The Image

by Jean de Berg

Anne seemed to know just what was expected of her. After the slightest hesitation she glanced at us to make sure that, where we were standing, we shielded her from the more frequented parts of the garden.

  “Come on, hurry up!” Claire told her.

  She took a step into the flower bed, her narrow shoes and high heels sinking into the loose earth. I hadn’t noticed before what delicate ankles she had. What one could see of her legs was equally admirable.

  “Now, go ahead,” Claire ordered.

  Anne held her right hand out toward the half- opened flower. Very gently she ran her finger tips around the outer edges of the petals, partly closed, barely touching their tender pink flesh.

  She ran her fingers several times around the closed, heart, very slowly. Then she delicately spread open the inner petals and closed them again, using all five fingers.

  When she had, in this fashion, spread wide and closed again the flower’s center two or three time’s, she suddenly thrust her middle finger deep inside it, where it almost disappeared entirely.

  Then she withdrew her finger, very slowly, only to plunge it in again as far as it would go.

  “She has pretty hands, don’t you think?” Claire asked. I agreed. In fact, her hand was very pretty indeed, white, little, fine-boned, moving with grace and precision.

  Claire was speaking in the same aggressive, cruel tone of voice of the evening before, in the cafe. With a look of disdain she gestured toward the young girl, who was still attentively caressing the interior of the flower.

  “She likes doing that, you know. It excites her. I can prove it to you, if you like. At the slightest provocation she gets all wet.

  Isn’t that right, little one?”

  There was no answer.

  “All right, that’s enough,” Claire told her. “Pick it, and bring it over here.”

  Anne withdrew her hand but then stood motion less, her arms held stiffly at her sides.

  I turned back to look down the path we had taken, off the central walk, but nobody was coming in our direction, or paying the slightest attention to us. Claire went on, in an even harsher tone:

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t dare,” said the young girl. “It’s not allowed.” One could hardly hear her, she was so afraid of saying the wrong thing. Claire gave me an ironic smile, making sure that I was aware of the stupidity of her protégée.

  “Of course it’s not allowed... neither is walk ing in the flower beds... or touching the flow ers. There’s a big sign, at the entrance to the park.”

  Then, more softly, as a mark of sympathy, she added:

  “Nothing that I like is allowed either, you know that.” Anne started to reach for the flower’s rigid stem but quickly drew back:

  “I don’t know how to do it,” she said all in one breath. “And besides, all those thorns.”

  “Well, you’ll simply have to get scratched,” Claire said.

  The girl reached out toward the flower’s rigid stem, seized it between her thumb and forefinger, and snapped it off. Then she jumped backward and rushed over to Claire as if she were a refugee, holding her trophy in her two fingers.

  Separated from its plant, the rose seemed more beautiful than ever. It was perfectly shaped, and the delicate texture of its flesh made one want to feel it, or bite it. Claire condescended to voice her approval.

  “Very good. And you see, it wasn’t so hard after all... But of course you will be punished, for having hesitated just a little bit too long.”

  The girl did not dispute this, merely lowered her eyes and blushed in a charming gesture of submissiveness.

  I asked, “What are you planning to do to her?”

  “I don’t know yet. But rest assured, she will be punished in your presence.”

  Anne raised her face, shaking her head, her eyes full of fear, no doubt wanting to plead for clemency. But her expression changed suddenly and she whispered:

  “Some people are coming.”

  “Well, then, let’s be off!” Claire said, indicating the other part of the path.

  The girl, who had been hidden from the new comers by Claire and me, wheeled around and we fell into place on either side of her.

  We continued our walk, three abreast, at a leisurely pace.

  Anne, in the middle, held the rose against her breast. Since there was no one in front of us, no one could detect her crime.

  As we passed the mutilated rosebush Claire said to her young friend:

  “Look, do you see your footprints?”

  Indeed, the imprint of two high-heeled shoes was clearly visible in the loose earth.

  We continued our walk, a little faster now.

  We soon came to a sort of grove, or thicket, more or less closed off from the rest of the gardens, and completely deserted.

  Since it was bare of flowers we thought that perhaps here we could find some privacy.

  Set back against a dense mass of foliage there were two iron garden chairs which looked fairly comfortable. Claire settled herself in one of them, and waved me into the other.

  “Sit down, Jean,” she told me. Then, when I hesitated, “The little girl will have to stand. After all, she has to think about where to hide what she has stolen.”

  Accordingly, I sat down. Anne stood in front of us, elegant and straight in her pretty white dress dappled with sunlight, still holding, both hands against her heart, the flower she had picked.

  Her eyes were lowered.

  We looked at her for a long time, Claire and I.

  The cut of her skirt showed off her hips and the slenderness of her waist. Under the top of her dress, with its wide bateau neckline, one could tell she was not wearing a bra. Or was that just my imagination? Claire returned to her subject:

  “That rose must be hidden.”

  It would have looked beautiful against her breast. She could simply pin it to her dress and pretend that she had been wearing it when she arrived. Unless, of course, the sign also said you were not allowed to wear flowers in the garden at all. I pointed out some very thick underbrush on our left:

  “All she has to do is throw it in there. No one would ever find it.”

  “Yes, obviously,” Claire said, thinking it over. “But it would be a shame to lose such a beautiful flower. Don’t you agree, little one?”

  “Yes... No... I don’t know,” the girl an swered.

  After a moment of thought, Claire, who was studying her friend carefully, announced:

  “It’s very simple; you’ll just have to hide it somewhere on you.”

  When the girl didn’t seem to understand, since she was neither wearing anything with pockets nor carrying a handbag, Claire was more explicit.

  “Under your skirt.” She quickly went on, “Here, you’ll see.

  Come over here.”

  Anne went up to her.

  “Lift your skirt,” Claire ordered.

  At the same time she took the rose from her hands. Anne leaned over to catch the bottom of her skirt and turned the hem up, to show it to Claire, lifting it up to her knees. Claire burst out laugh ing.

  “No, no, little idiot. You’re supposed to lift it all the way up!”

  Anne blushed again, and stole a quick look at me with her wide green eyes.

  Then she looked to the right and to the left. She must have been reassured that we were in a relatively safe spot: even if someone came along he couldn’t tell what we were actually up to.

  She turned back to us, holding the edge of her skirt in her hands, and exposed her legs to just above the knees, two round smooth knees on which the stock ings were barely visible.

  “Hurry up,” said Claire.

  As though lashed by a whip the girl, in one motion, revealed her thighs to us. Her full, pleated skirt was ideally suited to this operation; one could have raised it up to her face with no trouble at all. The thighs were round and firm, and very pleasingly proportioned. Above the discreetly embroidered tops of her stockings the radiant silky flesh,
white and dazzling, was a startling contrast to the narrow black satin straps of her garter belt.

  “Higher!” Claire directed, losing her patience. Little Anne gave me a look of complete despair, this time waiting to see what my answering look would be. Never had her eyes been so beautiful, deep and somber, suffused with terror and surren der.

  Her mouth was partly open. Her breasts swelled with her quickened breathing. Just below her waist her hands, which held up the pleated skirt of her dress, were far enough apart from each other to afford an ample view.

  As I had thought the night before, she wore no underwear at all, just a simple garter belt of black lace. The short golden pubic hair appeared under this graceful arc, with its narrow little ruffle.

  The pubis itself was rather prominent, nice and soft, plump, small but inviting.

  Again I sought her eyes, but she had closed them. She resembled a sweet and gentle victim, calmly waiting to be sacrificed.

  “Well,” Claire asked me, “what do you think of it?” I replied that it all certainly seemed most agreeable. The design embroidered in black on the tops of her stockings, delicate leaves intermingled with tiny roses, I thought was a particularly charming touch.

  Claire raised her left hand, which still held the flower, to the curly pubic hairs and stroked them with the petals. Then she showed me the thin, red dish green stem, about six inches long:

  “You see, what we’ll do is slip the stem up between the garter belt and the skin about here, close to the crotch. The thorns should be strong enough to hold the flower in place.”

  “No,” I said. “The thorns might be strong enough to tear the flesh, but the flower would fall the minute she started walking.”

  “Just wait and see,” Claire retorted.

  She gave the stem a quick going over and it proved to have only one really big thorn, near the end. The rest were brittle little things which she peeled off with her fingernail, remarking:

  “See how nice I am? I’m taking off all the prickles, so as not to hurt you.”

  Then she suddenly turned to me:

  “But I forgot, she’s supposed to be punished, isn’t she?” Her voice became more authoritative and more loving, as she addressed her friend.

  “Spread your legs apart and then don’t move, I’m going to hurt you. Come close to me.”

  Little Anne did as she was told, imploring softly, “No... No... Don’t do that... Please don’t...”

  Claire grasped the rose by its stem end, the blossom hanging down, to bring the cruel thorn up against the most sensitive flesh, on the inner thigh up close to the pubis. While her victim kept saying, “No... please... please don’t... ,” Claire pushed the steely point slightly into the skin. Anne gave a little moan and bit her lower lip to keep from crying out.

  Claire waited a few seconds like this, alternately looking at the face and at the flesh chosen for torture, then in one motion, jabbed the thorn in and pulled it down. The tender skin was ripped about a quarter of an inch. Anne gave a cry of pain, from deep in her throat, and shrank back a step. But she stayed there in front of us, wide-eyed, open mouthed – although trembling all over, her cunt exposed. Claire, leaning back in her chair, contemplated her victim with what seemed to me to be either hatred, or the deepest love.

  Without making a move, or saying a word, the two young women stayed facing each other for quite a long time. Then Anne, who was still hold ing her dress up, took a step toward her mistress, coming back, offering herself again, as close as she had been before.

  A little drop of blood, bright red, had formed on the naked flesh of her thigh. Claire, whose features were softening, leaned forward without getting up from her chair and placed a kiss on each of her hands.

  Then, with one finger, she lifted up the edge of the garter belt to the left of the crotch, and with the other hand slipped the stem in under the black material pushing it up towards the hip so that just the flower would show under the filmy ruffle. To keep it in this position Claire just had to push the thorn out to the front where it hooked itself into the lace.

  Claire leaned back again to survey the effect from a distance. She put her head to one side and narrowed her eyes, like a connoisseur appraising a painting.

  “It’s pretty, wouldn’t you say?” she asked, pout ing at me.

  Beneath the central archway of lace the rose, held against the flesh on the left, its head hanging down, spilled out over both the black material and the triangle of blonde fur, one of whose upper corners it hid almost completely. The edge of one petal almost touched the beginning of the thigh. Still lower, and to the right, between the lowest point of the triangle where the pubic hairs end in delicate feathers, and the black ribbon of the garter belt, the drop of blood seemed about to run down onto the pearly flesh.

  I answered that it was indeed a great success, although perhaps rather overburdened with symbols, in the romantic and surrealist traditions.

  Claire smiled. Her face was completely relaxed.

  Pretending to want to rearrange some small de tail, she leaned over her work again. But instead she started to caress the rose just as the girl had done earlier, spreading the petals and plunging a finger into its heart.

  She stopped abruptly. Apparently it had only been a game.

  She had also stroked, briefly, the short curly hair with the back of her finger.

  “It’s too bad,” she said, “that we didn’t bring a camera: we could have had a lovely color shot.”

  She bent down a little and gently licked the drop of blood which was threatening to run down and spot the stocking.

  Voices were approaching on the path behind the bushes.

  Claire had raised her face to look at her friend, a new look, full of tenderness, in her eyes. The two young women smiled at each other a long time.

  It was a beautiful day. Anne’s golden hair shone in the sunlight. In a peaceful voice that I had never heard her use before, Claire said:

  “You may lower your dress.”

  III : A CUP OF TEA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

  We went to have tea at the pavilion in the park. Claire was lively, talkative, almost childlike. Even Anne spoke with confidence and gaiety. I could see, on this occasion, that she wasn’t stupid at all.

  However, we only talked about trivial things: gardening, art, literature. Claire made me give the latest gossip on the “fraud” of the moment she had heard me holding forth about the night before at the party. The two young women seemed very amused.

  But, little by little, this good mood vanished. The silences grew longer, and Claire’s face took on the same closed look it had had at the beginning of our outing. Her classic features, her cold beauty, her remoteness, made me think of some goddess in exile. I saw that she was once again completely engrossed in her young companion, her protégée, her victim, her mirror image. Anne, for her part, had resumed the modest demeanor of an object of lust.

  We finished our tea. While Anne was arranging the pleats of her skirt on her lap Claire abruptly asked her:

  “Is the rose still in the proper place?” Bowing her head, she indicated that it was. “When you’re sitting down,” Claire went on; “the petals must fall down between your legs and get crushed. Is that right?”

  Anne nodded.

  “Then you must open your legs wider, so that the flower can hang freely and not be ruined, do you hear?” The girl, immobile from the waist up, eyes fixed on her empty cup, carried out the order silently and rearranged the pleats of her skirt over her stomach and knees. Claire then asked:

  “Can you still feel the petals between your thighs?” Anne nodded that she could.

  “Does it feel nice?” asked Claire.

  At this the girl began to blush.

  “Well? Can’t you answer?”

  “Yes, it feels nice,” the girl answered.

  But it was only a murmur. Claire warned her that if she didn’t speak more distinctly in the future she would pull down the top of her dress and expose her breasts,
right there in front of everybody. Then, turning to me:

  “It would be very easy, you know, since with that gathered neckline her dress is only held up by a band of elastic, and since she hasn’t got a thing on under it anyway.”

  Putting her words into action, Claire reached out and pulled the top of her friend’s dress down a couple of inches, enough to bare the rounded shoulder, the beginning of the armpit, and half of one breast.

  She didn’t dare go so far as to expose the tip, but still, one could see the part that is whiter, softer and more intimate, gently curved, seeming to cry out for more torments. Further up, an irregular red line in the flesh marked where the elastic had been.

  “People are looking at us,” I said. “You’ll have to stop there. What a pity.”

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Claire snapped.

  We all three stood up. The girl, who had put her dress back in place, went up to Claire to whisper something in her ear. Claire stared at her with an evil smile, apparently pleased to have hit upon a revenge so quickly, and said in a loud voice:

  “No, you can’t go now. I don’t feel like waiting for you. You didn’t have to drink all that tea in the first place.” Little Anne followed us out meekly, of course, her head lowered. I didn’t have much trouble real izing that she had wanted to go to the bathroom, and hadn’t been given permission.

  But I didn’t know yet what Claire was leading up to. She guided us nonchalantly around the garden making us admire here a flower bed, there a bush pruned in a clever shape, or the design of some walk or other.

  At last we came to an area that seemed more wild and natural, where very large trees had blan keted the sparse, unkempt grass with fallen leaves.

  This neglected part of the garden would attract no one, especially at that hour when the setting sun was lengthening the shadows. I guessed that our guide was looking for a secluded spot, as far as possible from the rounds of the usual walks.

  Claire, indeed, soon stopped, and pointed out a brownish carpet of broken leaves and twigs, under a spreading beech tree whose branches, near the trunk, left some space, but then grew down almost to the level of the grass.