Little Birds (13 page)

So now he uncovered her and began to unfasten the cord of her pajamas. But at this point she asked him to turn out the light.

Pierre came home about midnight, and as he walked past the room he heard the moaning sounds of a woman, which he recognized as sounds of pleasure. He stopped. He could imagine the scene behind the door. The moans were rhythmic, then at times like the cooing of doves. Pierre could not help listening.

Then the next day Jean told him about Jeanette. He said, "You know, I thought she was just a young girl, and she was ... she was a virgin, but you have never seen such an aptitude for love. She is insatiable. She has already worn me out."

Then he went out to work, and was gone the whole day. Pierre remained in the apartment. At noon Jeanette appeared quite timidly and asked if she was going to have lunch. So
they had lunch together. Then after lunch she disappeared until Jean came home. The same thing happened the next day. And the next. She was as quiet as a mouse. But every night Pierre heard the moaning and crooning, the dove-cooing behind the door. After eight days, he noticed that Jean was growing tired. Jean was twice Jeanette's age to begin with, and then Jeanette, keeping her mother in mind, must have been seeking to outdo her.

On the ninth day Jean stayed out all night. Jeanette came to wake Pierre. She was alarmed. She thought Jean had met with an accident. But Pierre had guessed the truth. Indeed, Jean was already tired of her and wanted to inform her mother of her whereabouts. But he had not been able to extract the address from Jeanette. So he merely stayed away.

Pierre tried to console Jeanette as best he could, then went back to sleep. She wandered aimlessly about the apartment, picking up books and dropping them, trying to eat, telephoning the police. At all hours of the night she entered Pierre's room to talk about her anxieties, and she remained gazing at him wistfully, helplessly.

Finally she dared to ask him, "Do you think Jean does not want me about anymore? Do you think I should go away?"

"I think you should return home," said Pierre, weary and sleepy and indifferent to the young girl.

But the next day she was still there, and something happened to disturb his indifference.

Jeanette sat at the end of his bed to talk to him. She was wearing a very thin dress that seemed like a light sachet around her, merely a cover to hold the perfume of her body. A composite perfume, so strong and penetrating, Pierre could catch all its nuances—the bitter, strong odor of the hair; the few drops of perspiration on her neck, under her breasts, under her arms; her breath, both acid and sweet, like some mixture of lemon and honey; and beneath all this the odor of her femininity, which the summer heat wakened as it awakened the smell of flowers.

He became fully aware of his own body, feeling the caress of his pajamas on his skin, aware that they were open at the chest and that she could perhaps smell his odor as he was smelling hers.

His desire suddenly asserted itself, violently. He pulled Jeanette towards him. He made her slide beside him, and he felt her body through the thin dress. But at the same moment he remembered how Jean had made her moan and croon by the hour, and he wondered if he could do it as well. Never before had he been so near to another man making love or overheard the sounds of a woman being exhausted by pleasure. He had no reason to doubt his own power. He had ample proofs of his success as a good and satisfying lover. But this time, as he began to caress Jeanette, a doubt took hold of him—such a fear that his desire died.

Jeanette was amazed to see Pierre grown suddenly limp in the very middle of his fervent caresses. She felt contempt. She was too inexperienced to think that this might happen to any man in certain circumstances, so she did nothing to revive their lovemaking. She lay back, sighed and looked at the ceiling. Then Pierre kissed her mouth, and this she enjoyed. He lifted the light dress, looked at her young legs, pulled down the round garters. The sight of the stocking beginning to roll down and the tiny white panties she wore, the smallness of the sex he felt under his fingers, aroused him again, giving him such a desire to take her and do violence to her, so yielding and moist. He pushed his powerful sex into her and felt the tightness. This enchanted him. Like a sheath, her sex closed around his penis, softly and caressingly.

He felt his power coming back to him, his usual power and deftness. He knew by each move she made where she wanted to be touched. When she pressed against him, he covered her little round buttocks with his warm hands, and his finger touched the orifice. She leaped under his touch but made no sound.

And Pierre was waiting for this sound, a sound of approval, encouragement. No sound came from Jeanette. Pierre listened for it while he continued to pound into her.

Then he stopped, half withdrew his penis, and with the tip of it alone, he circled the opening of her little rosy sex.

She smiled at him and abandoned herself, but she still did not utter a sound. Wasn't she enjoying herself? What was it that Jean did to her that wrung such shrieks of pleasure from her? He tried all his positions. He raised her towards him by the middle of her body, brought her sex up to him, and he kneeled to better push into her, but she made no sound. He turned her over, and took her from behind. His hands were everywhere. She was panting and moist, but silent. Pierre touched her little ass, caressed her small breasts, bit into her lips, kissed her sex, thrust his sex into her violently and then softly turned and churned in her, but still she remained silent.

In desperation he said, "Say when you want it, say when you want it."

"Come now," she said immediately, as if she had been waiting for him to do it.

"Do you want it?" he asked again, filled with doubts.

"Yes," she said, but her passivity made him uncertain. He lost all his desire to come, to enjoy her. His desire died inside of her. He saw an expression of disappointment in her face.

It was she who said, "I suppose I'm not as attractive to you as other women."

Pierre was surprised. "Of course you are attractive to me, but you did not seem to be enjoying yourself and that stopped me."

"I was enjoying myself," said Jeanette, startled. "Of course I was. I was only afraid of Jean's coming and of his hearing me. I thought, if he comes and finds me here, at least if he does not hear me he may think you took me against my will. But if he hears me, he will know I enjoy it and be hurt, for he is the one who keeps saying to me, 'So you like it, so you like it, say so then, go on, speak, cry out, you like it, eh? It gets you, you enjoy it, enjoy it then,
say
so,
speak,
how does it feel?' I can't tell him
how
it feels, but it makes me cry out and then he is happy and that excites him."

Jean should have known what would happen between Jeanette and Pierre while he was out, but he did not believe Pierre could take a real interest in her; she was too much of a child. He was immensely surprised when he returned and found that Jeanette had stayed on and that Pierre was perfectly willing to console her, to take her out.

Pierre took pleasure in buying her clothes. For this purpose he accompanied her to the shops and waited as she tried on clothes inside the little booths provided for this. He delighted in seeing through a slit of the hastily drawn curtains not only Jeanette, her girlish body slipping in and out of dresses, but other women too. He would sit quietly in a chair facing the dressing rooms, smoking. He could see portions of shoulders, bare backs, legs, flitting behind the curtains. And Jeanette's gratitude for the clothes he gave her took the form of a coquetry comparable only to the mannerisms of stripteasers. She could hardly wait to be out of the shop to glue herself to him as
they walked, saying, "Look at me. Isn't it beautiful?" And she would thrust her breasts out provocatively.

As soon as they got into a taxi she wanted him to touch the material, to approve the buttons, to straighten the neckline. She stretched her body voluptuously, to see how closely the dress fit her; she caressed the material as if it were her own skin.

As eager as she had been to wear the dress, she now seemed eager to take it off, to have it handled by Pierre, to have it wrinkled, to have it baptized by his desire.

She moved against him, inside of the new dress, which made him keenly aware of her aliveness. And when finally they got home, she wanted to be locked in his room with him, to have him appropriate the dress as much as he had her body, not satisfied until by friction, rubbing, undulations, Pierre felt the urge to tear the dress off her. When this was done, she did not remain in his arms, but went all over the room in her underwear, brushing her hair, powdering her face and acting as if that was all she intended to remove, and Pierre would have to be content with her as she was.

She still wore her high-heeled shoes, her stockings, her garters, and the flesh showed between the garters and the beginning of her panties, and again between her waist and the little brassiere.

After a moment Pierre tried to hold her. He wanted to undress her. He managed only to unfasten the brassiere when she slipped out of his arms again to perform a little dance for him. All the steps she knew she wanted to do for him. Pierre admired her lightness.

He caught her as she passed, but she refused to let him touch her panties. She let him take off only her stockings and shoes. But at this moment she heard Jean enter.

As she was, she leaped out of Pierre's room and rushed to meet him. Jean saw her flinging herself into his arms, naked but for the panties. Then he saw Pierre, who had followed her, angry to be deprived of his satisfaction, angry that she should have preferred Jean to him.

Jean understood. But he had no desire for Jeanette. He wanted to be free of her. So he rebuffed her, and left them.

Then Jeanette turned on Pierre. Pierre tried to calm her. She remained angry. She began to pack, to dress, to leave.

Pierre barred her way, carried her to his room and flung her on the bed.

He would have her this time, at all cost. The struggle was pleasant, his rough suit against her skin, his buttons against her tender breasts, his shoes against her naked feet. In all this mixture of hardness and softness, coldness and warmth, rigidity and yielding, Jeanette felt for the first time Pierre as master. He sensed this. He tore off her panties, discovered her moisture.

And then he was taken with a diabolical desire to hurt her. He inserted only his finger. When he had moved this finger until Jeanette pleaded to be satisfied and rolled with excitement, he stopped.

Before her astonished face, he took hold of his erect penis and caressed it, giving himself all the pleasure he could extract, sometimes using only two fingers around the tip of it, sometimes the whole hand, and Jeanette could see every contraction and expansion. It was as if he held a palpitating bird in his hand, a captive bird that tried to leap at her but that Pierre kept for his own pleasure. She gazed at Pierre's penis, fascinated. She drew her face nearer. But his anger at her for darting out of the room to Jean was still fresh in him.

She knelt in front of him. Although she was throbbing between the legs, she felt if she could at least kiss his penis she might satisfy her desire. Pierre let her kneel. He seemed about to offer his penis to her mouth, but he did not. He continued to massage it, angrily enjoying his own motions, as if to say, "I don't need you."

Jeanette threw herself on the bed and became hysterical. Her wild gestures, the way she pressed her head back into the pillow so she could no longer see Pierre caressing himself, the way her body lay arched upwards—all of this stirred Pierre. But still he did not give her his penis. Instead, he buried his face between her legs. Jeanette fell back and grew quieter. She murmured softly.

Pierre's mouth gathered the fresh foam between her legs, but he would not let her reach her pleasure. He teased her. As soon as he felt the rhythm of her pleasure starting he stopped. He held her legs apart. His hair fell on her belly and caressed her. His left hand reached for one of her breasts. Jeanette lay almost swooning. He knew now that Jean could come in and she would not notice him. Jean could even make love to her, and she would not notice him. She was completely under the spell of Pierre's fingers, awaiting pleasure from him. When finally his erect penis touched her soft body, it was as if he had burned her; she trembled. He had never seen her body so abandoned, so unconscious of all but the desire to be taken and satisfied. She bloomed under his caresses, no longer the girl but the woman already being born.

*Adapted from the introduction to the story published as "Maríanne" in
Delta of Venus.

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