The Image (10 page)

Without attempting the impossible – a description of beauty – I want to say why we make him take off his clothes almost immediately. It is because it gives us extreme pleasure to see him move around naked, particularly when the flexible curves of his back are set in motion. Whether he grovels or crawls on all fours, his spine is surrounded by the rippling muscles of a panther. He's a black reptile, as well.

(Not long ago, in the back room of an S&M club in the dockyards of New York, a filthy, stuffy room smelling like a unused coal bin, barely lit by a few naked bulbs colored piss-yellow or dark red, a young Black threw himself at my feet, flat on the ground, to start licking them feverishly, rolling around in the dust around my ankles to lick the patent leather of my right shoe, slowly pushing his hot and damp tongue between the sole of my foot and that of the shoe, squirming in the dirt into which I pushed his head a little further still by applying my other foot to his neck... but that really wasn't much to look at...)

Eight o'clock. Time to rehearse the main scene in the sanctuary. I tell the Black to kneel in front of me, quite close, on the spot where Sebastian will be kneeling soon. He will play the part of the immolated, while F. stands in for him in his servant role.

Françoise stands beside me, watching. A strange rehearsal …If it were only a matter of mechanically establishing the various positions, Françoise would serve just as well. The Black could then rehearse his proper part; that would be both logical and simple. But he has been chosen for this intentionally. He is visibly excited by the proximity of danger. The danger, now, is the flame, the cigarette I light very close to his skin, the cigarette with which I'll burn him in a few moments. But at the crucial moment I extinguish the incandescent tip and only crush it on his chest like any inoffensive butt that disintegrates into shreds of tobacco and ashes: I disperse them with a breath.

No, he won't get burned, not tonight, not like that, on the spur of the moment!

There is no time to spare between the end of the rehearsal and the arrival of Sebastian. The sound of the doorbell comes immediately after the final bar of the opera, as if it were part of the score. My friends and my servant retire to the red salon without a sound.

I take Sebastian to F.'s bedroom at the far end of the apartment through a narrow L-shaped corridor. It's a small room, almost entirely taken up by a big low divan whose large white fur spread reaches down to the floor which is covered by dark woolly carpeting. In addition to the small bedside table, the furniture, ranged around walls covered with a light green ribbed fabric, consists of a secretary, an elmwood chest of drawers, and a light chair on which to leave one's clothes. On the far side of the building, with a window overlooking a quiet little courtyard, the room is cocoon-like and calm. Sebastian will be able to take a nap there. He looks tired. Alas, my favorite has caught a cold. (This happens even to great big muscular Aryans.) He can use the isolation, this short retreat that I have consciously arranged for him between his arrival and the beginning of our liturgy. But first, before leaving him, I have to outline his eyelids with a touch of kohl. Then, with a pair of sewing scissors I have brought for this express purpose, I cut his hair: I find it too long and want to free his neckline from the blond locks that hide where it joins the shoulder in a curve that seems made for the curvature of lips. Secretly, I love this rounded line clasped in studded leather collars, heavy metal rings, small chains, narrow ribbons or plain laces. This evening I adorn Sebastian's neck with a black velvet ribbon.

I leave after turning down the light and placing a satin mask and a flashlight on the marble top of the chest of drawers. Sebastian will be fetched when his time has come.

In the red salon, my friends (Marie, the last of the invited guests, has arrived in the meantime) are being served champagne according to an unchanged and, by now, familiar ritual: the Black, with one knee bent and lowered eyes, pours the golden liquid into goblets and hands them one by one to each guest. For me, he has poured a glass of Scotch which he offers me with the same deference.

Four women, two men… Four female accomplices, two men at their disposal… That's fine. The key can be turned in the lock and the curtain drawn across the front door, for a while.

While the Black has been sent to the kitchen to find some ice or whatever, I give a rapid description of the events planned for the ceremony to Françoise and Marie who have not, like F., participated in its creation. I describe to them the alternation of the masked, nocturnal, formal scenes with the more relaxed ones in which we'll be in bright light, without masks. At the same time, I just remember, I change into my ceremonial outfit.

We are ready. Now I have only to explain to the Black what it is I expect of him: "You'll go to F.'s bedroom. On top of the chest of drawers you'll find a flashlight and a mask. You'll pick these up.

Then you'll bring Sebastian to us; you'll lead him through the corridor and T.'s bedroom to this door (I point to it) and stop in front of it. You'll knock on it three times. You'll wait a minute, then make your entrance." Then I give him additional instructions concerning the uses of the flashlight and the mask. "That's all for now. Go!"

***

Darkness. Silence.

The red salon is plunged into total darkness, absolute silence. We are waiting. After the three knocks on the wooden panel, the squeak of the knob and the almost inaudible sound of the door opening, there is more silence. The bare feet on the carpet are quite noiseless. They advance, accompanied by the luminous circle before them created by the flashlight held at arm's length and pointed toward the floor. The bare feet, the luminous circle move on to the middle of the room and stop there. Suddenly the flashlight, raised in our direction, projects a blinding beam that moves horizontally, slowly, from right to left, left to right and finally settles on us, as if arrested by its discovery: four women sitting side by side on a black couch, motionless, silent, four women wearing long black dresses and high-heeled shoes, also black. The women do not have faces: they are wearing four identical white masks, expressionless ones, with the unseeing eyes of ancient statues. They all have the same closed, white lips, the same great vacant eyes; their calm features, rounded foreheads, perfectly oval cheeks all have the same waxy pallor. Four funereal mannequins with faces of the dead have sprung forth from the night.

The two in the middle are holding hands, resting them on their closed knees. The two others at the ends of the couch, each with an arm extended over an armrest, lean a little, in a less rigid posture. Not one of them moves. The beam of light itself remains fixed on the frozen apparitions. It takes a while... It seems to take a long time. As if brought to life by the insistent light, one hand moves imperceptibly; without warning, another beam of light, as powerful as the first, suddenly strikes Sebastian's face. Drowned in that intense, unbearable brightness, the apparitions fade away.

The initial beam, useless now, is turned down toward the floor and extinguished.

Behind their masks, the false dead have sharp eyes: a tribunal of phantoms, they now want to examine their prey, standing naked before them in the center of the room as if scorched by the cone of light that envelops and blinds him. Passed from hand to hand, the flashlight is pointed four times in succession at the long, muscular legs, the exposed penis below its blond fleece, the wide shoulders pulled back by the position of the forearms crossed behind the back at waist-level, the black velvet ribbon – at this large, well-made body that looks even larger lit up this way in the darkness, and virile enough to dispel any sense of blond insipidness.

He does not look like a native of these parts but rather like someone from a Germanic region. I have already described his features of an archangel: without softness, without fuzzy shadows – a strong-boned nose, firmly drawn lips. And it is quite amazing to scrutinize them here and now, in their unarmed nudity, and to think about other times when they would have been the features of a seductive SS man, cruel and dominating, whom it would have been a pleasure to kill.

Sebastian does not like that image superimposed on himself. Nevertheless, it sticks in my mind and is indestructible. In spite of you, in spite of me, you're wearing a black uniform and looking superb as you straddle a powerful motorcycle and with an impassive face control the huge roaring machine. Black archangel, steel horseman, you are a lovely object...

His eyes, no doubt suffering from the brightness, remain wide open and fixed at a spot behind us, beyond the heads of those who contemplate him.

Not a sound, not even whispers.

Now the Black who has stood by his side all this time places the satin mask over his face: its eyeholes have been covered with two pieces of fabric the color of his own irises: a hard blue.

Then the second flashlight is switched off. In the renewed darkness, one can hear the fading noise of a motorcycle driving away, then, again, nothing. Again, silence.

***

All the lamps in the room come on, almost simultaneously, with a series of little clicks: the largest lamp on a stand close to the couch, one with a Chinese porcelain base on the piano, another on the nest of tables, and others... The red salon is bathed in light. All we need now is the light from the fireplace.

Zealous, quick, the Black strikes a match in the hearth, under the twigs that catch fire immediately with a continuous crackle and disintegrate into tiny embers as the logs start burning.

The women remove their masks, which the Black collects and aligns on the mantelpiece on both sides of an earthenware bust representing some virgin female warrior.

Looking determined and sure of herself, Françoise approaches Sebastian who remains stock-still in the center of the room. She deciphers the letters on his chest and walks around him, touching him lightly, as if taking the measure of this body she is touching for the first time. She says to me in a low voice:

"Congratulations," then, more loudly, to be heard by everybody:

"Can one ask questions of him? Can one hurt him?" And I answer:

"Yes. Please do. Do with him what you will."

Whether it is that, satisfied with my reply, she does not want anything else at the moment, or that she finds all new initiatives premature at this point, or that she is suddenly embarrassed by Sebastian's intimidating availability, or... whatever, she leaves it at that, does not ask any more questions and returns to the couch.

He hasn't moved. Blind or not, he won't move until a female voice orders him to do so. You can't even see any of those minuscule movements, instinctive shiftings that cause one to put more weight on one leg or the other to prevent ankylosis. He looks petrified. Yet the statue has warm skin and a beating heart. How long can he stand there before feeling discomfort, before swaying with exhaustion? I don't know.

F. does not appreciate this extreme passivity in the least.

You wouldn't have to push her very hard to make her admit that she finds it boring. She prefers transports half-restrained by the fear of transgressing the limits of what is permissible, transports she encourages, tolerates or sanctions depending on her mood.

It is the "extreme" in this extreme passivity that fascinates me. There is something in it that incites me to violate him, an excess that defies me... and I hear myself utter these threatening syllables:

"On your knees!" and he kneels.

"On all fours!" and he obeys.

"Head down!" His head sinks toward the floor.

"Don't bend your back!" His shoulders are in perfect alignment with his buttocks.

There is hardly any "give" in that couch of flesh when I lie down on it, my head resting between his shoulder blades. A little to the side, the Black sits cross-legged on the floor, his palms turned up, waiting for our next command. At this moment, he is watching me attentively. As I start moving my arms to put my hands on Sebastian's belly, the open flap of my dress slips off me and leaves me almost entirely uncovered. I leap to my feet. The Black has lowered his eyes. That's good.

Then what happens? Fog... forgetfulness... never mind, only a little time can have passed between the servant's lowered gaze and what I see next: a leather whip nonchalantly resting on Sebastian's back, a whip with multiple thongs spread out like a fan, thongs that fall back, softly, onto his thighs, between the buttocks-and farther away, Françoise leading Marie to the fireplace and making her sit down with her back to the fire. She caresses Marie's lips with one hand and with the other starts unbuttoning the woman's black lace bodice, baring her shoulders and arms. As it slides off, the bodice stops for a moment at the wrists, then drops onto the white marble of the hearthstone.

Unfastened, her wide skirt falls around her ankles and high-heeled shoes. Marie is wearing a pair of my sheer black stockings, pulled up very high, almost to the groin, held by narrow garters, and, according to my wishes, black silk lingerie.

Françoise strips her of that lingerie after she has admired it and tested the silkiness of Marie's skin at the edge of the material.

Now my pretty friend is naked. Her only ornament is a marcasite bead that glitters like mica in the hollow of her throat, at the base of a neck so slender and delicate that one could grasp it with one hand.

Her soft brown hair has been cut short, helmet-like, à la Louise Brooks.

She looks chaste, her face without a trace of makeup, her arms hugging her slender chest in a sweet shivering pose, a graceful androgyne whose silhouette is outlined by the dancing flames.

Françoise takes her hand and leads her toward Sebastian.

She says, in an indifferent tone of voice: ' Lie down on him, on your belly."

She does so, stretches out on the docile mount, her head above his neck.

Françoise' s first lash, striking her back, is like a caress. The second one, on the buttocks, is sharper. Marie trembles, presses herself against Sebastian hugging his shoulders.