Read The Image Online

Authors: Jean de Berg

Tags: #Erotica

The Image (3 page)

BOOK: The Image
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“You see, what we'll do is slip the stem up between the garter belt and the skin about here, close to the crotch. The thorns should be strong enough to hold the flower in place.”

“No,” I said. “The thorns might be strong enough to tear the flesh, but the flower would fall the minute she started walking.”

“Just wait and see,” Claire retorted.

She gave the stem a quick going over and it proved to have only one really big thorn, near the end. The rest were brittle little things which she peeled off with her fingernail, remarking:

“See how nice I am? I'm taking off all the prickles, so as not to hurt you.”

Then she suddenly turned to me:

“But I forgot, she's supposed to be punished, isn't she?” Her voice became more authoritative and more loving, as she addressed her friend.

“Spread your legs apart and then don't move, I'm going to hurt you. Come close to me.”

Little Anne did as she was told, imploring softly, “No... No... Don't do that... Please don't...”

Claire grasped the rose by its stem end, the blossom hanging down, to bring the cruel thorn up against the most sensitive flesh, on the inner thigh up close to the pubis. While her victim kept saying, “No... please... please don't... ,” Claire pushed the steely point slightly into the skin. Anne gave a little moan and bit her lower lip to keep from crying out.

Claire waited a few seconds like this, alternately looking at the face and at the flesh chosen for torture, then in one motion, jabbed the thorn in and pulled it down. The tender skin was ripped about a quarter of an inch. Anne gave a cry of pain, from deep in her throat, and shrank back a step. But she stayed there in front of us, wide-eyed, open mouthed – although trembling all over, her cunt exposed. Claire, leaning back in her chair, contemplated her victim with what seemed to me to be either hatred, or the deepest love.

Without making a move, or saying a word, the two young women stayed facing each other for quite a long time. Then Anne, who was still hold ing her dress up, took a step toward her mistress, coming back, offering herself again, as close as she had been before.

A little drop of blood, bright red, had formed on the naked flesh of her thigh. Claire, whose features were softening, leaned forward without getting up from her chair and placed a kiss on each of her hands.

Then, with one finger, she lifted up the edge of the garter belt to the left of the crotch, and with the other hand slipped the stem in under the black material pushing it up towards the hip so that just the flower would show under the filmy ruffle. To keep it in this position Claire just had to push the thorn out to the front where it hooked itself into the lace.

Claire leaned back again to survey the effect from a distance. She put her head to one side and narrowed her eyes, like a connoisseur appraising a painting.

“It's pretty, wouldn't you say?” she asked, pout ing at me.

Beneath the central archway of lace the rose, held against the flesh on the left, its head hanging down, spilled out over both the black material and the triangle of blonde fur, one of whose upper corners it hid almost completely. The edge of one petal almost touched the beginning of the thigh. Still lower, and to the right, between the lowest point of the triangle where the pubic hairs end in delicate feathers, and the black ribbon of the garter belt, the drop of blood seemed about to run down onto the pearly flesh.

I answered that it was indeed a great success, although perhaps rather overburdened with symbols, in the romantic and surrealist traditions.

Claire smiled. Her face was completely relaxed.

Pretending to want to rearrange some small de tail, she leaned over her work again. But instead she started to caress the rose just as the girl had done earlier, spreading the petals and plunging a finger into its heart.

She stopped abruptly. Apparently it had only been a game.

She had also stroked, briefly, the short curly hair with the back of her finger.

“It's too bad,” she said, “that we didn't bring a camera: we could have had a lovely color shot.”

She bent down a little and gently licked the drop of blood which was threatening to run down and spot the stocking.

Voices were approaching on the path behind the bushes.

Claire had raised her face to look at her friend
,
a new look, full of tenderness, in her eyes. The two young women smiled at each other a long time.

It was a beautiful day. Anne's golden hair shone in the sunlight. In a peaceful voice that I had never heard her use before, Claire said:

“You may lower your dress.”

III : A CUP OF TEA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

We went to have tea at the pavilion in the park. Claire was lively, talkative, almost childlike. Even Anne spoke with confidence and gaiety. I could see, on this occasion, that she wasn't stupid at all.

However, we only talked about trivial things: gardening, art, literature. Claire made me give the latest gossip on the “fraud” of the moment she had heard me holding forth about the night before at the party. The two young women seemed very amused.

But, little by little, this good mood vanished. The silences grew longer, and Claire's face took on the same closed look it had had at the beginning of our outing. Her classic features, her cold beauty, her remoteness, made me think of some goddess in exile. I saw that she was once again completely engrossed in her young companion, her protégée, her victim, her mirror image. Anne, for her part, had resumed the modest demeanor of an object of lust.

We finished our tea. While Anne was arranging the pleats of her skirt on her lap Claire abruptly asked her:

“Is the rose still in the proper place?” Bowing her head, she indicated that it was. “When you're sitting down,” Claire went on; “the petals must fall down between your legs and get crushed. Is that right?”

Anne nodded.

“Then you must open your legs wider, so that the flower can hang freely and not be ruined, do you hear?” The girl, immobile from the waist up, eyes fixed on her empty cup, carried out the order silently and rearranged the pleats of her skirt over her stomach and knees. Claire then asked:

“Can you still feel the petals between your thighs?” Anne nodded that she could.

“Does it feel nice?” asked Claire.

At this the girl began to blush.

“Well? Can't you answer?”

“Yes, it feels nice,” the girl answered.

But it was only a murmur. Claire warned her that if she didn't speak more distinctly in the future she would pull down the top of her dress and expose her breasts, right there in front of everybody. Then, turning to me:

“It would be very easy, you know, since with that gathered neckline her dress is only held up by a band of elastic, and since she hasn't got a thing on under it anyway.”

Putting her words into action, Claire reached out and pulled the top of her friend's dress down a couple of inches, enough to bare the rounded shoulder, the beginning of the armpit, and half of one breast.

She didn't dare go so far as to expose the tip, but still, one could see the part that is whiter, softer and more intimate, gently curved, seeming to cry out for more torments. Further up, an irregular red line in the flesh marked where the elastic had been.

“People are looking at us,” I said. “You'll have to stop there. What a pity.”

“Then let's get out of here,” Claire snapped.

We all three stood up. The girl, who had put her dress back in place, went up to Claire to whisper something in her ear. Claire stared at her with an evil smile, apparently pleased to have hit upon a revenge so quickly, and said in a loud voice:

“No, you can't go now. I don't feel like waiting for you. You didn't have to drink all that tea in the first place.” Little Anne followed us out meekly, of course, her head lowered. I didn't have much trouble real izing that she had wanted to go to the bathroom, and hadn't been given permission.

But I didn't know yet what Claire was leading up to. She guided us nonchalantly around the garden making us admire here a flower bed, there a bush pruned in a clever shape, or the design of some walk or other.

At last we came to an area that seemed more wild and natural, where very large trees had blan keted the sparse, unkempt grass with fallen leaves.

This neglected part of the garden would attract no one, especially at that hour when the setting sun was lengthening the shadows. I guessed that our guide was looking for a secluded spot, as far as possible from the rounds of the usual walks.

Claire, indeed, soon stopped, and pointed out a brownish carpet of broken leaves and twigs, under a spreading beech tree whose branches, near the trunk, left some space, but then grew down almost to the level of the grass.

“Here is the perfect place,” she said. “Don't you think so?” She had dragged us both in under the tree. On one side of it there was a fairly large free space en tirely enclosed by relatively dense branches.

“It depends what you want to use it for,” I replied.

“But for the little girl, of course: she was look ing for a bathroom!”

Anne protested weakly:

“But no... honestly... I don't need to go... ,” trying to get us back out to the gardens.

“If that's the case,” said Claire, “then why did you lie to us?

I thought you were going to give us a little performance.”

“No... I assure you... , I was mis taken...” Claire made the girl stand in front of her and look her in the eye, holding her chin up with her fist.

“Come on,” she said, “you little idiot, don't try to fool us. You know it won't get you anywhere.” Then, in a harsher tone, calm but with no non sense about it, she suddenly ordered:

“You'll do it right now, or else I'm going to slap you!” The girl at once bent down and, carefully spreading her white dress around her, squatted in front of Claire. Claire reached down to caress the pretty face, reddened with shame. With a firm hand she forced her friend to raise her face to hers, and continued stroking it: the cheeks, the eyelids, and the mouth. More tenderly, she said:

“Get on your knees, it's much more attractive.” The girl knelt and pulled her skirt in front of her, taking the white material in both hands to hold it away from her thighs. From behind, the tips of her shoes protruded from beneath her dress. “Now then,” said Claire, with a slightly disgusted smile, “is our little girl going to do pee pee?”

She forced the mouth open with her fingers and began fondling the lips.

“Above all, be sure your legs are apart!”

Anne spread her knees further, and disappeared completely under her dress.

“There, that's fine. Now lean forward a little.” The girl leaned forward and lowered her head. Under the blonde curls that fell over her face, Claire's fingers continued to play with the open mouth.

“You're very nice like this, you know,” she said. Then, after a moment, suddenly losing patience:

“Well, are you going to piss or not, little bitch!” When nothing happened, Claire gathered the mass of hair in one hand and yanked the head up, exposing the face. Then she slapped it with the other hand, as hard as she could, once... twice...

I heard the stream of water, long held in, hit the dry leaves on the ground with violence.

IV : AN EXPIATORY SACRIFICE

More than a week went by without my seeing Claire or her friend again.

On the eighth day, quite by chance, I ran into little Anne in a bookstore in Montmartre. She was alone. She pretended not to recognize me, which hardly surprised me, I must say.

I thought of the last image I had of our afternoon in the Bagatelle gardens. The rose must have come loose from the garter belt when the girl knelt down under the beech tree. When she got to her feet again, hiding her face in her hands, I saw the flesh-colored flower lying abandoned on the dead leaves. It had happened to be right under the stream: in the hollows of its bruised petals drops of liquid glistened like pearls. All around it the brown leaves were wet, dark and lustrous.

One large drop had slid slowly down a folded petal of the rose and come to rest on an almost perfect leaf, more or less flat, where the water, before it ran off, had formed a sort of mirror which took several seconds to seep away.

The girl was now speaking to the salesman. What struck me at once was the positive tone, full of assurance, she used in dealing with this man. She wanted a rare book, sold only under the counter, which she asked for with poise, obviously sure that this was the place to find it.

In effect, the salesman soon gave up pretending he'd never heard of it and got a copy out from under the counter. She paid for it without further ado.

I had placed myself in her path, in the middle of the doorway, where she couldn't avoid having to look at me. I said:

“Don't you remember me?” She regarded me coldly.

“Yes, obviously. But not the way that you mean.” I realized at once that things were going to go very differently that day, so I quickly assured her that I hadn't meant anything in particular, and accompanied her outside.

“What do you want?” she asked me rather rudely.

“Nothing... just to talk to you a little...”

“I don't feel like having anyone talk to me, and I'm in a hurry. I've got to bring this book back right away.” She showed me the little package wrapped in brown paper: the handiwork of the salesman.

“To whom?” I asked. “To Claire?”

The look in those green eyes became even more hostile: a flashing that was certainly unlike any thing I had known before.

“I bring things back to whomever I please. It's none of your business!”

I thought an innocent smile would get me off the hook and I wished her a pleasant evening.

But she had already turned to go.

This encounter left me highly dissatisfied.

I hadn't imagined that I, personally, would have any power over this girl, but it had seemed only natural that I should continue to enjoy certain privileges, outside of Claire's presence, since they had already been granted to me so liberally, and without my even having asked for anything.

BOOK: The Image
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