Suddenly, behind one of the rocks, which were half covered by the silent water, I heard a slight movement. Turning round, I saw a tall, naked girl, sitting up to her bosom in the water, taking a bath; no doubt she reckoned on being alone at that hot period of the day. Her head was turned toward the sea, and she was moving gently up and down, without seeing me.
Nothing could be more surprising than that picture of a beautiful woman in the water, which was as clear as crystal, under a blaze of light. She was a marvellously beautiful woman, tall, and modelled like a statue. She turned round, uttered a cry, and half swimming, half walking, hid herself altogether behind her rock. I knew she must necessarily come out, so I sat down on the beach and waited. Presently, she just showed her head, which was covered with thick black plaits of hair. She had a rather large mouth, with full lips, large, bold eyes, and her skin, which was tanned by the climate, looked like a piece of old, hard, polished ivory, the lovely skin of a white woman tinted by the Negroes’ sun.
She called out to me: “Go away!” and her full voice, which corresponded to her strong build, had a guttural accent. As I did not move, she added: “It is not right of you to stop there, Monsieur.” Her r’s rolled in her mouth like chariot wheels. I did not move, however, and her head disappeared. Ten minutes passed, and then her hair, then her forehead, and then her eyes reappeared, but slowly and prudently, as if she were playing at hide-and-seek, and were looking to see who was near. This time she was furious, and called out: “You will make me catch a chill, for I shall not come out as long as you are there.” Thereupon, I got up and went away, but not without looking round several times. When she thought I was far enough off, she came out of the water. Bending down and turning her back to me, she disappeared in a cavity of the rock, behind a skirt that was hanging up in front of it.
I went back the next day. She was bathing again, but she had a bathing costume and she began to laugh, and showed her white teeth. A week later we were friends, and in another week we were more than that. Her name was Marroca, and she pronounced it as if there were a dozen r’s in it. She was the daughter of Spanish colonists, and had married a Frenchman, whose name was Pontabèze. He was a civil servant, though I never exactly knew what his functions were. I found out that he was always very busy, and I did not care for anything else.
She then altered her bathing hour, and came to my house every day, to take her siesta there. What a siesta! It could hardly be called resting! She was a splendid girl, of a somewhat animal but superb type. Her eyes were always glowing with passion; her half-open mouth, her sharp teeth, and even her smiles, had something ferociously loving about them; and her curious, long rigid breasts, like pointed pears of flesh, and as supple as though a steel spring controlled them, gave her whole body something of the animal, made her a sort of inferior yet magnificent being, a creature destined for unbridled love, and roused in me the idea of those ancient deities who gave expression to their tenderness on the grass and under the trees.
Never was a woman consumed by such insatiable passion. Her ecstatic ardours, and delirious embraces, in which she clenched her teeth, bit, and quivered convulsively, were followed immediately by lassitude as profound as death. But she would suddenly awake in my arms, eager for further kisses, her bosom swelling with desire.
Her mind, however, was as simple as two and two are four, and a sonorous laugh served her instead of thought.
Instinctively proud of her beauty, she hated the slightest covering, and ran and frisked about my house with daring and unconscious immodesty. When she was at last satiated with love, and worn out by her cries and movements, she used to sleep soundly and peacefully by my side on the couch, while the overwhelming heat brought out minute spots of perspiration on her brown skin and brought out from beneath her arms, thrown backwards under her head, and from all the secret corners of her body, that feminine odour which the male loves.
Sometimes she returned in the evening, when her husband was on duty somewhere, and we used to lie on the terrace, scarcely covered by some fine, gauzy, Oriental fabric. When the full bright moon of the tropics lit up the town and the gulf, with its surrounding frame of hills, we saw on all the other terraces a recumbent army of silent phantoms, who would occasionally get up, change their places, and lie down again, in the languorous warmth of the starry night.
In spite of the brightness of African nights, Marroca would insist upon stripping herself almost naked in the clear rays of the moon; she did not trouble herself much about anybody who might see us, and often, in spite of my fears and entreaties, she uttered long, resounding cries, which made the dogs in the distance howl.
One night, when I was sleeping under the starry sky, she came and kneeled down on my carpet, and putting her lips, which curled slightly, close to my face, she said:
“You must come and sleep at my house.”
I did not understand her, and asked:
“What do you mean?”
“Yes, when my husband has gone
