Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [120]
‘She was a very cheerful young woman, smiling, good-natured. She had dyed her hair blond. But her eyelashes were of deep black and bushy like a man’s. She had a soft little bit of hair in her upper lip. She must have been a dark, hairy southern girl before she dyed her hair. Her one good leg was sturdy, firm, her body quite beautiful. But I could not bring myself to ask her. As I looked at her I remembered a painting by Courbet I had seen. It was a painting commissioned by a rich man long ago, who had asked him to paint a woman in the act of sex. Courbet, who was a great realist, painted a woman’s sex and nothing else. He left out the head, the arms, the legs. He painted a torso, with a carefully designed sex, in contortions of pleasure, clutching at a penis that came out of a bush of very black hair. That was all. I felt that with this whore it would be the same, one would only think of the sex, try not to look down at her legs or anything else. And perhaps that would be exciting. As I stood in the corner deliberating with myself, another whore came up to me, a very young one. A young whore is rare in Paris. She spoke to the one with the wooden leg. It was beginning to rain. The young one was saying, “I’ve been walking in the rain for two hours now. My shoes are ruined. And not a single client.” I suddenly felt sorry for her. I said, “Will you have a coffee with me?” She accepted joyously. She said, “What are you, a painter?”
‘“I’m not a painter,” I said, “but I was thinking about a painting I saw.”
‘“There are wonderful paintings in the Café Wepler,” she said. “And look at this one.” She took out of her pocketbook what looked like a delicate handkerchief. She held it opened. There was painted on it a big woman’s ass, placed so as to reveal the sex fully, and an equally large penis. She tugged at the handkerchief, which was elastic, and it looked as if the ass were moving, the penis too. Then she turned it over, and now the penis was still heaving but it looked as if it had gone inside of the sex. She gave it a certain movement which made the whole picture active. I laughed, but the sight aroused me, so that we never got to the Café Wepler and the girl offered to let me go to her room. It was in a very shabby house of Montmartre, where all the circus and vaudeville people stayed. We had to climb five flights.
‘She said, “You’ll have to excuse the drabness. I’m just starting in Paris. I’ve only been here a month. Before that I was working in a house in a small town and it was so boring seeing the same men every week. It was almost like being married! I knew just when they would be coming to see me, the day and hour, regular as clocks. I knew all their habits. There were no more surprises. So I came to Paris.”
‘As she talked we entered her room. It was very small – just room enough for the big iron bed on which I pushed her and which creaked as if we were already making love like two monkeys. But what I couldn’t get used to was that there was no window – absolutely no window. It was like lying in a tomb, a prison, a cell. I can’t tell you exactly what it was like. But the feeling it gave me was of security. It was wonderful to be shut in so securely with a young woman. It was almost as wonderful as being already inside her cunt. It was the most marvelous room I ever made love in, so completely shut out of the world, so tight and cozy, and when I got inside of her I felt that the whole rest of the world could vanish for all I cared. There I was, in the best place of all in the world, a womb, warm and soft and shutting me in from everything else, protecting me, hiding me.
‘I would like to have lived there with this girl, never