Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [100]
When they returned home that day, Martha was filled with a kind of drunkenness that made her behave recklessly. The house was so arranged that Pierre and Sylvia’s apartment was connected to Martha’s room, and hers in turn communicated with the bathroom used by John. When the children were younger all the doors were left open. Now Pierre’s wife preferred to lock her bedroom door, and the one between Martha and Pierre was also locked. On this day Martha took a bath. Lying quietly in the water she could hear John’s movements in his room. Her body was in a great fever from Pierre’s caresses, but she still desired John. She wanted to make one more attempt to awaken John’s desire, to force him into the open, so she would know whether or not there was any hope of his loving her.
Once bathed, she wrapped herself in a long white kimono, with her long thick black hair hanging loose. Instead of returning to her own room she entered John’s. He was startled by the sight of her. She explained her presence by saying, ‘I am terribly anxious, John, I need your advice. I’m leaving this house soon.’
‘Leaving?’
‘Yes,’ said Martha. ‘It is time I leave. I must learn to become independent. I want to go to Paris.’
‘But you are so needed here.’
‘Needed?’
‘You are my father’s companion,’ he said bitterly.
Could it be that he was jealous? Martha waited breathlessly for him to say more. Then she added, ‘I should be meeting people and trying to get married. I cannot be a burden forever.’
‘Married?’
Then he saw Martha as a woman for the first time. He had always considered her a child. What he saw was a voluptuous body, clearly outlined in the kimono, moist hair, a fevered face, a soft mouth. She waited. The expectancy in her was so intense that her hands fell to her sides, and the kimono opened and revealed her completely naked body.
Then John saw that she wanted him, that she was offering herself, but instead of being stirred, he recoiled. ‘Martha! Oh, Martha!’ he said. ‘What an animal you are, you are truly the daughter of a whore. Yes, in the orphanage everybody said it, that ; you were the daughter of a whore.’
Martha’s blood rushed to her face. ‘And you,’ she said, ‘you are impotent, a monk, you’re like a woman, you’re not a man. Your father is a man.’
And she rushed out of his room.
Now the image of John ceased to torment her. She wanted to efface it from her body and her blood. It was she who waited that night for everyone to fall asleep so she could unlock the door to Pierre’s room, and it was she who came to his bed, silently offering her now cool and abandoned body to him.
Pierre knew that she was free of John, that she was his now, by the way she came into his bed. What joy to feel the soft youthful body sliding against his body. Summer nights he slept naked. Martha had dropped her kimono and was naked too. Immediately his desire sprang up and she felt the hardness of it against her belly.
Her diffuse feelings were now concentrated in only one part of her body. She found herself making gestures she had never learned, found her hand surrounding his penis, found herself gluing her body to his, found her mouth yielding to the many kinds of kisses Pierre could give. She gave herself in a frenzy, and Pierre was aroused to his greatest feats.
Every night was an orgy. Her body became supple and knowing. The tie between them was so strong that it was difficult for them to pretend otherwise during the day. If she looked at him, it was as if he had touched her between the legs. Sometimes in the dark hall they embraced. He pressed her against the wall. At the entrance there was a big dark closet full of coats and snow shoes. No one ever entered there in the summer. Martha hid there and Pierre came in. Lying over the coats, in the small space, enclosed, secret, they abandoned themselves.
Pierre had been without sexual life for years, and Martha was meant for this and only came to life at these moments. She received him always