Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [77]
The Basque bided his time. He watched Viviane’s ceremonious ablutions. Today she was swollen from many assaults. No matter how small a sum was placed for her on the table, she had never been known to stop a man from satisfying himself.
The big, rich lips, too much rubbed, were slightly distended, and a slight fever burned her. The Basque was very gentle. He deposited his little gift on the table. He undressed. He promised her a balm, a cotton, a veritable padding. These delicacies put her off her guard. The Basque handled her as if he were a woman. Only a little touch there, to smooth, to quieten the fever. Her skin was as dark as a gypsy’s, very smooth and clean, and even powdered. His fingers were sensitive. He touched her only by accident, brushing by, and laid his sex on her belly like a toy, merely for her to admire. It answered when spoken to. Her belly vibrated to its weight, heaving slightly to feel it there. As he showed no impatience to move it where it would be sheltered, enclosed, she permitted herself the luxury of expanding, abandoning herself.
The gluttony of other men, their egotism, their eagerness to satisfy themselves without appreciation of her, made her hostile. But the Basque was gallant. He compared her skin to satin, her hair to moss, her odor to the scent of precious woods. Then he placed his sex at the opening and said tenderly, ‘Does it hurt? I won’t push it in if it hurts.’
Such delicacy moved Viviane. She said, ‘It hurts just a little, but try.’
He advanced only half an inch at a time. ‘Does it hurt?’ He offered to take it out. Then Viviane had to press him: ‘Just the tip. Try again.’
So the tip slipped in an inch or so, then rested. This gave Viviane plenty of time in which to feel its presence, time that other men did not give her. Between each tiny advance into her, she had leisure to feel how pleasant its presence was between the soft walls of flesh, how well it fitted, neither too tight nor too loose. Again he waited, then advanced a little more. Viviane had time to feel how good it was to be filled, how well suited the female crevice was to hold and to keep. The pleasure of having something to hold there, exchanging warmth, mingling the two moistures. He moved again. The suspense. The awareness of the emptiness when he withdrew – her flesh withered almost immediately. She closed her eyes. His gradual entrance threw radiations all around it, invisible currents warning the deeper regions of her womb that some explosion was coming, something made to fit in the soft-walled tunnel and to be devoured by its hungry depths, where restless nerves lay waiting. Her flesh yielded more and more. He entered further.
‘Does it hurt?’ He took it out. She was disappointed and did not want to confess how she withered inside without his expanding presence.
She was forced to beg, ‘Slip it in again.’ It was sweet. Then he placed it halfway in, where she could feel and yet not clutch at it, where she could not truly hold it. He acted as if he would leave it halfway there for good. She wanted to move toward it and engulf it but she restrained herself. She wanted to scream. The flesh he did not touch was burning at his nearness. At the back of the womb there lay flesh that demanded to be penetrated. It curved inwards, opened to suck. The flesh walls moved like sea anemones, seeking by suction to draw his sex in, but it was only near enough to send currents of excruciating pleasure. He moved again, watching her face. Then he saw her mouth open. She wanted to raise her body now, to take his sex in wholly, but she waited. By this slow teasing he had her on the edge of hysteria. She opened her mouth as if to reveal the openness of her womb, its hunger, and only then did he plunge to the very bottom and felt her contractions.
This is how the Basque found Bijou.
One day when he arrived at the house he was met by a melted Martian who told him that Viviane was busy. Then she offered to console him, almost as if he were