The Invitation
She would enter that small society of the damned
and the blessed that is the only aristocracy one
may still regard with a certain degree of respect.
Contrary to belief, it is not as easy to join as it
is to become a member of “café society.”
—André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Le Belvédère,
“The Irons, the Fire, the Night of the Soul”
She can not really be seen from the street, as there are trees obscuring the view. But she has no doubts whatsoever that her neighbors are ogling her behind their windows opening onto her garden across the hedge. Who are they? She has no idea. She has never seen them. Will they resent the sight? Perhaps they are masturbating? She imagines their frenzied hands—and her clitoris rises and hardens, sending urgent messages all the way up to her throbbing temples. . . .
Mario’s voice gives her a start.
“Do you ever stroke yourself in front of your servants?” he wants to know.
“Oh, sure.”
But in actual fact only Ea is her mute confidante when Emmanuelle makes love to herself in the mornings, in her bed or in the shower, or, after lunch, on the chaise-longue, while reading or listening to records. Her other domestics—as far as she knows, at least—are lacking in such curiosity.
“Well then,” her visitor goes on, “be generous, call your houseboy. Yes, right now. He’s so handsome!”
Emmanuelle feels her heart sink. No, that really goes too far! Mario must understand. . . . It would seem, she remarks, that he is making up for time lost! Then, for a moment, she thinks she can hear the “beeps” of fate, measuring her guilt. That’s one, and there goes another: how many minutes of eternity have already been entered on her debit side? Then she realizes she will, sooner or later, act according to his predictions (because he is not giving her any orders, but simply reading her own wishes, only half a step ahead of her own consciousness); so what is the use procrastinating? Without even a sigh, she calls out the boy’s name, not very audibly at first, then loudly.
The servant appears, his eyes and gait like those of a jungle cat. Mario motions him closer and makes him kneel right in front of her.
“Do you want him to make you come?” Mario asks.
Emmanuelie bites her lip; she wants to warn Mario that the young man understands French. But Mario has already started talking to him, in a language she has never heard before. The boy replies, muttering under his breath, his eyes downcast, and as ill-at-ease, it seems, as Emmanuelle herself. Mario sounds like a lecturer—the tone is familiar! How nice it sounds, she thinks, a little lesson in erotology, in demotic Thai. . . . She finds it amusing, despite the awkwardness of the situation. Nevertheless she is startled to the point of bounding off the wall when Mario—without warning—guides the boy’s hand to her vulva, showing him what needs to be done, preventing him from undoing his own clothes, and correcting his initial fumbling. But it doesn’t take the boy’s fingers more than a moment or two to acquire the right strokes, and Mario lets them pursue their task without his assistance.
“He confessed to me that he has the hots for you,” says Mario. “Surely it is cruel to let him suffer?”
Emmanuelle does not reply, and he goes on to inquire:
“Or do you feel that would be stooping too low?”
“Certainly not!” Emmanuelle says, indignantly, suddenly furious in the midst of all the titillation and confusion, forcing herself to add: “A man is a man!”
“Well, this one hungers and thirsts for your breasts and belly, your mouth, your cunt—he’s yearning to touch your body and to enter it. From the day you arrived he’s been dreaming of the moment when he would finally dare to seduce you. But isn’t it up to you, in this case as in all others, to glory in your own initiative, your own forwardness? What would you have thought if this youngster had proven himself to be more of a conqueror than yourself?”
And then, in what sounds like a non sequitur, he suggests:
“Think about Anna Maria!”
She tries to do so, closing her eyes, but is instantly taken unawares by the memory of Bee. Perhaps that is due to the pervasive fragrance of roses.
She remembers the letter she had been writing to her lost friend, the day before. Bits and pieces of it come back to her—words she knows to be useless, Bee will never get to see them:
“What I want to tell you is simply that the sun over Siam has risen once again, only for you, and for me. The sun, whose rays caress you the very moment after they have roused me from sleep: the sun, like a bell ringer, happy in his passion for punctuality. And there we are, close enough to be shared by him, the god of the sky.
“I am reaching out to you, opening, unfolding there, behind so many walls—you, a dream, teeming with your very absence. I press myself against you, sweet sleeping beauty quite frosted over with sleep, and my breath makes your lips glisten.
“With my fingers, I give you eyes to see with, I smooth your hair and return their springy liveliness to your silken legs; I uncover your face, removing its enameled mask. I have made you yourself again.
“I arrange the motions of my life according to the flickerings of your image on the screen of memory, more faithful than the seasons. I turn around you from the first light of dawn, from the ends of space, moving with the hours on the sundial; and yet, I am a planet lacking its sun.
“And from tree to tree I advance toward you, who are my fountain in that clearing where I know I shall arrive to rest. Stretching out beside you I’ll bend down to see my own face, to refresh it with your live water, dear spring, after my long march! I’ll quench my thirst with you, yet you will remain on my lips forever. In the mornings you’ll wash me clean of my nights; in the evenings, you’ll provide the sweetest oblivion from the events of the day.
“I extend to you the promise of a dark bridge, separating, yet uniting us every night, across the waters of oblivion. . . .”
In her mind there is a great parade of desires, of voluptuousness, with cheers and ovations. . . . And now, never mind whose hand it is, caressing her clit as she lies there, spread-eagled, on the granite parapet—never mind whose eyes are contemplating her, whose ears are eavesdropping on her, from behind the shelter of their Venetian blinds: all she feels is sheer pride.
Then Emmanuelle and Mario are back in the living room.
“How would you like your tea?” she asks, “with eight lumps of sugar, or with fourteen? Or would you like a yard of it?”*
* See Emmanuelle I, “The Lesson of Man.”
“If you don’t mind,” he says, “I know of no sweeter drink than this.”
He looks at her, calmly.
“Come and sit next to me,” he says.
She sits down, wants to fondle him. He doesn’t let her, but she stays there, right next to him, happy to watch him and eager to learn more. Who, better than Mario, knows what must be done in order to exalt oneself? The glorious pleasure that she feels in her own body at this very moment . . . is it any different, she wonders, from the pleasure known by men? Why would it be? An imagined cock swells and throbs at the base of her belly, hardens, blooms between her fingers. She almost swoons in following in her mind’s eye the semen which, under the stimulation of a virile hand, climbs the entire length of the shaft and prepares to explode within and over her. Pressed against this other body, in whom she loves at this instant her own sex most, she comes at the same time as he, emptying herself of nights and nights of unspent semen.
Their lips half open. What liqueur, his or hers, will be able to slake their thirst?
Mario hands her a long-stemmed crystal glass into which he has shot. Emmanuelle takes long, sweet, greedy gulps, followed by Mario, both enamored of a body more than by itself alone consumed. Oh, enjoyable communion! The discovery of self in the substance come out of another. . . !
“Now, be woman!” Mario commands.
She protests. She wishes to be a man for him, exactly as she is a woman to women. She tells him this, and asks him if he would like to make love to her the way he makes love to boys.
“What boy could ever caress himself in front of me the way a woman can—no matter how eager to please he’d be?” Mario says. “Don’t offer me anything I can have elsewhere.”
Emmanuelle does not argue with him, but takes off her sweater, smiling at her own superb nudity. Her hands slide all over this naked body that she loves, moving up to her breasts, cupping and bouncing them, twiddling their nipples, sensitizing them until they stand out like twin clits; then she lets them go, moves her hands along her flanks as if to calm herself down, slides them over her buttocks, back up into the armpits, where they brush against her breasts again, and she resumes her fondling of them, as if to say, “Thank you for being so patient”. . . .
Her lips move, searching for other lips, or nipples, or genitals. But now her hand arrives at her own crotch, and her fingers chance to touch a minute opening, a tiny little pinprick in a cushion of rosy flesh. The fingertips start turning around this tiny center, titillating it, squeezing it without respite, inflaming it with little slaps and tremors and almost imperceptible grazings of her fingernails.
With her eyes closed now, her buttocks taut, her legs describing a great letter V, planted firmly on her bare feet, she looks the picture of an amazing crucifixion, painted in the black, ocher, and pink of the falling dusk.
Her own caresses overwhelm her, drawing forth tears of joy, little moans: she is weeping at her own pleasure and gathering new strength from this delicious mortification. In vain she tries to prolong this state of suspension, to allow a period of grace to that part of herself in which she feels herself totally immersed: but she can’t do it, she has to go on, right to the end, right to that limit she feels to be the ultimate one, every time, not to be surpassed, not even attained again. . . .
Her hand curves like a mussel shell around her vulva, as if to protect it, to contain its violence, as the torrents of pleasure sweep through Emmanuelle, as heaven and earth are rent asunder, and she herself is flung, like a great naked bird, against the chest of her watcher.
Mario takes her hands in his own, and she no longer knows, now, whether she owes this incredible sense of happiness to herself or to him. . . .
But then he disengages himself and places her flat stomach on the silk-covered seat, her face rubbing against the slightly rough surface of the cover. Her pitch-black mane tumbles over her shoulders, tresses reaching down past the small of her back. Her buttocks still twitch in little spasms.
“Actually, I came as a royal messenger,” Mario says. “So it’s time now for me to accomplish my mission.”
Then he emotes, in a tone of voice suited to the formality of the occasion:
“His Most Serene Highness, the Prince Orme Séna Orméaséna, requests the honor of your presence at a soirée he is giving the day after tomorrow at his palace of Maligâth. If you accept the invitation, I shall be glad to escort you there.”
“Do I know this Prince?” Emmanuelle asks, trying to sound interested. She is still in the drowsy throes of aftermath.
“He has not yet been introduced to you, and that is exactly the reason why he has not taken the liberty of delivering this invitation in person. In any case, I told him I thought I would be able to persuade you to accept.”
“What about Jean?”
“Your husband? He is not expected to come with you.”
“But, well . . .”
Mario does not let her go on:
“Darling, I mustn’t let you remain ignorant of what kind of occasion it is that you have been invited to attend. There will be much to eat, much to drink. Music and dancing. But, first and foremost, it will be an opportunity for you to offer your body to all those present whom you find worthy of receiving this honor. And your accomplishments there will help you in gaining further insight into your powers—provided that your pursuit of these studies, as I have no doubt it will, matches your native talent for them.”
“To put it more plainly, it’s an orgy you want to drag me to?”
“That word ‘orgy’ displeases me, with its mundane connotations of free-for-all and slobber: I would rather think of it as a celebration of bodily joys. You should also know that unless you yourself feel an urge to experience it, no one will commit any violence against you whatsoever. At the risk of offending certain schools of thought, our host prefers his female guests to act purely out of their own free will in their erotic pursuits.”
Emmanuelle thinks it over for a couple of seconds.
“And after such a night, I guess I’d be closer to your ideal, wouldn’t I?”
Before Mario can answer she goes on:
“Well, I’m ready to give it a try.”
Nevertheless, there are certain misgivings.
“What am I going to tell Jean?”
“I would imagine you’d rather not tell him anything.”
“But he isn’t going to let me run around every night without worrying about where I’m going and what I’m doing. . . .”
“Well, he’ll find out, sooner or later.”
“And what then?”
“Well, then you’ll know whether you were deceiving yourself or not.”
“Me? Deceiving myself? About what?”
“About his love for you.”
“But I’ve never doubted it!”
“But as I’ve had occasion to tell you, love is . . .”
Emmanuelle remembered the theses delivered by Mario in his house surrounded by dark waters. She did not feel unintermittently certain about their absolute validity.
“Well, put it to the test!” Mario proposed.
“And what if I then find out that Jean does not love me in the way you have in mind?”
“Why, then you’ll be a two-time loser in matters of intelligence as well as in those of love.”
“I do love him,” she thought, out loud. “I don’t want to lose Jean, nor do I want him to lose me.”
“So you’d prefer to call a halt to everything, right now?”
“No, I’m not sure I could even do that,” she admitted. “It’s not just Jean and myself that I want—I want more.”
“You aren’t, and you’ll never be, a mere chattel, a fenced-in piece of territory. You have no choice: you have to be a real person to your husband.”
“And for the other men that get to make love to me, what will I be to them?”
“First of all you should think about what they’ll be to you: then you’ll know what you’ll be to them. Surely, you don’t believe they’re all that different from you?”
“I wish they weren’t.”
“When you give yourself to them, is your own private pleasure all you have in mind?”
“No, I really love it when I can make others come.”
“How could men’s desire for you in any way restrict your freedom? Does it offend you?”
“I’m happy when they want me.”
“Does your happiness cease when they ask you to fulfill that desire?”
“You ought to know the answer to that.”
“It’s exactly to those men who put that demand on you that you have to give yourself! Because they won’t know that you are there, that you are there for them—until the very moment they can stop being afraid of you. Only then will your wish be granted; and you and your lovers be as one, indistinguishable from one another. That is what they themselves are hoping for, without even knowing it, and what they have been hoping for since the beginning of time!”
“And so, I shouldn’t deceive anyone?”
“Not anyone. No man will make any sense to you unless he’s inside you.”
She smiles. He goes on:
“And as your own consciousness depends on that of all humans . . .”
For a moment, Emmanuelle remains lost in thought. Then, she asks a final question:
“And what if I should become . . . pregnant? I wouldn’t even know who sired the child!”
Mario reassures her:
“You certainly wouldn’t. Again, you’ll have to comprehend the true import of that.”
Emmanuelle wasn’t about to tell Mario, but she didn’t really find that perspective so difficult to integrate. Until the time when Jean had left her alone in Paris, he and she had been in agreement that they did not want any offspring. However, from the day of her arrival in Bangkok she had taken no precautions whatsoever. Nor had she taken any in the plane over, for that matter, nor when she was being fucked by the sam-lo. It was a strange thing: she couldn’t feel any grave apprehension at the thought that one day she might have to tell Jean that she was about to give birth to another man’s child. Without being able to explain it to herself, she felt certain that he would receive such news with understanding, as an event in its own right.
“Well, Christopher, how do you like it here?” she says, later that same day. “Jean, how is it you’re not introducing your friend to some pretty Siamese girls? Why don’t you take him out on the town to have some fun?”
“Good idea,” says Jean. “Let’s go to see one of those Chinese striptease shows.”
“Oh, no! What a revolting notion!” Christopher exclaims.
This manifestation of human concern, in the young man, delights Emmanuelle:
“How come Christopher is such a virtuous young man?” she asks.
“Listen, he isn’t! He’s just being a hypocrite.”
The young Englishman merely groans. His friend insists:
“You should see him when he gets close to little girls.”
“Little girls!” Emmanuelle gasps. “How little?”
“Well, like that.”
Jean’s palm indicates about three feet from the floor. His wife pouts:
“Too small, I should say.”
Christopher decides to join in their hearty laughter.
After dinner they start out through the labyrinth of the native quarter, and finally arrive at a theater that looks like a giant supermarket. Hundreds of spectators, shining with sweat and excitement, milling about, most of them on their feet, facing a catwalk paraded by lines of naked female teenagers. Well, not quite naked, as the newcomers find out as soon as they install themselves in the metal folding chairs (empty because they are so expensive) which they are offered, right in the front row: a length of braid running across and around the girls’ buttocks ends in a playing-card-sized piece of some black, pliable material, dangling before that strategic opening. With two fingers at a time, the performers are flicking this important accessory up and down, in time to the music, to uncover momentarily their downy abdomens—such fugitive revelations being greeted with yells of delight from the audience. This goes on for at least a half-hour, without any variation, without any slackening of the aficionados’ enthusiasm. The three European visitors distract themselves by discussing the young ladies’ respective charms.
Emmanuelle declares her preference for “the big one with no tits.” No one seconds her in that opinion. Finally Jean and Emmanuelle find a great deal of common ground in their taste for the long and deep crack, framed by such sweet and succulent-looking lips, the girl right in front of them keeps flashing.
“Well, I say, until now I never heard a married couple chatting away about such matters,” says Christopher, not too seriously, yet quite obviously amazed.
To scandalize him further, Emmanuelle says, with a sigh: “Oh boy, could I dig making love to her . . . !”
She’s trying to test my modesty, he thinks. I’ll show her! Emmanuelle’s legs, their skin naked against his, excite him a good deal more than the Oriental charms up there.
“As for me,” he says, “I’d rather do that with you.”
Hope she realizes I’m kidding, he says to himself: hope she doesn’t think I’ve gone too far. . . .
“Christopher’s learning fast,” says Jean.
The Britisher is breathing quite heavily now. He hadn’t been aware of the possibility of his voice carrying through all the brouhaha of the nightclub to Jean’s ears. He feels stupid, contrite, miserable.
All of a sudden, Emmanuelle experiences a crazy urge to give herself to him. “I’ll do it, and I’ll do it tonight,” she vows silently. And before she can arrest the impulse, she leans toward her husband and whispers into his ear, caressingly:
“Darling, listen! Can I make it with Christopher?”
“Yes,” says Jean.
She squeeezes his arm, passionately, and leans over to kiss him, feeling happier than she’s ever felt since she first fell in love with him.