and her jacket from the baggage rack and put them on her lap when she sat down. An obliging hand had raised the back of her seat and placed a cup of tea and a tray of rolls beside it. The man in the next seat, whom she glanced at absent-mindedly, was visibly surprised. “But . . . aren’t you going on to Tokyo?” he asked in English, with a note of dismay in his voice.

Emmanuelle guessed rather easily what he had said and shook her head. His face darkened. He asked another question, which she did not understand and, anyway, was in no mood to answer. She looked straight ahead with a chagrined expression.

He took out a notebook and held it in front of her, motioning her to write in it. He probably wanted her to leave him her name, or an address where he could reach her. But she shook her head again, stubbornly. She wondered if the stranger with the smell of warm stone, the fantastic genie of the ruined temple, would get off at Bangkok with her or fly on to Japan.

She looked for him among the passengers when they had gotten off the plane and were waiting, clustered under its wings in the morning of the tropical airport, for someone to lead them to the cement and glass buildings whose futuristic silhouettes stood out against a sky that was already white with heat. But she saw no one as tall as he or who had his autumnal hair. The stewardess smiled at her; Emmanuelle scarcely noticed her. She was already being pushed toward the iron customs gates. Someone crossed a barrier, flashed a pass, and called her. She ran forward with a cry of joy and threw herself into the outstretched arms of her husband.

2

Green Paradise

Do I counsel you to kill your senses?
I counsel the innocence of the senses.

—Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spake Zarathustra

The black mosaic pool with pink water in which Emmanuelle’s ankles were dancing belonged to the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. The wives and daughters admitted into that male club came to the paddock of the racecourse on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to show their legs and breasts through the transparency of their dresses. On the other days of the week, they did not leave the edges of the swimming pool.

Lying next to Emmanuelle, who occasionally felt the caress of her short hair on her thigh, a young woman was talking with the side of her face resting on her folded arms. The swelling of her muscles beneath her bronzed skin outlined her coltish body in the sunlight like the red chalk of a sculptor’s rough sketch. Her happy laughter echoed from the surface of the water. The beauty of her voice adorned the stories she was telling.

“Gilbert thinks it’s good form to pretend to be outraged since
The Buccaneer
passed through. He’s still complaining about the three nights I spent away from home, but God knows I came back like a good little girl on the fourth night—once
The Buccaneer
was gone!”

Emmanuelle knew that this was Ariane, wife of Count de Saynes, Counselor to the French Embassy, and that she was twenty-six.