“My treasure.”
I was talking to the broken outline.
“Yes,” said Isabelle.
She said, “I’m coming,” but hesitated.
“I’m coming,” Isabelle said again.
She tied her hair back, her elbow swept over my face. I waited.
A hand came to rest on my neck: a winter sun whitened my hair. The hand was tracing veins, downward. The hand stopped. My pulse was beating against Isabelle’s hand, its mount of Venus. The hand climbed again: it drew widening circles, it dropped away into nowhere, it was extending the waves of sweetness around my left shoulder while my right shoulder on the pillow was abandoned to the night striated with the other girls’ breathing. I was learning the velvet nap of my bones, the aura of my flesh, the infinities in my shapes. The hand was lingering, bringing dreams of lawn shawls. The sky pleads charity when your shoulder is caressed: the sky was pleading. The hand was climbing back, fixing a wimple of velour up to my chin, the persuasive hand descending again, pressing, replicating curves. In the end it was the pressure of friendship. I took Isabelle in my arms, I quivered with gratitude. I smoothed her hair, she smoothed mine.
“Can you see me?” asked Isabelle.
“I can see you. I want to give too.”
“Listen!”
“. .”
“No, nothing. . They’re sleeping and those who aren’t won’t tell on us.”
“I want to give you. .”
She cut me short, she slipped under the covers, she kissed my short curls.
“Horses,” a girl cried out.
“Don’t be frightened. She’s dreaming. Give me your hand,” said Isabelle.
I was crying with joy.
“What’s wrong? Turn on the light.”
“No, don’t. No, no. .”
“But you’re crying?” she asked, alarmed.
“I love you: I’m not crying.”
I dried my eyes.
The hand undressed my arm, stopped near the vein, around the crook of my elbow, grew promiscuous among its patterns, followed them down to the wrist, to the tips of the nails, resleeved my arm in a long suede glove, fell from my shoulder like an insect, perched at my armpit, rubbed at the tuft of hair. My face tensed, I listened to my arm as it answered the adventurer. Willing persuasion, the hand brought my arm, my armpit, into the world. The hand wandered over the babbling of white bushes, over the last frosts on the prairies, over the first buds’ oozing. Spring, which had been chirruping with impatience inside my skin, burst out in lines, in curves, in parabolas. Stretched out on the darkness, Isabelle was tying ribbons around my feet, unfolding the binding of my turmoil. Hands flat on the mattress, I was carrying out the same spellbinding labor as she. She would kiss what she had caressed, then, with her light hand, she would ruffle and flick with her feather duster of perversity. The octopus in my guts was quivering, Isabelle was drinking at my right breast, at my left. I was drinking with her, I suckled on shadows when her mouth moved away. The fingers returned, encircling, weighing the breast’s warmth; the fingers finished in my belly, hypocritical wrecks. A tribe of slaves all sharing Isabelle’s face was fanning my forehead, my hands.
She knelt on the bed:
“Do you love me?”
I led the hand up to those rare tears of joy.
Her cheek wintered between my thighs. I turned my flashlight on her, saw her fanned-out hair, saw my belly raining silk. The flashlight slipped, Isabelle veered into a new tack.
We seemed to be marrying with fangs in our skin, horsehairs in our hands: we were reeling on the teeth of a rake.
“Harder, harder,” she said.
We bit each other, we thrashed at the shadows.
We slowed, we came back with our plumes of smoke, with black wings at our heels. Isabelle leapt out of the bed.
I wondered why Isabelle was redoing her hair.
With one hand she laid me down flat on the bed, with the other she tormented me with the yellow light.
I hid behind my arms:
“I’m not pretty. You’re intimidating me,” I said.
She saw our future in my eyes, she was looking an instant ahead, she was keeping it in her blood.
She got back into bed, she lusted for me with gold-sifter’s fingers.
I was flattering her; I preferred failure to preparations. Making love with her mouth was enough for me: I was afraid and I called for help with my finger stumps. Two fine paintbrushes were wandering among my folds. My heart was beating in a molehill, my head was full of compost. Suddenly everything changed. Two alternating fingers were attending on me. How masterly her caress, how inevitable her caress. . Closed, my eyes were listening: the finger grazed my pearl, the finger waited. I wanted to be capacious, to help it.
The regal and diplomatic finger was advancing, withdrawing, choking me, beginning to enter, offending the octopus deep inside, bursting the cloud of unease, stopping, starting up, waiting close to viscera. I was clenching, I enclosed the flesh of my flesh, its marrow and its vertebrae. I rose and fell back again. The finger that had not hurt me, the finger come in gratitude came out. The flesh ungloved it.
“Do you love me?” I asked.
I was hoping for confusion.
“You mustn’t shout,” said Isabelle.
I crossed my arms over my face, I listened beneath my eyes squeezed tight.
Two fingers entered, two pirates. Isabelle was tearing open and beginning the deflowering. They were oppressing me; they wanted, my flesh did not want.
“My love. . You’re hurting me.” She put her hand over my mouth.
“I won’t complain,” I said.
The gag was a humiliation.
“It hurts. It must. It hurts. .”
I gave myself to the night and without wanting to I helped the fingers.
“You can, you can. .”
I leant forward so as to tear myself, to make Isabelle’s fingers crack, to be closer to her face, to be near my injured sex: she threw me onto the pillow.
She was pounding, pounding, pounding. . We could hear loud slaps of flesh on flesh. She was putting out the virgin eye. I was in pain: I was approaching freedom but I couldn’t see what was happening.
We listened to the sleeping girls, we sobbed for breath. Her fingers had left a line of fire.
“Let’s rest,” she said.
My recollection of the two fingers grew sweeter, my swollen flesh began to recover, bubbles of love rose up. But Isabelle was there again, the fingers turned faster and faster. Where had this mounting wave come from? Smooth wrappings inside my knees. My heels were drugged, my visionary flesh was dreaming.
“I can’t go on.”
“Quiet.”
I lost myself with her in this tender gymnastics.
The fingers were too short, the knuckles were obstructing our fever, the knuckles would go no further.
“I want to,” Isabelle grieved.
The springs creaked, again we could hear each slap of flesh.
“You’re hot.”
“I want, I want you!”
Isabelle crashed into my arms. The sweat running down her face, her hair, her throat, wet my face, my hair, my throat. Her last gift after the deflowering.
“You’re calling me? You want me?” Isabelle asked.
She returned again, obeying already and to the point of paroxysm.
The fingers’ whirling reached as far as my languid knees but they did not bring the unearthly wave I was expecting. The pleasure was approaching. It was only an echo. The slow fingers left me. I was greedy for her presence.
“Your hand, your face. . Come closer.”
“I’m tired.”
Make her come, make her lend me her shoulder or indeed let her borrow mine, make it so her face is near mine. I must trade my innocence for hers. She is out of breath: she is resting. I have to move to hear her living. Isabelle coughed as if she were coughing in a library.