I spit on your graves

by Vian, Boris, 1920-1959

  "Never!" she said defiantly.

  She snatched the flask out of Dick's hands as he was about to give it back to me. When I got it, it was empty.

  "Well!" I said approvingly, "feel better now?"

  "Oh! its not so bad," she said.

  I could see the tears showing in her eyes, but she held up alright. Her voiced sounded a bit choked.

  "Damn, said Jicky, "there's no more left for me."

  "We'll go after some more," I suggested.

  Let's get the guitar first and then we'll go back to Ricardo's."

  "You're lucky," the boy said. "Nobody'U sell us any."

  "That's what you get for looking so young," I kidded them.

  "Not as young as that," Jicky said angri-

  She squirmed about and got into such a

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  I Spit on Your Graves

  position that all I had to do was press with my fingers to keep me well occupied. The roadster suddenly stopped, and I dropped my hand on her arm.

  "Be right back," Dick cried.

  He got out and ran to the house. It was one of a whole row, obviously built by the same company on contract. Dick reappeared on the porch. He had a guitar in a shiny case. Slamming the door behind him, he was back in the car in a couple of jumps.

  "B.J. isn't here," he told us. "What're we going to do?"

  "We'll bring it back to her," I said, "Climb in. Drive to Ricardo's and I'll get this baby filled up."

  "You're going to get yourself a nice reputation," said Judy

  "I'm not worried," I assured her. "Everybody'll understand right away that you're the ones who dragged me into your wild orgies."

  We turned around, but now the guitar was in my way. I told the boy to stop a short ways before the bar, and I got out to get a refill. I bought an extra flask, and went back to the bunch. Dick and Judy, on their knees on the front seat, were in a hot argument with the blond.

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  Boris Vian

  "What do you say, Lee", said the boy, "How about going swimming?"

  "O.K." I said, "Got a pair of trunks to loan me? I haven't got a thing here."

  "Oh, we'll manage," he said.

  He took off, and we drove out of town. Almost immediately he took a little side road, just wide enough for the Chrysler and in pretty bad shape. In no shape at all, as a matter of fact.

  "We've got a swell spot to go swimming," he said. "Nobody ever goes there. Swell water, too."

  "Trout stream?"

  "Yep. Gravel and white sand. Never see a soul there. We're the only ones that ever take this road."

  "You can see that," I said, holding my jaw which I was afraid might get jolted off at the next bump. "You should trade this baby in for a half-track or something."

  "It's all part of the fun," he explained. "It keeps people from sticking their dirty noses into our spot."

  He stepped on the gas, and I offered up my soul to my maker. The road took a sudden turn and after another five hundred feet it just gave out. There were just some thick bushes there. The Chrysler stopped just before a big

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  I Spit on Your Graves

  maple and Dick and Judy jumped out. I then got out and lifted Jicky out. Dick had taken the guitar and led the way. I picked my way after him. There was a narrow path under the branches and we suddenly came on the stream, clear and cool as a glass of gin. The sun was pretty low in the sky, but it was still very hot. On one side the water rippled in the shade and on the other it glistened brightly in the slanting rays of the sun. A patch of thick, dry, almost powdery grass went right down to the stream.

  "This spot isn't bad at all," I said approvingly. "D'ya find it all by yourselves?"

  "Do you take us for some little dopes," said Jicky.

  And a clod of dry earth hit me on the neck.

  "If you don't behave right, I won't give you any more milk", and I patted my pocket to make sure they understood.

  "Oh, don't get mad, nice old blues-singer," she said. "How about showing us what you can do."

  "How about the trunks?" I asked Dick.

  "You won't need any," he said. "Nobody ever comes here."

  I turned around. Judy had already

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  Boris Vian

  taken off her sweatshirt. She sure wasn't wearing much under it. Her skirt sHpped down her legs, and in a jiffy, she kicked off her socks and shoes. She stretched out on the grass, completely nude. I must have had a dopey expression on my face, since she laughed at me in such a mocking manner that I almost forgot myself. Dick and Jicky, now dressed in the same uniform, lay down beside her. As a result of their laughter, I was the one who felt embarrassed. I nevertheless took notice that the boy was very skinny, his ribs sticking out under his sun-tanned skin.

  "O.K.." I said, "I'm game."

  I purposely took my time. I appreciated what a fine body I had, and I made sure that they had the time to appreciate it too while I was undressing. I gave myself a good stretch, crackling my bones, and then I sat down next to them. I still wasn't completely calmed down from my campaign with Jicky, but I didn't try to hide anything. I suppose they had expected me to go down.

  I grabbed the guitar. It was an excellent Ediphone. I didn't like to play sitting on the ground so I said to Dick.

  "O.K. with you if I go after the car-seat?"

  "I'll go with you," Jicky said.

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  I Spit on Your Graves

  She slithered through the bushes like an eel. It was a funny effect she made with her boyish body and her face like a Hollywood starlet, in the middle of the bushes with their dark shadows. I put down the guitar and followed her. She had a good start on me, and by the time I reached the car, she was coming back, carrying the heavy leather seat.

  "Let me have it," I said.

  "Let me alone, Tarzan!" she cried.

  I paid no attention to her protestations, and I grabbed her roughly by the behind. She dropped the seat and didn't object. I was hot enough to have jumped a monkey. She must have realized it, for she gave me a tough tussle. I broke out into a happy laugh. I liked that. The grass was high in that spot, and soft as a rubber mattress. She slipped onto the ground and I went down too. We wrestled about like a couple of savages. She was tanned to the tips of her breasts, and didn't have the brassiere-marks that disfigure so many nude women. As smooth as silk, and naked as a babe, but when I finally got her under me, I learned right quick that she was no baby. She gave me the best sample of technique I'd had in many a moon. My fingers felt the hollows and curves of her back, and farther down, her buttocks, hard as a watermel-

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  Boris Vian

  on. We kept it up for about ten minutes. She made out as though she were sleeping, and just as I was going all the way, she dropped me like a hot potato and ran away from me towards the river. I picked up the seat and ran after her. At the edge of the stream she sprinted and dove into the water without a splash.

  "You're going in already?"

  It was Judy's voice. She was chewing on a blade of grass, stretched out on her back, her hands under her head. Dick, sprawled out beside her, was caressing her thighs. One of the two flasks was tossed aside on the ground. She caught my look.

  "Yep, it's empty." she giggled. "We left you one".

  Jicky paddled about on the other side of the stream. I felt around in my jacket and took out the other bottle, and then dived in. The water was warm. I felt I was in perfect form. I swam with a heavy stroke and reached her out in the middle of the stream. It was just over our heads and there was hardly any current.

  "Thirsty?" I asked her, moving one arm about to keep me up.

  "Are you kidding," she replied. "You'll just kill me with your drug-store cowboy manners."

  "Come on," 1 said, "Try to float."

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  I Spit on Your Graves

  She turned over on her back, and I sHpped in under her, one arm around her middle. I gave her the flask with my other hand. She to
ok it, and I let my Angers stroke her thighs. I slowly spread her legs and I again took her there in the stream. She let herself go onto me. We turned almost vertical, moving just enough to keep off the bottom.

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  Boris Vian III

  It went on like that until September. There were five or six other kids in their bunch, boys and girls: BJ., who owned the guitar, a girl with a funny figure but whose skin gave off a most remarkable perfume. Susie Ann, another blond, more shapely than Jicky; and a girl with chestnut hair, 100% scatterbrained who danced all day long. The boys were as dumb as I could hope for. I hadn't repeated the mistake of leaving town in their company. It wouldn't have taken long and I would have been in trouble. We met now at the stream, and they kept the secret because I was an easy source of whiskey and gin for them.

  I had all the girls, one after the other, but it was a bit too easy, it almost turned my stomach. They did it as easily and regularly as though they'd been taught it in school hygiene, like brushing their teeth. They acted like a bunch of monkeys, untidy, greedy, chattering, vicious. I kept myself busy with them for the time being. I often played the guitar for them; that alone would have been enough, even if I hadn't been able to spank them all together with one hand tied behind my back. They taught me to jitterbug and to talk jive : it didn't

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  I Spit on Your Graves

  take me long to do it better than they. Nothing they could do about it either.

  I still couldn't get the kid off my mind and I wasn't sleeping well. I'd seen Tom a couple of times. He managed to get along. We never talked about the business down there any more. They didn't bother Tom in his school, and as for me, they hadn't ever seen me much. Anne Moran's father had sent her to the State University. He kept things going with his son. Tom asked me if everything was alright with me, and I told him that my bank account had already reached a hundred and twenty dollars. I was stingy with everything but liquor, and the book sales were still excellent. I hoped for a raise towards the end of the summer. He counseled me not to neglect my religious devotions That was one thing I'd been able to free myself of in my mind, but I made sure that other people didn't notice it. Tom believed in God. I just went to church every Sunday like Hansen, but I think you can't keep a clear head and believe in God both, and I had to keep a clear head.

  After church, we'd meet at the stream and take the girls in turn, with the same degree of modesty as a holy menagerie of monkeys in rut. That's just about what we were, you can take it from me. And then the

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  Boris Vian

  summer went by without our even knowing it, and it began to rain.

  I often went back to Ricardo's. Occasionally I went to the drugstore to cut a rug with the cats that hung out in the joint. As I said, I was able to talk their jive better than they-maybe it was in my blood. A whole crowd of the richer bunch in Buckton began to come back from their vacations at the seashore or in the mountains and Lord knows where. Skins well tanned, hair bleached, but no more than ours, that is of those who'd spent the summer at the stream. The store became one of their favorite rendez-vous.

  They still didn't know me, that bunch, but I had plenty of time and I didn't rush things.

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  I Spit on Your Graves

  IV

  And then Dexter came back too. They had all been talking about him enough to drive me batty. He lived in one of the swankest houses in the nice part of town. His parents stayed in New York, but he spent most of the year in Buckton, because of his delicate health. They originally came from Buckton, and it was as good a place to study as any. I already knew all about his Packard, his golf-clubs, his radio console, his bar and his liquor stock as though I'd spent my whole life in his place : When I finally saw him I wasn't disappointed. He was exactly the miserable little bastard that he should have been. A skinny guy, dark, almost Indian-like with black, shifty eyes, a thin mouth under a big hooked nose, yet with curly hair. He had horrible looking hands, big paws with short broad nails, wider than they were long and giving the effect of running crosswise across his fingers. They were swollen too and made you think of something unhealthy.

  They were all after Dexter like some mutts scrapping over a bit of meat. I lost some of my importance as a source of liquor, but I

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  Boris Vian

  still had the guitar and I had also saved up some specialties they had no previous notion of. I had plenty of time. I was waiting for worthwhile game and I was sure that in Dexter's bunch I would find just what I had been hoping for ever since I'd been dreaming about the kid every night. I think Dexter liked me, after a fashion. He must have hated me because of my muscles and my body, and also because of my guitar, but I guess it attracted him too. I had everything he didn't have. And he had plenty of dough. We'd make a good pair. And besides, he'd understood from the very beginning that I was willing to try at-I'm sure he didn't go that far-how could he have suspected it any better than the others. He just figured, I think, that together with me he could organize some real wild orgies. A far as that goes, he wasn't wrong.

  The town's population had now come back to normal; I was beginning to sell school books such as general science, physics, geology, and stuff like that. They sent all their school friends to me. The girls were pretty bad. At the age of fourteen their main interest had already become to get themselves petted, and you've really got to try hard to find a pretext for that in buying a book. But they always

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  I Spit on Your Graves

  managed : they made me feel their biceps so I could see how they'd built them up during their vacations, and then, bit by bit, they got me down to their thighs. They overdid it. After all, I had some serious customers and I had to look out for my job. But these kids at any time of the day were as hot as a bitch in heat, and must have had wet panties all the time. I don't think being a college teacher can be a very restful job, if an ordinary bookseller can go so far so easy When school started again, I was a lot better off. Then they came only in the afternoon. What's worse is that the boys liked me too. They were neither male nor female, most of them except for some that were already built like men, most of them got as much pleasure as the girls from having me. feel them. And then there was their damn dancing anywhere any time. I don't remember ever having seen five of them together without their beginning to hum some popular hit and then start hopping. In a way that made me feel good for I knew that came from my people.

  I didn't worry any more about my being caught. I think I showed nothing suspicious. Dexter had frightened me one of the last times we went swimming. I was clowning with one of the girls, no clothes on of course, tossing her into the air and rolling her on my arms like a

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  Boris Vian

  little baby. He was watching us, stretched out on his belly behind me. He was an ugly sight with his sickly body and the scars on his back from the drainages when he'd had his twice repeated onsets of pleurisy.

  He looked up at me and said:

  "You know you're not built like everybody else, Lee, you've got the same kind of drooping shoulders as a colored prizefighter."

  I dropped the girl and tensed into alertness, and I danced about him singing some lyrics I'd made up, and everybody laughed, but I didn't feel good. Dexter didn't laugh. He just looked at me.

  That night, when I looked in the mirror over my washstand, it was my turn to laugh. There wasn't a thing I had to worry about with the blond hair I saw there, the pink and white skin. I'd take them all in. It was jealousy that had made Dexter talk that way. And then, I really did have drooping shoulders. So what? I hardly ever slept as well as I did that night. A couple of days later, they organized a party at Dexter's house for the weekend. Evening dress. I rented a tux which it didn't take the tailor long to fit to me. They guy who'd worn it before me must have had just about my build, and it wasn't bad at all.

  That night too, I thought of the kid.

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&nbs
p; I Spit on Your Graves

  As soon as I was in Dexter's house, I understood why they'd specified evening dress : our bunch was lost in a majority of "better class" people. I recognized some of them at once : the doctor, the preacher and others of the same type. A colored servant took my hat, and I noticed a couple of others. Then Dexter took me by the arm to introduce me to his parents. I learned that it was his birthday. His mother looked like him : a little, skinny, dark-haired woman, with muddy eyes, and his father was the sort of man you feel like smothering slowly with a pillow, they have such a superior air about them. B.J., Judy, Jicky and the others, all dressed up in evening dresses, were acting very properly. I couldn't keep from thinking of their boxes when I saw them ceremoniously drink their cocktails and accept the invitations of some serious looking characters in cheaters who asked them to dance. From time to time we gave each other a wink to keep our spirits up. It was pretty miserable.

  They really had the liquor though. Dexter did know how to treat his pals. I asked

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  Boris Vian

  a couple of girls to dance a rumba without being properly introduced, and I drank-that's about all there was to do. A good number with Judy picked me up again-she was one of the girls I hardly ever laid. She usually seemed to avoid me and I never went after her more than after any other, but that evening I thought I'd never get out from between her legs-boy, was she hot! She wanted me to go up to Dexter's room, but I wasn't sure we wouldn't be bothered there so I took her to have a drink instead, and then, I saw a group of four people come in and I felt as though I'd been jolted by a mule.

  There were three women - two of them young and the other about forty, and a man -but who cares about them. I felt that I'd at last found what I wanted. Those two young ones, and the kid would squirm in his grave with joy. I grabbed Judy's arm - she must have thought I was going to take her, for she snuggled up against me. I would have liked to stretch them all out in my bed together, just to look at them. I let Judy go and stroked her buttocks casually as I dropped my arm. "Who are those two dolls, Judy?" "Interested, aren't you, you vicious old postcard peddler?"