Return to the Chateau (5 page)

“No, no, not that,” Monique exclaimed. “Her uniform first.”

“What uniform?” O asked.

“The same one that Monique is wearing. Look for yourself,” Anne-Marie said.

Monique was wearing a dress cut roughly the same as the long dresses that O remembered, but Monique’s was more severe, more staid, an effect which doubtless stemmed from the material-a very dark gray-blue wool-and the shawl which covered her head, shoulders, and bosom. When O had donned the same clothing and saw herself in the mirror beside Monique, she realized what it was that had surprised her when she had seen Monique. It was an outfit which oddly resembled those worn in women’s prisons, or by servants in convents. But not if you really looked closely at them. The wide, full skirt, lined with taffeta of the same color, was sewed onto a band with large, open, unpressed pleats that fastened over the corset, exactly like certain evening gowns do. And although it appeared closed, it was open in the middle of the back from the waistline down to the feet. Unless you deliberately pulled the dress to one side or the other, however, you would never have noticed it. O noticed’ it on hers only after they had put on her skirt, and she had failed to remark it earlier on Monique’s. The blouse, which buttoned in the back, had short, scalloped peplums which covered, for about the width of a person’s hand, the onset of the pleats. It was fitted with darts and two elastic panels. The sleeves were cut out but not sewed on, with a seam on the upper part of the arm that extended to the shoulder seam and ended at the elbow in a wide, flared bias. A similar bias piped the d=E9collet=E9 neckline which tightly followed the curve of the corset.

=

But a large scarf of black lace covered her head, one corner of which hung down in the middle of her forehead, like a kerchief, while the other corner extended down her back, falling between her shoulder blades. It was fastened by four snaps, two on the shoulder seams and two on the bias of the low-cut neckline, just at the rise of the breasts, and crossed between them, where a long steel pin held it taut to the corset. The lace, held in the hair by a comb, framed the face and completely concealed the breasts, but was supple and transparent enough so that you could make out the nipples, as you knew that the breasts were ‘free beneath the shawl. Besides, all you had to do to make them completely bare was to remove the pin, as, in the back, all you had to do was spread the two folds of the skirt to bare the backside.

Before she undressed her again, Monique showed O how, with two straps that raised the two sections of the skirt and then tied in front at the waist, it was a simple matter to keep them open. It was while she was demonstrating this that, in effect, Anne-Marie answered the question raised by O:

“It’s the uniform of the community,” she said. “You didn’t have a chance to get acquainted with it on your last visit because then you were brought here by your lover for his own account. You were not, properly speaking, a member of the cornmunity?’

“But I don’t understand,” said O. “I was just like the other girls. Anyone could …”

“Anyone could sleep with you? Of course they could. But it was for your lover’s pleasure, and the only person it concerned was he. Now it’s different. Sir Stephen has turned you over to the community. Everyone can still sleep with you, true, but now it’s the community’s problem. You’ll be paid …”

“Paid!” O exclaimed. “But Sir Stephen …”

Anne-Marie did not let her finish.

“Listen, O, I’ve heard quite enough. If Sir Stephen wants you to go to bed for money, he’s certainly free to do so. It’s no concern of yours. Go to bed and keep quiet. As for your other duties and obligations, we use the sister system here. Node will be your sister, and she’ll explain all the procedures to you.”

The luncheon in Anne-Marie’s bedroom was a strange affair. A servant had brought the meal on a heated serving table. Monique, in her community uniform, had served them, after having set four places at the table: Anne-Marie’s, O’s, Noelle’s, and her own. Before lunch, O had tried on several more dresses. Anne-Marie had chosen, and set aside, the gray and yellow dress, which O would wear that same day; another blue dress; a thing which was a paler blue mixed with green; and lastly, a very tightfitting knitted dress which opened in front from the waist down. It was dark purple, and O’s pale thighs and loins, so naked and so weighted with their metal rings, were visible even when she did not move, as were her naked breasts. The servant had taken all the dresses, except the yellow one that Anne-Marie had chosen, into O’s room, which adjoined Noelle’s. Monique would take all the others back to the storeroom.

O watched Noelle, who was seated opposite her, laughing. She was laughing because the black horsehair of the chair on which she was sitting tickled her; O glanced over at Anne-Marie, who was trying to control her temper but was on the verge of losing it, then at Monique, who was concentrating on her domestic table duties. On two occasions, when Monique got up from her place, O saw Anne-Marie, as Monique passed to her right, slip her hand into the slit in Monique’s dress. Monique froze, and O realized, or rather guessed, from the slight yielding of her body, that she was accommodating herself to the probing hand.

“Why didn’t he say anything to me about it?” O kept repeating to herself, over and over. “Why didn’t he?”

And sometimes she had the feeling that, quite simply, she had been abandoned, and that Sir Stephen had sent her to Roissy, turned her over to Roissy, as Anne-Marie had put it, in order to get rid of her. And then again she imagined that the opposite was true, that he had done it because he desired her all the more. Then Anne-Marie was right: whatever he wanted was of no concern of hers, nor were his reasons any of her business; all that mattered was that he had his own good reasons. And at that point the whole cycle would begin all over again: “Why didn’t he say anything to me? Why didn’t he?” And what could she do, at this juncture, to keep the tears from flowing, or at least to keep the others from seeing them flow? Noelle saw them. She gave her a slight but very tender smile and shook her finger at her, signifying that O ought to control herself. O smiled in return and dried her eyes with both her fists, the way children do when they’ve been scolded. She didn’t have any napkin, and she was naked. Luckily, Anne-Marie, who had removed the pin holding Monique’s scarf and was busy caressing the brownish tips of her breasts, was not looking at O. She was watching Monique’s face to see the nascent signs of pleasure reflected there, and even while she caressed she kept plying her with questions: How many men had entered her body since the previous evening? Who were they? Had she been as open to them as she was now?

As she said these last words, Anne-Marie called Noelle and O, and, without letting go of Monique, had them lift and fasten the two sides of her dress. Monique had generous, golden buttocks, and finely shaped, unmarked thighs. In a monotone, Monique had answered each of Anne-Marie’s questions: Five men had taken her, three of whom she did not know; she gave the names of the other two. Yes, she had opened herself as best she could. Anne-Marie, making Monique bend over, demonstrated to the other two girls how easily she was able to plunge, one after the other, the two longest fingers of her hand first into the sex then into the rear. Each time she did they could see Monique’s buttocks contract as she closed around the fingers, moaning. Finally she gave a cry, her hands gripped her breasts, her head was thrown back, and, beneath her black veil, her eyes closed. Anne-Marie let her go.

It was not until after midnight that O, the evening of that first day, was taken and chained in her room. She had spent the afternoon in the library, dressed in her lovely gray and yellow dress lined with matching yellow taffeta, whose voluminous folds she took in both her hands to raise whenever the order was given to her to lift her skirt. Noelle, who was dressed in a similar red dress, was with her as were two blonde girls, whose names Noelle failed to tell her until they were alone that evening: the rule of silence, in the presence of any male, were he a master or a valet, was absolute.

It was just three o’clock in the afternoon when the four girls entered the empty room, whose windows were wide open. It was warm and pleasant; the sun struck the wall of the main building at right angles, its reflection casting a false light on one of the ivy-colored walls. And O was mistaken. The room was not empty: there was a valet standing on guard duty against a door. O knew that she had no right to look at him, but she couldn’t help doing so. Being careful not to raise her eyes any higher than the man’s waist, she found herself once again overwhelmed with the same feeling of panic and fascination which she had experienced a year earlier. No, she had forgotten nothing, and yet, in actuality, it was worse than in her memory, this sex so free in its pouch, and so visible between the thighs of the tightfitting black breeches like those one sees in sixteenth-century paintings-and the thongs of the whip he kept stuck in his belt. At the foot of the easy chairs there were stools, and O, following the example of the other three girls, sat down on one of them with her dress spread out in a broad arc around her. And it was from this lowly position that O looked up at this statuesque, unmoving man standing directly opposite her. The silence was so heavy you could have cut it with a knife, and O was afraid even to shift the folds of her dress: the crackling of the silk would have been too loud. She gave a cry at the sudden sound that broke that silence. A swarthy, thickset young man in a riding outfit, a riding crop in one hand, his boots adorned with golden spurs, had entered the room by straddling the windowsill.

“What a pretty picture,” he said. “As sensible as you are well mannered. But what are you doing here all alone? Is there no one here to appreciate your charms? I’ve been watching you through the window for a good fifteen minutes. But the beauty in yellow,” he added, running the tip of his riding crop over O’s breasts, “yes, you,” he said, “you haven’t been as well mannered as the others, have you?”

O got to her feet. Just as she did, Monique came into the room, her purple satin dress tucked up in front at her waist, beneath which a triangle of dark fleece marked the beginning of her long thighs which O had previously seen only from the rear. She was followed by two men. O recognized the first. He was the one who, the previous year, had outlined to her the rules that governed at Roissy. He recognized her too and smiled at her.

“Do you know her?” the young man who had preceded them into the room wanted to know.

“Yes,” the man said. “Her name is O. She is marked by Sir Stephen, who took her over from Ren=E9 R. She was here for a few weeks last year, when you were away. If you’d like, Frank . .”

“You know, I just might,” said Frank. “But do you realize what your O’s been going? For the past fifteen minutes I’ve been watching her without her being aware of it, and during the entire time she was staring at Jos=E9, but not above his waist.”

The three men laughed. Frank took O by the nipples and pulled her toward him.

“Tell me the truth, my little whore, what was it you were staring at with such desire, Jos=E9’s whip, or his prick?”

O, flushed and burning with shame, losing all notion of what was allowed and what was forbidden at Roissy, tore herself loose from the young man’s grasp, jumping back and screaming, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

He caught her as she stumbled over an easy chair and brought her back to her former position.

“You’re wrong to try and run away,” he said. “The whip. Jos=E9 is going to give it to you before you know it.”

Ah, if only she could keep herself from moaning, from grovelling and begging for mercy! But she did moan and cry and ask to be spared, she twisted and turned trying to get away from the rain of blows, she tried to kiss Frank’s hands, the hands that were holding her while the valet flogged away. One of the blonde girls, together with Noelle, helped her to her feet and straightened out her skirt.

“Now I’m taking her’ said Frank. “I’ll let you have my opinion shortly.”

But when she had followed him into his room and was naked in his bed, before he lay down beside her he said:

“I’m sorry, O, but your lover also has you whipped, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” O said, then hesitated, as though she had intended to say more but had thought better of it.

“Go on,” he said. “Speak your mind.”

“He doesn’t insult me,” O said.

“Are you quite sure he doesn’t?” Frank said. “He’s never called you a whore?”

O shook her head, and even as she did she realized that she was lying. Whore was indeed what Sir Stephen had called her when he had taken her to the Laperouse restaurant and given her to the two Englishmen, when he had stripped her naked during the meal, her breasts crisscrossed with scars. She raised her eyes until they met Frank’s eyes, staring fixedly at her. They were dark blue, gentle, almost compassionate; he had realized that she was lying when she had told him that her lover had never called her a whore.

Responding to his unspoken words, she murmured:

“If he does, it’s with good reason.”

He kissed her on the mouth.

“Do you really love him all that much?” he said.

“Yes,” O said.

That seemed to close the conversation, or at least Frank did not feel like pursuing it any further. He caressed her, with his lips, so long and tenderly in the hollow of her thighs that her breathing came faster and deeper until she could no longer control it. When after having penetrated deep inside he shifted position and entered her from behind, he called her, in a near whisper: “O.” O felt herself tightening around the pale of flesh that filled and burned her. He lost himself within her and quickly fell asleep, snuggled against her, with his hands on her breasts and his knees pressed tightly against the hollows of her knees.

It was cool. O pulled the sheet and blanket up over them and fell asleep too. The day was drawing to a close when they awoke. How many months had it been since O had last slept for so long in a man’s arms? All of them, first and foremost Sir Stephen, slept with her, then left her, or sent her away. And this one, who only a short while before had treated her so coarsely, so churlishly, was now seated at her feet, asking her jokingly, like Hamlet to Ophelia (Ophelia because of “O,” he said), whether he could curl up and sleep in her lap. With his head against O’s upper thighs and belly, he toyed with her irons, turning them over and over. He lighted a lamp the better to see them, read out loud the name of Sir Stephen inscribed on the disk, and then, remarking on the crossed whip and riding crop engraved beneath the name, asked O which Sir Stephen preferred to use, the whip or the crop. O did not reply.