“No more. I used to be, but how did you know? Did Mauricette tell you?”
“No. It's easy to see. Or hear. Where have you been on the stage?”
Without answering, she lay down next to me on her stomach. I replied a little maliciously:
“You'll tell me tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“Stay here until then.”
“Until tomorrow morning? You want me to?”
She smiled and I thought she was going to accept. I was still a little weak, but she inspired me so that I was almost as ready to go as if I had not just finished. She lay stretched out next to me and said, “What do you want with me from now until tomorrow morning?”
“First to make love.”
“That's not hard.”
“Don't say that. You exasperate me. Why are you staying now, then?”
“Because my little work in the toilet would be ruined if I got up now. And then what would you want?”
“Everything.”
“How many times?”
“Oh, I don't know. With you I don't think I'd be keeping count. However, that shouldn't be hard either.”
Teresa gave me one of those long, silent looks of hers that I had so much difficulty in reading and understanding. And I suddenly felt that this woman who refused to answer any of my questions had suddenly inspired in me the most unexplainable and unexpected confidence, as if the certainty that she now had of being able to attract me could assure her also of my discretion. Or guard any secret if I happened to hear it from lips other than her own.
“Ricette told me that you kept your word to her. Can I tell you a secret? Yes? All right then, I used to live in Marseilles with my three daughters in an apartment. I had to leave because they changed their chief of police. There it is. You understand? Here I can probably stay quite a while without moving; but since I have a daughter with fire in her behind who was come to be cornholed by you the very first day… and her mother after her.”
Upon this, she began to laugh again, first to convince me that her secret really was quite unimportant, and secondly because she wanted to see me in a good humor before she told me the rest of her plans.
From the laugh she passed to caresses, and when she was sure of my state of mind as well as body she posed me a question in such a way that it was also the extraction of a confession.
“You're not enough of a virgin not to know what it's like with a little girl, are you? A real one, without hair, without teats: ever screw one like that?”
“Yes, but not often. Two, maybe four in all. Two real ones; the other two not quite as authentic.”
“Two, that's enough. You know that you don't run it into a kid like you do with a woman; you can only stick it in as far as the head. They can't take any more. You know that?”
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
“Because I'm going to send you my little Lili since you seem to have this mania for fucking. I don't want you knocking me up.”
The patient persons of both sexes that assumed the charge of my education taught me that when at a party, if one should invite a woman to dance and she should reply, “Dance with my daughter.” I should show neither regret, nor pleasure, nor indifference. The situation is very complex.
I knew it, but, completely nude, my polite education was less at my fingertips than usual. And then again I am much like Alexander. I destroy complexities rather than circumventing them.
“I don't think I'd exactly know how to handle myself with her. You'd better give me a lesson.” I said.
She suddenly became a little nervous and turning her head, gave a little laugh.
“You've never even seen what you're asking me for.”
“Show it to me.”
“Not from the front. You cornholed me from the front before, now you can see my pussy from the rear. But you know what I said?”
“And that will be the end?”
“Poor thing! If I stuff your cock into my mouth you'll be something to be pitied. And if I make your balls dance at the end of my tongue… You don't know my tongue, do you? Hold it… There, look!”
Still looking, I tried to take Teresa in a simpler, though not less agreeable manner, but she shut her thighs and held my arm.
“Don't you understand that you can't keep three daughters on a chain like three monkeys on a string? You think if they make love in Marseilles they're not going to do it in Paris? That if I take a lover they won't take six? Listen. You want me? You can have me. But you're going to have all four of us.”
I almost asked, horrified, “Every day?” but held myself in and tried to mask my anxiety with a thankful expression.
“I'm going to send you Lili,” she continued, “because she has to go to bed early and because kids like that are like society women: they get itchy asses in the afternoon. This evening I'll send you Charlotte for the night and tomorrow evening I'll come again. And if that doesn't satisfy you, you can go to the exchange department and get your money back.”
“I'm overwhelmed… Unfortunately, you seem to be getting ready to leave…”
“Not yet. In five minutes when I've kept my promise. But on two conditions. First, no coming. I won't either. Second, I'm not going to show you my beauties because I don't want you sucking them.”
That was all right with me. I would much rather prove my virility than try to compete with lesbians. And this preference becomes an unbreakable rule when the woman has other lovers. Always supple and agile, Teresa flipped around quickly to face the other way on my prone body. She was keeping her promise, all right. And the parts that I now had before my eyes I can only call extraordinary. Each was abnormal in one way or another: a protruding clitoris, great thin delicate lips, as black and red as the petals of an orchid. Within them, the throat of her vagina narrowed suddenly making the lips seem monstrous by comparison, while her anus formed a strange rosette of blackish brown on purple. But all around each one of these objects was the strangest of all her singularities — namely, her hair. Never before had I had a so thoroughly furred woman in my bed. The hair was everywhere: on her stomach, thighs, groin, crossing between her buttocks, mounting all the way up her rump, even climbing to…
Suddenly I could see nothing more. Teresa's tongue had touched my skin. My stung muscles tightened and knotted, and her tongue wandered everywhere, turning, probing, going under…
I shuddered… Teresa raised her head and jumped from the bed.
“Enough for now,” she said.
“You promised to leave me up in the air like this? You'd leave me in such a-state?”
“For Lili. I'm going to get her now. Make her think that you're hot for her. And tomorrow, you and I… all night. Okay?”
There's nothing I hate more than changing partners in mid-fuck. To desire one woman and have to possess another is really odious. So when Teresa had gone I decided that little Miss Lili would have to make me want her on her own, or else do without.
That resolved, I took from my library a heady novel by Henri Bordeaux that I had purchased expressly for the purpose of beating down rebellious erections.
By the seventh line it had achieved its purpose.
III
At the fifteenth line I wag just dropping off to sleep when the doorbell gave a tiny metallic tinkle.
“Who's there?”
A small voice, weak but distinct through the wood, answered, “The child of a whore.”
I hadn't felt like laughing, but that manner of announcing oneself slid easily into my list of short phrases which stand out like peaks in the monotony of existence. I opened the door. A droll little girl, cute, cunning, frank,
