Then we draped her with jewelry: earrings and necklaces, oversized, chunky bracelets, and ankle chains.
I put a finger in the furrow of her sex and kissed her. I played for several instants with the ring that pierced her clitoris. She was soaked. She murmured:
"Is it going to hurt a lot?" "Of course it's going to hurt a lot, idiot." "So much the better. I love you." She returned my kiss with renewed passion, with fire. J. P. handcuffed her from behind. I got a chair and attached a good sized, rather short chain to a ring in the ceiling. "Lift your arms," I told her. She had to raise herself a bit on tiptoe. I attached the handcuffs to the chain hanging from the ceiling.
She looks strange like that: nude, elongated by the chain. Her hands are like imprisoned birds in the handcuffs.
I walk around her, the oversized sex attached to my waist. I caress her slowly, delicately—lengthily. I have to get on tiptoe to kiss or lick her ear or neck.
Our reflection in the mirror is not without dubious interest.
J. P., who from the beginning has been as discreet as possible ("You've organized this, I am only a tool," he tells me in a flash of clarity) finishes the first roll of film, reloads the camera, and has Nathalie drink another glass of champagne.
He remains completely dressed, but his feet are bare.
The wine runs from her lips to her neck and breasts, sparkles against her cunt.
I rub the synthetic penis against her buttocks as if it were real. I place it between her thighs. She groans.
"Take me," she murmurs. I shake my head. I look at J. P. He has returned to his camera. I know he already sees nothing except for the shots he imagines as he experiments with the zoom, without pushing on the button.
I insert the dildo into Nathalie's cunt, but just a little—a third of its length, maybe. She groans again and tries to bend over, in spite of her uncomfortable position, so I can penetrate her completely.
I pull out of her, go to the bed, and pick up the whip.
In the mirror, J. P., his finger poised on the camera. The instant is frozen.
I caress Nathalie with the hard strap. She looks me in the eye. "Tell me you love me," she says. "I love you," I echo. "I love you."
Everything that follows belongs to the history of cataclysms.
I don't try to whip her methodically. I beat her in front and back, sparing her nothing, then suddenly hitting her very hard. She twists around, and the tip of the lash that has just torn into her shoulders bites into her breasts with its next blow. The little chains and jewels clatter. I hear the ceaseless clicks of the cameras.
Little by little the marks of the blows are superimposed over the network of metal holding her. It is as if she is covered with an irregular pattern of brown and purple traces.
The whip strikes the nipple of her right breast and half tears the ring from its hole in the flesh. It bleeds abundantly.
Sometimes I enchain the blows very quickly, without giving her body time to immobilize itself, and the whip strikes haphazardly. Sometimes I spy in the mirror the moment when her blond body stops twisting at the end of its chain, and I return to purposeful blows on her breasts, thighs, or back. An alternatingly baroque and classical syntax.
I did not count, but I must have hit her at least fifty times with all my strength. Nathalie held on until the thirtieth blow, then cried out or groaned with each one that followed. I had already heard her scream, of course, but she would do so very rarely, as if ,taken by surprise, when her mistreated flesh protested briefly. But that night I wanted her to be nothing but nerves on fire, lacerated flesh. Passion itself. Crucified. I throw the whip to the floor.
She twists about for several instants at the end of the chain.
I go to her, kiss her, pull on the small chains and rings to wrest from her new cries.
I stand on tiptoe and undo the handcuffs. She slides to her knees as if in slow motion. I pull her to me and kiss her all over. Her skin is burning.
At the tip of her breast, her blood tastes of earth and iron. I take her by the hair and put her on all fours, then get behind her and push into her cunt, doggy-style. I hear only the successive clicks of the cameras. I don't manage to get the enormous dildo all the way in. I fuck her more violently than a brute animal—like the hermaphrodite rapist I am. She screams with each thrust, as she had earlier at the whip's blows.
I pull out from her cunt. I adjust the synthetic organ between her buttocks and sodomize her as she has never been— as if I were impaling her, as if I wanted to pierce her to the heart and come out through her mouth.
As deeply as I can go. She screams again, so monstrous is the tearing of her anus; no matter that she is used to it.
I want to chase from her ass the memory of the cocks buried there.
With each thrust of my loins, the base of the dildo pushes against my sex, nearly painfully.
I want to ejaculate. Knowing I cannot makes me even more savage.
I want to be taken as I am taking Nathalie—harder, even. I turn toward J. P. "Come here, please." He shakes his head. "Beat me." Again he refuses and continues to take photographs, imperturbable. Nathalie rests her forehead against her bound hands, her loins raised high, offering herself totally to the dildo's thrusts. I pull the cock out of her ass and put it in her vagina again, this time for several strokes back and forth. Then I sodomize her again, as if to kill her.
Time stood still. Fucked like that, did she come? She did not stop crying. I don't know how to describe the pleasure I felt. Nor how to qualify the pleasure she felt.
I pull out of her, her ass so round, so delicate; striped with love, gaping like an open door. A bloody foam is coming out of it.
"Get on your feet," I say, helping her to stand. I reattach her to the chain from the ceiling as before. I go to the bed and pick up the long crop. From the first blow, she screams. She yells with each impact, as if each blow plunges her into a horror without end. I beat her maybe twenty times. The swellings made by the crop, nearly all straight, are superimposed upon by the more irregular, confused lines of the whip. The skin has broken in a dozen places. On the final blows, she bends her knees, suspended by all her weight from the chain attached to the handcuffs. Her imprisoned hands are open and begging, as if she were trying to fly away.
I am lost.
The mirror throws back to me the image of a disheveled reveler, outside of herself, the horrible dildo dangling.
J. P. does not stop taking photographs. I almost believe he is hiding himself discreetly behind the cameras in order not to take part in my delirium.
I throw down the crop.
I glue myself to Nathalie's body, bring her back to consciousness, cover her with kisses. She turns her hps to mine. Under her tears, her makeup is slowly disintegrating.
God, she is beautiful like that! Passion. Suffering. Death and resurrection. When there is no longer any reason, there is no reason to stop.
I am on my knees, between her legs. I spread her thighs, slide my tongue over her sex, and drink for a long time. With my mouth, I pull on the little chain connecting her clitoris to her breasts. She emits a sort of hiccup of suffering.
My fingers push inside her more. Her vagina sucks them up and she comes, bleeding.
The big artificial cock beats between my thighs as if a part of me.
I turn towards J. P. "Take her," I say. "No," he says, his eye still riveted to the camera. "Please."
"No," he repeats. His mind seems made up. On tiptoe, I undo the hook and unlock the handcuffs. If I had not supported her, she would have fallen to the floor like a rag doll.
Gently I help her to her knees. She tumbles forward on her shackled hands. Her cunt, breasts, back, buttocks, and thighs are no more than a mass of purple streaks, meandering swellings, illegible.
I get rid of my artificial cock, throwing it to the ground as I have everything else.
I take the hood from the bed. I go to Nathalie, pulling her up and placing her back on her knees.
St
eadily I undo the chains from her ears, nose, and breasts, letting them fall with all their weight to her cunt.
I put on the hood, which is difficult because her mass of blond hair, its curls wet with sweat, keeps slipping free of the slick leather.
She is nothing more than an indistinct form, without a face, without eyes, just a mouth. She pants loudly because she is suffocating, and because she thought it was all over with and is afraid again.
I stand her up, reattach her to the ceiling.
Again I caress her. I have the singular sensation, as I draw my hand over the swellings, that they are a countryside of vales and dells and shadows on her skin, so beautiful and clear.
I take the razor J. P. gave me and open it.2
Steadily, with maniacal precision, without pushing down, I slice open the welts on her body, one by one. The violet blood boiling under the raised skin flows in little rivers down her chest, back, buttocks, and legs.
Sometimes I stop for a few instants and finger myself. I am on the brink of coming, so I wait for an instant until my breathing calms before beginning to torture her again.
Each time the burning of the razor recalls her to life, she groans strangely, like an animal and, with a sort of convulsion, throws several drops of blood to the light-colored floor.
I am standing completely pressed against her. I drink in her warmth, rub against her unstitched skin, inundate myself with blood. I kiss her on the neck and put the blade there.
"Tut, tut," whispers J. P. from behind his lens.
I believe he thought I was going to kill her. I believe we all thought so: Nathalie did, and I did, too. I believe I was going to cut her throat. To feel against me the blood beating crazily in her jugular vein.
In the room is a bizarre odor: the very odor of fear, a nauseating perfume, fascinating, that I inhale for the first time. I stop my hand and slowly come back to myself.
Nathalie hangs inert at the end of the chain.
I untie her and let her fall to the floor like an exhausted waterfall.
I stay there, watching her lying at my feet, a white and red stain a black mask, on the brown of the tiles.
I feel a displacement of air at my back. J. P. comes to me and takes me gently by the shoulders. I am frozen in place. He kisses me tenderly on the temple. "Well!" he says. There is admiration in his voice. He leans toward Nathalie and, with rapid and precise gestures undoes the hood, which he takes off by turning it inside out as if he were skinning an animal.
Her eyes are closed, her nostrils pinched. Her makeup has run everywhere, collecting in gray splotches between the hood and her skin.
He grabs the bottle of champagne and pours a long stream on her face. The bubbles sparkle on her skin like hydrogen per- oxide on an abrasion.
It takes her some time to come back to herself—as if she were coming from very far away.
"Are you okay?" I ask stupidly.
She has been chained like a medieval martyr, beaten and whipped nearly to death, fucked in front and from behind. She is covered with gashes where the blood is slowly coagulating, and I have just asked her if she is okay...
Without saying anything, she drags herself to the wall and leans there.
As paradoxical as this might seem, there is something immensely happy in her face. And also something disappointed.
J. P. returns to me, takes me by the arm, throws me on the bed. I bury my face in the red comforter. I need something—but I don't know what.
I feel his weight on me, and I open up as never before, voluntarily.
He fucks my cunt as if he were carving a piece of meat. Meat. To be only meat. He pulls out of my sex, lies down on the bed, pulls me to him, and penetrates me again. His lips seek my mouth; I kiss him with the ferocity I have just put into fucking Nathalie. I press myself against him, rub against him. I wipe his chest with the blood covering me.
I suddenly sense a presence behind me. I turn my head without impeding my impalement on the cock piercing my cunt.
Nathalie has returned to us. In her hand she is holding the dick I had thrown to the ground. Hallucinatory. I hardly recognize her under her tragic mask, a watercolor of blood and mascara.
She puts the dildo to her labia, rubs it against her sex, then buries it between my buttocks clumsily, as if she were screwing it in. It hurts so much that my whole body moves in an effort to escape the impossible double penetration.
J. P. pulls me tightly against him, his mouth on mine, his arm encircling me. He glues me to him and keeps me jammed down on his cock, and Nathalie is able to get the oversized rod all the way up my ass. I want to scream, but he drinks my cries from my lips. I want to escape this monstrous rape. I want them both to be longer and bigger. I don't know what I want. I want to come, because it seems to me they will stop hurting me if they see me come. I don't want to come, because I could open myself even more, and I want them to fuck me for an eternity.
The blunt rod of the dildo rams the wall of my asshole, presses against, the other rod of flesh burning in my cunt.
I feel him ejaculate inside me—or was it her? I see the jets of sperm rush into me, cover my dilated mucous membranes, look for a way out of the impasse...
She lets go of the dildo, leaving it stuck inside me. Then she slides her hand to my pussy, seizes my clitoris, and twists it gently between her fingers.
It is my turn to come as if possessed.
It is after midnight. Nathalie dozes in a warm bath full of creamy soap. I am lying on my back, my millionth glass of champagne in my hand. I have the impression my cunt has been torn open. My soul too, besides.
J. P. meticulously puts away the photographic materials. On the wall where Nathalie leaned are long streaks of blood.
Notes
1. Did Florence consciously copy a scene from Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women? Her story is full of these reminiscences, whether voluntary or not.
2. On the photos I took at that moment, Florence looks insane. I think she was.
Chapter XI
January., Later
After that crazy night, our relationship cooled. It was as if we had said what was essential. It took a long time for Nathalie's scars to fade, and I followed the phases of their effacement with a curious detachment. The swellings caused by the whip and crop turned purple, then yellow. The gashes scarred over, leaving only faint lines, whiter still than her skin.
Through instinct she came to see me less often. One after- noon, returning home, I found her stretched out on the bed, completely dressed, shaking with sobs. I could never get her to say what was wrong.
Even the fact I had to ask proved my indifference, and she sensed that.
I decided to give up the Sophocles play and write an original production on Tiresias and the myth of the androgyne, with a hermaphroditic character at its center. I looked in vain for a young actor to play the role, then a young actress.
By silent mutual agreement, J. P. and I no longer made love. We continued to work together, our efficiency increasing tenfold. He no longer called me "my love" and kept himself from touching me.1
My spirit was drained and my soul depleted, with no desire to be filled.
I made love to Nathalie twice, and each time I was distracted.
Once at least I was sure she faked an orgasm. Her piercings began to appear vaguely ridiculous. In this way, January passed.
***
I had never been to Nathalie's house—I had gone there to pick her up but had never been inside. I had extracted her address with difficulty that December by promising to write her. And I had written her, besides. To tell her I loved her. That I needed her.
Put into writing, it sounded false. When you love someone, it always sounds false. The letters J. P. occasionally sent me were more credibly eloquent—since he did not love me, I thought.
I returned to her mother's, to that sordid project in Creteil. I arrived at around six o'clock at night. All the streetlights were out this time. The slums.
I rang
. Several times. I was going to give up when I heard the noise of a footfall. "Who's there?" A terrible voice. Blow for blow, question for question. "Is Nathalie there?" I asked. A beat. The door opened. Behind it, Nathalie, thirty years later. Her mother, obviously. She reeked of alcohol. Was dressed in that housedress of faded flowers that becomes the second skin of the drunks you see in the movies.2
"Nathalie is not here," she said. A cavernous voice, dark and broken. "Mama?" A little girl dressed like a two-dollar whore paraded into the frame. "Hello," she said. "I'm Clara, Nathalie's sister. Come in."
The mother didn't budge, and her daughter pushed her with her elbow to let me get by.
I entered as if committing a crime, as if breaking into a mausoleum. A sanctuary.
The walls were covered with photos in frames of varied but particularly mediocre taste, of a man in his thirties. Slightly bearded. A fighter.
An odor reigned of recently extinguished votive candles and incense.
I must have looked completely stupid. "Would you like something to drink?" "No, no, thank you." I had answered mechanically.
"Doesn't know what's good," said the voice from beyond the grave.
She poured herself a large glass of rotgut white wine. Its smell mingled with the odors of the crypt, and I felt slightly nauseated and really wanted to get out of there.
The girl (she might have been fifteen) enjoyed my surprise. "Takes your breath away, huh?" she said. She gestured about the room. "My father," she said, as if she were continuing the introductions. "I never knew him," she added. "At least, I don't remember him."
The terrible voice sounded: "She wasn't two years old when he left." "Left?"
"Mama means when he died" Clara said, shrugging her shoulders. "Not for anything in this world will she say the word. I'm not afraid to, though."
Then suddenly: "Would you like to see Nathalie's room?" I acquiesced. Several steps took us from the main cavern. The mourning continued in the other rooms. There were niches surrounded by small lit candles, as one sees on Italian street corners, illuminated pots of round red votive candles, like in churches.
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