The Glass House
There is no other Shelter,
There is no other Door,
There is no other Beauty,
There is no other Tenderness!
Welcome to my heart,
To my eyes, to my mouth,
You Who raise the stones!
—The Koran
I shall not punish your daughters for
their whoredom.
—Hosea, 4:14
“Let’s take your car,” says Mario. “I’ll drive.”
A freshly washed sun has emerged from the previous day’s torrents. The air is almost cool, and gentle, like springtime in Paris. Emmanuelle delights in the breeze whipping against her face, making her hair stream back. She has been sleeping late, still feels like stretching.
Mario has been up in her room, helping her choose a suitable outfit. She feels very dressed-up, much more so than usual, and she is even wearing some very handsome platinum jewelry.
The day had got off to a good start—Emmanuelle had enjoyed the feel of his hands on her bare skin while he was helping her dress.
They arrive in the vicinity of the city’s most frequented hotel. Mario is driving right up to its entrance.
‘We aren’t going to the Chandra, are we?” Emmanuelle asks, apprehensively.
She is bound to run into at least twenty people who will recognize her, right there in the foyer, and they’re bound to know what she is up to. . . .
Mario does not reply, but the very moment Emmanuelle is telling herself that she has no say in the matter anyway, he swings a sharp left so suddenly that she bumps into him. The hotel has vanished from sight. They are now driving down an alley bordered by green hedges, thick as ramparts and so tall that the sky seems as far away as it does from the bottom of a deep gorge. Before she can ask for an explanation, Mario has made another sharp turn, and they are entering a small park.
“But that’s amazing,” exclaims Emmanuelle. “I never noticed that there was any place to turn off this alley! How is it one can’t see it?”
“Clever trompe-l’oeil effect,” Mario says. “Created by cutting that shrubbery in a certain way. No one finds the place unless they’ve been given exact directions, and that’s just as well.”
The building they are approaching is one of the world’s marvels. Its dimensions are mind-boggling: it seems quite impossible for such an edifice to exist in the middle of a downtown block. Emmanuelle has driven past here almost every day, and all she has ever seen is the monumental black and white mass of the big hotel.
The front of the building is rectilinear, flat, bare, in the manner of a fortress. The only difference is that the surface does not consist of dull and austere stones or bricks: it is shiny, flashing a thousand fiery reflections, as if some sorcerer had transmuted it into a diamond of utterly fantastic dimensions, this mansion hidden by tall trees in the midst of a spacious park.
“It looks like it’s made out of glass!”
“It is, my dear. Slabs of glass, six or eight inches thick— solid as concrete! Heat can’t penetrate those walls, nor can you see through them. But there’s a lovely kind of diffuse daylight in all the rooms, and no need for windows.”
“How is it ventilated?”
“There are air ducts, opening out onto the terrace. The place is air-conditioned throughout.”
“There aren’t even any doors. No apertures at all!”
“That’s true,” Mario says. “The way in is quite amusing, in fact.”
The car is gliding past the mirror-bright wall, making her blink her eyes; they turn round a corner of the building: it presents the same appearance from all sides. Its overall shape is that of a gigantic cube of glass.
Mario stops the car, turns off the ignition, but makes no attempt to get out. Emmanuelle grabs hold of his arm: they are sinking into the ground!
It takes only a couple of seconds. They are below ground. Mario starts the car again, they slowly roll off the elevator platform which then starts ascending again, obscuring the rectangular piece of sky they have glimpsed for a moment above their heads.
A bluish light illumines the crypt they’re in. Long corridors open up from it: a signal light comes on above one of them, and Mario starts driving into it. They follow another signal, and then an iron gate rises in front of them. As it goes up, they drive through, and it closes behind them like a trap door. They find themselves in an immense room divided up into pearl-gray partitions. The air is fresh, and Emmanuelle feels better already. It’s a garage, that’s what it is, she tells herself. It certainly is a very organized sort of place.
Mario opens the door on her side, assists her out. Without a word, he leads the way toward the back wall: a rectangular portion of it, so well fitted that it is indistinguishable when closed, automatically opens up in front of them. Emmanuelle passes through it first, finds herself in a small cabin-like space with a velvet-upholstered seat. As soon as Mario has entered it, too, the door closes, and they start ascending, although the elevator’s motion is almost imperceptible. The silence is most impressive. Well, it’s just an old elevator, Emmanuelle says to herself.
“All this must have cost a fortune to install,” she says. “Where did the money come from?”
“From the paying public. . . .”
She looks pensive.
“What’s the place called?”
“Among the locals, it has no name at all. Foreigners who have heard stories about it refer to it as ‘The Great Brothel,’ but few of them know where to find it.”
The elevator stops, ever so smoothly. A panel slides back, opening onto a glass-walled corridor, lit by a pearly light. They start walking down this passage, for quite a long way, it seems to Emmanuelle. Here, too, there are no doors or other openings on either side.
Then they arrive in a round foyer. Corridors like the one they have just passed through branching off at all sides. Above them, shedding a light not unlike that in a forest clearing, a glass dome, huge as that of an observatory or basilica.
In the middle of the foyer stands an elegant table, fashioned out of precious wood, ornamented with bronze inlays, and perfectly empty except for a quartz prism placed in the center, with inscriptions engraved in it in various languages. Emmanuelle reads the French one: “Secrétaire.”
A curved door opens, and before it closes again, one can see an immense office with a number of young women working, typing, duplicating, shifting papers in and out of trays, transcribing tapes, watching video-tapes, answering telephones. The person entering the foyer is a woman, very slim, very tall, well-dressed and definitely upper-class, although her attire consists only of a clinging Chinese gown of a pale ivory color; she wears no makeup, no jewelry. She greets them with a little bow, addresses herself to Emmanuelle:
“Let me explain the house rules.”
Her voice is rather sharp, the accent nondescript: European? Asian? Emmanuelle can’t make up her mind. Nor can she decide whether she finds this woman beautiful or not.
The secretary does not ask the visitors to take a seat; there are no seats. She is carrying a leatherbound volume, the book of rules, no doubt. Evidently she knows it by heart, as she does not even bother to open it. She must have taken it out of a drawer merely in order to look impressive and to lend solemnity to the occasion.
“No formal registration is required.”
Emmanuelle acknowledges that, returning the little bow by way of greeting. The woman goes on:
“The reciprocal obligations of this institution and its clients are entirely a matter of honor. The contracts may be verbal or written, at the discretion of the management.”
That must be it! Emmanuelle gasps to herself: it’s an electronic woman! She sounds like a robot. . . .
At the discretion of the secretary, anyone is eligible to be employed. However, in the files and archives there are data on all the female residents of the city who have at one time or another exhibited potential of a kind likely to interest the establishment. Thus the secretary’s decisions are not arbitrary, but depend on the merit of each case.
Particular consideration is given to those who have demonstrated special talents. It will be easily understood that the secretary does not want to elaborate on this aspect.
Emmanuelle is now asking herself whether she’ll make the grade: what does she have to offer? She likes men to come into her mouth, she likes to be penetrated by several at the same time, she likes them to watch her while she is masturbating, she likes women, too: pretty ordinary accomplishments . . .
(These ruminations cause her to miss part of the lecture: this will be a black mark against her. . . .)
. . . However, a certain number of the conditions apply to one and all, and they can be formulated without any breach of discretion. Thus, the women authorized to benefit from the advantages offered by the institution have to belong to the most desirable strata of society, being, preferably, the wives or daughters of judges, politicians, top civil servants, university teachers, commissioned officers, religious dignitaries, diplomats, persons distinguished in the arts and letters, in business or finance. Wealth is regarded as equal to noble birth or the father’s or husband’s distinction as the member of some high-ranking order. All visits must be made using an automobile, as the mechanism of reception is not designed for pedestrian access.
It goes without saying that only truly beautiful females have the right to frequent this establishment. The management’s strict insistence on that point is exemplary, and this is well-known in the city. It has given rise to a great number of intrigues and vain efforts to get into the place, on the part of the less fortunately endowed. Vain, because the management is adamantly incorruptible.
There is no minimum age limit: the youngest candidates are the most welcome. Those over forty will be admitted only if they can demonstrate exceptionally rare talents as well as esthetic endowments.
The secretary assigns each visitor a reception room for the day. The choice of this room is not arbitrary: the size, shape, furniture, equipment of each room differs from all the others. Yet there is little likelihood that one will find oneself in the same room twice in the course of a year, and it is pointless to make requests for any particular room.
No one, after she has been admitted, nor for that matter before that time, has the right to exercise any manner of discrimination or preference, nor even to express any general or particular wishes, regarding the visitors who will be assigned to her. Any attempts to indulge in such matters will be looked upon as an affront to the institution, whose rules in the matter of masculine qualifications are just as stringent as they are concerning the candidates’ looks and standing. Those who desire to benefit from the facilities of this house can put their blind trust in the judgment, the distinction, and the experience of the management, which has for many years administered it to the total satisfaction of all parties, a fact that has merited the establishment its international reputation. In this respect, it should be mentioned as significant that a far from negligible percentage of its clientele consists of transient persons, some of whom have traveled here only for this purpose.
The patrons are admitted into the presence of the ladies either singly or collectively, depending on their preference, and at the secretary’s discretion. They stay there as long as they wish. They are free to request the company of several women at the same time, but cannot be guaranteed the fulfillment of such a request at all times. Apart from this qualification, they do, of course, have every right.
Although the establishment does not want to encourage this practice, as it complicates bookkeeping and thus causes additional expenses, a woman may choose to visit only for the time it takes to service one single patron, if she so desires: but, if she does, she must leave the house in his company. If this arrangement does not suit her, or if the patron is disinclined to take her along, she is obliged to receive further clients as assigned to her by the secretary. Furthermore, if her first assignment is to entertain a group of clients, she has to accomplish this task, even if she has come in the expectation of a single encounter: in this case, the group of clients is regarded as a single entity. Generally speaking, the secretary is in the best position to decide what is best suited for everyone, in number as well as in quality, and it is recommended that one submits to her authority. The discretionary powers she is invested with are entirely due to her long experience and competence.
Despite the considerable rights granted to the employees by the establishment, there are a considerable number of qualifications. It goes without saying that a woman may run the risk of accidentally meeting one of her close friends, or even her husband, in the capacity of a patron. This situation does not in any way contradict the house rules, as long as the due payments are made, and the management does not accept any liability for the prejudices and complications that may ensue from such coincidences or other chance encounters.
The establishment is entitled to a certain percentage of each employee’s earnings. These funds are channeled into the maintenance and improvement projects, as well as into those relating to expansion. Despite the amplitude of tasks she is obliged to perform and the modest position she occupies, the secretary does not accept any retainers.
Having recited all that, without once asking Emmanuelle a single question, without one personal word to her, without even any inquiries as to whether she accepted the conditions she had just been told, this woman—obviously enjoying the implicit trust of her employers—told Emmanuelle to follow her, adding that she would be taken to Room 2238, and that a client was already waiting for her services. Emmanuelle followed her, her heart beating wildly, turning round to cast a look at Mario, who hadn’t even said goodbye, much less any encouraging word. She felt like running away, if only that had seemed possible.
The room the secretary took her to was shaped like a perfect hemisphere, the floor being the horizontal side. The dome continuum of walls and ceiling, completely unbroken once the door closed behind them, seemed even more planetarium-like in that it was entirely covered in dark blue velvet material. A dim, intimate light emanated from invisible lamps, casting shadows and reflections on the velvet whenever people moved about in it. The very quiet hum of the air conditioners indicated the origin of the slightly scented freshness of the air. The floor was covered with ash-gray carpeting, its pile so thick that the high heels of Emmanuelle’s shoes sank into it all the way. She had to take them off to be able to proceed.
What surprised her most was to find, in the very center of this room that did not look like a boudoir at all, a very large bed, without any headboards or legs, covered with a thick fur throw, its edges falling over the sides. Its shape certainly harmonized with the setting: nonetheless, it was a little disconcerting. It was perfectly round.
About the bed, scattered on the wall-to-wall carpet, a profusion of long-fringed, multicolored rugs, reminiscent of those hand-made in Greece or on Majorca; three semi-spherical armchairs, one blue, one red, one purple; poufs of various heights; and a long, black, unpolished table completed the furnishings. Hung at some little distance from the concave wall, in an opulent, dark golden frame, a large and most impressive abstract painting provided a counterpart to the stark circular shape of the bed.
The secretary walked over to the side of the room diametrically across from the painting and pushed against the wall with one hand. A part of the wall slid back (Emmanuelle was getting used to all these unexpected openings), and a bathroom came into view. The ceiling and walls, incongruously straight and right-angled after the curved space of the room, were completely covered in mirrors. Emmanuelle noticed that even the floor, made out of a polished, glass-like substance (perhaps it even was glass?), reflected her image as clearly as all the other parts of the room.
At floor level, a bathtub, more like a small swimming pool, also lined with mirrors. That’ll take a little getting used to, Emmanuelle thought. It was filled, three-quarters of the way, with pale green water; a faint smell of pine needles pervaded the room.
On wall hooks or little tables a great number of chrome-plated implements: without difficulty Emmanuelle recognized a vibro-massager not unlike the one she had been using and enjoying, and various kinds of shower nozzles, some of which were unmistakably shaped like male organs. But most of these appliances looked quite enigmatic.
She was suddenly aware of additional presences, and turning round she saw two men standing in the curved entranceway.
“For you,” the secretary whispered to her.
Emmanuelle felt tempted to throw her arms around her and beg her to be excused, or at least, given some more time to gather her composure. But the secretary took her leave, abandoning her to her ridiculously vulnerable state of mind.
She asked herself if it wouldn’t be more honest to admit her embarrassment and inexperience and to introduce herself as a debutante as yet ignorant of the local customs, thus appealing to the indulgence of her visitors. But surely they had come here looking for refinements only an expert was able to provide: they wouldn’t give a fig for her excuses, they would leave and ask to get their money back from the management! They would be reimbursed, and Emmanuelle would stand there covered in shame. She completely reversed her train of thought. Never would she let them inflict such humiliation on her! This was her chance to find out if she was good for something or not.
The smile that accompanied this thought was so radiant that she would not have had to make any further effort, had she but known this: she had already conquered her first two clients completely. They came over, stood beside her at the edge of the pool. With a little girl’s innocence she turned her face up to the one who stood closest and offered up her mouth to be kissed, then raised her hands to undo his necktie, opened the shirt-buttons, undressed him altogether, with gestures of such exotic tenderness that he seemed quite stupefied. Then she rendered the same service to the other one. Finally, gracefully, unhurriedly, taking care that they would appreciate the art of her movements, she took off her own clothes, walked down the steps into the pool. Standing there in the jade-colored water, in it up to mid-thighs and thus appearing more naked than nakedness itself, she then turned around and beckoned them to come in, too.
They grabbed her, caressed her, fucked her, splashing water all over the walls and ceiling in the process. She concentrated so hard on making them come that she didn’t even think about coming herself: it was sufficient recompense to hear them praising her services. She did her best to make it as easy for them as possible, guessing their desires before they were even formulated, taking advantage of the lightness of her body in the tepid water. . . . After a multiplicity of variations, both of them spurted at the same time, one into her mouth, the other inside her cunt. Then they were washed, dried, and as soon as they had stretched out on the white fur-covered bed, she started licking their cocks again.
They had hardly left when a low-voiced loudspeaker announced that Emmanuelle should get ready to receive the next visitor. She hastened to slip on the moss-green dressing gown she had noticed hanging next to the shower. She had just managed to do so when the secretary came in, then vanished again, leaving her with a tall dark man. Emmanuelle burst out laughing: it was the naval officer, her intrepid seaman.
“Now I realize,” she said, “that you’re always where you’re most needed!”
She told him that she would like to leave the glass house today in his company. Would he take her with him? That would all depend, he answered, on the satisfactoriness of her services.
They passed an afternoon so perfectly voluptuous and satisfying, doing and confiding so many things to each other, that Emmanuelle told herself it could not have been the least little bit more wonderful had they been young lovers.
“I’ve just drafted a new set of rules,” she announces, triumphantly. “Would you like me to read it to you?”
“I’m afraid I’m not too well qualified to give an opinion,” Anna Maria replies. “So, please don’t get angry with me if I don’t express all the admiration it no doubt deserves. You know my blind spots.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” her model reassures her, obviously in great good spirits. “You can always ask me to explain, if something seems unclear. This morning I feel in an exquisitely pedagogic mood.”
“Well, it seems to me that the current rules and regulations have already aroused your opposition; can it be that your neophyte fervor has already cooled?”
“On the contrary, it is positively flaming! And so is my creative imagination. I’m so concerned for the best interests of the establishment that I want to see it make positively stunning progress, I want it to be ahead of its time, I want it to be the absolute avant-garde! I won’t be content with any remaining shades of conformism.”
“Well, I must admit, there’s hardly anything as old-fashioned as a brothel.”
“But you must come with me one day, so you’ll know what you are talking about! You’ll see how up-to-date, how unexpected it is, in many ways. The only thing that bothers me is that only women can go there to prostitute themselves. I do admit that that is a reactionary feature: it amounts to sex discrimination.”
“You would like to see male prostitutes there as well?”
“Yes, of course. I don’t see why men should have fewer rights than ourselves.”
“But I thought you were working as a whore out of a sense of duty?”
“In the new mutant world there’s no difference between duty and right.”
“Ah yes, of course. Please forgive my momentary lapse! So your new draft takes this into account?”
“That’s up to you to judge. It is based on the idea that nothing should be uni-directional. Erotic love is neither active nor passive, it is neither subject nor object. And freedom is not a vector.”
“I don’t see—”
“Or if it is one, it has to be reciprocal, pointing both ways. And that applies to prostitution as well.”
“Truly, Emmanuelle, I haven’t understood a word!”
“That doesn’t matter. The new articles of my set of rules provide the following:
“First of all, no distinction is to be made between the sexes.
“Secondly, each and every club member has the right to either ‘choose’ or ‘be chosen.’ For instance, a woman may visit the glass house in order to hire out her talents, or to enjoy those of a man. In the one case, she’ll get paid and she’ll submit; in the other, she pays and gives the orders. She either satisfies her own desires in her own manner, or she goes there in order to provide some relaxation for others.”
“Those two things are incompatible, then?”
“Physically, they go together: but from a psychological standpoint, an inversion of roles will make the pleasures greater.”
“Ah, yes!”
“What do you know about it?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. Go on.”
“Thirdly, every member opens an account. If she comes to ‘choose,’ a choice will be entered on the debit side; if she comes to ‘be chosen,’ she gets credited with her earnings. The basic rule is that she is only entitled to a ‘choice’ after having been ‘chosen’ at least once—in other words, the accounts have to be perfectly balanced at all times, no overdrafts are allowed.”
“Will it bear interest?”
“That isn’t a bad idea: I’ll give it some thought. The trick might be to make the interest interesting—I mean artistically: for instance, to make it payable in the form of child prostitution.”
“Oh, that’s horrible!”
“Not if they’re beautiful! Those who can’t provide a presentable fledgling of their own can always borrow from the others, or else bring along some young friend of theirs. Preferably a virgin.”
“I hope you realize that your imagination is naturally vicious?”
“So you think every virgin must remain so forever?”
“There are better circumstances in which to lose one’s virginity than in a brothel.”
“Ah, I wonder. . . . Surely you notice how inspired I am? I don’t think I was this inventive before I went there. Well, to get back to the mode of bookkeeping: at the end of each month, the accounts are balanced, and everybody receives a statement and the balance of their account.”
“I don’t think your system will work. How will you manage to have all the accounts show a positive balance?”
“We’ll have to consult an expert on that. I’m not really a financier, you know.”
“That’s easy enough to tell. But why not have cash payments? Why have that cumbersome clearing-house at all?”
“That’s just it, that’s to make sure that everybody will be obliged to prostitute him or herself. Otherwise there’d be only buyers, and that would favor the rich to an undue degree.”
‘I’m positively touched by your social concern.”
“You should be! Because when I say ‘the rich,’ I mean the possessors, exactly those husbands after your own heart: the possessors of their wives as of their works of art, who run to the glass house in order to buy themselves other bodies, while pretending horror at the idea of offering up their own bodies to others.”
“You’ll wind up in the ranks of the suffragettes and other revolutionary feminists.”
“No, I told you, I’m talking about the best interests of those very men! It isn’t right that they should remain deprived of the voluptuous joys of self-prostitution. Even though they’re not quite capable of understanding that yet.”
“Such altruism . . . ! You should have lived in Charles Fourier’s time.”
“I like this one, thank you. Which reminds me: it won’t be possible, either, for anyone to come to the glass house with only money-making in mind—because at least half of the credit you acquire has to be spent on natural assets, in the form of ‘choices’ with which your account will be debited. The institution’s aims are philanthropic, not commercial.”
“So it isn’t prostitution at all, but good works! It’s like going to volunteer at the welfare clinic. I must say, I had expected something a little more exciting. Your kind of establishment doesn’t tempt me in the least.”
“No, listen: as soon as a client of either sex arrives, he can obtain listings of those who have come there on that day in order to be ‘chosen.’ But only if his—or her—account is in the black. And from the moment the client asks for the listing, he or she is irrevocably debited with the equivalent of one ‘choice,’ even if the person he picks doesn’t suit him and he goes away without having any satisfaction. Thus curiosity is permitted, but you pay for it, just as you have to pay for the act itself. And thus the erotic value of curiosity is recognized.”
“And you have to choose merely on the basis of a list of names? But then all the members of the circle know each other, I guess?”
“Not so. New recruits are added to it, continuously: and that’s the main benefit of the system—the attraction of the unknown.”
“But they do have to write down their names.”
“There’s nothing to prevent you from giving a false name!”
“In any case, it’s less a matter of choice, it’s more like a lottery.”
“If you wish; but every number wins, and all the prizes are good ones.”
“Ugly people don’t stand a chance?”
“No, they don’t.”
“And you call that justice?”
“They can wait for their paradise.”
“Heaven isn’t reserved for the ugly, you know.”
“Earth is reserved for the beautiful, though.”
“Your club certainly won’t contribute to that.”
“Come on, don’t be such a spoilsport! Why don’t you forget your prejudices for a moment and tell me, in all honesty, what you think of my rules and regulations?”
“They’re no good. With your idea of pretended reciprocity between the sexes you demolish the very temple of eroticism! In that temple, you yourself told me so, woman is the deity, and the only one. That her favors can be bought, well, with a little effort that is fathomable: but to have her, the goddess, buy the favors of her worshipers—? When they make love to her, men celebrate her cult, put themselves at her service, no matter what the circumstances are. But to make the goddess pay them before that rite, that’s pushing one’s sense of black humor a little too far!”
“Now you’re really talking! Please, go on!”
“What I want to know is, do you want eroticism to be an esthetic ethic, with its own inner coherence, or are you merely planning some egalitarian utopia: if that’s the case, let me warn you—it isn’t a new one; and, to my mind, it looks about as inviting as a prison gate. Your club is more like a phalanstery than a Cythera of the future. Your members will succeed so well in their efforts to match their intentions and act identically that one won’t be able to tell the sexes apart. As for me, I prefer to keep mine: to be a woman, the fair one, the desired one, and, if it really is possible to merchandise a human being, the only salable one. Let that remain my privilege. And let the men stay where they are, where we stretch our arms toward them, in love as well as in the stock market!”
“Well, I must say, for once I think you really are right.”
Emmanuelle crumples up her notes and throws the wad of paper over the side of the terrace balustrade, down into the unruly leaves and branches of the coconut trees.
On another occasion, Emmanuelle confided in Anna Maria:
“A man who was too tired to make love to me told me that the whole love business was simply stupid. But by now I have learned enough to know that he was wrong. Really, love is the means mankind has found to make its intelligence transcend the universe.”
In this room, entirely white, almost clinical, the first object to attract Emmanuelle’s attention was a double seat, shaped somewhat like a figure eight, with short legs, its middle deeper than the sides. From the look of it, one would have to sit down face to face if one wanted to make love on it; or perhaps one behind the other.
The room was divided in two parts by a curtain. In addition to that bizarre taboret the other objects this side of the curtain were a kind of saddle seat, a glass case containing artifacts made out of various materials that looked like representations of animal penises, from dog to mule, all of them life-sized, handcuffs, thongs, tweezers, speculums, and a very absurd-looking device consisting of two hemispheres of glass, each one the size of a hefty breast, connected by rubber tubes to a little hand pump. It looks like a milking machine for women, Emmanuelle thought: oh, how that must feel good!
Along one of the glass walls through which the dim light of the outside world filtered there were two long platforms, rosy-colored, supporting even weirder structures. The first one, manufactured out of some metal that looked almost soft, and was a pale brass color, was shaped like the contours of a woman: there were separate concavities for legs and arms, and two for the breasts. The head would have to go into something that looked like a fencer’s mask, with padded sides, from which a wisp of sweet-smelling vapor rose out of the opening for the mouth. Similar little wisps floated around in the bottom of the breast-cups and in the smaller depression designed to accommodate the vulva. Emmanuelle bent down to sniff them, and almost at once experienced a strong pricking sensation in her clitoris and nipples, so powerful that she felt close to orgasm. For a moment, she was tempted: why not just install herself in this mold, belly and face against the metal, and let herself go? In a second she had ripped off her summer dress. She was, of course, stark naked underneath. But then her curiosity for what was on the other platform diverted her from her first impulse.
It was, reclining on a thick mattress, an undressed woman, perfectly shaped in every way, and seemingly asleep. Emmanuelle touched her: she was made out of foam rubber, softer than flesh. Her skin was velvety, neither warm nor cold. Her mouth and her sex were extraordinarily lifelike. She lowered her face to that of the doll and opened the lips with a finger: the mouth emitted a breath, of a different odor than what she had just experienced. The impression it gave her was difficult to analyze, but it did not please her. She proceeded to explore the vagina: it was warm, and filled with the effervescence of that very same gas. That’s interesting, Emmanuelle reflected: it has to be a compound designed for males, and one that only works on them. The establishment seemed to be discouraging ambisexual trends! And what was on the other side of that curtain?
She threw her dress on a pouf, walked across the room, pushed the curtain aside, and walked through it. She saw a rectangular bed, covered with a sheet. Two fully dressed men were sitting on it, bolt upright, like two chimneys. They were curiously alike in looks and bearing, big and tough-looking, their faces yellowish and wrinkled, their eyes slanted to a pronounced degree, like those of Koreans. They did not turn their heads in the direction of Emmanuelle when she entered. With intense attention they were examining, not unlike research scientists at work upon some exciting experiment, a body lying between them on the bed: a boyish body with elegant amber-colored legs and a lovely, clean-shaven pubic mound: a body that Emmanuelle recognized straightaway. It was Bee.
She wasn’t dead, was she? Emmanuelle stared at her, quite petrified herself. But it wasn’t long before the reclining girl opened her eyes, smiled, turned to look first at one, then at the other attending gentleman, and said, in English:
“So fantastic!”
Emmanuelle breathed easier again. The three others were now looking at her. Bee seemed equally at ease in the nude as she had appeared in her brocade tailored suit that afternoon in mid-August when they had had tea together at Marie-Anne’s mother’s house. She exclaimed:
“But it’s great to see you!” She sat up on the bed, leaning on one man’s shoulder.
Her voice had the same cheerful ring to it, her face was as radiant as ever. The sweetness of the look in her great big gray eyes moved Emmanuelle, almost to tears.
“You two know each other,” one of the two clients remarked, speaking French with a fairly incomprehensible accent. “Go on, make love.”
Emmanuelle stepped forward. She knelt down at the foot of a bed, raising her eyes toward the one who had spoken, awaiting his orders. It seemed he had nothing further to say. He just gave her an impassive stare. She turned back to the young American girl, asking herself who would make the first move. It was Bee. She twined her arms round the neck of her old lover, pulled Emmanuelle toward herself, embraced her, pressed her breasts against hers.
“Do you remember?” she said. “It was you who taught me!”
Her thigh caressed Emmanuelle’s vulva.
“And I’ve made some progress, since.”
After the thigh, a hand, and such an expert hand at that! Emmanuelle was amazed. Such progress indeed! And Bee’s lips on her nipples, now. And now, on her mouth. On her mouth!
But she remained inert, she didn’t feel anything. Oh, this is horrible, she thought. I’ve become frigid! She had to force herself to concentrate on Bee’s fingers exercising themselves on her clitoris and on her lips. Suddenly she remembered a day, she had been quite a small girl, when her tonsils were removed, under local anesthetic. This prevented her from feeling any pain, and yet she had sensed what was going on. Without missing a move, she had watched the instruments at work in her throat: she had felt the prodding, the cutting. Emmanuelle had tried to convince herself that she was sick: but that was hard to prove, there was no pain—she had merely been rendered incapable of feeling any physical emotion, she was totally cold, apathetic, indifferent to whatever one did to her, an outcast from the world of the living, those beings that experience joy and pain, cry out with anguish or revel in lovely spasms: not objects to be touched, prodded, and cut, without even making them bleed, in the imperturbable and sterilized universe of specialists. A frightful nausea had risen within little Emmanuelle, and they had had to interrupt the operation, calm her down, and give her a total anesthetic. A similar feeling was now rising in the woman she had become, and who, once again, was unable to accept such a state of insensitivity. She tore herself out of Bee’s embrace and turned over onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked herself, desperately, sinking her teeth into the pillow. “What’s come over me?” She tried to visualize Bee’s face, to recall how she had waited for her, so in love with her. . . . She repeated herself, but no echo answered: O my long lost one! O my beautiful one with the winged name, O my pretty one, my sweet. My promised land with the winged name! Beautiful, sweet, winged one. . . . The words kept turning, ringing in her empty head. She could not recognize them, she did not understand them even. Bee! Hadn’t she sworn to love her with a legendary passion, more faithful than the seasons themselves? To call her forth from the deepest abyss? From the well of forgetfulness. . . .
She arose, her entire body expressing grief and rage, refusing to look at Bee, jumped out of the bed and, without turning, walked toward the curtain, parting it with a disgusted gesture. On the other side, she located her dress, bent down to pick it up, walked to the door, opened it, went out. She started down the corridor, seeing nothing or no one. A man stopped her, asked her something she could not understand. But she heard herself reply:
“I’m sorry, not today.”
She continued, drifting from corridor to corridor, just as she was, carrying her dress in her hand, until, finally, a door opened, giving access to a complicated maze of stairwells and galleries. Here, however, she found her bearings and left the glass house. She drove through the frenetic lights and noises of the city like a hypnotized subject, totally unaware of the dozen or so accidents she barely avoided. . . .
Jean was waiting for her. They went in to dinner.
“Let’s go to bed early,” she suggested. “And let’s really fuck tonight. I want to know if I still love you or not.”
“You have doubts?” Jean said, in a tenderly mocking tone.
“Not really. But it’s always better to make certain, isn’t it?”
“If I were a husband,” Emmanuelle says to Anna Maria, “I’d like my wife to make love to the greatest possible number of other men—and certainly to women, too. I’d constantly look for new partners for her, fresh lovers and mistresses. And it would be my primary reason for enlarging my circle of acquaintances. My house would be the most hospitable in the city, but no one would be welcome into it unless they exhibited firm resolve to seduce the lady of that house. Every time I’d meet a new person, my first thought would be this question—‘Does this one desire to pay homage to the body of her whom I love? If not, he, or she, is not worth wasting my time on.’ Without having been to bed with my wife, no man could be called my friend. How could I stand it if someone met her and did not immediately desire her? In short, I’d have no other taste for my own friends than the taste she would have for them.”
“In other words, every good husband should have the soul of a procurer?”
“Yes, if by ‘procurer’ you mean a man who is sufficiently in love with a woman to want to see her live in a continuous whirl of caresses! The good husband wants the entire world to stretch out its arms toward the beloved, to touch her and to make her experience joy.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s impossible to make love to the ‘entire world.’”
“I know it is. And what a pity! But at least one can make love to a great number of its inhabitants! And that’s why I want my husband not only to give me to others, but to publicize me, advertise me, put me in a showcase. Sell me publicly, to the highest bidder, whenever. To sell me is not to lose me; on the contrary: it is his gain. I love him, and I’m proud to be his wealth.”
“So all our lives would become like those of pimps and whores, and I suppose the laws of the underworld would obtain in every other respect as well?”
“In a society where prostitution is regarded as a disgrace, like ours, it isn’t surprising at all that procurers are rotten pimps and prostitutes equally rotten whores.”
“Is it that you want to present me a revised constitution this time, or will the future do without such boring documents?”
“No, dear, you’ve convinced me that secular law isn’t my forte.”
“Well, you can still legislate the divine.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve done.”
“How?”
“By engraving the new tablets of the law.”
“No less than that! I can’t wait to see them.”
“Remember what happened to Moses!”
“But your god won’t be such a jealous one.”
“But are you sure you really want to reach the promised land?”
“Enough of your sales talk! I’ll make up my mind when I see the samples. Let’s see your ten commandments.”
Emmanuelle goes to her room, gets a briefcase, returns, and takes out a sheet of paper, covered in her own round handwriting.
“Woman,” she reads, “this is your law, given by you, to commence the reign of love, on earth as in the starred sky which is the kingdom of men:
“THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE ART OF LOVE
I
Honor Eros, and him alone,
In judgment, deed and image.
II
Make love unto yourself,
Day and night, aided by your dreams.
III
Freely show your breasts and legs,
Freely and proudly fuck in public.
IV
Go naked in the world,
So that all can freely enjoy your body.
V
Permit access to your body
To everyone who desires it.
VI
Regale your tender palate
With long spurts of sperm.
VII
Be a loving and caressing body
To women as well as men.
VIII
Give yourself to more than one at a time,
One after the other, or all at once.
IX
Give your eager consent to your spouse
When he wants to make a present of you.
X
Thus, lover, you will ennoble your love
By being a whorish little turtledove!”
Both of them started laughing at the same time. Then Anna Maria commented:
“Well, that seems to me a pretty good résumé of the technical aspects of your eroticism. But is it love?”
“No,” said Emmanuelle, “that’s not all there is to love. But outside of these laws love is an evil.”