Emmanuelle (21 page)

“Has he told you that you could do it?”

She again felt that she was being prosecuted. “Not explicitly, of course. But he’s never told me I couldn’t. And he doesn’t ask me whether I do it or not. He leaves me free.”

Mario made a gesture of regret. “That’s exactly what you ought to reproach him for. It’s not that kind of freedom that eroticism needs.”

She tried to understand what he meant.

“When you were alone in Paris and writing to him,” he went on, “did you keep him posted on your lovers?”

Emmanuelle was overwhelmed by the awareness of her “banality.” She shook her head, then tried to evade the question.

“I told him about my mistresses,” she said.

He made a gesture which might have meant “That’s at least better than nothing.” They were silent again. She looked at Quentin. He was smiling with remarkable perseverence. She wondered if he really understood what was being said, or if his smile was merely intended to hide his boredom.

“But don’t think Jean is jealous,” she resumed, trying to erase the bad impression she knew she had made on Mario. “He’s no more jealous than I am. He himself taught me to show my legs, for example. And it’s to please him that I wear tight dresses, so that when I get out of a car my skirt will go up as high as possible. And even in the most proper drawing room, I sit very immodestly; you can check on it for yourself.” She laughed. “Doesn’t that show that he and I have some aptitude for eroticism?”

“Yes.”

“He’s the one who decides on my necklines, too. Do you know many husbands who uncover their wives’ breasts so generously?”

“Do you also find it enjoyable to show your breasts?”

“Yes. But especially since Jean taught me to do it. Before I knew him, I liked to be touched—by girls, I mean—but I didn’t care whether I was seen or not. I didn’t get any pleasure from it. Now I do.” She added bravely, “I wasn’t born an exhibitionist—I became one! Thanks to him.” And she insisted, “You see!”

“Have you ever wondered why your husband enjoys making you publicly desirable that way? If it’s only to make you a sexual teaser, it’s hardly praiseworthy. And if it’s merely out of pride, to show off his wife’s beauty as a kind of wealth, and taunt other men who are less rich in that respect, it’s no better.”

“Oh, no!” protested Emmanuelle, who could not bear to hear anyone speak ill of Jean. “That’s not at all like him. He makes me show my body for the sake of others . . .”

“That’s just what I was saying!” Mario exclaimed triumphantly. “If he does his best to make you stir up other men’s lust, if he presents you that way to give them erections, it means that he wants you to make love with them.”

“But . . .” she tried to object. This idea had never occurred to her and she could not think of anything that would help her to refute it. Yet she felt almost dazed. Was it conceivable that Jean expected that of her?

“After all,” she pleaded, “why should he want me to deceive him? What kind of pleasure could a man get from having others possess his wife?”

“Come, come, my dear,” said Mario, and his voice was stern, “are you still at that stage? Do you mean to say that you don’t understand how, out of erotic refinement, a highly advanced man can want his wife to seduce other men? The author of
Ecclesiasticus
knew more about it than you do when he said, ‘The grace of a wife delighteth her husband.’ Be logical; if your husband is glad to know that you make love with women, why should he feel differently about men? Is there really such an essential distinction between heterosexual and homosexual love as you seem to think? As for me, I maintain that there’s only one love, and that making love with a man or a woman, with a husband, a lover, a brother, a sister, or a child is all the same thing.”

“But Jean has always known I liked girls, even before he deflowered me. I told him so myself, the first day I knew him,” she added abruptly, picking up one of Mario’s allusions. “And naturally, if I’d had a brother I’d have made love with him. But I’m an only child!”

“Well?”

“Well what? . . . What I’m saying is that when I caress a woman I’m not deceiving my husband.”

Mario seemed amused. “Does he like men?”

“No!” The idea that Jean might be a homosexual struck her as absurd. Mario guessed what was in her mind.

“You’re unjust,” he pointed out.

“It’s not the same!” He smiled and she was no longer sure it was not the same . . .

“Do you like him to go to bed with other women?”

“I don’t know . . . I suppose so.”

“Then why shouldn’t he feel the same way about you and other men?” Emmanuelle thought, “Yes, why shouldn’t he?”

“Another example,” Mario went on, without waiting for an answer, “do you expose your legs and breasts merely as a matter of habit, or as a social game, or do you do it because it excites you to offer yourself?”

“Because it excites me, naturally!”

“Physically?”

“Yes.”

“Is your pleasure greater when your husband is present?”

She reflected. “I think so.”

“When you’re sitting sedately beside him and a man tries to see under your dress, don’t you sometimes dream that he’s also slipping his hands under it, not to mention the rest?”

“Of course,” she laughed. This, however, did not convince her that Jean also enjoyed imagining the same scene.

Mario discerned it and sighed. “You still have a great deal to learn: everything that separates simple sexuality from erotic art.” He returned to the attack, adding a tinge of irony to the word she had used: “If your husband didn’t want you to ‘deceive’ him, why would he have let you come here without him this evening? Did he make any objection?”

“No. But maybe he thought that having dinner with a man didn’t necessarily mean I was going to give myself to him.” She was gracefully pretending to be natural. She did not know if her thrust had struck home.

Mario seemed lost in meditation. Just as she was beginning to let her thoughts drift toward other shores, he asked: “Are you ready to give yourself this evening, Emmanuelle?”

It was the first time he had called her by her name. She did her best to restrain the emotion she felt at hearing such a question asked so casually. She tried to make her answer equally casual, to prove her freedom: “Yes.”

“Why?”

Embarrassment overcame her again.

“Do you give in to men easily?” he asked.

How unfair! Was the purpose of this conversation to humiliate her? She had to re-establish her worth.

“Not at all,” she said with a vehemence that was unusual for her. “I told you I’d had many
mistresses,
I didn’t say I’d had many lovers. To tell you the truth,” she added, moved by a sudden impulse—and with some shame, for she disliked lying and did it as little as possible—“I’ve never had any. That will explain to you why I’ve never had anything to tell my husband on that subject—until now,” she concluded, with a smile that was easy to interpret.

As she was attributing this virtue to herself she reflected that she was actually not far from the truth, for could she seriously give the name of “lovers” to those strangers who had possessed her in the plane? Marie-Anne had already said they did not count. And she herself had gradually come to doubt the reality of that adventure. In yielding to the waking dream that had been given to her between heaven and earth, she had been no more unfaithful than she was when she savored the immaterial embraces of the men to whom she abandoned herself in imagination while Jean took his pleasure in her body every night.

For the first time, she thought that perhaps she was pregnant by one of the travelers; she would soon know. But that was not very important either.

Mario, however, seemed to take a suddenly increased interest in her. “Are you joking? I thought I heard you say that you ‘also’ liked men.”

“I do. Otherwise, why would I have gotten married? And I just told you, in so many words, that I’m ready to give myself to another man, this very evening.”

“For the first time, then?”

She nodded to confirm her half-lie, then she thought with sudden anxiety, “Could Marie-Anne have told him my secret?” No, it was clear that Mario knew nothing.

“Maybe there have been other times when I was ready to do it, but no one took advantage of it
then,
” she said with a grain of salt which he must have sensed, because he looked at her with a smile that she did not like.

He counterattacked: “Why do you want to deceive your husband? Is it because he leaves you physically unsatisfied?”

“Oh, no!” she cried, taken aback and suddenly unhappy. “Oh, no! He’s a wonderful lover. I’m not at all frustrated, I assure you. It’s not because of that. On the contrary . . .”

“Ah!” said Mario. “‘On the contrary’? That’s interesting. Would you mind telling me what you mean by that ‘on the contrary’?”

She was furious with him. He had made an eloquent speech to demonstrate that Jean himself wanted her to have lovers, and he already seemed to have forgotten it . . .

But why, in fact, she asked herself, had she now so easily accepted the idea of being unfaithful? Why, for the first time in her life, and so abruptly, did she want to be a married woman who had a lover? Because that was exactly what she wanted— to be an
adulteress
. She wanted it, yet without loving Jean any less passionately—
on the contrary
. . . What was happening to her? She heard herself saying, before she had time to reflect on the meaning of her words: “It’s because I’m happy. It’s . . . it’s because
I love him
!”

Mario leaned toward her. “In other words, if you want to deceive your husband, it’s not because he bores you, or out of weakness, or to take revenge on him;
on the contrary,
it’s because he makes you happy. It’s because he’s taught you to love what’s beautiful. To love the wonder of physical pleasure given by the penetration of a man’s body into the depths of yours. He’s taught you that love is the dazzling of the senses that you feel when a man’s nakedness crushes yours. That which gives life its constantly reborn splendor is the movement of your hands toward your shoulders to make your dress fall down to your waist and uncover your breasts, and the movement of your hands toward your hips to make your dress fall down to your feet and turn you into a statue more adorable than any dream. He’s taught you that beauty is not in the guarding of your body, but in its offering; not in your waiting for other hands to undress you, but in the haste and freedom of your own fingers creating a reality more human than the heritage of matter.”

Emmanuelle had been listening, not knowing if she ought to let herself be enveloped by the spreading branches of Mario’s words, let them decide what she was . . . She looked up at him firmly.

“Is that how you’ll give yourself?” he asked.

She nodded.

“And you’ll tell your husband that he can be proud of you?”

She lost her serenity. “Oh, no!” she said in alarm; then, after a moment of hesitation, “Not right away . . .”

Mario’s face took on an indulgent expression. “I see,” he said. “But you’ll have to learn to.”

“What else do I have to learn?”

“The pleasure of telling; it’s even more subtle, more refined, than the pleasure of secrecy. The day will come when even the savor of your adventures will be less precious to you than the voluptuousness of recounting them, with details that will excite you more than caresses, to the man who is both yourself and the most attentive of your spectators.” He made a gesture of clemency. “But there’s no reason to hurry. If, for the moment, discretion is easier for you, keep your husband in temporary ignorance of his pupil’s progress.” He smiled with a hint of mockery. “Anyway, it may be preferable to wait till that progress has become conclusive, don’t you think? The way of eroticism is sometimes steep,
ad augusta per angusta,
but some day the very memory of your harsh labors will be sweet to you. Now you must decide freely. Are you ready to try everything?”

“Everything?” she asked cautiously. She remembered that Marie-Anne had spoken to her in the same terms a few days earlier.

“Yes, everything!” said Mario, suddenly concise.

She tried to picture what that “everything” might be—and succeeded only in imagining herself abandoning her body to Mario’s whims. Since she had decided to give herself to him anyway, did it matter very much how he would take her? She even told herself, with a little irony, that her mentor had a rather exaggerated idea of the virtues of his amorous methods if he thought that the experience he was preparing for her would make her “mutate.” Her previous experience with men was limited, she could not deny it, but even so she was convinced that to become capable of progress a woman had to do more than submit to the singularities of a lover. That male smugness amused her. But it did not irritate her enough to make her want to discourage it.

One thing did bother her, however—her inability to explain why, despite Mario’s assurances, she preferred to have her affair with him remain unknown to Jean. It was not really for fear that Mario might have been mistaken about Jean’s motives, she reflected. It was, rather, because she had glimpsed a short time earlier, without being able to express it clearly, that “deceiving” a husband whom one loved was a special, very tender pleasure; she had not thought of it before, but the temptation of it now made her temples throb with impatience. It was quite possible, she told herself, that in the world of eroticism the complicity of a woman’s husband constituted a more advanced form of libertinism. But she had not yet reached that point. Before learning the complicated art that Mario had outlined to her, she wanted to content herself with something simpler. Did not adultery alone already offer her the possibility of marvelous discoveries? Did it not involve abstract eroticism as much as sensuality, since she was eager to
deceive
Jean as a matter of principle, to deceive him as much as she loved him, immediately, fully, with her whole body, with all her nakedness, with all the softness of her belly, into which a stranger’s semen would flow.