Emmanuelle (11 page)

“What about that shower?” she asked.

The artifice now seemed superfluous to Emmanuelle. “Come to bed,” she ordered, to cut Bee’s movement short.

Bee stopped in front of the door, hesitantly. Then she made up her mind to laugh. “But I feel like cooling off, not sleeping,” she said.

Emmanuelle wondered if she really thought she had been invited to take a nap, or if she was only pretending innocence. Looking at her as she stood there naked, she was dismayed to see no veiled meaning in her eyes.

She went over to Bee and opened the door. “Then we’ll make love in the shower,” she said firmly.

4

Cavatina,
or the Love of Bee

Stop, moment: thou art so beautiful!

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Faust

I shall leave the bed as she left it, unmade and disrupted,
with the sheets tangled, so that the form of her body
will remain imprinted beside mine.

Until tomorrow, I shall not go to the bath, I shall wear no
garments and I shall not comb my hair, lest I efface her caresses.

I shall not eat this morning, nor this evening, and on my lips
I shall put neither rouge nor powder, so that her kiss will remain.

I shall leave the shutters closed and I shall not open the door,
lest the lingering memory be carried away by the wind.

—Pierre Louÿs,
Les Chansons de Bilitis,
“Le passé qui survit”

The big white bathroom was equipped with several kinds of showers. One was attached to the ceiling, another to the wall, a third and smaller one at the end of a long, flexible tube that could be held in the hand and bent in any direction. The two women stood beside each other under the crossed streams of water. Emmanuelle had drawn her hair up to the top of her head to protect it, and that made her look as tall as Bee.

She told Bee that she was going to show her how to use the flexible shower. She took the tube in her right hand, put her left arm around Bee’s hips, and ordered her to spread her legs.

Bee smiled and obeyed. Emmanuelle sent the warm jet slanting downward to Bee’s sex, then moved it closer, sometimes making it quiver slightly, sometimes giving it a spiral motion. She seemed thoroughly familiar with the rules of that game. The water cascaded between Bee’s legs. Emmanuelle looked up. “Does it feel good?” she asked.

Bee seemed to consider the question incongruous. She hesitated a moment, apparently wanting to say something, then she changed her mind and finally contented herself with nodding. A moment later, however, she admitted, “Yes, very good.”

Without ceasing to direct the shower with a sure hand, Emmanuelle leaned forward and took one of Bee’s little nipples in her mouth. She felt a hand touch her hair. Was it to push her away? Was it to draw her closer? She pressed the miniature bud between her lips, provoked it with the tip of her tongue, sucked it. It immediately became hard and more than doubled its size. She lifted her head, triumphantly. “You see . . .”

She stopped short. Bee’s features had lost their mask of serenity. Her gray eyes were still more immense, her lips were thicker and more lustrous. With her face almost childlike, purified, a Bee whom Emmanuelle had not known till now, electrifyingly intense and beautiful, abandoned herself to orgasm without a cry, without a quiver, without letting the rhythm of her body betray the violence of her pleasure.

Her ecstasy continued so long that Emmanuelle wondered if she was still aware of her presence. Then, little by little, her marvelous expression faded away and Emmanuelle was sad that her sensual rapture could not have lasted forever. She was so intimidated by the transfiguration she had witnessed that she did not dare to speak. Bee smiled at her.

Emmanuelle put her arms around her neck and kissed her lips. She moaned with pleasure when Bee’s body fused with hers. The streaming coolness of their two skins was a caress in itself. She embraced her tightly and slowly rubbed her pubis against hers.

Bee sensed the pleasure that Emmanuelle was seeking; she put her hand on her back, pressed gently on her buttocks, and grafted her onto her belly. A singular savor penetrated her open mouth, juicy and sweet like an exotic fruit. She felt a spasm rising in the beautiful body she was holding against herself. She helped it with all her power. She heard her lips murmuring words that had the sound of love.

“Emmanuelle is intelligent, curious about everything, and always in a good humor, but that’s not why I married her,” Jean said to Christopher as the jeep rolled along, making two red ruts on the slimy road.

Their skin was sticky with sweat, the heaviness of the air inflamed their throats. They crossed a little bridge. Naked boys and girls were playing in the water, splashing each other amid shouts of laughter.

“Look. Isn’t that the Orient you see in films?”

Jean stopped the engine. They went down to the stream and cooled their faces. The children leaped with enthusiasm, pointing at them, and chirping in chorus, “
Farang! Farang!
”

“What are they saying?” Christopher asked uneasily.

“Only ‘Europeans! Europeans!’ The way European children shout, ‘Chinese! Chinese!’”

A little girl, whose wet hair caressed her shoulders with long black tongues, came over to them. She had picked up a bright, blue sarong, which contrasted with the amber of her skin, and was tying it around her waist as she walked.

“Than yak sue som-o mai tja?”
she asked, giving the foreigners a bewitching smile.

“I don’t know what she wants,” Jean confessed to Christopher.

She pointed to a basket of enormous grapefruit that had been placed in the shade of a breadfruit tree.

“Ah, I see. She’s offering us some grapefruit. That’s not a bad idea.”

Jean nodded and said,
“Ao ko dai!”

The girl ran over to the basket and came back with a grapefruit bigger than her head. She held up a hand with all five fingers spread apart.

“Ha baht.”

“It’s a deal,” said Jean. He handed her a five-baht note which she examined carefully. “There, are our accounts in order?”

“Kha!”

She seemed to take this bilingual conversation in stride. Christopher was surprised.

“Does she understand French?”

“Not a single word. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little chat.”

She held the fruit up to her face with a questioning expression.

“Pok hai mai tja?”

Jean spread his arms in a gesture of incomprehension. The girl’s free hand drew imaginary rings around the grainy skin of the fruit, then went through the motions of peeling it.

“Yes, of course, why not?” said Jean. “That would be nice of you.”

She went back to her basket, took out a little knife with a sharp, curved, bronze blade, and sat down with the grapefruit on her skirt, which was pulled tight by her crossed legs.

The two men sat down on the grass, facing her.

“Since you didn’t marry Emmanuelle for her mind, as you’ve said, I suppose it must have been for her beauty,” said Christopher, returning to their earlier conversation. “That’s easy to understand.”

“Maybe, but her beauty wouldn’t have been enough to conquer me.”

“What did, then? Her household talents?”

“No, her carnal genius. I don’t know anyone in the world who likes to make love as much as she does. Or who does it as well.”

Christopher was shocked. This kind of confidence seemed to him in bad taste. But he was eager to hear more. “You’re lucky, of course,” he said with a certain effort, “but aren’t you also running a risk? That . . . what do you call it? . . . that gift she has . . . others may sense it . . . They may be tempted to . . . try to take advantage of it . . . take her away from you.”

“No one can take something away from me that doesn’t belong to me,” Jean said as if this were self-evident. “She’s not my property. She’s not my beauty.”

Christopher was puzzled.

“I didn’t marry her to own her,” Jean added.

The little girl held out several grapefruit sections, on her joined palms. Jean accepted one, after nodding his thanks, and ate it with obvious pleasure.

“Don’t you want any?” he asked Christopher.

Christopher mechanically took some of the offered fruit, staring at the scene with an absent-minded look.

“Emmanuelle and I are interested in the world,” Jean went on. “And we both have a desire to know more about it.” He laughed and remarked zestfully, “There’s plenty to do!” He took two grapefruit sections from the girl’s hands. “Even for the two of us. And enough to justify teamwork.”

Christopher wondered if Jean’s words had any connection with his own question. The children had squatted in a circle around them and were now watching them in silence, though from time to time they nudged each other and burst into wild laughter that brought tears to their eyes.

“They seem to be making fun of us,” remarked Christopher.

The fruit had refreshed his tongue, but his throat remained curiously tight. He tried to struggle against the images that imposed themselves on his mind with gentle insistence and horrified him. “That’s no way to think of a friend’s wife!” he told himself.

The vision persisted just the same. He suggested, in a false voice, that they buy another grapefruit. But while the little girl was preparing it for them and he was forcing himself to talk about canal locks and kilowatts, his imagination tirelessly re-created Emmanuelle’s round breasts, her muscular buttocks, the tempting nakedness of her belly . . . Jean leaped to his feet and announced that it was time for them to be on their way. Only then did he notice Christopher’s state of excitement, spectacular under his thin, white, twill shorts. He rounded his lips in surprise and laughed.

“I didn’t know you had such tastes!” he said jubilantly. “I won’t introduce you to any more little girls.” He mockingly called Christopher’s condition to the attention of their hostess, who did not seem at all offended. “Listen, you should at least wait until they’re a little less green. This one can’t be more than eight years old!”

Emmanuelle began lathering Bee’s body. She knew how to go about it so well, slipping her hand between Bee’s legs, that Bee had to defend herself.

“No, no, not all the time, Emmanuelle! It’s too tiring. Let me get some of my strength back.”

Emmanuelle let her rinse and dry herself, then she said cajolingly, “Come into my bed!”

Bee made no reply and Emmanuelle immediately became panic-stricken. Bee kissed her on the eyelids.

“Let’s go to your bedroom,” she said.

Emmanuelle pushed her down across the big bed, lay on top of her, covered her forehead, cheeks, and neck with kisses, nibbled her ear lobes and her bosom. She slid down to the floor, knelt, and buried her face in Bee’s bare belly.

“Oh,” she moaned, “how soft!” She rubbed her cheeks, her nose, and her lips against the elastic bulge of Bee’s pubis. “Darling! Darling!”

Bee remained motionless and silent.

“Are you happy like this?” Emmanuelle asked anxiously.

“Yes.”

“You’re willing, aren’t you? Willing to let me love you?”

“But, Emmanuelle . . .” Bee stopped short, caressed Emmanuelle’s loose hair, and waited.

Emmanuelle’s hands pushed her long legs apart, grazed the opening that separated them and gently penetrated it. Bee sighed, let her arms fall along her sides, and closed her eyes. Emmanuelle moved the tip of her tongue toward Bee’s sex, narrow and smooth as a virgin’s. She moistened the edges of her vulva, licked it inside, then sought her clitoris, drew it into her mouth, stimulated it with vibrations, softened it with saliva, made it move back and forth between her lips like a miniature penis. She slipped her bent middle finger into her own vagina. She continued stimulating Bee’s sex with her free hand. Her fingers were wet. She ran them over Bee’s buttocks, which rose to let her penetrate the narrow orifice. Her finger sank in to its full length. Only then did Bee cry out, and she continued during the whole time while Emmanuelle was licking her, sucking her, and moving her hand from one opening of her body to another. It was Emmanuelle who first had to admit that she was tired. She lay down on Bee again. Neither of them seemed to have the strength to speak.

Later, when Bee had put on her clothes despite Emmanuelle’s pleas, Emmanuelle put her arms around her neck and made her sit down on the bed.

“I want you to tell me something. But promise me it will be the truth!”

Bee answered only with an affirmative smile.