Monsieur (13 page)

‘
No
. All I'm saying is you'd be a real bastard. Mind you, what with what we're up to, we're in no position to judge!'

Monsieur's mood darkened. He fell silent as he adjusted his shirt collar and came to sit beside me on the bed. ‘I don't like it when you call me a bastard.'

‘From me, it can be an endearment.'

Which was true, but his eyes were so dark that I thought for a moment he was about to hit me, or that I had hurt him. ‘Don't look at me like that,' I whispered, wrapping myself against the cold material of his suit. ‘When my girlfriends and I talk about bastards, it's in a nice way. Affectionate.'

Monsieur appeared unconvinced, but he kissed me at length.

I added: ‘Anyway, I'm as much of a bastard as you.What with my uncle, all my family in fact, I have so many reasons not to be sleeping with you.'

‘There's nothing wrong about what we're doing. Other than that I'm married.'

‘Can't you see? We're immoral. You used to work with my uncle. You spent three days at a seminar in Jersey with him and my mother. All my family knows you. And I happen to be the young niece and daughter.'

‘It's not as if I were sleeping with his wife.'

‘It's almost worse. My uncle adores his nieces. He doesn't want to know that other men touch them, particularly men he knows. Especially if those men are married and have children. Have you any idea of the unholy mess there would be if anybody found out what's going on?' The tone of my voice no doubt betrayed how much the wrongness of the situation excited me.

‘So, the only problem is that I'm married, no? If I happened to be your uncle, I'd rather like to know you were with a man of my age, someone with experience, rather than with a young fool who'd treat you badly.'

‘Come on!' I was exasperated. ‘Don't you realize that if Philippe sees you with me, he won't give a damn about experience or status? Even if he were to ignore the fact you have a wife and children – and I'd find that difficult to believe – the situation remains the same: you're his age, you worked together and he likes you, which would certainly make you one hell of a bastard in his eyes. No way you could ever hope he might forgive you. He'd also despise me, but because he's my uncle he would always love me too – somehow. If he ever found out about you and me,
which will not happen
, all he would see is one thing: that you're fucking his niece.'

Monsieur sat next to me, his hands on my hips.

‘But should anyone find out about us, all I'd have to do is open my in-box and they'd know you came looking for it.'

I looked into his smiling eyes and saw the hint of a threat. Or was it? Perhaps it was the expression of a thug telling a newly arrived shopkeeper: ‘We're going to play a little game which will be to both our advantage. As long as you play fair, so shall I. If you ever betray me or put me in an uncomfortable position, I can blackmail or hurt you and wouldn't hesitate to do so.'

I remember thinking, Fucking bastard, as I watched Monsieur without blinking, trying to see if he was serious. If he was capable of defending himself by throwing me to the wolves. From the determination I saw in the depths of his eyes, I knew he was. Indeed. Monsieur was that type of man.

Wordless, smiling back at him, I lay down against his legs, coiled like a cat. I was being held hostage, and Monsieur was now as much an adversary as a lover. He controlled me in vile ways, but the more I thought about it, the more it aroused me.

Monsieur. Monsieur and his lips.

As he began to fade away, already mentally on the way back to his medical and conjugal life, I became his slave. I was lying flat on my stomach and observing every movement he made. He settled back on the bed, taking my hands in his. As if he were about to kiss my neck. Which would have been enough for me.

‘Talk to me of love before I leave.'

My eyes widened with amazement and incredulity.

‘How could I not be a little in love with you when you feel the same way towards me?'

I understood he wouldn't leave unless I said something, and I was dying to know where all this was leading. Maybe I did love him, in the contemptible way cheap tarts do, or was I just attracted by the idea of love? Who knows? ‘I am a little in love with you,' I admitted.

Monsieur's smile was silent, and I felt like slapping my face.

There was nothing cataclysmic about my defeat at his hands. I can see that now. Defeat is just an accumulation of minor acts of surrender. One. And then another. Until the noose around my neck choked me.

ELLIE

TUESDAY, 11 MAY 2009, 04.25

I don't know where the surrounding décor I invent when I'm playing with myself comes from. When I think of Monsieur, the mystery deepens; around us, blue swirling drapery, with a life of its own, full of haphazard breathing and sighs. The walls and the whole world gasp and vibrate to an obscene rhythm. Here and there, a window, the edge of the bed, the smell of a room; a random potpourri of all the places where Monsieur has followed me, trapped me, cornered me.

I'm at the hotel in the ninth
arrondissement
but I'm also everywhere and nowhere. Do take note of the fact that it's half past four in the morning and I still can't sleep. And I have no sleeping pills or grass and only my two fingers guide me towards sleep and liberation.

So, I'm lying here, sprawled out. Naked. The mirrors in the ceiling capture an image with all the purity of a painting, my body at the heart of crimson sheets, a bad-taste odalisque, as kitsch as this ‘Chinese' room.

It's weird, this adversarial relationship I have with my pussy, and how it never presents Monsieur with a problem. Why are all men so irresistibly attracted to
it
? What do they see? What is so fascinating about what I have between my legs? Two lobes of flesh and a thin carpet of fur, shining like a seal's skin, disfigured by a deep gash. All these ‘
gracious undulations, the lacework of love
', as Aragon puts it, how is it possible for Monsieur to find poetry there? How can I not see beyond the superfluous folds of my flesh? Wouldn't it be nice if I had one of those exquisite sealed pussies in the shape of a shy mouth, slit barely opening when touched, widened by fingers. A sea shell carved from almond paste, harbouring minuscule nacreous lips, the tiny muzzle of the clitoris, a miniature rampart in need of courting before it consents to display itself. But I inherited this loud, lippy, porno-movie pussy, ever gaping, open like an obscene smile even when lovemaking is the last thing on my mind. Open-legged in front of Monsieur, I feel as if I'm displaying so much more than my sex. And it's never enough for him. In such close proximity to my pussy, he wants to watch it come alive, squirm beneath my fingers as it does when I am alone. How can I tell him, face to face, that I'd like to hear him say I'm as beautiful there as I am elsewhere? Monsieur wants to watch, spend hours studying me there, dissecting me until I become catatonic with discomfort. In his ideal world, Monsieur wishes to pin me down like a butterfly with wings extended, pulling and pinching to his heart's content, but all those assaults on my modesty would exasperate me and render me sopping wet. God only knows how much worse it all is when I'm wet. I become bloated and expand, unable to conceal the fact that mine is no virginal cunt shedding just a few parsimonious drops of inner dew. Doesn't Monsieur know this already? It's like a waterfall. A flow of gummy lava streaming down to my arse crack; evidently, even if I look the picture of innocence, the dark folds of my pants betray the mark of the devil. There is no way I can even open my thighs without making untold promises of shameful sex. Maybe that's what makes his cock grow so hard.

Maybe, maybe. The mirror above the bed has its undeniable charms. The finger I slowly slip inside disappears within the slimy moistness, and the stale odour of the sheets is overcome by my sickly fragrance. A smell that undeniably operates as a spell on all men, strong enough to turn them into murderers. It's a bit like walking into a cider-house, where the perfume of the apples becomes too much. Maybe it's this very smell that turns men topsy-turvy so that they find everything beautiful and right about the bodies of women. And now I know this, it's impossible, IMPOSSIBLE, to proceed with any semblance of normality. Lust makes my slit open and close like a real mouth, and all these silent utterances make me blush. I am annoyed by the nuances of this language I fail to fully understand, and hate the fact that I don't like watching myself do what excites me when other girls do it.

I'm like an amateur movie. I can't watch; I'm still blushing. I can't look at my own face without wincing. Have I ever known what I look like when I come? How do those delicate contractions in the pit of my stomach reflect in an onlooker's eyes? I'm sure I pleasure myself as much as anyone else, if not more, in every imaginable or possible position, standing, sitting, lying down, with my hands, my thighs, the showerhead, all the ordinary objects of everyday life my unquenchable vice summons up for assistance. But never in front of any of the thousand mirrors spread across my house. And now that I have met the man, whenever I touch myself I feel as if I'm being watched. Just three days ago I surprised myself by checking my own room (within the walls of the family home) for hidden cameras. And tonight the red reflections of the super-cheap galaxy painted across the ceiling in this room are like a gang of informers reporting my activities back to the Île Saint-Louis castle, more precisely, the mythological study where he hides my accumulating letters, between volumes by Mandiargues and Baudelaire. Improbable, I know. But I'm on my guard.

It would be so much better if Monsieur were actually here. At least I'd know why I was shivering. There would be something tangible to fear or lust for, no longer these twisted fantasies that I wouldn't reveal to him even under torture.

Can you hear me? With your animal intuition, can you feel that somewhere in Paris, as you fall asleep against your wife, I'm spreading my thighs all the way open until it's painful and I'm thinking of you, standing by the door there gazing at me? And because I'm a paradox, closing my eyes to my reflection in the mirror doesn't stop me imagining you ordering me to spread my legs wide, still wider,
even more
. A touch red-faced, I improvise a scenario in the style of the Marquis de Sade, a tale full of orders and insults, and – would I ever have the courage to tell you in real life or confess its details to my girlfriends? – the moment that captivates me most, binding all the other scenes together, is the one where I hear you say, your voice calm but peremptory, unwilling to accept any refusal: ‘I can see your pussy, Ellie, but I can't see your arse. Pull your legs up.'

And I watch myself in the mirror following orders. (Imagining you imagining all this, troubled by it as you read a book, numbs my fingers and I find it difficult to write.)

As if your almost invisible presence wasn't enough, you appear out of nowhere and come to me, kneeling by my head, your nails digging into my calves preventing any further movement. Bewildered, I watch as my stomach divides, just a few centimetres away from my nose, and above it how my cunt and arse cheeks painfully conjugate with the spreading of my thighs.