The Night of Maligâth
The body is a great intellectual system,
it is a complex structure with but one meaning,
it is a war, and it is peace,
it is the flock, and it is the shepherd.
—Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spake Zarathustra
The long Ionian tunic, finely pleated, Emmanuelle is wearing is a very pale jade-green, so light that it looks almost white. One of her shoulders is bare: on the other, a golden brooch in the shape of an owl holds the material together. Under her breasts, a chain with large, flat links holds up the tunic, unadorned by any embroidery or decoration: but between the breasts, holding down the material, there is a heavy pendant of old gold, with a square hole in the middle, engraved with animal designs. It looks like a coin of some long since vanished realm. A little below the elbow a wide “slave” bracelet, studded with emeralds, encircles her right arm.
“Well, I’m going to my own holocaust—I thought Iphigenia’s getup would be most appropriate.”
“You look stunning,” Mario says. “But, a little too proper. . . .”
Without a word, Emmanuelle moves in front of a low floor lamp: weak as its light is, it is sufficient to make her legs show as clearly as if the tunic were glass. Mario still looks dissatisfied. Emmanuelle smiles, raises one knee: the robe opens of its own accord, gaping wide from belt to ground. Thus, on the dance floor, her legs will flash forth in all their naked beauty, and anyone can feel her up with the greatest of ease! The amber-skinned flesh of her belly, and farther down, that most luscious aperture of her body, are accessible to one and all, any given moment.
“And look!”
Her black pubic triangle is glorious with a multitude of tiny pearls. It has taken dear patient Ea four hours to attach them, one by one, to the rebellious wool.
“Well, that’s the finest jewelry setting I’ve ever seen,” says Mario, with approval.
“Yes? And what do you think of the top half?”
Emmanuelle lifts both arms high. From armpit to hip, the upper part of her dress is wide open. Looking at Emmanuelle from one side, whenever she raises an arm or bends forward, Mario realizes that one will see the full profile of her bare breasts. It should be easy for dance partners to please their palms by slipping their hands through these lateral vents.
Mario is amazed that Emmanuelle’s clothes closet provides her with such a phenomenal outfit. Or is it a new acquisition, made during the last couple of days? The dressmaker must have had a very exciting time. . . . But his fair pupil chides him: surely he ought to know enough about female wiles to realize that this chiffon is normally worn over some opaque “foundation”? Thus, all Emmanuelle needed to do, was to leave the other half in her closet. . . . “You should burn it!” growls Mario. “All garments are an outrage, if they aren’t designed to extol the glory of nudity.”
“You’ll have to go through my wardrobe one day. I’ll let you burn every item that displeases you.”
“I’ll be glad to do that,” Mario promises, looking somber.
Maligâth is a conglomeration of marble edifices, separated by gardens with fountains and archways, lit up by parchment-covered lanterns and the moon, a cool, magical radiance. The grounds are terraced, and one ascends stairways bordered with hibiscus hedges and white columns, and, beyond them, wide, greenhouse-dotted lawns, the expanse of which makes the sounds of the city quite remote. The falling of the fountains’ water jets, faraway notes of a slow dance, and the almost imperceptible counterpoint of human voices—these fill the ear, in the grounds of Maligâth.
A strong perfume, emanating from big, fleshy-looking flowers—giant gardenias planted in great Chinese vases—envelops the newcomers, guided by a mere garland of rush lights burning with a purple flame to the corridors and halls, where they seem to find themselves the first arrivals.
There is no host there to receive them. Or is the reception room somewhere else, have Mario and Emmanuelle taken a wrong turn, back there in the realm of water and shadow? Or are they, perhaps, really early?
“Who has been invited?” Emmanuelle says, in a half-whisper.
“All that Bangkok has to offer in the way of beauty and intelligence,” says Mario. “Only the elect—those truly intelligent, truly beautiful.”
“Are you sure we are that?”
Mario grins.
I wonder what the master of this realm is like? Emmanuelle asks herself. He must be powerful, and certainly demanding. Perhaps even perverse, some kind of maniac? Isn’t it sheer madness to take such risks, in such a strange place? Does she really know what to expect? Perhaps the Prince and his henchmen will never let her go back to Jean?
Well, there is still time to turn around. No one has seen her, the great park is empty, there are no guards to be seen. But there’s Mario. . . . What would he think—and what wouldn’t he have to say!—about her timidity?
So she keeps on following him, as in a nightmare. She feels certain that she is doing the wrong thing: she ought to have the courage to run away. . . .
Now she sees windows, lit with a dim, rosy light. And were those peals of laughter she just thought she heard, or were they screams? All doors are closed, there is no one outside at all, for instance, on this terrace that they are crossing this very moment—which would seem such an attractive spot: the night is just a trifle humid.
“Mario,” she murmurs, but so quietly that he (no doubt) does not hear.
They enter a small room. Three men and a woman are sitting on a couch, side by side. Emmanuelle is relieved not to encounter the Laocoon-like group of bodies engaged in plural activities that she has half expected to see, right there in the entrance hall. The woman is quite young. Her jet-black eyes are extraordinarily long and slanted toward her temples, in a serene face. Her hair is done up in a casque, with a thick fringe over the forhead, evocative of ancient Egypt. A black fur coat accentuates her petiteness. There is not the slightest hint of immodesty about her appearance, and Emmanuelle becomes painfully aware of her own blatancy. Maybe it has all been a big practical joke of Mario’s? Mario says something, in Siamese. The young girl replies, without so much as a smile: it seems she has given him the information he requires, for he propels Emmanuelle out of the room with utmost determination.
“Where are we going?” she says plaintively. “Who was that? Isn’t she a bit young to be here?”
“The soirée is in her honor. She’s the Prince’s only daughter. It’s her fifteenth birthday.”
Before she has time to consider this interesting fact, they enter a much larger hall. It is dimly lit, and there are a few couples dancing. They don’t even turn their heads to look at the newcomers. A maid comes up, gives them their drinks. A fruity-tasting concoction, smooth and very strong.
“I suppose this is some kind of love-philter?” Emmanuelle jokes, to reassure herself.
(The Siamese girl is naked but for a coarse linen loincloth, hugging her hips, leaving her navel and the tops of her thighs bare; Emmanuelle lets her eyes roam approvingly over the antelope-like legs, the apple-shaped breasts.)
“I’m sure it is,” Mario answers. “But then, practically everything one eats and drinks, in these parts, is some kind of aphrodisiac.”
It was really dark. . . . God, I hope he doesn’t leave me alone here! Emmanuelle sighed. At that moment, a man walked up to them: he seemed to know Mario, and Mario introduced him to her. She forgot his name instantly. He bowed, impersonally, courteously, and asked her to dance with him. Reluctantly, Emmanuelle followed him to the floor, holding the folds of her dress together, one hand on thigh.
He was tall, had to bend down a little, to keep his face level with Emmanuelle’s. He wanted to know how old she was, where she had passed her childhood; he wanted her to tell him about her tastes, her preferences. Did she like to read? Did she enjoy going to the theater? Did she have any favorite authors? At first, her replies were none too friendly. She felt rather put upon, by all those questions. But then she started enjoying the way her partner was leading her in the dance. She didn’t want to chat about literature, she wanted to give in to the rhythm. The mere act of dancing was reassuring, a link back to the known world. She felt a little calmer already, held by those steady arms.
Soon she realized that she, herself, was pressing her body against his, provoking him. It wasn’t that she felt particularly attracted to him: she simply responded to a conditioned reflex—dancing, her partner’s erection, and even his coming had always appeared to her as interconnected and inseparable events. Her Parisian admirers (who hadn’t had the balls to take her to their beds, whenever the absence of her husband would have made this possible) had, however, been marvelously eager to engage in such pastimes. It wasn’t only that she dedicated herself to them with ideal docility, her body reacted almost in spite of herself, as soon as it found itself in the required circumstance. It did not have to be coaxed or convinced by the partner’s desire or even by her own consciousness: it knew, automatically, what to do in order to bring the dance to its proper conclusion, which was to make them come.
Until now, Emmanuelle had always found this kind of libertinage quite satisfying in all respects. It allowed her to appear as a woman of the world without obliging her to commit formal adultery. Her own senses were sufficiently keen to permit her to find in such vertical activity a pleasure equal to that accorded to the partner; it was obviously tainted with furtiveness, factitiousness, but that very taint made it that much more spicy. . . .
That evening, resuming familiar gestures, she rubbed up against the guest of Maligâth, felt his cock harden and press up against her belly. She felt much more at ease doing it than she thought she would have felt confronting what she imagined to be the mysterious caprices of an Oriental sovereign, and she wasn’t far from regarding her proximity to this unknown companion as some kind of refuge and defense.
He, on his part, seemed to enjoy the talents of his partner. He let her take him right up to the point of spasm, but withdrew just as she was about to give the finishing touch. It annoyed her. She couldn’t understand how a man could reject a chance like that, even if his intention was to save his spunk for some better occasion. Why should he be so mean?
Appearing absolutely certain of the rightness of his action, the recalcitrant fellow held up Emmanuelle’s ring-finger, adorned with a fine cluster of diamonds, and asked her if she was married.
“Of course I am,” she answered sullenly, as if he had cast some aspersion on her femininity.
Oh, yes? Very good. And had she had any lovers?
“I’ve only been married for a year!”
But seriously, she asked herself, did she have any lovers? Her first thought was, well yes, at least one: Mario. But then the notion seemed quite amusing to her: did such a thing exist, a lover who has never made love to you? But if it was making love that conferred this title upon a man, then her true lovers were those strangers in the plane, the sam-lo. Did the young boy in the votive temple count as well? Then why not those young men she had jerked off while dancing with them? If ejaculation is the event that turns a man into your lover, then there really wasn’t any reason not to include all the men who had engaged in quiet masturbation while contemplating her!
Visualizing them at it, she had to laugh out loud, all her worries gone:
“Tell me, dear sir, what exactly is a ‘lover’?”
He smiled politely, thinking she just wished to be cute, and not crediting her with too much wit. But then Emmanuelle went on to explain her train of thought, not omitting any of the intimate details, quite amazed at her own sudden ability to confide, so meticulously and with such a supreme absence of embarrassment, to someone who really was a total stranger, secrets she had not revealed before—not to Jean, nor to Marie-Anne (and that was even more surprising), nor even to Mario.
Now her partner seemed genuinely interested. He started pressing her for further details, and she related them with great frankness. And he himself replied most obligingly to the questions she asked him, despite their quite intentional scabrousness.
“I wonder if you aren’t attaching excessive importance to a mere question of vocabulary,” he remarked, finally (they had been talking and dancing quite a while now). “Is it so important to know whether to call a man a lover or not, depending on whether he has made love to you in this particular fashion or that? If you ask me, I think that that little Siamese fellow was your lover, all right, and so were the passengers on the plane, and the rickshaw-runner, too.” (Was it a mere omission, or was he being discreet? he did not mention Mario at all.) “But, well, whom would you call your lovers?”
“I guess you’re right,” Emmanuelle said, looking thoughtful. “And my dance partners in Paris?”
“That, I think, is a little different. The pleasure you provided them was, in a way, a rather twisted form of refusal! It may well be that it is some such intention that counts. When you were lubricating them, weren’t you thinking something along those lines—that you were really being faithful to your husband? Whereas that was not the case, I assume, while you were caressing that young Siamese?’
“But then I don’t feel I’m being an adulteress when I’m making love to girls, either: how do you explain that difference?”
He didn’t care to explain. He had obviously reached the point at which theory ceased to be interesting: instead of providing Emmanuelle with brilliantly reasoned clarifications, he just squeezed her, so vehemently that she, too, was soon distracted from her ratiocinations. She kissed him, returned his embrace, and thought of nothing but fucking. She stretched out her naked leg, and he squeezed it between his own. He started groping for her breasts, for her cunt. They were hardly dancing any more, but sometimes jostling other couples. Were these all engaged in similar fondlings?
Quickly, Emmanuelle recovers her awareness of the surrounding world, momentarily obscured by her memories. Strange thing, the other women dancing nearby (there are perhaps five, six) resemble her a lot: for a moment, Emmanuelle gains the hallucinatory impression that she is looking into a many-faceted mirror. They are all beautiful, clad in transparent veils, with long, black hair, and shoulders as bare as her own. Their thighs glide between their partners’ legs, to the measure of a slow music, emanating from who knows where, that moves them in analogous circles. They are looking at Emmanuelle with gentle curiosity, turning their eyes away as soon as their gaze encounters hers.
Emmanuelle thinks it would be a pleasure to watch one of them in the act of making love, but her partner has decided that it is, in fact, she who is going to provide that spectacle. He leads her, without disengaging himself, toward a roofed-over terrace that runs all along the outside of the hall. There are other guests standing around. He sits down on a low stool, upholstered in green silk, and pulls Emmanuelle toward himself until she stands facing him, her legs pressed against his knees. He parts her Greek robe, uncovers the long legs, parts them with his hands and makes her stand astraddle his thighs. Then he makes her bend her knees, to move toward him: when the moist cunt touches his prick, he inserts it, using his fingers, then takes hold of her buttocks and makes her envelop it completely.
He says:
“Now ask me to make you come.”
“Yes,” Emmanuelle says, in a hoarse whisper. “I want to come.”
“Louder! So everybody can hear.”
She bends backward, shouts: “Make me come!”
He insists:
“Again! Go on!”
She obeys, attracting an increasing number of spectators, who stand watching her bounce up and down, then hear her cry out, groaning with pleasure:
“Oh, oh, I’m coming! I’m coming! Oh, it’s so good. . . .”
When she finally stops, he holds on to her, limp and soft in his arms, until she has returned to her senses. He stays right inside her, makes her move again, making her breasts bobble up and down, thrusting into her, twice, thrice, twenty times. A groan arises from Emmanuelle’s throat. The man bites her shoulder, explodes inside her. She feels him spurting into her, and once again she soars like an eagle.
One of the spectators asks Emmanuelle’s partner to let him have her now. She gets up. She has neither time nor sense enough to ask herself if she’ll miss her lover of a moment ago, to whom she has told so many things: she finds herself giving her hand to the newcomer, following him into an antechamber opening up to their right. A houseboy appears, hands them refreshments.
“Voilà,” she says to herself, munching on a gâteau, “I’ve made it with a total stranger. And now I’m going to do it again, with another one. I really don’t know what’s so terribly evolutionary about that.”
Her new master stops, under a ceiling light, and inspects his prize with satisfied mien.
“I’ve been looking for you for over an hour!” he sighs.
“For me, you mean, me in particular?” Emmanuelle asks, genuinely surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought there was any shortage of talent on these premises.”
“No, I guess there’s plenty. But I came here for you.”
“Oh, I see now. Mario’s little publicity campaign.”
“You’re not just like any woman.”
“What’s so different about me?”
“I still can’t believe that you are here. That I can see you, stark naked, through your dress. . . .”
Suddenly Emmanuelle feels fed up with this crooner. She remarks:
“You can see me more naked than this any morning, at the beach.”
Her eyes are already roaming, searching for less tedious company. Where’s Mario? How boorish of him to leave her here, at the mercy of imbeciles!
She makes a getaway, walks straight ahead. She passes groups of people who seem to have nothing better to do than to wander aimlessly through the corridors, not talking, not paying any attention to her. It seemed as if there were two quite distinct brotherhoods conducting their reunions within these walls, each one according to its own rules, totally ignoring the other. Emmanuelle remembers having experienced a similar impression at a visit to a castle on the Loire, in the company of other tourists: they walked along from hall to hall, admiring, in docile concord with their guide’s predilections, the great tapestries, the ancestral portraits, while quite close by, not paying any attention to them, there moved a bespectacled group from some congress of learned individuals. Then Emmanuelle had suddenly chanced upon the proprietors of the domain, sitting out on the lawn, drinking tea, not casting a single glance in her direction. This time, though, she was a member of the elite gathering. . . . It was easy to tell who looked as if they had come here as tourists; but where were the hosts?
If the truth be known, she felt so little yearning to meet her host that she even thought she might be able to avoid being introduced to him altogether: and wouldn’t it, perhaps, really be better to just fade away quietly, without any fuss? The evening had none of the festive air Mario had promised her. . . .
A group of strangers—two men in dinner jackets, a young woman in an evening gown—stopped and tried to communicate with her in several languages at once: finally, one of them managed to explain, in rather good French, that they were looking for a pretty girl to take along, out of the palace, to make up a “foursome” with them. Emmanuelle felt tempted. But curiously, at the very moment that an opportunity to leave presented itself, she began to feel reluctant. It seemed to her that she would be committing a faux pas if she went away with these young people, pleasing as they appeared.
While she was still hesitating, another trio arrived from the opposite direction and, without a word, dragged her along at a brisk pace through several rooms in a row. She had no time to protest. From a half-open door in front of them came peals of laughter and the sound of music. They entered, and the tableau before them forced an exclamation of surprise from Emmanuelle’s lips.
On a fur-covered divan, as wide as it was long, reclines Ariane de Saynes, a big grin on her face as always, between two males as stark naked as herself.
When she hears Emmanuelle’s little cry, Ariane raises herself on one elbow, not seeming in the least surprised to find her here, and proceeds to hail her exuberantly.
“O my dear immaculate virgin, come and join us! My God, what a lovely outfit that is! But hurry up, take it off.”
In her right hand, Ariane is holding, with perfect grace, the erect member of one of her neighbors on the divan. Her left breast serves as a cushion for the other fellow’s penis. All three are smiling amiably at Emmanuelle.
“Do have some of the mango cake,” Ariane urges her. “I’ll bet you’re absolutely famished. And take some champagne, too. It’s one of Daddy’s finest vintages.”
Emmanuelle’s eyes are smarting from the sudden brightness: ever since her arrival she has been moving around in dimly lit halls and passages. Once and for all, Maligâth has become a realm of shadows in her mind. But now she finds herself quite suddenly in a room so brilliantly illuminated that she asks herself if it isn’t really a theatrical stage or a movie set she has stumbled into, glaring with arc lights and spots. The impression is so compelling that Emmanuelle can’t help looking up to make sure the place has a real ceiling: the walls are high enough to excuse her doubts. The decor of the place is as weird as can be imagined: a Klee canvas above a Buddhist temple portal from Sukhothai; a blind wall, entirely shrouded in white; in the middle of another one, an Etruscan frieze; yet a third one, covered from top to bottom and over all its width with precious tapestries, overlapping and crowding each other, entirely concealing any doors there may be in that wall. A bundle of long poles, inlaid or covered with gold, which Emmanuelle takes to be halberd shafts but which really are oars from the royal galley, hangs in precarious equilibrium above the monumental couch on which Ariane and her swains are reclining. There are no other pieces of furniture in the room, except for a profusion of chests of dark wood, some leather-covered and others fashioned out of bronze: these serve as seats and tables, and the guests who brought Emmanuelle here have already arranged themselves on them, poured drinks, and now sit there looking at her.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” says a voice behind her, in an accent she has never heard before.
Well, this is it, she says to herself, feeling more dead than alive: it’s the Prince himself! She doesn’t dare turn around; he walks around her, stands in front of her, scrutinizes her, with a little frown: her face, her breasts, her abdomen, her legs, all the way down to her feet. Again, she feels like a contestant of sorts. Then the thought strikes her—what if he is merely wondering who I am, and what I’m doing here? She explains, in a voice reflecting stage fright:
“I came here with the Marchese Serghini. He told me—”
“I know,” the Prince interrupts her. “I thank you for having accepted my invitation. Are you having a good time?”
She smiles politely, mute once again. He goes on piercing her with his critical regard. She casts around for something to say, to avoid the pronouncing of the sentence. But her host gestures her to direct her attention to the great couch, and she obeys, without so much as a peep.
One of the men is now penetrating Ariane, while the other one goes on rubbing his prick against her breasts. The young Countess undulates, contracts, vibrates, and stretches: every muscle in her body seems to be in perpetual motion.
“Aren’t you tempted to go and join them?” the Prince wants to know.
Not in the least, but she does not dare to say that.
“I’m sure you’ll feel more at your ease if you take that dress off.”
Without having to be told twice, she unbuckles her belt, looks around for a place to put it. Her host holds out his hand. . . . Then the brooch holding up her dress. In one long wave motion the chitón slides off her body, surrounding her ankles in glaucous foam. . . . She retains her other jewelry and stands there, waiting, very upright, tense, and touching.
The Prince compliments her. What is he going to do to me? she asks herself, her mouth dry.
The non-penetrating partner of Ariane’s gets up and takes Emmanuelle by the hand. She follows him, lets him stretch her out on her back, arrange her legs so that they hang over the edge of the divan and her black pubis with its constellations of pearls juts out over the edge of the white fur cover. Then he gets down on his knees and starts licking her. She closes her eyes, abandoning herself to the best of her ability, telling herself to concentrate on the caress, and soon she is nothing but a voluptuous body that has forgotten all its fears and alarms and once again sings its familiar paean:
“Oh, oh! I’m coming!”
He goes on licking until she has spent all her breath, given up all struggle. But then it is she who pulls him up and on top of herself: she feels the weight of his cock against her thighs: she works with her hands to make him enter into her. He accepts and takes her, most attentively, holding back his own pleasure until she has again reached the point where she is uttering her long, ecstatic yells; and then the fragrance of sperm seems to rise within her to delight her tastebuds. . . .
But a number of others are upon her now, dragging the man off her, grabbing her buttocks, playing with her breasts, pulling her off the cushions. She hears a couple of brief commands in a foreign language. Someone translates, tells her to raise her legs toward the ceiling: she complies, then folds the top of her thighs against her breasts. A dry, brutal phallus is trying to force its way in between her buttocks: the pain makes her cry out. She turns her head to the right, to the left, calls for help. Ariane comes close to her. Emmanuelle takes her hand:
“Oh, no! Get them off me! I don’t want to . . .”
At the same moment, a wave of bodies carries her assailant away: she hastens to stretch out her legs and to embrace her girlfriend.
Ariane whispers in her ear:
“This gentleman” (she points at the one Emmanuelle had seen, only a little while ago, pumping Ariane herself) “would like to put it in your mouth; but he’s too timid to ask you. You don’t mind, do you?”
Emmanuelle shakes her head, affirmatively.
Ariane’s body leaves her and is replaced by a male body stretching out on top of hers, with all its weight. Lips take possession of her own, crushing them, the tongue penetrating between her teeth, running its tip over her palate, over her own tongue, insistent, hard, bringing tears of pleasure to her eyes. She feels herself going, thinks she is ready to come once again, just by kissing, then refuses such sensual extravagance, fights against her abandon, her own submissiveness and weakness. She gives in to it after all, lets herself be overwhelmed by the sweetness of consent, of being passive, given over, abandoned to liberating joy.
The man looks pleased with her. He holds her by the shoulders, his hands like talons.
“Now then,” he murmurs. “You feel my belly on your belly? And now, how it’s moving upward? I’ll move up all the way to your breasts: and then, later, up to your face. First I’ll shove my prick into your tits. Not between them, you see: into them, into that lovely thick tissue, one after the other—I’ll stick it right through them, I’ll make the milk flow from your glands. Will you let me do that?”
Emmanuelle does not reply. He goes on:
“And after I’ve taken your tits, I’ll stick it into your throat, going in through your mouth. With all the muscles at my disposal I’ll shove it into your mouth and force you to unclench your teeth, to open your lips, I’ll make you choke on it, so fast you won’t even have time to cry out for help. I’ll hold your flanks between my knees, I’ll go up and down, I’ll screw it into you, I’ll make it bruise your tongue, your uvula—and I’ll push it even beyond that, all the way down back into your cunt, but from above! I’ll fuck you in the mouth, exactly as if I was fucking your cunt! I’ll feel your tears splashing onto my belly, laving my prick! But I can already see them coming, I had better hurry up.”
She has to open her mouth so wide it starts hurting even before he is able to insert his truly enormous rod. Quite obviously, he is running out of time: before he can proceed to any of those phenomenal tortures, his spunk flies, thick and copious, pints of it, accompanied by great groans of gratification.
“Go on, gulp it down,” he urges her, in a croaking voice. “Use your mouth. Don’t move. I’m going to stay in you awhile, I haven’t finished yet, I’ll just go on coming. . . .”
Emmanuelle, her face squeezed flat by the heavy abdomen, becomes aware that they are spreading her legs again. She tries to resist, but in vain: someone she can’t even see rips into her all the way, possesses her without further ado. Throat and vulva occupied thus, she starts going into panic: she is lost now, nothing can save her any more: she really is going to die. . . . The very next minute she is chiding herself for such prissy apprehensions: if she could, she would cry out, but in exultation and triumph!
What do you know, she congratulates herself. Here I am, being fucked by two men at once! What a memorable experience. It’s like a second defloration. The rite of initiation that Mario was talking about . . . I’m being cleansed, and publicly, of the last little stains of innocence. She had to chuckle, in the midst of her voluptuous enjoyment. She was celebrating her true glory: it is over, it’s over once and for all—I’m not a virgin any more!
Joyfully, she wanted to hug and kiss those who had brought about such promotion; like a friend, on both cheeks. In her enthusiasm she had completely forgotten that her mouth was still captive: once again, she forgot to breathe, choked, and started to sputter, loudly, so that the man took pity on her and withdrew. She didn’t even notice her other lover coming into her. She found herself again, confused, totally exhausted, in their arms.
A little while later, after hands that weren’t always easy to identify had lifted her up and carried her to another place, chancing, in the process, to come to rest on one or another portion of her anatomy, kneading it or poking into it, Emmanuelle was able to recognize the one who had made love to her mouth.
She had never seen a man as hairy as this one: he was furry all over, with a real fur so thick it completely obscured the skin on his legs, his belly, his chest, his shoulders; where the fur was a little less dense, the flesh appeared tanned, but lusterless.
The knotty muscles are those of a prizefighter or a butcher. Thick eyebrows, grown together between his eyes, extend upward almost to the equally black hairline.
He’s quite something, Emmanuelle thinks, then asks him:
“Where are you from?”
“From Georgia. I’ll take you there.”
Emmanuelle estimates his age to be about forty, give or take a couple of years. She tells him this. He laughs, he’s used to it:
“You’re far off the mark, my dear. I’m sixty-four.”
Emmanuelle is amazed. How horrible! No, it’s impossible. . . . He can’t be that old! Surely it can’t be her, either, so young, lying there this very moment, naked, stretched out on the naked body of a man older than her own grandfather! Her granddad, a Commander of the Legion of Honor, with the silvery head of hair to match such dignity. Has she ever imagined, even in her most extravagant reveries, that she would one day be making love to him? Well, but that’s what’s happening!
This man who is, among all those she has had the pleasure to meet recently, the one whom she finds the most exciting. . . . She doesn’t know whether she ought to feel ashamed of her inclinations, or simply doubt the evidence of her own senses. On the other hand, why should she go on worrying about it, to the point of an idée fixe? He’s made good love to her, she feels at ease on top of his hairy chest; what better ways are there of telling the good from the bad? He has made me happy, and that’s enough reason for having given myself to him, she reassures herself. Then, a little sigh: I’d sure like to have a grandfather who looks like this one, I’d love to be his mistress. She sees herself at the theater, or dining out, in a low-cut evening dress, showing off her legs, on the arm of her decorated escort in his cape of pure silk, his white—no, black—hair. . . . Her actual lover’s voice brings her back from the phantasmagoric reverie of sexagenarian incest.
“Let me suck your tits.”
She gets up on elbows and knees and moves her breasts up to where her left nipple hovers above his bushy mustache, then bends down a little to let the little round point, swollen with blood, descend to those red lips whose kisses she has enjoyed so much.
Ariane’s face reappears under Emmanuelle’s right arm, addresses the hairy man:
“Would you like to share her with me?”
“With pleasure.”
“I know she loves being shared.”
That’s true, Emmanuelle admits to herself: I do think that is true!
The nipple of one breast in the Georgian’s mouth, the other in Ariane’s, she gives in to her body, lapped by waves that are offering her up to the wind: a thousand heads of spume, a thousand tongues of seaweed, a thousand sweet reefs caress her hull, freighted to the brim with a treasure cargo of precious stones and spices, loaded into her by men with golden skins, on unknown shores. . . .
There were some new arrivals, and Emmanuelle took a short break from love-making in order to chitchat. She had regained all her composure, did not even remember her demoralized state, fleeting as it had been, an hour before this time. She found it perfectly normal to be stark naked in this salon, frequented by what seemed to be a fine class of people, after all: the majority had remained in full evening regalia, buttoned up to their chins and quite remote, it seemed, from any ribald intentions. And why not leave it that way, she asked herself, philosophically. Let those who liked to be dressed up, dress up, and those who’d rather go naked, go naked! It was as simple as that.
Yet, perspectives kept shifting in this palace, in a manner that frequently made Emmanuelle doubt if she really knew not only where she was but what time sphere all these events were taking place in. The mysteries she was being initiated into were perhaps contemporaneous with some Orphic or Dionysiac antiquity, while seeming to take place in the future. Now and again she caught glimpses of non-terrestrial cities where naked women walked upon streets of metal, among men in spacesuits and others clothed in black.
Two of the guests dressed in white tie and tails, without losing any of their proper composure, implored her to lie down on her back, very straight, and then persuaded Ariane to get down on all fours above her, with her pubis right above Emmanuelle’s mouth. The latter told herself that they were then going to ask her and her friend to perform a classical position (which annoyed her a little, after all the games she had been playing with Ariane the last couple of days), but that was not the case at all. One of the men produced, out of his immaculately pressed trousers, a long and sturdy cock, which he proceeded to introduce into Ariane’s slit, fucking her right in front of Emmanuelle’s eyes: from where she was lying, she couldn’t possibly miss the least detail.
For a duration that seemed to approach infinity, Emmanuelle lay watching the shaft sink in right up to the testicles, then saw it reappear, plunge back in, and so on and on, with a deliberateness that excited her enormously. Never in her life had she experienced any spectacle as powerfully aphrodisiac as this one, performed right in front of her face. She could hear the slurping noises in the vagina, well lubricated by the prick’s steady and magisterial in-and-out, and she waited for the great spray to rain upon her face. She could have gone on watching forever: the excitement of her senses was so superb that she cried out, shaken by tremors of voluptuousness, while no one even touched her: she didn’t need the assistance of her own caresses to be the first one of the three to obtain orgasm.
However, after her initial spasm, the second visitor (who had not intervened until now) took hold of her right hand and firmly directed it to her clitoris, to make her masturbate. Then he opened a little case, took out his camera, and filmed the scene. Emmanuelle was totally incapable of paying attention to that: she had eyes only for the fascinating motions of copulation.
When the moment arrived, the rod withdrew, brusquely, and hastened to dip down into Emmanuelle’s waiting mouth, discharging its sperm into it, aromatic with the flavors of Ariane.
Emmanuelle was still swallowing, when a hand brushed her own aside and took a firm hold on her genitals, as if to reserve them to itself. At first, she thought it was Ariane: but no, the grip was too virile. Well then, it had to be the other man in full evening dress. She raised her head and peered down, between her breasts: it was neither one nor the other, but it was someone she had met before. He had then been wearing a naval officer’s uniform, at a reception given by the Ambassador. He had been one of those guests who had been deeply excited by the extent of her décolletage when she had made her entrance. She remembered the stammers that betrayed the conflict created between their desires and their good manners, and that memory pleased her a great deal. Here I am now, she thought, exposed to one and all, without the slightest covering—and here’s one of them, looking much less embarrassed than back there!
Ariane seemed worn out, reclining on her side. Emmanuelle sat up, gracefully.
“Sailors never have a tan: I wonder why?” she thought out loud.
“Next to you, I really should feel ashamed of the pallor of my skin,” the man admitted. “But then we men don’t have to provide that kind of beauty.”
“What do you have to provide?”
“The law.”
Emmanuelle looked for traces of the timidity and deference the same protagonist had shown only four days before this encounter. There were none to be seen: nothing but smiling strength, and a manner indicating that he was used to having his orders obeyed. She found it most stimulating.
“Well, what do I have to do, to live up to my role?” she asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Just submit, that’s all.” His tone was matter-of-fact. No answer was required.
Nevertheless, Emmanuelle felt impelled to say:
“That’s all I could ask for.”
Yet, suddenly, she wanted more than that: to render her submission complete, she wanted it to be public, proclaimed. She wanted him to dispose not only of her flesh, but of her reputation as well. Thus, his possessing her would not remain a secret of this alcove, but would become, for her masters, a subject of glorification in their forum.
She asked him:
“Will you tell everybody that you’ve fucked me?”
“But, of course . . . not!” the officer said, defensively, and obviously surprised.
“But why not? Isn’t it nice, for a man, to be able to talk about the girls he’s fucked?”
“Not about women like you.”
“You mean I wouldn’t be sufficient cause for pride?”
He merely laughed, uncertain as he was as to what kind of quarrel she was picking. He dimly suspected that she wanted to subject him to some kind of test, try his reliability in some very special way, not of this jaded world—nor of its times. They were now sitting on the immense couch, facing each other, Emmanuelle hugging her knees, he with his legs to one side. No parts of their bodies were touching.
“Well then?” she insisted. “If you’re not ashamed of me, why make a secret of it! As for me, I’ll be flattered if you go around telling your mates that you’ve fucked me.”
“Are you really serious?” He stared at Emmanuelle, seemed to conclude that she wasn’t joking. This only increased his perplexity.
“You are . . . indeed strange!” he mumbled. “I would have expected just the opposite. . . . Is it some form of exhibitionism?”
Emmanuelle made an involuntary sound which could, in a pinch, be taken as an affirmative response. She didn’t think that the term really covered what she had in mind; but, after all, this wasn’t the place for embarking on subtle analytical conversation. On the other hand, the passive eroticism implied by the word “exhibitionism” did not please her.
“All right,” said the young officer, “if that’s what you like, I’ll do it.”
He realized that he found the prospect exciting. The pleasure he would experience in fucking Emmanuelle would return to his mind every time he’d relate it to others, while making it perfectly clear that it was she, herself, who had asked him to be that indiscreet. His desire for her waxed so violent that he felt like getting on top of her then and there: but, no! there was something even better. To make quite sure, he asked, not yet entirely over the hump of his amazement:
‘You’re saying that I should tell them your real name?”
“Yes, please.”
There was no doubting it: the idea that her new-found lubricity would become the talk of the town obviously made this lady’s juices flow: a kind of perverse refinement, evidently.
“You’re a weird one,” he said, rather rudely. “Ever since you came to Bangkok you’ve remained faithful to your husband—perhaps even a little too faithful, for the taste of some! And tonight, romping about in the buff, you hurl yourself from one extreme to the other. What’s the reason for such a dramatic transformation?”
‘You’re quite mistaken,” Emmanuelle said, calmly. “I have always been this way.”
She really didn’t believe that any transformation had taken place. She certainly did not feel she had “mutated” in a single night. True, Mario had been helping her, not so much to change as to grow up, to become conscious of her right to be herself: perhaps even of her duty to be herself—but Emmanuelle much perferred not to think of love as a duty: on that point, her preceptor had not convinced her at all. . . .
The man of the sea went on looking at her, saying nothing; but as soon as she seemed to want to make some further statement, he jumped to his feet.
“We’re wasting time with all this small talk,” he said, quite the man-of-action now. “Come on!”
He took her arm, holding it in a strong grip above the elbow.
“Where are you taking her?” Ariane called out. “Don’t take her away from us! She’s ours.”
“For the time being, she’s mine,” the young naval officer corrected her.
“You’ll be back?” Ariane shouted after them.
Emmanuelle turned, made a reassuring sign.