Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [106]
André had a particular passion for her mouth. In the street he looked at women’s mouths. To him the mouth was indicative of the sex. A tightness of a lip, thinness, augured nothing rich or voluptuous. A full mouth promised an open, generous sex. A moist mouth tantalized him. A mouth that opened out, a mouth that was parted as if ready for a kiss, he would follow doggedly in the street until he could possess the woman and prove again his conviction of the revelatory powers of the mouth.
Linda’s mouth had seduced him from the first. It had a perverse, half-dolorous expression. There was something about the way she moved it, a passionate unfolding of the lips, promising a person who would lash around the beloved like a storm. When he first saw Linda, he was taken into her through this mouth, as if he were already making love to her. And so it was on their wedding night. He was obsessed with her mouth. It was on her mouth that he threw himself, kissing it until it burned, until the tongue was worn out, until the lips were swollen; and then, when he had fully aroused her mouth, it was thus that he took her, crouching over her, his strong lips pressed against her breasts.
He never treated her as a wife. He wooed her over and over again, with presents, flowers, new pleasures. He took her to dinner at the cabinets particuliers of Paris, to the big restaurants, where all the waiters thought she was his mistress.
He chose the most exciting food and wine for her. He made her drunk with his caressing words. He made love to her mouth. He made her say that she wanted him. Then he would ask: ‘And how do you want me? What part of you wants me tonight?’
Sometimes she answered, ‘My mouth wants you, I want to feel you in my mouth, way down in my mouth.’ Other times she answered, ‘I am moist between the legs.’
This is how they talked across restaurant tables, in the small private dining rooms created especially for lovers. How discreet the waiters, knowing when not to return. Music would come from an invisible source. There would be a divan. When the meal was served, and André had pressed Linda’s knees between his and stolen kisses, he would take her on the divan, with her clothes on, like lovers who do not have time to undress.
He would escort her to the opera and to the theaters famed for their dark boxes, and make love to her while they watched a spectacle. He would make love to her in taxis, in a barge anchored in front of Notre Dame that rented cabins to lovers. Everywhere but at home, on the marital bed. He would drive her to little far-off villages and stay at romantic inns with her. He would take a room for them in the luxurious houses of prostitution he had known. Then he would treat her like a prostitute. He would make her submit to his whims, ask to be whipped, ask her to crawl on her hands and knees and not to kiss him but to pass her tongue all over him like an animal.
These practices had aroused her sensuality to such a degree that she was frightened. She was afraid of the day when André would cease to be sufficient for her. Her sensuality was, she knew, vigorous; his was the last burst of a man who had spent himself on a life of excess and now gave her the flower of it.
A day came when André had to leave her for ten days for a trip. Linda was restless and feverish. A friend telephoned her, André’s friend, the painter of the day in Paris, the favorite of all women. He said to her, ‘Are you bored with yourself, Linda? Would you care to join us in a very special kind of party? Do you have a mask?’
Linda knew exactly what he meant. She and André had often laughed at Jacques’s parties in the Bois. It was his favorite form of amusement: on a summer night, to gather society people wearing masks, drive to the Bois with bottles of champagne, find a clearing in the wooded section and disport themselves.
She was tempted. She had never participated in one. That, André had not wanted to do. He said playfully that the question of the masks