Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [95]
The old woman was gluttonous but patient. The boy was exhausted with pleasure, almost swooning over her head, and the blood was coming to her face. Still she vigorously chewed and licked, until the boy began to tremble. She had to put both her arms around him or he might have shaken himself out of her mouth. He began to utter moaning sounds like some cooing bird. She went at him more feverishly, and then it happened. The boy almost fell asleep on her shoulder from exhaustion, and she had to unclasp him gently with her big hands. He smiled wanly and ran out.
*
While he lay there Pierre remembered a woman he had known who was already fifty when he was only seventeen. She was a friend of his mother’s. She was eccentric and willful and still dressed in fashions of ten years earlier, which meant wearing an endless number of petticoats, tight corsets, long and heavily laced panties, and full-skirted dresses that were cut very low over her breasts so Pierre could see the little valley between them, a black shadowy line vanishing inside the lace and frills.
She was a handsome woman, with luxuriant reddish hair and a fine down over her skin. Her ears were small and delicate, her hands plump. Her mouth was particularly attractive – very red, naturally so, with great fullness and width, and with small, even teeth, which she always showed, as if she were about to bite into something.
She came to visit his mother one very rainy day when the servants were out. She shook her filmy umbrella, took off her important hat, and unloosened her veil. As she stood there, her long dress all wet, she began to sneeze. Pierre’s mother was already in bed with the grippe. She called out from her room, ‘Darling, do take off your clothes if they are wet, and Pierre will dry them for you before the fire. There is a screen in the parlor. You can undress there and Pierre will give you a kimono of mine.’
Pierre hustled about with evident eagerness. He got the kimono from his mother and he opened the screen. In the parlor there was a beautiful fire burning brightly in the fireplace. The room was warm and smelled of narcissus, which filled every vase, of the wood fire, of the visitor’s sandalwood perfume.
From behind the screen she handed her dress to Pierre. It was still warm and scented from her body. He held it in his arms and smelled it, intoxicated, before laying it over a chair before the fire. Then she handed him a large, very full petticoat, the hem extremely wet and covered with mud. He sniffed at this with pleasure before placing it, too, before the fire.
Meanwhile she talked and smiled and laughed unconcernedly, not noticing his excitement. She threw him another petticoat, a lighter one, warm and musky. Then, with a shy laugh, she threw him her long, lace-edged panties. Suddenly Pierre realized that they were not wet, that this was unnecessary, that she had thrown them at him because she wanted to and that now she stood nearly naked behind the screen, knowing he was aware of her body.
As she looked at him over the top of the screen, he could see her full, rounded shoulders, soft and gleaming, like cushions. She laughed and called out to him, ‘Give me the kimono now.’
‘Aren’t your stockings wet, too?’ said Pierre.
‘Yes, indeed they are. I am taking them off.’ She leaned down. He could imagine her snapping loose the garters and unrolling the stockings. He wondered what her legs looked like, her feet. He could contain himself no longer and gave the screen a pull.
It fell down before her and exposed her in the pose he had pictured. She was leaning down and unrolling her black stockings. Her whole body had the golden color and delicate texture of her face. It was long-waisted, full-breasted, ample, but firm.