“You have never been there?”
“No. It is forbidden. There are dogs and black men. Sometimes when the wind is strong you hear those beasts from hell howling… After all it’s her home!”
“Does no one ever go there?”
“Friends of hers who arrive in their yachts from the other side of the sea.”
“And what if I went there, to her island?”
“She said it is better not to go.”
“She has spoken of me?”
“She said it’s better not to go.”
“At any rate, your countess would not eat me!”
“Who knows?” shrugged the old man.
While calling for drink to put an end to my interrogation, he gave me the half-condescending, half-pitying smile that old people sometimes have.
From then on I had but one idea – to see Mona again, to visit her island, her castle. Although I took great care not to show this desire, my assiduity with Emma abated. I kept silent in order to imagine and thus envisage, but who has faith in his own visions?
Frequently, in the afternoon, I escaped to the terrace. I had been able to obtain a telescope easily, but though it drew the island nearer, it did not show me anything. I succeeded in spotting a large white yacht, the castle not at all. The island was hilly enough to conceal it. In any case, did they not call anything the least bit bigger than the poky village houses a castle?
The map told me nothing either. No doubt the island was off the main route, or else so tiny that reduction to scale made it invisible.
I secretly prepared for my expedition, making a habit of borrowing Emma’s father’s boat. It had a shallow draught and I quickly familiarized myself with its handling. The weather was calm, my hopes high: what have I to fear from Beauty?
LILLY’S LOULOU by Michèle Larue
Translated by Noël Burch
My mistress abandoned me over a Chinese restaurant. There are at least twelve on la calle Cuchillo, a busy street in Havana’s barrio chino. The Cuban Chinese chefs threw thick Mexican spaghetti in their soups instead of rice noodles, which always riled my Lilly. When I heard that eight chefs were due in from Canton to teach the locals how to make genuine sharks’ fin soup, I was frightened: I myself am pink – the color of flesh, in fact – and I look a bit like a sausage. When my mistress said melted condoms had been known to replace the mozzarella on Cuban pizzas, I thought to myself that the contents of a condom, i.e. yours truly, might make tasty meatballs in their soup.
I’m ten inches long and an inch and a half in diameter. I’m veined and flexible like a paupiette de veau. Two alkaline batteries set me to twitching, with a choice of three speeds. For years I was Lilly’s favorite dildo. Nestled in a red velvet zip-bag next to a round-tipped candle, I toured the world in her trunk. She always flew during the off-season so that she could negotiate a whole row just for the two of us. She took me out of my case when the movie began. In the darkness, she slipped me under her panties where I started buzzing in low gear like a fly caught in a lace curtain. Lilly began to pant as she slid me sidewise under her panties and pressed me to her flesh. My hum became muffled as I drilled into the zones she chose around her clitoris, then over the little bridge of flesh to the anus. There, I skated around in circles… After a while, my mistress would heave a little sigh and drop me under the seat. She rarely reached climax in the air. When the plane landed, she would pick me up with a fistful of crumpled newspapers.
On the infrequent evenings when Lily was at home alone, I played stand-in, alternating with a black, cone-shaped competitor called Plug. I never knew much about Plug’s capabilities, but they must have been far inferior to mine. One morning, as I emerged from the bag where Lilly had forsaken me all night long, I noticed him lying on the bed. Whenever she chose me for her evening bodyguard, she told all her boyfriends she would be getting her beauty sleep at home that night. I was delighted to count among the treatments meant to make her even more desirable. As she stepped out of her bath and slipped into a slinky Chinese negligee and mules trimmed with black swan feathers, my mistress would already be planning an orgasm. Pulling back the blankets, she would stretch out on the cool percale sheets. I could feel her finger applying a male-scented gel, then the touch of her clitoris as I swung into action. She would put me down and caress herself with her fingers. Pick me up again. Arch her back to see me standing between her thighs. Her pleasure came in moans that made me feel proud. The next morning her hand would come looking for me under the sheets. She’d give me a few licks with her tongue, spit on my tip, and back to work!
When Lilly had a man in her bed, she would let me watch the lovemaking that I had, in a way, initiated. She would bring the man into the bedroom and take me out of my case. I heard the usual “it sure is big” or “just like the real thing.” Wearing the string she never removed with any partner, and for which she was known as “Lilly-string,” she rubbed me against her pink lips to make them moist. When the man tired of my collaboration, she would throw me on the carpet. But sometimes she quietly picked me up again while the man was in the shower. To finish herself off. To drench me with her juices. The mechanism would stop just in time for me to feel her spasms, and it would be my turn to feel the throbbing of my mistress’s body. Her little squeals were more audible and attractive without the sound of my motor. When the man came out of the shower, kissed her cheek, and asked, “Was it good for you, too?” it was as if he were talking to me.
My role was usually restricted to surface-work. Except for that one time in Africa, when we ran out of batteries. I had a whale of a time! My mistress took me firmly in her hand and slowly drove me nearly halfway inside of her. Never before had she thrust me thus into the sheath of her flesh. It was in Zimbabwe that I realized what Plug was for. Actually, Lilly’s cavity wasn’t my size. Her eyes had been bigger than her stomach when she picked me out in her favorite sex-shop on the Rue de la Gaite in Paris. Was she trying to talk the price down when she told the salesmen I was too big to be of use to anyone? It was under a tent in the African bush that I first experienced confinement inside my mistress, and every night I wanted more. It was soft and maternal in there… I still have fond memories of that expedition, although, without my vibratory powers, never once during the long safari did I manage to bring her off.
And so now I don’t belong to Lilly any more. She sold me – traded me, rather – for two boxes of Robusto cigars scarcely thicker than a little finger. How’s she going to manage with those, unless she ties them in a bunch?
The tall black man who bought me puts on a silk fuchsia vest every evening. He claims that anyone who lives for any length of time in Chinatown (where he was born forty years ago) will inevitably turn tradesman. Orestes – for such is his name – has ignored this year’s big craze in Havana: going in for a barman’s job on a Caribbean cruise ship. He devotes himself solely to managing my activities, an occupation well suited to his tropical indolence. Any effort to entrust him with something other than coaching my depraved little body – keeping an eye on the workers painting the family terrassa, for example, or having sex with a woman – makes him terribly nervous. He’s often so stressed that his body ceases to function and he has to lie down. If it were in my power, I’d rebel against this boss of mine, who thinks the exhalations of an expensive scent should fill the street where he walks. Fortunately, I have little contact with the man. I change condoms several times a day and pass from hand to hand: I’m a dildo for hire. When I’m squeezed into a Chinese rubber, it reminds me of Lilly’s tender sex. Her tight vagina. Between jobs, my manager takes me back and washes me clean. When I’m dry, he pours white rum all over me. “She” never washed me at all. I’ve never seen so many black men and women at close range before. The rum has so blurred my memories of Lilly that I can scarcely recall her scent. Some days, I feel homesick.