Delta of Venus Read online

  ‘“I’m not a painter,” I said, “but I was thinking about a painting I saw.”

  ‘“There are wonderful paintings in the Café Wepler,” she said. “And look at this one.” She took out of her pocketbook what looked like a delicate handkerchief. She held it opened. There was painted on it a big woman’s ass, placed so as to reveal the sex fully, and an equally large penis. She tugged at the handkerchief, which was elastic, and it looked as if the ass were moving, the penis too. Then she turned it over, and now the penis was still heaving but it looked as if it had gone inside of the sex. She gave it a certain movement which made the whole picture active. I laughed, but the sight aroused me, so that we never got to the Café Wepler and the girl offered to let me go to her room. It was in a very shabby house of Montmartre, where all the circus and vaudeville people stayed. We had to climb five flights.

  ‘She said, “You’ll have to excuse the drabness. I’m just starting in Paris. I’ve only been here a month. Before that I was working in a house in a small town and it was so boring seeing the same men every week. It was almost like being married! I knew just when they would be coming to see me, the day and hour, regular as clocks. I knew all their habits. There were no more surprises. So I came to Paris.”

  ‘As she talked we entered her room. It was very small – just room enough for the big iron bed on which I pushed her and which creaked as if we were already making love like two monkeys. But what I couldn’t get used to was that there was no window – absolutely no window. It was like lying in a tomb, a prison, a cell. I can’t tell you exactly what it was like. But the feeling it gave me was of security. It was wonderful to be shut in so securely with a young woman. It was almost as wonderful as being already inside her cunt. It was the most marvelous room I ever made love in, so completely shut out of the world, so tight and cozy, and when I got inside of her I felt that the whole rest of the world could vanish for all I cared. There I was, in the best place of all in the world, a womb, warm and soft and shutting me in from everything else, protecting me, hiding me.

  ‘I would like to have lived there with this girl, never to go out again. And I did for two days. For two days and nights we just lay there in her bed and caressed and fell asleep and caressed again and fell asleep, until it was all like a dream. Every time I woke up I was with my penis inside of her, moist, dark, open, and then I would move and then lie quiet, until we got terribly hungry.

  ‘Then I went out, got wine and cold meat and back to bed again. No daylight. We did not know what time of day it was, or whether it was night. We just lay there, feeling with our bodies, one inside of the other almost continuously, talking into each other’s ears. Yvonne would say something to make me laugh. I would say, “Yvonne, don’t make me laugh so much or it will slip out.” My penis would slip out of her when I laughed and I would have to put it back again.

  ‘“Yvonne, are you tired of this?” I asked.

  ‘“Ah, no,” said Yvonne, “it is the only time I have ever enjoyed myself. When clients are always in a sort of hurry, you know, it sort of hurts my feelings, so I let them go at it, but I don’t take any interest in it. Besides, it’s bad for business. It makes you old and tired too quickly if you do. And I always have that feeling that they don’t pay enough attention to me, so it makes me draw in, away from them somewhere in myself. You understand that?”’

  Then Marcel asked me if he had been a good lover that first time in his place.

  ‘You were a good lover, Marcel. I liked the way you gripped my ass with both hands. You gripped it firmly as if you were going to eat into it. I liked the way you took my sex between your two hands. It was the way you took it, so decisively, with so much maleness. It is a little touch of the caveman you have.’

  ‘Why do women never tell men this? Why do women make such a secret and mystery of it all? They think it destroys their mystery, but it is not true. And here you come out and say just what you felt. It is wonderful.’

  ‘I believe in saying it. There are enough mysteries, and these do not help our enjoyment of each other. Now the war is here and many people will die, knowing nothing because they are tongue-tied about sex. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I am remembering St Tropez,’ said Marcel. ‘The most wonderful summer we have ever had …’

  As he said this, I saw the place vividly. An artists’ colony where society people and actors and actresses went, people with yachts anchored there. The little cafés on the waterfront, the gaiety, the exuberance, the laxity. Everybody in beach costumes. Everybody fraternizing – the yacht people with the artists, the artists with the young postman, the young policeman, the young fisherman, young and dark men of the south.

  There was dancing on a patio under the sky. The jazz band came from Martinique and was hotter than the summer night. Marcel and I were sitting in a corner one evening when they announced that they would put all the lights out for five minutes, then for ten, then for fifteen in the middle of each dance.

  A man called out, ‘Choose your partners carefully for the quart d’heure de passion. Choose your partners carefully.’

  There was a great flurry and bustle for a moment. Then the dance began, and eventually the lights went out. A few women screamed hysterically. A man’s voice said, ‘That’s an outrage, I won’t stand for it.’ Someone else screamed, ‘Turn on the lights.’

  The dance continued in the dark. One felt that bodies were in heat.

  Marcel was in ecstasy, holding me as if he would break me, bending over me, his knees between mine, his penis erect. In five minutes people only had time to get a little friction. When the lights went on everybody looked disturbed. A few faces looked apoplectic, others pale. Marcel’s hair was tousled. One woman’s linen shorts were wrinkled. One man’s linen trousers were wrinkled. The atmosphere was sultry, animal, electric. At the same time there was a surface of refinement to be maintained, a form, an elegance. Some people, who were shocked, were leaving. Some waited as if for a storm. Others waited with a light in their eyes.

  ‘Do you think one of them will scream, turn into a beast, lose his control?’ I asked.

  ‘I may,’ said Marcel.

  The second dance began. The lights went out. The voice of the band leader said, ‘This is the quart d’heure de passion. Messieurs, mesdames, you now have ten minutes of it, and then you will have fifteen.’

  There were stifled little screams in the audience, women protesting. Marcel and I were clutched like two tango dancers, and at each moment of the dance I thought I would unleash the orgasm. Then the lights went on, and the disorder and feeling in the place was even greater.

  ‘This will turn into an orgy,’ said Marcel.

  People sat down with eyes dazed, as if by the lights. Eyes dazed with the turmoil of the blood, the nerves.

  One could no longer tell the difference between the whores, the society women, the Bohemians, the town girls. The town girls were beautiful, with the sultry beauty of the south. Every woman was sunburnt and Tahitian, covered with shells and flowers. In the pressure of the dance some of the shells had broken and lay on the dance floor.

  Marcel said, ‘I don’t think I can go through the next dance. I will rape you.’ His hand was slipping into my shorts and feeling me. His eyes were burning.

  Bodies. Legs, so many legs, all brown and glossy, some hairy as foxes’. One man had such a hairy chest that he wore a net shirt to show it off. He looked like an ape. His arms were long and encircled his dance partner as if he would devour her.

  The last dance. The lights went out. One woman let out a little bird cry. Another began to defend herself.

  Marcel’s head fell on my shoulder and he began to bite my shoulder, hard. We pressed against each other and moved against each other. I closed my eyes. I was reeling with pleasure. I was carried by a wave of desire, which came from all the other dancers, from the night, from the music. I thought I would have the orgasm then. Marcel continued to bite me, and I was afraid we would fall on the floor. But then dr
unkenness saved us, the drunkenness kept us suspended over the act, enjoying all that lay behind the act.

  When the lights went on everybody was drunk, tottering with nervous excitement. Marcel said, ‘They like this better than the actual thing. Most of them like this better. It makes it last so long. But I can’t stand any more of it. Let them sit there and enjoy the way they feel, they like to be tickled, they like to sit there with their erections and the women all open and moist, but I want to finish it off, I can’t wait. Let’s go to the beach.’

  At the beach the coolness quieted us. We lay on the sand, still hearing the rhythm of the jazz from afar, like a heart thumping, like a penis thumping inside of a woman, and while the waves rolled at our feet, the waves inside of us rolled us over and over each other until we came together, rolling in the sand, to the same thumping of the jazz beats.

  Marcel was remembering this, too. He said, ‘What a marvelous summer. I think everybody knew it would be the last drop of pleasure.’

  * Adapted from The Diary of Anaïs Not, Volume III

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  Preface

  The Hungarian Adventurer

  Mathilde

  The Boarding School

  The Ring

  Mallorca

  Artists and Models

  Lilith

  Marianne

  The Veiled Woman

  Elena

  The Basque and Bijou

  Pierre

  Manuel

  Linda

  Marcel

  Footnotes

  Preface

  Page vii