Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [81]
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked again.
He raised her skirt and exposed such a luxuriant tuft of curled hair that the three men whistled. She kept her legs tightly closed, her feet against the Basque’s trousers, where he suddenly felt a swarming sensation, like a hundred ants traveling over his sex.
He asked the three men to hold her. Bijou squirmed at first and then realized it was less dangerous to lie still, for he was carefully shaving her pubic hair, beginning at the edges, where it lay sparse and shining on her velvety belly. The belly came down in a soft curve there. The Basque lathered, then shaved gently, wiping off the hair and soap with a towel. With her legs tightly closed the men could not see anything but the hair, but as the Basque shaved on and reached the center of the triangle, he exposed a mount, a smooth promontory. The feeling of the cold blade there agitated Bijou. She was half-angry, half-stirred, intent on not showing her sex, but the shaving revealed where the smoothness descended into a fine incurving line. It revealed the bud of the opening, the soft folded flesh that enclosed the clitoris, the tip of the more intensely colored lips. She wanted now to move away but she was afraid of being hurt by the blade. The three men held her and bent over her to watch. They thought the Basque would stop there. But he ordered her to part her legs. She shook her feet against him, which only excited him more. He said again, ‘Part your legs. There are some more hairs down there.’ She was forced to open them, and he gently began to shave off the hairs, sparse again, delicately curled, on each side of the vulva.
And now everything was exposed – the long vertically placed mouth, a second mouth, which opened not like the mouth of the face, but which opened only if she chose to push out a little. But Bijou would not push, and they could see just the two lips, closed, barring the way.
The Basque said, ‘Now she looks like the paintings by that woman, doesn’t she?’
But in the paintings, the vulva was open, the lips parted, showing the paler inner layer like the inside of the lips of the mouth. This, Bijou would not show. Once shaved, she had closed her legs again.
The Basque said, ‘I will make you open there.’
He had rinsed the soap off the brush. Now he brushed the vulva lips, up and down, gently. At first, Bijou contracted herself even more. The men’s heads leaned closer. The Basque, holding her legs against his erection, meticulously brushed the vulva and the tip of the clitoris. Then the men saw that Bijou could no longer contract her buttocks and sex, that as the brush moved, her buttocks rolled a little forward, the lips of the vulva parted, at first imperceptibly. The nakedness exposed every nuance of her motion. Now the lips parted and exposed a second aura, of a paler shade, then a third, and now Bijou was pushing, pushing as if she would open. Her belly moved in accord, swelling and falling. The Basque leaned more firmly against her writhing legs.
‘Stop,’ begged Bijou, ‘stop.’ The men could see the moisture oozing from her. Then the Basque stopped, not wanting to give her pleasure, reserving that for himself later.
Bijou was eager to make a distinction between her life in the whorehouse and her life as the companion and model of an artist. The Basque was intent on making only one little distinction, merely in the matter of actual possession. But he liked to expose her and delight his visitors with the sight of her. He made them assist at her bath. They liked to watch how her breasts floated in the water, how the swelling of her belly could make the water heave, how she raised herself to pass soap between her legs. They liked to dry her wet body. But if any of them tried to see Bijou privately, and possess her, then the Basque became a demon