The Woman With the Bouquet (6 page)

2—The delights of Prometheus

Prometheus, punished by Zeus, was chained to a rock and subjected henceforth to the attacks of an eagle who came to devour his liver. I propose to chain my lord to something as solid as a rock but to devour something else. As often as he would like.

3—The visit in a dream

For the ancient Greeks, a dream was a visitation of the gods. My Lord shall be the dreamer, in the bed, stretched out naked on his back, and I shall persuade him that Aphrodite, the goddess of delights, has come to join him in his sleep. On condition that he does not open his eyes, or reach out his hand—in a word, does not move, except his hips, slightly, and I shall see to climbing onto him to perform the subtle movements that will bring us to a shared orgasm.

Variant: I shall be the dreamer and my lord the visitor.

4—The flute player

My lord will be the flute, and I shall be a musician. I shall play his instrument as a virtuoso. I am a good performer, and I hasten to point out that I play both the recorder and the flute. The first is taken into the mouth, the second caressed on the side.

5—The bear and the beehive

My lord will be a bear, running after the nectar of the flowers, while I shall be the beehive, unapproachable, as difficult to find as to reach. When the bear has found a position that makes contact feasible, I shall allow him to devour my honey with his inexhaustible tongue.

6—The original ball

Aristophanes has told us that in the beginning, man and woman formed a single body, a sphere that was then split in two, the male to one side, the female to the other. We will venture to re-create the original ball, holding each other close, fitting into each other in whatever way we can. The joints beneath the belly will require particular care. This will occur with a minimum of movement in order to refine the sensation and make it last. Nevertheless, the ball, like any sphere, has the right to roll on the bed or the carpets.

7—The disorientated ball

In this case, the ball must be put together by mistake, because not everyone has a talent for geometry. Thus, my lord’s head might explore between my thighs while I shall have a look around between his. And while this is sure to fail, we shall try all the same to join together, using our lips to catch whatever we can find on the other’s body.

8—The lighthouse keepers

There was a poet who claimed that love meant looking together in the same direction. That is what we shall try to do, like those who watch over dangerous reefs, with me in front, my lord behind.

9—The voyage of Tiresias

Some may recall this eminent Greek as a seer, others as the only individual to belong to both sexes, for the legend tells us that he was male and female in succession. My lord and I shall undertake to relive the experience of Tiresias: my lord will adopt the attitude of a woman, and I shall adopt the attributes of a man.

10—Zucchini with melons

This is an old recipe from the Aegean Sea, which consists in placing a zucchini between two melons to squeeze out the juice.

11—Waiting in the labyrinth

What is a labyrinth? A place where you get lost, one wall hiding another, a deceptive way out, a mysterious neuralgic center that is never reached. The game consists in multiplying the preliminary approaches, like a prisoner in a labyrinth, going through the wrong door, rubbing up against the wrong wall, tickling just next door—in short, slowly reaching the point of extreme delight. It is not forbidden to find it, but it should be delayed as much as possible.

12—The Olympic Games

Like the athletes of antiquity, my lord and I shall be naked, and covered in oil. We have two possibilities: struggle, or care. In struggle, each of us shall try to place the other at his, or her, mercy. In care, one will massage the other. The two activities are not incompatible and may be practiced in succession. No hold is ruled out, nor is any caress.

13—The snows of Parnassus

When Mount Parnassus is sprinkled with snow, the cold leaves a burning memory upon the skin; and yet, the gods gathered there. My lord and I, therefore, shall make love like gods, with our flesh smarting not from snow, but blows.

I closed the volume, impressed. It would have been awkward to look at Emma Van A. right away, because I could not imagine her writing such prose.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Just the question I did not want to hear! Luckily, I had no time to reply, because she took the text from my hands and said, “I won’t tell you what he chose from the menu. In any event, right from the start, our embraces were astonishing. From the very first he was intoxicated with me, and I with him. I had not imagined it could be so enjoyable to spend my time with a man, who turned out to be lascivious, and sensual, always on the lookout for new pleasure . . . He liked nothing better than to come over to me and, his eyes shining, point to a line in this notebook. Who would go first? Did his desire arouse mine, or did he anticipate my intentions? I’ll never know. The rest of the time, we talked about literature . . .”

She stroked the leather with the back of her hand.

“One day, he too gave me an identical album, with his menu set out just for me. Alas, later I was obliged to burn it.”

She lingered in her memory, and left me at leisure to imagine, my mouth watering, what Guillaume must have written. What new whims? How far did he go, after his mistress’s boldness? Beneath her sentences, her formality, these lovers from another era had given each other an unheard-of freedom, that of confessing their fantasies, and leading their partner into that place, refusing to allow their lovemaking to become bogged down by mechanical repetition, raising it to a moment of invention and erotic poetry.

“After he had read this notebook,” continued Emma, “Guillaume was amazed to discover that he was the first man to possess me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, you heard me. He required proof in order to be convinced that I had been a virgin until him.”

“I confess that these pages are nothing like the platitudes of an inexperienced virgin.”

“I was a virgin but not inexperienced. Otherwise, how could I have written these lines and then performed them! No, in Africa I was given a head start.”

“In Africa?”

“That is what I explained to Guillaume.”

I spent my childhood in Africa, in a large villa with columns, where servants tried to protect us from the heat by means of awnings and fans, but all they managed to provide was hot shade. I was born there, in the Congo, the jewel in imperial Belgium’s crown. My father had gone to teach literature to the white bourgeoisie in Leopoldville, now called Kinshasa. He met a rich girl there in a society drawing room, fell in love and, although he had no fortune, only culture, he was able to win her hand. My arrival in the world was the cause of my mother’s departure, for she died from complications after the birth; all I knew of her was a sepia photograph placed on the piano she used to play, now closed, imperial and silent, a photograph that faded too quickly: by my adolescence, all I could see of her was an elegant, chalky ghost. My father was the other ghost in my childhood: either he held it against me for having caused his wife’s death, or else he despised me, for he was neither present nor attentive. My mother’s dowry had made him rich, and he spent the money buying thousands of books in order to shut himself away in his library, which he only left to go out to give his lectures.

Naturally, like any child, I thought my everyday life was normal. If from time to time I envied my schoolmates because they had a mother, I did not consider myself unhappy, because I was surrounded by nurses with lilting voices, whose hips swayed as they walked, joyful servants who laced with pity the affection they felt for me. As for my father, his solitude and indifference only made him seem more fascinating. All my efforts in those days were toward a single goal: to grow closer to him, to be with him.

I decided I would cherish books as much as he did. In the beginning, as I read, I wondered what pleasure he could find in giving himself a headache to read such tiny black script—it is true that I had started with a treatise of Roman history in fifteen volumes—then by chance I came upon the novels of Alexandre Dumas, and was filled with enthusiasm for Athos, Aramis and d’Artagnan; from that moment, I became the reader I had initially only pretended to be. After a few years went by, when it had become clear to him that I was devouring thousands of pages every week, from time to time he would point to a spine, and say in a weary voice, “There, you should try that one.” I would gratefully plunge into the text as if my father had said, “I love you.”

When I was twelve years old, I noticed that from time to time my father, once he was sure I was in bed, would set off at twilight, an hour when he could no longer give any lectures. Where did he go? Where did he return from, an hour or two later, quiet, almost smiling, humming a tune now and again to his own amusement? I began to dream that he was courting a woman who would someday become my second mother.

I was not far from the truth: I would soon discover that he had unearthed an entire army of mothers! A battalion of women who became my friends . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself, let me explain.

One day, because he had stolen a flower from the bouquet in the dining room to put in the lapel of his new suit, I followed him, in secret. Imagine my stupefaction when I saw that he only went a hundred yards or so from our street, just round the corner, to the Villa Violette.

I begged the maids: who lives there? They burst out laughing, refused to reply, and then as I would not give up, they eventually described the place to me: it was a brothel.

Fortunately, Maupassant, one of my favorite authors, had taught me the existence of these establishments where women gave pleasure to men in exchange for money; better still, because he passed no moral judgment on the activity of prostitutes, and depicted them with so much humanity in
Boule de Suif
and
La Maison Tellier
, Maupassant had filled me with respect for them. Particularly as, in my opinion, they had been ennobled, even blessed, because they had inspired the pen of such a genius.

It was in that state of mind that I went up to the brothel of Madame Georges. What must she have thought, that fat redheaded woman with her gold teeth, squeezed into her made-to-measure dresses from thinner days, when she saw this little girl come up to her? I will never know. The fact remains that although I was initially discouraged by her chilly reception, over time I managed to convince her I was in good faith: no, I was not looking for work; no, I did not come to keep a jealous eye on my father; no, I would not write down the names of her clients in order to inform their spouses in Leopoldville.

“What you doing here again? What is it that attracts you? It’s not very healthy for a girl your age to be so curious . . .”

“Indeed, Madame, I may be curious, but I don’t see why it is unhealthy. I’m interested in pleasure. Isn’t that what you offer here?”

“For money, that’s what I offer, yes. However, there are other places where you can learn.”

“Oh, yes? Where? There are no women in my house because my mother died; my nannies treat me like a little kid; no one wants to talk to me! I want to see women, real women. Like you and your girls.”

Fortunately, Madame Georges loved to read novels. Since she no longer gave herself to men—or since they had stopped asking for her—she indulged in orgies of reading. By lending her the books she didn’t have, and talking about them with her, I won her over, and in some confused part of her brain I was transformed into the daughter she would have liked to have. As for me, I played along with complete sincerity, for I was fascinated by Madame Georges, or rather by her world.

Because she ran a business that was devoted to men’s pleasure, she was not afraid of them.

“Don’t be afraid of men, my girl, they need us as much as we need them. There’s no reason for you to keep quiet, ever. Remember that.”

Over time, I was allowed access to the Blue Salon, a room where no males had the right to enter. That is where the girls rested between two clients, chatting together; as the weeks went by, they got used to me, and stopped paying attention to what they talked about, and I finally discovered what went on between men and women, from every angle, with every variation. I learned about love the way a chef learns about gastronomy, by staying in the kitchen.

Out of friendship, one of them allowed me to use “Madame’s trap door,” an opening that was built into every room so that Madame could keep an eye on any suspicious clients.

So, between the age of twelve and seventeen, I was a frequent visitor to Madame Georges’s brothel. It became a second home. As incredible as it may seem, there was so much tenderness between us that Madame Georges kept my visits a secret. We were both intensely curious about other people, but she had satisfied her curiosity through prostitution, then reading. She insisted, moreover, that I must not imitate her, or any of her boarders, and she took charge of a part of my education.

“Your style has to be pure, with a ‘healthy girl’ aspect, a sort of eternal virgin, but modern. Even if you wear makeup, you have to give the impression you have nothing on your face.”

So, while I spent my days in the company of whores, I looked as respectable as can be.

Then one day one of my cousins saw me go in and come out of the Villa Violette, and tattled on me to my father.