The young woman looks at herself in the ceiling mirror, and from her perspective, the mulatto girl massaging her appears closer to her than she in fact is, as if it were her mouth, her lips massaging her and not her fingers. But very soon, it is actually her darker lips that are now attaching themselves to her taut nipples, licking then sucking on her hard tips, racing across her tremulous skin, her pretty café au lait face soon ensconced between her thighs. All she can see is the back of her head, a mass of short, dense curls when the maid’s mouth alights on her cunt, and the masseuse’s tongue separates the delicate lips of her opening, skims across her dilated clit. She feels as if she wants to come that very moment if only to release all the tension building up inside her since she walked into the house. With her hands, she grasps the short dark curls and pulls the girl’s face hard against her stomach – black against white – her lithe tongue butterflying over her clit now feeling more forceful, more incisive.
The young maid pulls her body down towards the edge of the table, both her legs now winging over the sides, the indefatigable tongue squirming around her red-hot button, plunging down into her wet vagina, tip-toeing across her anus and delicately forcing it open – she has never had the courage to tell any of her previous lovers how much she likes to be sodomised by a hard, burning tongue, all this while her long bronzed fingers keep on playing with her breasts. Finally she comes, no longer able to restrain her voice, flooding the mulatto girl’s face with her juices. The maid rises, wiping her mouth, her chin, her nose with a towel and, curiously enough, smiles not at her but towards the mirror on the ceiling. The thought that someone has just witnessed the whole scene through a one-way mirror dawns on her with absolute certainty. What other traps are to follow? She slides off the massage table, pulls the young maid by her hair as she was doing earlier, and forces her to kneel before her and presses her face against her cunt, the heavy-lipped and violent mouth against her small blonde bush.
“Drink,” she says.
And she slowly pees into the open, willing mouth that doesn’t miss a single drop, still watching the ceiling as she does so, now smiling at the mirror, pleased to be conveying in such a way to the master of the house that by defiling his slave, she is resisting his will.
She is then made up, slowly, a bit too gaudily to her taste. She is then given a long evening dress, a glossy couture piece with classical lines that Madame Grey would have much appreciated. Once inside the formal dress, she feels like a marble statue sandwiched inside a skin of blackness, the exquisite pallor of her skin enhanced by the night black of the material.
No underwear or lingerie underneath the dramatic dress. The silk adheres to her breasts, her arse and her stomach; the sudden crispness of the wrap awakens her nipples.
“You are beautiful,” says the young mulatto girl. “I’m happy the Commander has brought you here.”
Once again the stairs. The maid guides her from one door to another. She hears a rumour of conversation; she knows that very soon she will be told where she is. She is both curious and worried and slows her steps.
The mulatto girl swings the door open and invites her in.
First, it’s the intense light. There are four or five men in dinner jackets and six or seven elegantly attired women; they all briefly fall silent and watch her walk towards them. Meanwhile the grey-haired stranger moves in her direction, takes her by the hand and smiles, putting her at ease.
“You are quite ravishing,” he says. And truly looks as if he believes it.
She smiles back, still cautiously, but holds on to him, surrounded as she is by all these unknown faces.
“Friends,” he says, with a semi-circular gesture of his hand. “All charming people, as you will see.”
Why does he not introduce her to anyone? Why isn’t she even provided with a name, a surname?
Right then a servant attired in quite incongruous Louis XV style calls out loudly that food is served and they all march on into the immense dining room, where a very long rectangular-shaped table dominates the proceedings.
The plates are exquisitely sober, the silver knives and forks and crystal glasses shine wildly beneath the glow of the candelabras.
The man is at the top of the table and indicates she should sit to his left. Facing her is a very beautiful woman whose splendour has seen better days, a thousand wrinkles smiling, a thousand small pains betraying her long and cruel past history.
On her left is the the youngest man in the room; he is younger than her, his face and skin barely out of teenagehood, radiant, almost effeminate. He is all smiles and his conversation artfully banal.
The meal offers all that Provence can supply, from the most refined to the most colourful dish. Her taste buds sing along. Stylish servants see that their glasses are never empty and provide the right wine for each course: a sublime Cassis white followed by a racy Gigondas from the Aix vineyards, and soon champagne, small bubbles adhering under her gaze to the shape of the cut glasses. Very soon, she experiences a new kind of drunkenness, like an aggravated echo of her dizziness on the train. The feeling surrounds her like a scarf; she feels she is burning, her legs are like cotton wool, her breath short. Her breasts rub anxiously against the silk of the dress, her tips harden again under the black material, becoming quite visible. She has the impression that all present are watching her, evaluating her, judging her, as if the woman facing her, eating her strawberries and drinking her champagne is already promising her a whole set of caresses and indulgences. She feels as if her stomach is incandescent, a combination of fire and water, and the wide smile of the woman in front of her indicates she is aware of it, that she recognizes the torment inside her body, that behind the combined fragrance of the wines and the food spread across the now crumpled tablecloth, she has caught an early whiff of the purple taste of her inner juices. Right then, a foot deliberately brushes against hers, caressing her ankle, gliding across her leg and the silk sheathing her. She isn’t sure if it is the smiling woman or her attentive host or maybe the gauche young man on her left. The champagne bubbles float upwards to the surface of the crystal glasses, and her eyes are transfixed by the thin rising columns, as if she were the one drowning inside the glass and her oxygen was running out…
When they all rise to make their way to the salon, she stumbles.
“Come,” says the woman, holding her arm, “Are you feeling unwell? You must lie down for a quarter of an hour, allow all that alcohol to settle…”
Together, they climb the monumental stairs.
“I’m in number Seven,” she stammers.
“No need to go that far,” the woman says. “I’m in One.”
The room is predominantly green, with an array of scattered heavy brown curtains; the bed is covered with a dark green satin quilt, which feels so wonderfully cool when she settles her cheek against it and allows herself to relax. The woman helps her lie down, pulling her shoes off, caressing her thin ankles, taking them into her hands as if she were about to handcuff them.
But the young girl is still overcome by that dizzy feeling and knows she would allow anything to happen.
She tries to overcome the feeling, she turns her head around, sees a painting on the wall, attempts to focus on its image, to capture some sense of reality from the shimmering fog in which the painting floats.
It’s a small canvas, like the country scene in the picture in room Seven, in which a court jester is offering a rose to a comedic maid – the very image of card One in the Tarot – but the woman here has pulled her skirt up and is displaying a regal, sculptured arse to him. On closer inspection, it appears that the jester is not about to offer the rose to the young woman but is readying to pin the thorny flower straight into her satin globes. It even looks as if he has begun punishing her: a long, pink cut already crisscrosses her right arse cheek, and petals lie on the ground following the first blow, and the girl’s face reflects pain and submission.