Emmanuelle (4 page)

“What’s the matter with your husband?” asked another woman who was stretched out on a red deck chair, combing the fur of a blasé little female dog that she called “O.” “Is he abandoning his principles?”

“It wasn’t the nights I spent in the captain’s cabin that upset him, but the fact that I didn’t tell him about it beforehand. He feels he made himself ridiculous by looking for me everywhere and even notifying the police.”

The hum of conversation continued. Spread out on the hot flagstones in a half-dazed stupor despite being used to the broiling climate, the women formed a star around Ariane, lying on her stomach, and Emmanuelle, sitting on the edge of the pool. Emmanuelle heard them more than she saw them; for the moment, the sight of their browned bodies interested her less than the caramel-colored glints of the warm water around her legs.

“Where did he expect you to be? He doesn’t have to be a genius to figure it out.”

“Just when you finally had a chance to enjoy yourself a little in this place!”

“Especially since he saw me for the last time at the end of the party on board the ship, in the clutches of two lusty seamen who seemed determined to share me as their booty.”

“Did they do it?”

“How should I know?”

Ariane lifted her bust to speak to Emmanuelle, who could not help admiring the ease and guile with which these ceramic sunbathers untied the tops of their swimsuits, ostensibly to avoid leaving a light streak in their tan, actually to make the law of gravity work in their favor when, with apparent innocence, they raised themselves on their elbows to greet a passing male friend.

“My dear,” Ariane proclaimed, “you missed the chance of the century. Last weekend an adorable little warship anchored in the river to pay some sort of courtesy visit to the Thai Navy. I wish you could have seen it! A crew of satyrs, with a Dionysian captain! For three days there were nothing but cocktail parties, dinners, dances—and all the rest!”

Emmanuelle was intimidated by the indiscretion, the shrill laughter, and the free-and-easy manner of the young women around her; she was surprised that her experience as a Parisian was of so little help to her in confronting this intemperate society. The idleness and luxury of these uprooted French girls seemed to her more excessive than the languid luxuriance of the wealthy women of Auteuil and Passy. Emmanuelle’s new acquaintances even lived their idleness intensely, ostentatiously, without improvisation or respite. And apparently, wherever they were, whatever their age, looks, or condition, their sole concern, day in and day out, was to seduce or be seduced.

One of them, with a tawny mane that tumbled profusely over her shoulders and down to her hips, casually got up, walked to the edge of the pool, and stood there, stretching and yawning with her legs wide apart. The crotch of her white bikini, no wider than a shoelace, revealed a tuft of sun-drenched pubic hair the color of a lion cub’s fur and the curve of her sex, a strong, well-exercised sex whose immodesty was heightened by the purity of her face and the grace of her figure.

“Jean is no fool,” she said, “he waited till
The Buccaneer
was gone before he sent for Emmanuelle.”

“It’s a pity,” Ariane remarked in a tone of sincere regret. “She would have been a tremendous success.”

“But I don’t see why he should have thought Emmanuelle was safer in Paris,” one of the half-naked girls said ironically. “I’m sure she wasn’t neglected there!”

Ariane looked at Emmanuelle with what seemed to be increased interest.

“That’s true,” one of her acolytes commented phlegmatically. “Her husband must not be jealous if he left her alone like that for a whole year.”

“It wasn’t a year, it was only six months!” Emmanuelle corrected her. She scrutinized the rounded contours of the vulva which was so close to her that she could have touched it with her lips by leaning forward slightly.

“I think he was right not to bring you with him when he came here,” said O’s mistress. “He was in the north most of the time during the last few months; he didn’t even have a house and he had to stay in a hotel whenever he was in Bangkok. It wouldn’t have been a decent life for you.” And she added immediately, “How do you like your villa? I hear it’s delightful.”

“Oh, it’s not really finished yet; it still lacks some furniture. What I like most about it is the garden, with its big trees. You’ll have to come and see it,” Emmanuelle concluded politely.

“You’ll still be alone in Bangkok for three-quarters of the year, won’t you?” asked a member of Ariane’s retinue.

“Of course not,” Emmanuelle replied with a touch of irritation. “Now that the engineers are all settled in Yarn Hee, Jean won’t have to go there any more. He’ll have plenty to do at the main office. He’ll stay with me all the time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ariane said with a reassuring laugh, “Bangkok is a big city.”

Since Emmanuelle did not seem to understand why the size of the city was important, Ariane explained: “The office will take up most of his time, you’ll see. You’ll have all the time and space you need for maneuvering your admirers. It’s lucky all the able-bodied men in this country aren’t as busy as our husbands! Do you drive?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid of getting lost in that tangle of impossible streets. Jean is giving me the chauffeur until I’ve learned to find my way around.”

“It won’t take you long to learn what you need to know. And I’ll guide you.”

“In other words, Ariane will see to it that you’re led astray!”

“Nonsense! Emmanuelle doesn’t need me for that. But I
would
like her to tell me about her escapades. Minoute is right—Paris is the only place where you can really swing.”

“I have nothing to tell,” Emmanuelle objected weakly. She felt almost wretched.

“Don’t worry,” said the one who seemed most eager to know her secrets, “we’ll be as quiet as the grave.”

“But what can I tell you? During the whole time I was in France,” Emmanuelle said with sudden strength and serenity, “I never deceived my husband.”

Silence reigned among the women for a few moments. They seemed to be evaluating the scope of that declaration. Emmanuelle’s tone of sincerity had impressed them. Ariane looked at her with a little disgust. Was this girl a prude? And yet, judging from her bathing suit . . .

“How long have you been married?” she asked.

“Nearly a year,” answered Emmanuelle. And she added, to make them jealous of her youth, “I was married at eighteen.” Then she said abruptly, for fear of letting them regain the advantage, “A year of marriage, and half of it away from each other! You can imagine how glad I am to be with Jean again.”

The young women nodded, as though to show that they understood her feelings. Actually they were thinking, “She’s not one of us.”

“Would you like to come to my house for a milk shake?”

Until now, Emmanuelle had not noticed the girl who had just leaped to her feet. But she was already amused by the expression of firmness and almost protective self-assurance of this new face—because it was also the face of a little girl.

Not so little, she corrected herself, as the adolescent standing before her seemed to take charge of her. Around thirteen, probably, but almost as tall as Emmanuelle. The difference was in the maturity of their bodies; there was still something unfinished, something undeveloped, about the girl’s. But it was perhaps the texture of her skin that made her closest to childhood. The sun had given it no patina, it was not a warm-colored, civilized, elegant skin like Ariane’s. Emmanuelle even judged it, at first sight, to be a little rough . . . But not really. It was as though she had a very slight case of goose flesh. On her arms, especially. It was glossier on her legs. Beautiful boyish legs, because of the prominent tendons in their ankles, their hard knees and calves, their sinewy thighs. It was their harmonious proportions and their light strength that made them pleasant to look at, rather than the somewhat impure emotion generally aroused by women’s legs. Emmanuelle could more easily imagine them running over a beach or flexing on a diving board than loosened by the caress of a hand and opening the door of a docile body to an impatient one.

She got the same impression from the girl’s concave, athletic belly, hollowed by her vivacity, palpitating like a heart, with all the tonicity of its aligned muscles. The narrowness of the cloth triangle that partially covered it—no more than what a nude dancer wears on the stage—did not succeed in making it indecent. Her pointed little breasts were scarcely concealed by the symbolic ribbon of her bikini top. “They’re pretty,” thought Emmanuelle, “but why doesn’t she just leave them bare? They would look even better and I’m sure they wouldn’t give anyone any lewd thoughts.” After a moment’s consideration, she was no longer so sure. She wondered what sensuality such young breasts could have. Then she remembered her own and the pleasures she had drawn from them while they were still so small that they made almost no difference in her profile; they had not even been as big as the girl’s, she acknowledged, for as she looked at the girl’s closely they seemed more prominent. Maybe it had been the contrast with Ariane’s breasts that had influenced her judgment at first. Or the girl’s narrow hips, or her childish waist . . .

Or perhaps also the long, thick braids that played over her pink chest. Emmanuelle had never seen such hair. So blonde, so fine that it was almost colorless—neither straw, nor flax, nor sand, nor gold, nor platinum, nor silver, nor ash . . . To what could it be compared? To certain skeins of raw silk, not completely white, used for embroidering. Or to the sky at dawn. Or to the fur of the lynx . . . Then Emmanuelle encountered the girl’s green eyes and forgot everything else.

Slanting, oblong, rising toward her temples with such a rare line that they seemed to have been placed in that light Caucasian face by mistake. But so green, it was true! So luminous! Emmanuelle saw flashes pass through them like the revolving beam of a lighthouse, flashes of irony, seriousness, reason, extraordinary authority, then sudden solicitude and even compassion, followed by laughing mischievousness, whimsy, or candor—spellbinding flashes.

“My name is Marie-Anne.”

And no doubt because Emmanuelle, absorbed in contemplating her, had forgotten to answer, she repeated her invitation: “Would you like to come to my house?”

This time Emmanuelle smiled at her and stood up. She explained that she could not accept today because Jean was to pick her up at the club and take her visiting. She would not be back until rather late. But she would be so happy if Marie-Anne would come to see her the next day. Did she know where she lived?

“Yes,” Marie-Anne said briefly. “All right, tomorrow afternoon.”

Emmanuelle took advantage of the diversion to escape from the group, saying that she did not want to keep her husband waiting. She hurried toward her cabana.

“Do you think the guest room could be ready in a few days?” Emmanuelle’s husband asked her when they sat down to dinner.

The folding walls, pushed back now, opened onto a rectangle of water in which lotuses, pink, purple, white, or blue in the morning, nodded their green calyxes in the evening.

“It can be used right now, if necessary. Only the curtains and multicolored cushions I want to put on the bed are missing. Ah, yes, a lamp, too.”

“I’d like it to be completed a week from Sunday.”

“I’m sure it will be. It won’t take ten days to put in those things. But what do you want to do with it? Is someone coming?”

“Yes, Christopher . . . you know, he’s been in charge of the Malaysian office for the past month. I invited him before you came. He’s just answered. It’s worked out perfectly . . . the company is sending him on a tour of Thailand, so he’ll be able to spend several weeks with us. He’s a very nice fellow, you’ll see. It’s been almost three years since I saw him last.”

“Isn’t he the one who stayed with you at Aswan after the dam was built?”

“Yes, he was the only one who didn’t lose his nerve.”

“I remember now. You told me how serious he was . . .”

Jean laughed at her pout. “He’s serious, yes, but he’s not gloomy. I like him, and I’m sure you will, too.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s six or seven years younger than I am. He was just out of Oxford at the time.”

“He’s English?”

“No. Only half . . . his mother is English. But his father is one of the founders of the company. Don’t think he’s a spoiled brat, though. He’s a hard worker. You can rely on him.”

Emmanuelle was a little disappointed to learn that her intimacy with Jean would be disturbed so soon after she had regained it. Even so, she decided to give a warm welcome to the visitor who meant so much to him. She recalled having seen photographs showing Christopher as a tanned, athletic explorer with a reassuring smile, and, after all, she would rather have him as a guest than the paunchy old inspectors whom she would later, no doubt, have to guide through the sights of the city, protecting them from sunstroke and mosquitoes.

She asked about other details, avid for images of the dangerous years before Jean had met her. If he had been killed then, she would never have become his wife. This thought made her heart tighten and she was unable to continue eating.

The houseboy moved around the table, bringing coconuts filled with custard and caramel, after the polished rice and the flower fritters that the old cook with red teeth had spent three days preparing in honor of the new mistress. He walked by rising alternately on the ball of each foot, as if he were about to leap. Emmanuelle was a bit afraid of him. He made too little noise, he was too strong and lithe, too neat, too ubiquitous—too much like a cat.