Return to the Chateau (4 page)

The Citro=EBn moved swiftly westward leaving Paris behind: O was oblivious to the world outside the car. She was crying. Her face was still covered with tears when, half an hour later, the car turned off the main route and entered a forest road, over which tall beech trees cast dark shadows. It was raining, and the insides of the car windows, all of which were rolled up tightly, were steamed up. The driver tilted the back of the front seat until it was horizontal, then made O lie down upon it. The car had so little head room that O’s feet touched the ceiling when he raised her legs to penetrate her. He spent almost an hour using her at will, and the thought did not even cross her mind to try and escape his embrace, so convinced was she that he had a perfect right to do what he was doing, and the only comfort she derived from the state of anxiety into which Sir Stephen’s sudden departure had plunged her was the total silence which accompanied the young man’s endeavors as he took her again and again, a silence broken only by a brief spasmodic moan at the moment of pleasure, until he had exhausted his forces.

He was perhaps twenty-five, with a thin, harsh yet sensitive face, in which two black eyes were set like somber jewels. He had, on two occasions, wiped O’s tear-stained cheek with one finger, but at no time had he brought his mouth close to hers. It was obvious that he did not dare, although he did not have the slightest compunction about thrusting a sex so thick and so long in its state of erection that each time he rammed it home a fresh cascade of tears poured down her cheeks. When at last he had finished, O pulled down her skirt, rebuttoned first her sweater then her suit jacket, which she had opened so that he could have free access to her breasts: she had time; while he disappeared somewhere into the underbrush, to run a comb through her dishevelled hair, powder her face, and freshen the lipstick on her lips. The rain had stopped, the trunks of the beech trees shone brightly in the gray light. Almost touching the left side of the car, crowning a getitle slope, a red mass of foxgloves lay within arm’s reach, so close that O could literally have reached out and picked them through the lowered window of the car. The driver returned, got into the car and closed the door which he had left open when he had disappeared, and started the motor. Once they had rejoined the main highway it was no more than fifteen minutes before they reached a little village that O did not recognize; but when the Citro=EBn slowed down, after having skirted the length of some endless wall enclosing a vast park, and stopped before an ivy-covered house, O finally realized that it must indeed be the back entrance to Roissy. She got out of the car; the driver began busying himself with her baggage. The heavy wooden door, which was painted a dark green then varnished, opened even before she had a chance to knock or ring: they had seen her from inside. She crossed the threshold; the tiled vestibule, with its red and white muslin drapes, was empty. Directly opposite her, a mirror that covered the entire wall reflected her full-length portrait, thin and erect in her gray suit, her top coat over her arm, her suitcases piled around her feet, the door closing behind her, and this sprig of heather she was holding in her hand, a sprig she had automatically accepted when the driver had handed it to her, a childish and ridiculous keepsake, which she did not dare throw onto the brightly waxed tile floor and which, for some reason she did not understand, embarrassed her. But yes, she did know. Who was it who had told her that heather picked in the woods near Paris brought bad luck? She would have been better off to have picked the foxgloves that her grandmother had forbidden her to touch as a child, because they are poisonous. She put the sprig of heather down on the windowsill of the only window in the vestibule. Just as she did, Anne-Marie, followed by a man dressed in a gardener’s blue denim work clothes, came in. The gardener took O’s suitcases.

“Don’t tell me you finally made it,” said Anne-Marie. “Sir Stephen called me almost two hours ago saying you were on your way. The car was supposed to bring you here directly. What happened?”

“It was the driver,” said O. thought that . .

Anne-Marie burst out laughing. “I get the picture,” she said. “He raped you, and you let him do whatever he liked? No, that was not in the plans; he had no right to do what he did. But it doesn’t matter, that’s what you’re here for.” And she added: “You’re off to a good start. I’m going to tell Sir Stephen what happened. It will give him a good Laugh.”

“Is he going to come?” O inquired.

“I think so,” Anne-Marie said, “but he didn’t say when.”

The lump in O’s throat when she had asked the question slowly dissolved, and she glanced at Anne-Marie gratefully; how lovely she was, how sparkling with her hair streaked with gray. She was wearing, aver her black pants and matching blouse, a bright red jacket. Obviously, the rules which governed the dress and conduct of the women at Roissy did not apply to her.

“Today I want you to have lunch with me,” she said to O. “Meanwhile, get yourself ready. On the stroke of three o’clock I’ll take you to the little gate?’

O followed Anne-Marie without uttering a word; she was floating on cloud nine: Sir Stephen had said he would come.

Anne-Marie’s apartment occupied part of a separate wing, a prolongation of the’ ch=E2teau proper constructed in the direction of the main highway. It consisted of a living room which communicated directly with a small boudoir-bedroom and bath; the door by which O entered gave Anne-Marie complete freedom to come and go as she pleased. As was the case for the house they had occupied in Sannois, which opened directly onto the garden, both Anne-Marie’s bedroom and sitting room opened onto the park. The grounds were cool and empty, filled with tall, stately trees as yet untouched by the approaching autumn, whereas the ivy covering the walls had already begun to turn red. Standing in the middle of the living room, O looked around at the white woodwork, the Directory-style rustic furniture made of light wood, and the large sofa in an alcove, like the easy chairs upholstered with a blue-and yellow-striped material. The floor was covered with a blue wall-to-wall carpet. The French doors were curtained with long drapes of blue taffeta.

“You’re daydreaming, O,” Anne-Marie said suddenly. “What are you waiting for to go and get undressed? I’ll send someone to fetch your things and bring you whatever you need. And when you’re naked I want you to come over here.”

Handbag, gloves, jacket, sweater, skirt, garter belt, stockings: O put them all on the same armchair near the door, and put her shoes under the chair. Then she walked over to Anne-Marie who, after having the rung the bell next to the fireplace once, then again, had sat down on the sofa.

“Why O, your little lips are clearly visible now that you’re clean-shaven,” Anne-Marie exclaimed as she gently parted them. “I didn’t realize that you had such a prominent mound, or that you were so highly slit . .”

“But everyone … ,” O protested.

“No, my dear love, not everyone!”

And, without letting go of O, she turned to a tall brunette who had just entered the room, doubtless in response to Anne-Marie’s rings, and added:

“Look, Monique, this is the girl I branded last summer for Sir Stephen. It’s very well done, isn’t it? Here, feel.”

O felt Monique’s hand, cool and light, gently probing the hollows of the initials engraved in her buttocks. Then the hand slipped between her thighs and grasped the disk that was suspended from her nether lips.

“So she’s pierced too?” Monique said.

“Of course, he had me pierce her and affix the disk,” Anne-Marie responded, and her answer suddenly made O wonder whether her “of course” meant that Anne-Marie found it perfectly natural to do so, or whether it was customary for Sir Stephen to both brand and pierce. In that case, should she conclude that he had done it to others before her? She heard herself amazed, as the words struck her own ears, at her own audacity, asking Anne-Marie that last question, and was even more amazed to hear Anne-Marie answer her by saying:

“That’s none of your business, O, but, since you’re so much in love and so jealous, I can nonetheless tell you that he hasn’t. I’ve often enlarged and whipped other girls for him, but you’re the first one I’ve marked for him. I do believe he loves you, for once in his life.”

Then she sent O into the bathroom, telling her to bathe and freshen up while Monique was off fetching her a collar and wrist bracelets.

O began to draw her bath, removed her makeup, brushed her hair, stepped into the bathtub, and, once immersed in the refreshing warmth, began slowly to soap herself She paid no attention to what she was doing, letting her mind wander as she tried to picture, with a mixture of curiosity and pleasure, the girls who, before her, had caught Sir Stephen’s fancy. Curiosity: she would have liked to know them. She was not really surprised that he had had all of them enlarged and whipped, but she was nonetheless jealous that there had been others before her, that she had not been the first for him. Standing up in the bathtub, bent over with her back to the mirror that covered the wall, she gently soaped her buttocks and the inside of her thighs, then rinsed herself to remove the suds and shifted her buttocks to look at herself in the mirror: that is what she would have liked to see, the other girls in just such a pose. How long had he kept them? So she had not been mistaken when she had had the feeling that others before had followed-naked and submissive and in a state of fear and trembling-Sir Stephen’s faithful old retainer Norah. But that she had been the only one to bear his irons and the mark on her buttocks overwhelmed her with a feeling of happiness.

She stepped out of the water and began to dry herself. She heard Anne-Marie’s voice through the bathroom door, calling her.

On Anne-Marie’s bed, which was covered with a hand-embroidered purple and white percale counterpane, identical to the double drapes that framed the window, there was a pile of long dresses, corsets, mules with high heels, and the strongbox which contained the wrist bracelets. Anne-Marie, who was seated on the foot of the bed, made O kneel down in front of her, then took from one of her trouser pockets the flat key which unlocked the collars and bracelets and which she kept attached to her belt by a long thin chain. She tried a number of collars on O, until she found one that, without choking her, fit her snugly enough half way up the neck so that it was difficult to turn it in one direction or the other and yet it was even more difficult to insert a finger between the metal and the neck itself. The same applied to her wrists, to which the bracelets were fastened just above the pulse, which was left unencumbered.

The collar and bracelets that O had worn herself and seen others wear the previous year had been of leather, and had been worn much more tightly. These were of stainless steel, made in such a way as to be slightly flexible like certain wristwatch bands. They were about two inches wide, and each had a ring of the same metal. Never had the leather accouterments of the previous year felt so cold, nor had they given O such a strong impression of being so irrevocably in chains. The metal was the same color and the same dull finish as the irons attached to her nether lips. Anne-Marie said to her, her words coinciding with the final click of the closing collar, that she would never remove either collar or bracelets, day or night, not even when she bathed, during her entire stay at Roissy.

O got to her feet, and Monique took her by the hand and led her over in front of a full-length, three-sided mirror where she applied a light red, slightly liquid lipstick to her lips with a tiny brush:

O noted that the color darkened as it dried. With the same red, she painted her nipples, including the tips, and then the tiny lips between her thighs, emphasizing the upper reaches of the slit. O never learned what product she used, but it was more some kind of dye than makeup: it did not come off when it was rubbed, and even when she was removing her makeup, using alcohol, it only came off with considerable difficulty. After she had thus been made up, she was allowed to powder her face and choose a pair of mules that fit. But when she went to take one of the vaporizers on the dressing table Anne-Marie exclaimed:

“Have you lost your mind? Why in the world do you think Monique has just finished making you up? You know as well as I do that now that you’re wearing all your irons you don’t have the right to touch yourself.”

Then Anne-Marie herself took the vaporizer and, in the mirror, O saw her breasts and armpits gleam beneath the welter of droplets, as though they were covered with perspiration. Then Anne-Marie led her back over to the dressing-table bench and told her to raise and spread her thighs which Monique, holding her by the back of the legs, kept spread. And the fine spray of perfume that inundated the hollows between her thighs and her buttocks burned her so that she moaned and struggled.

“Hold her until it’s dry,” Anne-Marie said, “then find a corset for her.”

O was surprised at how happy she was to find herself once again ensconced in the tightfitting black corset. She had obeyed and inhaled deeply to pull in her waist and stomach when Anne-Marie had told her to, while Monique tightened the laces. The corset came up to beneath her breasts, which an unobtrusive vertical stay kept separated and a narrow horizontal stay supported so firmly that they were projected forward, and seemed all the more fragile and free.

“Your breasts are really made for the riding crop, O” Anne-Marie noted. “Do you realize that?”

“I know,” O said, “but please, I beg you . .”

Anne-Marie burst out laughing.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not the one who makes that kind of decision,” she said. “But if any of the customers should want to whip you, you can protest and beg until you’re blue in the face.”

Without being fully aware of it, the word “customer” far more than the feeling of terror which she felt at the thought of the whip, overwhelmed O. Why “customers”? But she did not have time to pursue the questioning any further, so struck was she, again without consciously realizing it, by what Anne-Marie told her a minute later. O was, therefore, standing in front of the mirror, with her mules on her feet and her waist throttled by her corset. Monique came over to her, carrying over her arm a skirt and blouse of yellow faille embroidered with a gray floral design.