‘You have an amazing arse,’ the boy whispers into her neck.
Her skirt is slipping, it’s so awkward.
She’d like to take back the stuff about her parents being dead because it’s another huge lie and, as well as that, one day she’ll have to introduce this boy to them (her parents) (and even to Bihotz) (no, not to Bihotz).
Up a step, another step, she pretends to trip, he holds her, he holds on to her, she gives a little gasp, drawing air in between her teeth, like Marilyn.
‘Did you see that?’
On the landing there’s an enormous painting with orange, yellow and red stripes that don’t represent anything but look good.
‘Her father owns all the vineyards north of here,’ says the boy with a big sweep of his arm that includes the entire geographical world. ‘He spends his whole life buying paintings, in the United States and everywhere, and the rest of the time he smokes in his smoking room and drinks.’
An old man passes them on the landing. A king.
Wow, she says.
The Earth is spinning on the end of Arnaud’s hand. The staircase continues upwards.
And Lætitia is coming down, alone. Her lover is right now lying in a pool of blood. A little clinking of her gold chain belt. She’s smoking, with an expression of disdain, her eyelids half-closed, her long legs set in slow motion in front of her, her patent-leather Doc Martens preceding her down the stairs step by step, as if the exertion has finally convinced her of the vanity of this world.
And, stock-still on the staircase, he’s looking at her.
But she’s the one he kisses. Solange. He hiccups as he squeezes her. He sticks his tongue in her mouth.
There’s a huge stained-glass window on the final landing, a seascape lit by the moon, with the real garden, under maritime pines, visible behind it, in shades of blue, as if Clèves was turning into the sea, and the whole world was immersed in a marvellous connectedness.
The door they’re leaning on opens behind them. They fall into a bedroom, laughing, their bodies entwined, he’s holding her, he pushes her head down. He’s pushing really hard, he’s struggling with his fly and her head, to unzip and to hold her, time is doing one of its shadowy loops again, there’s some rubbing of fabric and skin and then everything becomes clear: his dick is in her mouth. From the pumping action he’s doing with her, she understands that she has to raise and lower her head. It’s a bit lumpy down there, it smells bad and it tastes acidic.
He groans. Is she hurting him? She relaxes her jaw.
‘Suck, for fuck’s sake.’ He sounds distressed.
She clamps her jaw again and tries to cope with putting pressure on his dick, as well as suction, a vacuum, that seems to be what he wants, like when you suck your thumb but bigger.
The taste has gone. There’s a lot of saliva and a bit of it is running down her chin, tickling her, like the pubic hairs sticking up her nose. She’s got used to the smell, but it’s kind of a pity that she feels as if she’s cleaning his dick. She’d like him to let go of her hair, it’s hurting, and her arm is stuck in some kind of judo position. She’s starting to get a sore jaw. The muscles on the side of her mouth are cramping up. Clearly she doesn’t use them enough, in any case not like this. It must be a matter of practice. This business does seem to require opening your mouth a lot. She tries to think about other things, like when she’s at the dentist.
‘Fuck!’ she hears, all of a sudden. ‘I’ve ended up with a robot!’
She twists her neck to look at him. Her jaw relaxes and the skin on her skull slides back into place.
‘You’ve really got zero imagination, haven’t you? Do you actually have to be reminded to lick the penis from time to time? Run your tongue around it a bit, whatever!’
He mimes it, sticks his tongue out, stretches his neck. He looks weird, like he’s in agony. A look she’s already seen on Bihotz, the day he was holding his dick in his hand (or the day of the cup and ball game).
He shows her how to hold the base, her hand around it, not too hard, and every now and again to have a go at his balls underneath. He falls back on the bed, holds on to her hair and seems to feel better now.
She’s got to play the part of the desirable girl, the one who knows what she’s doing. An exquisite shuddering.
That’s exactly what’s happening right now. Right now she is doing that to a boy. The world is alive and she is at the centre of it.
But it takes so long. She tries thinking about the river running through the bottom of the garden. About the swimming pool at night (she can hear shouts, dives, laughter. She’ll go down there later). The dick is driving into her brain. Ramming the back of her skull. It really is a pretty weird situation to be in. It’s difficult to think about anything else. The cramp becomes unbearable, she tries to extricate herself and he screams: ‘No! No way! No way!’
He gets up, with the thing at that strange angle and really stiff like she’s seen on Bihotz. A spur. A bottle opener. He’s intimidating, not so much his dick, but his angry pride. But it’s true: she’s behaving like a fool.
He starts from scratch again (in a daze but with precision): she’s on her knees in front of him pumping him, he’s grabbing on to her ears, his fingers digging into the back of her skull, he’s slamming into her gullet and she wants to vomit, she coughs, she weeps, he yanks and pulls her, she coughs, her head is a coconut, a rattling money-box, there’s nothing inside there and he cries out and something revolting fills her mouth.
She runs to the bathroom and spits. Rinses her mouth and breathes. In the mirror she looks awful. She fixes her hair with her fingers and tries to make her cheeks and eyelids less puffy with splashes of cold water. Her mascara has run and looks terrible. She rubs at it with the tip of her finger but that makes it worse. And the taste is still there. Something from outer space (as Bihotz would say). Slimy, sickly sweet, pervasive, appalling.
He’s lying on the bed, eyes closed. ‘You’re a pretty inhibited girl,’ he says, with a hint of tenderness. His dick is lying in a little grey pile outside his jeans.
‘I mean, that could be kind of offensive for a guy. If you rush off to the bathroom and all that. It’s gratifying for men when girls swallow. It’s a nice way to finish the thing off…’
He opens his arms for her and kisses her on her hair.
‘Dope slows me down. And with the alcohol on top of that…But that’s why it’ll be good for you later. We’ll have plenty of time.’ His dick lifts up slightly, it’s crazy, all by itself, like the head of a lizard.
She’s finding it hard to believe that she’s here, for real, lying against a boy’s chest, in the hollow of his shoulder. Not the usual make-believe, not the pillow on her little bed, no, a man, a real one.
He kisses her, on the hair again. Fair enough, what with that taste in her mouth. She’d like to brush her teeth. She must have bad breath. It’d be good if they could start talking again. She can’t feel the effect of the dope anymore. He must think she’s stupid. He’s smoking a cigarette, his eyes on the light fitting. He looks brooding and mysterious. She doesn’t know what to say.
The plaster mouldings on the ceiling. The wallpaper that has the same bird pattern as the Bihotz teacups, but with a more old-fashioned, pastel look. A Chinese screen and claw-foot furniture. The window opens onto a small terrace.
If only she could be Lætitia d’Urbide, a bit older. And stay with him in the chateau. They would have horses down by the river, tennis matches with guests. They would disappear together and he would possess her, and she would put her dress back on, he would tie the ribbons, perhaps tightening her corset, his knee pressed into her waist like she saw in a film, one last kiss in her unfastened hair, followed by a long embrace at the top of the stairs, she’s leaning back, he’s so proud of her, the master of her heart and soul, and he would marry her, the most beautiful girl of all, beaming in front of the swooning guests.
He stands up to get dressed and she realises in horror that she was rub
bing herself against his thigh. But he starts telling her something: ‘I was right up the front, pogo-dancing, I could touch the stage, there were girls fainting everywhere, it was totally crazy. We were so squashed that we didn’t even realise the girls had fainted and were still standing up, can you believe it? The crowd was holding them up and it was like they were dancing and we were passing them over our heads to the roadies and then there was even a disabled guy in his wheelchair being handed over our heads, it was so cool of them to do it.’
She has the same taste as him in music, exactly the same. She must go to the Cure concert in Bordeaux. But she’d better get with it, that’s precisely what he’s talking about—the concert was last week.
‘You’ve read the lyrics of Robert Smith’s songs, haven’t you? I mean you’ve read them? That combination of cynicism and edgy sensitivity. He really feels things. You don’t realise unless you’ve read his lyrics, but it’s even more complex than that: he’s hiding his own feelings otherwise it’s too painful. Cynicism is polite despair, it’s cool, and it’s totally the essence of Robert Smith.’
She doesn’t dare mention Michael Jackson. Is Michael Jackson actually that cool after all? She’d really like him to go and get her something to drink, something strong, but would that be going too far?
He’s rolling another joint.
Arnaud. Arnaud. She sighs as she whispers the ‘r’.
‘You look sort of wistful.’
He undoes the buttons on her Polo shirt, one by one.
She tries to look wistful, it’s cute the way he said that.
‘I hope you understand that none of this commits us to anything.’
Of course. Absolutely. She’s so cool, open-minded.
‘I wouldn’t want you to suffer.’
He says it as if they were in a soap opera, and she realises that it’s funny and that they are in this together. He takes off her Polo shirt, her father’s Lacoste Polo (fortunately there are no stains on it or she’d be shot).
He kisses her on the neck and grabs her breasts. She hopes they’re big enough, big enough to fill the hands of an honest man. She tries to pull him closer to her so he can kiss her neck again and pummel her breasts less. She breathes in deeply and then there’s some kind of misunderstanding and he pushes on her head, holds her down, under the sea, under water. She can feel her tears welling like a huge wave of cynicism, the dick is cold and sticky, soft and full of wrinkles, he moves his abdomen impatiently and she gets going, she chews a bit (like the fatty bits on the chicken) and it expands, it really is a pretty wacky thing, it fills her mouth like an inflating balloon.
Tenderly, he tells her she’s a little doggy. The word immediately sticks itself between her legs and she starts to get wet. Perhaps he’s saying it in his sort of off-hand way, projecting the word from his mouth—in any case it sticks there like a muzzle.
‘You’ve got potential,’ Arnaud says, puffing. ‘You’re improving every minute. Stop, you’ll make me come.’
And he turns her over, repositioning her with assurance, an assurance that lets a bounding puppy-dog loose in her underpants, until it hits her, and there’s no doubt about it—he wants to do it. He lifts up her mother’s Prince of Wales check skirt and sticks his dick in there.
She doesn’t want to. Not like that. Not back to front. She wants to see his face, talk to him, see him. She struggles, she’s drowning, she’s in free fall.
He turns her back the right way. He takes her in his arms and strokes her hair. Says it’s okay, that he’s not going to rape her. He guides her hand to his dick and, with his hand over her hand, he sets up a sliding rhythm.
‘It’s okay if you’re a virgin. You don’t have to pretend. I’m the one who popped d’Urbide’s cherry, and I have to say she really got off on it. She came, all right.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘On the other hand’—he relights the joint on the bedside table—‘there are plenty of ways to stay a virgin, if that’s what’s bothering you.’
He shoves his hand into her hair. She applies herself to the pumping, now that she knows how to do it. She’s got the rhythm, come on, I’ll get you going, her skirt pushed up to her waist, his hand whacking at her bare breasts and sliding down between her legs where it’s so wet now, little doggy, inflamed by the words, she keeps pumping, she pictures herself doing it, she sees both of them in this bedroom, her soggy underpants jammed between her buttocks, her twisted mouth and sweaty face slapped up against pubic hair and balls, back and forth, she’s pumping him well. She’d like him to move his hand further down but it’s annoying that either his arm is too short or she’s too far away or something’s stuck and yet it seems possible, she imagines, she has the feeling that all he’d have to do is to finger her and then she’d—‘Ahh, you fat fucking bitch!’—the ‘itch’ bursts out of him in a piercing trill and she leaps away and the stuff spurts in the air and falls on her mother’s skirt—shit.
She’s not really fat. There are plenty of people fatter than her, like Delphine or even Rose, and anyway he is too—he’s a bit like Bihotz in the belly department. Or was he saying it as a joke?
‘That wasn’t very nice of you,’ he announces. He takes a drag of the joint, crushes the butt on the lampshade base and disappears into the bathroom.
She pulls the sheet back over herself and tries to rub out the burn mark on the lamp with some spit on her thumb. She listens to him having a long piss. The intimacy of gurgling urine. She fantasises again about the young bridegroom who, after sealing the secret pact, descends the staircase and casually greets the guests. His whole life in front of him to lie with her and lie with her again, while also looking after his horses, and coming up to find her again tomorrow and the day after and forever. She’s only got a few seconds to rub herself, the flesh of her fingers on the flesh of her cunt, in a swift circular motion she is both the lord and lady at the same time and she pushes right inside her cunt, her belly flat on the bed, her thighs quivering, she comes in one huge surge.
Arnaud. She pretends to be asleep. She hears him going downstairs.
In the bathroom she examines herself in profile. How can she serve him up these fried eggs; he must know plenty of other better ones, and her areolas are ugly. Cheap Carpet’s are much more attractive, even Delphine’s are bigger. You probably have to go all the way before they grow.
She’s not sure whether to go home to her place or to Bihotz’s. Where will she have fewer questions to deal with? But when she gave her telephone number to Arnaud she got confused (the dead parents), and gave him Bihotz’s number (my tutor) to memorise (Arnaud didn’t have a pencil).
‘What time did you go to bed?’ Bihotz asks. He looks deep into her eyes as if a tunnel led right inside her, from the eye sockets to her vagina where her cherry is still in place.
One-fifteen.
Like those shutters that can block the viewfinder on telescopes.
‘How’s Delphine’s mother?’
Yeah, she’s good.
‘So you saw that she’s not the girl who lives in the chateau?’
Yeah, I got that.
He stops and she can finally get back to the movie in her head. Arnaud. His sly look. A pact. A silent agreement. Arnaud. The way he said it: Stop, you’ll make me come.
She’d happily go to bed now but Bihotz will think that’s odd, for a girl who went to sleep early last night. So she stays there, watching ‘Stade 2’ on TV, while he fondles Lulu.
You’ve got potential. ‘Potential’, that’s in the future, which means he wants to see her again. And the way he moved, the firm grasp of his hand, a bit too firm but so much the man in control. Her breathing is getting shorter and she’s wet between her legs. A future as a courtesan. Lounging under chandeliers and tapestries.
Carl Lewis is on his mark for the hundred metres. Carl Lewis runs so fast that it’s already finished. Bihotz says the white guys will never have a chance. (But ever since she made up her mind about all that—the planet spinning pointlessly in empty space�
�politics does not interest her.)
She looks at the telephone as if it’s a completely new object, a gateway, an antechamber to another world, with wall hangings and Chinese screens. She tries to remember if its ring is a ‘dring’ or a ‘bli bli’. ‘Bli bli’ is the phone at her house, the new touch-tone telephone. She tries to hypnotise this one, the rotary-dial phone.
Dring.
She leaps up. She’s Carl Lewis.
It’s her mother. Asking if she’s eating here or over there. No, no one has phoned. Was she expecting a call from Rose? From Nathalie? How was Delphine’s?
23 57 01.
That’s his number. She knows it by heart, it was imprinted in her memory straight away. 23 57 01. Two and three (the two of us and then a child?), five to seven like the secret rendezvous time, and zero and one (why zero and one?). Anyway if you add it all up, 2+3+5+7+0+1, it makes 18, adulthood, when she’ll be free. Perhaps 18 is his age? There are so many things for them to discover about each other.
23 57 01.
Bihotz is going to lock up the chickens.
She lifts up the receiver and punches the numbers into the air. How are you? Very well and you. I was just thinking about you. I couldn’t call you. Because. I was thinking about your mouth and your breasts. Yes, I mean it, they’re amazing. You’re so beautiful. No other girl has ever made me stiff like you do. You’ve got potential. Stop, you’ll make me come. No other girl. You’re more beautiful than. Stop, you’ll make me come. I love you. Do you love me. I love you. Yes. Yes.
Bihotz comes back from the chickens.
Night falls.
Dring!
She picks up, her heart pounding terribly, she really is way too cynical—once again, it’s her mother. Who is expecting her for dinner. Who has not seen her the whole weekend. I only have one daughter and I don’t even see her. No, I told you to come and have dinner. I really wonder sometimes which way your head’s screwed on. Do I really have to ask you to come and see me? What will it be like in a few years’ time?
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