“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 by the maid, slowly, a bit too gaudily for her taste. Then she is given a long evening dress, a glossy couture piece with classical lines that Madame Gray would have 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 nocturnal black of the material. No underwear or lingerie underneath the dramatic dress. The silk adheres to her breasts, her ass and her stomach; the sudden crispness of the wrap awakens her nipples.
“You are beautiful,” says the young maid. “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 bit 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 girl swings the door open and invites her in.
She is greeted by 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 her ease.
“You are quite ravishing,” he says. And he 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 semicircular 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?
Just then a servant attired in quite incongruous Louis XV style calls out loudly that dinner is served, and they all march into the immense dining room, where a very long rectangular table dominates the proceedings. The plates are exquisitely sober; the silver knives and forks and crystal glasses shine wildly under the glow of the candelabras.
The grey-haired man is at the head of the table and indicates she should sit to his left. Facing her is a very beautiful woman whose splendour has however seen better days, a thousand wrinkles smiling, a thousand small pains betraying her long and cruel past.
On her left is the youngest man in the room; he is younger than her even, his face and skin barely out of teenage years, radiant, almost effeminate. He is all smiles and his conversation is 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 up, her legs are like cotton wool, her breath is short. Her breasts rub anxiously against the silk of the dress, her nipples harden again under the black material, becoming quite visible. She has the impression that everyone present is 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 across from 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 upward 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 living room, 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 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 girl is still overcome by dizziness and knows she will 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 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 ass to him. On closer inspection, it appears that the jester is actually not about to offer the rose to the young woman, but is preparing 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 criss-crosses her right ass cheek, petals lie on the ground following the first blow, and the girl’s face reflects pain and submission.
This is when she realizes that the older woman has folded her dress back up all the way to her thighs, and is now twirling the blonde curls of her pubis with her fingers, even briefly inserting a finger into her gash, then smelling it with half a smile before licking the wet finger clean and returning her hand below to stroke her swollen cunt.
The woman suddenly stands and walks over to the wall, where she rings a call bell. Then she leans back over the prostrate young girl, lips grazing her mouth, skimming the breasts barely concealed by the crumpled silk of the dress, lingering over the uncovered stomach and the thighs that part automatically under her caress.
There is a discreet knock at the door. “Come in,” the woman says, without looking up. It’s one of the servants who had served at the dinner table; he has a peasant’s wide and tawny features, which she had earlier found almost comical beneath the powdered wig he is now no longer wearing. But he is still attired in the Louis XV outfit meant to emphasize his thin waist. On him it has the contrary effect, highlighting his thick muscles, the incredibly wide shoulders and the lack of neck. He is a heavy-set man; his ferocious eyes remind her of a dog’s.