The 120 Days of Sodom (12 page)

    The three storytellers, magnificently dressed as upper-class Parisian courtesans, were seated below the throne upon a couch, and Madame Duclos, the month's narrator, in very scanty and very elegant attire, well rouged and heavily bejeweled, having taken her place on the stage, thus began the story of what had occurred in her life, into which account she was, with all pertinent details, to insert the first one hundred and fifty passions designated by the title of simple passions:

    'Tis no slight undertaking, Messieurs, to attempt to express oneself before a circle such as yours. Accustomed to all of the most subtle and most delicate that letters produce, how, one may wonder, will you be able to bear the ill-shaped periods and uncouth images of a humble creature like myself who has received no other education than the one supplied her by libertinage. But your indulgence reassures me; you ask for naught but the natural and true, and I dare say what of these I shall provide you will merit your attention.

    My mother was twenty-five when she brought me into the world, and I was her second child; the first was also a daughter, by six years my elder. My mother's birth was not distinguished. She had been early bereft of both her father and mother, and as her parents had dwelled near the Recollet monastery in Paris, when she found herself an orphan, abandoned and without any resources, she obtained permission from these good fathers to come and ask for alms in their church. But as she had some youth and health, she soon attracted their notice, and gradually mounted from the church below to the rooms above, whence she soon descended with child. It was as a consequence of one such adventure my sister saw the light, and it is more likely that my own birth might rightly be ascribed to no other cause.

    However, content with my mother's docility and seeing how she did make the community to prosper and flourish, the good fathers rewarded her works by granting her what might be earned from the rental of seats in their church; my mother no sooner obtained this post than, with her superior's leave, she married one of the house's water carriers who straightway, without the least repugnance, adopted my sister and me.

    Born into the Church, I dwelled so to speak more in the House of God than in our own; I helped my mother arrange the chairs, I seconded the sacristans in their various operations, I would have said Mass had that been necessary, although I had not yet attained my fifth year.

    One day, returning from my holy occupations, my sister asked me whether I had yet encountered Father Laurent…

    I said I had not.

    "Well, look out," said she, "he's on the watch for you, I know he is, he wants to show you what he showed me. Don't run away, look him straight in the eye without being afraid, he won't touch you, but he'll show you something very funny, and if you let him do it he'll pay you a lot. There are more than fifteen of us around here whom he's shown it to. That's what he likes best, and he's given a present to us all."

    You may well imagine, Messieurs, that nothing more was needed, not only to keep me from fleeing Father Laurent, but to induce me to seek him out; at that age the voice of modesty is a whisper at best, and its silence until the time one has left the tutelage of Nature is certain proof, is it not, that this factitious sentiment is far less the product of that original mother's training than it is the fruit of education? I flew instantly to the church, and as I was crossing a little court located between the entrance of the churchyard and the monastery, I bumped squarely into Father Laurent. He was a monk about forty, with a very handsome face. He stopped me.

    "Whither are you going, Francon?" he asked.

    "To arrange the chairs, Father."

    "Never fear, never fear, your mother will attend to them," said he. "Come, come along with me," and he drew me toward a sequestered chamber hard by the place. "I am going to show you something you have never seen."

    I follow him, we enter, he shuts the door and, having posted me directly opposite him:

    "Well, Francon," says he, pulling a monstrous prick from his drawers, an instrument which nearly toppled me with fright; "tell me," he continues, frigging himself, "have you ever seen anything to equal it?… that's what they call a prick, my little one, yes, a prick… it's used for fucking, and what you're going to see, what's going to flow out of it in a moment or two, is the seed wherefrom you were created. I've shown it to your sister, I've shown it to all the little girls of your age, lend a hand, help it along, help get it out, do as your sister does, she's got it out of me twenty times or more… I show them my prick, and then what do you suppose I do? I squirt the fuck in their face… That's my passion, my child, I have no other… and you're about to behold it."

    And at the same time I felt myself completely drenched in a white spray, it soaked me from head to foot, some drops of it had leapt even into my eyes, for my little head just came to the height of his fly. However, Laurent was gesticulating. "Ah! the pretty fuck, the dear fuck I am losing," he cried, "why, look at you! You're covered with it." And gradually regaining control of himself, he calmly put his tool away and decamped, slipping twenty sous into my hand and suggesting that I bring him any little companions I might happen to have.

    As you may readily fancy, I could not have been more eager to run and tell everything to my sister; she wiped me dry, taking the greatest care to overlook none of the spots, and she who had enabled me to earn my little fortune did not fail to demand half of my wages. Instructed by this example, I did not fail, in the hope of a similar division of the spoils, to round up as many little girls for Father Laurent as I could find. But having brought him one with whom he was already familiar, he turned her away, the while giving me three sous by way of encouragement.

    "I never see the same one twice, my child," he told me, "bring me some I don't know, never any of those who say they've already had dealings with me."

    I managed more successfully; in the space of three months, I introduced Father Laurent to more than twenty new girls, with whom, for the sake of his pleasure, he employed the identical proceedings he had with me. Together with the stipulation that they be strangers to him, there was another relative for age, and it appeared to be of infinite importance: he had no use for anything younger than four or older than seven. And my little fortune could not have been faring better when my sister, noticing that I was encroaching upon her domain, threatened to divulge everything to my mother if I did not put a stop to this splendid commerce; I had to give up Father Laurent.

    However, my functions continued to keep me in the neighborhood of the monastery; the same day I reached the age of seven I encountered a new lover whose preferred caprice, although very childish, was nevertheless somewhat more serious. This one was named Father Louis, he was older than Laurent, and had some unidentifiable quality in his bearing that was a great deal more libertine. He sidled up to me at the door of the church as I was entering it, and made me promise to come up to his room. At first I advanced a few objections, but once he had assured me that three years ago my sister had come for a visit and that he received little girls of my age every day, I went with him. Scarcely were we in his cell when he closed and bolted the door and, having poured some elixir into a goblet, made me swallow it and then two more copious measures too. This preparatory step taken, the reverend, more affectionate than his confrere, fell to kissing me and, chattering all the while, he untied my apron and, raising my skirt to my bodice, he laid hands, despite my faint strugglings, upon all the anterior parts he had just brought to light; and after having thoroughly fingered and considered them, he inquired of me whether I did not desire to piss. Singularly driven to this need by the strong dose he had a few moments earlier had me drink, I assured him the urge to do so was as powerful as ever it could be, but that I did not want to satisfy it in front of him.

    "Oh, my goodness, do! Why yes, my little rascal," quoth the bawdy fellow, "by God yes, you'll piss in my presence and, what's worse, you'll piss upon me. Here it is," he went on, plucking his prick from his breeches, "here's the tool you're going to moisten, just piss on it a little."

    And thereupon he lifted me up and set me on two chairs, one foot on one chair, the other foot on the other, he moved the chairs apart as far as was possible, then bade me squat. Holding me in this posture, he placed a container beneath me, established himself on a little stool about as high as the pot; his engine was in his hand, directly under my cunt. One of his hands supporting my haunches, he frigged himself with the other, and my mouth being at a level with his, he kissed it.

    "Off you go, my little one, piss," cried he, "flood my prick with that enchanting liquid whose hot outpouring exerts such a sway over my senses. Piss, my heart, care not but to piss and try to inundate my fuck."

    Louis became animated, excited himself, it was easy to see that this unusual operation was the one which all his senses most cherished; the sweetest, gentlest ecstasy crowned that very moment when the liquids wherewith he had swollen my stomach, gushed most abundantly out of me, and we simultaneously filled the same pot, he with fuck, I with urine. The exercise concluded, Louis delivered roughly the same speech to me I had heard from Laurent, he wished to make a procuress of his little whore, and this time, caring precious little for my sister's threats, I boldly guided every child I knew to dear Louis. He had every one of them do the same thing, and as he experienced no compunction upon seeing any one of them a second or third time, and as he always gave me separate payment, which had nothing to do with the additional fee I extracted from my little comrades, before six months had passed I found myself with a tidy little sum which was entirely my own; I had only to conceal knowledge of it from my sister.

    "Duclos," the President interrupted at this point, "we have, I believe, advised you that your narrations must be decorated with the most numerous and searching details; the precise way and extent to which we may judge how the passion you describe relates to human manners and man's character is determined by your willingness to disguise no circumstance; and, what is more, the least circumstance is apt to have an immense influence upon the procuring of that kind of sensory irritation we expect from your stories."

    "Yes, my Lord," Duclos replied, "I have been advised to omit no detail and to enter into the most minute particulars whenever they serve to shed light upon the human personality, or upon the species of passion; have I neglected something in connection with this one?"

    "You have," said the President; "I have not the faintest notion of your second monk's prick, nor any idea of its discharge. In addition, did he frig your cunt, pray tell, and did he have you dandle his device? You see what I mean by neglected details."

    "Your pardon, my Lord," said Duclos, "I shall repair these present mistakes and avoid them in the future. Father Louis possessed a very ordinary member, greater in its length than it was around and in general of a most common shape and turn; indeed, I do recall that he stiffened rather poorly and that it was not until the crisis arrived he took on a little firmness. No, he did not frig my cunt, he was content to enlarge it with his fingers as much as possible, so as to give free issue to the urine. He brought his prick very close two or three times, and his discharge was rapid, intense, and brief; nothing came from his mouth but the words: 'Ah, fuck! piss, my child, piss the pretty fountain, piss, d'ye hear, piss away, don't you see me come?' And, while saying that, he intermittently sprinkled kisses on my mouth. They were not excessively libertine."

    "That's it, Duclos," said Durcet, "the President was right; I could not visualize a thing on the basis of your first telling, but now I have your man well in view."

    "One moment, Duclos," said the Bishop, upon seeing that she was about to proceed. "I have on my own account a need rather more pressing than to piss, it's had me in its grip for an age and I have the feeling it's got to go."

    So saying he drew Narcisse to his alcove. Fire leapt from the prelate's eyes, his prick stood up against his belly, foam flecked his lips, it was confined fuck that wished absolutely to escape and which could not be liberated save by violent means. He dragged his niece and the little boy into his closet. Everything came to a pause; a discharge was regarded as something far too portentous not to suspend everything the moment someone was about to produce one; all was to concur to make it delicious. But upon this occasion Nature's will did not correspond with the Bishop's wishes, and several minutes after having retired to the closet, he emerged from it, furious, in the same state of erection and, addressing himself to Durcet, presiding officer for November:

    "Put that odd little fellow down for some punishment on Saturday," he said, flinging the child ten feet away from him, "and make it severe, if you please."

    It was apparent that the boy had not been able to satisfy Monseigneur, and Julie whispered in her father's ear what had happened.

    "Well, by God, then take another," cried the Duc, "choose something from one of our quatrains if nothing in yours suits you."

    "Ah, my satisfaction now would be far beyond the damned little that would have been sufficient a moment ago," said the prelate. "You know to what we are led by a thwarted desire; I'd prefer to restrain myself, but no undue leniency with that poor little fool," he continued, "that's what I recommend…"

    "But be at ease, my dear Bishop," said Durcet, "I promise you he'll get a good scolding, 'tis a fine idea to provide the others with an example. I'm sorry to see you in such a state; try something else; have yourself fucked."

    "Monseigneur," spoke up Martaine, "I feel myself greatly disposed to satisfy you, were Your Excellency to wish it…"