Delta of Venus

Pierre

When he was a youth, Pierre wandered off toward the quays very early one morning. He had been walking along the river for some time when he was arrested by the sight of a man trying to pull up a nude body from the river to the deck of one of the barges. The body was caught on the anchor chain. Pierre rushed to the man’s help. Together they managed to get the body on the deck.

Then the man turned to Pierre and said, ‘You wait while I get the police,’ and he ran off. The sun was just beginning to rise, and it touched the naked body with a roseate glow. Pierre saw it was not only a woman, but a very beautiful woman. Her long hair clung to her shoulders and full, round breasts. Her smooth golden skin glistened. He had never seen a more beautiful body, washed clear by the water, with lovely soft contours exposed.

He watched her with fascination. The sun was drying her. He touched her. She was still warm and must have died but a short while before. He felt for her heart. It was not beating. Her breast seemed to cling to his hand.

He shivered, then leaned over and kissed the breast. It was elastic and soft under his lips, like a live breast. He felt a sudden violent sexual urge. He continued to kiss the woman. He parted her lips. As he did so, a little water came out from between them, which seemed to him like her very own saliva. He had the feeling that if he kissed her long enough she would come to life. The heat of his lips was passing into hers. He kissed her mouth, her nipples, her neck, her belly, and then his mouth descended to the wet curled pubic hair. It was like kissing her under water.

She lay stretched out, with her legs slightly parted, her arms straight along her sides. The sun was turning her skin to gold, and her wet hair looked like seaweed.

How he loved the way her body lay, exposed and defenseless. How he loved her closed eyes and slightly opened mouth. Her body had the taste of dew, of wet flowers, of wet leaves, of early morning grass. Her skin was like satin under his fingers. He loved her passivity and silence.

He felt himself burning, tense. Finally he fell on her, and as he began to penetrate her, water flowed from between her legs, as if he were making love to a naiad. His movements caused her body to undulate. He continued to thrust himself into her, expecting at any moment to feel her response, but her body merely moved in rhythm with his.

Now he was afraid the man and the police would arrive. He tried to hurry and satisfy himself, but he couldn’t. He had never taken so long. The coolness and wetness of the womb, her passivity, his enjoyment so prolonged – yet he could not come.

He moved desperately, to rid himself of his torment, to inject his warm liquid into her cold body. Oh, how he wanted to come at this moment, while kissing her breasts, and he frantically urged his sex within her, but still he could not come. He would be found there by the man and the policeman, lying over the body of the dead woman.

Finally he lifted her body from the waist, bringing her up against his penis and pushing violently into her. Now he heard shouts all around, and at that moment he felt himself exploding inside of her. He withdrew, dropped the body, and ran away.

This woman haunted him for days. He could not take a shower without remembering the feel of the wet skin and seeing how she shone in the dawn. Never again would he see so beautiful a body. He could not hear rain without remembering how the water came out between her legs and out of her mouth, and how soft and smooth she was.

He felt he had to escape from the city. After a few days, he found himself in a fishing village, and stumbled on a row of cheaply built artists’ studios. He rented one. He could hear everything through the walls. In the middle of the row of studios, next to Pierre’s, was a community water closet. When he lay trying to sleep, he suddenly caught a faint streak of light between the wall boards. He applied his eye to a crack and saw, standing before the water closet, with one hand resting on the wall, a boy of about fifteen.

He had taken down his pants halfway and opened his shirt, bowing his curled head over his labor. In his right hand, he was thoughtfully fingering his young sex. Now and then he pressed it hard and a convulsion shook his body. In the dim light, with his curly hair and young pale body, he looked quite like an angel, except for the fact that he was holding his sex in his right hand.

He dropped his other hand from the wall where it had been resting and took hold of his balls very firmly, while he continued to maul, press and squeeze his penis. It did not get very hard. He was experiencing pleasure, but he could not reach a climax. He was disappointed. He had tried every motion of finger and hand. Now he held his limp penis wistfully. He weighed it, puzzled over it and then covered it within his pants, buttoned his shirt and left the place.

Pierre was wide awake now. The memory of the drowned woman haunted him again, mingled now with the picture of the young boy playing with himself. He was lying there, tossing, when a light again appeared from the water closet. Pierre could not keep from looking. Sitting there was a woman of about fifty, enormous, solid, with a heavy face and gluttonous mouth and eyes.

She had only sat for a moment when someone tried the door. Instead of sending him away, she opened it. And there appeared the boy who had been there earlier. He was amazed that the door had opened. The old woman did not move from the seat but drew him in with a smile and closed the door.

‘What a lovely boy you are,’ she said. ‘Surely you must have a little friend already, no? Surely you must already have had a little pleasure with women?’

‘No,’ said the boy timidly.

She talked to him easily, as if they had met in the street. He had been taken by surprise and stared at her. All he could see was her full-lipped mouth smiling and her insinuating eyes.

‘Never had any pleasure at all, my boy, you can’t tell me that?’

‘No,’ said the boy.

‘Don’t you know how?’ asked the woman. ‘Haven’t your friends in school told you how?’

‘Yes,’ said the boy, ‘I have seen them do it, with their right hand they do it. I tried, but nothing happened.’

The woman laughed. ‘But there is another way. Never learned another way, really? No one told you anything? You mean you only know how to do it with your own hand? Why, there’s another way that always works.’

The boy eyed her with suspicion. But her smile was wide, generous, reassuring.

The caresses he had given himself must have left a certain disturbance in him, because he made a step toward the woman.

‘What’s the way you know?’ he said with curiosity.

She laughed.

‘You really want to know, eh? And what happens if you enjoy it? If you really enjoy it, will you promise to come and see me again?’

‘I promise,’ said the boy.

‘Well, then, climb on my lap, this way, just kneel on me, don’t be afraid, now.’

The middle of his body was just at the same level as her big mouth. She deftly unbuttoned his pants and took out the small penis. The boy watched her with amazement as she took it into her mouth.

Then, as her tongue began to move and the small penis grew larger, the boy was taken with such pleasure that he fell forward over her shoulder and let her mouth take in his whole penis and touch the pubic hair. What he felt was so much more stimulating than when he had tried to manipulate himself. All that Pierre could see now was the big full-lipped mouth working on the delicate penis, now and then letting it halfway out of the cavern, and then swallowing it altogether until nothing showed but the hair around it.

The old woman was gluttonous but patient. The boy was exhausted with pleasure, almost swooning over her head, and the blood was coming to her face. Still she vigorously chewed and licked, until the boy began to tremble. She had to put both her arms around him or he might have shaken himself out of her mouth. He began to utter moaning sounds like some cooing bird. She went at him more feverishly, and then it happened. The boy almost fell asleep on her shoulder from exhaustion, and she had to unclasp him gently with her big hands. He smiled wanly and ran out.

While he lay there Pierre remembered a woman he had known who was already fifty when he was only seventeen. She was a friend of his mother’s. She was eccentric and willful and still dressed in fashions of ten years earlier, which meant wearing an endless number of petticoats, tight corsets, long and heavily laced panties, and full-skirted dresses that were cut very low over her breasts so Pierre could see the little valley between them, a black shadowy line vanishing inside the lace and frills.

She was a handsome woman, with luxuriant reddish hair and a fine down over her skin. Her ears were small and delicate, her hands plump. Her mouth was particularly attractive – very red, naturally so, with great fullness and width, and with small, even teeth, which she always showed, as if she were about to bite into something.

She came to visit his mother one very rainy day when the servants were out. She shook her filmy umbrella, took off her important hat, and unloosened her veil. As she stood there, her long dress all wet, she began to sneeze. Pierre’s mother was already in bed with the grippe. She called out from her room, ‘Darling, do take off your clothes if they are wet, and Pierre will dry them for you before the fire. There is a screen in the parlor. You can undress there and Pierre will give you a kimono of mine.’

Pierre hustled about with evident eagerness. He got the kimono from his mother and he opened the screen. In the parlor there was a beautiful fire burning brightly in the fireplace. The room was warm and smelled of narcissus, which filled every vase, of the wood fire, of the visitor’s sandalwood perfume.

From behind the screen she handed her dress to Pierre. It was still warm and scented from her body. He held it in his arms and smelled it, intoxicated, before laying it over a chair before the fire. Then she handed him a large, very full petticoat, the hem extremely wet and covered with mud. He sniffed at this with pleasure before placing it, too, before the fire.

Meanwhile she talked and smiled and laughed unconcernedly, not noticing his excitement. She threw him another petticoat, a lighter one, warm and musky. Then, with a shy laugh, she threw him her long, lace-edged panties. Suddenly Pierre realized that they were not wet, that this was unnecessary, that she had thrown them at him because she wanted to and that now she stood nearly naked behind the screen, knowing he was aware of her body.

As she looked at him over the top of the screen, he could see her full, rounded shoulders, soft and gleaming, like cushions. She laughed and called out to him, ‘Give me the kimono now.’

‘Aren’t your stockings wet, too?’ said Pierre.

‘Yes, indeed they are. I am taking them off.’ She leaned down. He could imagine her snapping loose the garters and unrolling the stockings. He wondered what her legs looked like, her feet. He could contain himself no longer and gave the screen a pull.

It fell down before her and exposed her in the pose he had pictured. She was leaning down and unrolling her black stockings. Her whole body had the golden color and delicate texture of her face. It was long-waisted, full-breasted, ample, but firm.

She was unaffected by the fall of the screen. She said, ‘Now look what I have done taking my stockings off. Hand me the kimono.’ He approached, staring at her – the first naked woman he had seen, so much like paintings he had studied in the museum.

She was smiling. Then she covered herself as if nothing had happened and went to the fire, extending her hand to the heat. Pierre was completely unnerved. His body was burning, yet he did not quite know what to do about it.

She was careless about holding the kimono around her, intent on warming herself. Pierre sat at her feet and stared at her smiling, open face. Her eyes seemed to invite him. He moved closer to her, still kneeling. Suddenly she opened the kimono, took his head between her hands, placed it on her sex for his mouth to feel. The tendrils of pubic hair touched his lips and maddened him. At that very moment his mother’s voice came from the far-off bedroom. ‘Pierre! Pierre!’

He straightened himself. His mother’s friend closed her kimono. They were left trembling, burning, unsatisfied. The friend went to his mother’s room, sat at the foot of her bed and chatted with her. Pierre sat with them, nervously waiting until the woman was ready to get dressed again. The afternoon seemed endless. Then, finally, she rose and said she must dress. But Pierre’s mother detained him. She wanted something to drink. She wanted the curtains drawn. She kept him occupied until the friend was dressed. Had she guessed what might have been happening in the parlor? Pierre was left with the touch of her hair and rosy skin on his lips, nothing else.

When the friend left, his mother talked to him in the half-dark room.

‘Poor Mary Ann,’ she said. ‘Did you know, a terrible thing happened to her when she was young. It was when the Prussians invaded Alsace-Lorraine. She was raped by soldiers. And now she will not let a man near her.’

The image of Mary Ann being violated inflamed Pierre. He could barely conceal his disturbance. Mary Ann had trusted his youth and innocence. She had lost her fear of men with him. He was like a child to her. So she had permitted his young, tender face between her legs.

That night he dreamed of soldiers tearing her clothes, spreading her legs, and he awakened with a violent desire for her. How could he see her now? Would she ever let him do more to her than kiss her sex gently as he had done? Was she closed forever?

He wrote her a letter. He was amazed when he received an answer. She asked him to come and see her. Wearing a loose robe, she greeted him in a dimly lighted room. His first movement was to kneel before her. She smiled indulgently. ‘How gentle you are,’ she said. Then she pointed to a wide divan in the corner and stretched herself on it. He stretched himself beside her. He felt timid and could not move.

Then he felt her hand deftly inserting itself under his belt, slipping inside his pants, sliding along, close to the belly, arousing every bit of flesh she touched, gliding, descending.

The hand stopped at his pubic hair, played with it, moved around the penis without touching it. It began to stir. He thought if she touched his penis it would kill him with pleasure. His mouth opened with the suspense.

Her hand continued to move slowly, slowly around and over his pubic hair. A finger sought the tiny rivulet between the hair and the sex where the skin was smooth, sought every sensitive part of the young man, slid along under his penis, pressed his balls.

Finally her hand closed around his throbbing penis. And it was a shock of such intense pleasure that he sighed. His own hand went out, blindly fumbling through her clothes. He, too, wanted to touch the core of her sensations. He, too, wanted to glide along and enter into her secret places. He fumbled with her clothes. He found an opening. He touched her pubic hair and the rivulet between the leg and the mount of Venus, felt the tender flesh, found moisture and dipped his finger into it.

Then in a frenzy he tried to push his penis into her. He saw all the soldiers charging into her. The blood rushed to his head. She thrust him away and would not let him take her. She whispered in his ear, ‘Only with the hands,’ and then lay open to him while continuing to caress him inside his pants.

When he again turned over to push his wild sex against her she pushed him away, angrily this time. Her hand aroused him, and he could not lie still.

She said, ‘I will make you come this way. Enjoy yourself.’ He lay back quietly enjoying the caresses. But as soon as he closed his eyes he saw the soldiers bending over her naked body, he saw her legs forced apart, the opening dripping from the attacks, and what he felt resembled the furious panting desire of the soldiers.

Mary Ann suddenly closed her robe and stood up. She had grown completely cold now. She sent him away, and he was never allowed to see her again.

At forty Pierre was still a very handsome man, whose successes with women, and the long and now broken liaison with Elena, had given the local people much to talk about in the small country place where he had settled. He was now married to a very delicate and charming woman, but two years after their marriage her health had grown poor and she was a semi-invalid. Pierre had loved her ardently, and his passion at first seemed to revive her but slowly had become a danger to her weak heart. Finally her doctor advised against all lovemaking, and poor Sylvia entered into a long period of chastity. Pierre, too, was suddenly deprived of his sexual life.

Sylvia was naturally forbidden to have children, and so she and Pierre finally decided to adopt two from the village orphanage. It was a great day for Sylvia, and she dressed lavishly for the occasion. It was a great day for the orphanage, too, because all the children knew that Pierre and his wife had a beautiful house, a big estate, and that they were reputed to be kind.

It was Sylvia who chose the children – John, a delicate fair-haired boy, and Martha, a dark and vivid girl, both about sixteen years of age. The two had been inseparable in the orphanage, as close as a brother and sister.

They were taken to the big, lovely house, where each was given a room overlooking the wide park. Pierre and Sylvia gave them all their care and tenderness and guidance. In addition, John watched over Martha.

At times Pierre observed them with envy of their youth and comradeship. John was fond of wrestling with Martha. For a long time she was the stronger. But one day while Pierre watched them, it was John who pinned Martha down to the ground and managed to sit on her chest and cry out his triumph. Pierre then noticed that the victory, following a heated mingling of their two bodies, did not displease Martha. There is the woman beginning to form herself already, he thought. She wants the man to be stronger.

But if the woman was appearing timidly now in the young girl, she obtained no gallant treatment from John. He seemed intent on treating her only as a playmate, even as a boy. He never complimented her, never noticed the way she dressed or her coquetries. In fact, he went out of his way to be harsh with her when she threatened to be tender, and to call attention to her defects. He treated her without sentimentality. And poor Martha was perplexed and hurt but refused to show it. Pierre was the only one aware of this wounded femininity in Martha.

He was lonely on the big estate. He had the care of the farm adjoining it, of other properties owned by Sylvia throughout the country, but it was not enough. He had no companion. John dominated Martha so completely that she would pay no attention to him. At the same time, with the experienced eye of the older man, he could see very well that Martha was in need of another kind of relationship.

One day when he found Martha crying and alone in the park, he ventured to say tenderly, ‘What is the matter, Martha? You can always confide to a father what you can’t confide to a playmate.’

She looked up at him, for the first time aware of his gentleness and sympathy. She confessed that John had said she was ugly and awkward and too animal.

‘What a stupid boy,’ said Pierre, ‘that is absolutely untrue. He says that because he is too much of a girl and can’t appreciate your type of healthy and vigorous beauty. He is a sissy, really, and you are wonderfully strong and beautiful in a way he cannot understand.’

Martha looked at him with gratitude.

Henceforth it was Pierre who greeted her every morning with some charming phrase – ‘That blue color suits your skin so well’ or ‘That is a very becoming way of wearing your hair.’

He surprised her with gifts of perfume and scarves and other little vanities. Sylvia never left her bedroom now, and only occasionally sat in a chair in the garden on exceptional, sunny days. John was becoming absorbed in scientific studies and had been giving less attention to Martha.

Pierre had a car in which he did all the errands for the supervision of the farm. He had always gone alone. Now he began to take Martha with him.

She was seventeen, beautifully formed by a healthy life, with a clear skin and brilliant black hair. Her eyes were fiery and ardent and rested lingeringly upon the slender body of John – too often, thought Pierre as he watched her. Obviously she was in love with John, but John did not notice it. Pierre felt a pang of jealousy. He looked at himself in the mirror and compared himself with John. The comparison was rather in his favor, for if John was a handsome youth, at the same time there was a coldness in his appearance, whereas Pierre’s green eyes were still compelling to women, and his body exuded great warmth and charm.

Subtly he began his courtship of Martha, with compliments and attentiveness, becoming her confidant in all matters, until she even confessed her attraction to John, but added, ‘He is absolutely inhuman.’

One day John insulted her openly in Pierre’s presence. She had been dancing and running, and looked exuberant and alive. Suddenly John looked at her reproachfully and said, ‘What an animal you are. You will never sublimate your energy.’

Sublimation! So that was what he wanted. He wanted to take Martha into his world of studies and theories and researches, to deny the flame in her. Martha looked at him angrily.

Nature was working in favor of Pierre’s humanness. The summer made Martha languid, the summer undressed her. Wearing fewer clothes, she was becoming more and more aware of her own body. The breeze seemed to touch her skin like a hand. At night she tossed in bed with a restlessness she could not understand. Her hair was unbraided, and she felt as if a hand had loosened it around her throat and were touching it.

Pierre was quick to sense what was happening to her. He made no advances. When he helped her out of the car his hand rested on her fresh bare arm. Or when she was sad and talking about John’s indifference, he would caress her hair. But his eyes rested on her and knew every bit of her body, whatever he could divine through the dress. He knew how fine the down was over her skin, how free of hair her legs were, how firm her young breasts were. Her hair, wild and thick, often brushed against his face when she leaned over to study the farm reports with him. Her breath often mingled with his. Once he let his hand stray around her waist, paternally. She did not move away. Somehow his gestures answered deeply her need of warmth. She thought that she was yielding to an enveloping, paternal warmth, and gradually it was she who sought to stand near him when they were together, it was she who put his arm around her when they were driving, it was she who rested her head on his shoulder late afternoons on their way home.

They returned from these supervising trips always glowing with a secret understanding, which John observed. It made him even more sullen. But now Martha was in open rebellion against him. The more reserved and severe he became with her, the more she wanted to assert the fire in her, her love of life and movement. She flung herself into the comradeship with Pierre.

About an hour’s drive away, there was an abandoned farm they had once rented out. It had fallen into disuse, and now Pierre decided he wanted to have it repaired for the day John married. Before calling in the workmen, he and Martha went together to look it over and see what needed to be done.

It was a very big one-story house. A mass of ivy had almost completely smothered it, covering the windows with a natural curtain, darkening the interior. Pierre and Martha opened a window. They found much dust, the furniture musty and a few rooms ruined where the rain had come in. But one room was nearly intact. It was the master bedroom. A big, somber bed, many draperies, mirrors and a worn carpet gave it, in the semi-darkness, a certain grandeur. Over the bed a heavy velvet cover had been thrown.

Pierre, looking around with the eye of an architect, sat on the edge of the bed. Martha stood near him. The summer warmth came into the room in waves, stirring their blood. Again Martha felt this invisible hand caressing her. It did not seem strange to her that a real hand should suddenly be slipping among her clothes, with the same gentleness and softness as the summer wind, touching her skin. It seemed natural and pleasant; she closed her eyes.

Pierre drew her body toward him and stretched her on the bed. She kept her eyes closed. This seemed merely like the continuation of a dream. Lying alone for many summer nights, she had been expecting this hand, and it was doing all that she had expected. It was stealing softly through her clothes, stripping her of them as if they were a light skin to be peeled, setting free the real, warm skin. The hand moved all over her, to places she had not even known it would go, to secret places, which were throbbing.

Then suddenly she opened her eyes. She saw the face of Pierre right over her face preparing to kiss her. She sat up brusquely. While her eyes were closed she had imagined it was John who was stealing thus into her flesh. But when she saw Pierre’s face, she was disappointed. She escaped from him. They returned home silent, but not angry. Martha was like a drugged person. She could not rid herself of the sensation of Pierre’s hand on her body. Pierre was tender, and seemed to understand her resistance. They found John rigid and sullen.

Martha was unable to sleep. Every time she dozed off she began to feel the hand again, to await its movements, as it came up her leg and worked its way to the secret place where she had felt a throbbing, an expectancy. She got up and stood by the window. Her whole body was crying out for this hand to touch her again. It was worse than hunger or thirst, this yearning of the flesh.

The next day she rose pale and determined. As soon as lunch was over, she turned to Pierre and said, ‘We have to see about that farm today?’ He assented. They drove off. It was a relief. The wind struck her face and she was free now. She watched his right hand on the wheel of the car – a beautiful hand, youthful, supple, and tender. Suddenly she leaned over and pressed her lips on it. Pierre smiled at her with such a gratitude and joy that it made her heart leap to see it.

Together they walked through the tangled garden, up the moss-covered path, into the green dark room with its curtains of ivy. Straight to the large bed they walked, and it was Martha who stretched herself on it.

‘Your hands,’ she murmured, ‘oh, your hands, Pierre. I felt them all night.’

How suavely, how gently his hands began to search her body, as if he were searching for the place where her sensations were gathered and did not know whether it was around her breasts, or under her breasts, along her hips or in the valley between the hips. He waited for her flesh to respond, perceiving by the slightest tremor that his hand had touched the place she wanted to be touched. Her dresses, sheets, nightgowns, the water of her bath, the wind, the heat, everything had conspired to sensitize her skin until this hand fulfilled the caresses they all had given her, adding warmth and the power to penetrate the secret places everywhere.

But as soon as Pierre leaned over too close to her face to take a kiss, then the image of John interfered. She closed her eyes, and Pierre felt her body also closing against him. So with wisdom, he pursued his caresses no further.

When they returned home that day, Martha was filled with a kind of drunkenness that made her behave recklessly. The house was so arranged that Pierre and Sylvia’s apartment was connected to Martha’s room, and hers in turn communicated with the bathroom used by John. When the children were younger all the doors were left open. Now Pierre’s wife preferred to lock her bedroom door, and the one between Martha and Pierre was also locked. On this day Martha took a bath. Lying quietly in the water she could hear John’s movements in his room. Her body was in a great fever from Pierre’s caresses, but she still desired John. She wanted to make one more attempt to awaken John’s desire, to force him into the open, so she would know whether or not there was any hope of his loving her.

Once bathed, she wrapped herself in a long white kimono, with her long thick black hair hanging loose. Instead of returning to her own room she entered John’s. He was startled by the sight of her. She explained her presence by saying, ‘I am terribly anxious, John, I need your advice. I’m leaving this house soon.’

‘Leaving?’

‘Yes,’ said Martha. ‘It is time I leave. I must learn to become independent. I want to go to Paris.’

‘But you are so needed here.’

‘Needed?’

‘You are my father’s companion,’ he said bitterly.

Could it be that he was jealous? Martha waited breathlessly for him to say more. Then she added, ‘I should be meeting people and trying to get married. I cannot be a burden forever.’

‘Married?’

Then he saw Martha as a woman for the first time. He had always considered her a child. What he saw was a voluptuous body, clearly outlined in the kimono, moist hair, a fevered face, a soft mouth. She waited. The expectancy in her was so intense that her hands fell to her sides, and the kimono opened and revealed her completely naked body.

Then John saw that she wanted him, that she was offering herself, but instead of being stirred, he recoiled. ‘Martha! Oh, Martha!’ he said. ‘What an animal you are, you are truly the daughter of a whore. Yes, in the orphanage everybody said it, that ; you were the daughter of a whore.’

Martha’s blood rushed to her face. ‘And you,’ she said, ‘you are impotent, a monk, you’re like a woman, you’re not a man. Your father is a man.’

And she rushed out of his room.

Now the image of John ceased to torment her. She wanted to efface it from her body and her blood. It was she who waited that night for everyone to fall asleep so she could unlock the door to Pierre’s room, and it was she who came to his bed, silently offering her now cool and abandoned body to him.

Pierre knew that she was free of John, that she was his now, by the way she came into his bed. What joy to feel the soft youthful body sliding against his body. Summer nights he slept naked. Martha had dropped her kimono and was naked too. Immediately his desire sprang up and she felt the hardness of it against her belly.

Her diffuse feelings were now concentrated in only one part of her body. She found herself making gestures she had never learned, found her hand surrounding his penis, found herself gluing her body to his, found her mouth yielding to the many kinds of kisses Pierre could give. She gave herself in a frenzy, and Pierre was aroused to his greatest feats.

Every night was an orgy. Her body became supple and knowing. The tie between them was so strong that it was difficult for them to pretend otherwise during the day. If she looked at him, it was as if he had touched her between the legs. Sometimes in the dark hall they embraced. He pressed her against the wall. At the entrance there was a big dark closet full of coats and snow shoes. No one ever entered there in the summer. Martha hid there and Pierre came in. Lying over the coats, in the small space, enclosed, secret, they abandoned themselves.

Pierre had been without sexual life for years, and Martha was meant for this and only came to life at these moments. She received him always with her mouth open and already wet between the legs. His desire rose in him before he saw her, at the mere idea of her waiting in this dark closet. They acted like animals in a struggle, about to devour each other. If his body won and he pinned her down under him, then he took her with such a force that he seemed to be stabbing her with his sex, over and over again, until she fell back exhausted. They were in marvelous harmony, their excitement rising together. She had a way of climbing over him like an agile animal. She would rub herself against his erect penis, against his pubic hair, with such frenzy that he panted. This dark closet became an animal den.

They sometimes drove to the abandoned farmhouse and spent the afternoon there. They became so saturated with lovemaking that if Pierre kissed Martha’s eyelids she could feel it between her legs. Their bodies were charged with desire, and they could not exhaust it.

John seemed a pale image. They did not notice that he was observing them. The change in Pierre was apparent. His face glowed, his eyes looked ardent, his body became younger. And the change in her: Voluptuousness was inscribed all over her body. Every move she made was sensual – serving coffee, reaching for a book, playing chess, playing the piano, she did everything caressingly. Her body became fuller and her breasts tauter under her clothes.

John could not sit between them. Even when they did not look at each other or speak to each other, he could feel a powerful current between them.

One day when they had driven to the abandoned farm, John, instead of continuing his studies, felt a wave of laziness and the desire to be out-of-doors. He got on his bicycle and began to ride aimlessly, not thinking of them but perhaps half-consciously remembering the rumor in the orphanage that Martha had been abandoned by a well-known prostitute. All his life, it seemed to him that, while he loved Martha, he also feared her. He felt that she was an animal, that she could enjoy people as she enjoyed food, that her point of view about people was completely opposed to his. She would say, ‘He is beautiful,’ or ‘She is charming.’ He would say, ‘He is interesting,’ or ‘She has character.’

Martha had expressed sensuality even as a little girl, in wrestling with him, in caressing him. She liked to play hide-and-seek, and if he could not find her she would give away her hiding place so he would catch her, gripping her dress. Once they were playing together and had built a small tent. They found themselves huddled together, very close. Then he saw Martha’s face. She had closed her eyes to enjoy the warmth of their bodies together, and John had felt a tremendous fear. Why fear? All through his life he was haunted by this recoil from sensuality. He could not explain it to himself. But there it was. He had seriously thought of becoming a monk.

Now, without thinking of his destination, he had reached the old farmhouse. He had not seen it for a long time. He walked softly over the moss and overgrown grass. Out of curiosity he entered it and began to explore. So he came quietly upon the bedroom where Pierre and Martha were. The door was open. He stopped, transfixed by the sight. It was as if his greatest fear had come alive. Pierre was lying back, eyes half-closed, and Martha, completely naked, was behaving like a demon, climbing over him, in a frenzy of hunger for his body.

John stood paralyzed with the shock of the scene, and yet took it all in. Martha, smooth, voluptuous, was not only kissing Pierre’s sex, but crouching over his mouth, and then throwing herself against his body and rubbing her breasts against his, and he lay back, entranced, hypnotized by her caresses.

After a moment John rushed off without being heard. He had seen the very worst of the infernal vices, confirming his fear that it was Martha who was the erotic one, and he believed that his adopted father was merely yielding to her passion. The more he sought to erase this scene from his mind, the more it penetrated into his whole being, stark, indelible, haunting.

When they returned he looked at their faces and was amazed at how different people could look in daily life from the way they looked while they made love. The changes were obscene. Martha’s face now seemed closed, whereas before it was crying out her enjoyment, through her eyes, hair, mouth, tongue. And Pierre, the serious Pierre, a short time ago was not a father but a rather youthful body stretched on a bed, abandoned to the furious lust of an unleashed woman.

John felt he could no longer stay at home without betraying his discovery to his sick mother, to everyone. When he declared his intention of leaving to join the army, Martha gave him a quick stabbing glance of surprise. Until now she thought John was merely puritanical. But she also believed that he loved her and that sooner or later he would succumb to her. She wanted them both. Pierre was a lover such as women dream of. John, she could have educated, even against his nature. And now he was going. Something remained unfinished between them, as if the warmth created during their games together had been interrupted and had been intended to continue into their adult lives.

That night she tried to reach through to him again. She went to his room. He received her with such revulsion that she demanded an explanation, drove him to confess, and then he blurted out the scene he had witnessed. He could not believe that she loved Pierre. He believed it was the animal in her. And when she saw his reaction, she sensed she would never be able to possess him now.

She stopped herself at the door and said to him, ‘John, you are convinced that I am animal. Well, I can easily prove to you that I am not. I have told you that I love you. I will prove it to you. I will not only break with Pierre, but I will come every night to you and stay with you and we will sleep like children, together, and I will prove to you how chaste I can be, how free of desire.’

John’s eyes opened wide. He was deeply tempted. The thought of Martha and his father making love was intolerable to him. He explained it on moral grounds. He did not recognize that he was jealous. He did not see how much he would have liked to be in Pierre’s place, with all of Pierre’s experience of women. He did not ask himself why he repudiated Martha’s love. But why was he so removed from the natural hungers of other men and women?

He assented to Martha’s offer. With cunning, Martha did not break with Pierre in such a way as to alarm him, but merely told him she thought John was suspicious and she wanted to calm all his doubts before he left for the army.

As John waited for Martha’s visit the next night, he tried to remember all he could of his sexual feelings. His first impressions were linked with Martha – he and Martha in the orphan age, protecting each other, inseparable. His love for her then was ardent and spontaneous. He delighted in touching her. Then one day when Martha was eleven, a woman came to see her. John caught a glimpse of her waiting in the parlor. He had never seen anyone like her. She wore tight clothes that outlined her full, voluptuous figure. Her hair was red-gold, waved, her lips so thickly painted that they fascinated the boy. He stared at her. Then he saw her receiving Martha and embracing her. It was then he was told this was Martha’s mother, who had abandoned her as a child, and then later acknowledged her but was not able to keep her because she was the favorite prostitute of the town.

After that, if Martha’s face glowed with excitement or became flushed, if her hair shone, if she wore a tight dress, if she made the slightest coquettish gesture, then John would feel a great disturbance, anger. It seemed to him that he could see her mother in her, that her body was provocative, that she was lustful. He would question her. He wanted to know what she thought, what she dreamed, her most secret desires. She answered him naïvely. What she liked best in the world was John. What gave her the greatest pleasure was to be touched by him.

‘What do you feel then?’ asked John.

‘Contentment, a pleasure I cannot explain.’

John was convinced it was not from him she derived these half-innocent pleasures, but from any man. He imagined that Martha’s mother felt the same with all the men who touched her.

Because he turned away from Martha and starved her of the affection she needed, he had lost her. But this he could not see. Now he felt a great pleasure in dominating her. He would show her what chastity was, what love, love without sensuality, could be between human beings.

Martha came at midnight, noiselessly. She wore a long white nightgown, and over this her kimono. Her long thick black hair fell over her shoulders. Her eyes shone unnaturally. She was quiet and gentle, as if she were a sister. Her usual vivaciousness was controlled and subdued. In this mood she did not frighten John. She seemed like another Martha.

The bed was very wide and low. John turned out the light. Martha slipped into it and rested her body without touching John. He was trembling. This reminded him of the orphanage where, in order to be able to talk to her a little longer, he escaped from the boys’ dormitory and went and talked with her through her window. She wore a white nightgown then and her hair was braided. He said this to her and asked her if she would let him braid her hair again. He wanted to see her as a little girl again. She let him. In the dark his hands touched her rich hair and braided it. Then they both pretended to fall asleep.

But John was tormented by images. He saw Martha naked, and then he saw her mother in the tight dress that revealed every curve, and then again he saw Martha crouching like an animal over Pierre’s face. The blood beat in his temples, and he wanted to stretch out his hand. He did. Martha took hold of it and laid it over her heart, over her left breast. Through the clothes he could feel her heart beating. And in this way they finally slept. In the morning they awakened together. John found he had come near to Martha and slept with his body against hers, spoon-fashion. He awakened wanting her, feeling her warmth. In anger he leaped out of bed and pretended he had to dress quickly.

And so passed the first night. Martha kept herself gentle and subdued. John was tormented with desire. But his pride and fear were greater.

He now knew what it was he feared. He was afraid he might be impotent. He was afraid that his father, known as a Don Juan, was more potent and more knowing. He was afraid to be awkward. He was afraid that once he aroused the volcanic fires in Martha, he could not satisfy them. A less fiery woman might not have frightened him as much. He had been so eager to control his own nature and sexual flow. He had succeeded perhaps too well. He was doubtful of his power now.

With feminine intuition, Martha must have guessed all this. Every night she came more quietly, she was more gentle, more humble. They fell asleep together innocently. She did not betray the heat she felt between her legs as he lay near her. She actually slept. He remained awake sometimes, with the haunting sexual images of her naked body.

Once or twice in the middle of the night he awakened, and he drew his body close and breathlessly fondled her. Her body was limp and warm in sleep. He dared to lift her nightgown by the hem, to raise it high over her breasts and pass his hand over her body to feel the outline of it. She did not awaken. This gave him courage. He did nothing more than stroke her, softly feeling the curves of her body with care, every line of it, until he knew just where the skin grew softer, where the fullest flesh lay, where the valleys were, where the pubic hair began.

What he did not know was that Martha was half awake and enjoying his caresses, but never moving for fear of frightening him. Once she was so warmed with the searching of his hands that she almost reached an orgasm. And once he dared to place his erect desire against her buttocks, but no more.

Each night he dared a little more, surprised that he did not waken her. His desire was constant, and Martha was kept in such a state of erotic fever that she marveled at her own power of deception. John became bolder. He had learned to slip his sex between her legs and to rub very gently without penetrating her. The pleasure was so great he then began to understand all the lovers of the world.

Tantalized by so many nights of repression, John one night forgot his precautions and took the half-sleeping Martha like a thief, and was amazed to hear little sounds of pleasure coming from her throat at his thrusts.

He did not go into the army. And Martha kept her two lovers satisfied, Pierre during the day and John at night.