After seeing the ugly room, O describes it truthfully to René, and René makes a proposal for it, a proposal that will dramatically change both of their lives; René’s proposal is for Jacqueline to move in with O. Jacqueline finally accepts this proposal for no other reason than her family.
In fact, the use of the word “family” here is a serious mistake: it is a clan, or rather a tribe. The grandmother, the mother, the aunt, and the maid were four women between fifty and seventy years of age, noisy, heavily made-up, wrapped in onyx ornaments and black silk garments, rising at four o’clock in the morning to weep and lament in the dim red light of the iconostasis, and caught up all day in the smoke of paper cigarettes.
These four women were drowned in the clinking of teacups and the shrill yelling of curses, and the language they used was the very language that Jacqueline hated to give up half her life to forget that she would do as they told her, that just to listen to them, or even just to come and look at them, was like madness. Whenever Jacqueline saw her mother grab a lump of sugar and throw it into her mouth before she drank her tea, she would put down her own cup and go back to her dusty room, leaving the three of them alone, leaving her grandmother, her mother, and her mother’s sister, with their jet-black hair, their furrowed brows, and their wide-open, doe-like, disconcerted eyes, in the room which served as her mother’s bedroom as well as the living room, and the fourth room, which was her mother’s bedroom, and the living room. room, which served both as her mother’s bedroom and parlor, there was a fourth woman, the maid, who was of the same character as the three of them.
She slammed the door behind her as if she were running away, and they kept calling her name, “Shura, Shura, little dove”, exactly as in Tolstoy’s novel. Her real name wasn’t Jacqueline, it was her professional name, a name given to her in order to forget her real name. With that name, the small, gloomy, gentle woman stood in the sunshine of France, in a real world, where a man does not disappear after marrying you, like her father, whom she had never met, who disappeared into the vast wilderness of the Arctic, and did not come back until he was dead.
She looked very much like him, and she felt a mixture of anger and satisfaction about it. She had his hair and high cheekbones, his skin color and his slightly slanted eyes. The only thing she was grateful to her mother for was that she had given her such a blonde devil for a father, a devil made out of ice and snow instead of clay like the others.
She was indignant that her mother had forgotten her father so quickly, fornicated with someone else, and one fine day had given birth to a dark-skinned little girl, her half-sister, named Natalie, with a man they didn’t know. She was now fifteen and only visited them on vacations.
Her father never came, but he provided Nathalie with board and lodging at a university preparatory school not far from Paris, and sent her mother a little money every month. With this money, the three women, plus the maid and even Jacqueline, subsisted, poor but idle and in paradise.
The money that Jacqueline earned from modeling, in addition to buying her own clothes and lingerie, shoes, and dresses, which were all bought from the most up-to-date stores, albeit at a discount because she was a model, was still staggeringly expensive, all of which was gobbled up by the family’s bloodied pockets, and God only knows where it went.
Certainly Jacqueline could find a lover who could provide for her; she had no lack of such opportunities, and in fact she did have one or two. As for her reasons for finding lovers, the lesser one was that she really liked them, rather than disliking them altogether; the more important reason was that she wanted to prove to herself that she had the power to arouse a man’s desire for her and make him fall in love with her.
Her second lover was a rich man who had given her a very lovely light pink pearl ring, which she wore on her left hand. She refused to live with him because he would not originally marry her. She eventually left him and didn’t regret it too much, but was just glad she wasn’t pregnant (she thought she was pregnant, and it was a terrifying few days). No, living with a lover was humiliating and would jeopardize future opportunities, and it would not be a repeat of her mother’s and Natalie’s father’s mistakes, which should never be considered.
Living with O, however, is another matter entirely. Jacqueline has the grand excuse of falsely claiming to have moved in with a girlfriend in order to share the cost of housing with her, and O’s role is twofold: one is to play the role of providing for or helping the girl René loves; the other is to play the role of providing moral protection for Jacqueline. This second role is theoretically opposed to the first.
René’s presence was not officially part of this arrangement, but does anyone know if there was a René behind Jacqueline’s decision? Perhaps René’s presence was the real motivation for her acceptance of the proposal. It had come to such a pass that O herself, and she alone, had to tell Jacqueline’s mother about it.
As she stood before the woman and spoke these words while she repeatedly thanked O for her affection for her daughter, O developed a feeling she had never felt before; she realized with extreme acuteness that she was playing the part of a traitor and a spy, and she felt as if she were an emissary sent here by some criminal syndicate.
Meanwhile, deep down, O kept denying her mission, denying the real reason for bringing Jacklyn to her home. Yes, Jacqueline was to be moved to her place, but one must never, never accept all of Mr. Stephen’s plan to put her in his hands.
However, things turned out much differently than she had expected. At René’s request, Jacqueline took the room that he falsely claimed was his bedroom (I say “falsely” because he never slept in O’s king-size bed).
Shortly after she moves into O’s residence, O is surprised to find himself completely wrapped up in the burning desire to possess Jacqueline at all costs, even if he has to turn her over to Mr. Stephen in order to achieve his goal.
Anyway, she thought to herself, self-deprecatingly, Jaclyn is beautiful enough to protect herself, and besides, why should I care? What if she had to go through what I’ve gone through, would it be so terrible? Although she didn’t want to admit it, she couldn’t help imagining how sweet it would be to see Jacqueline beside her, naked and pathetic like herself.
Jacqueline had asked her mother’s permission completely. The week she moved in, René seemed extraordinarily welcoming, inviting them to dinner every other day and taking them to the movies. Oddly enough, the movies he chose were detective stories, drug trafficking stories, and feature films about white slavery (white women reduced to prostitution).
He always sat between them, holding both their hands tenderly and saying nothing. But whenever there was a violent scene on the screen, O could see him watching for subtle changes in Jaclyn’s expression, and the only expression he saw was one of disgust with the corners of his mouth turned slightly downward.
After the movie broke up, he drove them home in the canvas-topped car, and they rolled down the top and rolled down the car windows. The speed of the car and the wind of the night blew Jacklyn’s thick blonde hair into her cheeks, onto her narrow forehead, and even into her eyes. She shook her head to bring her hair back into place and brushed it together with her hands like a boy.
Once she lives with O and accepts the fact that O is René’s lover, René’s reckless behavior seems perfectly natural to her. When René pretends to come into her room to look for something he has left there, she is not at all alarmed. Yet O knew that he was pretending, for it was she herself who emptied every drawer of the large Dutch writing-desk, which was beautifully designed, with its leather-rimmed compartments, and which was usually open, and not at all like René’s person.
Why does he have such a desk? Where did he get it? Its extremely elegant shape and light-colored wood created a luxurious tone in the slightly darkened room. The room overlooked the backyard to the north, with steel-gray walls and a cold, thickly waxed floor.
All this contrasted with the room facing the Seine, which was pleasing to the eye. The contrast would have the effect that Jacqueline would be unhappy there for a long time, and would be willing to share the sunny room with O, and to sleep in O’s bed, just as she had agreed to share the washroom, the kitchen, the toiletries, the perfumes, and the meals with her the day before.
In this, O was wrong. Jacqueline was obsessed with everything that belonged to her, such as the pink pearl ring, and had no interest whatsoever in anything that did not belong to her. Even if she lived in a palace, she wouldn’t be interested in it until she was told it was hers and presented with a notarized deed to prove it.
She didn’t even notice if the gray room was pleasant or not, and she didn’t end up in O’s bed to avoid that room. Nor did she agree to do it to show her gratitude to O, because she didn’t feel she should thank him for it.
Yet O kept thinking she was doing this because she was grateful to her for housing her and reveled in the thought, or maybe she just thought she was reveling in it. In fact, Jacqueline just liked the feeling of pleasure, and she also thought that getting that pleasure from a woman was both beneficial and pleasurable. In the hands of a woman, she could do as she pleased without any danger.
Since she moved over, it was O who helped her get her boxes out and organized one by one. It was on the fifth day after she had moved here, after René had invited them to dinner for the third time, and he had dropped them off at home around ten o’clock and left (as he had done on the other two occasions), that she had walked right up to O’s doorway, completely naked and looking dripping wet because she had just taken a shower, and she had asked O:
“Can you be sure he won’t come back?”
Then, without waiting for O to answer, she climbed into her king-sized bed. She allowed O to kiss her and touch her. She closed her eyes and did not respond to all the touching. At first she moaned softly, more than a whisper, then the moans increased in pitch until she screamed.
She fell asleep on the bed paralyzed, knees apart, legs straight, upper body slightly tilted to one side, arms spread wide, her whole body bathed in the bright light of the pink desk lamp, a little trail of sweat glistening shimmeringly between her breasts. Two hours later, when O wanted her again, in the darkness, Jaclyn didn’t resist, just mumbled:
“Don’t tire me out too much, I have to get up early in the morning.”
It was during this time that Jaclyn, in addition to modeling off and on, threw herself into a more exhausting and uncertain career: small roles in movies. Was she proud of this? Did she see it as the first step in making her famous? It’s hard to say. Every morning, she forces herself out of bed, her mood seeming more angry than enthusiastic.
Having showered and quickly put on her make-up, for breakfast she only drank a large cup of coffee, which O had hurriedly made for her, and then she allowed O to kiss her fingertips, only to return the favor by giving her a mechanical grin and a look of resentment.O looked dainty and languid in her white camel-hair bathrobe, and although she had brushed her hair and washed her face, she looked as if she was ready to go back to bed. This was not really the case, and O had not yet had the courage to explain this to Jaclyn; in fact, every day when Jaclyn went off to shoot a movie at the studio in B, which was when the children went to school and the white-collar workers went to work, O began to get dressed as well, and in the past, at this hour of the clock, she did spend her time at home.
“I’ll send my car,” Mr. Stephen had said, “to drop Jaclyn off at B and pick you up.”
So O found himself at Mr. Stephen’s lodgings every morning when the sun was still due east, and the walls of the courtyard were still hidden in the cool shadows, but the shadows had begun to grow shorter and shorter in the garden.
On Politi Road, the early morning cleanup had not yet been completed. Nala, the maid of the mixed race, showed O into the little bedroom. It was there, on her first night in the residence, that Mr. Stephen had left her alone to sleep and sob. The servant waited for O to put her gloves, purse and clothes on the bed, then took them and put them in front of O in a closet to which she alone had the key, then she handed O a pair of shiny leather high heels, which made a sharp “kaka” sound on the floor when she walked in them. Nala led her through a series of doors until she reached Mr. Stephen’s study, then stepped aside to let O in.
O had always found it difficult to become accustomed to this preparatory work, and to this day she has not been able to get used to being undressed in the presence of the patient old woman. She never said a word to O, and scarcely glanced at her, which made O feel that undressing in her presence was as fraught with danger and as unnerving as undressing in the presence of those servants at Rosyth. The old woman, in a pair of felt slippers, walked noiselessly, like a nun, and following her, O could not in any way take her eyes from the pair of polka dots on her coarse-needled square headscarf; nor, whenever she opened a door, could O take her eyes from her dark, thin hand gripping the china doorknob, which looked as hard as wood.
At the same time, contrary to the feeling of horror aroused by the old woman, which was an inexplicable contradiction, O experienced a sense of pride in the fact that she considered Mr. Stephen’s servant (what was her relationship to Mr. Stephen, and why had he entrusted her with the task of costume and make-up assistant?) a witness that she was a worthy person for Mr. Stephen, as were many others who had been brought to him by her in the same way. She looked extremely unsuitable for the job) was a witness that she could prove that O was a person worthy of being used by Mr. Stephen just as many others were, just as those she had brought to Mr. Stephen’s attention in the same way, and why shouldn’t she think so? Perhaps Mr. Stephen did love her, no doubt he did.
O had a feeling that the time could not be too far away when he would no longer let her have any doubts about this and would openly declare it to her With his love and desire for her growing with each passing day, his attitude towards her was becoming one that was more thorough, obsessive, and deliberately demanding. And so she stayed by his side all morning.
During this time he sometimes scarfed her almost without scarfing her, just waiting for her to caress him. She did everything he asked her to do with a feeling of gratitude, and this feeling was intensified when his requests took the form of commands. Each offering is in her mind a promise, a promise to offer herself again for the next request, and she fulfills this one offering as if she were doing her duty. It is a strange thing for a person to be content with such a situation, and yet she feels it.
Mr. Stephen’s office was upstairs, just above the yellow-gray drawing-room where he always liked to be at night, a smaller, low-ceilinged room, with neither benches nor sofas, but only two armchairs in the English Regency style, padded with brocade cushions in a floral pattern. o sometimes sat in one of these, but Mr. Stephen generally preferred to keep her within easy reach. O sometimes sat in one of them, but Mr. Stephen generally preferred to keep her within easy reach.
While he was busy with other things, he had her sit on his writing desk, just to his left. The right side of the writing desk was against the wall, so O could press against her left leg, and whenever the telephone rang, she was startled before she picked up the receiver and asked, “Who is this, please?” Then she repeated the name aloud and handed the phone to Mr. Stephen.
If he made hints to her, she pushed him out of the way. Whenever a visitor came, old Nara would come and inform Mr. Stephen, and he always kept the visitor waiting for a short time, so that Nara had time enough to take O back to the room from which she had undressed, and when the guest had gone, and Nara heard Mr. Stephen ring for her, she came to this room and took her there again.
Since Nara had to go in and out of the study several times every morning: to bring Mr. Stephen coffee or mail, to open and close the blinds, to empty the ashtray; since she alone had the right to enter and was authorized to do so without knocking; and since she always waited silently when she had something to say, and did not speak until Mr. Stephen asked her a question, it was not surprising that Nara came in one time just in time to see O the upper part of her body on the writing-table, with her hips high in the air, and her head and bones resting on the leather table-top of the writing-table, waiting for Mr. Stephen to do the deed.
O looked up. Nala never looked at her, and if she hadn’t glanced at O this time, O would never have made another move if she hadn’t raised her head a little. But this time Nala was obviously trying to get O’s attention, and her dark eyes were fixed on hers, and O could not tell whether they meant indifference or something else, and those eyes, which were sunk deep in the sockets of an indifferent face, made O so uneasy that she began to wriggle to get away from Mr. Stephens.
He pressed one hand hard on her waist so that her body was dead against the tabletop, while at the same time spreading her legs with the other hand, and she, who had always done her best to cooperate with his movements, couldn’t help but become very tense and stiff this time, while Mr. Stephen still forced his way inside. When he had already entered, she could still feel a ring of muscles in her anus tightening around him, making it almost impossible for him to fully insert his prick.
He withdrew until he was able to get in and out. Then as he tried to take her again, he told Nala to wait a moment and instructed her to help her dress when he was finished with O. Before he let her go, he kissed her tenderly on the lips, and it was that kiss that gave her the courage to tell him a few days later that Nala had frightened her.
“I was hoping so,” he gloated, “and by the time you’ve put on my mark and my ‘iron’ if you’re willing, I’m sure it’s close at hand you’ll have more reason to fear her up.”
“Why?” O asked, “What mark? What iron? I’m already wearing this ring…”
“That all depends on Anne-Marie. Mary’s arrangements, and I promise to bring you to her, and we’ll call on her after lunch, and I don’t suppose you’ll disapprove? She is a friend of mine, and you may have noticed that until now I have never let you meet my friends. By the time Anne B. Mary has done with what you have to do, I will tell you the real reason why you should be afraid of Nara.”
O did not dare to go further into the matter, and this Anne-Marie, whom they had used to frighten her, aroused her greater curiosity than Nara. This Anne-Marie had aroused her greater curiosity than Nara. Monsieur Stéphane had mentioned her name that time at lunch at the Hôtel St. Cloud, and it was true that O knew neither Monsieur Stéphane’s friends nor his acquaintances; in short, she was in Paris, but locked up alone in her own secret, as in a brothel, and only René and Monsieur Stéphane possessed the key to her secret, as well as the key to her body.
She could not help but think of the phrase “to open herself to someone”, which meant to give herself away. The phrase has only one meaning for her: the one that is most in keeping with the meaning of the phrase, with its material meaning, and which is certain, and that is to give herself to all the parts of her body that can be opened. This, in her view, was the very purpose of her existence. That was how Mr. Stephen saw her, and that was how René saw her.
For whenever he spoke of his friends, as he had spoken of them on that occasion at the St. Cloud Hotel, he had always told her that those whom he would introduce to her were, needless to say, of course at liberty to do with her what they wished, whatever they wished, and O tried to guess what kind of person Anne Marie was, and what Mr. Stephen wanted from her, and why these things concerned himself. O tried to guess what sort of a person Anne-Marie was, what Mr. Stephen wanted from her, and why these things concerned himself.
O was bewildered by it all, and even Rosie’s experience couldn’t help her in the slightest. Mr. Stephen had mentioned that he’d like to see her caress another woman, could that be it? (But he emphasized that he meant only Jacqueline…) No, that couldn’t be it. He’d just said, “Show her,” and that’s exactly what he’d said. But after meeting Anne-Marie. But after meeting Anne-Marie, O didn’t know any more about what was going to happen than he did before.
Anne-Marie. Marie lived in a building flanked by drawing rooms near the Paris Observatory. She lived on the roof of this newer building, with windows overlooking the canopy of trees. She was a slender woman, about Mr. Stephen’s age, with dark hair interspersed with strands of gray. Her eyes were a heavily colored dark blue, so deep that they were almost black.
She poured coffee for O. and Mr. Stephen in a small cup, unusually strong and hot, and it restored O.’s confidence. As she finished her coffee and got up from her chair to put the empty cup on the coffee table, Anne-Marie grabbed her by the wrist and turned to face Mr. Stephen. Mary grabbed her by the wrist, turned to face Mr. Stephen, and said:
“May I?”
“Be my guest.” Mr. Stephen said.
Anne B. Mary had neither spoken to O, nor smiled at her, nor even greeted her, nor made any sign of Mr. Stephen’s introduction, till this moment. At that moment she began to speak to her in a tone of great tenderness, and her smile was so soft that it looked as if she were about to give her a present:
“Come, my boy, let me see your bottom and buttocks, but better yet, first please take off all your clothes.”
As O undressed, she lit a cigarette. Mr. Stephen never took his eyes off O for a moment. They let her stand there for about five minutes; there were no mirrors in the room, but O saw her blurred figure on a black lacquered screen.
“Take off your stockings too.” Anne B. Mary snapped, “You see,” she went on, “you shouldn’t wear stockings; it would ruin your thighs.” She pointed with her fingertips to the area above O’s knees, where O always rolled her wide, elastic stockings. There was a faint mark there.
“Who told you to roll like that?”
Before O could answer, Mr. Stephen had taken over:
“The boy who gave her to me, you know him, René.” Then he added, “But I’m sure he’ll agree with you.”
“I’m glad you say so,” said Anne B. Mary said, “I’m going to give you some dark stockings, O, and tights that will fasten and secure the stockings, the whale-bone kind of tights, the kind that snaps right up to the waist.”
Anne Marie rang for a silent blonde. Mary rang for a silent blonde girl, who brought some thin, sheer black stockings and black nylon taffeta tights that tightened inward below the belly and above the hips, reinforced by wide, dense elastic bands. o was still standing, and she took turns inverting her feet to put on the stockings, which reached to the base of her thighs.
The blonde helped her into the corset, which had rows of buttons on each side, and like Rosie’s corset, this corset could be tightened or loosened at will, with straps located at the back.O fastened her stockings with a total of four garters in the front and back, and then tied them as tightly as she could with the straps that the girl had tied around her waist.O felt that her waist and belly were being tightened tightly by the tightening, and that the front of the corset was almost up to her pubic bone, but that the pussy itself and the buttocks were bare, and the back of the corset was very short, leaving her buttocks exposed.
“Her figure will be much improved,” Anne B. Mary said to Mr. Stephen, “and her waist will be much thinner than it is now. And, as you can see, if you can’t wait for her to get undressed, this corset won’t be in the way at all.O, now you come here.”
The girl had gone quietly, and O went toward Anne-Marie. She was sitting in a low chair, a small easy chair with a bright red velvet seat cushion. Anne-Marie’s hand slid gently over her. Anne-Marie slid her hands gently over her hips, then pushed her down onto a low stool, also covered in bright red velvet, and ordered her to stay still while she grabbed both of her pussy lips.
O wondered if that was how people grabbed fish by the gills to lift them up in the marketplace, or how they pried open a horse’s mouth! She recalled Bill, the servant, doing the same thing on the first night of her arrival in Rosyth, when Bill had put her in chains after he had chained her. In short, she was no longer master of her own destiny, and the parts of her body over which she lacked the most control, so to speak, were precisely those that would be put to separate use. Why was it that every time she realized this she felt a sense of shock, and the word “shock” might not be appropriate here, always having to convince herself again and again; why was it that every time she was filled with the same deep sense of depression, a feeling of unwillingness to put herself so completely into the hands of the other person, at least not as completely as into the hands of the man who would ultimately transfer her to someone else?
On that occasion, by the possession of others, she felt herself nearer to René; but with whom could this devotion, here, bring her nearer? René or Mr. Stephen? She was no longer able to clarify these things… At this point, because she didn’t want to know, but in fact, it was very clear that up to this point, she had belonged to Mr. Stephen for… how long had she belonged to Mr. Stephen? For…
Annie B. Mary told her to stand up and get dressed.
“You may bring her to me whenever you think fit,” she said to Mr. Stephen, “and I shall be at Seamus (Seamus?) in two days; O always thought it would be at Rosyth. If this is not speaking of Rosyth, what will it mean for her?) It will be done.” (What will be done?) “Within ten days, if it’s convenient for you,” said Mr. Stephen, “right at the beginning of July.”
Mr. Stephen stayed with Anne-Marie. In the car on the way home, O recalled a statue she had seen as a child in the Luxembourg gardens: a woman who had girded her loins in the same way, and whose waist was extraordinarily slender between her ample breasts and hips, looking down into the clear water, which was as calm and clear as her expression. The statue was carefully carved out of marble, and gazing at her reflection in the water looked so fragile that she was really worried that the thin waist carved out of marble might suddenly snap. But if this was what Mr. Stephen wanted…
It also occurred to her how she could explain all this to Jacqueline; perhaps she could simply tell her that the corset had come from a whim of René’s. This brought up another development that O had been trying to avoid lately, one that she was surprised she didn’t find even more painful: since Jacqueline had moved in with her, René hadn’t tried to leave her alone with Jacqueline as much as he could, and if that was understandable to her, she found it hard to comprehend that he himself had tried to avoid being alone with O as much as he could.
July was fast approaching, and he was leaving Paris, and would not be there to see her when Mr. Stephen sent her to Anne-Marie. Mary when he sent her to her. She might have to accept the fact that she would see him only on those evenings when he wanted to see Jacqueline and her alone, or that she would see him only when she was at Mr. Stephen’s, when he came into the room after Nara. She wondered which of these two possibilities disturbed her more.
(There must be something wrong in these two possibilities, because the relationship between them is overly constrained.)
Whenever René came to Mr. Stephen’s residence, Mr. Stephen always greeted him, and René always gave O the usual kiss, stroked her nipples, and then discussed the next day’s plans with Mr. Stephen, plans that never included O. And then he walked away. He had given her over to Stephen so completely, had he stopped loving her? This thought threw O into such a state of panic that she got out of the car mechanically beside her house, forgetting to tell the driver to wait for her at the door, and only after the car had driven off did she wake up and have to call a cab in a hurry.
O had to run all the way to S Street, where she still had to wait for a cab, and she was almost breathless from running, sweating all over her body because the tights were making it hard for her to breathe. Finally a cab slowed down at the C Street intersection, and she stopped it, and as soon as she got in, she gave the driver the address of René’s office. She didn’t know whether René was in his office or not, nor did she know if he would be willing to see her: it was the first time she had ever been to his office.
O was not at all surprised when she saw the very distinguished edifice situated in a side street not far from E Street, and the large American-style office was just what she had expected. But René’s manner gave her a pang, though he received her at once and was not unreasonable to her; she did not reproach her.
In fact, she was in danger of being blamed for this action, for he had never given her the right to disturb him by coming to his office, and it was probable that her arrival had caused him no small amount of harassment.
He asked his secretary to leave for a moment, told her he wasn’t seeing anyone for a while, and asked her not to put the phone through for a while, then he asked O what had happened.
“I’m afraid you don’t love me anymore.” O said.
He laughed, “Just like that all of a sudden?”
“Yes, it came to me in the car coming back from…”
“Back from where?”
O was silent.
René laughed again:
“But I know where you’ve been, silly. You’ve come back from Anne-Marie’s, and you’re going to Seamus in ten days. Mary’s, and you’re going to Seamus in ten days, and Mr. Stephen has just spoken to me on the telephone.”
René sat in the chair in front of his desk, the only comfortable chair in this office, and O let himself be buried in his embrace.
“They can do whatever they want to me, I don’t care,” she murmured, “but tell me that you still love me.”
“Of course I love you, my dear,” said René, “but I want you to obey me, and I’m afraid you don’t do very well at that. Have you told Jacqueline that you belong to Mr. Stephen? Did you talk to her about Rosie?”
O admitted that she didn’t. Jacqueline only reluctantly accepted her caresses, but the day had come when she should know the truth about me…
Without letting her finish the sentence René picked her up and placed her in the chair he had just sat in, lifting her skirt with his hand.
“Aha, so you’ve got your tights on,” he said, “not bad, you’d be even more attractive if you had a thinner waist.”
After saying this, he wanted her, and O felt that it had been too long since he had done this. Subconsciously, she had begun to wonder if he still had any desire for her at all, however, she saw evidence of love in his behavior at this moment.
“You know,” he said later, “you’d be foolish not to make it clear to Jacqueline that we absolutely need her to go to Rosie, and the easiest way to get her there is through you. And when you come back from Anne-Marie’s, you won’t have a chance. Mary’s, there won’t be any way you can continue to hide what you really are.”
O wants to know why.
“You will see.” René then added, “You have five days left, and only five more, for from the time Mr. Stephen sends you to Anne. Marie from five days before he was ready to resume his daily routine of whipping you, and there will be no way for you to hide those whipping marks any longer, and how are you going to explain them to Jacqueline?”
O did not answer. René doesn’t yet know that Jacqueline is completely self-centered in her relationship with O. She is only interested in O because of the passion and interest O shows in her; she never looks closely at O. If O has whip marks on her body, all she has to do is to avoid taking a shower in front of Jacqueline and put on another robe. Jacklyn would never have noticed anything, she never noticed that O wasn’t wearing shorts, and she would never have noticed anything else: in fact, O couldn’t have aroused her interest.
“Listen to me,” continued René, “there is one thing I want you to tell her, right away, and that is that I am in love with her.”
“It’s true?” O said.
“I need her,” said René, “because you can’t, or won’t, do this, and I’m going to do it myself, and do everything that has to be done.”
“You’ll never do it to get her to agree to go to Rosie,” O said.
“Can’t I do it? If that were the case,” retorted René, “we would force her to go.”
That night, after darkness had passed, Jacqueline had gone to bed, and O, pulling back her covers to gaze at her in the light, had told her, “René is in love with you, you know?” She had conveyed the message, and had not delayed it; a month before, O would have felt a thousand horrors just to see in her imagination the elegant slim body stamped with whip marks, the narrow organ stuffed, the pure lips uttering cries, the tears running down the beautiful downy layer of her cheeks; but it was different now, and O repeated René’s last words over and over again to herself, with an inward joy.
Since Jacqueline was away on a movie shoot and would not be back until August, there was nothing to keep O in Paris. July was just around the corner and all the gardens in Paris were in full bloom with fuchsia geraniums.
By midday all the shutters in town were closed and René was complaining that he had to make a trip to Scotland.
For a moment, O wished he would take her with him, but, needless to say, he had never yet taken her to visit his family, and she knew well enough that René would give her to Mr. Stephen as soon as he asked for her.
Mr. Stephen announced that he would come to fetch her on the day of René’s flight to London, when she was on leave.
“We’re going up to Anne-Marie’s,” he said. We’re going up to Anne-Marie’s,” he said, “and she’s waiting for you! There’s no need to pack a suitcase, you don’t need to take anything with you.”
The place they went to this time was not the building near the Observatory where O. had first met Anne-Marie. Marie when he first met her, but a small, low, two-story building at the end of a large garden, on the edge of Fontainebleau. From the first day he met her, O had been wearing the whalebone corset that Anne-Marie considered essential. Marie considered essential at this time. Every day she girded it a little more tightly, and up to the present time her waist had been so thin that Anne-Marie should have been satisfied. Anne-Marie should be satisfied.
They arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon, and the whole house was asleep. The dog barked breathlessly as they rang the bell: it was a big, shaggy sheepdog who got under O’s skirt and sniffed her legs. Anne B. Mary was sitting under a reddish-bronze beech tree that stood on the edge of the grass in a corner of the garden, directly opposite her bedroom, and she did not rise to greet them.
“O come on,” said Mr. Stephen, “you know what should be done with her. When can she be made well?”
Annie B. Mary glanced at O, “So, you haven’t told her yet? Well, I’ll start right away, ten days is about right. I take it you want the iron ring and your initials? Come back in two weeks, and another two weeks from then it’ll all be done.”
O wanted to ask a question.
“Wait a minute, O,” Anne. Mary said, “Go to that bedroom out front, take off your clothes, but you don’t have to take off your heels, and then come back.”
The room was a large bedroom painted white and hung with dark purple printed curtains, the room looked empty. o put her purse, gloves and clothes on a chair near the door, there were no mirrors in the room, she stepped out of the room, the bright sunlight made her feel wobbly, she walked slowly back into the shadow of the beeches. Mr. Stephen was still standing in front of Anne-Marie, and the dog was crouching in front of her. Mr. Stephen was still standing before Anne-Marie, and the dog was crouching at his feet. Mr. Stephen was still standing before Anne-Marie, and the dog was crouching at his feet. Anne-Marie’s black hair was streaked with a few strands of gray, and it shone as if she had put some kind of hair cream on it, and her blue eyes looked nearly black. She wore a white dress with a shiny belt around her waist, and her toenails, painted with bright red kodak, peeked out of her leather sandals, the exact same color as her fingernails.
“O,” she said, “kneel before Mr. Stephen.”
O dutifully knelt down, her arms behind her back, her nipples quivering slightly. The dog was tense all over, as if ready to jump on her at any moment.
“Lie down, Turk,” said Anne. Mary scolded the dog, and then said, “O, do you consent to wear the iron ring by all necessary means, and to have Mr. Stephen’s name stamped upon you, as he desires?”
“I agree.” O said.
“Okay then, I’m going to walk Mr. Stephen to his car, you stay here and don’t move.”
When Anne Marie lowered her feet from the stirrups, Mr. Stephen bent over and grasped O’s breasts in his hands. Mary lowered her feet from the stirrup stool, Mr. Stephen bent down and grasped O’s breasts in his hands, and he kissed her on the lips, murmuring under his breath:
“Are you mine? O, are you really mine?”
With those words, he turned and followed Anne Marie. Mary, leaving O there with the door slamming shut.
Anne B. Mary returned, O still sitting on her heels, her arms resting on her knees like an Egyptian statue.
There were three other girls in the house, each with a bedroom on the second floor. o was placed in a small bedroom on the first floor, connected to Anne Marie’s room. O was placed in a small bedroom on the first floor, connected to Anne-Marie’s room. Anne-Marie told them all to go downstairs. Anne-Marie told them all to go downstairs to the garden garden, and, like O, the three girls were naked. The little daughter country was concealed by high walls, and the shutters of the windows overlooking the narrow dirt road beyond were all closed tightly. Only Anne-Marie and three of the servants were dressed. In the whole country, only Anne-Marie and three servants were dressed, one of them was a cook and the other two were maids. They all looked older than Anne-Marie. They all looked older than Anne-Marie, and they wore long black alpaca-wool dresses and hard-pasted aprons, and their expressions were somber and solemn.
“Her name is O,” said Anne B. Mary resumed her seat and said to the group, “Bring her to me so I can get a good look at her.”
The two girls helped O to her feet: both of them were of the light-black type, with dark hair and pubic hair, and their nipples were huge and so dark they were almost purple. The other girl was a small one with fluffy red hair, and the snow-white skin of her breasts was covered with horrible green marks. The two girls pushed O over to Anne Marie. Mary, who pointed to the three black whip marks on her body that stretched from her thighs to her buttocks:
“Who whipped you?” She asked, “Was it Mr. Stephen?”
“Yes.” O replied.
“When? With a horsewhip.”
“Three days ago, with a horsewhip.”
“You will not receive any whippings for a month from tomorrow, but today you will receive a whipping in honor of your arrival here, which will take place immediately after I examine you. Has Mr. Stephen ever spread your legs apart and whipped your inner thighs? Never? Indeed. Men don’t know what to do. Well, we’ll see soon enough. Let me see your waist, yes, it’s much better than it was!”
Anne Marie. Mary squeezed O’s waist to make it look thinner, then she sent the redhead to bring her another corset to put on. This one was also made of black nylon, but the sizing was so stiff and narrow that it looked like a wide belt. There were no suspenders on the top of the leotard, and one of the girls helped O to fasten it as tightly as she could, with Anne Marie repeatedly asking her to fasten it as tightly as she could. Anne-Marie repeatedly asked her to make it as tight as possible.
“This is too much,” said O. “I don’t know if I can stand it.”
“Therein lies the whole problem,” said Anne B. Mary said. “You look much lovelier than you used to, and the trouble is that you didn’t tie it tight enough in the past. You’re going to have to wear it like this every day from now on, but now tell me, how does Mr. Stephen like to use you? I need to know that.”
She held the lower part of O’s hand with her whole palm, and O could not answer. Two girls were sitting on the grass, and a third, the one with the light dark complexion, was sitting next to Anne. Mary’s stirrup stool.
“Help her turn around, girls, and let me see her backside.” Anne B. Mary said.
The two girls helped her turn around, bent over, and spread her legs with their hands.
“Of course,” continued Anne-Marie. You don’t have to tell me that the mark must be stamped on your hip.
Now you can stand up straight. We’re going to put the bracelet on you. Collette, go and get the box, we’re going to draw straws to decide who’s going to whip you. Bring the chips, Collette, and then we’ll go to the music room.”
Collette was one of the two dark-haired girls, the other was called Clarie; the little red-haired girl was called Evony. It was not until then that O noticed that all of them wore collars, as they had done in Rosyth, and bracelets on their wrists, and they wore bracelets of the same pattern on their ankles.
After O had picked out a bracelet of her own size and had it put on by Ivoni, Anne Marie handed O four chips to distribute to each of the girls, without looking at the numbers on them. Mary handed O four chips and told her to distribute them to each of the girls without looking at the numbers on them, and O gave them to them, and each of the three girls looked at the chips she had been given, and waited for Anne-Marie to say something. The three girls each looked at the chips they had been given and waited for Anne-Marie to say something.
“I got number two,” said Anne Marie. “Who got number one?”
Collette got number one.
“Okay, take O away! She’s all yours.”
Collette grabbed O’s arms and put her hands behind her back, locking them together with bracelets, and then she pushed O ahead of her. They walked through a French door and into a small side room, which formed an L-shape at right angles to the main room. Ivoni took off her heels and led the way.