The Image (7 page)

All I said to her was that she was beautiful, which was quite a thing for me to say.

She looked at me silently. She seemed to understand something, something far away, and she smiled at me mysteriously with a startling tender ness. Then she immediately demanded to see what we had bought.

I handed her the paper bag Anne had laid on the table. She unwrapped the contents and evaluated, as an expert, the various advantages of the models we had chosen.

In doing this she used, as always, the most crude, humiliating terms, which never failed to bring a blush to the fresh face of her pupil. For my part, I was lost in admiration at the ingenuity at her com mand: only a woman would be able to hit upon the most vulnerable spots of her own cunt with such knowing cruelty. The effect that her words had on me seemed to give me a glimpse of greater things to be expected from her in the future.

Then she asked me for an account of our shopping trip. I described briefly the high points of the scene in the fitting room and the deep impression made on our young salesgirl.

“And the little girl, did she behave herself?” Claire asked.

I made a face and shrugged as though I weren't quite sure, for suddenly I felt like exacting further tortures from our victim.

At this, Claire turned to her friend:

“You must have been happy, weren't you? To have everyone know what a little whore you are?” Then, more harshly, “Well, answer me!”

“Yes... I was happy...”

“Happy about what?”

“I was happy... to show... how I had been whipped...” It was a barely audible murmur. Was she reciting something without understanding it, or was this what she really thought?

“You like being whipped?” her tormentor continued.

The obedient lips formed a silent “Yes.”

“Stand up!” Claire ordered.

She was sitting opposite me. Anne, on my left between the two of us, stood up against the table. Her back was facing the rear wall. Claire went on:

“Put your hands on the table and lean forward... Open your legs... Bend your knees...” The girl carried out the orders.

Taking advantage of the fact that no one was looking, Claire put her hand up under her dress, from behind. She announced the results to me at once:

“She's wet already, the little bitch! You only have to promise to whip her... Would you like to see for yourself?” I reached up, also, under the dress, and felt two agile fingers moving between the moist lips.

And again my eyes met Claire's, warm and conspiratorial, dreaming up the most terrible violences.

The waiter, a very young man, came to take our order. I was obliged to remove my hand.

Claire, on the contrary, had pushed her chair back against the wall to make her position seem more natural while continuing with her scandalous pursuit. Little Anne, panic-stricken, tried to straighten up. But she didn't have the courage to break away completely from her friend's attentions. So she stood there, desperately clinging to the table, staring in a daze at the dumfounded young man.

I took as long as possible giving all the details of our order.

The waiter, I might add, didn't seem to hear me at all, for he couldn't take his eyes off the pretty girl with the distracted face, wide-eyed, lips parted, writhing in the grip of some invisible power across from him.

When I finally said:

“That will be all for the moment,” he fled in terror. Claire, in a peaceful voice, asked:

“Well now, little one, does it feel nice?”

“Let me go, I beg of you,” Anne implored all in one breath.

But Claire continued, saying:

“Which do you like better: when I embarrass you, or when I hurt you?” Then, turning to me, “Let's see, Jean, didn't you say that she wasn't good this afternoon?”

I affirmed that the girl indeed deserved a punishment.

Claire didn't ask for an explanation. She probably knew only too well that it wasn't true.

“Good,” she said, “then we're going to make her cry.” Anne's contortions became more and more painful. Her mistress was now torturing her under her dress.

After a few minutes, since a waiter was com ing with our tray, she finally withdrew her hand. “Don't think I'm letting you off so easily,” she said. “When would you like to come over to my place, Jean?”

“Tomorrow evening,” I said, “after dinner.”

“Very well. It will be tomorrow, then. You may sit down.” The waiter, no longer the same young man as before, arranged the cups and plates and silver ware on the table, paying no attention to us.

Claire sniffed her fingers, then put them under her friend's nose.

“Smell,” she said, “see how good you smell.” The girl blushed again.

“Lick them!”

The girl opened her mouth and sweetly licked the finger tips impregnated with her own odor.

The following evening, rue Jacob, I found Claire in her favorite indoor costume: tight pants and a narrow black sweater.

Her greeting struck me as being very impersonal, but no more so than usual, I suppose. At that time it was only when I was away from her that I could imagine her being more accessible. We sat down, each in one of the armchairs. I didn't ask where Anne was.

After exchanging a few remarks, of no real interest, I said:

“It's getting hotter and hotter outside. You might think it was the middle of August.”

Claire looked at me with that somewhat distant, haughty expression that I had always known. Then, an idea apparently having crossed her mind, she gave me a friendlier, although ironical, smile, and answered:

“I regret, my dear, that we are obliged to keep our clothes on. But in our role, you understand... it's indispensable...” That word “our” sounded like a good omen.

“That's true,” I said, “it's indispensable. To you especially, no doubt?”

She was willing to agree.

“Yes, perhaps, to me especially...”

There was something like a hint of regret in her words. At the same time her look grew vaguer, less guarded. Once again I thought she might be stirred by temptations of a different nature.

She was beautiful this way, much more beautiful... I hazarded an oblique approach:

“But all covered up like that, don't you ever get too hot?” Claire stared at me unflinchingly, and little by little her features hardened. Then her eyes nar rowed and the corners of her mouth turned down in a parody of amused disdain:

“No, never,” she said.

Then she got up from her chair:

“The little girl must be ready. Follow me!” All her self-possession had returned.

The door that she opened, without knocking, led into a room where I had never been before. It was the bathroom.

Its vast dimensions, as well as its luxury, most unusual in these old apartment buildings, clearly indicated that it had been installed recently, probably by Claire herself. She must have sacrificed a whole room of the apartment to it.

In addition to the usual fixtures, in pale blue porcelain, I was struck at once by the presence of a couch, full-sized, in one of the corners. The bath tub was nearby, at right angles to the couch, against the far wall. It was an enormous bathtub, also pale blue, decorated like the walls with white ceramic tiles.

Anne was standing up in the bathtub facing the door, busy soaping her body with both hands. Instinctively her hands, fingers spread, flew to her crotch and her breasts to cover them as much as possible. But a look from her mistress made her abandon this attempt at modesty. She took her little hands away, one after the other, with a fright ened, constrained look, and finally stood with her arms at her sides, palms out, her head bent.

Her pink and blonde flesh was glistening with soapsuds which had run together in places, form ing trails of white bubbles.

The delicate fullness of her body and her limbs cried out so to be touched that I could almost feel what that warm, wet, slippery embrace would be like, my hands sliding freely over the supple curves.

Claire gestured toward the couch where I stretched out, leaning on one elbow. Claire sat down across the opposite corner of the bathtub and said to her friend, who hadn't moved a muscle:

“Well, go ahead!”

The young girl began soaping herself again. But Claire, judging that she no longer had her heart in it, took charge of directing the action, indicating which areas should be scrubbed, which positions should be assumed (supposedly to make the job easier), and the whole scope and rhythm of the slightest movement.

The entire body was gone over, meticulously. From in front and behind, straight and bent over, one leg raised and the thighs opened wide, the hands at the back of the head caressing the neck, massaging the breasts, and lingering between the buttocks, all the motions of the bath had to be per formed in front of us.

Claire, of course, delighted in going back over the most intimate ones, the most indiscreet.

Two or three times, even, on the pretext of try ing to make her directions clearer, Claire offered the assistance of her own expert fingers. She acquitted herself of this function with implacable gravity and preciseness which partly hid her mounting excitement. I had no trouble noticing, however, that she spoke and handled her pupil with more and more brutality.

As for the poor girl, she proved to be a model of docility even when forced to endure long, uncomfortable poses, excessive probings, or spectacular contortions.

When she was finally allowed to sink into the water for good, Claire, her sleeves rolled up, bent over the tub again to wash away, herself, the last traces of soap from the most secret recesses of the body. She took her time. Lying in the water, the body of her friend responded to her slightest touch, letting itself be rolled over and back, stretched out and bent up, opened and closed, with perfect flexibility and ease.

I edged up closer to the tub myself, without getting up from the couch. Anne's head happened to be at my end. Her mistress had ended up with both hands around her neck, squeezing it tighter and tighter, pretending to want to push her head under the water...

Claire was smiling; but in the girl's green eyes a flicker of fear was growing which could only be real.

Nevertheless she obeyed the order to close her eyes, then to hide her hands behind her back in order to illustrate more clearly her role of the defenseless prey...

And Claire, very slowly, went on drowning her.

Anne gave herself up with complete abandon.

At that particular moment Claire's arms caught my attention. They were strong and well shaped, as I had imagined they would be. I wasn't prepared, however, to find them so graceful.

But Claire quickly realized that I was looking at her instead of at her victim. She stared back at me, pointedly, meaning to make me lower my eyes.

I smiled at her... I told her that she had very attractive arms.

She let go her hold and stood up. As one might have guessed, her confusion only increased her violence toward little Anne.

“Get up!” she commanded.

As soon as the girl was on her feet she brutally made her open her legs and put her hands again behind her back.

“Don't move!”

Her lovely body was dripping, as well as her hair, which fell in sinuous strands over half her face and her neck.

Claire said, like a challenge:

“Would you like me to turn on the little fountain?”

“Why not?” I answered.

“All right, watch!”

She seized the dripping wet pubic hair in her hand and parted the lips to poke her fingers in side. In her haste she must have hurt the young woman, who winced. Claire ordered her to stand still, on pain of being further mistreated, then she said:

“Show the gentleman the pretty fountain.”

However, her menacing tone did not suit the childish turn of the phrase at all.

The girl didn't have to be persuaded. She bent her knees slightly and threw out her chest. She closed her eyes. She steadied her arms in their position behind her back. The colorless liquid gushed out between Claire's fingers falling to the surface of the bath below with the sound of a rushing brook.

Claire played for an instant with the lips of the cunt, and then with the stream itself, letting it land on her open hand which made it run down one of the thighs.

And I was, I admit, rather surprised at the charm of such a scene whose simple and wonderful sweetness filled me, even me, with pleasure.

Having washed the soiled body of her friend under a warm shower at great length, Claire, now full of little kindnesses and attentions, helped her get out of the bath. She dried herself, rubbing, patting, polishing.

She brushed and combed the small triangle of pubic hair.

Then she perfumed it with a vaporizer, also the breasts, the armpits, the neck, the under side of the buttocks and the groove between them.

While the girl's hair was drying, very quickly, thanks to a little electric dryer, she carefully applied a bright pink rouge to her mouth and the nipples of her breasts.

She seemed to be overflowing with tenderness, wondering what to think up next to further adorn the young woman, to set her off, pamper her. She didn't seem to mind kneeling in front of her, on the pale-blue, foam rubber rug, or kissing the favorite parts of her body whenever she wanted to.

As she accomplished these various jobs with the gestures of a mother, or a lady in waiting, or a child playing with a doll, she kept up a running commentary for my benefit, even asking my advice about which perfume to choose, or which shade of lipstick.

When all these things were finally finished she slipped on a pair of stockings with embroidered tops, and the white garter belt and bra that I had bought the day before. She made her masterpiece turn around for her, to give it one last final inspection, then she pushed it toward the couch:

“Go and kiss your master, who loves you.”

The girl came and placed herself next to me, almost lying down, and kissed me for some time, with all the patience and gentleness I already knew were hers. I pressed my arm against her waist to hold her closer to me.