It was almost a month before the whip marks on O’s body disappeared completely. Where the skin had been broken it left a fine white mark, like one of those old bruises, and whenever and wherever she forgot where they had come from, René’s and Mr. Stephen’s attitudes reminded her of them by means of them.
René, of course, had the key to O’s house in his possession, and he had not thought of giving one to Mr. Stephen, perhaps because to this day Mr. Stephen had not expressed any desire to visit O’s house. But the fact that he had sent her home that night had made René suddenly realize that the door could only be opened by him and O. Mr. Stephen might think that René had deliberately set up an obstacle, a barrier, or a restriction for him.
It would have been absurd, however, if he had, on the one hand, given O to him, and, on the other, had not at the same time given him the right to come and go as he pleased in and out of O’s house whenever he wished. So he fitted out another key and gave it to Mr. Stephen, and did not tell O until after Mr. Stephen had received it; and she could not conceive of protesting against it at all, not even in her dreams.
And she soon found that she felt an uncanny calmness within her as she waited for Mr. Stephen’s arrival, and she waited for a long time, guessing whether he would make a surprise midnight visit; and also whether he would take advantage of the situation when René was not at home; and whether he would come alone; and also whether he would come at all, and she did not dare to tell René of these thoughts.
One morning, when the cleaning-woman happened not to be here, O got up earlier than usual, and at ten o’clock she was properly dressed. Just as she was about to go out, she suddenly heard the sound of a key in the lock, and she darted to the door, calling René’s name on her lips (for on several occasions René had indeed arrived at this hour in this manner, and she had not thought at all of any one but him). It was Mr. Stephen, he said to her, smiling:
“Yeah, why don’t we call on René?”
But René was held up by a business appointment at the office and wouldn’t be able to come until an hour later.
O’s heart was beating wildly (she wondered why that was) as she watched Mr. Stephen hang up his coat, he sat her down on the bed, cupped her face in his hands, put a little pressure on it forcing her lips to part slightly and then kissed her. She was almost breathless from the kiss and would have fallen over if he hadn’t grabbed her with his hands. He grabbed her and made her straighten up.
She couldn’t understand why her throat was clogged with a feeling of anxiety and extreme pain, because in the end, she had experienced everything Mr. Stephen was capable of doing to her, so what was there to be afraid of?
He instructed her to take off all her clothes and she began to obediently undress as he watched her without saying a word.
Hadn’t she become quite accustomed to exposing her nakedness to his gaze? It was as if she had become accustomed to his silence, to waiting for him to make a decision as to which pleasure he would take from her next.
If she allowed herself to go back in her imagination to a previous time and place, to the fact that in this room she hadn’t exposed herself to anyone except in René’s presence, she would have to admit that she had been deceiving herself, that the basic cause of her anxiety was the same as it had always been: her own self-consciousness.
The only difference was that at this moment her self-consciousness appeared to be extraordinarily clear, and this was because this time she was neither in some special place where she had no choice but to obey, nor at night, when she could let herself into a dream, or into a secret place connected with the daytime, as in the case of a secret place in the Castle of Rossi, which was already connected with her life and with René. The same was true of the place. The brightness of the May day made her secret public: henceforth the reality of the night and the reality of the day would be one, and henceforth O thought: the moment had come at last.
There was no doubt that this was the source of that strange feeling of security mixed with terror. She felt deeply that this was the sort of thing that made her submit to it completely. From now on there would be no more intervals, no more endings, no more pardons.
As he was the very one she had long waited for and expected, he had become her master as soon as he appeared.
Mr. Stephen was a far more demanding and opinionated master than René, and no matter how much O loved René, and how much he loved her, there was always a certain equality between them (perhaps only in age) which eliminated her feeling of tame obedience to him, and prevented her from realizing her subordination to him.
Whenever he needed her, it was precisely the same time that she needed him, and the mere fact that he had asked for her was enough in her. But it seemed to be due to the emotional sense of him that ejaculated her, the sense of his adoration and respect for Mr. Stephen in all things pertaining to him, that she obeyed Mr. Stephen’s commands without hesitation, and was grateful to him for having given them.
Whether he spoke to her in French or English, and whether he addressed her by the familiar “you” or the less personal “you,” she always called him “Mr. Stephen” and never by any other name, like a stranger or a servant. “and never called him anything else, as if he were a stranger or a servant. She said to herself, if she dared to be so bold as to suggest it, that it would be more appropriate to use the word “master”, whereas it would be better for him to use the word “slave” when referring to her.
She admonished herself again that it was all very well, for René would be delighted to see her become Monsieur Stephen’s slave.
By this time she had folded her clothes neatly at the foot of the bed, and had resumed putting on her high heels, and then she faced Mr. Stephen and lowered her eyes as she waited. Mr. Stephen was standing against the window, the bright sunlight pouring in through the fine cotton curtains with their dotted patterns, gently caressing her hips and thighs.
She had never deliberately sought any particular effect in the way she dressed herself, but she suddenly realized that she should have perfumed herself more, and she realized that she had forgotten to paint her areolas, and it was fortunate that she was wearing high heels, for the kodans on her toenails had begun to flake, and it was then that she suddenly woke up to what she was waiting for in this deep silence, in this bright sunlight.
She waited for Mr. Stephen to give her a sign, or perhaps for him to order her to kneel before him, to unbutton him, to caress him, but it did not happen, for it was only her imagination, and she felt her face heat up at once. She felt herself blushing while thinking: how stupid she should look blushing at this moment! A whore would still be shy and bashful.
It was at this point that Mr. Stephen motioned for O. to sit down at her dresser; he had something to say to her. It was not exactly a dressing-table, but merely a rather low shelf embedded in the wall, and filled with an assortment of face-brushes, eyebrow-brushes, and small bottles. In the hinged mirror, which dated from the time of the Restoration of Charles II, O could see her whole figure sitting in the chair.
Mr. Stephen paced behind her as she spoke, and again and again his figure was reflected in the mirror, behind O’s shadow, but his shadow looked as if it were at a great distance, for the mercury of the mirror had become somewhat mottled and darkened.
O spread her hands apart and her knees were spread apart. To make it easier to answer Mr. Stephen’s questions, she felt an urge to grab the swaying figure and make him stop. Mr. Stephen spoke in a kind of terse English, asking one question after another, the last of which O never dreamed he would ask, though she was mentally prepared for any kind of question that might be asked.
The conversation had scarcely begun when he suddenly stopped, and came over and swung O a little deeper and further back in that chair, so that she rested her left leg on the arm of the chair, and curled up the other slightly.O was bathed in bright light, and assumed an immaculately open position in the sight of herself and Mr. Stephen, as if an invisible lover had just departed from her, and left her in that slightly open midst of the state.
Mr. Stephen resumed his subject, and kept on asking questions in a tone of judge-like decisiveness and confessor-like tact; O did not look at him as he spoke, but only answered his questions one by one, with her head bowed. Had she belonged to any other person than René and himself since her return from Rossi? No. Had she ever thought of belonging to any one she had met? No. Had she ever caressed herself at night when she was alone? No. Has she ever caressed or been caressed by any of her girlfriends? No. (This “no” is answered with some hesitation.) Did she ever desire any of her girlfriends? Yes, there was a Jacqueline, but in terms of “friends.”
The term seems excessive. Acquaintance might be more appropriate, as would “roommate”, which was the preferred form of address for educated schoolgirls in high boarding schools.
Next, Mr. Stephen asked her if she had any photographs of Jacqueline, and he helped her to her feet and told her to go and get those out. It was at this moment that René rushed into the sitting-room, breathless from his hasty climb up four flights of stairs.
He saw that O was standing in front of a large table that was covered with pictures of Jacqueline, black and white like pools of water at night, and that Mr. Stephen, half seated at the table, was looking carefully at the pictures that O was handing to him one after the other, and then placing them back on the table one by one.
He held the lower part of O in one hand, and when René came in, Mr. Stephen greeted him, but never let go of her, and she felt that his fingers were probing deeper into her. Since René’s arrival, he had stopped speaking to her and turned to René instead, and she thought she knew why: because of René’s presence, the agreement between Mr. Stephen and René regarding her had been revived. But because of this, she was set aside, for she was only the introduction or object of the agreement, and they did not have to question her any more, nor did she have to answer questions. After that, decisions about what she should do, or even what she should be, were none of her business.
It was nearly noon, and the sun was shining directly on the table, curling the edges of the photographs.O wanted to move the photographs out of the direct sunlight and spread them out before she ruined them, but her fingers trembled because by now Mr. Stephen’s fingers were moving inside her so fast she couldn’t help moaning, and she eventually wasn’t able to stifle her moans.
Then Mr. Stephen pushed her roughly down among the photographs on the table and left her hanging there with her legs spread out like that, and he walked away, her feet not touching the floor, and one of her heels slipping off her foot and falling noiselessly onto the white carpet. Her face was bathed in dazzling sunlight and she closed her eyes.
Then, after another long time, she remembered hearing only a few words of Mr. Stephen and René’s conversation during this time, and by this time she was no longer shocked by the type of conversation she had heard, as if it were something that did not concern her, and as if it were something she had already experienced in the past.
It was true, in fact, that she had already been in a similar situation, and that they had been discussing matters relating to her in this way ever since René had first brought her to M. Stephen’s, but at the time of that first meeting M. Stephen had not yet known her, and therefore it was René who had been doing most of the talking. From that meeting to the present day Mr. Stephen had managed to make her yield to all his whims, had reshaped her to his own taste, had demanded and received from her everything that was most appalling, and had made these actions as commonplace as if they had been a family affair.
She couldn’t give him anything more than what he’d already gotten. At least that’s what she thought.
Mr. Stephen was talking about something or other, and he had always been rather silent in her presence. He and René were again talking about what they had often talked about when they were together, and that was the subject of her: a discussion of how to make the most of her, of how to share what they had learned in the course of their respective special uses of her. Mr. Stephen readily admitted that O. tended to look more attractive when her body was covered with whip marks, and that it did not matter exactly what kind of whips they were, so long as they made it impossible for her to conceal them at first sight, and revealed everything about her at once in a clear and unmistakable way.
It was one thing to understand this, another to see evidence of its realization, and another to see this evidence constantly re-presented. Mr. Stephen said that René was perfectly right in wishing her to be whipped, and that they had decided that they need not think too much about the pleasure that could be derived from her cries and tears, but that she should be whipped from time to time in accordance with the need of always being able to see the marks of the whip on her body.
O still lay motionless, her belly still burning within her, and listening to their conversation, she was suddenly struck with the sensation as if Mr. Stephen had become her double, and was speaking for her, as if he had somehow entered her body, and was thus able to feel her anxiety, pain, and shame, and at the same time a secret pride and a biting pleasure, especially when she was alone in the midst of a crowd of strangers.
Among the passers-by on the roads, on the buses, in the studios with the models and the technicians, she said to herself that for all those who were now with her, if they had met with some sudden change and had had to lie down on the ground, had had to call for a doctor, even when they had been unconscious or had inadvertently left their bodies exposed, they would be able to keep their privacy; but she could not: her secret could not be kept in silence, nor could she keep it by herself. keep their privacy; but she could not: her secret could not be kept by silence, nor by herself alone.
It was simply impossible for her to indulge herself a little on the spur of the moment, for the truth would immediately be revealed, which was the real implication of those questions Mr. Stephen had asked at the outset. She was no longer able to go to many of the general activities of the lower classes, such as playing tennis or swimming.
Such prohibitions gave her comfort, a material comfort, in the same way that the iron bars of the convent had materially prevented the girls in monastic life from coming into contact with each other, and from escaping. For the same reason, how could she not risk having to explain the truth, in whole or in part, to Jacqueline, if she did not want to risk her contempt?
The sun had moved away and no longer shone on her face. She was still lying on top of those photographs, her shoulders sticking to their shiny surfaces. At that moment she felt her knees scarf up to the hard edge of Mr. Stephen’s coat, and she had returned to her side, and he and René took her one by one hand to help her to her feet. René picked up for her the high heeled shoe that had fallen to the floor, and it was time for her to get dressed.
Later they dined together at the Hôtel de St. Cloud on the banks of the Seine, and when Mr. Stephen was alone with her he began to question her further. The table at the hotel was covered with a white tablecloth and rested on a balcony with an awning, surrounded by a hedge of buffalo-wax, beneath which was a bed planted with crimson peonies, which were in bud.
Before Mr. Stephen could make any hints to her, O had obediently lifted her skirt before settling in the iron chair. It took a long time before her bare thighs warmed the cool iron chair surface.
Sitting at the dining room table, you could hear the river lapping against the small boat tethered to the wooden trestle at the other end of the platform.
Mr. Stephen sat down opposite her, and O spoke every word very slowly, taking care that everything that was said should exactly correspond to the actual situation. Mr. Stephen wanted to know why she liked Jacqueline, oh! It was too simple:
That’s because in O’s eyes, she’s too pretty, like a big doll the poor kids get for Christmas, and they’ll cherish her too much to even scarf her.
The reason why she had not as yet shown her affection for her, or tried to seduce her, was simply because she did not indeed wish to do so. Until then, her lowered gaze had been on the peony bed, and when she spoke, she raised her eyes to find Mr. Stephen staring intently at her lips. Was he really listening to her? Perhaps he was merely listening without hearing, merely watching the opening and closing of her lips?
Suddenly she stopped speaking, and at that moment Mr. Stephen’s eyes rose just in time to towel with hers. This time the meaning she could read in it could not have been clearer; it was quite evident that he, too, had seen that she had seen through him, and now it was his turn to grow pale. If he did love her, could he still forgive her for having seen through his true feelings?
She could neither avert her gaze, nor smile, nor speak. Even if it was a matter of her life or death, she could not make any movement, could not run away, her legs would never obey her. Perhaps he didn’t want anything from her other than to make her submit to his own desires, except that he following the fact?Since the day René had given her to him, he had invited her more and more frequently, leaving her behind, sometimes simply to keep her at his side, not asking her to do anything.
He sat motionless and silent across from her, while some businessmen at the neighboring table were talking over coffee that was so black and fragrant that the scent drifted over to their table. Two well-dressed, haughty Americans ate their half-meals and lit cigarettes, and the gravel “creaked” at the feet of the waiter.
The ground rattled one of them as he came over to fill Mr. Stephen’s glass, which was three-quarters empty; but was it not vain to waste good wine on this statue, this sleepwalker? The waiter did not take the trouble to notice this.
O felt, to her delight, the eager gaze that fired from his gray eyes move from her eyes to her breasts, her arms, and then back again above her eyes, and she saw a small smile finally appear on his lips, the kind of smile that she dared not return with a smile. At that moment, she suddenly heard a monotone word, which was unbelievable to her, and she was so excited that she couldn’t even breathe.
“O…” said Mr. Stephen.
“Yes.” O replied almost passing out.
“O, what I have to say to you now has been discussed with René, and the two of us have agreed on it. But I…” his words broke off.
O had been unable to say exactly what force had made her close her eyes, because of the sudden chill she felt, not because he too was having trouble catching his breath. He was silent for a long time.
At that moment the waiter came up to replace the plates and brought O a menu and asked her to order her after-dinner dessert, which O handed to Mr. Stephen.
“One egg cream? Okay.”
“One eggnog, twenty minute wait.”
“Okay, just wait twenty minutes.”
The waiter walked away.
“My words will take more than twenty minutes.” Mr. Stephen said.
Then he began to speak in a firm tone, and the words he uttered quickly showed O that at least one thing was certain, that even if he had fallen in love with her, nothing between them would change, unless the peculiarly respectful manner in which he was now treating O was to be seen as a change on his part, and unless the bluntness of his request to her was replaced by a passionate phrase “I would be very happy if I could…” as a change. Even in this tone of voice, it was still a command in O’s mind, and she would never have imagined that she would disobey it, and when she made this clear to Mr. Stephen, he expressed his full approval.
“I still insist that you oblige me beforehand.” He said.
“I’ll do anything you like.” O replied.
At the moment, the echo of the sentence she was saying echoed in her memory, “I will do anything you like.” She had said the same thing to René, the only difference being that she had said it to René with the familiar word “you.”
She mumbled in a low tone almost like a whisper, “René…”
Mr. Stephen heard it.
“René knows what I want you to do, now listen to me.”
He spoke in English, in a tone so low and carefully moderated as to make it utterly impossible for those at the neighboring table to hear what he was saying, and whenever the waiters passed their table he was silent until they moved away, when he resumed his interrupted speech.
The words he was saying sounded very peculiar, and seemed out of harmony with the atmosphere of this calm public place. What was even more peculiar, however, was the fact that he was able to utter them, and that O was able to listen to them without moving.
His words began with her visit to his house the previous night, when he had given her an order that she had refused to obey. He reminded her that although he had slapped her on that occasion, he had not repeated that order again since that night. So was she now able to agree to do what she had refused to do that time?O realized that at the moment it was not enough for her to simply express her acceptance in her mind; he had to hear her say it herself, in her own words, and admit that whenever he asked her to caress herself she would do it.
And so she said. In her visions, she saw again that yellow and gray living room, René’s departing figure, the revulsion within her that first night, and the fire that burned between her parted legs as she lay naked on the carpet. Tonight, in this same living room… But it didn’t turn out that way, and Mr. Stephen didn’t get into that specifically, but continued where he left off.
He pointed out to her that she had never yet been possessed by René (or any other person) in his presence, as she had been possessed by him in René’s presence (as she had been possessed by all the masters in Rossi). But from this she should not conclude that René alone was fond of humiliating her in this way.
The way to do that was to give her to a man who didn’t love her but only knew how to hunt pleasure from her, and in front of a man who really loved her. (He had spoken so long and so cruelly that she would have to part her legs, her buttocks, and her lips in the near future to his friends, friends who had lusted after her after seeing her, that O began to suspect that the target of this cruel speech was not only her, but also himself. And the only thing she could remember from that great speech was that last sentence in the presence of a man who truly loved her. With a confession like that, what else did she need?) And, sometime in the summer, he was going to bring her back to Rosie.
Could it be that the imprisonment, first by René and then by him, was still an unexpected shock to her? The two of them were the only men in her heart, both when they were together and when they came alone.
Whenever Mr. Stephen entertained guests at his Porty Road residence, O never got an invitation. She never lunched at his residence. Nor did René ever introduce her to any of his friends, except Mr. Stephen himself.
It is most probable that René will continue to regard her as a thing of the past, for Mr. Stephen will retain the privilege of doing with her whatever he pleases. But she should not be led to think that, as she belonged to Mr. Stephen, she was entitled to more legitimate protection; the reverse would be the case.
(What saddens O the most is that she has realized that Mr. Stephen will treat her in exactly the same way as René, no differently.)
On her left hand she wore a ring made of iron and gold She should have remembered that they had chosen for her a ring so tight that it had to be put on her finger with great effort, in order that she might never be able to take it off That ring was a sign that she had been reduced to slavery, and it showed, also, that she had become part of the public property.
It was purely by chance that she hadn’t met any members of the Rosie’s since the previous fall, or people who would have noticed she was wearing the Iron, or that they had noticed it.
Mr. Stephen had mentioned the word “iron” in the plural, just as he had told her the last time he had said that “iron” looked particularly good on her. She had thought at first that the expression was a pun, but in fact it was not a pun; it had become a form of identification, a catchphrase. Mr. Stephen did not need to ask the second question, which was to whom the “iron” she wore belonged. If he were to ask O this question at this very moment, how would she answer it, to which O was hesitant?
“René’s and yours.” She said this.
“No,” said Mr. Stephen, “it is mine. René would have you belong to me first.”
O fully recognizes this, why should she pretend not to? In the near future, but at any rate before her return to Rosie, she was to receive a most authoritative sign, which would not absolve her from her duties as a public slave, but would otherwise show that she was a slave belonging to a man, and that she was a slave belonging to Mr. Stephen.
The whip marks on her body that had been stamped on repeatedly would pale in comparison to this ultimate mark.
(But what kind of mark will it be? What is it made of? What was it made of, and how did it become the most authoritative mark of all?O was terrified and fascinated, and couldn’t wait to find out. She must know it all at once.
To all this she had to accept and agree, and to use the words “accept” and “agree” in their dubbing. Nothing could be imposed on her without her consent; she could reject it all, there was no power that could enslave her, her love and her self-enslavement. What power can prevent her from leaving?)
However, before she was given this mark, she had a period of reprieve. During this time the routine whippings administered to her by Mr. Stephen were suspended, and according to the principle agreed upon by René and himself, she was whipped according to the measure of the fresh marks that could always be seen on her body. The reason for this reprieve was based on the estimate that it would take some time for her to tame Jacqueline.
In shock, O looked up at Mr. Stephen, why? Why Jacklyn? Even if Jacklyn had interested Mr. Stephen, what did it have to do with O?
“For two reasons,” said Mr. Stephen, “the first, and the less important one, is that I want to see you kissing and fondling another woman.”
“But even if she had promised me,” cried O, involuntarily, “what makes you expect me to be willing to do such a thing to your face?”
“That doesn’t worry me at all,” said Mr. Stephen; “you can resort to deception if necessary, and, in short, I expect much more from you than that. The second reason I want you to seduce her is that you will be the bait that will draw her to Rosie.”
O set down the coffee cup in her hand, spilling the sticky mixture of coffee and sugar left at the bottom of the cup because her hands were shaking so badly. Like a soothsayer, she saw on the brown stains scattered on the tablecloth an unforgiving vision: the magnetically glowing eyes of Jacqueline gazing at the servant Bill; her buttocks, as noble and elegant as her breasts, a part O had hitherto had no opportunity of seeing, exposed under the red velvet gown rolled up high in the back; her delicate cheeks imprinted with tearstains; her lipsticked lips were crying out; and her straight hair, that short Dutch style combed along her forehead, looked like freshly cut straw No, it couldn’t be, it was never her, not Jacqueline!
“No, that’s never going to happen.” She said.
“Of course things aren’t what you think,” retorted Mr. Stephen; “how do you suppose girls are recruited to go to Rosyth? Once you’ve got her there, the rest is out of your hands, and anyway she can leave whenever she wants to. Now let’s go.”
He snapped to his feet, leaving the money to pay the bill on the table.O followed him to the car and got in.
Before he could reach B Street, he turned into a side street, stopped the car beside a narrow lane, and took her arm.
III. Anne Marie and the Iron Ring Mary and the Iron Ring
In order to find herself a suitable excuse, O believed, or was willing to believe, that Jaclyn belonged to the category of the extremely shy, an idea that had suddenly occurred to her in the morning the moment she was about to open her eyes.
Jacqueline had always surrounded herself with a particularly shy atmosphere, and whenever she dressed or undressed, she always kept the door of the dressing-room, with its four walls of mirrors, firmly shut, when in fact it was clearly intended to incite O.’s desire to make up her mind to push the door open. If the door had remained open, she might never have made up her mind to go in.
O’s decisions ultimately come from an authority outside of her, and she would never have taken her relationship with Jaclyn any further had it not been for that plan, which O was mesmerized by from the very beginning. For example, when Jacqueline took off her performance costume, slipped on her turtleneck cardigan, put on a pair of lime green necklaces the color of her eyes, and was helped by O to brush her hair, O found herself enthralled by the idea that, later that evening, Mr. Stephen would be given a detailed report on Jacqueline’s every move. Whether it was the way she allowed O to caress her small, delicate and parted breasts through that black sweater, or the way her eyelashes touched O’s cheek as she lowered her eyes, which were even more beautiful than her skin; whether it was the way she sighed or moaned, the way her body grew heavy in her embrace, the way she didn’t move at all, the way she showed an expression of anticipation, the way her lips parted slightly, the way her hair was spread back.
O was always careful to put his arm around her shoulders and lean her against the doorframe or the table, otherwise she would have slipped and fallen on the floor. Her eyes would open and close in silence, but once O let her go, she would immediately turn cold again, smile distantly, and say, “You got lipstick on my mouth,” wiping her mouth as she did so.
It was this expression of the estranged stranger that made O Le Kai report to Mr. Stephen all the subtleties she had observed. She did her best not to forget anything, to remember all the details of her gradually flushed cheeks, that faint scent of yoso leaves.
Jaclyn was largely unrefused and unguarded. When she had succumbed to those kisses up to the present time, she had only allowed O to kiss her, and had not returned the kisses always seeming to come out of nowhere, as if she had become someone else entirely in those ten banknotes, or in those five minutes. At other times, she had been both flirtatious and coy, evading O’s attacks again and again with incredible dexterity.
She managed never to meet her conqueror with any verbal gesture or even with a glance, to make her think that she had conquered her, or to make her think that it was a simple matter to take possession of her lips. The only signs of guidance, the only signs that allowed one to detect the current of agitation under her calm expression, the only signs that revealed her heart, were those fleeting and rather forced smiles that appeared on her triangular face like a cat’s smile, as fleeting, disturbing and wandering as a cat’s smile.
However, O soon found the two things that could induce such a smile. Jaclyn herself was oblivious to these two things. The first was her gift; the second was her ability to arouse desire in others, provided that the person who desired her was likely to be of use to her or to satisfy her vanity.What use could O be to her? Perhaps she only sees O as an exception, and she revels in his desire for her, taking pleasure in his explicit admiration for her on the one hand, and on the other hand, she may think that a woman’s desire is harmless and of no consequence.
In the midst of all this, O also realized that it would be better to give Jacqueline, who always seemed to be in need of money, one or two hundred francs rather than a pearl brooch or a designer headscarf with “I love you” printed in various languages. Every now and then, Jacqueline would change her mind and stop saying that she didn’t have time to come to O’s house for lunch or tea, and stop avoiding her caresses.
But on this point O was not yet entirely certain. She had merely suggested the conjecture to Mr. Stephen, and he was already reproaching her for progressing too slowly. It was at this time that René came, and on five or six occasions when René came to see O, it happened to towel to the presence of Jacqueline, and the three of them had been to Wilbur’s Bar together.
During these encounters, René had often gazed at Jacqueline with that mixture of interest, confidence, and arrogance, the kind of gaze he used in Rossi to gaze at girls who were completely at his disposal. His haughty gaze seemed to have no effect on Jacqueline at all, as if it were sliding over a piece of armor so solidly faced and smooth that Jacqueline did not even notice it at all.
O was disturbed by the odd contrast, thinking that René’s attitude, which had become quite natural and normal for her, was an offense to Jacklyn. Was she protecting Jacqueline herself? Perhaps simply because she wanted Jacklyn to belong to her? It was hard for her to answer that question because she hadn’t gotten her at least not until now. But if she finally succeeded at last, she had to admit it was thanks to René.
Three times in all, the three of them stayed at the bar until late. They had bought Jaclyn an overdose of whiskey her cheeks were red and bright and her eyes were glazed over he always drove her home first before dropping O off at Mr. Stephen’s.
Jacqueline lived in a dank apartment that had been settled by a large group of White Russians after the revolution, and they had never changed places between then and now. The hallway at the entrance to the apartment was painted with oaks, dust covered in the gaps between the stair rails, and the green carpet was old and worn in many places.
Every time René tried to get in the front door of the apartment he’d yet to step through, Jacqueline jumped out of the car as if she’d been suddenly burned by fire, screaming “not tonight” or “thank you very much,” and slamming the door with a thud.O thought to herself, “Actually, there is a fire chasing her. O said to herself, “Actually, there is a fire chasing after her, that’s true.
It’s remarkable that Jacqueline realizes this, even though she doesn’t have any concrete evidence to prove it, at least she realizes that she has to guard against René. She seemed completely unfazed by his panache (or maybe she wasn’t?). In her current state of unperturbation, the game between the two of them will continue, and René is a worthy opponent for her).
The only time that Jacqueline had allowed O to enter the front door of her house and to go upstairs to see her room, whereupon O had immediately understood why she had adamantly refused to allow René to enter her home. What would be the consequences for her privilege, for the legendary image she had created on the glossy pages of the most luxurious and fashionable first-class clothing magazines, if anyone other than a woman like O saw that this so radiant creature had emerged from such a filthy and dilapidated den on a daily basis?
Her bed was never made up, just barely drawn, and underneath it showed greasy and dirty sheets, due to the fact that Jacqueline always applied cold cream to her face before going to bed, but fell asleep before she could wipe them off. At some time in the past there had apparently been a curtain separating the room from the toilet, and all that remained of the triangularly folded curtain cord were two iron rings and a few rags.
Everything was faded: the carpet was faded, the wallpaper was faded, and the pink and gray flowers on it were snaking upward like crazy vegetables on a falsely painted white trellis. All this should be thrown out and redecorated: scrape off the wallpaper, throw out the carpet, sand the floor. But before you start all that, you have to scrub the grease from everywhere anyway.
This sludge left layers of stains on the porcelain surface of the bath tub, and should also have wiped up those cosmetics and bottles and jars and put them in order, cleaned out the powder case, wiped down the dresser, thrown away those dirty cottons, and opened the window. But forthright, fresh, clean and smelling of cologne and wildflowers, this out-of-the-blue Jacqueline, there was no one in the world who cared less about this filthy room of hers than she did. What she really cared about was her family, which alone could draw her close attention.