by Jean de Berg
I would drink the delight contained in the spurt of sperm that would gush over his stomach, between my fingers. Then I'd let him fall back, panting...
At the moment, I feel like spitting – on his cheek – with a loud splat... A fleeting expression of surprise appears on his face.
He turns his head, his cheek brushes against my wrist. He says
"Thank you," in a low voice.
***
On the floor before the fireplace the Black has installed a rectangular mirror, twice as long as it is wide, in a gilt frame. The fire is dying down. There are no last flickers to interfere with the darkness which I now need. It is time for us to put on our masks again and to turn off the lamps.
The officiants are standing around the gilded rectangle, one at each corner.
As in the first nocturnal scene, it is the Black who brings Sebastian. Once the latter has kneeled down, he is at the very edge of the mirror without encroaching upon it. The Black removes Sebastian's mask.
One of the women steps forward and straddles the mirror.
Taking the hem of her skirt in both hands, she gathers the fabric in parallel folds above her pubis, baring her black stockinged legs, her garters, her groin and her bushy brown fleece. While I shine my flashlight between her thighs, she slowly bends her knees. The farther down she crouches, her vagina approaching the mirror, the larger its reflection becomes. The glistening lips spread apart slowly around something round and white: slowly, she expels it. An egg, shiny with transparent secretions, falls onto the smooth mirror surface, spinning around on it.
The ghostly faces bend over the mirror, above their doubles appearing in the depths of the pool of darkness in the midst of which floats the disembodied egg.
Encouraged by a slight pressure on his neck, Sebastian bends down. With his teeth he breaks open the rubbery substance and eats it under the converging gazes of the phantoms and their reflections.
Now it is the second woman's turn to perform her part of the ritual. The prostrated Black hands her a glass: it is the big crystal goblet, with facets. She takes it in her right hand, spreads her legs and makes it disappear under her dress which she lifts up with her left.
I hear the rustling of taffeta; then, after a moment, the sound of brief liquid jets striking the sides of the goblet, and finally a little clink as she sets it down on the mirror, three quarters full.
Surrounded by the luminous halo, Sebastian raises the offering to his lips in his cupped hands. He proceeds to drink the urine. At the sound of each gulp in the otherwise complete silence, I feel the tepid liquid running down my own throat. He finishes it without haste, down to the dregs. I have a bitter yet insipid taste in my mouth, and it persists for a while after he has returned the goblet to the mirror, where it sparkles, empty.
The Black picks it up and replaces it with a bowl of some hot concoction. The third acolyte sticks two fingers in it and withdraws them covered with a coating of puree that she offers to Sebastian for him to lick it off. She repeats the procedure, but this time she immerses her whole hand. As he isn't able to ingest it quickly enough this time, the puree dribbles onto his chin, and she carefully smears the overflow over his cheeks, covering them with lumpy streaks of the stuff.
The last officiant, having threaded a net stocking through a thick bronze ring, reaches out for Sebastian's penis which is hidden from sight (intentionally?) between his thighs, now that he is sitting on his heels. Without a word, she corrects his position (reserving the question of "why?" for later) and ties the stocking to the root of his rod. Then, she ties a bandage of soiled cotton round his head, adjusting it over his eyes.
Now the women can take off their masks again, and the servant turns on the lights, one by one.
The ring is heavy, solid, at least four centimeters thick. It is a slave shackle: by means of a moving part cut out of the metal it is possible to open it and to close it again around an ankle. Has it ever been used? I doubt it, despite its crude and unpolished surface and utilitarian aspect. In any case, considering its small diameter, it must have been fashioned for the ankle of a gazelle, a very young woman or even a child. Merely a symbol? Genuine or not, its weight was quite surprising when you hefted it in your hand.
Sebastian had given it to me some time ago, surely and secretly for this very purpose: for him to enjoy the progressive strangling of his penis as it drags the weight across the carpet while I lead him along the Lshaped passage to the back of the apartment.
He is crawling on all fours, attached to my whip by means of the small chain on its handle which I have wedged between his canines.
Little by little, I accelerate our progress. He follows awkwardly, encumbered by the bronze ring that collides with his knees at every step. I point out obstacles to avoid, maneuvers to execute: "Watch that statue... Turn left, right here... Go on... Faster... Now right..."
The ring vibrates as it scrapes against the tiles of the bathroom.
"Stop. We're here."
After removing his dirty blindfold I tell him: "My, but your face looks disgusting... Come here, sweetheart, let me clean you up."
I wash his forehead, his cheeks, his chin with cotton balls soaked in cool water, gently dabbing and using my fingernails to detach the dried scaly spots.
"Who did this to you?"
He looks at me for a moment, then says: "Some masked women... you must know them..."
“I'd like to know women crazy enough to..."
"Yes, I think so."
I dry the drops of water on his face with a handkerchief, then ask him: ' What did they smear on you?"
"Some kind of puree... and they made me drink their urine, too."
"How was it?"
' Warm, salty, a little bitter."
"I guess you thought it was good."
"Yes... you know that."
"But no, you're mistaken... And what about those initials you have there?"
"They're those of a mistress who–"
"She's here tonight?"
"She is, and she looks like you."
I put the satin mask back over his eyes.
"There, you look good again ... Now I'll take you back to those women with their bizarre sick tastes, and I'll make them please you!"
On the way back, I lead him by the hand through the narrow hallway. Nothing of note on that trip, just the pendulum swing of the bronze weight from one thigh to the other and voices, even laughter it seems, from the red salon where my accomplices are waiting. What have they been doing in my absence? F. would tell me soon, tomorrow, later.
To get from the red salon to the blue, where they now had to go, the women will have to cross the entrance hall. The Black will open the door to the red salon, withdraw to let them pass, then open the door to the blue salon just across the hall, following the same procedure. I place Sebastian exactly halfway between the two doors.
The women pass him, a powerless sentinel, in single file.
The bronze ring hangs at the end of the stretched net stocking. The pendulum has stopped swinging. As the women pass, they start it up again, but it slows down almost immediately, the movements arrested by the fabric rubbing against the skin of his thighs.
***
We enter the sanctuary, the place of celebration. The altar is glorious. Flames rise, in tiers, from church candles placed on the marble hearthstone, to those in silver chandeliers, to those in candelabras placed higher up on consoles. In vertical rows they rise in front of a mirror leaning against the wall in the back of the room, a beveled mirror in which their reflections are dazzling. Banished to the shadows around the circle of light, the remainder of the decor dissolves into obscurity with a highlight dimly reflected here and there from some varnished contour.
Scented incense sticks consume themselves in wavering spirals. The waiting masks have been set down on the high priestess' chair in front of the altar.
Everything is perfect. The servant has forgotten nothing.
Now he can bring Sebastian in.
***
Harem. I once bought it for its name, inscribed in ink on its gummed label, in a tiny shop in the souk of Tunis, from an old man in faded slippers: a small bottle of perfume, its stopper just a wad of compressed cotton. A perfume that had to be heady and vaguely antiquated, ideally suited for excess.
Françoise applies a few drops to Marie's neck, then to F.'s and mine.
I complete the ceremonial unction by perfuming the chosen one: his earlobes, the crook of the elbow, the wrists, the pubic fleece. The hollows, folds, orifices, hairs should absorb the tempting scent and make it seem as if they exuded it.
I tell him to raise his arms. He crosses his arms behind his neck. Reminiscences of the Turkish bath, heavy with effluvia and intimate moisture, come to mind when I see his open armpits.
With a red felt-tip pen I draw a little star just below my initials. I finish by adorning his left breast with a coral earring, clamping it onto the nipple.
***
The women, masked once again and for the third time, lead the chosen one to the altar where he kneels on a velvet footstool before me. I am already seated in the priestess' chair. Two of the women stand behind him, their hands on his shoulders; the third one, on bended knee, is proffering a small dish at the level of my armrest.
As soon as the grave voice of Isolde is heard (a cassette player has been hidden within my reach), I relieve Sebastian of his mask, and the Black comes with a tray, offering me my silver cigarette holder, long and thin with a black "Galalith" mouthpiece, the truncated cigarette, and a tortoise-shell lighter. I light the cigarette and return the lighter to the tray which the Black removes immediately.
I have imagined the course of events so thoroughly and exactly that nothing should surprise me now. This group – I have already seen it precisely like this: hieratic, bathed in a chapel light, without contrast, which gives the masks an appearance of old ivory.
I have already observed the reddening of the cigarette that is being consumed puff by puff; I have seen Sebastian's gaze, fixed on my face. Rivulets of sweat run down his arms, and my heart beats quickly. Caught in the snare of his captive eyes, I watch him watching me through the exhalations of diaphanous smoke. It seems as if he does not hear the song, no longer hears it, that lament of a lost lover rising slowly in successive waves, higher and higher, inexorably, toward a paroxysm that is always imminent, always deferred, cresting, suspended to the point of vertigo... At the apogee of anguish I strike, plunge the incandescent cigarette into the center of the star – at the very moment when the last wave, finally breaking, unfurls into a dazzle of voluptuous pleasure that carries Isolde, submerged in it, into the white brilliance of death.
With a groan, the sacrificial victim bends as if struck by a hard gust of wind. I go with that motion, and the ember stays fixed to his chest. I am quite calm. Beginning in my hand, a brutal wave of pleasure passes through me. My breath stopped by his hoarse whimpering, I experience the intense and overwhelming frenzy of the huntress reaching her prey... Now you are mine, for a few more seconds...
Slowly, Sebastian returns to an upright position. His eyes are as blue as a calm sea. During the last bars of the opera, the return to serenity, F. offers me the small gilded bowl into which I deposit my instrument which holds the crushed butt of the extinguished cigarette, now only a few millimeters long.
The final chord reverberates in the silence. Everything has been accomplished.
Then, the tallest of the women takes off her mask to let Sebastian see her face for the first time, reflected in the altar mirror. Does he really see it? He seems contemplative, huddled within himself. Walking backward so that her image, fading into the penumbra, disappears gradually, Françoise withdraws, holding her mask in her hand, toward the door which the Black opens without a sound. Marie and F. leave in the same manner.
***
We are alone. Sebastian rubs his head between my thighs, embracing my knees. He hugs them to the point of hurting, with a sudden passion to which I abandon myself. There even are some endearments and perhaps a few tears... a moment...
Then I put a stop to these caresses and proceed to untie the stocking that is garroting his penis. The bronze ring falls to the floor and I tell him: "Now you'll jerk off – I want your come in this glass." He starts stroking himself right away. When I put my index finger on the aching and tumescent flesh, his eyes close, his face hardens and the sperm flows into the glass, splattering the crystal sides. I gather the milky substance with my finger and spread it on his lips in a thick, shiny layer, transparent like mother-of-pearl. We engage in a long, creamy kiss; I sink into his mouth, which tastes of sperm, until it becomes sticky.
(Tonight, the park is suffused by a sweet and insinuating smell of sperm, just as every year on hot June evenings when the chestnuts are in bloom at the far end of the big oval lawn. Quite soon, at nightfall, I'll take a walk over there.)
The scent of gluey lips... Once again, the thread is broken.
There's nothing left in my memory between that kiss and what comes next: Sebastian, standing, already dressed (or almost), in the weakening candlelight. It is time for him to leave: I'm sure of that...
I have offered him a gauze bandage to protect the burnt epidermis from contact with his clothes. He thanks me, but refuses: he'd rather leave the burn uncovered.
Now I still have to lay the blackened fragment of a cigarette and the earring into a small Oriental box decorated with enamel cloisonne and lined with crimson satin. I give him this reliquary, and then he leaves, by himself, just as he'd arrived-under the rough fabric of his shirt, a vivid scarlet seal, the mark of his submission.
When F. has sent the Black home, his duties accomplished, we women remain in each other's company in the red salon...