In the darkest, coldest hour before dawn, Bill reappeared. He snapped on the washroom light, leaving the door open, and a square patch of light reflected down the center of the bed, right where the quilt was slightly raised, and underneath the quilt was O’s slightly curled up slim body. He silently lifted the quilt, and O was still lying on her left side, her face to the window, her feet slightly curled up, and in front of him was the white side of her, looking whiter and whiter against the black hide of the beast. After withdrawing the pillow from under her head, he said courteously.
“Please stand up.”
She managed to get to her feet by holding the chain, he held her elbow to help her stand facing the wall, the light from one side of the bed looked a little dimmer when it met the black animal skin, illuminating her body but the bright light couldn’t illuminate his movements, she couldn’t see it but she could guess that he was undoing the chain and hanging it on the other to make it taut, as she felt the chain getting tighter and tighter.
She steadied herself on the bed in her bare feet, not seeing that this time he had a black riding crop pinned to his belt instead of a leather whip. She felt Bill press her waist with his left hand and then the mattress moved as if his right foot had stepped on it. At the same time as she heard a whine, O, half hidden in the darkness, felt a terrible burn on her back, and she cried out in dismay. Bill whipped her with all his might, and he didn’t wait for her screams to stop before he lashed her four more times in quick succession, purposely making each lash a little up or down, so as to make all four lash-marks plainly visible, and until he stopped her screams continued, and tears streamed into her open mouth.
“Please be a good boy and turn around.” He said.
As she was too confused to obey him, he grabbed her hips and turned her around, the whip sweeping up to her waist. When she faced him he stepped back slightly and then began to whip her thighs so hard that the whipping lasted a full five minutes. He then turned off the light, closed the door to the washroom, and walked out, leaving O moaning in the darkness, tossing and turning along the wall at the end of the chain. She tried to make herself stop moaning and steadied herself against the wall, her whipped flesh feeling cool against the thin cloth that shimmered on the wall.
The day slowly began to dawn, and she faced the high window, half against the wall, with her face to the east. The window opened from the ground down to the blossoming panel, without curtains. o watched the pale dawn rising, and following with its mists the vines of asters outside the window, the outline of an aspen showed itself, and the yellow leaves fluttered down from time to time, though there was no wind. Beneath the asters outside the window was a meadow with a canal at the end of it. It was dawn, and O hadn’t moved a muscle in a long time.
A gardener appears in the canal. Pushing a wheelbarrow, the screech of iron wheels grinding gravel could be heard.
If he had come this way to collect the fallen leaves from the aster flowers, with the window so large and the room so small and bright, he would have been able to see that O was chained with an iron lock, naked, and could even see the whip marks on her legs, which had swollen up to form a narrow, dark red trail.
Her lover loved to slumber in the quiet of the morning. What room was he in and what kind of bed did he sleep in? Did he know the pain and suffering he had inflicted on her? Was he the one who had decided it all?O thought of the prisoners she had seen in sculptures and history books, chained up and enduring whippings, years and centuries ago, long dead. She didn’t wish to die, but if enduring torture was the price she had to pay to keep her lover, then she only hoped that what she endured would make him happy. In a state of tenderness and serenity she waited, waiting for them to bring her to him.
At this time no woman possessed a key, whether it was the key to the door lock, the key to the padlock on the chain, or the key to unlock the lock on the collar bracelet, but every man carried three sets of keys of different sizes to open all the door locks, padlocks, and locks on the collars respectively, and the servants also had these keys.
Every morning the servant on night duty slept, so one master or another came to unlock the door. The man who came to O’s room was dressed in a leather jacket, breeches, and leather boots; she did not recognize him. He first unlocked the chain on the wall, so O lay down, and before unlocking the locks on her wrists he put his hand between her thighs in exactly the same way as the first man in the mask and gloves had done in the little red parlor, or perhaps it was the same man. His face was bony, with the sharp gaze of the old Hagenotschau, but his hair was gray, and O’s eyes met his gaze for what seemed like an infinitely long time, and then froze, and she remembered the rule against looking at her master above the belt, and hastened to close her eyes, but it was too late, and as he unlocked the locks on her wrists, she heard him laugh, and say.
“You will be chastised for this after dinner.”
He said something to Jenny and Angie, who had come with him to wait on either side of the bed, and then left, Angie picking up the pillows that had fallen to the floor and laying out the blankets that had been pushed to the side of the bed by Bill when he whipped O. Jenny moved to the bed a dining-car table that had been pushed in from the hallway earlier, with coffee, milk, bread and butter on it.
“Hurry up and eat,” Angie said, “It’s nine o’clock. After you eat you can sleep until noon, and when you hear the bell ring, it will be time for lunch. You shower and brush your hair yourself and I’ll come and do your makeup and help you put on your corset.”
“What about you guys?” O asked.
“We are only taking care of you for the first twenty-four hours of your stay, after that you are on your own and you will only deal with men from now on. We can’t tell you anything more, and you can’t talk to us anymore.”
“Don’t go,” O said, “stay a little longer and tell me…” She didn’t have time to finish her sentence when the door opened: it was her lover, and he hadn’t come alone. He was dressed as he used to be when he woke up and lit a cigarette: striped pajamas and a blue bathrobe, and a woolen robe with a silk lining, which they had bought together a year earlier. His slippers were old, she thought, and she should buy him another pair. The two women disappeared without making a sound, except for the soft rustle of satin when they lifted their skirts, all of which were floor-length, and the slippers made no sound on the carpet.
O was sitting on the bed with a cup of coffee in her left hand and a buttered bread roll in her right, with her legs folded or rather half folded: one leg bent and the other attached to it. She did not move, but the cup in her hand suddenly began to tremble, and the buttered bread roll fell from her hand to the ground.
“Pick it up.” René said. Those were his first words.
She set the cup on the table, picked up the buttered bread roll she had already taken a few bites from and set it next to the cup, a few greasy crumbs remained on the floor next to her bare feet. René bent down and picked them up, then he sat down beside O and pushed her down on the bed and kissed her. She asked him if he loved her and he replied, “Yes, I love you!” He then stood up and helped her to her feet, and with his cool palms he tenderly stroked the whip marks on her body and kissed them all over with his lips.
O wondered if she could look at the man who had come with her lover, who at the moment was leaning against the door with his back to them, smoking a cigarette. What followed upset her.
“Come up here and let us see it,” so said her lover, as he led her to the head of the bed. He told his partner that he was right, and that he was grateful to him. And said that if he needed O, it was only fair that he should be allowed to come first.
She hadn’t dared to look up at the strange man as he ran his hands all over her breasts and buttocks before asking her to spread her legs.
“Do what he tells you.” René said and reached out and grabbed her. She stood with her back to him as he fondled one of her breasts with his right hand and rested his left hand on her shoulder. The stranger sat on the edge of the bed and slowly reached down and spread the lips of her hair-covered pussy, and René, understanding the man’s intentions, pushed O forward to make it a little easier for her to get closer, and he slid his right arm around her waist and wrapped it around her more tightly.
She was never able to accept such caresses with peace of mind; they always filled her with shame and she did her best to avoid them, for they seemed to her to be a kind of sacrilege, and she thought that it was sacrilege to bring her lover to his knees, and that it should be she who should be on her knees. She suddenly realized that she could not avoid it this time; it was her destiny. She moaned as those unfamiliar lips pressed against that petal-open flesh, suddenly feeling her body burn, and she stopped minding her own business, letting that fiery tongue ignite her even more. Her moans became more violent as those lips resumed. She felt the hidden bit hardening and stiffening, sucked long and hard by teeth and lips that still hadn’t let go, and another long slow sucking bite made her hold her breath.
Suddenly, she lost her footing and fell onto the bed as René’s lips pressed against hers and his hands pressed her shoulders to the bed as the stranger’s hands pushed up underneath to lift her knees and open her legs again. Her hands were behind her back (her wrists locked together as René pushed her against the stranger) and the man’s sex touched her gently, his thrusts causing her to yelp as if it were a whipping, each of his subsequent thrusts causing her to scream as her lips were bitten by her lover. The good man withdrew suddenly, and with a yelp fell spread-eagled on the floor as if he had received an electric shock.
René untied O’s hands and picked her up and laid her on the bed, tucking her in with a blanket as the man stood up and René walked him out the door. With what felt like a flash of electricity in her heart, O felt abandoned, reduced to nothing, cursed. She let out a moan under the lips of a stranger that she had never uttered before her lover, and the stranger’s prick made her cry out in a way that she had never uttered before her lover. She felt corrupted and ashamed, and if he left her for that reason she could only blame herself. But he did not leave, he came back when the door opened and closed again, and he was with her again, lying side by side with her under the blankets, he slipped into her moist, hot arms and embraced her as before, saying.
“I love you, and in the days to come I will have to give you to the servants. One in the night I will come to see you and let them whip you to the skin.”
The sun broke through the morning fog to flood the room, and they didn’t wake up together until the clock struck noon.
O didn’t know what to do, where her lover should lie, as close and gentle and relaxed and unguarded as he had been in their low-ceilinged room, in the bed they had slept in almost every day since they had moved in together. It was a huge English mahogany four-poster bed, with the headboard slightly higher than the footboard, and he always slept on her left side, and no matter what time of day it was, sometimes even in the middle of the night, when he woke up, his hand was always in the habit of touching her leg.
For this reason, she always sleeps with nothing on under her robe, and occasionally wears pajamas and never the lower half of her body.
He was now in the habit of doing it again. She grabbed his hand and kissed it, but had been too hesitant to ask him anything, when he began to speak. He reached out and grasped her collar, put two fingers between her neck and the collar, and he said to her: This is all happening according to his will, and from now on she will be shared by him with those he chooses, and also by those he does not know, but who are connected with the circle of the castle, just as it happened the night before. She should trust in him and rely on him alone, although she would also receive orders from others, because in principle he was involved in whatever she was asked to do or had placed upon her. All that she endures at the hands of those strangers is his possession and enjoyment of her, for it is he who delivers her into their hands. She must greet them and obey them as if they were his own, as if they were his manifold incarnations, so that he might possess her as God possesses his creatures.
God gives to his creatures the appearance of devils, or of fowls, and transforms them into invisible spirits, or into a state of dissipation. He was not willing to leave her, and the more he gave her up the tighter he embraced her. In fact, he gives her away to prove to himself and to her that she is indeed his: only what belongs to oneself can be given to another. To give her up is to receive her, to receive her as she becomes more beautiful in his eyes, like some offering for a sacred purpose.
For a long time he had had it in his mind to make her sell her flesh for his sake, and he had been pleased to find that the pleasure he had derived from it had been greater than he had expected, and that this had made him even more inseparable from her, just as she was even more inseparable from him. For she would be more humiliated and ravaged in the process, but because she loved him, there was no way she could not love everything that came from him.
O listened, trembling with pleasure, for she was sure that he loved her, and she trembled with excitement at having acquiesced in what he had said. He seemed to have guessed what she was thinking, for at that moment he added: “It is easy to agree verbally to give up those things which I want and which you cannot give me, but even if you have agreed beforehand, even if you agree at the moment, and if you think that you will be able to submit to them, it is impossible for you not to resist. And we are going to get your submission anyway, not only for the unparalleled pleasure that I and the others will derive from it, but also so that you will understand the changes that have taken place in yourself from this experience.”
O was about to say that she was his slave, and that she would bear the chains placed upon her with pleasure, when he stopped her.
“Yesterday you were told that as long as you are here in the castle you must not look a man in the face or speak to him, and this applies to me: to me you must remain silent and obedient, and I love you. Now get up, and from now on, in the presence of a man, open your mouth only to cries and caresses.”
So O complied and got up, René still lying in bed. She showered and combed her hair, her bruises shivering painfully at the touch of warm water, so she had to sponge her body dry without the burning pain caused by scrubbing. She applied lipstick but not eye halo, and put perfumed powder all over her body, then she returned to her room with her eyes downcast, still without a stitch of clothing on her body.
René was looking at Jenny at this point as she came into the room to stand next to the bed, also keeping her head down in silence. He asked her to help O dress, and Jenny fetched the green silk corset, the white petticoat, the long skirt and the green brogues. She helped O fasten the corset first and then turned behind her back to help her cinch it up, which was long and tight, with the wide whalebone braces and padding that had once been fashionable to hold up her breasts. The tighter the corset was cinched, the higher the padding lifted the breasts and the more prominent the nipples became. At the same time, the tightly cinched waist accentuated the belly and hips.
Amazingly, the costume is very comfortable to wear, and even provides a certain degree of comfort and serenity: it makes you stand up straight, but makes you feel – it’s hard to say why, except by way of contrast – that those parts of the body that are not bound are more free and comfortable, or simply more easily utilized. parts of the body that are not bound are more free, or rather more accessible.
The long skirt and trapezoidal open neckline opened from the lower part of the neck through the breasts to the whole chest, and to the girl who wore the costume it seemed less like an attire for the protection of the body than one designed for seduction or exhibition.
When Jenny had laced her up, O picked up the long dress from the bed; it was a dress, with the petticoat and overskirt attached, but separable. The corset and lace outlined the elegant lines of the breasts, more or less affected by whether they were bunched loosely or tightly. Jenny had cinched O’s corset so tightly that O could see herself in the washroom mirror through the open door: slim, hidden below the waist in waves of green satin. The two women stood side by side, and as Jenny reached up to help smooth the folds in O’s green dress, O could see her breasts quivering in the lace of her corset, her nipples slightly elongated, her areolas brown, her dress yellow.
René walked up to them and said to O, “Watch.” And to Jenny, “Lift your skirt.” Jenny’s hands lifted the shivering hem and hard edges of her skirt, revealing her golden belly, her shimmering thighs and knees, and the tight black triangle on which René slowly stroked with one hand, while his other hand tweaked one of her nipples.
“Just for you to see.” He said to O.
O saw it, she saw his slightly sarcastic but eager expression. His eyes were riveted on Jenny’s half-open lips and her neck, which was slightly tilted back, the leather collar tightly fastened around it, and O wondered bitterly: what pleasures could she give him that the girl or any other person could not give him?
“Not with you.” He added.
No, not with her. Her spirit suddenly and completely broke at the thought, leaning against the wall between the two doors, her hands dropping helplessly, there was no longer any need to ask her to remain silent, what else could she say?
Perhaps he was felt by her desperation, he let go of Jenny and took O in his arms, he said she was his love, his life, repeating over and over that he loved her.
His hand on her neck was moist, smelling of Jenny. what else could O do? The despair that had once overwhelmed her slowly ebbed: he loved her, ah! He loved her, he could play with Jenny or anyone else as he pleased, but he still loved her.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear, “I love you,” in a voice so low and soft that it was barely audible, “I love you.” He didn’t leave until he saw her eyes clear and her expression calm and satisfied.
Jenny took O’s hand and walked down the corridor, their slippers once more striking loud echoes on the brick floor, and again they saw a servant sitting on a bar stool between two doors. He was dressed exactly like Bill, but he wasn’t Bill; the man was tall, dry and had dark hair. He guided them into a parlor, where two servants stood in front of a ripe iron door adorned on both sides with a green cloth mantle, and a couple of white dogs with brown spots lay at their feet.
“That’s the fence.” Jenny cooed, and the servant walking in front of them heard it and turned around, and O was surprised to see Jenny all of a sudden become ashen, and scattering the hand that was holding O, and the hand that was gently lifting her long skirt, she fell to her knees on the black marble floor of the parlor, and the two servants by the door burst into a fit of laughter, and one of them came up to O, and courteously asked her to go in with him first, into a door across the street, and she heard the sound of laughing and the sound of footsteps, and the door closed behind her. She wondered what was going to happen, and whether Jenny had been chastised for it, and what kind of chastisement? Perhaps she had fallen to her knees to beg the servant to spare her, or perhaps she had followed some rule with that gesture. Had she achieved her goal?
During the first two weeks of her life at the castle she noticed that, although the principle of silence was absolute, the girls always tried to break it on those occasions when only they and the servants were present, when they were being led by the servants on their way to a certain part of the castle, and at meals, especially during the day. It seemed as if that sense of security which had been destroyed by their nakedness, by the chains of the night, by the presence of their masters, had returned to them all together. She also noticed that in the presence of their masters, the slightest gesture could dictate their actions. This was not the case with the servants, who were never without orders, though those courteous requests were as unalterable as commands. They were evidently fond of chastising any little transgression committed in their presence, and always on the spot, and O saw three girls caught in the act of talking and thrown on the floor and whipped on the spot-once in the corridor to the red quarter, and twice just as they entered the dining-room. In that case, it was possible to be whipped in the daytime, even though they had told her it wouldn’t happen. This seems to indicate that the behavior of the servants is not included in this, but is left to their discretion.
The attire of the servants looked grotesque and frightful in the daytime; some of them wore black socks, red jackets, and white shirts, which were wide-sleeved silk shirts of a soft texture, tied tightly at the wrists of the neck. At noon on the eighth day of O’s arrival, one of these servants, armed with a whip, called a blonde named Madeline, a plump, delicate girl, whom O happened to be sitting not far from, up from the pier on which she was sitting. Madeline lifted her rose-red milky breasts and smiled at him, saying something that O didn’t hear because it came out so fast. Before his hand could scarf her, she had stroked his still-sleeping prick and then put it into her half-open lips, so she didn’t get whipped. Since he was the only watcher in the dining room that day, and since he closed his eyes when he was being fondled, the girls began to talk quietly: so it was possible to bribe a servant, but what was the point?
The one rule that O found most difficult to follow, and in fact she never really managed to follow it fully, was the rule against looking at men’s faces – a rule that applied to the servants as well, and O felt herself in constant danger because those faces always intrigued her, and she had already been whipped by two of the servants for it. But it wasn’t always because they caught her looking at them, it was most likely just to humiliate her.
They liked the freedom to have variations, and did not wish to be bound by rules such as those concerning the necessity for the girls to avert their eyes from their faces and mouths to their pricks, whips, and hands. No matter how cruel they had been to her when they had been ruthless, she had never had the courage to fall at their knees in pleading for mercy, although her tameness was in no way intended to encourage their cruelty. The rule about silence meant little to her, and except for that time with also her lover, she had never violated it, and when the other girls had taken advantage of the distraction of the guards’ energies to speak to her, she had always replied with a gesture.
At dinner they were ushered into a hall with black walls, a black marble floor, a long dining table made of heavy glass, also black, and each girl seated on a round pier wrapped in a black leather top. Before being seated, they were required by rule to first lift their skirts, and the feel of the smooth, cool leather against the underside of their legs brought back memories of the first time O remembered the sensation she had felt when her lover had made her remove her pantyhose and petticoats and sit in the back seat of a car in the same way.
In the future, when she left the castle, she would dress as normal, except for one thing – she was completely naked under her normal-looking suit and long skirt. Whenever she lifted her petticoats and long skirts to sit beside her lover or anyone else, whether in a car seat or a restaurant seat, the familiarity would come back to her, the breasts held out by the silk corset, the mouth and hands that could not deny any advances, the terrible silence.
Yet nothing could have given her more relief than silence and chains. Chains and silence bound her deep within herself, suffocating and depressing her, yet at the same time freeing her from herself. When her lover made her give herself to those strangers in front of him, what had she become if she had the right to speak, if her hands were free, if she had a choice to make? Indeed, she spoke when she was tortured, if moans and cries can be counted as speech, and they often muzzled her.
Under the gaze of those eyes, under the touch of those hands, lost in the illusion of not being there, she was just one of anyone, one of any girl. Her body was forced open like all those girls who were forced open. She saw it all, but there was nothing she could do about it.
It was thus, not twenty-four hours after her arrival at the castle, the day after her arrival, that after dinner she was taken to the library to serve the coffee and to take charge of the fire. Jenny had been brought back by the dark-haired servant, ready to go with her, together with a girl named Monique. The servant led them into the hall and stood himself not far from the pillar where O had been bound. The library was empty, and the French doors stood open to the west. In the vast, cloudless blue sky, the autumn sun moved slowly, its light shining on the bookcases with their tiers of drawers, and a large bouquet of golden chrysanthemums smelled of earth and rotting leaves.
“Did Bill leave a mark on you last night?” The servant asked O.
She nodded that he did.
“Then you should show them,” he said, “and roll up your skirt.”
He watched her roll up her skirt from behind, as Jenny had done last night, and watched Jenny help her fasten it, and then he instructed her to light the fire.O’s hips were bare all the way up to her waistline as well as her thighs and slim calves, and a waterfall of green silk and white linen folds ticked off one edge of the five lashings of whiplash that had turned black.
The fire in the hearth was ready, and in a few moments a handful of apple boughs were ablaze, and then round oak sticks, which burned with a splintering crackle and arched into a high, colorless flame, scarcely visible in the light of day, but with a pleasant odor. Another servant came in and placed a tray full of coffee cups on the long table, moving the lamp to make room, and O went over to the table, where Monique and Jenny still stood on either side of the fireplace.
While this was going on, two men came in, and the first servant immediately left the room, and O thought she recognized one of them by his speaking voice; he was one of the men who had possessed her last night, the one who had suggested that her behind should be made more accessible.
Monique put sugar in each cup in turn, and as O filled those black-and-gold cups with coffee, she took the opportunity to steal a glance at the man, who turned out to be such a thin, blond boy, a young man with an English air, and who was talking again, and now she could be sure it was him. The other man had light hair, too, and a big, stony face, and both of them were sitting in big leather chairs, with their feet stretched out by the fire, quietly smoking cigarettes and looking at the papers, and paying no attention to the women, as if they were not there at all, and occasionally the sound of a newspaper being turned over, or of coal dropping into the hearth, could be heard.
O added logs to the fire again and again as she sat next to the basket of firewood, on a cushion that sat on the floor, Monique and Jenny also sitting on the floor, just across from her, their spread skirts overlaying each other, Monique’s a deep red.
An hour passed. Suddenly the blonde boy summoned Jenny over to him, then Monique, and he instructed them to bring the low animal-skin stool (the same one O had ambled on that night), and without waiting for any further instructions from him Monique dropped to her knees and crouched on it, her breasts pressed against the low animal-skin stool and her hands gripping both of its corners tightly. Monique didn’t move a muscle when the young man instructed Jenny to lift up her red dress, and then Jenny undressed him as he had instructed her to do – the way he had given the order was extremely rough – holding the fleshy sword in both her hands, the very same sword that had at least once so brutally stabbed into O’s body. It erected and hardened in the closed palms of her hands, and then still those same hands, Jenny’s small hands, parted Monique’s legs, and the young man thrust slowly toward the hollow between her legs, with one brief spasm that brought a faint moan from her.
The other man watched them silently and gestured for O to come to him, he pulled her to sit on the arm of the chair, his eyes still fixed on the state of affairs in front of him, O’s rolled up skirt gave a good view of her ass and he grabbed her pussy with his hand.
After a minute the door opened, and it was in this situation that René saw her.
“Please don’t let me disturb you.” He said and then sat down on the cushion O had just sat on on the floor by the fireplace, he watched her intently and smiled slightly with each dip and retraction of that hand that was gripping her. The hand probed both her front and back orifices at the same time, going deeper and deeper inside as they opened, finally causing her to let out a moan that she couldn’t hold back any longer.
Monique had long since risen to her feet, and Jenny was lazily adding logs in O’s former place as she brought René a glass of whiskey and he kissed her hand. The next thing he knew, he was drinking while still watching O intently.
The man still holding her asked, “Is she yours?”
“Yes.” René replied.
“James is right,” the man went on, “she is too narrow; she must be made wider.”
“You can’t make too much of it either, so keep your eyes peeled.” James said.
“At your service,” said René, rising to his feet, “you are a better referee than I am.” He then rang the bell to call the men.
For the next eight days, generally between eight and ten o’clock in the evening, when it was dark and O had finished her work in the library, she returned to her room chained up, with nothing on her body but a red cloak, and a black rubber rod resembling an erect male genitalia inserted in her anus, which was held in place by three small chains on a belt around her hips, preventing the movement of her internal muscles from making it from falling out. One of the small chains was directly behind and the other two were on either side of the abdominal triangle, so as not to impede anyone’s access to the other orifice if needed.
René rang the bell to ask his servant to bring a safe full of small chains and straps of various sizes and rubber rods, all fine, thin at the top and thick at the bottom, to prevent them from slipping into the body and doing the opposite of what they were intended to do. The rubber rods were designed to widen the entrance, but once slipped in, they would instead tighten it. Each day James handpicked a rubber mallet slightly thicker than the previous day and made O kneel or lie on her side, watching as Jenny or Monique or whichever girl happened to be there stuffed her.
At supper the girls ate in the same dining-room, and O wore it naked after her bath and powder, and everyone could see the little chains and straps, and only took them out of her on those nights when no one wanted her, after the servants had chained her to the wall. If anyone wanted her, the servants would lock her hands behind her back and remove them for her before taking her to the library.
After a few nights, this orifice was easier to use, although it was still a bit narrower than the other one.
After eight days, this instrument having ceased to be necessary, O’s lover told her that he felt quickened by her double openness, and that he was determined that she should keep it up. He told her that he was going away for a few days, and that she would not see him during her last seven days at the château until he returned to take her back to Paris.
“But I love you,” he added, “I really do, don’t forget me.”
Ah, how could she forget him! He was the hand that blindfolded her, he was the whip that whistled in the hands of Bill the servant, he was the chains she wore as a suppressed voice.
Is she getting tired of it all? No. As a result of the great and excessive bitterness of her constant defilement and growing habituation to violence and humiliation, it seems that she has become thrown into a state of numbness, into a liminal state of dormancy or sleepwalking. On the contrary, the corset that kept her upright, the chains that tamed her, the silence that became her haven, have now been transformed into the eternal image of the girl and of her own used flesh, the eternal image of a flesh that will always be ready for use, even if it is not used, which is the image of her own body and her self-consciousness.
As a result of this almost daily ritual of being defiled by spit and semen, she felt that she had literally become a place of impurity, the cesspool referred to in the Bible; however, those parts of her body which had become dulled by the constant aggression became in her mind infinitely more beautiful and noble: although her lips held the strange prick, her breasts were constantly fondled by hands, and a pair of neighboring orifices between her thighs were roughly invaded, her betrayal of herself became a source of greater nobility and dignity. Although her lips held the strange prick, her breasts were constantly fondled by hands, and a pair of neighboring orifices were roughly invaded, her betrayal of herself became a source of greater nobility and dignity. It may sound strange, but the word “dignity” was apt here, and she was illuminated by it, and her heart was filled with peace. A bright, imperceptible smile could be observed on her face, the kind of smile that glimmers in the eyes of a hermit and can only be guessed at but not seen.
Night had fallen when René told her he was leaving, and O was in her room waiting for the servants to take her to the dining room, wearing nothing at all. Her lover arrived in the suit he usually wore every day when he went to town, and when he embraced her, the hard tweed blouse hurt her nipples. He kissed her, laid her flat on the bed, then lay down beside her and took her with the utmost gentleness and slow elegance, taking turns with the two orifices that were open to him, kissing her lips once more before finally pouring himself into her mouth.
“Before I leave,” he said, “I wish to whip you once more. This time I shall ask your permission beforehand; do you agree?”
She agreed.
“I love you.” He said it again, “The ringer now is called Bill.”
Her ringer, Bill, hung her by her hands from the chains on the wall, and after she had been so bound, her lover kissed her again, and then stood over her as he told her once more that he loved her, and then nodded to Bill. He watched her struggle hopelessly, listened to her moans turn into screams, and when her tears ran down her face, he ordered Bill to leave.
She tried to concentrate her last bit of strength to tell him that she loved him, and he kissed her tear-stained cheeks and gasping mouth, untied her, carried her to lie down on the bed, and left quietly.