curiously enough, the ceiling. Exotic plants, suspended from shelves and metal stands, spread a delicate perfume of wet earth and heavy flowers throughout the the room. The bath tub, carved out of a single piece of dark marble, and held up by sphynx-like feet, is positively enormous.
The girl runs the water, pouring in perfumed oil that rises in bubbles, the strong fragrance of which blends easily with that of the green plants across the room. The perfume rising through the steam now obscuring the mirrors transports her back to that sense of dizziness she had experienced on the train, like feeling slightly drunk on an empty stomach.
The maid comes towards her, unbuttons her shirt, unhooks her bra and then the skirt. She does not remark on the fact she is wearing no knickers. The young woman allows her to do so, suddenly assaulted by tiredness, or at any rate using the tiredness as an excuse to surrender to whatever is about to happen to her.
In the water, it feels to her as if she is swimming in the immensity of the tub. Above her, she sees the shrouded reflection of a young blonde woman in the misted-up mirror, her skin ever so pale, like a white mummy floating inside a green, marble coffin, the blue grey of her eyes lost in the distance. But the steam rises and finally wipes out this lazy landscape of curves.
The maid allows her for a long period to soak in all the fragrances that the heat is now breaking up. Finally, she comes back and hands her a Japanese robe, pale green, embroidered with birds of paradise.
“Do you want me to give you a massage?” she asks. “The bath will wash the journey away, and the massage will wash the bath away. After, I shall apply your make-up. The Commander has given me very precise instructions.”
She lets herself go, agile fingers skimming across her skin with exquisite softness, slowly untwisting her nerves, polishing her muscles, effectively providing her with strength again after her energy has been sapped by the bath. The maid has her lie down over a folding table once she has slipped out of the robe. First, on her stomach, she is massaged from her neck down to her heels unavoidably feeling something stirring inside her when the long, brown fingers knead her arse and thighs. But she’d rather believe it’s just a feeling of comfort. She almost falls asleep anyway, listening to the gurgling sounds of the emptying bath.
She is then turned round. Above her, the mirror is clearing up.
The young Creole girl is working her shoulders, the birth of her neck, grazing her breasts whose tips are hardening, not that she notices as her hands lower themselves towards her midriff, before moving back to polish her nipples from time to time. Her brown hands make the extreme winter pallor of her blonde skin appear almost indecent.
The young woman looks at herself in the ceiling mirror, and from her perspective, the mulatto girl massaging her appears closer to her than she in fact is, as if it were her mouth, her lips massaging her and not her fingers. But very soon, it is actually her darker lips that are now attaching themselves to her taut nipples, licking then sucking on her hard tips, racing across her tremulous skin, her pretty
The young maid pulls her body down towards the edge of the table, both her legs now winging over the sides, the indefatigable tongue squirming around her red-hot button, plunging down into her wet vagina, tip-toeing across her anus and delicately forcing it open – she has never had the courage to tell any of her previous lovers how much she likes to be sodomised by a hard, burning tongue, all this while her long bronzed fingers keep on playing with her breasts. Finally she comes, no longer able to restrain her voice, flooding the mulatto girl’s face with her juices. The maid rises, wiping her mouth, her chin, her nose with a towel and, curiously enough, smiles not at her but towards the mirror on the ceiling. The thought that someone has just witnessed the whole scene through a one-way mirror dawns on her with absolute certainty. What other traps are to follow? She slides off the massage table, pulls the young maid by her hair as she was doing earlier, and forces her to kneel before her and presses her face against her cunt, the heavy-lipped and violent mouth against her small blonde bush.
“Drink,” she says.
And she slowly pees into the open, willing mouth that doesn’t miss a single drop, still watching the ceiling as she does so, now smiling at the mirror, pleased to be conveying in such a way to the master of the house that by defiling his slave, she is resisting his will.
She is then made up, slowly, a bit too gaudily to her taste. She is then given a long evening dress, a glossy couture piece with classical lines that Madame Grey would have much appreciated. Once inside the formal dress, she feels like a marble statue sandwiched inside a skin of blackness, the exquisite pallor of her skin enhanced by the night black of the material.
No underwear or lingerie underneath the dramatic dress. The silk adheres to her breasts, her arse and her stomach; the sudden crispness of the wrap awakens her nipples.
“You are beautiful,” says the young mulatto girl. “I’m happy the Commander has brought you here.”
Once again the stairs. The maid guides her from one door to another. She hears a rumour of conversation; she knows that very soon she will be told where she is. She is both curious and worried and slows her steps.
The mulatto girl swings the door open and invites her in.
First, it’s the intense light. There are four or five men in dinner jackets and six or seven elegantly attired women; they all briefly fall silent and watch her walk towards them. Meanwhile the grey-haired stranger moves in her direction, takes her by the hand and smiles, putting her at ease.
“You are quite ravishing,” he says. And truly looks as if he believes it.
She smiles back, still cautiously, but holds on to him, surrounded as she is by all these unknown faces.
“Friends,” he says, with a semi-circular gesture of his hand. “All charming people, as you will see.”
Why does he not introduce her to anyone? Why isn’t she even provided with a name, a surname?
Right then a servant attired in quite incongruous Louis XV style calls out loudly that food is served and they all march on into the immense dining room, where a very long rectangular-shaped table dominates the proceedings.
The plates are exquisitely sober, the silver knives and forks and crystal glasses shine wildly beneath the glow of the candelabras.
The man is at the top of the table and indicates she should sit to his left. Facing her is a very beautiful woman whose splendour has seen better days, a thousand wrinkles smiling, a thousand small pains betraying her long and cruel past history.
On her left is the the youngest man in the room; he is younger than her, his face and skin barely out of teenagehood, radiant, almost effeminate. He is all smiles and his conversation artfully banal.
The meal offers all that Provence can supply, from the most refined to the most colourful dish. Her taste buds sing along. Stylish servants see that their glasses are never empty and provide the right wine for each course: a sublime Cassis white followed by a racy Gigondas from the Aix vineyards, and soon champagne, small bubbles adhering under her gaze to the shape of the cut glasses. Very soon, she experiences a new kind of drunkenness, like an aggravated echo of her dizziness on the train. The feeling surrounds her like a scarf; she feels she is burning, her legs are like cotton wool, her breath short. Her breasts rub anxiously against the silk of the dress, her tips harden again under the black material, becoming quite visible. She has the impression that all present are watching her, evaluating her, judging her, as if the woman facing her, eating her strawberries and drinking her champagne is already promising her a whole set of caresses and indulgences. She feels as if her stomach is incandescent, a combination of fire and water, and the wide smile of the woman in front of her indicates she is aware of it, that she recognizes the torment inside her body, that behind the combined fragrance of the wines and the food spread across the now crumpled tablecloth, she has caught an early whiff of the purple taste of her inner juices. Right then, a foot deliberately brushes against hers, caressing her ankle, gliding across her leg and the silk sheathing her. She isn’t sure if it is the smiling woman or her attentive host or maybe the gauche young man on her left. The champagne bubbles float upwards to the surface of the crystal glasses, and her eyes are transfixed by the thin rising columns, as if she were the one drowning inside the glass and her oxygen was running out…
When they all rise to make their way to the salon, she stumbles.
