“This is a suit little girls wear when they're completely nude. My mama made it for me working with her…”
“And the thing that hides your sex, miss?”
“Oh! For all the sex I've got, madame, it's hardly worth the trouble bothering to hide it.”
Lili could be good when she had gained a little aplomb. I began to question her also.
“Do you want me to hire you, my dear? As dancer? Singer? Acrobat? What do you know how to do?”
“Suck off the director,” said Lili unhesitatingly.
She was doing well! And in the same tranquil voice, without ever looking for a word, she continued, “As an acrobat I'm the spitting image of my grandmother. Would you like to see the snake-girl number, good sir? With the trick of finding a lesbian in your bed when you get in by yourself?”
“Yes,” said Teresa. “Let's see it.”
“If my mama knew what I was doing,” began Lili. And from there on I thought that she was reciting a role she had learned by heart. I didn't know her well enough at that time to guess that she had made the whole thing up herself from scraps of sentences she had chanced to hear plus the natural gift of a child-comedienne.
She squatted at the foot of the bed, elbows on knees, feet beneath buttocks, and said in a melancholy voice:
“You see here before you the most unhappy girl in the world, the child-martyr the papers have been so full of lately. They didn't dare tell why she is a child-martyr, it's so terrible, but it's because I have a perverted mother, good sirs! God forgive her!”
“You listening?” asked Teresa.
“There are little girls who are beaten, whipped, chained up, martyred, that people slick tacks into and deprive of food, but my case is even worse! Do you know what is forbidden to me until my twenty-first birthday? Ah! Good sirs! No one could ever guess where my mother has inflicted her punishment on me! She forbade me to beat myself off!”
“You'd think it was true!” said Teresa again.
Lili never batted an eye. She continued in the same slow, resigned voice, a child naming her misfortunes without the least hope of consolation. There was almost a modesty in her manner as she related the rest of her tale:
“Sir, I ask you to be my witness. I used to beat myself off like this, like any good child would: one finger in the ass, one finger in the hole, and one finger on the clitoris. I didn't hurt myself, I assure you, but it was no use telling that to mama. Grown-ups never understand anything.”
“Poor thing!” I sympathized.
“And the things they shout at you!.. Mama made me swear that I would never again acquire the deadly vice of masturbation! Imagine a word like that right to my face! And me just a little girl!”
“They allow such things? And you never again took up this terrible habit?”
“No, what could I do?”
“And you didn't commit suicide?”
“No, because I say to hell with it like to hell with my three virginities. Since I can't beat myself off, I suck myself.”
Instinctively, Lili gave this, last answer without the least trace of an accent, keeping the same simple, soft voice. Ten years in the theatre does less for most actresses than ten years of existence had done for Lili. I couldn't help whispering to Teresa, “She should be on the stage!”
“True!” replied Teresa. “She offers to suck the director without even bothering to tell him what she can do. What else can you teach a girl like that?”
But Lili was finishing her monologue, modulating the grossness of her language with an angelic voice.
“So it's entirely my mother's fault if I no longer beat myself off under my nightdress like a model little girl. Instead of that, I spend an hour completely naked, rubbing my behind against my mouth, saying, 'Lili, you're no dummy when you can still suck your own come!' Grown-ups, kind sir, never know what bad advice they give we children because, fortunately, we never listen to them; we only pretend to; but if, once in a while, we do listen, look what happens.”
“Oh, really, Lili!” cried Teresa, gayly scolding.
“You're not here, mama,” replied Lili, immediately taking up her role once again to finish by saying that she could tell no more since her exercise made it rather difficult to talk.
And then she proceeded to do what she had said. She rolled herself into a tiny ball, her shoulders on the bedsheet, her legs open behind her head, her arms crossed on her buttocks. Her mound was touching her chin… and this detail wasn't the only one I was most interested in.
I was amazed at her body, so small already, so slim, so short, so light, become twice as small, reduce itself to almost nothing, as if she were turning herself inside out by going back inside her own little shell.
Lili prolonged the position, and when I wanted to order, “Rest!” Teresa gave a contradictory command.
“Better then than now. Enough for the snatch, stick your tongue into your cunt. Good. And is that all you can do? Can't you go any farther? Is that kid a real whore or not? What about that little rose bud I can see? Better than that, Lili! Your whole tongue into your ass…! Look how she's sticking it in! What a little whore…! That's fine, Lili! Not bad at all! Engaged for the season!”
Lili came up very red in the face and…
All educators will understand what I am going to say: either it should be forbidden to little girl-serpents to engage in saphism on themselves in front of their mothers' lovers, or, if it is permitted, they must be praised for their performances.
Therefore, I was just beginning to offer the young acrobat the compliments that were her due when Teresa interrupted us.
“Go into the bathroom, honey. Close the door, make yourself pretty, brush the hairs on your ass, and come back in when I call you.”
Lili obeyed with good grace. However, the ghost of a curious smile flitted across her face at the words, “Brush the hairs on your ass!” It seemed to me that she was saying to herself, “If I wanted to be bothered to answer that, I could be funnier than she.” But she knew another way to prove that she was not stupid: she said nothing at all.
When the door closed there was a silence. Teresa said nothing, and although I knew that she loved Lili at least maternally if not more, I would have been really naive if I thought she was waiting for me to compliment her on her daughter.
She looked into my eyes.
She let her hand creep across to my flank.
Her thigh to my thigh.
That was all. A minute had been all she had needed to obtain, without touching the desired article directly, the result she sought. More weary of mind than of body, I was slothful enough not to greet the instant success of her remote-control magnetism with a ringing oration. I don't like to submit myself as subject for thaumaturgical scenes; and besides I was beginning to know Teresa: I saw that she wanted more to excite me than to satisfy me.
“I refuse to say another word to you unless you get an erection!” she said unpityingly.”
“You see before you,” I smiled, “the young-man martyr the papers have been so full of lately.”
“Get a hard-on and wait! Do like me. When Lili licks me you'll see if I hold in or not.”
“Is it because of your religion, Madame? Is this staunch resolution the result of a vow?”
With a little growl she quieted me. “I'm getting a little tired of these jokes!” But it was only a threat, for she proceeded to tell me what she was now going to offer in the way of pleasures, what awaited my perseverance, and the role that Lili would play. I won't tell you now what they were, not in order to hide them, but because you will read them on the next page. Besides, Teresa gave me a resume that was a little long for a production of only one act.
I would have liked to have explained to her at this point that I had not had the good fortune to receive at birth a miraculous organ that never wore out, but one susceptible to one of the proofs of human weakness. But she wasn't listening. She cried, “Lili!”
