“My bookkeeping…?”
“Yes! If you know how to count, so do I…! Listen!” she continued, “the money you gave me is really mine, isn't it?”
He sneered:
“Yes, you earned it by the sweat of your thighs…!”
“What's the difference! I'm sick of your opinion and everyone else's! Very well, I've had enough! Yes, I have some money, and let me tell you once and for all: I despise you!”
“But we've spent to many good moments together. Why are you suddenly talking to me like this?”
“Listen, Edward! It's over! I'm through with you! That's clear, isn't it? Understand that and get out! Everything is finished between us and maybe nothing ever started…”
He moved toward-her, his face drawn, his cheeks burning. She looked at him and felt ashamed, if the state of her mind could be called that, ashamed of being the mistress of this human decrepitude.
Now the accountant looked like one of those old, bent, weak little men who have clung to life only through a frightened passion.
“Danielle,” he said in a tremulous voice, “you're not going to abandon me! What will I do without you?”
She burst out laughing cruelly.
“Look at that! Abandonment frightens the gentleman! You bought the pleasure I gave you! You had it! You have to be satisfied! I end the contract between us and send you away!” And she pointed to the door.
He dared to protest! Tears ran down his cheeks. He got on his knees and tried to grab the young woman's dress. His head was shaken with convulsive sobs.
He felt his pleasure escaping him. He was too old to hope for another affair and the money he had put aside during his entire lifetime of working had gone to this slut in such a short time…
“Don't send me away, my little Danielle! Look how unhappy I am! Come kiss me and I'll leave you until you're calmer, then…”
She was exasperated.
“Are you going to get out of here or not?” she cried, pushing him to the door.
He got up, finally realizing that it was over.
He put his shirt on and, without looking at the woman who had stretched out on the bed, he walked down the stairway sighing.
As soon as the old man was gone, Danielle, who was happy with the rapid conclusion which had removed the heavy inert mass that had been tied to her cunt, remembered the pleasures she had felt in the arms of her lovers. Suddenly her apartment seemed empty to her. She felt an uncertain apprehension about her future. Always having to search for a companion, always living in that eternal waiting! But, dear God, for what…?
She got up from the bed, stifled a yawn, and stretched. Then, in her sleepy nudity she walked away from the mirror, but stopped, her eyes wide open, crying an “Oh!” of stupefaction when she saw her body reflected before her.
“That's me,” she said. “Me! That woman who looks so old with the falling breasts and big belly!”
She had an even bigger surprise in store for her when she contemplated her cunt in the mirror. That place which had been caressed by so many fingers, seemed wrinkled, cracked, with the flabby skin that separated the hairs, perhaps trying in a final burst of agony to swallow the voracious mouths that would taste its bitter flavor.
Ten years had passed! Ten long years in which she had taken so much pleasure, in which she had used her body in the most extravagant embraces, and this was the result. She looked at the implacable psyche which seemed to be laughing at her.
The city meant nothing more to her now. She dreamed of leaving it, of going off to sunny countries, joyous horizons.
Oh, to leave this poisoned atmosphere! Not to have to see all the people who are unconscious of their destiny and are insolent and vicious, teaching their children the rigid precepts of enslaving conventions.
“Yes,” she thought, “a little peaceful corner where no one would know who I am. How marvelous it would be to live among simple people!”
And a feeling of nostalgia rose inside her from her distant childhood, the time when her hair floated in the fresh mountain air, when she ran joyously through her native village!
“My poor parents left me the cottage I was born in! They've been dead for two years! But what was wrong with me to give up such a simple and joyous past? It's all those male bastards who spit their venom at me and poisoned me! Oh, if only I had known…”
Yes, if she had known the inanity of everything, she would have stayed in the village with her peers and perhaps she would have been the mother of an admirable family which would have brought happiness and pleasure to one man alone: her husband!
And suddenly Danielle became the little girl she had once been in the memory of flowery fields and seeing the faces of her mother and father. She was carried away by this flood of thoughts and cried a long time.
It felt good to cry and no one seeing her cry like that would have dared to call her a whore. And yet…
“I want to leave without regrets,” she thought several minutes later when she began to rise from her depression.
Without regrets? Could she ever release herself from the indelible imprints left on her by passionate males?
No! It was too late to go back. But she wanted to try this test. Perhaps she would be able to find the serenity she had longed for.
The next day she paid her landlord off and when he asked if she would be gone for long she replied:
“Forever!” Then she took her suitcases and carried them to a taxi. Several curious heads poked out of windows. A neighborhood in a big city has its secret police. All the activities of its inhabitants are known.
“The whore is leaving,” said a young man who had been watching her for a long time without daring to approach her.
“Good riddance,” answered his mother, “one slut less is always nice to see!”
Danielle returned to the village she had left ten years earlier. Everything seemed changed to her. She didn't recognize many of the people. Some had died, others had left the village and gone to the city, hope and tomb of so many country beauties.
She found the cottage she had inherited from her parents in such a state of dilapidation that it hurt her to see it.
As soon as she entered, she went up to her own room. Poor little once-loved room! An odor of dampness came from the walls, from the uncovered bed, from the dusty chairs.
Danielle sat down heavily in a corner, putting her suitcases next to her. She looked around the room and her gaze stopped at a photograph showing her at sixteen.
She was ashamed of that candid face which was no longer hers and she tore it into a thousand pieces.
Then she went to open the windows and saw a vision of paradise in the discovery of the immense fields of wheat, barley, and corn whose frail stems moved gently in the light country breeze.
Farther off, a farmer was seeding his ground, pushing a couple of heavy, massive oxen in front of him. Closer, in a path that she knew so well, a troop of sheep were coming down from the hill to return to the flock. The joyous song of the cock rose, followed almost immediately by a powerful baying.
The thousand sounds of the hills struck her ears, so unaccustomed to these restful noises.
“I should never have left all this,” she thought. “And this is what I've become: a depository for human excrement!”
But boredom won out. A woman like she, accustomed to satisfying her whims, used to men, couldn't remain in such a state of emptiness.
She recognized an old servant who often came to her parents' house and asked her to keep her company.
“I'll pay you, certainly. But you see, if I go on living with my memories, I'll be miserable and perhaps I'll become ill!”
The servant, who had known her as a little girl and who was all alone now, couldn't resist the young woman's charm. She said she would care for her. Danielle gave her a sum of money and had no household worries.
