Emmanuelle (15 page)

Thou didst create clay and I made the cup,

Thou didst create the deserts, mountains, and forests,

I produced the orchards, gardens, and groves;

It is I who turn stone into a mirror,

And it is I who turn poison into an antidote.

—Mohammed Iqbal

Mario seated Emmanuelle on the sofa covered with red leather as supple as satin, between the Japanese lamps. A houseboy, wearing only a pair of tight, bright blue shorts that were open to expose his thighs, brought in a tray of glasses and knelt to set it down on the long, narrow table, covered with leather.

Mario’s house was made of logs, overhanging a shimmering black canal. With only one floor, it looked like a hunting lodge from the outside. The luxury of its interior decor was all the more startling when one entered. One whole side of the drawing room opened onto the
khlong
. From where she was sitting, Emmanuelle could see boats made of bark, laden with sweet beverages, durians, coconuts, and lengths of bamboo filled with cooked rice gliding past the islets of vines and leaves that were drifting with the current. The man or the woman who stood straining over the single oar at the stern, swinging one foot, would glance placidly into the drawing room before melting away in the night. From the gable of a nearby temple, a little brass bell whose clappers, stirred by the wind, had the shape of a
bodhi
fig leaf, was tinkling in two notes, one high, the other low, as though wounded. In the distance, a gong was calling the Buddhist priests to sleep. A woman’s voice began singing a shrill lullaby at a child’s bedside.

“A friend will soon be here,” said Mario.

His softened voice was in harmony with the shadows of Buddhist figures cast on the wall by the laconic light of the lamps. Emmanuelle felt a kind of physical apprehension, so much so that she gulped down half a glass of the strong cocktail that the houseboy had served her. But the shock of the alcohol was not enough to loosen the knot that had formed inside her. She rebuked herself for that shapeless fear, and tried to break the absurd enchantment.

“Do I know him?” she asked.

Only after she had spoken did she feel disappointment— so Mario didn’t even care about being alone with her! She had thought he wanted to have her at his mercy, he had refused to let her bring her husband, and now he had invited someone else, a chaperon!

“No,” he answered. “I met him only two days ago myself, at a social gathering. He’s English. An engaging personality. And what amazing skin! The sun of this country has given him an even, toasted complexion . . . how shall I say? . . . a color that smells good. You’ll like him.”

Jealousy and humiliation clawed at Emmanuelle’s heart. Mario spoke to her of that man with a greediness that made him pause before each word, apparently able to make his choice only after an inner debate. She imagined him with a tray in his hand, leaning over the display in a pastry shop. What doubt could she now have about his inclinations? Ariane had been right to warn her! At the same time, however, she had the disconcerting impression that his praise of his awaited guest’s merits was not only for his own pleasure, but that it was also meant for her.

She was at a loss. If Mario wanted to take her, she had no objection. She was expecting it. That was why she had come, determined to go through with that misconduct to please Marie-Anne—or simply because the temptation was stronger than she was willing to admit, and the certainty of yielding to it gave her a pleasure as physical as the one she would soon feel in unfastening her dress herself, opening her legs, feeling a body whose touch and warmth had been unknown to her until now, entering her either all at once, in a delectable rape, or slowly, inch by inch, then withdrawing, leaving her waiting, open, dependent, supplicating, uncertain, and moist—what sweet suspense!—and returning, still as miraculously hard, swollen, and sharp as before, imperiously caressing the inside of her sex, voluptuously emptying itself to the last drop in her, not leaving her until she was seeded, until she was a field that had been dug, plowed, irrigated, appropriated . . . She bit her lips. She was ready. She loved that possession of her flesh. She desired it. But she wanted to be spared a complicated game—the idea of it tired her in advance. She should have been wary of the Italian spirit!

She was on the verge of saying to Mario, “You’re right to take advantage of any opportunities that arise, but be content with the woman I am. Make love with me, then send me away to let me sleep beside my husband. When I’m gone, you can amuse yourself with your Englishman in any way you please.” But she imagined how embarrassed she would be if he then looked at her with that expression of distant courtesy—of disdain—that she had already seen, and answered, “I’m afraid you have some mistaken ideas, my dear. I like you, of course, I like you a great deal, but . . .”

Mario’s voice, with the very tone she had attributed to it in her thoughts, interrupted her imaginary scene.

“I want you to show as much of your legs as possible. Quentin will sit on that ottoman. Will you please turn in that direction, so he’ll be facing your knees and can look into the shadows of your skirt?”

She felt bewildered. He put his hand on the bare skin of her shoulder, far enough forward to let his fingertips press the curve of her breast. He gently made her turn to the right while, with his other hand, he delicately took hold of her skirt and arranged it diagonally, so that it uncovered her legs unevenly, the left side up to the middle of the thigh, the right side almost to the groin.

“No, don’t cross them,” he said. “That’s perfect. And whatever you do, don’t move. Here he is.” Mario’s hand withdrew. She felt it slipping away from her as a wave leaves the beach.

He installed his guest on the ottoman, at the same time giving Emmanuelle a smile of encouragement, like a kindly examiner reassuring a frightened schoolgirl. But it was the Englishman who seemed almost intimidated. “He’s not even looking at my legs,” thought Emmanuelle, with less resentment than vindictive joy over the failure of Mario’s machinations. It served him right! Quentin now seemed to her more an ally than an enemy. She admitted that he was rather pleasant to look at. It was true, she realized, he was quite handsome. And she had never seen anyone who looked less like a homosexual!

He was apparently incapable, unfortunately, of speaking a single word of French. “That seems to be my fate,” Emmanuelle told herself ironically. “I’m doomed to meet only globetrotters who have no gift for foreign tongues.” The ambiguity of the word “tongues” secretly amused her and goaded her to lascivious thoughts. She tried to imagine the sensations she would feel if Quentin’s tongue were seeking hers, then descending to her belly. She pictured it penetrating her. Then she brought herself back to reality and made a heroic effort to use the few English phrases she had learned during her three weeks in Bangkok, but it did not take her far. Quentin, nevertheless, seemed delighted.

Mario obviously did not care to act as an interpreter. He mixed drinks and gave his servant explanations in a modulated language in which Emmanuelle did not recognize the inflections and sonorities of Thai, to which her ear was becoming accustomed. Finally he sat down in front of her, on the rug. He was three-quarters turned away from her, facing Quentin. They talked in English. Now and then Quentin looked at her and tried to include her in the conversation. After a time she decided that this had gone on long enough.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Mario raised one eyebrow in surprise and replied, “It doesn’t matter.”

Then, before she had time to object to his impertinence, he leaped to his feet, sat down beside her, put his arm around her waist, made her lean back a little, and cried out to Quentin, with an enthusiasm and warmth that left her stupefied,
“Non è bella, caro?”

He held her in that unbalanced position that forced her to raise her legs and—she realized, this time with a touch of amusement—uncover them more. He teased her lips with his fingers, then solemnly pulled down the top of her dress. First he bared one of her shoulders and her upper arm, then the tip of a breast. He contemplated it, rounding his lips. “She’s really beautiful, isn’t she?”

The Englishman nodded. Mario covered her breast. “Do you like her legs?” he asked in French. Quentin’s only answer was to squint his eyes. Mario insisted: “They’re
very
beautiful! And above all, they’re pure organs of erotic pleasure, from hip to toe.” He ran his fingertips along the lines of her golden thighs. “It’s perfectly clear that their function is not to walk.” He leaned over her. “I’d like you to give your legs to Quentin. Are you willing?”

She did not understand very well what he meant and her head was spinning a little. But she did not want to appear to back down, no matter what was asked of her. She decided to remain impassive. This seemed to satisfy him.

His hand raised her skirt again, but much higher. Because of its tightness, he had to lift her with his free arm to uncover the top of her thighs and lower belly entirely. That evening, for the first time since she had come to Bangkok, she was wearing stockings, in spite of the heat. In the diamond-shaped space marked off by her garter belt and the folds of her groin, her black panties, transparent as tulle, sedately held her silky curls in order.

“Come,” said Mario, “take them.”

She saw Quentin inch toward her. A hand caressed her ankles, then two. Then one again, while the other rose along one of her calves, then along the other, lingering in the hollows of her knees, at the beginnings of her thighs, finally moving around them and remaining there, as though awed by all the space that was offered beyond that last refuge of decency.

The other hand came to the assistance of the first and joined it to encircle her thighs, thin enough near her knees to fit almost entirely into the ring of fingers that was pressing them against each other.

Next, the two hands advanced together, first on the sides of her thighs, then along their tops, then beneath them, until they touched her buttocks. There they firmly pushed her legs apart so that they could rub their inner surfaces, so sensitive that she felt her lips swelling.

Mario was looking at her. But she did not see him. When she opened her eyes and tried to read in his what he was expecting of her, he merely smiled without letting her discern anything. Then, as much out of defiance as because she was avid for pleasure, she raised her skirt, already rolled up, still higher, took hold of her elastic panties, and pushed them down. The Englishman’s hands instantly became bolder and more obliging; they helped her slip out of her panties and pulled them completely off.

Almost immediately Mario’s voice, still deeper and softer than before, made Emmanuelle start. He was speaking in English. After a few sentences he translated for her. “You mustn’t grant everything to the same person,” he said in the tone of someone teaching a difficult truth. “Quentin has had your legs; let him be satisfied with that, for the moment. Keep the rest of your body for others, on another occasion. One part of yourself to each man; play at first giving yourself bit by bit.”

Emmanuelle did not dare to cry out, “But what do
you
want? Which part of me tempts you?” She wondered, with a touch of derision, whether the breast he had briefly touched was enough for him. For a second she hated him. But he stood up, cheerful and brisk, clapped his hands, and said, “Shall we have dinner now? Come,
cara
! I want you to taste some dishes that drive the body wild.”

He picked her up from the sofa, with one arm under her shoulders and the other under her legs, which were still uncovered and seemed even longer from being thus suspended, sculpted in shadow and relief by the uneven light of the paper lamps. When he set her on her feet, her black skirt fell back down. She gracefully leaned to one side to smooth it out. She looked at a thin patch of dark nylon on the rug and did not know what to do. Mario deftly picked it up with his fingertips and pressed it to his lips.

“‘Breaking with real things is nothing, but with memories! . . .’” he declaimed. “‘The heart is broken by separation from dreams, so little reality is there in Man.’”

Then he slipped the perfumed panties into the breast pocket of his raw silk jacket. He took Emmanuelle, disconcerted, by the hand and led her to the little round table around which had been placed three high-backed old wooden chairs in quasi-medieval style.

She could not bring herself to look at Quentin. In spite of herself, however, she now enjoyed the strangeness of the experience and was beginning to forget her grievances against Mario. She even told herself, after thinking it over, that he had no doubt been right to prevent her from abandoning herself to that handsome young stranger, to whom she felt indifferent. After all, she was not going to open her body to every man who put his hand on her knee. It was already enough that she had behaved that way on the plane. With Mario, obviously, it was different . . . She agreed that there was nothing outrageous in a married woman’s letting herself be shared by a husband and a lover. And now that Marie-Anne had put the idea into her head, she really wanted to have a lover. But only one! And she wanted that lover to be Mario . . . It suddenly occurred to her that, no matter what he claimed, he might have made her refuse herself to Quentin because he wanted to keep her for himself. This hypothesis brought back her good humor.