Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [44]
These were the external feelings of the bodies discovering each other. From so much touching they grew drugged. Their gestures were slow and dreamlike. Their hands were heavy. His mouth never closed.
How the honey flowed from her. He dipped his fingers in it lingeringly, then his sex, then he moved her so that she lay on him, her legs thrown over his legs, and as he took her, he could see himself entering into her, and she could see him too. They saw their bodies undulate together, seeking their climax. He was waiting for her, watching her movements.
Because she did not quicken her movements, he changed her position, making her lie back. He crouched over so that he could take her with more force, touching the very bottom of her womb, touching the very flesh walls again and again, and then she experienced the sensation that within her womb some new cells awakened, new fingers, new mouths, that they responded to his entrance and joined in the rhythmic motion, that this suction was becoming gradually more and more pleasurable, as if the friction had aroused new layers of enjoyment. She moved quicker to bring the climax, and when he saw this, he hastened his motions inside of her and incited her to come with him, with words, with his hands caressing her, and finally with his mouth soldered to hers, so that the tongues moved in the same rhythm as the womb and penis, and the climax was spreading between her mouth and her sex, in cross-currents of increasing pleasure, until she cried out, half sob and half laughter, from the overflow of joy through her body.
When Elena returned to Casutza, Madame Kazimir refused to speak to her. She carried her stormy condemnation about silently but so intensely that it could be felt all through the house.
Elena postponed her return to Paris. Pierre could not return. They met every day, sometimes staying the whole night away from Casutza. The dream continued unbroken for ten days, until a woman came to call. It was an evening when Elena and Pierre were away. His wife received her. They locked themselves up together. Madame Kazimir tried to listen to what they said but they caught sight of her head at one of the little windows.
The woman was Russian. She was unusually beautiful, with violet eyes and dark hair, an Egyptian cast of features. She did not talk very much. She appeared greatly disturbed. When Pierre arrived in the morning he found her there. He was quite evidently surprised. Elena received a shock of inexplicable anxiety. She feared the woman immediately. She sensed danger for her love. Yet when Pierre met her hours later, he explained it all on the basis of his work. The woman had been sent with orders. He was to move on. He was given work to do in Geneva. He had been rescued from the complications in Paris with the understanding that he was to obey orders from then on. He did not say to Elena, ‘Come with me to Geneva.’ She waited for his words.
‘How long will you be away?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you going with … ?’ She could not even repeat her name.
‘Yes, she is in charge.’
‘If I am not to see you any more, Pierre, tell me at least, the truth.’
But neither his expression nor his words seemed to come from the man she knew intimately. He seemed to be saying what he had been made to say, nothing more. He had lost all his personal authority. He was talking as if someone else were listening to him. Elena was silent. Then Pierre approached her and whispered, ‘I am not in love with any woman. I never have been. I am in love with my work. With you I was in great danger. Because we could talk together, because we were so near each other in so many ways, I stayed with you too long. I forgot my work.’
Elena was to repeat these words to herself