Then, stepping out of her role and speaking for me alone with an expression that I'll never forget, she murmured:
“No.”
XV
Mauricette leaped up and ran to me, overjoyed that I had cut short the scene even at the expense of the drama inherent in it. She neither wished that Charlotte should be the cause of the state I was in, nor that I should fall into an indifferent lassitude for lack of solicitude.
And immediately she thought of another scene, then came out with one of those sentences that seemed to be so natural to Teresa's daughters and which always left me completely stupefied.
“Lili,” she cried. “Stick your tongue into my ass and see if there's any mustard left!”
And while Lili was lifting the panel in her clown costume, she said, “It's terrible how my asshole gets me! But no! Mama did it on purpose to get me hot and I like it. You'll have to cornhole me a dozen times tonight before you deflower me! Well, Lili?”
“Well,” began Lili, “it smells of come, garlic, cocoa, whores, marshmallow, pricks, pussy juice, Spanish fly, dildoe rubber, suppositories, the bottom of a bidet, lipstick, towels, vaseline, starch, musk, bordello shit-houses, and bitcheries I don't even dare mention.”
“That you don't dare mention!” repeated Ricette. “Oh, thanks! Come here and let me give you a slap in the head.”
“Instead of that, how about giving me what I just gave you?” said Lili, approaching without the least fear.
“Look!” said Ricette to me. “Look at her! See if she doesn't know I won't hit her! Clever for her age, isn't she? And the only whore in the family, I tell you! She just gave me one of her famous digs in the ass, and I can still feel it.”
“Sure I did,” said Lili, “but if I were really a whore it would have been worth six sous, as Charlotte said.”
“One, two, three, four, five, six! And paid!” said Ricette, giving her six kisses. “And…”
She struck a wonderful pose: a skinflint of a miser, suddenly trying to be generous. “And, in honor of the occasion, a special prize, entirely free of charge. What I am holding in my hand is mine for the night, but mama had it once in the cunt and Charlotte once in the mouth, while Lili sighed and said she was going to rub her mound to see if she could make the hairs grow.”
“And they're not growing!”
“Therefore, we have the special privilege to present, with the permission of the gentleman here, a little three-part scene in which our special guest, the schoolgirl, will have my lover for a period of time not to exceed one minute and on the condition that she return him intact at the end of that period.”
“Be careful,” said Lili with a straight face. “If he got a hard-on in front of Charlotte without wanting to, with so beautiful a woman as me he'll play hell trying to keep from coming!”
And the game that followed presented to me a frankly negative and therefore rather rare and interesting phenomenon. A thing that proved fascinating because it was entirely foreign to any previous known conception of mine. In other words, these short erotic scenes had as little connection with dramaturgy as with love.
And I describe it here without fear of being repetitious. Please be kind enough 'not to think that I am making up these childish programs. If you can accept my style as not being that of a primer, have the grace also not to think that these dialogues are the fruit of my imagination. I have noted them down because I felt that they were more “little girlish” than “whorish” despite their subject matter and vocabulary: a contrast I found amusing. However, like the drawings of a child, they would lose all their character under the editing pen of another.
Before plunging into it, I warned Ricette that I was once mere in a physical state less marked by ostentation and therefore less willing to be opened to ridicule. So they gave me a little respite in this direction. But not for long.
The scene began with a fortissimo, like a classical symphony.
Without the slightest preparation: “You're just leaving school, little girl?” asked Ricette. “That can't be true. It's seven o'clock. Your mother's going to give you a good scolding.”
“Yes. She already gave me a slap in the chops because I came home with a dildoe in the rear. And one that I didn't even know about.”
Lili's beginnings were always unexpected, but always prepared. Lili always directed the scenes she was in, and, of all the strange things that I saw in that family, the things she did surprised me the least. Ricette, however, was definitely surprised and had to laugh behind her hand before she could continue.
“It's still there? Whose is it?”
“How should I know? There are so many bitches that cornhole me… And since I turn my back to them, I can never recognize them. My mother was squawking all the time I was home: 'What? Not another whore of a whore who forgot her prick in your ass!' Was it you, miss?”
“Me? Me the bitch who cornholed you? Me the whore of a whore who…”
“Oh, don't get all in a lather. I said to her, 'It was on the stairway, mama.' And she said, 'Good! Go see that lump across the hall and ask if it's hers.' So here I am. I'm being very kind to come to you with it like that.”
“And I'll stick it back inside you! I've never seen such a thing, a kid coming to pay a formal visit with a dildoe in her ass. Any don't you even lick people from the front? I suppose not!”
“No! I haven't met all the different kinds of lesbians yet. Just those who cornhole you from behind and those who wash your face in their come… You fuck more with them than you do with men…”
“What? You mean you've already lost your cherry? At your age?”
“Oh, Christ! What a snob! Do I have to be a virgin to lick your ass? Why did the good God give me two holes if I wasn't supposed to use them?”
“I only use one.”
“That's nothing to brag about.”
Lili never had to look for a reply, and Mauricette, whose glibness had amused us so much before, sensed that she would fare better to quit dialogue for monologue where she shone to greater advantage.
“And if, instead of a dildoe, I give you a living prick?”
“Much better than a dead one,” said Lili calmly. “I try to stick to living ones when possible.”
“Then pay attention! If you want one, you'll have to thank me ahead of time by giving me a jolly little working over while my friend is asleep in the room next door. First of all, kisses on the face, your tongue around my ear, and your teeth in my neck. That's the beginning. Then you suck first my right nipple and then my left nipple until I say enough. After that you let your tongue wander lightly and without wetting anything around my cunt; you chew the lips of my pussy, your tongue then passes underneath and just touches my ass lightly, as if it scarcely dare do anything there, then plunges deeply inside. When it returns, it works over my cherry, seeking out all the little unknown corners and finally it attacks the snatch itself. And when I've finished coming, I'll give you a nice, handsome prick, all warm and hard, to play with.”
“Oh, miss!” said Lili unenthusiastically. “That's worth more than a prick, all that. That's worth fifty francs.”
This reply that sent Teresa off into such gales of laughter proved to me that Ricette was right when she said that Lili had the instinct for her trade. But now it was my turn to play, and I almost missed my entrance.
From her first words, Lili brought us once again back to the subject.
“Good day, sir. Your lady told me that she is really too ugly for you and that for a long time now you would have chucked her out except that she has given you other women as a distraction. Now she's obliged to dress herself up like a clown and send you schoolgirls. You're a little nutty, is that right? Oh, I don't care, mind you! I'm used to it.”
That wasn't in the original script! “The little beast!” muttered Mauricette between her teeth, but Lili continued:
