Actually, the same fire burnt all the surroundings, thick shrubs and trees alike.
This is what will cause Dulita to get dirty, and to blacken her white smock and legs, the day that her mother and Gallo force her to pass through this spot in order to go and picnic at the fountain. The idea that Dulita has to get dirty seems to me from that moment on essential, and is elaborated upon to perfection in the following fantasy. I see Dulita, who reaches the fountain and dirties her feet with a kind of pestilential mud mixed with decomposed moss, which, in reality, covers the paving of the fountain, each time that the pipe gets blocked with leaves and prompts one of those frequent inundations, especially in autumn. Even though the spot was closed off, dry leaves nonetheless managed to get in, swept in by gusts of wind on stormy days. But the cypress fountain, whose interior the fire enabled me to see, still remains invisible from the dining room. A section of wall behind the stable hides it.
Displacing the fountain enough to return it to my field of vision seems to me to be an insufficient solution, and one that would destroy the sense of my reverie. On the contrary, I see very clearly the end of the fire which had burnt the cypresses and thus destroyed the partition wall which, moreover, allows for “the absolutely direct communication between the stable and the cypress fountain”.
The desolate and ruined aspect of the environs of the fountain, heightened by the pile of charred stones from the wall, affords me an atmosphere perfectly suited to my designs. I suddenly think, with a strange emotion, a mixture of anguish and pleasure, that the disappearance of the wall wiII permit, towards the end of the afternoon, the shadows of the cypress to spread slowly the length of the yard, which up till then were continuously in the shade. The sun will hit the first steps of the entrance stairwell which at that time of the year is covered with dry leaves.
Thus, the sun, at the moment prior to its setting, will penetrate, in a cadmium line, this first-floor room with its half-closed shutters and furniture without dust covers, to the parquet floor which is covered with corn that is drying out there, and will illuminate for half a minute, with all its bedazzlement, the tip of the finger of a greenish marble statue, arm raised, hair masking its eyes, and which, along with the pond, is at a remove from the fountain group.
Despite the disappearance of the wall hiding the cypress fountain, it is impossible to see it from the dining room, because it is still hidden, far to the left, by the window.
After several insufficient fantasies which lead me little by little to the solution, I decide to imagine the scene of Dulita’s initiation reflected in the big mirror in Dulita’s room which is contiguous with the dining room. Thus could I observe everything from my own chair, with the advantage of a certain complication and a certain blur of images that is absolutely desirable and already experienced as a result of the slightly incomplete burning of the cypresses. And also, due to the distance which separates me from the place where the scene is to be played, images will reach me in a state of imprecision which is particularly disturbing to me.
I see with a very particular clarity and precision this new phase of the reverie which is to follow.
It is the night of Dulita’s initiation, the night before the Day of the Dead; we have just finished eating, and everything has been cleared from the table, on which only three cups of coffee, three liqueur goblets and a bottle of cognac remain. Dulita is to my left in front of the half-open door of her room. She occupies the same place that I myself had occupied at the time of my childhood stay. Like myself at that time, she is in the middle of doing her school homework. In front of her are her books and an open pencil box, where I see an eraser with a lion drawn on it. It is the exact atmosphere of my first stay at the château. Gallo occupies the place of the owner, smoking in silence and reading her newspaper. Mathilde occupies the place of the wife and knits. This evening the silence is greater, disturbing, suffocating. Finally, I make the daily gesture, the exact copy of the one which the owner made to me: I dip a sugar cube in the last of my cognac and stretch a hand forward to Dulita. Dulita, head bent over an exercise book notices my gesture and takes the sugar with her teeth. This is the signal for going to sleep. I drain the cognac with one very slow gulp from my glass. Behind Dulita’s head, through the half-open door in her room, in the mirror, the black cypresses of the fountain must sway.
It is the solemn afternoon of the insipid Day of the Dead. I prepare myself to watch the scene of Dulita’s initiation.
I put the shoes Dulita wears every day on the dining-room table. I take my penis out of my pants and wrap it in dirty linen. Eyes fixed on the fountain and its surroundings reflected in the mirror, I see, advancing between the two women, Dulita clad in white, with a very tight short skirt, new espadrilles. Gallo is dressed in a very bright and luminous sweater and Mathilde in black. I run to the window in Dulita’s bedroom because I want to see every detail of the trip to the fountain, through the burnt bushes. They advance very slowly and with difficulty, to avoid the large burnt branches, but Gallo and Mathilde push Dulita into the dirty places, as if for fun. With each step, the sometimes spiky and stiff bushes cling to Dulita’s legs and buttocks, leaving her with long black streaks. They stop from time to time to see where they can pass through.
Gallo spanks Dulita, feigning to dust off some spots, but with so much violence and savagery that she has to pretend that she is playing.
Dulita tries to escape Gallo, after she hurls her against a wall covered with burnt ivy. Dulita now runs straight ahead recklessly, through the bushes that scratch her till she bleeds. She rushes towards the fountain, gets there. She slips on the frothy mud which covers the paving and falls. She gets up, dirty all over, spattered everywhere.
She smiles to excuse herself, wipes herself with a handkerchief, fixes her hair, pulls up her stockings, all the while holding her skirt with her teeth and showing off her dirty thighs.
Gallo and Mathilde arrive later, Gallo has become gentle again and kisses Dulita on the forehead. Mathilde cuts slices of bread and keeps the heel of the loaf for Dulita who sits down between the two women. With each passing moment, the group has for me more and more transcendence and solemnity.
Dulita combs her hair now with a very red celluloid comb which, in the light of the setting sun, shines so bright as to be blinding. The shadow of the château advances towards the fountain, leaving the whole front row of burnt bushes that have just covered the three figures in shadow.
And Dulita is eating (a mouthful of chocolate, a mouthful of bread crust) very slowly. She swings her right foot which is close to Gallo.[1]
I think that the sun at this moment illuminates the tip of the finger of the statue in the bedroom on the first floor, and the corn, on the ground, for a moment, becomes the color of fire. I see a dazzling image, me sodomizing Dulita, who lies on the corn in the said room. This vision motivates a new element in my central reverie, to which I return via the image of Dulita getting up to dust the white bits of bread from her skirts and then leaning over to drink some water.
From that moment, the gestures of Dulita who cleans the aluminum goblet attached to the chain and three times throws water across the exact and relative position of Gallo and Mathilde, the illumination, the buttocks showing through Dulita’s transparent clothing, as she bends forward, kneels, etc., all this, I say, acquires a lucidity and an exacerbated visual concretion, quasi-hallucinatory. The time it takes for the three consecutive gestures of emptying the glass[2] creates the illusion of a very clear and exact “déjà-vu” which coincides with a strong erection. The moment in which Dulita cleans the glass, before drinking, is by far the most moving. It is also the one which has the greatest visual power of the entire reverie up to the end.
Then very indistinctly, I see Dulita, whom I couldn’t see drinking, wipe her mouth with her hand. Gallo very gently makes Dulita sit down again between her and Mathilde. I foresee the beginning of the initiation. The shadow of the castle extends as far as Dulita’s knees.[3] Terribly disturbed, I
wait for Gallo’s signal which will announce the beginning for me. Gallo puts the album of pornographic photos on her knees. Mathilde caresses Dulita’s head and Dulita leans her head over the album, tries to open it, but Gallo restrains her hand, and, in so doing, looks at her face and puts a finger in front of her mouth, as a sign of silence and respect.
Then Gallo raises her head and in her face I see a great surviving beauty. I am very moved when Gallo slowly begins opening the album. I can’t take any more and I go in, towards the dining-room table, eyes closed, filled with this last image.
Seated on the chair that I occupy every evening at suppertime, I continue to contemplate the fountain scene reflected in the mirror, all the while masturbating suavely with the linen which envelops my penis. I now see the group from the fountain, smaller, further away. Their faces and their expressions are very gently abstracted, which gives an almost complete leeway to my fantasy.
I observe nothing particular in the group. Dulita doesn’t show a single sign of reacting. Her head is held very low and motionless, her face, a mixture of shame and attention. From time to time, Gallo turns the page and murmurs something very close to the tilted face hidden by Dulita’s hair. Very indistinctly, I see the group descend by way of the courtyard, because it gets dark very quickly after the sun goes down. I run and place an ear of corn on Dulita’s chair which she will have to sit on for the three following days without noticing it being there. On the third evening, the eve of the “manifest” act of the reverie, everything has just been removed from the table.
Three coffees are brought out, the cognac. The same deep silence as on every evening. I am overtaken by a great emotion which would surely prevent me from speaking.
Dulita shifts imperceptibly on the ear of corn. I give the details for the following day, short, necessary, totally precise. Finally, as happens every night, I stretch out my hand with the sugar dipped in cognac. Dulita momentarily stays still then takes it by her teeth. I see her gaze through tears, while my meatus gives birth to a large drop.
The following day is a Sunday. We must very quickly take advantage, around four o’clock, of the fact that everyone goes to the village. I await a sign from Mathilde in the prairie and rush, covered only by my burnoose, first into the room where the ear of corn is lying then to the first floor. There I find Dulita, Gallo and Mathilde, entirely naked. For a moment Dulita masturbates me very awkwardly, this excites me a lot. The three women cross the courtyard and go inside the stable. In the meantime, I run to the cypress fountain, sit down on the wet stone bench and with all my strength erect my penis with my two hands, then head for the stable where Dulita and the two women are lying naked, in the midst of the excrement and the rotten straw. I take off my burnoose and throw myself on Dulita, but Mathilde and Gallo have suddenly disappeared and Dulita has turned into the woman I love, concluding the reverie with the same images of the memory of the dream.
Then the reverie comes to an end, because I have just realized that for some time I have been analyzing in an objective fashion the reverie under whose influence I have just been and that I am directly annotating with the most scrupulous regard.
Notes
[1] Right then I experience an erection and masturbate by banging my penis against my stomach. I uncover my penis, the ball of bread bounces to the ground and rolls a long way. This distracts me for a moment because I hesitate about going to look for it.
I can no longer recall where I was in my reverie. Which plunges me into a deep feeling of anguish which disappears the moment I recover the image of Dulita swinging her fool. I carry on with the reverie while keeping my hands motionless behind my buttocks, a rather uncomfortable position, and one which gives me a cramp in my arms. I stay that way without moving, however, and even for ten minutes after the reverie ends.
[2] I tried some time after this to masturbate with the representation of this image, but, approaching ejaculation, the image transformed into that of the woman I love, squatting next to a rabbit-cage.
[3] At this very moment I uncover my penis, remove the ball of bread I had been keeping under my prepuce for so long and put it between my nose and my upper lip, so I can smell it, It is very warm and has a slight seminal odour. I put it back again from where I had taken it, with the hope that the longer I keep it there, the stronger it will smell.
HOW TO BECOME EROTIC WHILST REMAINING CHASTE
At twenty I was a being of desires, savoring pleasures, all pleasures of the senses and the mind, with refined, exquisite voluptuousness, with an Olympian fulfillment that obeyed a long-nurtured code of hyperlucid discipline.
My eye, my intelligence, and my prick were my most delectable media of enjoyment, and the almost infinite variety of combinations among them pleasured me with delights ranging from scatology to exhibitionism, from daydreaming to masturbation (one not excluding the other); the confirmation by action being always the least interesting part, except where voyeurism was concerned, and even then it would happen that the failure, refusal, or accident, interfering with consummation, might give me greater satisfaction than success itself. The point indeed was to remain chaste while becoming erotic. The formula demands a very high degree of self-control. In a word, the mastery of the paranoiac-critical attitude. But the facts speak for themselves.
My love at the age of seven for beautiful Ursulita Matas, who, according to Eugenio d’Ors’ legend, inspired his La Bien Plantada, was not due only to the quality of her beauty, but the orgasmic oral delights I got from Napoleon. The plump flanks of the emperor with the maté inside and the big silver sucking-cup that was passed around allowed me to suck in at the same time a honeyed liquid sweeter than my mother’s blood, a bit of Ursulita’s spittle, and the imperial strength of Napoleon that came to me from his guts through the little keg. For a few moments I was the lover connected by umbilical cord to the bellies of his mother and his beloved, and in my ecstasy this libation made me the all-powerful master of the world. My mouth was the source of a warm but troubling well-being.
I turned simultaneously into the embryo-little boy and the jealous lover, who always arranged to be next to beautiful Ursulita so as to capture the most of his beloved’s mouth and the reflections in her fascinating hair.
My desire to return to the nourishment, the warmth, the protection of the preparturient placenta was also combined with an intense taste for the strong odors of the human body: blood, sweat, urine. I liked to hide behind the kitchen doors so as to breathe in the suggestive smells of the maids in heat, whose broad beams went about their business at my eye level. The preparation of meals also provided me with a source of deep satisfaction, what with the fragrances of kidneys, pots and pans, spices, acids, and deep fries floating out like so many promises, with flies dancing over all. I drooled over eyefuls of creamy froths, beaten egg-whites, oozing, soft, and viscous organic matters. The fact that I was forbidden to go into the kitchen only added to the quality of my savoring.
Somewhat as if I had raised the huge skirts of one of the servant girls that fascinated me, and violated the secrets kept from me under them.
I continued wetting my bed for a long time, not just out of contrariness, but to have the pleasure of feeling my warm urine running down my legs and wallowing in its odor. Adults too quickly forget the intense satisfaction there is in rolling around in one’s own filth and becoming intoxicated with one’s self. Imperative taboos turn us away and condition us against the primal verities of skin and senses. I have been able to keep intact my gifts of organic participation.
One of my memories from this period goes back to about my fifth year. I am out walking with three very beautiful, elegant, and refined young women. Three images of grace. They are speaking in low voices and try to keep a distance from me, but I have my eye on them. One of them stops, as the other two watch. With her two hands, she slightly raises her long skirt. And suddenly a stream of urine comes spurting between her two white shoes, breaks the dust of the path like a little crater, and soon runs of
f around the two feet, spattered and tainted with a long wet spot that turns gray on the Spanish white. Then two other little rivulets are started in silence. Wild-eyed, I look at the three streams that soil the soil, splattering shoes and petticoats, and each splash hits me like a prickling of shame. I am fascinated by the simmering foamy yellowness that makes such cracklets in the ground. One of the young women sees me – the petrified witness – and all three laugh at once, relieved, and provocative. I stand motionless, haggard-eyed... The blood rushes from my head, and my eyes rise slowly toward the veil of one of the women, whose mocking eyelids crinkle.
I let the three ladies walk ahead of me, and follow them, sensually aroused with a voluptuous feeling of having violated their secret. I have picked up a firefly and my closed fist is full of sweat. A drop falls to the ground and cuts like acid through the thin crust of the path. I feel gooseflesh popping up on my arms.
At that time, first out of awkwardness, but later out of pleasure, I liked to splotch my undershirts with cafe au lait that made spots all the way down to my belly. One of my games was biting into the fruits in the Pichots’ garden and letting the juice run down my chin, while I gargled it in my mouth. I bit a different type of fruit each time, in order to vary the sensations, spoil as many fruits as possible, and especially not fill myself up.
Reverie Page 2