Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [80]
Then he would close the dress again. He would feel along the legs until he touched the prominence of the garters. ‘Isn’t it too tight for you? Let’s see. Has it left a mark?’ He would lift the skirt and carefully remove the garter. As Bijou lifted her leg to him the men could see the smooth gleaming lines of her thighs above the stocking. Then she covered herself again and the Basque would continue to fondle her. Bijou’s eyes would blur as if she were drunk. But because she was now like the Basque’s wife and in the company of the Basque’s friends, each time he exposed her she fought to cover herself again, hiding away each new secret in the black folds of her dress.
She stretched her legs. She kicked off her shoes. The erotic light that shone from her eyes, a light that her heavy eyelashes could not shade sufficiently, traversed the bodies of the men like fire.
On nights like this she knew the Basque was not intent on giving her pleasure but on torturing her. He would not be satisfied until the faces of his friends were altered, decomposed. He would pull the zipper on the side of her dress and slip in his hand. ‘You are not wearing panties today, Bijou.’ They could see his hand under the dress, caressing the belly and descending toward the legs. Then he would stop and withdraw his hand. They watched his hand coming out of the black dress and closing the zipper again.
Once he asked one of the painters for his warm pipe. The man handed it to him. He slipped the pipe up Bijou’s skirt and laid it against her sex. ‘It’s warm,’ he said. ‘Warm and smooth.’ Bijou moved away from the pipe because she did not want them to know that all the Basque’s fondlings had wetted her. But the pipe came out revealing this, as if it had been dipped in peach juice. The Basque handed it back to its owner, who was thus given a little of Bijou’s sexual odor. Bijou was afraid of what the Basque would invent next. She tightened her legs. The Basque was smoking. The three friends sat around the bed, talking disconnectedly as if the gestures which were taking place had nothing to do with their conversation.
One of them was talking about the woman painter who was filling the galleries with giant flowers in rainbow colors. ‘They’re not flowers,’ said the pipe smoker, ‘they’re vulvas. Anyone can see that. It is an obsession with her. She paints a vulva the size of a full-grown woman. At first it looks like petals, the heart of a flower, then one sees the two uneven lips, the fine center line, the wavelike edge of the lips when they are spread open. What kind of a woman can she be, always exhibiting this giant vulva, suggestively vanishing into a tunnel-like repetition, growing from a large one to a smaller, the shadow of it, as if one were actually entering into it. It makes you feel as though you were standing before those sea plants which open only to suck in whatever food they can catch, open with the same wavering edges.’
At this moment the Basque had an idea. He asked Bijou to bring the shaving brush and razor. Bijou obeyed. She was glad for a chance to move about and shake off the erotic lethargy his hands had woven around her. His mind was on something else now. He took the brush and soap from her and began to mix a lather. He placed a new blade in the razor. Then he said to her, ‘Lie on the bed.’
‘What are you going to do?’ she said. ‘I have no hairs on my legs.’
‘I know you haven’t. Show them.’ She extended them. They were indeed so smooth that they looked as if they had been polished. They shone like some pale