To say that O had been waiting for her lover’s return from the moment he left was still far from enough: she had felt nothing but bitter waiting and darkness from that moment on. On that day, she wore an expression like a picture, her skin was soft, her lips were docile, her eyes were always downcast – the only time she was able to put up with this rule.
She lit the fire and added wood, poured the wine and served the coffee, lit the cigarettes, arranged the bouquets, and folded the newspapers, as a young girl might do in her parents’ sitting-room. Her bare neck and leather collar, her tight corset and prisoner’s bracelets, all of it made her look so innocent, and though her orders from the men she served went no further than to stand by and watch them ravage the other girls, she could sense that they wanted to ravage her even more.
This is undoubtedly the reason why they treat her much less favorably than before. Had she made any mistakes? Perhaps it was the departure of her lover that made them feel freer to deal with her? Whatever the case, here’s what happened: the day after he left, as night fell, she began to undress and looked in the mirror in the washroom at the whip marks Bill’s horsewhip had left on her thighs – they were almost gone.
It was at this point that Bill came in. It was two hours before dinner and he informed her that she would no longer be eating in the dining room with the others and told her to get ready. He pointed to the Turkish toilet in the corner and told her to squat down, which reminded her of a time when Jenny had mentioned that Bill would make her do that.
She stayed there for a long time and he just stood there watching her, she could see his figure in the mirror and see her own. She couldn’t control the fluids that flowed from her body, he waited until she had finished her bath and sprinkled the perfumed powder, just as she was about to get her slippers and cloak he stopped her and then locked her hands behind her back as she sat down at the foot of the bed and waited for him.
It was pouring outside at the moment, and the aspen tree in front of the window swayed in the storm, with an occasional pale leaf hitting the windowpane. Although the clock had not yet struck seven, the sky was already as dark as midnight. Autumn had deepened, and the days were getting shorter and shorter.
Bill came back with the blindfold they had used on her when she first arrived, and a clanging chain in one hand, much like the one on the wall, and O could sense he was hesitating between putting the blindfold on her first and putting the chain on first. She stared out the window at the rain, unconcerned about what he wanted to do to her, just thinking: René had said he was coming back to get her out, there were still five days and five nights to go, I wonder where he was now? Is he alone? If not, who was he with? But she believed that he would definitely come back.
Bill put the chain on the bed and didn’t bother to interrupt O’s daydreaming, just covered her eyes with a black velvet blindfold. That blindfold was rounded under the sockets and ironically compounded over the cheekbones, making it utterly impossible to peek, or even to open the eyes. And so the comforting darkness came like night, and O greeted it with a joy she had never known before, that same comforting chain carrying her away from her self.
Bill tied the chain to her collar and asked her to follow him, she stood up and was led forward by the chain.
From the cold brick floor under her feet, she deduced that she was walking down a corridor in the red zone, and then the ground under her feet, though still cold, began to grow rough, and she knew by feel that she was at the moment walking on a stone floor, paved with sandstone or corundum. Twice the servant had asked her to stop, and she had heard the sound of a key unlocking and then re-locking the door.
“Watch the steps.” Bill said.
She tripped as she walked down the stairs and Bill wrapped his arms around her waist, he had never toweled her before this, other than whipping her in chains, but at this moment he had her pinned to the cold stone steps, which she attempted to grab with her locked hands to keep from sliding down. His hands grabbed her breasts, then his mouth moved from one to the other, and she could feel his slow erection from the body that pressed against her. He didn’t help her to her feet until he had had his fill. Wet and cold and constantly shivering, she finally descended the last of the stone steps while hearing yet another door open.
As soon as she stepped inside, she immediately felt a thick carpet under her feet, and with another gentle tug of the chains, Bill untied her hands and removed her blindfold. She found herself in the middle of a small, short, round vaulted dooryard, the walls and vaulted ceiling of which were made of stone, and the joints between a strip of stone could be seen. Directly opposite the door, set into the wall, was an iron ring to which the chain on her collar was fastened, and which stood three feet above the floor, so that she could move no more than two paces forward.
There was neither a bed nor any facility that could be used as a bed, nor any blanket of any kind to cover it with, but only three or four Moroccan-style cushions, but she could not reach them, and they were obviously not meant for her. There was, however, a niche at a distance within her reach, from which a faint light shone, and apart from this little light the room was dim. In the niche was also a wooden tray containing bread, water, and fruit. There was a ring of heating pipes at the foot of the enclosure, but the heat emanating from them could not cover the odor of the earth: the odor of ancient prisons and dungeons of ancient castles.
There was not a sound in that mattress-hot dimness, and O soon lost all notion of time; there was no longer day or night, and the light was always on. Bill or some other servant-it made no difference to her-was always replacing the trays of bread, water, and fruit, and taking her to a nearby dungeon to bathe. She never saw the men who came in, for each time they came in, one of the servants blindfolded her beforehand and removed it after they left.
She had lost the ability to recognize them, to tell who they were, how many of them there were, and what it was that her soft hands and lips were blindly caressing. Sometimes there were several of them, most often it was one, but each time before they took possession of her, they always made her kneel against the wall to be whipped.
The ring under her collar was fastened by the chains on the wall, and she pressed her palms against the wall, her face against the backs of her hands so that her face wouldn’t be bruised by the stone wall, and her knees and breasts directly against the wall. That was how she got lost in the constant torment and cries as the rounded vault soothed her moans of pain.
She waited, and time had ceased to exist. She had waited three months, three days, maybe ten days or ten years.
In the velvety darkness, her chains were unlocked, and she vaguely felt herself wrapped in a thick cloth, and the shoulders and knees of someone resting on them picked her up and carried her away. She found herself back in her room, lying under a black animal skin quilt. It was early morning and she opened her eyes, her hands were free and René was sitting beside her, gently stroking her hair.
“You must get dressed now,” he said, “we’re getting out of here.”
She took a quick shower and he brushed her hair and handed her powder and lipstick. She walked into the room to find her suit, shirt, jacket, socks and shoes already by the bed, along with her gloves and small purse, she even saw her trench coat that she always used to wear over her suit when the weather changed and a piece of sari to protect her neck, but there was no belt or lining pants in these clothes. Slowly, one by one, she put her clothes on, rolling her stockings down to her knees; she did not wear her trench coat, for the room was warm.
While this was going on, the man who had explained the rules of the place to her on the first night came in and opened the collar and bracelet she had been wearing for two weeks. Was she then free from their bondage, or did she feel lost as a result? She was silent, hardly daring to scarf her wrists and throat.
He took out a small wooden box, and told her to choose from the many rings in it one that would fit the ring finger of her left hand, a curious kind of iron ring, with a gold interior, and a very wide crest, raised in the center, and with three circles, from large to small, at the upper part of the base, each one in a spiral shape, like Günther’s wheel of light. The second ring she tried on went on just right; it weighed heavily in her hand, and shone vaguely gold in the dull gray of the iron.
Why iron? And why gold? She did not understand the significance of the sign, and it was impossible to talk about it in this room, for the chain still hung above the bed, the black comforter slipped to the floor, and at any moment the servant Bill might appear, and in the dim light he seemed to actually appear, in that absurd theatrical costume.
She was wrong, however, Bill didn’t show up. René let her slip her trench coat over her suit and put on the and gloves that covered the cuffs, and she picked up her head scarf and small leather bag, her coat on her arm. The heels of her shoes hit the floor less loudly than her slippers, and the door closed behind her, leaving the parlor empty.
O took her lover’s hand, and a stranger who accompanied them opened the familiar iron gate, which Jenny remembered to have called “the wall,” and which no longer contained the servants and dogs she had last seen. The man lifted a green velvet curtain and led them through it, which dropped behind them, and they heard the door close. They came at last to a drawing-room, from which they could see the lawn outside, and as they went down the steps to the front door, O recognized the car.
She sat next to her lover as he took the wheel and started the car. They crossed an open field and an open gate, and after driving a few hundred meters further, he stopped the car and kissed her. Next they drove home, the car traveling on the outskirts of a small, quiet town, and O just happened to see the name on the road sign: Rosie.
II. Mr. Stephen
O’s residence was situated on the Rue St. Louis, an old house facing north and south overlooking the Seine, with spacious but rather low rooms, a pitched roof, and two large rooms opening on to a balcony, which the sloping edge of the house just hid from view.
The two rooms, one of which was occupied by O., and the other, with a fireplace and bookshelves from floor to ceiling, served as a study and sitting-room during the week, and as a bedroom when necessary. A large sofa was placed opposite the two large windows, and in front of the fireplace there was an antique table, which was used temporarily as a dining-table when there were too many guests for the small dining-room, which was decorated in green and faced the inner courtyard. The other room, facing the inner courtyard, belonged to René, who used to dress and store his clothes in it; O shared with him the yellow-colored washroom, and the kitchen, also painted yellow, was small and compact.
There was a cleaning woman who came once a day to clean the room, the floor of which was made of red bricks, of that antique hexagonal red brick which was often seen in the old Parisian hotels on the second-floor staircase and on the landing connecting the staircase with the corridor, and which was seen afresh to be exactly the same. Her room was small, the pink and black calico curtains tightly covered, the fire burning behind a metal grate, the quilt folded up, the bed looking very neat.
“I bought you a nylon nightgown,” René said, “you’ve never had one of those.”
Sure enough, a snow-white, semi-transparent nylon nightgown was spread out on the side of the bed where she usually slept, elegant as the costume of an Egyptian statue.O had tied a thin belt around the nightgown that had an elastic waistband, and the texture of the nightgown was so light that the shadows of her hips showed through to make it look a pale pink. Except for the screen, which was the same color as the curtains, and the covers of the two small reclining chairs, the room was a snowy white: the walls, the lace fringe of the mahogany four-poster bed, and the bearskin rug on the floor. Sitting by the fireplace in that white nightgown, O began to listen to her lover.
He had warned her at the outset not to think that she was now free, but that unless she ceased to love him, and left him at once, she would be free again, and if she still loved him, she would not be free at all. She listened to his words in silence, but her heart was full of joy, for he wished to prove to himself that she belonged to him.
How naïve of him to have not realized by now that he needed no proof of his ownership of her, or perhaps he had realized it, but still wanted to emphasize it, even just to derive some pleasure from it? She gazed into the fire as he spoke, not and not daring to look him in the eye.
He stood and walked around from time to time. Suddenly he said to her that he wished her to listen to him without leaning her knees together or hugging her shoulders, when she was sitting with her arms in the position of wrapping them around her knees. So she raised the hem of her nightgown and sat up on her knees, or more precisely on her heels in the position of a nun or a Japanese woman, and waited for him to continue. As her knees were spread out, she felt the white bear hair gently but sharply lodged against the middle of her half-open thighs.
He went on to say, “Her legs are not spread wide enough,” and when the word “spread” and the words “spread your legs” came out of her lover’s mouth, they carried so much uneasiness and power that she could not help but hear them without a kind of inward worship and solemn obedience, as if she were speaking to God instead of him. obedience, as if it were God before her eyes and not he speaking to her. So she remained motionless, her hands palms up on either side of her knees, the hem of her nightgown spread out on the carpet.
His lover’s wish for her is very simple: she must be available at all times. It was not enough for him alone to be able to approach her without any obstacle, but she had to be dressed in such a way that experienced eyes could see at a glance that she was as available as she was supposed to be. He said that this had a twofold significance: the first she already knew, having been told on the first night she arrived at the castle that she must never close her knees or close her lips. She might well have thought that it would not be difficult to do so (and she did), but she had to understand that in order to observe this discipline, it would require an unremitting effort on her part, an effort that would constantly remind her of the secret shared between her and him, and perhaps a few others, and remind her of her true position, even when she acted and appeared to be no different from the norm among those who did not know their secret. different from the common people.
As for clothes, she was at liberty to pick them out and design them herself if necessary, and he no longer required her to dress in the style of the half-naked attire she had worn to Rossi’s automobile. To-morrow she would stay at home and organize the garments in her closet and the undergarments in her chest of drawers, and she should leave at his disposal everything that resembled belts and petticoats, and that included all brassieres, like the one whose straps had to be cut to take them off, any long garments that covered her breasts, all blouses and long skirts that did not open at the front, and any tight skirts that could not be easily lifted.
She will go back to sewing other styles of bras, blouses and dresses. Should she wear nothing under her shirt or sweater when she goes to the tailor? Yes, she should wear nothing underneath, and if anyone notices, she can explain it in any way she likes, or not at all, as she likes, it’s her problem, just her problem.
He had other commands for her, but he preferred to speak of them in a few days, and hoped that she would be dressed in proper attire before listening, and that in the little drawer of the table she would find all she needed for her expenses. After he had finished this speech, she remained motionless, sitting on her knees, and murmured, “I love you.”
He added some wood to the fireplace and lit the bedside pink opal table lamp, then he instructed O to get into bed and wait for him; he was going to share her bed tonight. When he returned, O reached up to turn off the light; she used her left hand, so the last thing she saw before darkness engulfed the room was the ghostly glow of the iron ring on her finger. She lay on her side as her lover tenderly called her name while taking the lower end of her abdomen in his hand and pulling her into his embrace.
René had gone out early the next morning, saying he wouldn’t be back until the evening to take her to the restaurant.O had just eaten lunch alone in the green dining room, still in her bathrobe, when the phone rang. The phone was planted under the bedside lamp in the bedroom, and O was sitting on the floor to answer it. It was René, and he wanted to know if the cleaning woman had gone. She had left, after serving lunch, and would not come back until tomorrow morning.
“Have you started organizing your clothes?” René asked.
“I’ve just started,” she replied, “I got up late, and it’s noon after I freshened up.”
“Are you dressed?”
“No, I’m only in my pajamas and bathrobe.”
“Put the phone down for now and take off your pajamas and bathrobe.”
O obediently did as he said. While this was going on, the phone suddenly slid off the bed, she was taken aback and put the phone down on the white carpet, she thought the phone had hung up, but it had not been hung up.
“Are you completely naked?” René continued to ask.
“Yes.” She said, “Where are you calling from?”
Ignoring her question, he continued, “Are you still wearing your ring?”
She’s wearing her ring.
He instructed her to stay just as she was now until he got home, just like that, naked, with the box of clothes ready to be thrown away, and then hung up the phone.
It was after one o’clock, and the weather was clear and pleasant, and a small patch of sunlight spilled over the carpet and shone a light green color like fresh lemon rind on the white nightgown and thick cotton bathing suit that O had just removed from her body and slid to the floor, and which she picked up and took to the washroom to hang in the closet.
Suddenly she saw her own image in the mirror. It was a mirror embedded in a door, and there was another mirror on the wall and another on the other door, forming a large three-way mirror: she wore only a pair of green leather slippers of the same color as her bathrobe only a little darker than her slippers at Rosie’s – and wore that ring; she no longer wore a collar or leather bracelet.
She was alone, she was her only audience, and yet she had never imagined that she would be in a state of mind so utterly terrified of being alone as she was at this very moment; she had become an even more downright slave, and willingly so.
As she bent over to open the drawer, she saw her breasts fluttering gently. It took her almost two chimes to pick out the clothes she had to box up separately and put them on the bed. There wasn’t much to choose from in the way of petticoats and she piled them in a small heap at the foot of the bed. Same with the bras, none of them, as they all had side hooks in the back, and she thought she could make them open in the front, right under her cleavage. The girdle and garters needn’t be kept either, but she couldn’t decide whether or not to keep the pink brocade undergarment, trimmed with black lace, which so closely resembled the corset she’d worn at Rossi’s that she left it alone on the dresser, ready for René to decide. It was also up to him to decide about the sweaters, which were sheathed and tight-necked and could not be opened from the front, but could be pushed up from the waist to expose the breasts. All the petticoats were placed on that little pile.
In the chest of drawers there was a bustle of black silk petticoats with a very pretty crinkled edge, designed to be lined under a too-thin black woolen skirt to make it look less sheer, and she needed to get on to some bustle petticoats, the short, light-colored ones.
She realized that she would also have to give up the sheaths and those one-button down skirts and redo the petticoats that opened from the front like the dresses. Alterations to undergarments and dresses were easier to explain, but what could she say to her dressmaker about alterations to petticoats? She should probably say that she wasn’t afraid of the cold and was therefore willing to have her dresses open in the front, but in reality she was quite sensitive to cold air. It suddenly occurred to her that how could she stand the cold of winter when she was so thinly dressed?
She had finally finished packing and all that was left in the closet was the shirt with the buttons down the front, the black folded skirt, and then there were the tunics and the suit that she had worn when she had come home from Rosie’s. Then she went to prepare the tea, she turned on the tea stove in the kitchen, the cleaning woman had forgotten to fill the basket of firewood, O knew that her lover liked to see himself sitting by the fireplace in the sitting room when he arrived home in the evening, she filled the basket full of firewood from the woodpile in the hallway closet, lifted it up to the fireplace in the sitting room, and lit the fire. She sat curled up in a large easy chair, waiting for him to come home, the tea tray aside, and unlike before, she followed his orders: she waited for him completely naked.
The first trouble O got into was at her place of work, which is perhaps too much to say, but more precisely the amazement of her coworkers; O worked in the fashion department of a photography company, taking pictures of people in the studio, where models, chosen by the hands of the designers, often posed for hours with some of the most beautiful and sexy girls.
They were all surprised that O had gone on vacation and did not return to work until late fall, the busiest time of the year in the fashion industry, as new samples were about to be introduced. But this is nothing, the most surprising thing is that she has changed a lot, at first glance, it is difficult to say exactly where she has changed, but they can feel the change, and the more they observe her, the more they are convinced that they are not wrong: she stood straighter than before, walking posture is also more upright, her eyes are more clear, but the most conspicuous is the rest of her beautiful posture, and everywhere revealing the elegance and sophistication. elegance and refinement of manner.
She had always dressed conservatively, always in the more masculine attire favored by the girls in her line of work. Since those girls – the people she worked with – were always concerned with clothing, both by habit and by personality, they soon noticed subtle changes that were not visible to the casual observer: the outline of her breasts was vaguely outlined when she wore her close-fitting sweaters! –René finally agreed to keep the sweaters – the hem of her folded skirt swung out too much when she turned around, and she always wore them as if they were a uniform.
“Too much of a little girlie girl.” A model said to her one day. She was a girl with lots of hair and green eyes, with Slavic high cheekbones and olive skin, “And you shouldn’t wear stockings,” she added, “they’ll ruin your legs.”
This comment was elicited by O herself, who was walking past her with one side out of her mind and one side in a hurry, and taking a seat in a large easy-chair diagonally opposite to her, lifting up her skirt as she sat down, and the taller girl caught a glimpse of her thighs above her stockings, which were naked, and which were rolled up only to the level of her knees.
O noticed her smile, which was so sly that she couldn’t help but wonder what the girl was thinking, or perhaps what she understood. She straightened her stockings, pulling them upwards in order to flatten them and fasten them, they weren’t the usual kind of stockings fastened by a garter belt, so they weren’t easy to fasten.
O replied to Jaclyn as she tied her socks, “That’s practical.”
“Useful for what?” Jaclyn wanted to know.
“I don’t like garters.” O replied.
But Jacqueline wasn’t listening to her, instead she couldn’t stop staring at the iron ring. Unlike all the likenesses she had ever taken before, perhaps because she had never seen such a model, in short, she had never before created such a wealth of meaning and emotion from a face and a body. In fact, O’s entire goal was simply to make the silks, furs, and laces appear more beautiful through the beauty that flashed through the girl’s naughty image in a single moment, whether it was a shirt of the simplest style or a white ermine of unparalleled splendor.
Jaclyn has short, thick blonde hair that is slightly curly. She always tilted her head slightly to her left shoulder when she wore mink, hiding her face in the collar of her upturned coat. Once O caught her in this expression just right, and she smiled softly, her hair swaying gently in the breeze, her smooth, hard cheekbones next to the gray sable, a soft gray like ashes that had just fallen from a burning log.
Her vermilion lips were slightly parted, her eyes half-open, half-closed, and amidst the dim liquid sheen she looked like a girl indulging in a state of utter bliss; she was pale, a little too pale, and O had washed this picture with very little contrast.
She had also taken another masterpiece of Jacqueline’s, which was even more ravishing: it was a back-lit picture, which clearly outlined her bare shoulders, the shape of her elegant head and face, which was covered with a black mesh veil, with two feathered ornaments floating above her head like a cloud of misty smoke, and she wore a wide, thick brocaded gown of a vivid red color, which made her look like a medieval bride, which trailed down to her wrists and shimmered at the hips, and was tightly girded at the waist, with a circle of breast supports outlining her bust. A medieval bride, the robe trailing down to her ankles, shimmering at her hips, tightly girded at the waist, a ring of breast braces outlining her bust.
The costume, which the designer called a holiday gown, had never been worn before, and the heels were made of bright red velvet, and when Jacqueline appeared before O in this gown and heels and the veil, which could be imagined as a mask, O was always remodeling the model in his own imagination, perfecting her image: a little here, a little there — a little tighter at the waist, a little higher at the breasts — it was just like Rosie’s costume, the same smooth, thick, straight, uncluttered silk that Jenny had worn — the same smooth, thick, straight, unctuous silk. –A little tighter at the waist, a little higher at the breasts-it was almost like Rosie’s costume, like the one worn by Jenny, the same smooth, heavy, straight silk, so that it could be lifted up in a single movement, on command, in any case. In a single movement… who wouldn’t say so?
It was in that exact way that Jacklyn lifted her skirt when she stepped down from the camera table, on which she performed for fifteen minutes, with the same rustling, the same sound of dry leaves breaking. Does no one wear these robes anymore?
But they wore, Jacqueline’s neck also wear a pair of gold collar, wrist also wear gold bracelets. o can not help but think: wearing a leather collar and leather bracelets, she will look more beautiful.
Then O did something she’d never done before: she followed Jacqueline into the large dressing room adjacent to the studio, where the models were dressed and made up and their clothes and supplies were stored, and O stood there, leaning against the doorframe, her eyes resting on Jacqueline’s body in the dresser mirror, where she was sitting, having not yet had time to take off her gown. The mirror was enormous – taking up an entire back wall, the dresser was just a black glass panel – so O could see Jacklyn and herself in the mirror, as well as the female costumer, who was packing up her feathered accessories and veil.
Jacqueline took off the necklace herself, and she raised her bare arms, a little sweaty underneath, and her internal hairs were shaved (why? O wondered what a pity it would be to shave them off, she was so perfect). o could smell the very stimulating, very elegant, sort of field-smell aroma, and she speculated about what kind of perfume Jacqueline should wear – what kind of perfume they would make her wear. -what kind of perfume they would let her wear. At that moment Jacqueline took off her bracelet and placed it on the glass plate with a memorable clang that sounded like the rattle of chains. Her hair was so beautiful that her complexion was slightly darker than the color of her hair, the color of fine sand left behind by receding waves. In photographs, the red velvet will wash out black.
It was at this point that Jaclyn lifted those thick lashes that were rarely made up, and in the mirror, O’s eyes met her gaze, and she looked straight at her, unable to take her eyes off of that. Her face flushed slightly, but that was all.
“I’m sorry,” Jaclyn said, “I have to undress.”
“Sorry,” O mumbled, closing the door.
The next day, she brought home the samples she had taken the previous day, and she couldn’t figure out for herself whether she wanted to show them to her lover, or whether she didn’t want to show them to him. That day, he had planned to take her out to dinner. While putting on her make-up, she placed the pictures on the dressing table, admiring and gently stroking with her fingers the eyebrows on the pictures, which were smiling. But then, when she heard the sound of the door unlocking, she put the photos in the drawer again.
For a whole fortnight O had been in a state of complete readiness for her to be used, but still she could not manage to become accustomed to it. Until one evening, when she came home from the studio, she found that her lover had left a note which said that she should prepare for her to have dinner with him and a friend of his at eight o’clock that evening, and that she would be picked up by a car, and that the driver would come upstairs and call at the door. The note was accompanied by a note requesting her to wear the leather jacket, which had to be all black (emphasis under “all”), and that she should put on makeup and perfume as she had done at Rossi.
It was six o’clock, mid-December, and quite cold – a black outfit for a dinner party meant black stockings, black gloves, a scalloped folded skirt, a thick sweater with shiny stars or her short black silk jacket. She decided to wear the black silk jacket: it was lined with large stitches, which made it very flattering; the buttons went from the neck to the waist, like the tight tops men loved to wear in the sixteenth century; it outlined her breasts perfectly, because the bra was embedded in the dress; it was hemmed with the same silk thread, and the hemline was split at the hips. The only ornament was a row of large shiny gold hooks like those that adorned children’s snow boots, and they always clanged whenever she fastened or opened those wide, flat loops.
O picked out the clothes she was going to wear and placed them on the bed, at the foot of which were her black high-heeled leather shoes. Perceiving that she was meticulously applying her own make-up and perfume while she was alone and free in her own washroom, O had a strange feeling that she was doing this after her bath, just as she had often done in Rossi, but her own make-up was different from that which she had used in Rossi. In a dresser drawer she found some rouge, and at first she thought she had smeared it on too heavily, trying to wash some of it off with alcohol – it was very difficult to get off – and then started again: she painted her nipples with the pink color of peonies.
She tried to apply the hair-covered labia as well, but was unsuccessful, and at least she didn’t leave a rouge mark there. Finally, among those lipsticks in the drawer, she found the one that didn’t lose its color when kissing, which she didn’t really like because they were too dry and didn’t wash off easily. Let’s just use this one, it’s not bad.
She combed her hair, washed her face once more, and finally sprinkled on the perfume, a spray perfume, given to her by René, whose name she still could not pronounce. The perfume gave off an odor of dry wood and marshy field stuff, an odor that was a little irritating and a little wild. The perfume that had been sprinkled on her skin quickly disappeared, and the perfume that had been sprinkled on her armpit hair and pubic area flowed down, leaving little dots.
At Rosie, O learned how to consume her time: she perfumed herself three times, each time waiting for the new spritz to dry then spritzing again. She put on her stockings, then her heels, then her petticoat and skirt, then her jacket. She put on her gloves and picked up her purse, which contained her powder case, lipstick, comb, keys and ten francs. With her gloved hand she took the leather coat from the closet and glanced at the clock above her bed: a quarter to eight. She sat slumped on the edge of the bed, gazing at the alarm clock and waiting motionless for the doorbell. At last she heard it ring and stood up, ready to leave, and just before she turned out the light, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, elegant and supple.
The car stopped in front of a small Italian restaurant, and when she pushed open the door of the restaurant, the first person who met her eyes was none other than René, who was seated next to the bar, and who smiled warmly at her, took her hand, and then turned to a gray-haired man with the physique of an athlete, who introduced O to Mr. Stephen, in English.
They asked O to take a seat on a stool between them and she was about to sit down when René half whispered to her to be careful not to mess up her dress. He helped her to move the hem of her dress from under her legs and helped her to take her place on the edge of the stool, she felt the cool leather press straight against her skin and the metal edge of the ring pressed against her groin, making it so that she could only sit halfway down at first, and she feared that once she was fully seated she would have to bring her legs together. The skirt embraced her side as she rested her right heel on the bench support, her left toe next to the floor.
The Englishman bowed without a word and then stared at her intently. She realized that he was surveying her knees, her hands, and finally her lips. His demeanor was so calm, so meticulous, and so confident, that the scrutiny made O feel that she was being weighed and tested like a tool, and she knew deep down that she was just such a tool.
As if compelled by his gaze, she took off her gloves: she knew that once she showed her hands, he would speak – for she had unusual hands, hands that were more like a boy’s than a girl’s, and on the middle finger of her left hand she wore the iron ring with three golden spirals engraved on it. But she was wrong; he said nothing, but smiled slightly, which meant that he had already seen the ring.
René asked for a martini, and Mr. Stephen asked for a whiskey. He sipped his whisky, waited for René to finish his second martini and O to finish the grape juice René had ordered for her, and then said that, assuming O had no objections, they could go downstairs to dinner, where the single rooms were smaller and less noisy than the openings on this level of the hotel. This floor was actually a large bar.
“Of course,” O said this, already picking up the purse and gloves that were sitting on the bar.
Mr. Stephen helped her to stand up and held out his right hand to her, and she put her hand in his. He finally spoke directly to her, saying: “She has a pair of hands specially made for wearing “iron”, and this “iron” seems to match her particularly well. Since he said this in English, the meaning of the words was a bit ambiguous, and it was not clear whether he was referring to the metal itself or to the chain.
The downstairs private room, in shades of white, is simply furnished but refreshingly pleasant, with only four tables, one of which has customers who have already finished their meals and are ready to leave. The walls of the room are decorated with fresco-style cooking techniques and a tourist map of Italy, in a soft color palette reminiscent of ice cream, vanilla ice cream, plumpy ice cream, and pistachio ice cream. The color palette reminded O that when she called for ice cream for dessert after dinner, it had to be the kind with lots of almonds and cream on top. She felt relaxed and happy at the moment, with René’s knee next to hers under the table, and she knew in her heart that whatever he said, he said only to her: he kept his eyes on her lips.
They agreed that she ordered ice cream, but didn’t let her order coffee. Mr. Stephen invited O. and René to his house for coffee. They ate very little, and O realized that they were both very careful not to overindulge in alcohol, and basically didn’t let her drink much: the three of them only drank half a liter of Chianti. In addition, they ate very quickly: it was not even nine o’clock when they finished.