Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [51]
Pierre was sitting at the edge of the bed and had slipped his pants on and was fastening the buckle of his belt. Elena had slipped on her dress but was still coiled around him as he sat. Then he showed her his belt. She sat up to look at it. It had been a heavy, strong leather belt with a silver buckle but was now so completely worn that it looked about to tear. The tip of it was frayed. The places where the buckle fastened were almost as thin as a piece of cloth.
‘My belt is wearing out,’ Pierre said, ‘and it makes me sad because I have had it ten years.’ He studied it contemplatively.
As she looked at him sitting there, with his belt not yet fastened, she was sharply reminded of the moment before he unfastened his belt to let his pants down. He never unfastened it until a caress, a tight embrace of their bodies against one another, had aroused his desire so that the confined penis hurt him.
There was always that second of suspense before he loosened his pants and took out his penis for her to touch. Sometimes he let her take it out. If she could not unbutton his underwear quickly enough, then he did it himself. The little snapping sound of the buckle affected her. It was an erotic moment for her, as was, for Pierre, the moment before she took down her panties or loosened her garters.
Though she had been fully satisfied a moment before, she was aroused again. She would have liked to unfasten the belt, let his pants slip down and touch his penis once more. When it first came out of the pants, how alertly it straightened itself to point to her, as if in recognition.
Then suddenly the realization that the belt was so old, that Pierre had always worn it, struck her with a strange, sharp pain. She saw him unfastening it in other places, other rooms, at other hours, for other women.
She was jealous, acutely jealous, with this image repeating itself. She wanted to say, ‘Throw the belt away. At least do not carry the same one that you wore for them. I will give you another.’
It was as if his feeling of affection for the belt were a feeling of affection for the past that he could not rid himself of entirely. For her, the belt represented the gestures made in the past. She asked herself if all the caresses had been the same.
For a week or so Elena responded completely to his embraces, almost lost consciousness in his arms, sobbed once with the acuteness of her joys. Then she noticed a change in his mood. He was preoccupied. She did not question him. She interpreted his preoccupation in her own way. He was thinking of his political activity, which he had surrendered for her. Perhaps he was suffering from his inaction. No man could live completely for love as a woman could, could make this the purpose of his life and fill his days with it.
She could have lived for nothing else. In fact, she lived for nothing else. The rest of the time – when she was not with him – she felt and heard nothing clearly. She was absent. She only came to life fully in his room. All day, as she did other things, her thoughts circled around him. Alone in bed, she remembered his expressions, the laughter at the corner of his eyes, the willfulness of his chin, the glittering of his teeth, the shape of his lips as he uttered words of desire.
That afternoon she lay in his arms, noticed the clouds on his face, the clouded eyes, and could not respond to him. Usually they were in rhythm. He felt when her pleasure was mounting, and she, his. In some mysterious way they could hold back the orgasm until the moment when each was ready for it. Usually they were slow in their rhythmic