Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [76]
Maman knew the slender, fiery one who attacked men and made them feel victims of circumstance. She was a great favorite among the guilty men. They permitted themselves to be raped. Their conscience was at ease. They could have said to their wives: She threw herself on me and forced herself on me, and the like. They would lie back and she would sit on them, as upon a horse, spurring them to inevitable gestures by her pressure and galloping over the rigid virility, or trotting softly, or taking long strides. She pressed powerful knees against the flanks of her subdued victims, and like a noble rider, raised herself elegantly and fell back, with all her weight concentrated on the middle of the body, while her hand occasionally slapped the man to increase his speed and his convulsions, so that she could feel a greater animal vigor between her legs. How she rode this animal under her, with spurring legs and great pushes from her raised body until the animal began to foam, and then incited him more with cries and slaps, to gallop faster and faster.
Maman knew the smoldering charms of Viviane from the south. Her flesh was of hot embers, contagious, and even the coolest flesh would warm at her touch. She knew suspense, leisure. She liked first of all to sit on the bidet for the ceremony of washing herself. Legs spread over the little seat, she had bulging buttocks, two enormous dimples at the base of her spine, two golden-brown hips, wide and firm like the back of a circus horse. As she sat, the curves were swollen. If the man tired of seeing her from the back, he could face her and watch her throw water over her pubic hair and between her legs, watch her carefully spread the lips as she soaped. White foam covered her now, then water again, and the lips emerged glistening pink. At times she examined the lips calmly. If too many men had passed by that day, she saw that they were slightly swollen. The Basque liked to watch her then. She dried herself more gently so as not to increase the irritation.
The Basque came on such a day and divined he could benefit from the irritation. Other days Viviane was lethargic, heavy and indifferent. She laid her body down as in some classical painting, in such a manner as to accentuate the tremendous rise and fall of her curves. She lay on her side with her head resting on her arm, her flesh, of copper-colored tones, distended at times as if it were laboring under the erotic swelling of a caress from some invisible hand. Thus she offered herself, sumptuous and almost impossible to arouse. Most men did not try. She turned her mouth away from them with contempt, offering her body all the more, but with detachment. They could stretch open her legs and stare as long as they wanted. They could not draw any sap from her. But once a man was inside of her, she behaved as if he were pouring hot lava into her, and her contortions were more violent than those of women taking pleasure because they were dramatized to simulate the real. She twisted herself like a python, jerked herself in all directions as if she were being burnt or beaten. Powerful muscles gave to her motions a strength which stirred the most bestial desires. Men fought to arrest the contortions, to calm the orgiastic dance she did around them, as if she were pinned to something that was torturing her. Then suddenly, at her own caprice, she would lie still. And this, perversely in the middle of their rising fury, cooled them so that the fulfillment was delayed. She became a mass of quiet flesh. She took to gentle sucking then, as if she were sucking a thumb before falling asleep. Then her lethargy irritated them. They