by Emma Becker
‘I don’t want to blush with embarrassment when I tell people I’m Madame S, and I don’t want Charles asking me one day who all these women are when he answers the phone. And when you lie to me and an unknown woman hangs up on me when she learns you’re married, I’m ashamed of you and of myself. I’m ashamed of you and it hurts because I love you. So don’t do this to me. If you love me, if you have ever loved me, tell me the truth. Tell me you’re fucking another girl and she’s the one who called you. Or I’ll go mad.’
Monsieur’s grey eyes stare back at her. He is horribly aware of the sheer chaos a few wrong words would trigger. The pain he would inflict on Estelle, whom he loves so much. Without looking away from her, he says: ‘There’s this girl, at the hospital, a patient, who came to see me back in March with a bad deviation of her septum. I had to operate and she came back on several occasions for check-ups. Most of the time I looked after her. We got on fine and I gave her our home number in case of unexpected pain. She fell in love with me, or so she told me the last time she visited me. I immediately took her off my list of patients and referred her to someone else.’
Estelle listens to her husband; she will never know if his story is true or a fabrication. The tears on her face dry, turning her cheeks into a mask. Charles stops crying and the random sounds from his play-pen soften.
‘I hadn’t told you about it because it wasn’t worth it. She’s obsessed. Now she has our phone number, there’s not much I can do, apart from change it. I’ll call her tomorrow, get rid of her. Darling . . .’
He touches her cheek. As if stung by a wasp, Estelle jumps back.
‘Did you fuck her?’
‘No,’ Monsieur answers, not batting an eyelid.
She feels almost ashamed as the weight lifts from her chest. ‘Why should I believe you?’ she asks.
‘You must believe me. I have no proof, but you must believe me. Good God, the woman’s over fifty!’
And Estelle vaguely remembers the grainy, frayed voice, a smoker’s or an older woman’s. But how can she untangle the false from the true? How can she know he hadn’t planned it, an experienced womanizer, familiar with amorous intrigue? Monsieur loves women. And, for a man like him, wouldn’t a fifty-year-old prove a delicious trophy? As he leans towards her to take her in his arms, Estelle leaps up.
‘Leave me alone. If you touch me now, I think I’ll scream.’
‘Believe me, please,’ he says, his hands seeking her.
‘Leave me alone!’
‘I can’t allow that woman to harm us. I’ll get the cops on to her!’ Monsieur shouts, with an impulsiveness she has seldom seen in him.
‘Why? It’s your fault. You gave her our phone number. No judge, no cop can do anything about it,’ Estelle says calmly.
She goes to fetch Charles, holds him tight, heavy with love as she smells her husband’s scent on the small downy head.
‘I’m going to put him to bed,’ she says, her voice white and cold. ‘If you’re hungry, there’s some of yesterday’s pasta in the fridge. You can warm it up.’
And, baby in her arms, she turns round, no longer stuck to the same spot, cooing into the tiny uncomprehending ears, trying not to hear Monsieur calling Estelle Estelle Estelle brokenly. She walks into their bedroom as if facing the gallows.
A few hours later, in the dark, Monsieur finds her lying on the still made-up bed, her eyes dry and closed. In his cot, their child breathes softly, like a satisfied little bear. Before she can say or do anything, his long body spoons against hers, overlaps, holds her tight, taking away any thought of resistance. She is overwhelmed by unexpected tenderness, and tears spring to her eyes.
‘I love you so much,’ Monsieur sobs, into the hollow of her neck. ‘Believe me, darling, I love you so much. I could never hurt you.’
His words hurt Estelle so much more than the image of him thrusting between the legs of another woman. She is aware that he has unknowingly confessed everything, and she turns towards him (dear God, this is what pain is about) and holds him tight against her. ‘Don’t give our number to patients again. I thought I was going mad.’
‘I swear I won’t,’ he answers.
The ghost of the other woman floats across their bedroom, and Monsieur whispers: ‘Tell me how I can make you happy. I don’t want to see you sad because of me.’
She closes her eyes tight, wraps her hard thighs around his back as he moves above her, dries her eyelashes against the soft material of his suit through which his scent lingers. ‘I want to make love.’
It’s the only solution the instinct for survival dares suggest, that she should open herself to this man, own him, body and soul. And Monsieur, who is quite incapable of watching or touching his young wife without wanting her badly, gets rock hard in her embrace. Maybe he wasn’t yet the relentless explorer I know him to be, always inventing new perversions, reaching for more extreme limits; tonight, at any rate, all he wants is to give her pleasure. Between his fingers he feels the hard nipples, and reckons they’re the only part of Estelle’s body to retain some hint of anger. The rest of her is compliant, willing. The extra curves gained during her pregnancy are still beautifully present. Estelle is on offer, has lowered all her defences. He’s never looked at her as a mother: for him she will always be the young girl who awoke his desire in the South of France. He still gets as hard for her as he did on their first nights together. Sometimes all it takes is for her to move slightly in her sleep and he wants her with a vengeance. This woman is magical. This love is magical.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he says to her, inhaling her smell.
And Estelle groans, ‘I want you inside me, darling.’
Monsieur is so hard he fears he might hurt her. He penetrates her slowly, amazed as ever at how tight she always feels. With other women, frantic arousal results in a form of passive openness, while Estelle contracts and convulses repeatedly. Monsieur takes comfort in their togetherness against all the odds. She bites his arm to stop herself howling and waking the baby, and her cunt sucks his cock like a leech. Estelle kicks beneath him. She whimpers, ‘Fuck me,’ and he has to hold her still with his hand firmly against her chest, touched to tears by his deep need of her, but he is already facing the abyss and Estelle is impaling herself on his cock, fucking herself, drawing his thrusts towards the cushioned pit of her stomach. As she does so, she shamelessly touches her clit, her fingers racing against the hard nub, making Monsieur feel even crazier (she is the one who taught him how women caress themselves and initiated his fascination with it; she never asked for his approval, just did it of her own accord). What man would be able to hold back more than a few seconds, trapped within her small warm box, the only landscape in his sights the hypnotic panorama of a woman’s fingers teasing a tiny pink excrescence of flesh? Of course, he’s studied anatomy and knows all the technical words for this area of the body, but as a man he remains fascinated by the clitoris. Estelle, on the other hand, is just wanking, a word few medical tomes list.
‘Let me fuck you,’ Monsieur then says, launching himself towards her depths, holding her thighs apart like the pages of an art book.
While Charles is lost in infant dreams, Estelle and Monsieur almost come at the same time, the surgeon’s large, clever hands lost in his wife’s mane, just their clenched toes emerging from the cocoon of the bed. Monsieur’s powerful body is heavy on hers. As long as Estelle’s nails are digging into his arse, he will not retreat from her. He will never retreat even though he has already filled her to the brim, even though her cries are muted now, dying on the waves of satisfaction.
‘I love you,’ Monsieur says.
‘I love you,’ she answers.
As Estelle slips into sleep, she once again remembers the love and fear she had witnessed earlier in her husband’s eyes. These are things only she can trigger.
It’s all so pathetic and beautiful, a scene involving Estelle and Monsieur.
Book II
‘He took Marie by the hand and they dan
ced an obscene java. Marie gave herself to the dance with all her soul, nauseated, head held back.’
Georges Bataille, The Dead Man
Today I have no idea where Monsieur is. It’s three months since I’ve had any news from him, a few weeks since I ceased the drip-drip of our communications. Where are you? Sitting at the wheel of a car, leaning over that thick folder titled with a word that belongs to all men but only means you? Locked inside your office in an attempt to escape the unceasing stream of patients, leafing through the pages of our story? Do you hide in the toilets, late at night, away from Estelle and the children, as soon as their backs are turned? Or are you holding Monsieur casually, your fingers dripping with sun cream? Are my corners already turned down, pages covered with the sand your kids have thrown as they played with their beach ball? Have I somehow managed to infiltrate your family holiday?
Are you afraid? How much hate is there among all the possibly contradictory emotions I evoke (posthumously?) inside you?
Do you remember everything?
Even that particular day?
It was the first morning in June when the heat made itself felt. I was almost naked when I opened the front door of our house in Nogent to you and you fumbled with me, no preliminaries, on the kitchen table, among the sprinkling of breadcrumbs from breakfast. I had to beg you to come to my room in the basement. I ran down the stairs, as your hands searched for me.
‘Switch the light on,’ you commanded, noticing the skirts I had hung in front of the window in lieu of curtains. ‘I want to see all of you.’
We undressed in silence, at each end of the bed, panting loudly. I pretended I hadn’t understood and, naked, jumped onto the bed. Hesitation in your eyes: you were torn between wanting to punish my insolence and the attraction of my arse. Then, in one bound, you took me in your arms, wrapping yourself around me. My face was in your neck and I could smell the musky sweat rising from the palms of your hands as they raced across my back. You pushed me down on my stomach, your hand hard against the back of my neck. I was still damp from the shower but even so I was uneasy with your perverse insistence on licking my arsehole before you moved on to my pussy. What pleasure did it give you?
Sensing my unease, or wanting to make it worse, you brusquely turned me over, your face approaching my gaping thighs, your hot breath already so much more powerful than a caress, and whispered: ‘What is it you want, my love? Do you want me to eat your pussy or should I fuck you straight away?’
I cried: ‘Take me!’
And you methodically penetrated me, behind, even though I was laid out on my back, your eyes fixed on my cunt, which gaped slightly with every thrust. I was moaning, swinging between pleasure and pain. I couldn’t rid myself of a certain embarrassment, even as you loomed above me and filled my ears with a stream of seductive filth. I’m about to write it all down, but my ears still go red at the thought.
‘Darling, you should always look into the eyes of men who are fucking you in the arse. Look at me now.’
I raised my eyes but I couldn’t keep them on you: raw lust was written on your face. Then came the monologue. I shudder with wetness every time I think of it. You tightened your grip on my wrists and whispered: ‘Touch yourself. You have the right to do so. I understand, you know. With my cock deep inside your arse, it’s quite normal you should want to wank.’
Truly, you were so convincing and my heavy hand sketched a caress, banishing my shame, as I wallowed in the obscenity of your words. Surprised by my boldness, I somehow managed to slip my fingers inside and felt the hardness of your cock sheathed inside my arse. A popular clip on YouPorn.com. We moved on quickly to a higher level.
It occurred to you to turn me around and position me on all fours, which is when I had a bad feeling: something was wrong. This wasn’t the way I wanted things to be going. How could I explain it to you? (Just the thought of your smile somewhere in France sets my teeth on edge with feelings of shame and arousal.) It was like a smell. Maybe not a real smell. Maybe the seeds of doubt.
I was realizing that nothing good could come of our coupling, however long it lasted. I could already imagine the mortification, the scene endlessly repeating in my head months later, and the sight of you, unable to look at me as you did before. I wanted to get you out of there and, in some way, keep you in total ignorance of a possible diplomatic incident. Suck you, maybe. Anything to avoid you seeing me doing it.
Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Unaware of the drama hatching with every passing second, you came somewhat quickly, warning me with that dark voice of yours that I was about to be ‘filled to the brim with cum’. An assortment of witty responses came to my mind, but I kept praying silently.
It was after that that the doubt solidified. You rapidly withdrew from me, leaving me gaping, a vision I’d rather you hadn’t seen. I spent almost fifteen minutes just staring at your cock, while you held me against you, knowing it was often the best position to get me to whisper to you the endearments I normally reserved for Andrea. But time, our time together, faded away and you had to have your shower.
‘Why?’ I asked, a touch hastily.
It was thirty-five degrees outside, and well over a hundred inside my arse. We were dripping with sweat and I had worn Shalimar, in a covert attempt to help your wife catch you out. But I needed you to say it. You smiled. ‘I’m going to be at the clinic all day, as if you didn’t know.’
So I followed you to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, trying to dazzle you with my wit. Below my fringe, the machinery of surveillance and analysis women use on awkward occasions moved into a higher gear. It was just a total misunderstanding.
Back in the room, where our clothes were scattered across the floor, you gave me a lengthy look, smiling. ‘I like you so much . . .’
And my anguish ended. If you liked me so much, you didn’t know that I’d tried to fuck you up.
You kissed me one last time on the threshold. I watched you walk away and blow me a kiss as you sat behind the steering-wheel of your black car, the smile of a satisfied woman spreading across my lips. The scar of your nails dissected the skin of my thighs. I felt good. I ran for a pee, a cigarette hanging from my lips. And though I know you have read all of de Sade, the despicable scenes from Apollinaire’s Eleven Thousand Rods and Mandiargues until you’ve memorized them by heart, and I am only twenty years old, I must warn you now: this is where the story becomes excruciating.
I was about to wipe myself clean when I realized I’d been right to worry. My head began to spin. I threw my fag into the toilet, ran with my knickers around my ankles to my room, already well aware, like in a horror movie, of what was waiting for me in the still warm bed.
‘Two huge smears of shit,’ I whispered to Babette over the phone, shuddering on the brink of manic (solitary) laughter.
Two huge smears of shit, which, as she noted an hour later, were the precise shape of fingers wiped across the sheet.
‘I’ve come to the almost suicidal conclusion he must have touched his cock by mistake, seeing I must have covered it with . . .’
‘Not at all!’ Babette intervened, gazing at it. ‘When he had you on all fours, he must have pulled out and held it in his hand before he entered you again. He needed to support himself against something for a second and wiped his fingers on the sheet. Mind you, he could have stuck his hand on your bum cheeks. It could have been so much worse.’
‘Which might mean he didn’t realize it was all over his cock, and then his hand. I would have noticed if I’d been him. Definitely. Look at it. Those smears tell the whole story. He must have noticed.’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘I called him just before you arrived. Answer machine. Anyway, I’m not sure how I could raise the subject.’
‘Just ask him if anything unusual happened this morning. He’ll understand.’
‘Of course he will. And he’ll just say “Yes, there was lots of shit.”’
‘At least you’ll know.
’
‘But what do I say after that? What do we talk about?’
‘He’ll find something.’
‘Sure he will. With his usual laughter, cunningly asking me why I’m so embarrassed, these things happen when sluts get themselves fucked in the arse, eh, Ellie? Anyway, I enjoyed it, didn’t I? And he’ll probably say it was all the more exciting.’
‘No one could be that filthy.’
‘The way that guy thinks, it was no accident. There’s no place for accidents in Monsieur’s sexual universe. Everything that happens is meant to happen because it’s natural. I expect he believes I allowed myself to be fucked up the arse in full knowledge of the consequences, that it doesn’t bother me. That I wanted it so bad I didn’t pull back. But I’m telling you, Babette, there’s no reason this should have happened to me.’
I couldn’t bring myself to pull the cover over the sheet, unable to abandon the spectacle, even though the horror was fading. Babette sat on the bed, leaning over the smears to examine them forensically, looking for fingerprints or whatever. I slid down to the floor, my back against the wall.
‘Why did this have to happen to me today and with that particular guy? I’d spent hours in the bathroom stuffing myself with litres of water – I should have been as clean as a newly minted coin. That slut Ines lets them all fuck her arse when she’s bloated and nothing ever happens to her.’
‘I know, but if Monsieur, from the depths of his dark soul, wasn’t a bit drawn to shit, he wouldn’t take the risk, would he? He wouldn’t fuck your arse.’
‘I don’t think there’s a connection. Of course guys know women have to shit, but they surely don’t want it confirmed so obviously.’
‘He’s not your average man, Ellie.’
‘I know.’ I sighed.
I wasn’t reassured.
It was still too early for me to begin to understand how you thought of women, how you love them. Your relentless hunger was not assuaged when sheer filth mysteriously encountered the sublime at some crossroads. Or when sodomy was the only way to unveil the link between a woman’s purity and her carnal instinct. The point at which a woman’s sanctity becomes twisted and corrupt, transforming her into the holy slut who invariably gives them a hard-on. Months later, I sometimes think of the two smears of shit that might have ended our story. If they caused you to stop calling me and sending me the intoxicating messages that set our days on fire. How could I know? You disappeared from the surface of the earth. And I was caught between two monstrous explosions: your unexplained absence and the incident that might have caused it. They must be connected. The thought of changing the sheets was grotesque, like getting rid of the evidence, and I slept in Alice’s bed, my mind churning with unanswerable questions. The ridiculous idea that I disgusted you now was eating me alive. Everything I knew of men, everything I had ever read, all my recently constructed theories resisted this insidious thought, because, let’s be clear about this, there was no reason for you to leave. Just the day before we’d been communicating like two lovers the whole world could not have pulled apart – or, at least, not so abruptly.