Chapter 52 La Fere

When he penetrated me with the tip of his fingers, testing the solidity of my hymen before plunging his fingers into my ass – three fingers, right away. It was just before he sodomized me – not for one moment, at that time, did I think he could take me any other way. “And then words. When he told me to wrap my tongue tight around it, to go back up to the glans before plunging again, my nose in his pubic hair. When he came out of my mouth, he said that I was useless, incapable of making him come. He said it again when he came out of my ass: ‘Incapable of making me come – what are you good at?’ I crawled at his feet, told him I was sorry, I was going to make him come, I would be able to do it. He came back into my mouth – his penis had a bitter taste I learned to recognize, but again, he didn’t come. He was doing it on purpose, of course. “He finished undressing me, he made me walk up and down. We went into the kitchen, he made me lie down on the very cold white varnished wooden table. There were neon tubes on the ceiling and he ordered me to touch myself there, in front of him, spreading my legs wide. The idea that he was watching me made me come almost immediately. “He told me off; obviously, that was the purpose of the game. I was panting, I had come so intensely that my thighs were soaked. He inserted himself between my legs, lifted them to place my heels on his shoulders. I wanted to look at him but I closed my eyes, because of the neon, and he deflowered me. “Since I’ve known him, he has always liked to fuck me in harsh and at the same time gloomy lights, neon, bare lightbulbs, hanging on a wire. Stage spotlights. And on cold surfaces – lacquered woods, paving stones. Only once did we do it in his bedroom, but he had thrown some white sheets on the floor, which he’d carefully sprinkled with water, before stretching me on the damp material. He rolled me in it, only letting the part of my body he wanted to use show. “I felt a brief, sharp pain, then my blood flowed, at least I thought it was blood. He pinched my breasts hard, and I came again. When he pulled out of me, he still hadn’t ejaculated, and he said I was useless, I was good for nothing. He removed the belt from his trousers and hit me several times on the breasts and belly. “I fell on my knees and took him in my mouth again. He didn’t stop hitting me, on the back and buttocks, harder and harder, and I stopped sucking because I had come again.” I look at her carefully, straight into her face. She is not embarrassed, neither by recalling her memories nor by her use of the most precise words – it is plain that she takes delight in it. As if such a graphic confession was part of a protocol imposed by the master, and that, far from saying something on neurosis, it was part of its manifestation – its complacency, I should say. Surely not. Judith uses those words because she thinks they are adequate and I have a very brief flash, imagining her in class, in front of her bewildered students, with those same words, spoken in that calm, balanced voice. “That’s how our relationship started. “He told me to get dressed, immediately, without having a wash, my panties sticky, the jeans stained with the blood, which still dripped. And the rest. “I asked him where the toilets were. He took me there, left the door open, watching me with interest – delighted, without showing it, because of my confusion when the gush of piss hit the water in the bowl, like a heavy fountain. “He gave me, in detail, the protocol of our meetings. The exact time. The way I had to always kneel down as soon as I entered. The underwear I had to wear from now on – or rather, not wear. He ordered me to go to a saddler to buy a crop for breaking in horses – specifying that the handle had to be metallic. ‘What are you?’ he asked me. ‘I’m nothing.’ ‘No,’ he specified, ‘you’re less than nothing, you’re my slave.’ ‘I’m your slave, yes . . .’ “The next day, seeing him in class – I had sat alone instinctively, far away from him – gave me a shock. I had spent the night thinking it all over, trying to understand why, and my nerves were on edge, as if after insomnia. I looked for a long time at my skin, covered in red patches, the exact demarcation of the belt with which he had chastised me – that’s the word I used spontaneously. Chastised for some fault – and each time I reached that point, I caressed myself and came, and the question disappeared – or rather, the eventual answer – but the question remained, burning, and I caressed myself again. “Five days later, another meeting – just after class. I had brought the crop, spotted several days before and bought just prior to going to see him. The door was ajar, I entered and looked for him. He didn’t seem to be home. I took my clothes off and knelt down in the middle of the living room, in front of a heavy, low table where I had laid the crop. He made me wait an extremely long time. He was there, of course, scrutinizing my submission. “That day he just hit me on the loins, buttocks, and thighs, in neat parallel stripes. ‘Count the blows,’ was all he said. “At ten I thought it had to stop, he was doing it just to draw lines, I was not going to be able to refrain from screaming much longer. At thirty, I said to myself he will be fed up soon, the stripes are probably overlapping, forming a mesh, and it was no longer of interest, from an aesthetic point of view. I almost tried to get up, but he had stretched me over the lacquered wood, and bound my wrists to the legs of the table. “He stopped at sixty, and I was nothing but pain – no, I was beyond pain. I had screamed of course, pleaded, cried, and still the leather rained down. I don’t know when I thought, strongly thought, that I deserved what was happening to me. “He stopped, caressed me with the metallic knob of the crop, which he pushed inside, in one orifice, then the other. ‘You want it, don’t you?’ No point specifying what I wanted. ‘Please, please . . .’ ‘Please what?’ ‘Take me, please . . .’ ‘Take me how, little slut?’ I realized he wanted to hear the words, and I begged him to sodomize me, as deep as he could, to tear me apart. That pleased him, but he put his cock first in my mouth. My nose was stuffy with tears, and I was half suffocating while sucking him. “That’s it. It’s been going on for five years.” She looked at me. Obviously, it could all be fake – all the more so for it sounded true. Psychopaths are good actors, when acting is part of their delirium. But at worst (was it then something worse than the suspicion that it could be true?), the narrative was there, and was telling something.