“As the time was short and they were always expected to leave the shop with the others, he had to forego the caresses when it came to taking her. And now she did not know which she liked best. If his caresses were too lingering he did not have time to take her. If he proceeded directly, she felt less enjoyment. Behind the screen now took place scenes enacted in the most lavish bedrooms, only more hurried, and each time the mannequin had to be dressed again, the bed straightened. Yet they never met outside of this moment. This was their dream for the day. He had contempt for the shabby adventures of his comrades in five-franc hotels. He acted as if he had visited the most courted prostitute in Paris, and was the amant de coeur of a woman kept by the richest men.”

“Was the dream ever destroyed?” Pierre asked.

“Yes. Do you remember the sit-down strike of the big department stores? The employees stayed in them for two weeks. During that time other couples discovered the softness of the best-quality beds, of the divans and couches and chaise longues, and they discovered the variations that can be added to love positions when the beds are wide and low and rich materials tickle the skin. Madeleine’s dream became public property and a vulgar caricature of the pleasures she had known. The uniqueness of her meeting with her lover came to an end. He called her Mademoiselle again, and she called him Monsieur. He even began to find fault with her salesmanship and she finally left the store.”

ELENA TOOK an old house in the country for the summer months, a house which needed painting. Miguel had promised to help her. They began in the attic, which was picturesque and complex, a series of small irregular rooms, rooms within rooms at times, added as afterthoughts.

Donald was there, too, but not interested in painting, he went off to explore the vast garden and the village and the forest surrounding the house. Elena and Miguel worked alone, covering themselves as well as the old walls with paint. Miguel held his brush as if he were painting a portrait, and stood off to survey his progress. Working together took them back into the moods of their youth.

To shock her, Miguel talked about his “collection of asses,” pretending that it was this particular aspect of beauty which held him enthralled, because Donald possessed it to the highest degree—the art of finding an ass that was not too globular, like most women’s, not too flat, like most men’s, but something between the two, something worth gripping.

Elena was laughing. She was thinking that when Pierre turned his back to her, he became like a woman for her, and she would have liked to rape him. She could well imagine Miguel’s feelings when he lay against Donald’s back.

“If the ass is sufficiently rounded, firm, and if the boy has not got an erection,” said Elena, “then there is not so much difference from a woman. Do you still feel around for the difference?”

“Yes, of course. Think how distressing it would be to discover nothing there, and also to find too much of the mammary protrusions further up—breasts for milk, a thing to paralyze one’s sexual appetite.”

“Some women have very small milk holders,” said Elena.

It was her turn to stand on the ladder to reach a cornice and the slanting corner of the roof. Raising her arm she brought her skirts up with her. She wore no stockings. Her legs were smooth and slender, without “globular exaggerations,” as Miguel said, paying her compliments now that their relationship was secure from any sexual hopes on her side.

Elena’s desire to seduce a homosexual was a common error among women. Usually there was a point of female honor in this, a desire to test one’s power against heavy odds, a feeling, perhaps, that all men were escaping from their rule and that they must be seduced again. Miguel suffered from these attempts every day. He was not effeminate. He held himself well, his gestures were manly. As soon as a woman began to display coquetry towards him, he was in a panic. He immediately foresaw the entire drama: the aggression of the woman, her interpretation of his passivity as mere timidity, her advances, his hatred of the moment when he would have to reject her. He could never do this with calm indifference. He was too tender and compassionate. He suffered at times more than the woman, whose vanity was all that mattered. He had such a familial relationship with women, that he always felt as if he were wounding a mother, a sister, or Elena again, in her new transformations.

By now he knew what harm he had done to Elena in being the first one to instill in her a doubt of her ability to love or to be loved. Each time he brushed off an advance from a woman, he thought he was committing a minor crime, murdering a faith and confidence for good.

How nice it was to be with Elena, enjoying her feminine endowments without danger. Pierre was taking care of the sensual Elena. At the same time, how jealous Miguel was of Pierre, just as he had been of his father when he was a child. His mother always sent him out of her room as soon as his father entered. The father was impatient for him to leave. He hated the way they locked themselves together for hours. As soon as his father left, his mother’s love, embraces, kisses, returned to him.

When Elena said, “I am going to see Pierre,” it was the same. Nothing could hold her back. No matter how much pleasure they had together, no matter how much tenderness she showered on Miguel, when it was time to be with Pierre, nothing could hold her back.

The mystery of Elena’s masculinity charmed him, too. Whenever he was with her, he felt this vital, active, positive action of her nature. In her presence, he was galvanized from his laziness, his vagueness, his procrastinations. She was the catalyst.

He looked at her legs. Diana’s legs, Diana the huntress, the boy-woman. Legs for running and leaping. He was taken with an overpowering curiosity to see the rest of her body. He moved nearer to the ladder. The stylized legs disappeared into the lace-edged panties. He wanted to see further.

She looked down at him and saw him standing and looking at her with dilated eyes.

“Elena, I would just like to see how you are made.”

She smiled at him.

“Will you let me look at you?”

“You are looking at me.”

He lifted the edge of her skirt outwards and it opened like a summer umbrella over him, concealing his head from her. She began to step down the ladder but his hands stopped her. His hands had gripped the elastic belt of the panties and stretched them to slip them down. She remained midway on the ladder, one leg higher than the other, which prevented him from slipping the panties all the way down. He pulled the leg down towards him, so that he could slip off the panties altogether. His hands cupped her ass lovingly. Like a sculptor, he ascertained the exact contours of what he held, feeling the firmness, the roundness, as if it were merely a fragment of a statue he had unearthed, from which the rest of the body were missing. He disregarded the surrounding flesh, and curves. He caressed only the ass, and gradually brought it down nearer to his face, keeping Elena from turning around as she descended the ladder.

She abandoned herself to his whim, thinking it was to be an orgy of the eyes and hands only. When she reached the bottom rung, he had one hand on each round promontory and was kneading them as if they were breasts, bringing the caress back to where it had begun, hypnotically.

Now Elena faced him, leaning against the ladder. She sensed that he was trying to take her. At first he touched where the opening was too small for him and where it hurt her. She cried out. Then he moved forwards and found the real female opening, found he could slip in this way, and she was amazed to find him so strong, remaining inside of her and moving about. But although he moved vigorously, he did not accelerate his movements to reach a climax. Was he becoming more and more aware that he was inside of a woman and not a boy? Slowly he withdrew, left her thus half-taken, hid his face away from her so that she would not see his disillusion.

She kissed him, to prove to him that this did not cloud their relationship, that she understood.

SOMETIMES in the street or in a café, Elena was hypnotized by the souteneur face of a man, by a big workman with knee-deep boots, by a brutal, criminal head. She felt a sensual tremor of fear, an obscure attraction. The female in her was fascinated. For a second she felt as if she were a whore who expected a stab in the back for some infidelity. She felt anxiety. She was trapped. She forgot that she was free. A dark fungus layer was awakened, a subterranean primitivism, a desire to feel the brutality of man, the force which could break her open and sack her. To be violated was a need of woman, a secret, erotic desire. She had to shake herself from the domination of these images.

She remembered that what she had first loved in Pierre was the dangerous light in his eyes, the eyes of a man who was without guilt and scruples, who took what he wanted, enjoyed, who was unconscious of risks and consequences.

What had become of this unruly, self-willed savage she had met on that mountain road one dazzling morning? He was now domesticated. He lived for lovemaking. Elena smiled at this. That was a quality one rarely found in a man. But he was still a man of nature. At times she said to him, “Where is your horse? You always look as if you had left your horse at the door and were soon to start on a gallop again.”

He slept naked. He hated pyjamas, kimonos, bedroom slippers. He threw his cigarettes on the floor. He washed in ice-cold water like a pioneer. He laughed at comfort. He chose the hardest chair. Once, his body was so hot and dusty and the water he used so ice-cold, that evaporation took place and smoke issued from his pores. He held his steaming hands towards her, and she said, “You are the god of fire.”

He could not submit to time. He did not know how much could or could not be done in an hour. Half of his being was forever asleep, coiled in the maternal love she gave him, coiled in reverie, in laziness, talking about the voyages he was going to make, the books he was going to write.

He was pure, too, at strange moments. He had the reserve of the cat. Although he slept naked, he would not walk about naked.

Pierre touched all the regions of understanding with intuition. But he did not live there, he did not sleep and eat in those superior regions as she did. Often he quarreled, warred, drank, with a company of ordinary friends, spent evenings with ignorant people. She could not do this. She liked the exceptional, the extraordinary. This separated them. She would have liked to be like him, near to everyone, anyone, but she could not. It saddened her. Often, when they went out together, she left him.

Their first serious quarrel was about time. Pierre would telephone and say, “Come to my apartment about eight.” She had her own key. She would go in and pick up a book. He would arrive at nine. Or he would call her when she was already there waiting and say, “I will be right over,” and come two hours later. One evening when she had waited too long a time (and the waiting was all the more painful because she imagined him making love to someone else), he arrived and found her gone. Then it was his turn to rage. But it did not change his habits. Another time she locked him out. She stood behind the door listening to him. She was already hoping he would not go away. She deeply regretted their night being spoiled. But she waited. He rang the bell again, so gently. If he had rung the bell angrily she might have remained unmoved, but he rang gently and guiltily, and she opened the door. She was still angry. He desired her. She resisted him. He was stirred by her resistance. And she was saddened by the spectacle of his desire.

She had a feeling that Pierre sought this scene. The more aroused he became, the greater her aloofness. She closed herself sexually. But honey seeped through the closed lips, and Pierre was in ecstasy. He became more passionate, forcing her knees open with his strong legs, pouring himself into her with impetus, coming with tremendous intensity.

Whereas at other times if she had not felt pleasure she would have feigned it so as not to hurt him, this time she deliberately made no pretense. When Pierre’s passion was satisfied he asked her, “Did you come?” “No,” she said. And he was hurt. He felt the full cruelty of her holding back. He said, “I love you more than you love me.” Yet he knew how much she loved him, and he was baffled.

Afterwards she lay with her eyes wide open, thinking that his lateness was innocent. He had already fallen asleep like a child, with his fists closed, his hair in her mouth. He was still asleep when she left. In the street, such a wave of tenderness washed over her that she had to return to the apartment. She threw herself over him, saying, “I had to come back, I had to come back.”

“I wanted you to come back,” he said. He touched her. She was so wet, so wet. Sliding in and out of her he said, “I like to see how I hurt you there, how I stab you there, in the little wound.” Then he pounded into her, to draw from her the spasm she had withheld.

When she left him she was joyous. Could love become a fire that did not burn, like the fire of the Hindu religious men; was she learning to walk magically over hot coals?