Pierre had placed the chain on the bed and, without disturbing O’s thoughts, fastened the black velvet blindfold over her eyes. It fitted snugly up under the ridge of her brow and exactly followed the curve of her cheeks: no possibility of a downward glance nor even of raising her eyelids. Blessed darkness like unto her own inner night-time, never had O welcomed it with such joy, oh blessed chains which bore her away from herself. Pierre attached this new chain to the ring in her collar and invited her to accompany him. She stood up, sensed that she was being tugged along, and followed. Her bare feet froze on the icy tiles, she realized that she was walking down the red wing hallway, then the ground, as cold as before, became rough; she was walking upon flagstones, sandstone, perhaps granite. Twice the valet brought her to a halt, twice she heard a key scrape in a lock and a lock click as a door closed. “Be careful of the steps,” said Pierre, and she descended a stairway, once almost tripped. Pierre caught her in time, though, caught her round the waist. Prior to this, he had never touched her save to chain or beat her, but now here he was laying her upon the cold steps where with her pinioned hands she hung on as best she could to avoid slithering down, here he was clutching her breasts. His mouth was roving from one to the other and at the same time he was pressing himself upon her, she felt his member gradually stiffen. It was only when he was entirely satisfied that he helped her to her feet. Perspiring and trembling from cold, she finally descended the last steps, then heard him open yet another door, through which she was led, immediately feeling a thick carpet under her feet. The chain was still exerting a pull. Yet another pull on the chain and then Pierre’s hands released her hands, untied the blindfold: she was in a circular and vaulted room, quite small and very low-ceilinged; the walls and vault were of unfaced stone, the joints in the masonry were visible. The chain leading to her collar was secured to an eye-bolt set in the wall about a yard above the floor and opposite the door, leaving her free to move no more than two paces in any direction. Here, there was neither a bed nor anything that might substitute for one, there was no blanket, not a scrap of covering, and only three or four cushions like the Moroccan cushions, but out of her reach and not meant for her. On the other hand, set in the niche whence shone the sole light illuminating the room, lay a wooden tray; on it were water, fruit, and bread, and these were within her reach. The heat coming from radiators which had been installed at the base of and recessed in the thickness of the walls, and which formed a sort of burning plinth all the way around her, was nevertheless not enough to overcome the damp smell of mustiness and stone which is the odour of ancient prisons and, in old castles, of uninhabited keeps. In this sultry, soundless twilight, O soon lost all track of time, for here there was neither night nor day, and never was the light turned off. Pierre or some other valet, it didn’t matter which, replenished her supply of water, placed fruit and bread on the tray when none were left, and would take her to bathe in a nearby dungeon. She never saw the men who entered, because, whenever they came, they were preceded by a valet who blindfolded her and didn’t remove the blindfold until they had gone. She also lost track of these visitors, of their number, and neither her gentle blindly caressing hands nor her lips were ever able to identify whom they touched. Sometimes there were several of them, most often they came singly, but every time, before she was approached, she was placed on her knees, her face to the wall, her collar fastened to the same bolt to which her chain was affixed, and whipped. She would lay her palms flat against the wall and press her face against the back of her hands so as to avoid being scraped by the stone; but it lacerated her knees and breasts. She also lost track of the whippings and of her screams; the vault muffled them. She waited. All of a sudden, time stopped standing still. In the very midst of her velvety, anaesthetic night-time she felt her chain being detached. She’d been waiting about three months, about three days, or ten days, or ten years. She felt herself being swathed in some heavy cloth, and someone taking her under the shoulders and under the legs; felt herself being lifted and borne away. She found herself in her cell again, lying underneath her black fur covering; it was early in the afternoon, her eyes were open, her hands were free, and there was René sitting beside her, caressing her hair. “Come, dress yourself,” he said, “we’re going.”
She took one last bath, he brushed her hair, handed her powder and her lipstick. When she came back into her cell, her suit, her blouse, her slip, her stockings, her shoes lay on the foot of the bed, her handbag and her gloves too. There was even the coat she put on over her suit when the weather began to get cold, and a square of silk she wore to protect her neck, but no garter-belt, no panties. She dressed herself slowly, rolling her stockings to just above the knee, and didn’t put on her jacket, for it was very warm in the cell. That was the moment when there entered a man who, the first evening, had explained what would be expected of her. He undid the collar and the wristbands which had held her captive for a fortnight. Was she freed of them? or did she feel something missing? She said not a word, hardly daring touch her fingers to her wrists, not daring raise them to her neck. He then asked her to choose, from amongst all those identical rings he was presenting to her in a little wooden case, the one which would go on the ring-finger of her left hand. They were curious, these rings, made of iron, the inner surface was of gold; the signet was massive, shaped like a knight’s shield, convex, and in gold niello bore a device consisting of a kind of three-spoked wheel, each spoke spiralling in towards the hub, similar, all in all, to the sun-wheel of the Celts. She tried one, then another, and, by forcing it a little, found that it fitted her perfectly. It felt heavy on her hand, and the gold gleamed almost secretively in the polished iron’s dull grey. Why iron? and why gold? And this device she didn’t understand? But it wasn’t possible to talk in this room, with its red hangings, with its chain still hanging over the bed, in this room where the black blanket, rumpled once again, dragged on the floor, where the valet Pierre could enter, was going to enter, was bound to, absurd in his operetta costume and in the fleecy light of November. She was mistaken, Pierre didn’t enter.
René had her put on her suit jacket and her long gloves that reached up over the ends of the sleeves. He took her scarf, her bag, and folded her coat over his arm. The heels of her shoes made less noise on the hallway floor than her clogs had, the doors were shut, the antechamber empty. O held her lover’s hand. The stranger who accompanied them opened the grilled gate Jeanne had said was the enclosure gate and which neither valets nor dogs were guarding now. He raised one of the green velvet curtains and had them both go through. The curtain fell back again. The grilled gate was heard to swing to. They were alone in another antechamber; beyond them stretched the garden. They had now only to go down a short flight of steps, and there in the drive was the car, O recognized it. She sat down next to her lover who was at the wheel, and they started. When they’d gone through the main gateway, which was wide open, and gone on a hundred yards or so further, he stopped to kiss her. It was just before a peaceful little village they came to a moment or two later that O saw the signpost. On it was painted: Roissy.
From THE SLIT
Sebastion Gray
Sebastion Gray’s The Slit is one of the stranger manifestations of the early-1970s pulp porn fiction market. Its style, with its weakness for surreal metaphor and bizarre prose-poetic neology, suggests the author might have been a bored, middle-aged lecturer languishing in the English department of some benighted Midwestern college, with little better to do than write a ‘pornographic’ novel. Or quite possibly, one of his students. The plot is part ‘Quest’, part ‘Voyage and Return’. An elderly sex toy manufacturer sends his virginal daughter, Celeste, on a voyage around the world ‘to taste and enjoy every conceivable form of sex’. She is accompanied by a taciturn older brother, Jok, who will act as her guide and protector and for whom, during the course of the voyage, she develops an entirely unreciprocated sexual passion. Jok is given six envelopes by their father. Each one contains a different destin
ation: each country holds a different sexual ordeal for the inexperienced Celeste. In the following extract, we join Celeste’s odyssey after she has lost her virginity in the shadow of a Mayan pyramid to six café-au-lait-skinned youths. She and her brother have left Central America and are now on their way to Sweden.
The envelope is blue – ice blue.
She has seen it as Jok strolls the lower decks of the creaky Belgian freighter.
They always dine at the Captain’s table. The Captain is attentive to her in his royal blue and tarnished braid. He winks at her – politely. He grins with stained teeth out of a carefully trimmed Van Dyke moustache.
She wonders what it would be like to lie deep in the goose mattress of her compartment and feel the Captain’s fat and hairy body envelop her like a blue fog. She can sense the ageing, bearded chin upon her breasts, the tattooed anchor of his prick sunk between her drowning legs.
But the Captain does not touch her. He spins sea yarns at table, smokes black cigars that smell like turpentine and rolls thimblesips of brandy in his mouth as if he had just tasted the freshest little cunt in Brussels.
But she is not touched.
Not by the Captain and his disciplined crew, nor by the handful of other passengers.
And not by Jok.
She is left alone in her cabin to think of the green jungles under the eye of Xipe. To remember the brown-skinned Indian boys with their fierce young cocks, hard as polished teak.
To think of that – and the ice-blue envelope.
*
They say goodbye to the Captain in the mist of one early morning. He winks and waves, dipping his eyes downwards like some knowing Poseidon, ready to claim the sea again.
They travel once more by air, high into madder blue clouds and icy light.
North.
Into the whiteness of cold and aerated space.
Then down again, on stiffened wings with icicles fanging the windows. Down, down they come into a torch-lighted field, a landscape blue-white with snow and frigid lakes beyond.
Sweden.
The word is like a bright bauble to her. She knows no more geography than can be found on the palm of her hand or the skinscape of her body, but she likes the world of hoarfrost about her.
No pyramids here. No superstitions under glass. No decadent fruits with flybuzz.
Only the hard, bluish icefields swept against the hardy firs and pines, and, their faces lit by torchlight, the Nordic gods who never blush.
There are four of them – tall, long-faced and handsome, with golden hair and cobalt eyes. All young. All with bodies impatient with their coloured sweaters and thick scarves and toboggan hats. All laughing with strong and perfect teeth.
They pull her into an akja, with Jok beside her.
The boat-like sled begins to move under the clap of hands and the sting of whips on reindeer backs. The fragile horns toss against the snowdrift air, and the akja moves, slicking softly over the cadaverous earth.
A merry, rollicking tune accompanies them on the journey. The strong male voices ring like copper bells against the night. She feels warm and wanted. She even snuggles back against the warmth of Jok.
But he is cold to her touch. The cudgels of his knees are like carved pedestals of ice. The lapfur is her only comfort.
They arrive at a postcard lodge, wedged deep into a crevice of snow, a spangle of tall tree shadows behind, a ribbon of beryl smoke rising from the chimney lip. The apples of her cheeks are pulsing. Blood races sharp-hoofed through her brain. Her breath makes little wanton ghosts upon the air.
She is carried from the akja by the laughing, singing young men.
Inside the lodge, she finds a simplicity that amazes her. The walls are roughhewn, unpainted splinters with the frozen splash of caulk between the cracks of heavy beams. The windows are set like fists into the walls. A fireplace – a lion’s mouth of brick – bellows and crackles with birch logs. A long, oaken table with splitaxe stools. And on the table, food.
The smorgasbord is not for fragile throats. Plates laden with cheese, pickled herring, sardellen, anchovies, baked mushrooms, great cold chunks of meat.
To wash it down, tankards of glacier cold beer and schnapps.
They make her eat. They feel that she is thin, that she has a pallor, that to be strapping and wholesome and fit for games one must stuff.
As she eats she tries to memorise their names.
Dag, Sven, Olof and Viktor.
The names are like things under a microscope, strange and new to her. Strong names, names like their strong young bodies. She likes their hands. She can see nothing of them but their hands and faces.
The hands of each are wide enough to circle her waist. Heavy of knuckle and long of finger. Sven and Dag are younger. Viktor and Olof are very much men. There is a fine matting of golden hair on the backs of their hands. It matches the thick nape of sunyellow hair at their tarpon ears and hearty necks.
Sven and Dag are overgrown boys, an enchanting 20 apiece. They are like twin suns in an arctic sky. Steelblue eyes above high, ruddy cheeks and happy mouths.
They all drink toasts to her, shouting skal!
The schnapps runs down their sculptured chins, seeps into the dimpled places in their cheeks.
She wonders when they will lose their smiles, like the hungry boys under the curse of Xipe, and want to fuck her in dead seriousness. Already she has seen the poses of the male. The laugh that hides the rattle of greed. The boyish kiss that cloaks the thrusting truncheon of their lust.
She glances to the end of the long scabrous table to Jok, hoping for an answer.
He is intent on sucking the memory of a sardellen from his fingertips. Morose, indifferent, detached. He is eating because he is hungry.
She is being urged to eat for quite a different reason.
*
Her little tummy is full – packed with cheese and pickled herring, awash with foamy draughts of beer.
She wants to sleep, but Olof is unhappy with the thought.
He conveys to her in a parody of broken English that sleeping after eating is gluttony. Sloth. A sound insult to the wellbeing of her body.
One should never sleep after eating. One should exercise, churn the blood, stir the body to song.
It may all be done, however, he grins, on a feather bed.
So come!
There are no real lights in the lodge. Only thick, buttery candles set sentinel at the right places. There is one at the bottom of the crude log steps leading upstairs, and one set at the top. There are two in the narrow hallway above, and one in the room they enter.
It is her room. Her own little room, again.
No spoonbill feathers and pliant animal skins here. A flat, hard bed of uncarved wood. A pitcher and a bowl of ice-white, durable, ironstone. A rack of wooden pegs for her clothes. A stretched hide over a straight-backed chair for the sin of an idle buttock.
Olof pushes the tit-flame of his candle against the one in her room to make a double light.
No exercise worth doing should be done in the dark, he hums. It is an old Nordic custom.
The room is as chilly as a fjord.
Olof begins to undress. He is half-through with his merry task when he notices that she has not budged.
His blue eyes twinkle.
The coach must always breathe encouragement.
His large, gentle-rough hands move over the furry collar of her little coat, unbuttoning, undoing, undressing her.
At last she takes up the task herself, shuddering with cold, wishing for the sun in the jungle village. Wishing she had not filled her stomach with so much oppressive food. Wishing...
Olof is naked.
Vikings yet live, bold with muscle and thick of calf, horned at the head, with bracelets of hammered steel around their arms.
She cannot breathe for staring at him.
He is as clean and white as an ice floe, incredibly healthy, flawless, proud.
His prick is like the great white tusk
of a walrus. It wags between his legs softly as he walks back to the bed. He sits down, a muscled gallant, to assist her final disrobing.
She is ashamed of her body. Thin as a reed with its little nippled breasts grown only vaguely bolder by the orgy at Xipe. And her arms, her legs, her pelvis – skeleton-sized beside the marvellous masculinity of Olof. She blushes, not from the cold, but from shame.
He lifts her chin with one great, firm finger. He smiles at her, his placid eyes alive with life, his teeth as strong as marble.
The look tells her that she is there to grow.
His hands go back to the task of making her as naked as he. The coat, the dress, the slip, the panties – all snowfall to the floor until she is flagrantly nude in the middle of the great white tongue of a bed.
Olof moves in beside her, the thick columns of his legs solidly in place against her own. The fat, soft fish of his cock lays broadly across the upper part of his smooth thigh.
He takes her small hands in his own and carries them down to his sex, totally without guilt.
Her fingers tremble. The prick is much larger than the largest one at Xipe. Very white and very long. The little whorl of citron-coloured hair above the root looks like a puff of spun gold.
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