Emmanuelle (24 page)

She was about to add, with sudden rancor, that he had not seemed so disgusted with women while he was caressing her legs, but Mario did not give her time.

“For a man of taste, the love of boys will always have a quality that the love of women has only in exceptional cases—the quality of
abnormality
. It, therefore, fits the definition of a work of art that I recalled to you earlier this evening. For me, making love with a boy is erotic insofar as it’s against nature, as imbeciles rightly proclaim.”

“Are you sure it’s not simply in
your
nature?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I like women. For a long time, going to bed with a man was hard for me to conceive of. Then I made myself listen to reason. I tried it for the first time last year. Needless to say, I was glad I did. As you can see, it took a long time for even
my
mind to develop!”

Emmanuelle was suffering from conflicting emotions. She wondered, in particular, how much of Mario’s allegations she ought to believe. “And since your first experience, have you often practiced that . . . art?”

“I’m always careful to let things keep their rarity.
Bis repetita placent
—as you know, the opposite is true!”

“But,” she insisted, “have you also loved women during the past year?”

He burst out laughing. “What a question! Do I look like a paragon of chastity?”

“Many women?” she wanted to know.

“Not as many, certainly, as the lovers I’d have had if I’d been lucky enough to be a pretty girl.” He added, with a smile of homage to Emmanuelle, “And not as many as the mistresses I’d have had, either!”

This answer did not satisfy her; she became impatient. “Which do you like best?” she asked almost angrily.

Mario stopped. They had reached the place where the clearing gave way to the bridge of planks. He took her by the shoulders and drew her toward him; she thought he was going to kiss her.

“I love what’s
beautiful
!” he said forcefully. “And what’s beautiful is never something that’s already been done and it’s never something easy. It’s something that you make out of life for the first time, with an act of yourself and the act of someone else, and that you throw toward the infinite before it has time to take on its dead form.”

Man and woman—another world in the midst of the created world.

“What’s beautiful is what didn’t exist before you and wouldn’t have existed without you and will never again be in your power when the injustice of death has felled you on this earth that you loved.”

Haughty in their solitary knowledge. Strong in their exemplary designs.

“What’s beautiful is the moment that was nothing and that you have made unforgettable. It’s the person who was nothing and whose singular form you have lifted up against the amorphousness of destiny and the multitude.”

Straying leaders leading astray, abolishing the map of ready-made roads.

“What’s beautiful is to surmount your pieties toward your nation and your time, your fear of shocking them and being censured, so that a new species will be born of your refusal to be like your meek fathers, your faceless mothers, your hypocritical brothers, and your fashion-enslaved sisters.”

They are different—but from what ugliness?

They are deviants—but from what stupidity?

They are strangers—but to what herd?

They are beaten—but for what a revenge!

They are exiled—but to what a future!

“What’s beautiful is to hasten to discover, to make you leap without weighing the dangers or remembering past sweetnesses, it’s doing what you’ve never tried before and will never experience again, because the days and nights of your life will be only those which you’ve enriched with an extraordinary act. And is there anyone in heaven or on earth who can give you back the days and nights you’ve lost?”

The moonlight petrifies them; the statue of Mario holds the image of a woman in its hands.

“What’s beautiful is to try everything and refuse nothing, to be capable of knowing everything. Innumerable bodies in our likeness, men or women, ‘heaven or hell, it matters not . . . to the depths of the unknown to find the new!’”

At the four corners of the crossroads, empty footbridges, straight, unreal, all alike.

“What’s beautiful is what never has the same taste twice and has the taste of nothing else.”

Black hair on bare shoulders between the condottiere’s fingers.

“What’s beautiful is to be the opposite of the gregarious, skittish, lazy animal that you were born.”

The Tartar hero’s burly figure hides the moon.

“What’s beautiful is to refuse to let yourself stop, sit down, fall asleep, or look back.”

The hours of the night have turned, the steel stars revolve out of sight in the brightened sky.

“What’s beautiful is to say no to the temptation that immobilizes you, binds you, or limits you. And to say yes, always yes, however weary you may be, to the temptation that multiplies you and drives you forward and forces you to do more than is sufficient or necessary and more than others are content to do.”

Yellow light from the half-opened door: shadows go in, shadows come out. Night without sleep.

“What’s beautiful is to find a new cause of astonishment every day, a reason for wonder, a pretext for effort and victory over the temptation of the acquired and over the satiation and sadness of age.”

My heart opens to your voice
. . .

“What’s beautiful is to
change,
tirelessly. Because every change is an advance, every permanence a grave. Contentment and resignation are a single despair, and anyone who stops and gives up becoming something else has already opted for death.”

The gong of a temple, muffled by the din of the insects.

“You’re always free, of course, to prefer the peace of tombs, to embalm yourself in the mediocrity of an existence without desires, like a wax virgin in her jeweled shrine.”

Two children emerge from the shadows and walk by, hand in hand.

“But I, who am trying to win you over not to death but to life, I say that it would then be better if you had never been born. Because each human life that becomes frozen is a dead weight on our planet, and hinders the advance of our species.”

They are brother and sister. They are going to make love.

“Know this, Emmanuelle: the future of the earth will be what your body’s power of invention makes it. If your dream should darken and your wings fold, if, by a stroke of misfortune, your curiosity should falter, your insight and perseverence should fail, then that will be the end of Man’s hopes and chances: the future will be eternally like the past.”

The white ballerina between the warrior’s legs.

“Love of loving is what makes you the fiancée of the world. Thus everyone’s fate depends on your passion and courage, and if you forgo the conquest of a single man or a single woman, you, their betrothed mistress, will be enough to make the race forgo the conquest of the light-years and the nebulae.”

Mario’s voice silences the song of the crickets.

“Do you understand? It’s not the pleasure of the moment that I bring you, but the pleasure of the most remote. Happiness is not in the place where you are, it’s in the place you dream of reaching.”

In increasingly numerous arms.

“Ah, yes, Emmanuelle! I don’t quench your thirst with illusions, I burn you with reality!”

At the center of the triangle formed by the stars Alpha of Boötes, Alpha of Libra, and Alpha of Virgo.

“I teach you not that which is most convenient, but that which is most daring.”

“Take me,” said Emmanuelle. “You don’t know me yet; I’ll have a new taste for you.” She was surprised to see so much esteem in Mario’s eyes.

He shook his head. “That would be too easy. I want something better. Let me guide you.” He pushed her in front of him. “It’s time to become an acrobat again!”

She submissively walked ahead of him. When they came to the fork in the road he decided that they would take a path other than the one by which they had come.

“I’m going to show you something out of the ordinary,” he promised.

They soon came to the edge of a wide
khlong
—or was it a natural stream? It seemed to be winding. Its banks were covered with grass.

“Are we still in Bangkok?”

“Right in the middle of it. But this place isn’t known to foreigners.”

They began walking across a meadow, and because Emmanuelle’s heels sank into the soft ground she took her shoes off.

“You’ll tear your stockings,” said Mario. “Wouldn’t you rather take them off?”

She appreciated his thoughtfulness. She sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree. She pulled up her skirt. The cool air reminded her that her panties were in Mario’s pocket. The moonlight was so bright that her belly could be seen clearly while she was taking off her garter belt.

“I never tire of the beauty of your legs,” said Mario. “The beauty of your long, lithe thighs . . .”

“I thought you quickly tired of everything.”

His only answer was a smile. She did not feel like moving.

“Why don’t you also take off your skirt?” he suggested. “You’ll be able to walk more easily. And I’ll enjoy seeing you that way.”

She did not hesitate an instant. She stood up and unfastened her belt.

“What shall I do with it?” she asked, holding her skirt in her hand.

“Leave it on the tree, we’ll get it when we come back. We’ll have to come this way in any case.”

“What if someone steals it?”

“Would that matter? You wouldn’t have any objection to going home without it, would you?”

She did not argue. They continued on their way. Below her black silk sweater, her buttocks and legs, despite their tan, looked strangely bright in that night. Mario was walking beside her; he took her hand.

“We’re there,” he said after a time.

A crumbling wall rose before them. He helped her to climb up on the bricks and jump down on the other side. When she looked up, she started. A human figure was crouching nearby. She gripped Mario’s hand.

“Don’t be afraid. They’re peaceful people.”

She almost said, “But I’m half-naked!” Once again, fear of his sarcasm held her back. But she was so ashamed that she felt incapable of taking a single step. She would have been less embarrassed if she had been completely naked. He led her forward inexorably; they passed close to the man, who looked at them with burning eyes. She could not help shuddering.

“Look,” said Mario, pointing, “have you ever seen anything like it?”

She looked in the direction of his gesture. From a tree with an enormous trunk, veined with countless roots and wild vines, strange objects were hanging like fruit. When she focused her eyes on them, she saw that they were phalluses. She uttered a rather admiring exclamation.

“Some are votive offerings,” explained Mario, “others have been hung in the hope of obtaining fecundity or sexual potency. Their size is in proportion to the worshiper’s wealth—or the urgency of his prayer. I must point out to you that we’re in a temple.”

This reminded Emmanuelle of the indecency of her attire. “If a priest should see me like this . . .”

“You don’t seem at all out of place to me, in a sanctuary dedicated to Priapus,” said Mario, laughing. “Everything connected with his cult is permissible, even respectable, here.”

“Are those what are called ‘
lingams
’?” asked Emmanuelle, whose curiosity was stronger than her embarrassment.

“Not exactly. The
lingam
is Hindu and its design is generally stylized. It’s often a mere pillar stuck in the ground, and it takes the eyes of faith to identify what it represents. Here, as you can see, the object is fashioned in such a way as to leave nothing to the imagination. These are replicas of nature, rather than works of art.”

The phalluses hanging from the branches ranged from the size of a banana to that of a bazooka, but the realism of detail was the same in every case. They were all made of carved and colored wood, with a little spot of pink to embellish the opening at the tip. The foreskin was figured by deep folds behind the glans. The arched shape of the erection was rendered with striking beauty.