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Subject: The Lovers of Roissy, (or, The Story of O)

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 23:39:23 GMT

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Found this on the web....  The Lovers of Roissy  [The Story of O]



by Pauline Reage 







	Her lover one day takes O for a walk in a section of the city

where they never go--the Montsouris Park,the Monceau Park. After they

have taken a stroll in the park and have sat together side by side on

the edge of a lawn, they notice, at one corner of the park, at an

inter- section where there are never any taxis, a car which, because

of its meter, resembles a taxi.

   "Get in," he says.   She gets in. It is autumn, and coming up to

dusk. She is dressed as she always is: high heels, a suit with a

pleated skirt, a silk blouse and no hat. But long gloves which come up

over the sleeves of her jacket, and in her leather handbag she has her

identification papers, her compact, and her lipstick.

   The taxi moves off slowly, the man still not having said a word to

the driver. But he pulls down the shades of the windows on both sides

of the car, and the shade on the back window. She has taken off her

gloves, thinking he wants to kiss her or that he wants her to caress

him. But instead he says:

   "Your bag's in your way; let me have it." 

   She gives it to him. He puts it out of her reach and  adds:

    "You also have on too many clothes. Unfasten your  stockings and

roll them down to above your knees. Here  are some garters."

    By now the taxi has picked up speed. and she has some  trouble

managing it; she's also afraid the driver may turn  around. Finally,

though, the stockings are rolled down,  and she's embarrassed to feel

her legs naked and free beneath her silk slip. Besides, the loose

garter-belt suspenders are slipping back and forth.

    "Unfasten your garter belt," he says, "and take off your

panties."

    That's easy enough, all she has to do is slip her hands  behind

her back and raise herself slightly. she takes the  garter belt and

panties from her, opens her bag and puts them in, then says:

    "You shouldn't sit on your slip and skirt. Pull them up behind you

and sit directly on the seat."

   The seat is made of some sort of imitation leather which is

slippery and cold: it's quite an extraordinary sensation to feel it

sticking to your thighs. Then he says:

    "Now put your gloves back on."   The taxi is still moving along at

a good clip, and she doesn't dare ask why Rene just sits there without

moving or saying another word, nor can she guess what all this means

to him-having her there motionless, silent, so stripped and exposed,

so thoroughly gloved, in a black car going God knows where. lie hasn't

told her what to do or what not to do, but she's afraid either to

cross her legs or press them together. She sits with gloved hands

braced on either side of her seat.

  "Here we are," he says suddenly. Here we are: the taxi stops on a

lovely avenue, beneath a tree-they are plane  trees-in front of some

sort of small private home which can be seen nestled between the

courtyard and the garden, the type of small private dwelling one finds

along the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The street lamps are some distance

away, and it is still fairly dark inside the car. Outside it is

raining.

  "Don't move," Rene says. "Sit perfectly still."

  His hand reaches for the collar of her blouse, unties the bow, then

unbuttons the blouse. She leans forward slightly, thinking he wants to

fondle her breasts. No. He is merely groping for the shoulder straps

of her brassiere, which he snips with a small penknife. Then he takes

it off. Now, beneath her blouse, which he has buttoned back up, her

breasts are naked and free, as is the rest of her body, from waist to

knee.

   "Listen," he says. "Now you're ready. This is where I leave you.

You're to get out and go ring the doorbell. Follow whoever opens the

door for you, and do whatever you're told. If you hesitate about going

in, they'll come and take you in. If you don't obey immediately,

they'll force you to. Your bag? No, you have no further need for your

bag. You're merely the girl Iām furnishing. Yes, Of course I'll be

there. Now run along:."





     Another version of the same beginning was simpler and more

direct: the young O undressed in the same way, was given by her lover

and an unknown friend. The stranger was driving, the lover was seated

next to the young woman, and it was the unknown friend who explained

to the young woman that her lover had been entrusted with the task of

getting her ready, that he was going to tie her hands behind her back,

unfasten her stockings and roll them down, remove her garter belt, her

panties, and her brassiere, and blindfold her. That she  would then be

turned over to the chateau, where in due course she would be

instructed as to what she should do. And, in fact, as soon as she had

been thus undressed and bound, they helped her to alight from the car

after a trip that lasted half an hour, guided her up a few steps and,

with her blindfold still on, through one or two doors. Then, when her

blindfold was removed, she found herself standing alone in a dark

r6om, where they left her for half an hour, or an hour, or two hours,

I can't be sure, but it seemed forever. Then, when at last the door

was opened and the light turned on, you could see that she had been

waiting in a very conventional, comfortable yet distinctive room:

there was a thick rug on the floor, but not a stick of furniture, and

all four walls were lined with closets. The door had been opened by

two women, two young and beautiful women dressed in the garb of pretty

eighteenth-century chambermaids: full skirts made out of some light

material, which were long enough to conceal their feet; tight bodices,

laced or hooked in front, which sharply accentuated the bust line;

lace frills around the neck; half-length sleeves. They were wearing

eye shadow and lipstick. Both wore a close-fitting collar and had

tight bracelets on their wrists.

   I know it was at this point that they freed O's hands, which were

still tied behind her back, and told her to get undressed, they were

going to bathe her and make her up.  They proceeded to strip her till

she hadn't a stitch of clothing left, then put her clothes away neatly

in one of the closets. She was not allowed to bathe herself, and they

did her hair as at the hairdresser's, making her sit in one of those

large chairs which tilts back when they wash your hair and straightens

back up after the hair has been set and you're ready for the dryer.

That always takes at least an hour. Actually it took more than an

hour, but she was seated on this chair, naked, and they kept her from

either crossing her legs or bringing them together. And since the wall

in front of her was covered from floor to ceiling with a large mirror,

which was unbroken by any shelving, she could see herself, thus open,

each time her gaze strayed to the mirror.

   When she was properly made up and prepared-- her eyelids penciled

lightly; her lips bright red; the tip and halo of her breasts

highlighted with pink; the edges of her nether lips rouged; her

armpits and pubis generously per- fumed, and perfume also applied to

the furrow between her thighs, the furrow beneath her breasts, and to

the hollows of her hands-she was led into a room where a three-sided

mirror, and another mirror behind, enabled her to examine herself

closely. She was told to sit down on the ottoman, which was set

between the mirrors, and wait. The ottoman was covered with black fur,

which pricked her slightly; the rug was black, the walls red. She was

wearing red mules. Set in one of the walls of the small bedroom was a

large window, which looked out onto a lovely, dark park. The rain had

stopped, the trees were swaying in the wind, the moon raced high among

the clouds.

    I have no idea how long she remained in the red bedroom, or

whether she was really alone, as she surmised,  or whether someone was

watching her through a peephole camouflaged in the wall. All know is

that when the two  women returned, one was carrying a dressmaker's

tape  measure and the other a basket. With them came a man  dressed in

a long purple robe, the sleeves of which were  gathered at the wrists

and full at the shoulders. When he  walked the robe flared open, from

the waist down. One could see that beneath his robe he had on some

sort of  tights which covered his legs and thighs but left the sex

exposed. It was the sex that O saw first, when he took his first step,

then the whip, made of leather thongs, which  lie had stuck in his

belt. Then she saw that the man was masked by a black hood-which

concealed even his eyes  behind a network of black gauze and, finally,

that he was also wearing fine black kid gloves.

    Using the familiar tu form of address, he told her not to move and

ordered the women to hurry. The woman with  the tape then took the

measurements of O's neck and  wrists. Though on the small side, her

measurements were in no way out of the ordinary, and it was easy

enough to find the right-sized collar and bracelets, in the basket the

other woman was carrying. Both collar and bracelets were made of

several layers of leather (each layer being fairly thin, so that the

total was no more than the thickness of a finger). They had clasps,

which functioned automatically like a padlock when it closes, and they

could be opened only by means of a small key. Imbedded in the layers

of leather, directly opposite the lock, was a snugly fitting metal

ring, which allowed one to get a grip on the bracelet, if one wanted

to attach it, for both collar and bracelets fit the arms and neck so

snugly although not so tight as to be the least painful-that it was

impossible to slip any bond inside.

   So they fastened the collar and bracelets to her neck and wrists,

and the man told her to get up. He took her place on the fur ottoman,

called her over till she was touching his knees, slipped his gloved

hand between her thighs and over her breasts, and explained to her

that she would be presented that same evening, after she had dined

alone.

   She did in fact dine by herself, still naked, in a sort of little

cabin where an invisible hand passed the dishes to her through a small

window in the door. Finally, when dinner was over, the two women came

for her. In the bed- room, they fastened the two bracelet rings

together be- hind her back. They attached a long red cape to the ring

of her collar and draped it over her shoulders. It covered her

completely, but opened when she walked, since, with her hands behind

her back, she had no way of keeping it closed. One woman preceded her,

opening the doors, and the other followed, closing them behind her.

They crossed a vestibule, two drawing rooms, and went into the

library, where four men were having coffee. They were wearing the same

long robes as the first, but no masks. And yet O did not have time to

see their faces or ascertain whether her lover was among them (he

was), for one of the men shone a light in her eyes and blinded her.

Everyone remained stock still, the two women flanking her and the men

in front, studying her. Then the light went out; the women left. But O

was blindfolded again. Then they made her walk forward-she stumbled

slightly as she went-until she felt that she was standing in front of

the fire around which the four men were seated: she could feel the

heat, and in the silence she could hear the quiet crackling of the

burning logs. She was facing the fire. Two hands lifted her cape, two

others-after having checked to see that her bracelets were

attached--descended the length of her back and buttocks. The hands

were not gloved, and one of them penetrated her in both places at

once, so abruptly that she cried out. Someone laughed. Someone else

said:

   "Turn her around, so we can see the breasts and the belly."   They

turned her around, and the heat of the fire was against her back. A

hand seized one of her breasts, a mouth fastened on the tip of the

other. But suddenly she lost her balance and fell backward (supported

by whose arms?), while they opened her legs and gently spread her

lips. Hair grazed the insides of her thighs. She heard them saying

that they would have to make her kneel down. This they did. She was

extremely uncomfortable in this position, especially because they

forbade her to bring her knees together and because her arms pinioned

behind her forced her to lean forward. Then they let her rock back a

bit, so that she was half-sitting on her heels, as nuns are wont to

do.



  "You've never tied her up?

  "No, never."

  "And never whipped her?"

  "No, never whipped her either. But as a matter of fact..."

  It was her lover speaking.

   "As a matter of fact," the other voice went on, "if you do tie her

up from time to time, or whip her just a little, and she begins to

like it, that's no good either. You have to get past the pleasure

stage, until you

reach the stage of tears."

  Then they made O get up and were on the verge of untying her,

probably in order to attach her to some pole or wall, when someone

protested that he wanted to take her first, right there on the spot.

So they made her kneel down again, this time with her bust on an

ottoman, her hands still tied behind her, with her hips higher than

her torso. Then one of the men, holding her with both his hands on her

hips, plunged into her belly. He yielded to a second. The third wanted

to force his way into the narrower passage and, driving hard, made her

scream. When he let her go, sobbing and befouled by tears beneath her

blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only to feel someone's knees

against her face, and she realized that her mouth was

not to be spared. Finally they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry

finery, lying on her back in front of the fire. She could hear glasses

being filled and the sound of the men drinking, and the scraping of

chairs. They put some more wood on the fire. All of a sudden they

removed her blindfold. The large room, the walls of which were lined

with book-cases, was dimly lit by a single wall lamp and by the light

of the fire, which was beginning to burn more brightly. Two of the men

were standing and smoking. Another was

seated, a riding crop on his knees, and the one leaning over her

fondling her breast was her lover. All four of them had taken her, and

she had not been able to distinguish him from the others.

  They explained to her that this was how it would always be, as long

as she was in the chateau, that she would see the faces of those who

violated or tormented her, but never at night, and she would never

know which ones had been responsible for the worst. The same would be

true when she was whipped, except that they wanted her to see herself

being whipped, and so this once she would not be blindfolded. They, on

the other hand, would don their masks, and she would no longer be able

to tell them apart.

   Her lover had helped her to her feet, still wrapped in her red

cape, made her sit down on the arm of an easy chair near the fire, so

that she could hear what they had to tell her and see what they wanted

to show her. Her hands were still behind her back. They showed her the

riding crop, which was long, black, and delicate, made of thin bamboo

encased in leather, the kind one sees in the windows of better riding

equipment shops; the leather whip, which the first man she had seen

had been carrying in his belt, was long and consisted of six lashes

knotted at the end. There was a third whip of fairly thin cords, each

with several knots at the end: the cords were quite stiff, as though

they had been soaked in water, which in fact they had, as O

discovered, for they caressed her belly with them and nudged open her

thighs, so that she could feel how stiff and damp the cords were

against the tender, inner skin. Then there were the keys and the steel

chains on the console table. Along one entire wall of the library,

halfway between floor and ceiling, ran a gallery which was supported

by two columns. A hook was imbedded in one of them, just high enough

for a man standing on tiptoe, with his arms stretched above his head,

to reach. They told O, whose lover had taken her in his arms, with one

hand supporting her shoulders, and the other in the furrow of her

loins, which burned so she could hardly bear it, they told her that

her hands would be untied, but merely so that they could be fastened

anew, a short while later, to the pole, using these same bracelets and

one of the steel chains. They said that, with the exception of her

hands, which would be held just above her head, she would thus be able

to move and see the blows coming: that in principle she would be

whipped only on the thighs and buttocks, in other words between her

waist and knees, in the same region which had been prepared in the car

that had brought her here, when she had been made to sit naked on the

seat; but that in all likelihood one of the four men present would

want to mark her thighs with the riding crop, which makes lovely long

deep welts which last a long time. She would not have to endure all

this at once; there would be ample time for her to scream, to

struggle, and to cry. They would grant her some respite, but as soon

as she had caught her breath they would start in again, judging the

results not from her screams or tears but from the size and color of

the welts they had raised. They remarked to her that this method of

judging the effectiveness of the whip--besides being equitable--also

made it pointless for the victims to exaggerate their suffering in an

effort to arouse pity, and thus enabled them to resort to the same

measures beyond the chateau wails, outdoors in the park-as was often

done-or in any ordinary apartment or hotel room, assuming a gag was

used (such as the one they produced and

showed her there on the spot), for the gag stifles all screams and

eliminates all but the most violent moans, while allowing tears to

flow without restraint.

  There was no question of using it that night. On the contrary, they

wanted to hear her scream; and the sooner the better. The pride she

mustered to resist and remain silent did not long endure: they even

heard her beg them to untie her, to stop for a second, Just for a

second. So frantically did she writhe, trying to escape the bite of

the lashes, that she turned almost completely around, on the near side

of the pole, for the chain which held her was long and, although quite

solid, was fairly slack. As a result, her belly and the front of her

thighs were almost as marked as her backside. They made up their

minds, after in fact having stopped for a moment, to begin again only

after a rope had been attached first to her waist, then to the pole.

Since they tied her tightly, to keep her waist snug to the pole, her

torso was forced slightly to one side, and this in turn caused her

buttocks to protrude in the opposite direction. From then on the blows

landed on their tar-get, unless aimed deliberately elsewhere. Given

the way her lover had handed her over, had delivered her into this

situation, O might have assumed that to beg him for mercy would have

been the surest method for making him redouble his cruelty, so great

was his pleasure in extracting, or having the others extract, from her

this unquestionable proof of his power. And indeed he was the first to

point out that the leather whip, the first they had used on her, left

almost no marks (in contrast to the whip made of water-soaked cords,

which marked almost upon contact, and the riding crop, which raised

immediate welts), and thus allowed them to prolong the agony and

follow their fancies in starting and stopping. He asked them to use

only the leather whip.

  Meanwhile, the man who liked women only for what they had in common

with men, seduced by the available Jbehind which was straining at the

bonds knotted just below the waist, a behind made all the more

enticing by its efforts to dodge the blows, called for an intermission

in order to take advantage of it. He spread the two parts, which

burned beneath his hands, and penetrated-not without some

difficulty-remarking as he did that the passage would have to be

rendered more easily accessible. They all agreed that this could, and

would, be done.

   When they untied the young woman, she staggered and almost fainted,

draped in her red cape. Before returning her to the cell she was to

occupy,  they sat her down in an armchair near the fire and outlined

for her the rules and regulations she was to follow during her stay in

the chateau and later in her daily life after she had left it (which

did not mean regaining her freedom, however). Then they rang. The two

young women who had first received her came in, bearing the clothes

she was to wear during her stay and tokens by which those who had been

hosts at the chateau before her arrival and those who would be after

she had left, might recognize her. Her outfit was similar to theirs: a

long dress with a full skirt, worn over a sturdy whalebone bodice

gathered tightly at the waist, and over a stiffly starched linen

petticoat. The low-cut neck scarcely concealed the breasts which,

raised by the constricting bodice, were only lightly veiled by the

network of lace. The petticoat was white, as was the lace, and the

dress and bodice were a sea-green satin. When O was dressed and

resettled in her chair beside the fire, her pallor accentuated by the

color

of the dress, the two young women, who had not uttered a word,

prepared to leave. One of the four friends seized one of them as she

passed, made a sign for the other to wait, and brought the girl he had

stopped back toward 0. He turned her around and, holding her by the

waist with one hand, lifted her skirt with the other, in order to

demonstrate to 0, he said, the practical advantages of. the costume

and show how well designed it was. He added that all one needed to

keep the skirts raised was a simple belt, which made everything that

lay beneath readily available. In fact, they often had the girls go

about in the chateau or the park either like this, or with their

skirts tucked up in front, waist high. They had the young woman show O

how she would have to keep her skirt: rolled up several turns (like a

lock of hair rolled in a curler) and secured tightly by a belt, either

directly in front, to expose the belly, or in the middle of the back,

to leave the buttocks free. In either case, skirt and petticoat fell

diagonally away in large, cascading folds of intermingled material.

Like O, the young woman's backside bore fresh welts from the riding

crop. She left the room.

  Here is the speech they then delivered to )O:

  "You are here to serve your masters. During the day, you will

perform whatever domestic duties are assigned you, such as sweeping,

putting back the books, arranging flowers, or waiting on table.

Nothing more difficult than that. Put at the first word or sign from

anyone you will drop whatever you are doing and ready yourself for

what - is really your one and only duty: to lend yourself. Your hands

are not your own, nor are your breasts, nor, most especially, any of

your bodily orifices, which we may explore or penetrate at will. You

will remember at all times--or as constantly as possible--that you

have lost all right to privacy or concealment, and as a reminder of

this fact, in our presence you will never close your lips completely,

or cross your legs, or press your knees together (you may recall you

were forbidden to do this the minute you arrived). This will serve as

a constant reminder, to you as well as to us, that your mouth, your

belly, and your backside are open to us. You will never touch your

breasts in our presence: the bodice raises them toward us, that they

may be ours. During the day you will therefore be dressed, and if

anyone should order you to lift your skirt, you will lift it; if

anyone desires to use you in any manner whatsoever, he will use you,

unmasked, but with this one reservation: the whip. The whip will be

used only between dusk and dawn. But besides the whipping you receive

from whomever may want to whip you, you will also be flogged in the

evening, as punishment for any in-fractions of the rules committed

during the day: for having been slow to oblige, for having raised your

eyes and looked at the person addressing you or taking you-you must

never look any of us in the face. If the costume we wear in the

evening-the one I am now wearing-leaves our sex exposed, it Is not for

the

sake of convenience, for it would be just as convenient the other way,

but

for the sake of insolence, so that your eyes will be directed there

upon it

and nowhere else, so that you may learn that there resides your

master, for

whom, above all else, your lips are intended. During the day, when we

are

dressed in normal attire and you are clothed as you are now, the same

rules

will apply, except that when requested you will open your clothes, and

then

close them again when we have finished with you. Another thing: at

night you

will have only your lips with which to honor us:-and your widespread

thighs-

for your hands will be tied behind your back and you will be naked, as

you

were a short while ago. You will be blindfolded only to be maltreated

and,

now that you have seen how you are whipped, to be flogged. And yes, by

the

way: while it is perfectly all right for you to grow accustomed to

being

whipped-since you are going to be every day throughout your stay-this

is

less for our pleasure than for your enlightenment. How true this is

may be

shown by the fact that on those nights when no one desires you, you

will

wait until the valet whose job it is comes to your solitary cell and

administers what you are due to receive but we are not in the mood to

mete

out. Actually, both this flogging and the chain-- which when attached

to the

ring of your collar keeps you more or less closely confined to your

bed

several hours a day--are intended less to make you suffer, scream, or

shed

tears than to make you feel, through this suffering, that you are not

free

but fettered, and to teach you that you are totally dedicated to

something

outside yourself. When you leave here, you will be wearing on your

third

finger an iron ring, which will identify you. By then you will have

learned

to obey those who wear the same insignia, and when they see it they

will

know that beneath your skirt you are constantly naked, however comely

or

com-monplace your clothes may be, and that this nakedness is for them.

Should anyone find you in the least intractable, he will return you

here.

Now you will be shown to your cell."

   While they were talking to O, the two women who had come to dress

her had

been standing on either side of the stake where she had been whipped,

without touching it, as though it terrified them, or as though they

bad been

forbidden to touch it (which was more likely); when the man had

finished,

they came over to O, who realized that she was supposed to get up and

follow

them. She there-fore got up, gathering her skirts in her arms to keep

from

tripping, for she was not used to long dresses and did not feel steady

on

the mules with thick soles and very high heels which only a thick

satin

strap, of the same green as her dress, kept from slipping off her feet

As

she bent down she turned her head. The women were waiting, the men

were no

longer looking at her. Her lover, seated on the floor leaning against

the

ottoman over which she had been thrown at the beginning of the

evening, with

his knees raised and his elbows on his knees, was toying with the

leather

whip. As she took her first step to join the women, her skirt grazed

him. He

raised his head and smiled, calling her by her name, and he too stood

up.

Softly he caressed her hair, smoothed her eyebrows with the tip of his

finger, and softly kissed her on the lips. In a loud voice, he told

her that

he loved her. 0, trembling, was terrified to notice that she answered

"I

love you,,' and that it was true. He pulled her against him and said:

"Darling, sweetheart," kissed her on the neck and the curve of the

cheek;

she had let her head fall on his shoul-der, which was covered by the

purple

robe. Very softly this time he repeated to her that he loved her, and

very

softly added: "You're going to kneel down, caress me, and kiss me,"

and he

pushed her away, signaling to the women to move aside so he could lean

back

against the console. He was tall, but the table was not very high and

his

long legs, sheathed in the same purple as his robe, were bent. The

open robe

stiffened from beneath like drapes, and the top of the console table

slightly raised his heavy sex and the light fleece above it. The three

men

approached. O knelt down on the rug, her green dress in a corolla

around her.

Her bodice squeezed her; her breasts, whose nipples were visible, were

at

the level of her lover's knees. "A little more light," said one of the

men.

As they were adjusting

the lamp so that the beam of light would fall directly on his sex and

on his

mistress's face, which was almost touching it, and on her hands which

were

caressing him from below, Rene suddenly ordered: "Say it again: I love

you."

O repeated "I love you," with such delight that her lips hardly dared

brush

the tip of his sex, which was still protected by its sheath of soft

flesh.

The three men, who were smoking, commented on her ges-tures, on the

movement of her mouth closed and locked on the sex she had seized, as

it

worked its way up and down, on the way tears streamed down her ravaged

face

each time the swollen member struck the back of her throat and made

her gag,

depressing her tongue and caus-ing her to feel nauseous. It was this

same

mouth which, half gagging on the hardened flesh which filled it,

mur-mured

again: "I love you." The two women had taken up positions to the right

and

left of Rene, who had one arm around each of their shoulders. O could

hear

the com-ments made by those present, but through their words she

strained

to hear her lover's moans, caressing him carefully, slowly, and with

infinite respect, the way she knew pleased him. O felt that her mouth

was

beautiful, since her lover condescended to thrust himself into it,

since he

deigned publicly to offer caresses to it, since, finally, he deigned

to

discharge in it. She received it as a god is received, she heard him

cry

out, heard the others laugh, and when she had received it she fell,

her face

against the floor. The two women picked her up, and this time they led

her

away.





  The mules banged on the red tiles of the hallway, where doors

succeeded

doors, discreet and clean, with tiny locks,

like the doors of the rooms in big hotels. O was working up the

courage to

ask whether each of these rooms was occupied, and by whom, when one of

her

companions, whose voice she had not yet heard, said to her:

  "You're in the red wing, and your valet's name is Pierre.

  "What valet?" said 0, struck by the gentleness of the Voice. "And

what's

your name?"

  "Andree."

  "-Mine is Jeanne," said the second.

  "The valet is the one who has the keys," the first one went on, "the

one

who will chain and unchain you, who will whip you when you are to be

punished and when the others have no time for you.

  "I was In the red wing last year," Jeanne said. "Pierre was there

already.

He often came in at night. The valets have the keys and the right to

use any

of us in the rooms of their section."

   O was about to ask what kind of a person this Pierre was, but she

did not

have time to. As they turned a corner of the hallway, they made her

halt

before a door similar in all respects to the others: on a bench

between this

and the following door she noticed a sort of thick-set, ruddy peasant,

whose

head was practically clean shaved, with small black eyes set deep in

his

skull and rolls of flesh on his neck. He was dressed like the valet in

some

operetta: a shirt whose lace frills peeked out from beneath his black

vest,

which itself was covered by a red jacket of the kind called a spencer

. He

had black breeches, white stockings, and patent-leather pumps. He too

was

carrying a leather-thonged whip in his belt. His hands were covered

with

red hair. He took a master key from his vest pocket, opened the door,

ushered the three women in, and said:

  "I'm locking the door. Ring when you've finished."

  The cell was quite small, and actually consisted of two -rooms. With

the

hall door closed, they found themselves in an antechamber which opened

into

the cell proper; in this same wall, inside the room itself, was

another door

which opened into the bathroom. Opposite the doors there was the

window.

Against the left wall, between the doors and the window, stood the

head of a

large square bed, which was very low and covered with furs. There was

no

other furniture, no mirror. The walls were bright red, and the rug

black.

Andr6e pointed out to O that the bed was less a bed than a mattressed

platform covered with a black, long-haired imitation fur material. The

pillow, hard and flat like the mattress, was of the same reversible

ma-

terial. The only object on any of the walls was a thick, gleaming

steel ring

which was set at about the same height above the bed as the hook in

the

stake had been above the floor of the library; from it descended a

long

steel chain directly onto the bed, its links forming a little pile,

the

other end being attached at arm's length to a pad-locked hook, like a

drapery pulled back and held in place by a curtain loop.

   We have to give you your bath," Jeanne said. "I'll unfasten your

dress."

   The only peculiar features of the bathroom were the Turkish-type

toilet,

located in the corner nearest the door, and the fact that every inch

of wall

space was covered with mirrors. Jeanne and Andree did not allow O to

go in

until she was naked. They put her dress away in the closet next to the

washbasin, where her mules and red cape already were, and remained

with her,

so that when she had to squat down over the porcelain pedestal she

found

herself surrounded by a whole host of reflec-tions, as exposed as in

the

library when unknown hands had taken her by force.



   "Wait until it's Pierre," said Jeanne, "and you'll see."

   "Why Pierre?"

  "When he comes to chain you, he may make you squat."

   O felt herself turn pale. "But why?" she said.

  "Because you have to," Jeanne replied. "But you're lucky."

  "Why lucky?"

  "Was it your lover who brought you here?"

  "Yes," O said.

  "They'll be a lot harder with you."

  "I don't understand

  "You will very soon. I'm ringing for Pierre. We'll come and get you

tomorrow morning."

  Andr6e smiled as she left and Jeanne, before following her, caressed

the

tips of O's breasts. O, completely taken aback, remained standing at

the

foot of the bed. With the exception of the collar and leather

bracelets,

which the water had stiffened when she had bathed and were tighter

than

before, O was naked.

   "Behold the lovely lady," said the valet as he entered. And he

seized

both her hands. He slipped one of the bracelet hooks into the other,

so that

her wrists were tightly joined, then clipped both these hooks to the

ring of

the necklace. Thus her hands were joined as in an atti-tude of prayer,

at

the level of her neck. All that remained to be done was to chain her

to the

wall with the chain that was lying on the bed and was attached to the

ring

above. He unfastened the hook by which the other end was attached and

pulled

on it in order to shorten it. O was forced to move to the head of the

bed,

where he made her lie down. The chain clicked in the ring, and was so

tight

that the young woman could do no more than move from one side of the

bed to

the other or stand up on either side of the headboard. Since the chain

tended to shorten the collar, that is, pull it backward, and her hands

tended to pull it forward, an equilibrium was established, with her

joined

hands lying on her left shoulder and her head bending in that

direction as

well. The valet pulled the black cover up over 0, but not before he

had

lifted her legs for a moment and pushed them back toward her chest, to

examine the cleft between her thighs. He did not touch her further,

did not

say a word, turned out the light, which was a bracket lamp on the wall

between the two doors, and went out.

  Lying on her left side, alone in the darkness and silence, hot

beneath her

two layers of fur, of necessity motionless, o tried to figure out why

there

was so much sweetness mingled with the terror in her, or why her

terror

seemed itself so sweet. She realized that one of the things that most

distressed her was the fact that she had been de-prived of the use of

her

hands; not that her hands could have defended her (and did she really

want

to defend herself?), but had they been free they would at least have

made

the gesture, have made an attempt to repel the hands which seized her,

the

flesh which pierced her, to protect her loins from the whip. 0's hands

had

been taken away from her; her body beneath the fur was inaccessible to

her.

How strange it was not to be able to touch one's own knees, or the

hollow of

one's own belly. The lips between her legs, her burning lips were

forbidden

her, and perhaps they were burning because she knew they were open to

the

first comer: to the valet Pierre, if he cared to enter. She was

surprised

that the whipping she had received had left her so untroubled, so

calm,

whereas the thought that she would probably. never know which of the

four

men had twice taken her from behind, and whether it was the same man

both

times, and whether it had been her lover, quite distressed her. She

turned

over slightly on her stomach, recalling that her lover loved the

 furrow between her buttocks which, except for this eve-

 ning (if it had been he), he had never penetrated. She

 hoped - it had been he; would she ask him? Ah, never!

 Again she saw the hand which in the car had taken her

 garter belt and panties, and had stretched the garters so

 that she could roll her stockings down to above her knees.

 `me memory was so vivid that she forgot her hands were

 bound and made the chain grate. And why, if she took

 the memory of the torture she had gone through so lightly,

 why did the very idea, the very word or sight of a whip

 make her heart beat wildly and her eyes close with terror? She did

not stop

to consider whether it was only terror; she was overwhelmed with

panic: they

would pull on her chain and haul her to her feet on the bed, and they

would

whip her, with her belly glued to the wall they would whip her, whip

her,

the word kept turning in her head, Pierre would whip her, Jeanne had

said he

would. You're lucky, Jeanne had repeated, they'll be a lot harder on

you.

What had she meant by that? She no longer felt anything but the

collar, the

bracelets, and the chain; her body was drifting away. She fell asleep.





  In the wee hours of the night, just before dawn when it is darkest

and

coldest, Pierre reappeared. He turned on the light in the bathroom,

leaving

the door open so that a square of light fell on the middle of the bed,

on

the spot where 0's slender body was curled, making a small mound

beneath the

cover, which silently he pulled back. Since O was sleeping on her left

side,

her face to the window and her legs slightly drawn up, the view she

offered

him was that of her white flanks, which seemed even whiter against the

black

fur. He took the pillow from beneath her head and said politely:

   "`Would you please stand up," and when she was on her knees, a

position

she managed by pulling herself up with the' chain, he gave her a hand,

taking her by the elbows so that she could stand up straight with her

face

to the wall. The square of light on the bed, which was faint, since

the bed

was black, illuminated her body, but not his gestures. She guessed,

but

could not see, that he was un-doing the chain to rehook it to another

link,

so that it would remain taut, and she could feel it growing tighter.

Her

feet, which were bare, were solidly planted on the bed. Nor was she

able to

see that he had in his belt not the leather whip but the black riding

crop

similar to the one they had hit her with while she was tied to the

stake,

but they had only used it twice on her and had not hit her hard. She

felt

Pierre's left hand on her waist, the gave a little as, to steady

himself, he

put his right foot on it. At the same time as she heard a whistling

noise in

the semidarkness O felt a terrible burning across her back, and she

screamed.

Pierre fl9gged her with all his might. He did not wait for her screams

to

subside, but struck her again four times, being careful each time to

lash

her above or below the preceding spot, so that the traces would be all

the

clearer. Even after he had stopped she went on screaming, and the

tears

streamed down into her open mouth.

  "Please be good enough to turn around," he said, and since she, who

was

completely distracted, failed to obey, he took her by the hips without

letting go of his riding crop, the handle of which brushed against her

waist.

When she was facing him, he moved back slightly and lowered his crop

on the

front of her thighs as hard as he could. The whole thing had lasted

five

minutes. When he had left, after having turned out the light and

closed the

bathroom door, O was left moaning in the darkness, swaying back and

forth

along the wall at the end of her chain. She tried to stop moaning and

to

immobilize herself against the wall, whose gleaming percale was cool

on her

tortured flesh, as day slowly began to break. The tall window toward

which

she was turned, for she was leaning on one hip, was facing the east.

It

extended. from floor to ceiling and, except for the drapes-of the same

red

material as that on the wall-which graced it on either side and split

into

stiff folds below the curtain loops which held it, had no curtains. 0

watched the slow birth of pale dawn, trailing its mist along the

clusters of

asters outside at the foot of her window, until finally a poplar tree

appeared. The yellow leaves from time to time fell in swirls, although

there

was no wind. In front of the window, beyond the bed of purple asters,

there

was a lawn, at the end of which was a pathway. It was broad daylight

by now,

and O had not moved for a long time. A gardener appeared on the path,

pushing a wheelbarrow. The iron wheel could be heard squeaking over

the

gravel. If he had come over to rake the leaves that had fallen in

among the

asters, the window was so tall and the room so small and bright that

he

would have seen O chained and naked, and the marks of the riding crop

on her

thighs. The cuts were swollen, and had formed narrow' swellings much

darker

in color than the red of the walls. Where was her lover sleeping, the

way he

loved to sleep on quiet mornings? In what room, in what bed? Was he

aware of

the pain, the tortures to which he had delivered her? Was he the one

who had

decided what they would be? O recalled the prisoners she had seen in

engravings and in history books, who also had been chained and whipped

many

years ago, centuries ago, and had died. She did not wish to die, but

if

torture was the price she had to pay to keep her love's love, then she

only

hoped he was pleased that she had endured it. All soft and silent she

waited,

waited for them to bring her back to him.

  None of the women had the keys to any locks, neither the locks to

the

doors nor the chains, the collars or brace-lets, but every man carried

a

ring of three sets of keys, each of which, in the various categories,

opened

all the doors or all the padlocks, or all the collars. The valets had

them

too. But in the morning the valets who had been on the night shift

were

sleeping, and it was one of the masters or another valet who came to

open

the locks. The man who came into O's cell was dressed in a leather

jacket

and was wearing riding breeches and boots. She did not rec-ognize him.

First he unlocked the chain on the. wall, and O was able to lie down

on the

bed. Before he unlocked her wrists, he ran his hand between her

thighs, the

way the first man with mask and gloves, whom she had seen in the small

red

drawing room, had done. It may have been the same one. His face was

bony and

fleshless, with that piercing look one associates with the portraits

of old

Huguenots, and his hair was gray. O met his gaze for what seemed to be

an

endless time and, suddenly freezing, she remembered it was forbidden

to look

at the masters above, the belt. She closed her eyes, but it was too

late,

and she heard him laugh and say, as he finally freed her hands:

  "There will be a punishment for that after dinner."

  He said something to Jeanne and Andree, who had come in with him and

were

standing waiting on either side of the bed, after which he left.

Andree

picked up the pillow which was on the floor, and the blanket that

Pierre had

turned down toward the foot of the bed when he had come to whip 0,

while

Jeanne wheeled, toward the head of the bed, a serving table which had

been

brought into

the hallway and on which were coffee, mill;, sugar, bread, croissants,

and

butter.

  "Hurry up and eat," said Andree. "It's nine o'clock. Afterward you

can

sleep till noon, and when you. hear the bell it will be time to get

ready

for lunch. You'll bathe and fix your hair. I'll come to make you up

and lace

up your bodice."

   "You won't be on duty till afternoon," Jeanne said. "In

 the library: you'll serve the coffee and liqueur and tend

 the fire."

   "And what about you?? O said.

  "We're only supposed to take care of you during the first

twenty-four

hours of your stay. After that you're on your own, and will have

dealings

only with the men. We won't be able to talk to you, and you won't be

able to

talk to us either'

   "Don't go;' O said. "Stay a while longer and tell me..." Put she

did not

have time to finish her sentence. The door opened: it was her lover,

and he

was not alone. It was her lover, dressed the way he used to when he

had just

gotten out of bed and lighted the first cigarette of the day: in

striped

pajamas and a blue dressing gown, the wool robe with the padded silk

lapels

which they had picked out together a year before. And his slippers

were worn,

she would have to buy him another pair. The two women dis-appeared,

with no

other sound except the rustling of silk as they lifted their skirts

(all the

skirts were a trifle long and trailed on the ground)-on the carpet the

mules

could not be heard.

  0, who was holding a cup of coffee in her left hand and a croissant

in the

other, was seated cross-legged, or rather half-cross-legged, on the

edge of

the bed, one of her legs dangling and the other tucked up under her.

She did

not move, but her cup suddenly began to shake in her hand, and she

dropped

the croissant.

   "Pick it up, Rene said. They were his first words. .  She put the

cup

down on the table, picked up the partly eaten croissant, and put it

beside

the cup. A fat croissant crumb still lay on the rug, beside her bare

foot.

This time Rene bent down and picked it up. Then he sat down near 0,

pulled

her back down onto the bed, and kissed her. She asked him if he loved

her.

He answered: "Yes, I love you!" then got to his feet and made her

stand up

too, softly running the cool palms of his hands, then his lips, over

the

welts.

  Since he had come in with her lover, O did not know whether or not

she

could look at the man who had entered with him and who, for the

moment, had

his back to them and was smoking a cigarette near the door. What

followed

was not of a nature to reassure her.

  "Come over here so we can see you," her lover said, and having

guided her

to the foot of the bed, he pointed out to his companion that he had

been

right, and he thanked him, adding that it would only be fair for him

to take

0 first if he so desired.

  The unknown man, whom she still did not dare to look at, then asked

her,

after having run his hand over her breasts and down her buttocks, to

spread

her legs.

  "Do as he says," said Rene, who was holding her up. He too was

standing,

and her back was against him. With his right hand he was caressing one

breast. and his other was on her shoulder. The unknown man had sat

down on

the edge of the bed, he had seized and slowly parted, drawing the

fleece,

the lips which protected the entrance itself. Rene pushed her forward,

as

soon as he realized what was wanted from her, so that she would be

more

 accessible, and his right arm Slipped around her waist,

 giving him a better grip.

   This caress, to which she never submitted without a struggle and

which

always filled her with shame, and from which she escaped as quickly as

she

could, so quickly in fact that she had scarcely had a chance to be

touched,

this caress `which seemed a sacrilege to her, for she deemed it

sacri-lege

for her lover to be on his knees, feeling that she should be on hers,

she

suddenly felt that she would not escape from it now', and she saw

herself

doomed For she moaned when the alien lips, which were pressing upon

the

mound of flesh whence the inner corolla emanates, suddenly inflamed

her,

left her to allow the hot tip of the tongue to inflame her even more;

she

moaned even more when the lips began again: she felt the hidden point

harden

and rise, that point caught in a long, sucking bite between teeth and

lips,

which did not let go, a long, soothing bite which made her gasp for

breath

She lost her footing and found herself again lying on the bed, with

Rene's

mouth on her mouth; his two hands were pinning her shoulders to the

bed,

while two other hands beneath her knees were raising and opening her

legs.

Her own. hands, which were beneath her back (for when Rene had

propelled her

toward the unknown man he had bound her wrists together by clipping

the

wristbands together), were grazed by the sex of the man who was

caressing

himself in the furrow of her buttocks before rising to strike hard

into the

depths of her belly. At the first stroke she cried out, as though it

had

been the lash of a whip, then again at each new stroke, and her lover

bit

her mouth. The man tore himself abruptly away from her and fell back

on the

floor, as though struck by lightning, and he too gave a cry.

   Rene freed O's hands, lifted her up, and lay her down beneath the

blanket

on the bed. The man got up, Rene escorted him to the door. In a flash,

O saw

herself released, reduced to nothing, accursed. She had moaned beneath

the

lips of the stranger as never her lover had made her moan, cried out

under

the impact of a stranger's member as never her lover had made her cry

out.

She felt debased and guilty. She could not blame him if he were to

leave her.

But no, the door was closing again, he was staying with her, he was

coming

back, lying down beside her be-neath the cover, he was slipping into

her

moist, hot belly and, still holding her in this embrace, he said to

her:

  "I love you. When I'll also have given you to the valets, I'll come

in one

night and have you flogged till you bleed."

  The sun had broken through the mist and flooded the room. But only

the

midday bell woke them up.





  O was at a loss what to do. Her lover was there, as close, as

tenderly

relaxed and surrendered as he was in the bed in that low-ceilinged

room to

which, almost every night since they had begun living together, he

came to

sleep with her. It was a big, mahogany, English-style four-poster bed,

without the awning, and the posters at the head were taller than those

at

the foot. He always slept on her left, and whenever he awoke, even

were it

in the middle of the night, his hands inevitably reached down for her

legs.

This is why she never wore anything but a nightgown or, if she had on

pajamas never put on the bottoms. He did so now; she took that hand

and

kissed it, without ever daring to ask him for anything. But he spoke.

Holding her by the collar, with two fingers slipped in between the

neck and

collar, lie told her it was his intention that henceforth she should

be

shared by him and those of his choosing, and by those whom he did not

know

who were connected to the society of the chateau, shared as she had

been the

previous evening. That she was dependent on him, and on him alone,

even though

she might receive orders from persons other than

himself, whether he was present or absent, for as a matter of

principle he

was participating in whatever might be demanded of or inflicted on

her, and

that it was he who possessed and enjoyed her through those into whose

hands

she had been given, by the simple fact that he had given her to them.

She

must greet them and submit to them with the same respect with which

she

greeted him, as though they were so many reflections of him. Thus he

would

possess her as a god possesses his creatures, whom he lays hold of in

the

guise of a monster or a bird, of an invisible spirit or a state of

ecstasy.

He did not wish to leave her. The more he surrendered her, the more he

would

hold her dear. The fact that he gave her was to him a proof, and ought

to be

one for her as well, that she belonged to him: one can only give what

belongs to you. He gave her only to reclaim her immediately, to

reclaim her

enriched in his eyes, like some common object which had been used for

some

divine purpose and has thus been consecrated. For a long time he had

wanted

to prostitute her, and he was delighted to feel that the pleas-ure he

was

deriving was even greater than he had hoped, and that it bound him to

her

all the more, as it bound her to him, all the more so because, through

it,

she would be more humiliated and ravaged. Since she loved him, she

could not

help loving whatever derived from him. O lis-tened and trembled with

happiness, because he loved her, all acquiescent she trembled. He

doubtless

guessed it, for he went on:

  "It's because it's easy for you to consent that I want from you what

it

will be impossible for you to consent to, even if you agree ahead of

time,

even if you say yes now



and imagine yourself capable of submitting. You won't be able not to

revolt.

Your submission will be obtained in spite of you, not only for the

inimitable pleasure that I and others will derive from it, but also so

that

you will be made aware of what has been done to you.

  O was on the verge of saying that she was his slave and that she

bore her

bonds cheerfully. He stopped her.

  "Yesterday you were told that as long as you are in the chateau you

are

not to look a man in the face or speak to him. The same applies to me

as

well: with me you shall remain silent and obey. I love you. Now get

up. From

now on the only times you will open your mouth here in the presence of

a man

will be to cry out or to caress.

  So O got up. Rene remained lying on the bed. She bathed and arranged

her

hair. The contact of her bruised loins with the tepid water made her

shiver,

and she had to sponge herself without rubbing to keep from re-viving

the

burning pain. She made up her mouth but not her eyes, powdered herself

and,

still naked but with low-ered eyes, came back into the room.

  Rene was looking at Jeanne, who had come in and was standing at the

head

of the bed, she too with her head bowed, unspeaking. He told her to

dress 0.

Jeanne took the bodice of green satin, the white petticoat, the dress,

the

green mules and, having hooked up 0's bodice in front, began to lace

it up

tight in the back. The bodice was long and stiff, stoutly whaleboned

as

during the period when wasp waists were in style, with gussets to

support

the breasts. The more the bodice was tightened, the more the breasts

were

lifted, supported as they were by the gussets, and the nipples

displayed

more prominently. At the same time, the constriction of the waist

caused her

stomach to protrude and her backside to arch out sharply. The strange

thing

was that this armor was very comfortable and to a certain extent

restful.  

It made you stand up very straight, but it made you realize why, it

was hard to tell unless it

was by contrast-the freedom, or rather the availability, of that part

of the

body left unrestricted. The full skirt and the trapezoid-shaped

neckline

running from the base of the neck to the tips of the breasts and

across the

full length of the bosom, seemed to the girl to be less a protective

outfit

than an instrument designed to provoke or present. When Jeanne had

tied the

laces in a double knot, O took her dress from the bed. It was a

one-piece

dress, with the petticoat attached to the skirt like a de-tachable

lining,

and the bodice, cross-laced in front and tied in the back, was thus

able to

follow more or less the delicate contours of her bosom, depending on

how

tightly the bodice was laced Jeanne had laced it very tight' and

through the

open door O was able to see herself reflected In the bathroom mirror,

slim

and lost in the green satin which bfflowed at her hips, as a hoop

skirt

would have done. The two women were standing side by side. Jeanne

reached

out to smooth a wride in the green dress, and her breasts stirred in

the

lace fringes of her bodice, breasts whose tips were long and the halos

brown.

Her dress was of yellow faille.

  Rene, who had come over to the two women, said to 0: `Watch." And to

Jeanne: "lift your dress With both hands she raised the crackling silk

and

the crinoline which lined it, revealing as she did a golden belly,

gleaming

thighs and knees, and a tight black triangle. Rene put his hand on it

and

slowly explored, and with the other excited the nipple of one breast,

  Merely so you can see," he said to 0.

  O saw. She saw his ironic but attentive face, his eyes carefully

watching

Jeanne's half-open mouth and her neck, which was thrown back, tightly

circled by the leather collar. What pleasure was she giving him, yes

she,

that this girl or any other could not?

  "That hadn't occurred to you?" he added.

  No, that had not occurred to her. She had collapsed against the

wall,

between the two doors, her arms hanging limp. There was no longer any

need

to tell her to keep quiet. How could she have spoken? Perhaps he was

touched

by her despair. He left Jeanne and took her in his arms, calling her

his

love and his life, saying over and over again that he loved her. The

hand he

was caressing her neck with was moist with the odor of Jeanne. And so?

The

despair which had overwhelmed her slowly ebbed: he loved her, ah he

loved

her. He was free to enjoy him-self with Jeanne, or with others, he

loved

her. "I love you," he had whispered in her ear, "I love you," so

softly it

was scarcely audible. "I love you." He did not leave until he saw that

her

eyes were clear and her expression calm, contented.





  Jeanne took O by the hand and led her out into the hallway. Their

mules

again made a resounding noise on the tile floor, and again they found

a

valet seated on a bench between the doors. He was dressed like Pierre,

but

it was not Pierre. This one was tall, dry, and had dark hair. He

preceded

them and showed them into an ante-chamber where, before a wrought iron

door

which stood between two tall green drapes, two other valets were

waiting,

some white dogs with russet spots lying at their feet.

  "That's the enclosure," Jeanne murmured. But the valet who was

walking in

front of them heard her and turned around. O was amazed to see Jeanne

turn

deathly pale and let go of her hand, let go of her dress which she was

holding lightly with her other hand, and sink to her knees on the

black tile

floor-for the antechamber was tiled in black marble. The two valets

near the

gate burst out laughing. One of them came over to O and politely

invited her

to follow him, opened a door opposite the one she had just entered,

and

stood aside. She heard laughter and the sound of footsteps, then the

door

closed behind her. She never-no, never-learned what had happened,

whether

Jeanne had been punished for having spoken, and if so what the

punishment

had been, or whether she had simply yielded to a caprice on the part

of the

valet, or whether in throwing herself on her knees she had been

obeying some

rule or trying to move the valet to pity, and whether she had

succeeded.

During her initial stay in the chateau, which lasted two weeks, she

only

noted that, although the rule of silence was absolute, it was rare

that they

did not try and break it while they were alone with the valets, either

being

taken to or from some place in the chateau, or during meals,

especially

during the day.. It was as though clothing gave them a feeling of

assurance

which nakedness and nocturnal chains, and the masters' pres-ence,

destroyed.

She also noticed that, whereas the slight-est gesture which might have

been

construed as an advance toward one of the masters seemed quite

naturally

incon-ceivable, the same was not true for the valets. They never gave

orders, although the courtesy of their requests was as implacable as

an

order. They had apparently been enjoined to punish to the letter

infractions of the rules which occurred in their presence, and to

punish

them on the spot. Thus on three occasions O saw girls who were caught

talking thrown to the floor and whipped once in the hall-way leading

to the

red wing, and twice again in the refectory they had just entered. So

it

was possible to be whipped in broad daylight, despite what they had

told her



the first evening, as though what happened with the valets did not

count and

was left to their discretion.

  Daylight made their outfits look strange and menacing. Some valets

wore

black stockings and, in place of the red jacket and the white ruffled

shirt,

a soft, wide-sleeved shirt of red silk, gathered at the neck and with

the

sleeves also gathered at the wrists. It was one of these valets who,

on the

eighth day at noon, his whip already in his hand, made a buxom blonde

named

Madeleine, who was seated not far from 0, get up off her stool.

Madeleine,

whose bosom was all milk and roses, had smiled at him and spoken a few

words

so quickly that O had missed them. Before he had time to touch her she

was

on her knees, her hands, so white against the black silk, lightly

stroking

the still dormant sex, which she took out and brought to her half-open

mouth.

That time she was not whipped. And since he was then the only monitor

in the

refectory, and since he closed his eyes as he accepted the caress, the

other

girls began talking. So it was possible to bribe the valets. Put what

was

the use? If there was one rule to which O had trouble submitting, and

indeed

never really submitted to completely, it was the rule forbidding them

to

look the men in the face-considering that the rule applied to the

valets as

well, O felt herself in constant danger, so compelling was her

curiosity

about faces, and she was in fact whipped by both the valets, not, in

truth,

each time they noticed her doing it (for they took some liberties with

the

instructions, and perhaps cared enough about the fascination they

exercised

not to deprive them-selves, by too strict or efficacious an

application of

the rules, of the gazes which would leave their face or mouth only to

return

to their sex, their whips, and their hands, and then start in all over

again), but only when in all probability they wanted to humiliate her.

No

matter how cruelly they treated her when they had made up their minds

to do

so, she none the less never had the courage, or the cowardice, to

throw

herself at their knees, and though she submitted to them at times she

never

tempted or urged them on. As for the rule of silence, it meant so

little to

her that, except in the case of her lover, she did not once break it,

replying by signals whenever another girl would take advantage of

their

guards' momentary distrac-tion to speak to her. This was generally

during

meals, which. were taken in the room into which they had been ushered,

when

the tall valet accompanying them had turned around to Jeanne. The

walls were

black and the stone floor was black, the long table, of heavy glass,

was

black too, and each girl had a round stool covered with black leather

on

which to sit. They had to lift their skirts to sit down, and in so

doing O

rediscovered, the moment she felt the smooth, cold leather beneath her

thighs, that first moment when her lover had made her take off her

stockings

and panties and sit in the same manner on the back seat of the car.

Conversely, after she had left the chateau and, dressed like everyone

else

except for the fact that beneath her innocuous suit or dress she was

naked,

whenever she had to lift her petticoat and skirt to sit down beside

her

lover, or beside another, were it on the seat of a car or the bench of

a

caf6, it was the chateau she redis-covered, the breasts proffered in

the

silk bodices, the hands and mouths to which nothing was denied, and

the

terrible silence. And yet nothing had been such a comfort to her as

the

silence, unless it was the chains. The chains and the silence, which

should

have bound her deep within herself, which should have smothered her,

strangled her, on the contrary freed her from herself. What would have

become of her if she had been granted the right to speak and the

freedom of

her hands, if she had been free to make



a choice, when her lover prostitute d her before his own eyes? True,

she did

speak as she was being tortured, but can moans and cries be classed as

words? Besides, they often stilled her by gagging. Beneath the gazes,

beneath the hands, beneath the sexes that defiled her, the whips that

rent

her, she lost herself in a delirious absence from herself which

restored her

to love and, perhaps, brought her to the edge of death. She was

anyone,

anyone at all, any one of the other girls, opened and forced like her,

girls

whom she saw being opened and forced, for she did see it, even when

she was

not obliged to have a hand in it.

  Thus, less than twenty-four hours after her arrival, dur-ing her

second

day there, she was taken after the meal into the library, there to

serve

coffee and tend the fire. Jeanne, whom the black-haired valet had

brought

back, went with her as did another girl named Monique. It was this

same

valet who took them there and remained in the room, stationed near the

stake

to which O had been at-tached. The library was still empty. The French

doors faced west, and in the vast, almost cloudless sky the autumn sun

slowly pursued its course, its rays lighting, on a chest of drawers,

an

enormous bouquet of sulphur-colored chrysanthemums which smelled of

earth

and dead leaves.

  "Did Pierre mark you last night?" the valet asked 0.

  She nodded that he had.

  "Then you should show it," he said. "Please roll up your dress."

  He waited till she had rolled her robe up behind, the Way Jeanne had

done

the evening before, and till Jeanne had helped her fasten it there.

Then he

told her to light the fire. 0's backside up to her waist, her thighs,

her

slender legs, were framed in the cascading folds of green silk and

white

linen. The five welts had turned black The



fire was ready on the hearth, all O had to do was ignite the straw

beneath

the kindling, which leaped into flame. Soon the branches of apple wood

caught, then the oak logs, which burned with tall, crackling, almost

colorless flames which were almost invisible in the daylight, but

which

smelled good. Another valet entered and placed a tray filled with

coffee

cups on the console, from which the lamp had been removed, then left

the

room. O went over near the c6nsole, while Monique and Jeanne remained

standing on either side of the fireplace.

  just then two men came in, and the first valet in turn left the

room. O

thought she recognized one of the men from his voice, one of those who

had

forced her the pre-vious evening, the one who had asked that her rear

be

made more easily accessible. As she poured the coffee into the small

black

and gold cups. which Monique handed around with the sugar, she stole a

glance at them. So it was this thin, blond boy, a mere stripling, with

an

English air about him. He was speaking again; now she was certain. The

other

man was also fair, thick set with a heavy face. Both of them were

seated in

the big leather armchairs, their feet near the fire, quietly smoking

and

reading their papers, paying no more heed to the women than if they

had not

been there. Now and then the rustle of a paper was heard, or the sound

of

coals falling on the hearth. From time to time O put another log on

the fire.

She was seated on a cushion on the floor beside the wood basket,

Monique and

Jeanne, also on the floor, across from her. Their flowing skirts

overlapped

one another. Monique's skirt was a dark red. Suddenly, but only after

an

hour had elapsed, the blond boy called Jeanne, then Monique. He told

them to

bring the ottoman (it was the same ottoman on which O had been

spread-eagled

the night before). Monique did not wait for further instruc-



tions, she kneeled down, bent over, her breasts crushed against the

fur and

holding both corners of the ottoman in her hands. When the young man

had

Jeanne lift the red skirt, she did not stir. Jeanne was then obliged

to undo

his clothing-and he gave her the order in the most churlish manner-and

take

between her hands that sword of flesh which had so cruelly pierced O

at

least once. It swelled and stiffened beneath the closed palm, and O

saw

these same hands, Jeanne's tiny hands, spreading Monique's thighs,

into the

hollow of which, slowly and in short spasms which made her moan, the

lad

plunged.

  The other man, who was watching in silence, motioned to O to

approach and,

without taking his eyes off the spectacle, toppled her forward over

one arm

of his chair-and her raised skirt gave him an unhindered view of her

backside and seized her womb with his hand.

  It was in this position that Rene found her when, a minute later, he

opened the door.

  `Please don't let me disturb you," he said, and he sat down on the

floor,

on the same cushion where O had been sitting beside the fire before

she had

been called. He watched her closely, and smiled every time the hand

which

was holding her probed and returned, seizing both front and rear

apertures

at once and working deeper and deeper as they opened further,

wrenching from

her a moan which she could no longer restrain.

  Monique had long since gotten back to her feet, Jeanne `was fiddling

with

the fire in place of 0. She brought Rene a glass of whisky, and he

Jassed

her hand as she handed it to him, then drank it down without taking

his eyes

off 0.

  The man who was still holding her then said:

  "Is she yours?"'

  `Yes," Rene replied.



  "James is right," the other went on, "she's too narrow. She has to

be

widened."

  "Not too much, mind you," said James.

  "Whatever you say,  Rene said, getting to his feet. "You're a better

judge

than I." And he rang.

  For the next eight days, between dusk when her stint in the library

came

to an end and that hour of the night-which was generally eight or ten

o'clock-when she was returned to her cell, in chains and naked beneath

her

red cape, O wore an ebonite shaft simulating an erect male member

which was

inserted behind and held in place by three small chains connected to a

leather belt around her hips, in such a way that the internal

movements of

her muscles could not expel it. One little chain followed the furrow

of her

buttocks, the two others the fold on either side of the belly's

triangle, in

order not to prevent anyone from penetrating that side if need be.

  When Rene had rung, it was to have the coffer brought in which

contained,

or one of whose compartments con-tained, an assortment of small chains

and

belts, and whose other held a variety of these shafts, ranging from

the very

thin to the very thick. They all had one feature in com-mon, namely

that

they flared at the base, to make it im-possible for them to slide up

inside

the body, an accident which might have produced the opposite effect

from

that desired, that is it might have allowed the ring of flesh to

tighten up

again, whereas the purpose of the shaft was to distend it. Thus

quartered,

and quartered each day a little more, for James, who made her kneel

down, or

rather lie prone, to watch while Jeanne or Monique, or whichever girl

happened to be there, fastened the shaft that he had chosen, each day

chose

a thicker one. At the evening meal, which the girls took together in

the

same refectory, after their bath, naked and powdered, 0





still wore it, and everyone could see that she was wearing it, because

of

the little chains and the belt. It was only removed, by the valet,

when he

came to chain her to the wall for the night if no one had asked for

her, or,

if some-one had, when he locked her hands behind her if he had to take

her

to the library. Rare were the nights when someone did not appear to

make use

of this passage thus rapidly rendered as easy as, though still

narrower than,

the other. After eight days, there was no longer any need for an

instrument,

and O's lover told her that he was happy she was now doubly open and

that he

would make certain she remained so. At the same time, he warned her

that he

was leaving and that she would not see him dur-ing the last seven days

she

was to spend in the Chateau, before he came back to pick her up and

take her

back to Paris.

  "But I love you," he added, "I do love you. Don't for-get me."

  Oh, how could she forget him! He was the hand that blindfolded her,

the

whip wielded by the valet Pierre, he was the chain above her head, the

unknown man Who came down on her, and all the voices which gave her

orders

were his voice. Was she growing weary? No. By dint of being defiled

and

desecrated, it seems that she must have grown used to outrages, by

dint of

being caressed, to caresses, if not to the whip by dint of being

whipped. A

terrible surfeit of pain and pleasure should have by slow degrees cast

her

upon benumbing banks, into a state bordering on sleep or somnambulism.

On

the contrary. The bodice which held her straight, the chains which

kept her

submissive, her refuge of silence---these may have been responsible in

part-

as was the constant spectacle of girls being handed over and used as

she was

and, even when they were not, the spectacle of the



constantly available bodies. Also the spectacle and the awareness of

her own

body. Daily and, so to speak, cere-moniously soiled with saliva and

sperm,

she felt herself literally to be the repository of impurity, the sink

men-

tioned in the Scriptures. And yet those parts of her body most

constantly

offended, having become less sensitive, at the same time seemed to her

to

have become more beauti-ful and, as it were, ennobled: her mouth

closed

upon anonymous members, the tips of her breasts constantly fondled by

hands,

and between her quartered thighs the twin, contiguous paths wantonly

ploughed. That she should have been ennobled and gained in dignity

though

being prostituted was a source of surprise, and yet dignity was indeed

the

right term. She was illuminated by it, as though from within, and her

bearing bespoke calm, while on her face could be detected the serenity

and

imper ceptible smile that one surmises rather than actually sees in

the eyes

of hermits.

  When Rene had informed her that he was leaving, night had already

fallen.

O was naked in her cell, and was wait-ing for them to come and take

her to

the refectory. As for her lover, he was dressed as usual, in a suit he

wore

every day in town. When he took her in his arms, the rough tweed of

his

clothes irritated the tips of her breasts. He kissed her, lay her down

on

the bed, lay down beside her and, tenderly and slowly and gently, took

her,

alter-nating between the two tracks open to him, before finally

spilling

himself into her mouth, which he then kissed again.

  "Before I leave," he said, "I would like to have you whipped, and

this

time I'll ask your permission. Do you agree?"

  She agreed to it.

  "I love you," he repeated. "Ring for Pierre,"

  She rang. Pierre chained her hands above her head, to the chain of

the bed.

When she was thus bound, her lover kissed her again, standing beside

her on

the bed. Again he told her that he loved her, then he got down off the

bed

and nodded for Pierre. He watched her struggle, so fruitlessly; he

listened

to her moans swell and become cries. When her tears flowed, he sent

Pierre

away. She still found the strength to tell him again that she loved

him.

Then he kissed her drenched face, her gasping mouth, undid her bonds,

laid

her down, and left.





  To say that O began to await her lover the minute he left her is a

vast

understatement: she was henceforth nothing but vigil and night. During

the

day she was like a painted countenance, whose skin is soft and mouth

is meek

and--this was the only time that she abided by the rule-whose eyes

were

constantly lowered. She made and tended the fire, poured and offered

the

coffee and liqueurs, lighted the cigarettes, she arranged the flowers

and

folded the newspapers like a young girl in her par-ents' living room,

so

limpid with her open neck and leather collar, her tight bodice and

prisoner's bracelets, that all it took for the men whom she was

serving was

to order her to remain by their sides while they were violating

another girl

to make them want to violate her as well; which doubtless explains why

she

was treated even worse than before. Had she sinned? or had her lover

left

her so that the very people to whom he had loaned her would feel freer

to

dispose of her? In any case, the fact remains that on the second day

following his departure as, at nightfall, she had just undressed and

was

looking in the bathroom mirror at the almost vanished welts made by

Pierre's

riding crop on the front of her thighs, Pierre entered. There were

still two

hours before dinner. He told her that she would not dine in the common

room

and said to get ready, pointing to the Turkish toilet in the corner,

over

which she had to squat, as Jeanne had warned her she would m; the

presence

of Pierre. All the while she re-mained there, he stood contemplating

her,

she could see him in the mirrors, and see herself, and was incapable

of

holding back the water which escaped from her body. He waited then

until she

had bathed and powdered her-self. She was going to get her mules and

red

cape when he stopped her and added, fastening her hands behind her

back,

that there was no need to, but that she should wait a moment for him.

She

sat down on a corner of the bed. Outside it was storming, a tempest of

cold

rain and wind, and the poplar tree near the window swayed back and

forth

beneath the gusts. From time to time a pale wet leaf would splatter

against

the windowpanes. It was as dark as in the middle of the night,

although the

hour of seven had not yet struck, for autumn was well advanced and the

days

were growing shorter.

   When Pierre returned, he was carrying the same blind-fold with

which he

had blindfolded her the first evening. He also had a long chain, which

made

a clanking noise, a chain similar to the one fastened to the wall. O

had the

impression that he couldn't make up his mind whether to put the

blindfold or

the chain on her first. She was gazing out at the rain, not caring

what they

wanted from her, thinking only that Rene had said he would come back,

that

there were still five days and five nights to go, and that she had no

idea

where he was or whether he was alone and, if he was not alone, who he

was

with. But he would come back. Pierre had laid the chain on the bed

and,

without interrupting 0's daydream, had covered her eyes with the

blindfold

of black velvet. It was slightly rounded below the sockets of the

eyes, and

fitted the cheekbones perfectly, making it impossible to get the

slightest

peek or even to raise the eyelids. Blessed dark-ness like unto her own

night, never had O greeted it with such joy, blessed chains that bore

her

away from herself.

   Pierre fastened the chain to the ring in her collar and invited her

to

follow him. She got up, felt herself being pulled forward, and walked.

Her

bare feet were icy cold on the tiles, and she gathered she was

following the

hall-way of the red wing; then the ground, which was still as cold,

became

rough underfoot: she was walking on a stone floor, made of sandstone

or

granite. Twice the valet made her stop, she heard the sound of a key

in a

lock, of a lock being turned and opened, then locked again. "Careful

of the

steps," said Pierre, and she went down a staircase, and once she

stumbled.

Pierre caught her around the waist. He had never touched her except to

chain

or beat her, but here he was now forcing her down onto the cold steps,

which

she tried to grasp with her bound hands to keep from slipping, and he

was

taking her breasts. His mouth moved from one to the other, and as he

pressed

against her, she could feel him slowly rising. He did not help her up

until

he had taken his pleasure with her. Damp and trembling with cold, she

finally descended the last steps and heard another door open, which

she went

through and immediately felt a thick rug beneath her feet. There was

another

slight tug on the chain, then Pierre's hands were loosing her hands

and un-

tying her blindfold: she was in a round, vaulted room, which was very

small

and low: the walls and arches were of unplastered stone, and the

joints n

the masonry were visible. The chain which was attached to her collar

was

fastened to the wall by an eye-bolt opposite the door, which was set

about

three feet above the floor and al-lowed her to move no more than two

steps

forward. There was neither a bed nor anything that might have served

as a

bed, nor was there any blanket, only three or four Moroccan-type

cushions,

but they were out of reach and clearly not intended for her. Within

reach

however, in a niche from which emanated the little light which lighted

the

room, was a wooden tray on which were some water, fruit, and bread.

The heat

from the radiators, which had teen installed along the base of the

walls and

set into the walls themselves to form around the entire room a sort of

turning plintI;,, was none the less insufficient to overcome the odor

of

earth and mud which is the odor of ancient prisons and, in old

chaAteaux, of

uninhabited dungeons. In that hot semi-darkness, into which no sound

intruded, O soon lost all track of time. There was no longer any day

or

night, the light never went out. Pierre, or some other valet-it hardly

mattered which-replaced the water, fruit, and bread on the tray

whenever it

was gone, and took her to bathe in a nearby dungeon. She never saw the

men

who came in, for each time a valet preceded them to blindfold her

eyes, and

removed it only after they had left. She also lost track of them, of

who

they were and how many there were, and neither her soft hands nor her

lips

blindly caressing were ever able to identify who they were touching.

At

times there were several, more often only one, but each time' before

they

came near her, she was made to kneel down facing the wall, the ring of

her

collar fastened to the same eye-bolt to which the chain was attached,

and

whipped. She placed her palms against the wall and pressed her face

against

the back of her hands, to keep from scratching it against the stones;

but

she scraped her knees and her breasts on them. Thus she lost track of

the

tortures and screams which were smoth-ered by the vault, She waited.

Suddenly time no longer stood still. In her velvet night her chain was

unfastened She had been waiting for three months, three days, or ten

days,

or ten years. She felt herself being wrapped in a heavy cloth, and

someone

taking her by the shoulder and knees, lifting and carring her, She

found

herself in her cell, lying under the black fur cover, it was early

afternoon,

her eyes were open, her hands free, and Rene was sitting beside her,

stroking her hair.

  `You must get dressed now," he said, "we're leaving."

   She took a last bath, he brushed her hair, handed her powder and

lipstick

to her. When she returned to her cell, her suit, her blouse, her slip,

her

stockings, and her shoes were on the foot of the bed, as were her

gloves and

hand-bag. There was even the coat she wore over her suit when the

weather

turned brisk, and a square silk scarf to protect her neck, but no

garter

belt or panties. She dressed slowly, rolling her stockings down to

just

above her knees, and she did not put on her suitcoat because it was

very

warm in her cell Just then, the man who had explained on the first

evening

what would be expected of her, came in. He unlocked the collar and

bracelets

which had held her captive for two weeks. Was she freed of them? or

did she

have the feeling something was missing? She said nothing, scarcely

daring to

run her hands over her wrists, not daring to lift them to her throat

  Then he asked her to choose, from among the exactly identical rings

which

he showed to her in a small wooden box, the one which fit her left

ring

finger. They were strange fron rings, banded with gold inside, and the

signet was wide and as massive as that of an actual signet ring, but

it was

convex, and for design bore a three-spoked wheel inlaid in gold, with

each

spoke spiraling back upon itself like the solar wheel of the Celts.

The

second ring she tried, though a trifle snug, fit her exactly. It was

heavy

on her hand, and the gold gleamed as though furtively in the dull gray

of the polished iron.- Why iron, and why gold, and this insignia she

did not understand? It was impossible to talk in this room draped in

red, where the chain was still on the wall above the bed, where the

black, still rumpled cover was lying on the floor, this room into

which the valet Pierre might emerge, was sure to emerge, absurd in his

opera outfit, in the dull light of November.

   She was wrong, Pierre did not appear. Rene had her put on the coat

to her suit, and her long gloves which covered the bottom of her

sleeves. She took her scarf, her bag, and carried her coat over her

arm. The heels of her shoes made less noise on the hallway floor than

had her mules, the doors were closed, the antechamber was empty. O was

holding her lover by the hand. The stranger who was accompanying them

opened the wrought-iron gates which Jeanne had said were the

enclosure, which was now no longer guarded either by valets or dogs.

He lifted one of the green velvet curtains and ushered them both

through. The curtains fell back into place. They heard the gate

closing. They were alone in another antechamber - which looked onto

the lawn. All there was left to do was descend the steps leading down

from the stoop, before which O recognized the car.

  She sat down next to her lover, who took the wheel and started off:.

After they had left the grounds, through the porte-cochere which was

wide open, he stopped a few hundred meters farther on and kissed her.

It was on the outskirts of a small peaceful town, which they crossed

through as they continued on their route. O was able to read the name

on the road sign: Roissy.



II Sir Stephen



  The apartment where O lived was situated on the Ile Saint-Louis,

under the eaves of an old house which faced south and overlooked the

Seine. All the rooms, which were spacious and low, had sloping

ceilings, and the two rooms at the front of the house each opened onto

a balcony set into the sloping roof. One of them was 0's room; the

other, in which bookshelves filled one wall from floor to ceiling on

either side of the fireplace, served as a living room, a study, and

even as a bedroom in case of necessity. Facing the two windows was a

big couch, and there was a large antique table before the fireplace.

It was here that they dined whenever the tiny dining room, which faced

the interior courtyard and was decorated with dark green serge, was

really too small to accommo-date the guests. Another room, which also

looked onto the courtyard, was Rene's, and it was here that he dressed

and kept his clothes. O shared the yellow bathroom with him; the

kitchen, also yellow, was tiny. A cleaning woman came in every day.

The flooring of the rooms overlooking the courtyard was of red tile,

those antique hexagonal tiles which in old Paris hotels are used to

cover the stairs and landings above the second story. Seeing them

again gave O a shock and made her heart beat faster: they were the

same tiles as the ones in the hallways at Roissy. Her room was small,

the pink and black chintz curtains were closed, the fire was glowing

behind the metallic screen, the bed was made, the covers turned back.

  "I bought you a nylon night gown" Rene said. "You've never had one

before."

 Yes, a white pleated nylon nightgown, tailored and tasteful like the

clothing of Egyptian statuettes, an almost transparent nightgown was

unfolded on the edge of the bed, on the side where O slept. O tied a

thin belt around her waist, over the elastic waistband of the

nightgown itself, and the material of the gown was so light that the

projection of the buttocks colored it a pale pink. Every-thing-save

for the curtains and the panel hung with the same material against

which the head of the bed was set, and the two small armchairs

upholstered with the same chintz-everything in the room was white: the

walls, the fringe around the mahogany four-poster bed, and the

bearskin rug on the floor. Seated before the fire in her white

nightgown, O listened to her lover.

 He began by saying that she should not think that she was now free.

With one exception, and that was that she was free not to love him any

longer, and to leave him immediately. But if she did love him, then

she was in no wise free. She listened to him without saying a word,

thinking how happy she was that he wanted to prove to himself-it

mattered little how-that she belonged to him, and thinking too that he

was more than a little naive not to realize that this proprietorship

was beyond any proof. But did he perhaps realize it and want to

emphasize it merely because he derived a certain pleasure from it? She

gazed into the fire as he talked, but he did not, not daring to meet

her eyes. He was standing, pacing back and forth. Suddenly he said to

her that, for a start, he wanted her to listen to him with her knees

unclasped and her arms un-folded, for she was sitting with her knees

together and her arms folded around them. So she lifted her nightgown

and, on her knees, or, rather, squatting on her heels in the manner of

Carmelites or of Japanese women, she waited. The only thing was, since

her knees were spread, she could feel the light, sharp pricking of the

white fur between her half-open thighs; he came back to it again: she

was not opening her legs wide enough. The word "open" and the

expression "opening her legs" were, on her lover's lips, charged with

such uneasiness and power that she could never hear them without

experiencing a kind of internal prostration, a sacred submission, as

though a god, and not he, had spoken to her. So she remained

motionless, and her hands were lying palm upward beside her knees,

between which the material of her nightgown was spread, with the

pleats reforming.

   What her lover wanted from her was very simple: that she be

constantly and immediately accessible. It was not enough for him to

know that she was: she was to be so without the slightest obstacle

intervening, and her bearing and clothing both were to bespeak, as it

were, the symbol of that availability to experienced eyes. That, he

went on, meant two things. The first she knew, having been in-formed

of it the evening of her arrival at the chateau: that she must never

cross her knees, as her lips had always to remain open. She doubtless

thought that this was nothing (that was indeed what she did think),

but she would learn that to maintain this discipline would require a

constant effort on her part, an effort which would re-mind her, in the

secret they shared between them and perhaps with a few others, of the

reality of her condition, when she was with those who did not share

the secret, and engaged in ordinary pursuits.

   As for her clothes, it was up to her to choose them, or if need be

to invent them, so that this semi-undressing to which he had subjected

her in the car on their way to Roissy would no longer be necessary:

tomorrow she was to go through her closet and sort out her dresses,

and to do the same with her underclothing by going through her dresser

drawers. She would hand over to him absolutely everything she found in

the way of belts and panties; the same for any brassieres like the one

whose straps he had had to cut b6fore he could remove it, any full

slips which covered her breasts, all the blouses and dresses which did

not open up the front, and any skirts too tight to be raised with a

single movement. She was to have other brassieres, other blouses,

other dresses made. Meanwhile, was she supposed to visit her corset

maker with nothing on under her blouse or sweater? Yes, she was to go

with nothing on underneath. If someone should notice, she could

explain it any way she liked, or not explain it at all, whichever she

preferred, but it was her problem, and hers alone. Now, as for the

rest of what he still had to teach her, he preferred to wait for a few

days and wanted her to be dressed prop-erly before hearing it. She

would find all the money she needed in the little drawer of her desk.

When he had finished speaking, she murmured "I love you" without the

slightest gesture. It was he who added some wood to the fire, lighted

the bedside lamp, which was of pink opaline Then he told O to get into

bed and wait for him, that he would sleep with. her. When he came

back, O reached over to turn out the lamp: it was her left hand, and

the last thing she saw before the room was plunged into dark-ness was

the somber glitter of her iron ring. She was lying half on her side:

her lover called her softly by name and, simultaneously, seizing her

with his whole hand, covered the nether part of her belly and drew her

to him.





   The next day, 0, In her dressing gown, had just finished lunch

alone in the green dining room-Rene had left early in the morning and

was not due home until evening, to take her out to dinner-when the

phone rang. The phone was in the bedroom, beneath the lamp at the head

of the bed. O sat down on the floor to answer it. It was Rene, who

wanted to know whether the cleaning woman had left. Yes, she had just

left, after having served lunch, and would not be back till the

following morning.

 "Have you started to sort out your clothes yet?" Rene said.

  "I was just going to start," she answered, "but I got up late, took

a bath, and it was noon before I was ready."'

  "Are you dressed?"

 "No, I have on my nightgown and my dressing gown." "Put the phone

down, take off your robe and your nightgown."

 O obeyed, so startled that the phone slipped from the bed. where she

had placed it down onto the white rug' and she thought she had been

cut off. No, she had lIot been cut off.

 "Are you naked?" Rene went on,

 `Yes," she said. "But where are you calling from?"' Rene ignored her

question, merely adding:

  "Did you keep your ring on?"

  She had kept her ring on.

  Then he told her to remain as she was until he came home and to

prepare, thus undressed, the suitcase of clothing she was to get rid

of. Then he hung up.

   It was past one o'clock, and the weather was lovely. A



small pool of sunlight fell on the rug, lighting the white nightgown

and the corduroy dressing gown, pale green like the shells of fresh

almonds, which O had let slip to the floor when she had taken them

off. She picked them up and went to take them into the bathroom, to

hang them up in a closet. On her way, she suddenly saw her reflection

in one of the mirrors fastened to a door and which, to-gether with

another mirror covering part of the wall and a third on another door,

formed a large three-faced mirror: all she was wearing was a pair of

leather mules the same green as her dressing gown-and only slightly

darker than the mules she wore at Roissy-and her ring. She was no

longer wearing either a collar or leather bracelets, and she was

alone, her own sole spectator. And yet never had she felt herself more

totally committed to a will which was not her own, more totally a

slave, and more content to be so.

 When she bent down to open a drawer, she saw her breasts stir gently.

It took her almost two hours to lay out on her bed the clothes which

she then had to pack away in the suitcase. There was no problem about

the panties; she made a little pile of them near one of the bedposts.

The same for her brassieres, not one would stay, for they all had a

strap in the back and fastened on the side. And yet she saw how she

could have the same model made, by shifting the catch to the front, in

the middle, directly be-neath the cleavage of the breasts. The girdles

and garter belts posed no further problems, but she hesitated to add

to the pile the corset of pink satin brocade which laced up in the

back and so closely resembled the bodice she had worn at Roissy. She

put it aside on the dresser. That would be Rene's decision. He would

also decide about the sweaters, all of which went on over the head and

were tight at the neck, therefore could not be opened. But they could

be pulled up from the waist and thus bare the breasts. All the slips,

however, were piled on her bed. In the dresser drawer there still

remained a half-length slip of black faille, hemmed with a pleated

flounce and fine Valenciennes lace, which was made to be worn under a

pleated sun skirt of black wool which was too sheer not to be

transparent. She would need other half-length slips, short,

light-colored ones. She also realized that she would either have to

give up wearing sheath dresses or else pick out the kind of dress that

buttoned all the way down the front, in which case she would also have

to have her slips made in such a way that they would open together

with the dress. As for the petticoats, that was easy, the dresses too,

but what would her dressmaker say about the under-clothes? She would

explain that she wanted a detachable lining because she was

cold-blooded. As a matter of fact, she was sensitive to the cold, and

suddenly she wondered how in the world she would stand the winter cold

when she was dressed so lightly?

 When she had finally finished, and had kept from her entire wardrobe

only her blouses, all of which buttoned down the front, her black

pleated skirt, her coats of course, and the suit she had worn home

from Roissy, she went to prepare tea. She turned up the thermostat in

the kitchen; the cleaning woman had not filled the wood basket for the

living-room fire, and O knew that her lover liked to find her in the

living room beside the fire when he arrived home in the evening. She

filled the basket from the wood-pile in the hallway closet, carried it

back to the living-room fireplace, and lighted the fire. Thus she

waited for him, curled up in a big easy chair, the tea tray beside

her, waited for him to come home, but this time she waited, the way he

had ordered her to, naked.



   The first difficulty O encountered was in her work. Difficulty is

perhaps an exaggeration. Astonishment would be a better term. O worked

in the fashion department of a photography agency. This meant that it

was she who photographed, in the studios where they had to pose for

hours on end, the most exotic and prettiest girls whom the fashion

designers had chosen to model their creations.

  They were surprised that O had postponed her vacation until this

late in the fall and had thus been away at a time of year when the

fashion world was busiest, when the new collections were about to be

presented. But that was nothing. What surprised them most was how

changed she was. At first glance, they found it hard to say exactly

what was changed about her, but none the less they felt it, and the

more they observed her the more convinced they were. She stood and

walked straighter, her eyes were clearer, but what was especially

striking was her perfec-tion when she was in repose, and how measured

her gestures were.

   She had always been a conservative dresser, the way girls do whose

work resembles that of men, but she was so skillful that she brought

it off; and because the other girls-who constituted her subjects-were

constantly con-cerned, both professionally and personally, with

clothing and its adornments, they were quick to note what might have

passed unperceived to eyes other than theirs. Sweaters worn right next

to the skin, which gently molded the contours of the breasts-Rene had

finally consented to the sweaters-pleated skirts so prone to swirling

when she turned: O wore them so often it was a little as though they

formed a discreet uniform.

  "Very little-girl-like," one of the models said to her one day, a

blond, green-eyed model with high Slavic cheek-bones and the olive

complexion that goes with it. `But you shouldn't wear garters," she

added. "You're going to ruin your legs."

   This remark was occasioned by 0, who, without stop-ping to. think,

had sat down somewhat hastily in her presence, and obliquely in front

of her, on the arm of a big leather easy chair, and in so doing had

lifted her skirt. The tall girl had glimpsed a flash of naked thigh

above the rolled stocking, which covered the knee but stopped just

above it.

   O had seen her smile, so strangely that she wondered what the girl

had been thinking at the time, or perhaps what she had understood. She

adjusted her stockings, one at a time, pulling them up to tighten

them, for it was not as easy to keep them tight this way as it was

when the stockings ended at mid-thigh and were fastened to a gar-ter

belt, and answered Jacqueline, as though to justify herself:

 "It's practical."

 "Practical for what?" Jacqueline wanted to know.

 "I dislike garter belts," O replied.

  But Jacqueline was not listening to her and was looking at the iron

ring.

 During the next few days, O took some fifty photo-graphs of

Jacqueline. They were like nothing she had ever taken before. Never,

perhaps, had she had such a model. Anyway, never before had she been

able to extract such meaning and emotion from a face or body. And yet

all she was aiming for was to make the silks, the furs, and the laces

more beautiful by that sudden beauty of an elfin creature surprised by

her reflection in the mirror, which Jacqueline became in the simplest

blouse, as she did in the most elegant mink. She had short, thick,

blond hair, only slightly curly, and at the least excuse she would

cock her head slightly toward her left shoulder and nestle her cheek

against the upturned collar of her fur, if she were wearing fur. O

caught her once in this position, tender and smiling, her hair gently

blown as though by a soft wind, and her smooth, hard cheekbone

snuggled against the gray mink, soft and gray as the freshly fallen

ashes of a wood fire. Her lips were slightly parted, and her eyes

half-closed. Beneath the gleaming, liquid gloss of the photograph she

looked like some blissful girl who had drowned, she was pale, so pale.

O had had the picture printed with as little contrast as possible. She

had taken another picture of Jacqueline which she found even more

stunning: back lighted, it portrayed her bare-shouldered, with her

delicate head, and her face as well, enveloped in a large-meshed black

veil surmounted by an absurd double aigrette whose impalpable tufts

crowned her like wisps of smoke; she was wearing an enormous robe of

heavy brocaded silk, red like the dress of a bride in the Middle Ages,

which came down to below her ankles, flared at the hips and tight at

the waist, and the armature of which traced the outline of her bosom.

It was what the dress designers called a gala gown, the kind na one

ever wears. The spike-heeled sandals were also of red silk. And all

the time Jacqueline was before O dressed in that gown and sandals, and

that veil which was like the premonition of a mask, O, in her mind's

eye, was completing, was in-nerly modifying the model: a trifle here,

a trifle there-- the waist drawn in a little tighter, the breasts

slightly raised-and it was the same dress as at Roissy, the same dress

that Jeanne had worn, the same smooth, heavy, cas-cading silk which

one takes by the handful and raises whenever one is told to. . . . Why

yes, Jacqueline was lifting it in just that way as she descended from

the plat. form on which she had been posing for the past fifteen

minutes. It was the same rustling, the same crackling of dried leaves.

No one wears these gala gowns any longer? But they do. Jacqueline was

also wearing a gold choker around her neck, and on her wrists two gold

bracelets. O caught herself thinking that she would be more beautiful

with a leather collar and leather bracelets. And then she did

something she had never done before: she followed Jacqueline into the

large dressing room adjacent to the studio, where the models dressed

and made up and where they left their clothing and make-up kits after

hours. She remained standing, leaning against the doorjamb, her eyes

glued to the mirror of the dressing table before which Jacqueline,

without removing her gown, had sat down. The mirror was so big-it

covered the entire back wall, and the dressing table itself was a

simple slab of black glass-that she could see Jacqueline's and her own

reflec-tion, as well as the reflection of the costume girl who was

undoing the aigrettes and the tulle netting. Jacqueline re-moved the

choker herself, her bare arms lifted like two handles; a touch of

perspiration gleamed in her armpits, which were shaved (Why? O

wondered, what a pity, she's so fair), and O could smell the sharp,

delicate, slightly plantlike odor and wondered what perfume Jacqueline

ought to wear-what perfume they would make her wear. Then Jacqueline

unclasped her bracelets and put them on the glass slab, where they

made a momentary clanking sound like the sound of chains. Her hair was

so fair that her skin was actually darker than her hair, a grayish

beige like fine-grained sand just after the tide has gone out. On the

photograph, the red silk would be black. Just then, the thick

eyelashes, which Jacqueline was always reluctant to make up, lifted,

and in the mirror O met her gaze, a look so direct and steady that,

without being able to de-tach her own eyes from it, she felt herself

slowly blushing. That was all.

  I'm sorry," Jacqueline said, "I have to undress.

  "Sorry," O murmured, and closed the door.

   The next day she took home with her the proofs of the

 shots she had made the day before, not really knowing

 whether she wanted, or did not want, to show them to her

 lover, with whom she had a dinner date. She looked at

 them as she was putting on her make-up at the dressing

 table in her room, pausing to trace on the photographs

 with her finger the curve of an eyebrow, the suggestion

 of a smile. But when she heard the sound of the key in

 the front door, she slipped them into the drawer.





   For two weeks, O had been completely outfitted and ready for use,

and could not get used to being so, when she discovered one evening

upon returning from the studio a note from her lover asking her to be

ready at eight to join him and one of his friends for dinner. A car

would stop by to pick her up, the chauffeur would come up and ring her

bell. The postscript specified that she was to take her fur jacket,

that she was to dress entirely in black (entirely was underlined), and

was to be at pains to make up and perfume herself as at Roissy.

  It was six o'clock. Entirely in black, and for dinner-- and it was

mid-December, the weather was cold, that meant black silk stockings,

black gloves, her pleated fan-shaped skirt, a heavy-knit sweater with

spangles or her short jacket of faille. She decided on the jacket of

faille It was padded and quilted in large stitches, close fitting and

hooked from neck to waist like the tight-fitting doublets that men

used to wear in the sixteenth century, and if it molded the bosom so

perfectly, it was because the brassiere was built into it. It was

lined of the same faille, and its slit tails were hip length. The only

bright foil were the large gold hooks like those on children's snow

boots which made a clicking sound as they were hooked or unhooked from

their broad flat rings.

   After she had laid out her clothes on her bed, and at the foot of

the bed her black suede shoes with raised soles and spiked heels,

nothing seemed stranger to O than to see herself, solitary and free in

her bathroom, meticulously making herself up and perfuming herself,

after she had - taken her bath, as she had done at Roissy. The

cosmetics she owned were not the same as those used at Roissy. In the

drawer of her dressing table she found some face rouge--she never used

any--which she utilized to empha-size the halo of her breasts. It was

a rouge which was scarcely visible when first applied, but which

darkened later. At first she thought- she had put on too much and

tried to take a little off with alcohol-it was very hard to remove-and

started all over: a dark peony pink flowered at the tips of her

breasts. Vainly she tried to make up the lips which the fleece of her

loins concealed, but the rouge left no mark. Finally, among the tubes

of lipstick she had in the same drawer, she found one of those

kissproof lip-sticks which she did not like to use because they were

too dry and too hard to remove. There, it worked. She fixed her hair

and freshened her face, then finally put on the perfume. Rene had

given her, in an atomizer which re-leased a heavy spray, a perfume

whose name she didn't know, which had the odor of dry wood and marshy

plants, a pungent, slightly savage odor. On her skin the spray melted,

on the fur of the armpits and belly it ran and formed tiny droplets.

  At Roissy O had learned to take her time: she perfumed

 herself three times, each time allowing the perfume to

 dry. First she put on her stockings and high heels, then

  the petticoat and skirt, then the jacket. She put on her



gloves and took her bag. In her bag were her compact, her lipstick, a

comb, her key, and ten francs. Wearing her gloves, she took her fur

coat from the closet and glanced at the time at the head of her bed:

quarter to eight She sat down diagonally on the edge of the bed and,

her eyes riveted to the alarm clock, waited without moving for the

bell to ring. When she heard it at last and rose to leave, she noticed

in the mirror above her dressing table, before tuning out the light,

her bold, gentle, docile expression.

   When she pushed open the door of the little Italian restaurant

before which the car had stopped, the first person she saw, at the

bar, was Rene. He smiled at her tenderly, took her by the hand, and

turning toward a sort of grizzled athlete, introduced her in English

to Sir Stephen H. O was offered a stool between the two men, and as

she was about to sit down Rene said to her in a half-whisper to be

careful not to muss her dress. He helped her to slide her skirt out

from under her and down over the edges of the stool, the cold leather

of which she felt against her skin, while the metal rim around it

pressed directly against the furrow of her thighs, for at first she

had dared only half sit down, for fear that if she were to sit down

completely she might yield to the temptation to cross her legs. Her

skirt billowed around her. Her right heel was caught in one of the

rungs of the stool, the tip of her left foot was touching the floor.

The Englishman, who had bowed without uttering a word, had not taken

his eyes off her, she saw that he was looking at her knees, her hands,

and finally at her lips-but so calmy and with such precise attention,

with such self-assurance, that O felt herself being weighed and

measured as the instrument she knew full well she was, and it was as

though com-pelled by his gaze and, so to speak, in spite of herself

that she withdrew her gloves: she knew that he would speak when her

hands were bare--because she had unusual hands, more like those of a

young boy than the hands of a woman, and because she was wearing on

the third finger of her left hand the iron ring with the triple spiral

of gold. But no, he said nothing, he smiled: he had seen the ring.

   Rene was drinking a martini, Sir Stephen a whisky. He nursed his

whisky, then waited till Rene had drunk his second martini and O the

grapefruit juice that Rene had ordered for her, meanwhile explaining

that if O would be good enough to concur in their joint opinion, they

would dine in the room downstairs, which was smaller and less noisy

than the one on the first floor, which was simply the extension of the

bar.

  "Of course," O said, already gathering up her bag and gloves which

she had placed on the bar.

  Then, to help her off the stool, Sir Stephen offered her his right

hand, in which she placed hers, he finally address-ing her directly by

observing that she had hands that were made to wear irons, so becoming

was iron to her. But as he said it in English, there was a trace of

ambiguity in his words, leaving one in some doubt as to whether he was

referring to the metal alone or whether he were not also, and perhaps

even specifically, referring to iron chains.

  In the room downstairs, which was a simple white-washed cellar, but

cool and pleasant, there were in fact only four tables, one of which

was occupied by guests who were finishing their meal. On the walls had

been drawn, like a fresco, a gastronomical and tourist map of Italy,

in soft, ice-cream colors: vanilla, raspberry, and pistachio. It

reminded O that she wanted to order ice cream for dessert, with lots

of almonds and whipped cream. For she was feeling light and happy,

Rene's knee was touching her knee beneath the table, and whenever he

spoke she knew he was talking for her ears alone. He too was observing

her lips. They let her have the ice cream, but not the coffee. Sir

Stephen invited O and Rene to have coffee at his place. They had all

dined very lightly, and O realized that they had been careful to drink

very little, and had kept her virtually from drinking at all: half a

liter of Chianti for the three of them. They had also dined very

quickly: it was barely nine o'clock.

  "I sent the chauffeur home," said Sir Stephen, "Would you drive,

Rene. The simplest thing would be to go straight to my house."

  Rene took the wheel, O sat beside him, and Sir Stephen was next to

her. The car was a big Buick, there was ample room for three people in

the front seat.

  After the Alma intersection, the Cours la Reine was visible because

the trees were bare, and the Place de la Concorde sparkling and dry

with, above it, the sort of sky which promises snow, but from which

snow has not yet fallen. O heard a little click and felt the warm air

rising around her legs: Sir Stephen had turned on the heater. Rene was

still keeping to the Right Bank of the Seine, then he turned at the

Pont Royal to cross over to the Left Bank: between its stone yokes,

the water looked as frozen as the stone, and just as black. O thought

of hematites, which are black. When she was fifteen her best friend,

who was then thirty and with whom she was in love, wore a hematite

ring set in a duster of tiny diamonds. O would have liked a necklace

of those black stones, without diamonds, a tight-fitting necklace,

perhaps even a choker. But the necklaces that were given to her

now-no, they were not given to her--would she exchange them for the

necklace of hematites, for the hematites of the dream? She saw again

the wretched room where Marion had taken her, behind the Turbigo

intersection, and remembered how she had untied--she, not Marion--her

two big schoolgirl pigtails when Marion had undressed her and laid her

down on the iron bed. How lovely Marion was when she was being

caressed, and it's true that eyes can resemble stars; hers looked like

quivering blue stars.

  Rene stopped the car. O did not recognize the little street, one of

the cross streets which joins the rue de l'Universite and the rue de

Lille.

  Sir Stephen's apartment was situated at the far end of a courtyard,

in one wing of an old private mansion, and the rooms were laid out in

a straight line, one opening into the next. The room at the very end

was also the largest, and the most reposing, furnished in dark English

mahogany and pale yellow and gray. silk drapes.

  "I shan't ask you to tend the fire," Sir Stephen said to 0, "but

this sofa is for you. Please sit down, Rene will make coffee. I would

be most grateful if you would hear what I have to say.

  The large sofa of light-colored Damascus silk was set at right

angles to the fireplace, facing the windows which overlooked the

garden and with its back to those behind, which looked onto the

courtyard. O took off her fur and lay it over the back of the sofa.

When she turned around, she noticed that her lover and her host were

standing, waiting for her to accept Sir Stephen's invitation. She set

her bag down next to her fur and unbuttoned her gloves. When, when

would she ever learn, and would she ever learn, a gesture stealthy

enough so that when she lifted her skirt no one would notice, so that

she herself could forget her nakedness, her submission? Not, in any

case, as long as Rene and that stranger were staring at her in

silence, as they were presently doing. Finally she gave in. Sir

Stephen stirred the fire, Rene suddenly went behind the sofa and,

seizing O by the throat and the hair, pulled her head down against the

back of the couch and kissed her on the mouth, a kiss so prolonged and

profound that she gasped for breath and could feel her loins melting

and burning. He let her go only long enough to tell her that he loved

her, and then immediately took her again. 0's hands, overturned in a

gesture of utter abandon and de-feat, her palms. upward, lay quietly

on her black dress that spread like a corolla around her. Sir Stephen

had come nearer, and when at last Rene' let her go and she opened her

eyes, it was the gray, unflinching gaze of the English-man which she

encountered.

  Completely stunned and bewildered, as she still was, and gasping

with joy, she none the less was easily able to see that he was

admiring her, and that he desired her. Who could have resisted her

moist, half-open mouth, with Its full lips, the white stalk of her

arching neck against the black collar of her page-boy jacket, her eyes

large and clear, which refused to be evasive? But the only gesture Sir

Stephen allowed himself was to run his finger softly over her

eyebrows, then over her lips. Then he sat down facing her on the

opposite side of the fireplace, and when Rene had also sat down in an

armchair, he began to speak.

  "I don't believe Rene has ever spoken to you about his family," he

said. "Still, perhaps you do know that his mother, before she married

his father, had previously been married to an Englishman, who had a

son from his first marriage. I am that son, and it was she who raised

me, until she left my father. So Rene and I are not actually

relatives, and yet, in a way, we are brothers. That Rene loves you I

have no doubt. I would have known even if he hadn't told me, even ff

he hadn't made a move: all one has to do is to see the way he looks at

you. I know too that you are among those girls who have been to

Roissy, and I imagine you'll be going back again. In principle, the

ring you're wearing gives me the right to do with you what I will, as

it does to all those men who know its mean-ing. But that involves

merely a fleeting assignation, and what we expect from you is more

serious. I say `we' be-cause, as you see, Rene is saying nothing: he

prefers to have me speak for both of us.

  "If we are brothers, I am the eldest, ten years older than he. There

is also between us a freedom so absolute. and of such long standing

that what belongs to me has always belonged to him, and what belongs

to him has likewise be-longed to me. Will you agree to join with us? I

beg of you to, and `I ask you to swear to it because it will involve

more than your submission, which I know we can count on. Before you

reply, realize for a moment that I am only, and can only be, another

form of your lover: you will still have only one master. A more

formidable one, I grant you, than the men to whom you were surrendered

at Roissy, because I shall be there every day, and besides I am fond

of habits and rites.    ." (This last phrase he uttered in English.)

  Sir Stephen's quiet, self-assured voice rose in an abso-lute

silence. Even the flames in the fireplace flickered noiselessly. O was

frozen to the sofa like a butterfly im-paled upon a pin, a long pin

composed of words and looks which pierced the middle of her body and

pressed her naked, attentive loins against the warm silk. She was no

longer mistress of her breasts, her hands, the nape of her neck. But

of this much she was sure: the object of the habits and rites of which

he had spoken were patently going to be the possession of (among other

parts of her body) her long thighs concealed beneath the black skirt,

her already opened thighs.

  Both men were sitting across from her. Rene was smok-ing, but before

he had lighted his cigarette he had lighted one of those black-hooded

lamps which consumes the smoke, and the air, already purified by the

wood fire, smelled of the cool odors of the night.

  "Will you give me an answer, or would you like to know more?" Sir

Stephen repeated.

  "If you give your consent," Rene said, "I'll personally explain to

you Sir Stephen's preferences."

  "Demands," Sir Stephen corrected.

  The hardest thing, O was thinking' was not the ques-tion of giving

her consent, and she realized that never for a moment--did either of

them dream that she might refuse; nor, for that matter, did she. The

hardest thing was simply to speak. Her lips were burning and her mouth

was dry, all her saliva was gone, an anguish both of fear and desire

constricted her throat, and her new-found hands were cold and moist.

If only she could have closed her eyes. But she could not. Two gazes

stalked her eyes, gazes from which she could not-and did not desire to

escape. They drew her toward something she thought she had left

be-hind far a long time, perhaps forever, at Roissy. For since her

return, Rene had taken her only by caresses, and the symbol signifying

that she belonged to anyone who knew the secret of her ring had been

without consequence: either she had not met anyone who was familiar

with the secret, or else those who had had remained silent-the only

person she suspected was Jacqueline (and if Jacque line had been at

Roissy, why wasn't she also wearing the ring? Besides, what right did

Jacqueline's knowledge of this secret give her over 0, and did it, in

fact, give her any?). In order to speak, did she have to move? But she

could not move of her own free will-an order from them would

immediately have made her get up, but this time what they wanted from

her was not blind obedience, acquiescence to an order, they wanted her

to anticipate orders, to judge herself a slave and surrender herself

as such. This, then, is what they called her consent. She re-membered

that she had never told Rene anything but "I love you" or "I'm yours."

Today it seemed that they wanted her to speak and to agree to,

specifically and in detail, what till now she had ouly tacitly

consented to.

  Finally she straightened up and, as though what she was going to say

was stifling her, unfastened the top hooks of her tunic, until the

cleavage of her breasts was visible. Then. she stood up. Her hands and

her knees were shaking.

  "I'm yours," she said at length to Rene. "I'll be what-ever you want

me to be."

  "No," he broke in, "ours. Repeat after me: I belong to both of you.

I shall be whatever both of you want me to be."

  Sir Stephen's piercing gray eyes were fixed firmly upon her, as were

Rene's, and in them she was lost, slowly re-peating after him the

phrases he was dictating to her, but like a lesson of grammar, she was

transposing them into the first person.

  "To Sir Stephen and to me you grant the right. . ." The right to

dispose of her body however they wished, in whatever place or manner

they should choose, the right to keep her in chains, the right to whip

her like a slave or prisoner for the slightest failing or infraction,

or simply for their pleasure, the right to pay no heed to her pleas

and cries, if they should make her cry out.

  "I believe," said Rene, "that at this point Sir Stephen would like

me to take over, both you and I willing, and have me brief you

concerning his demands."

  O was listening to her lover, and the words which he had spoken to

her at Roissy came back to her: they were almost the same words. But

then she had listened snuggled up against him, protected by a feeling

of improbability as though it were all a dream, as though she existed

only in another life and perhaps did not really exist at all. Dream or

nightmare, the prison setting, the lavish party gowns, men in masks:

all this removed her from her own life, even to the point of being

uncertain how long it would last. There, at Roissy, she felt the way

you do at night, lost in a dream you have had before and are now

beginning to dream all over again: certain that it exists and certain

that it will end, and you want it to end be-cause you're not sure

you'll be able to bear it, and you also want it to go on so you'll

know how it comes out. Well, the end was here, where she. least

expected it (or no longer expected it at all) and in the form she

least ex-pected (assuming, she was saying to herself, that this really

was the end, that there was not actually another hiding behind this

one, and perhaps stiI1 another behind the next one). The present end

was toppling her from memory into reality and, besides, what had only

been reality in a closed circle, a private universe, was suddenly

about to contaminate all the customs and circumstances of her daily

life, both on her and within her, now no longer satisfied with signs

and symbols --the bare buttocks, bodices that unhook, the iron

ring--but demanding fulfillment.

  It was true that Rene had never whipped her, and the only difference

between the period of their relationship prior to his taking her to

Roissy and the time elapsed since her return was that now he used both

her backside and mouth the way he formerly had used only her womb

(which he continued to use). She had never been able to tell whether

the floggings she had regularly received at Roissy had been

administered, were it only once, by him (whenever there was any

question about it, that is when she herself had been blindfolded or

when those with whom she was dealing were masked), but she tended to

doubt it, The pleasure he derived from the spectacle of her body bound

and surrendered, struggling vainly, and of her cries, was doubtless so

great that he could not bear the idea of lending a hand himself and

thus having his attention dis-tracted from it. It was as though he

were admitting it, since he was now saying to her, so gently, so

tenderly, without moving from the deep arrnchair in which he was half

reclining with his legs crossed,- he was saying how happy he was to be

turning her over to, how happy he was that she was handing herself

over to, the commands and desires of Sir Stephen. Whenever Sir Stephen

would like her to spend the night at his place, or only an hour, or if

he should want her to accompany him outside Paris or, in Paris itself,

to join him at some restaurant or for some show, he would telephone

her and send his car for her-unless Rene' himself came to pick her up.

Today, now, it was her turn to speak. Did she consent? But words

failed her. This willful assent they were suddenly asking her to

express was the agreement to surrender herself, to say yes in advance

to everything to which she most as-suredly wanted to say yes but to

which her body said no, at least insofar as the- whipping was

concerned. As for the rest, if she were honest with herself, she would

have to admit to a feeling of both anxiety and excitement caused by

what she read in Sir Stephen's eyes, a feeling too in-tense for her to

delude herself, and as she was trembling like a leaf, and perhaps for

the very reason that she was trembling, she knew that she was waiting

more impa-tiently than he for the moment when he would place his hand,

and perhaps his lips, upon her. It was probably up to `her to hasten

the moment. Whatever courage, or what-ever surge of overwhelming

desire she may have had, she felt herself suddenly grow so weak as she

was about to reply that she slipped to the floor, her dress in full

bloom around her, and in the silence Sir Stephen's hollow voice

remarked that fear was becoming to her too. His words were not

intended for her, but for Rene. O had the feeling that he was

restraining himself from advancing upon her, and regretted his

restraint. And yet she avoided his gaze, her eyes fixed upon Rene,

terrified lest he should see what was in her eyes and perhaps deem it

a betrayal. And yet it was not a betrayal, for If she were to weigh

her desire to belong to Sir Stephen against her belonging to Rene, she

would not have had a second's hesitation: the only reason she was

yielding to this desire was that Rene had allowed her to and, to a

certain extent, given her to understand that he was ordering her to.

And yet there was still a lingering doubt in her mind as to whether

Rene might not be annoyed to see her acquiesce too quickly or too

well. The slightest sign from him would obliterate it Immediately. But

he made no sign, confining himself to ask her `for the third time for

an answer. She mumbled:

  "I consent to whatever you both desire," and lowered her eyes toward

her hands, which were waiting unclasped in the hollows of her knees,

then added in a murmur: I should like to know whether I shall be

whipped...:'

   There was a long pause, during which she regretted twenty times

over having asked the question. Then Sir Stephen's voice said slowly:

  From time to time."

  Then O heard a match being struck and the sound of glasses: both men

were probably helping themselves to another round of whisky. Rene was

leaving O to her own devices. Rene was saying nothing.

  "Even if I agree to it now: she said, "even if I promise now, I

couldn't bear it."

  "All we ask you to do is submit to it, and, if you scream or moan,

to agree ahead of time that it will be in vain," Sir Stephen went on'

  "Oh, please, for pity's sake, not yet!" said 0, for Sir Stephen was

getting to his feet, Rene was following suit, he leaned down and took

her by the shoulders.

 "So give us your answer," he said. "Do you consent?"

 Finally she said that she did. Gently he helped her up and, having

sat down on the big sofa, made her kneel down alongside him facing the

sofa, on which reclined her outstretched arms, her bust, and her head.

Her eyes were closed, and an image she had seen several years before

flashed across her mind: a strange print portraying a woman kneeling,

as she was, before an armchair. The floor was of tile, and in one

corner a dog and child were play-ing. The woman's skirts were raised,

and standing close beside her was a man brandishing a handful of

switches, ready to whip her. They were all dressed in

sixteenth-century clothes, and the print bore a title which she had

found disgusting: Family Punishment.

  With one hand, Rene took her wrists in a viselike grip, and with the

other lifted her skirts so high that she could feel the muslin lining

brush her cheek. He caressed her flanks and drew Sir Stephen's

attention to the two dimples that graced them, and the softness of the

furrow between her thighs. Then with that same hand he pressed her

waist, to accentuate further her buttocks, and ordered her to open her

knees wider. She obeyed without saying a word. The honors Rene was

bestowing upon her body, and Sir Stephen's replies, and the coarseness

of the terms the men were using so overwhelmed her with a shame as

violent as it was unexpected that the desire she had felt to be had by

Sir Stephen vanished and she began to wish for the whip as a

deliverance, for the pain and screams as a justification' But Sir

Stephen's hands pried open her loins, forced the buttocks' portal,

retreated, took her again, caressed her until she moaned. She was

vanquished, undone, and humiliated that she had moaned.

  "I leave you to Sir Stephen," Rene then said. `Remain the way you

are, he'll dismiss you when he sees fit."

  How often had she remained like this at Roissy, on her knees,

offered to one and all? But then she had always had her hands bound

together by the bracelets, a happy prisoner upon whom everything was

imposed and from whom nothing was asked. Here it was through her own

free will that she remained half-naked, whereas a single gesture, the

same that would have sufficed to bring her back to her feet, would

also have sufficed to cover her. Her promise bound her as much as had

the leather brace-lets and chains. Was it only the promise? And

however humiliated she was, or rather because she had been

hu-miliated, was it not somehow pleasant to be esteemed only for her

humiliation, for the meekness with which she sur-rendered, for the

obedient way in which she opened?

  With Rene gone, Sir Stephen having escorted him to the door, she

waited thus alone, motionless, feeling more ex-posed in the solitude

and more prostituted by the wait than she had ever felt before, when

they were there. The gray and yellow silk of the sofa was smooth to

her cheek; through her nylon stockings she felt, below her knees, the

thick wool rug, and along the full length of her left thigh, the

warmth from the fireplace hearth, for Sir Stephen had added three logs

which were blazing noisily. Above a chest of drawers, an antique clock

ticked so quietly that it was only audible when everything around was

silent O listened carefully, thinking how absurd her position was in

this civilized, tasteful living room. Through the Venetian blinds

could be heard the sleepy rumbling of Paris after midnight In the

light of day, tomorrow morning, would she recognize the spot on the

sofa cushion where she had laid her head? Would she ever return, in

broad daylight, to this same living room, would she ever be treated in

the same way here?

  Sir Stephen was apparently in no hurry to return, and 0, who had

waited so submissively for the strangers at Roissy to take their

pleasure, now felt a lump rise in her throat at the idea that in one

minute, in ten minutes, he would again put his hands on her. But it

was not exactly as she had imagined it.

  She heard him open the door and cross the room. He remained for some

time with his back to the fire, studying 0, then in a near whisper he

told her to get up and then sit back down. Surprised, almost

embarrassed, she obeyed. lie courteously brought her a glass of whisky

and a ciga-rette, both of which she refused. `Then she saw that he was

in a dressing gown, a very conservative dressing gown of gray

homespun-a gray that matched his hair. His hands were long and dry and

his flat fingernails, cut short, were Very white. He caught her

staring, and O blushed: these were indeed the same hands which had

seized her body, the hands she now dreaded, and desired. But he did

not approach her.

  "I'd like you to get completely undressed," he said. "But first

simply undo your jacket, without getting up."

   O unhooked the large gold hooks and slipped her close-fitting

jacket down over her shoulders; then she put it at the other end of

the sofa, where her fur, her gloves, and her bag were.

  "Caress the tips of your breasts, ever so lightly," Sir Stephen said

then, before adding: "You must use a darker rouge, yours is too

light?'

  Taken completely aback, O fondled her nipples with her fingertips

and felt them stiffen and rise. She covered them. with her palms.

  "Oh, no!" Sir Stephen said.

   She withdrew her hands and lay back against the back of the couch:

her breasts were heavy for so slender a torso, and, parting, rose

gently toward her armpits. The nape of her neck was resting against

the back of the sofa, and her hands were lying on either side of her

hips. Why did Sir Stephen not bend over, bring his mouth close to

hers, why did his hands not move toward the nipples which he had seen

stiffen and which she, being absolutely motionless, could feel quiver

whenever she took a breath. But he had drawn near, had sat down across

the arm of the sofa, and was not touching her. He was smoking, and a

movement of his hand-O never knew whether or not it was

volun-tary-flicked some still-warm ashes down between her breasts. She

had the feeling he wanted to insult her, by his disdain, his silence,

by a certain attitude of detachment Yet he had desired her a while

ago, he still did now, she could see it by the tautness beneath the

soft material of his dressing gown. Then let him take her, if only to

wound her! O hated herself for her own desire, and loathed Sir Stephen

for the self control he was displaying. She wanted him to love her,

there, the truth was out: she wanted him to be chafing under the urge

to touch her lips and pene-trate her body, to devastate her if need

be, but not to re-main so calm and self-possessed. At Roissy, she had

not cared in the slightest whether those who used her had had any

feeling whatsoever: they were the instruments by which her lover

derived pleasure from her, by which she became what he wanted her to

be, polished and smooth and gentle as a stone. Their hands were his

hands, their orders his orders. But not here. Rene had turned her over

to Sir Stephen, but it was clear that he wanted to share her with him,

not to obtain anything further from her, nor for the pleasure of

surrendering her, but in order to share with Sir Stephen what today he

loved most, as no doubt In days gone by, when they were young, they

`had shared a trip, a boat, a horse. And today, this sharing derived

its meaning from Rene's relation to Sir Stephen much more than it did

from his relation to her. What each of them would look for in her

would be the other's mark, the trace of the other's passage. Only a

short while before, when she had been kneeling half-naked before Rene,

and Sir Stephen had opened her thighs with both his hands, Rene had

explained to Sir Stephen why 0's buttocks were so easily accessible,

and why he was pleased that they had been thus prepared: it was

because it had occurred to him that Sir Stephen would enjoy having his

preferred path constantly at his disposal. He had even added that, if

Sir Stephen wished, he would grant him the sole use of it.

  Why, gladly," Sir Stephen had said, but he had re-marked that, in

spite of everything, there was a risk he might rend O.

  "0 is yours, Rene had replied, "0 will be pleased to be rent

  And he had leaned down over her and kissed her hands.

  The very idea that Rene' could imagine giving up any part of her

left O stunned. She had taken it as the sign that her lover cared more

about Sir Stephen than he did about her. And too, although he had so

often told her that what he loved in her was the object he had made of

her, her absolute availability to him, his freedom with respect to

her, as one is free to dispose of a piece of furniture, which one

enjoys giving as much as, and sometimes even more than, one may enjoy

keeping it for oneself, she re-alized that she had not believed him

completely.

  She saw another sign of what could scarcely be termed anything but a

certain deference or respect toward Sir Stephen, in the fact that

Rene, who so passionately loved to see her beneath the bodies or the

blows of others besides himself, whose look was one of constant

tenderness, of unflagging gratitude whenever he saw her mouth open to

moan or scream, her eyes closed over tears, had left her after having

made certain, by exposing her to him, by opening her as one opens a

horse's mouth to prove that it is young enough, that Sir Stephen found

her beautiful enough or, strictly speaking, suitable enough for him,

and vouchsafed to accept her. However offensive and insulting his

conduct may have been, 0's love for Rene' remained unchanged. She

considered herself fortunate to count enough in his eyes for him to

derive pleasure from offend-ing her, as believers give thanks to God

for humbling them.

  But, in Sir Stephen, she thought she detected a will of ice and

iron, which would not be swayed by desire, a will in whose judgment,

no matter how moving and submissive she might be, she counted for

absolutely nothing, at least till now. Otherwise why should she have

been so fright-ened? The whip at the valets' belt at Roissy, the

chains borne almost constantly had seemed to her less terrifying .than

the equanimity of Sir Stephen's gaze as it fastened on the breasts he

refrained from touching. She realized to what extent their very

fullness, smooth and distended on her tiny shoulders and slender

torso, rendered them frag-ile. She could not keep them from trembling'

she would have had to stop breathing. To hope that this fragility

would disarm Sir Stephen was futile, and she was fully aware that it

was quite the contrary: her proffered gentle-ness cried for wounds as

much as caresses, fingernails as much as lips. She had a momentary

illusion: Sir Stephen's right hand, which was holding his cigarette,

grazed their tips with the end of his middle finger and, obediently,

they stiffened further. That this, for Sir Stephen, was a game, or the

guise of a game, nothing more, or a check, the way one checks to

ascertain whether a machine is functioning properly, O had no doubt.

  Without moving from the arm of his chair, Sir Stephen then told her

to take off her skirt. 0's moist hands made the hooks slippery, and it

took her two tries before she succeeded in undoing the black faille

petticoat under her skirt.

  When she was completely naked, her high-heeled patent-leather

sandals and her black nylon stockings rolled down flat above her

knees, accentuating the delicate lines of her legs and the whiteness

of her thighs, Sir Ste-phen, who had also gotten to his feet, seized

her loins with one hand and pushed her toward the sofa. He had her

kneel down, her back against the sofa, and to make her press more

tightly against it with her shoulders than with her waist, he made her

spread her thighs slightly. Her hands were lying on her ankles, thus

forcing her belly ajar, and above her still proffered breasts, her

throat arched back.

  She did not dare look Sir Stephen in the face, but she saw his hands

undoing his belt. When he had straddled 0, who was still kneeling, and

had seized her by the nape of the neck, he drove into her mouth. It

was not the caress of her lips the length of him he was looking for,

but the back of her throat. For a long time he probed, and O felt the

suffocating gag of flesh swell and harden, its slow re-peated

hammering finally bringing her to tears. In order to invade her

better, Sir Stephen ended by kneeling on the sofa, one knee on each

side of her face, and there were moments when his buttocks rested on

0,5 breast, and in her heart she felt her womb, useless and scorned,

burning her. Although he delighted and reveled in her for a long time,

Sir Stephen did not bring his pleasure to a climax, but withdrew from

her in silence and rose again to his feet, without closing his

dressing gown.

  "You are easy, 0," he said to her. "You love Rene, but you're easy.

Does Rene realize that you covet and long for all the men who desire

you, that by sending you to Roissy or surrendering you to others he is

providing you with a string of alibis to cover your easy virtue?"

  "I love Rene'," O replied.

  "You love Rene, but you desire me, among others," Sir Stephen went

on.

  Yes, she did desire him, but what if Rene, upon learning it, were to

change? All she could do was remain silent and lower her eyes: even to

have looked Sir Stephen directly in the eyes would have been

tantamount to a confession.

  Then Sir Stephen bent down over her and, taking her by the

shoulders, made her slide down onto the rug. Again she was on her

back, her legs raised and doubled up against her. Sir Stephen, who had

sat down on that part of the couch against which she had just been

leaning, seized her right knee and pulled her toward him. Since she

was facing the fireplace, the light from the nearby hearth shed a

fierce light upon the double, quartered furrow of her belly and rear.

Without loosing his grip, Sir Stephen abruptly ordered her to caress

herself, without closing her legs. Startled, O meekly stretched her

right hand toward her loins, where her fingers encountered the ridge

of flesh -already emerging from the protective fleece beneath,

al-ready burning-where her belly's fragile lips merged.

  But her hand recoiled and she mumbled:

  "I can't."

  And in fact she could not The only times she had ever caressed

herself furtively had been in the warmth and obscurity of her bed,

when she slept alone, but she had never tried to carry it to a dim ax.

But later she would sometimes come upon it in her sleep and would wake

up disappointed that it had been so intense and yet so fleet-ing.

  Sir Stephen's gaze was persistent. She could not bear it, and

repeating "I can't," she closed her eyes.

  What, she was seeing in her mind's eye, what she had never been able

to forget, what still filled her with the same sensation of nausea and

disgust that she had felt when she had first witnessed it when she was

fifteen, was the image of Marion slumped in the leather armchair in a

hotel room, Marion with one leg sprawled over one arm of the chair and

her head half hanging over the other, caress-ing herself in her, 0's,

presence, and moaning. Marion had related to her how she had one day

caressed herself this way in her office when she had thought she was

alone,, and her boss had happened to walk in and caught her ln the

act.

  O remembered Marion's office, a bare room with pale green walls,

with the north light filtering in through dusty window's. There was

only one easy chair, intended for visitors, facing the table.

  Did you run away?" O had asked.     -

  "No" Marion had answered, "he asked me to begin all over again, but

he locked the door, made me take off my panties, and pushed the chair

over in front of the win-dow."

  O had been' overwhelmed with admiration-and with horror-for what she

took to be Marion's courage and had steadfastly refused to fondle

herself in Marion's pres-ence and sworn that she never would, in

anyone's pres-ence. Marion had laughed and said:

  `You'll see. Wait till your lover asks you to."

    Rene never had asked her to. Would she have obeyed?

 Yes, of course she would, but she would also have been

 terrified at the thought that she might see Rene's eyes

 filling with the sa;me disgust that she had felt for Marion.

 Which was absurd. And since it was Sir Stephen, it was

 all the more absurd; what did she care whether Sir

 Stephen was disgusted? But no, she couldn't, For the

 third time she murmured:

  "I can't."

  Though she uttered the words in almost a whisper, he heard them, let

her go, rose to his feet, closed his dressing gown, and ordered O to

get up.

  "Is this your obedience?" he said.

  Then he caught both her wrists with his left hand, and with his

right he slapped her on both sides of the face. She staggered, and

would have fallen had he not held her up.

  "Kneel down and listen to me," he said. "I'm afraid Ben6's training

leaves a great deal to be desired."

  "I always obey Rene," she mumbled.

  "You're confusing love and obedience. You'll,, obey me without

loving me, and without my loving you.

  With that, she felt a strange inexplicable storm of revolt rising

within her, silently denying in the depths of her being the words she

was hearing, denying her promises of submission and slavery, denying

her own agreement, her own desire, her nakedness, her sweat, her

trembling limbs, the circles under her eyes. She struggled and

clenched her teeth with rage when, having made her bend over, with her

elbows on the floor and her head between her arms, her buttocks

raised, he forced her from behind, to rend her as Rene had said he

would.

  The first time she did not cry out. He went at it again, harder now,

and she screamed. She screamed as much out of revolt as of pain, and

lie was fully aware of it, She also knew-which meant that in any event

she was vanquished --that he was pleased to make her cry out. When he

had finished with her, and after he had helped her to her feet, he was

on the point of dismissing her when he remarked to her that what he

had spilled in her was going to seep slowly out tinted with the blood

of the wound he had in-flicted on her, that this wound would burn her

as long as her buttocks were not used to him and he was obliged to

keep on forcing his way. Rene had reserved this particular use of her

to him, and he certainly intended to make full use of it, she had best

have no illusions on that score. He reminded her that she had agreed

to be Rene's slave, and his too, but that it appeared unlikely that

she was. aware-consciously aware of what she had consented to. By the

time she had learned, it would be too late for her to escape.

 Listening, O told herself that perhaps it would also be too late for

him to escape becoming enamored of her, for she had no intention of

being quickly tamed, and by the time she was he might have learned to

love her a little. For all her inner resistance, and the timid refusal

she had dared to display, had one object and one object alone: she

wanted to exist for Sir Stephen, in however modest a way, In the same

way she existed for Rene, and wanted him to feel something more than

desire for her. Not that she was in love, but because she clearly saw

that Rene loved Sir Stephen in that passionate way boys love their

elders, and she sensed that he was ready, if need be, to sacrifice her

to any and all of Sir Stephen's whims, in an effort to satisfy him.

She knew with an infallible intuition that Rene would follow Sir

Stephen's example and emulate his attitude, and that if Sir Stephen

were to show contempt for her, Rene would be contaminated by it, no

matter how much he loved her, contaminated in a way he had never

before been, or had dreamed of being, by the opinions and example of

the men at Roissy. This was because at Roissyy, with regard to her, he

was the master, and the opinions of all the men there to whom he gave

her derived from and depended on his own. Here he was not the master

any longer. On the contrary. Sir Stephen was Rene's master, without

Rene's being fully aware of it, which is to say that Rene admired him

and wanted to emulate him, to com-pete with him, and this was why he

was sharing every-thing with him, and why he had given O to him: this

time it was apparent that she had been given with no strings attached.

Rene would probably go on loving her insofar as Sir Stephen deemed

that she was worth the trouble and would Jove her himself. Till then,

it was clear that Sir Stephen would be her master and, regardless of

what Rene might think, her only master, in the precise relation-ship

of master to slave. She did not expect any pity from him; but could

she not hope to wrest some slight feeling of love from him?

  Sprawled in the same big armchair, next to the fire which he had

been occupying before Rene's departure' he had left her standing there

naked and told her to await his further orders. She had waited without

saying a word. Then he had got to his feet and told her to follow him.

Still naked, except for her high-heeled sandals and black stockings,

she had followed him up a flight of stairs which went from the

ground-floor landing, and entered a small bedroom, a room so tiny

there was only space enough for a bed in one corner and a dressing

table and chair be-tween the bed and window. This small room

communi-cated with a larger room, which was Sir Stephen's, with a

common bathroom between.

 O washed and wiped herself-the towel was faintly stained with

pink-removed her sandals and stockings, and crawled in between the

cold `sheets. The curtains of the window were open, but the night was

dark.

   Before he closed the door between their rooms, after O was already

in bed, Sir Stephen came over to her and kissed her fingertips, as he

had done when she had slipped down off her stool in the bar and he had

complimented her on her iron ring. Thus, he had thrust his hands and

sex into her, ransacked and ravaged her' mouth and rear, but

condescended only to place his lips upon her fingertips. O wept, and

did not fall asleep until dawn.





   The following day, a little before noon, Sir Stephen's chauffeur

drove O home. She had awakened at ten, an el-derly mulatto servant had

brought her a cup of coffee, prepared her bath, and given, her her

clothes, except for her fur wrap, her gloves, and her bag, which she

had found on the living-room couch when she had gone down-stairs. The

living room was empty, the Venetian blinds were raised, and the

curtains were open. Through the window opposite the couch, she could

see a garden green and narrow as an aquarium, planted in nothing but

ivy, holly and spindle hedges.

  As she was putting on her coat, the mulatto servant told her that

Sir Stephen had left, and handed her an envelope on which there was

nothing but her initial; the white sheet inside consisted of two

lines: "Rene phoned that he would come by for you at the studio at six

o'clock," signed with an S and with a postscript: "The riding crop is

for your next visit."

  O glanced around her: on the table, between the two chairs in which

Sir Stephen and Rene had been sitting the evening before, there was a

long, slender, leather riding crop near a vase of yellow roses. The

servant was waiting at the door. O put the letter in her bag and left.

  So Rene had phoned Sir Stephen, and not her. Back home, after having

taken off her clothes, and having had lunch in her dressing gown, she

still had plenty of time to freshen her make-up and rearrange her

hair, and to get dressed to go to the studio, where she was due at

three o clock. The telephone did not ring; Rene did not call `her.

Why? What had Sir Stephen told him? How had they talked about her? She

remembered the words they both had used in her presence, their casual

remarks concerning the advantages of her body with respect to the

demands of theirs. Perhaps it was merely that she was not used to this

kind of vocabulary in English, but the only French equiva-lents she

could find seemed utterly base and contemptible to her. It was true

that she had been passed from hand to hand as often as were the

prostitutes in brothels, so' why should they treat her otherwise? "I

love you, I love you Rene," she repeated, softly calling to him in the

solitude of her room, "I love you, do whatever you want with me, but

don't leave me, for God's sake don't leave me."

  Who pities those who wait? They are easily recognized: by their

gentleness, by their falsely attentive looks-at-tentive, yes, but to

something other than what they are looking at-by their

absent-mindedness. For three long hours, in the studio where a short,

plump red-haired model whom O did not know and who was modeling hats

for her, O was that absent-minded person, withdrawn into herself by

her desire for the minutes to hasten by, and by her own anxiety.

  Over a blouse and petticoat of red silk she had put on a plaid skirt

and a short suede jacket. The bright red of her blouse beneath her

partly opened jacket made her already pale face seem even paler, and

the little red-haired model told her that she looked like a femme

fatale. "Fatal for whom?" O said to herself.

   Two years earlier, before she had met and fallen in love with Rene,

she would have sworn: "Fatal for Sir Stephen" and have added: "and

he'll know it too." But her love for Rene and Rene's love for her had

stripped her of all her weapons, and instead of providing her with any

new proof of her power, had stripped her of those she had previously

possessed. Once she had been indifferent and fickle, someone who

enjoyed tempting, by a word or ges-ture, the boys who were in love

with her, but without giv-ing them anything, then giving herself

impulsively, for no reason, once and only once,' as a reward, but also

to in-flame them even more and render a passion she did not share even

more cruel. She was sure that they loved her. One of them had tried to

commit suicide; when he had been released from the hospital where they

had taken him' she had gone to his place had stripped naked, and

for-bidding him to touch her, had lain down on his couch. Pale with

pain and passion, he had stared at her silently for two hours,

petrified by the promise he had made. She had never wanted to see him

again. It wasn't that she took lightly the desire she aroused. She

understood it, or thought she understood, all the more so because she

her-self felt a similar desire (or so she thought), for her girl

friends, or for young strangers, girls she encountered by chance. Some

of them yielded to her, and she would take them to some discreet hotel

with its narrow hallways and paper-thin walls, while others,

horrified, spurned her. But what she took or mistook-to be desire was

actually nothing more than the thirst for conquest, and neither her

tough-guy exterior nor the fact that she had had several lovers-if you

could call them lovers-nor her hardness, nor even her courage was of

any help to her when she met Rene In the space of a week she learned

fear, but cer-tainty; anguish, but happiness. Rene threw himself at

her like a pirate at his prisoner, and she reveled in her cap-tivity,

feeling on her wrists, her ankles, feeling on all her members and in

the secret depths of her heart and body', bonds less visible than the

finest strands of hair, more powerful than the cables the Lilliputians

used to tie up Gulliver, bonds her lover loosened or tightened with a

glance. She was no longer free? Yes! thank God, she was no longer

free. But she was light, a nymph on clouds, a fish in water, lost in

happiness. Lost because these fine strands of hair, these cables which

Rene held, without exception, in his hand, were the only network

through which the current of life any longer flowed into her.

 This was true to such a degree that when Rene relaxed his grip upon

her-or when she imagined he had-when he seemed distracted, when he

left her in a mood which she took to be indifference or let some time

go by with-out seeing her or replying to her letters and she assumed

that he no longer cared to see her and was on the verge of ceasing to

love her, then everything was choked and smothered within her. The

grass turned black, day was no longer day nor night any longer night,

but both merely Infernal machines which alternately provided, as part

of her torture, periods of light and darkness. Cool water made her

nauseous. She felt as though she were a statue of ashes-bitter,

useless, damned-like the salt statues of Gomorrah. For she was guilty.

Those who love God, and by Him are abandoned in the dark of night, are

guilty, because they are abandoned. They cast back into their

memories, searching for their sins. She looked back, hunt-ing for

hers. All she found were insignificant acts of kind-ness or

self-indulgence, which were not so much acts as an innate part of her

personality, such as arousing the desires of men other than Rene, men

she noticed only to the extent that the love Rene gave her, the

certainty of belonging to Rene, made her happy and filled her cup of

happiness to overflowing, and insofar as her total sub-mission to Rene

rendered her vulnerable, irresponsible, and all her trifling acts-but

what acts? For all she had to reproach herself with were thoughts and

fleeting temp-tations. Yet, he was certain that she was guilty and,

with-out really wanting to, Rene was punishing her for a sin he knew

nothing about (since it remained completely in-ternal), although Sir

Stephen had immediately detected It: her wantonness.

  O was happy that Rene had had her whipped and had prostituted her,

because her impassioned submission would furnish her lover with the

proof that she belonged to him, but also because the pain and shame of

the lash, and the outrage inflicted upon her by those who com-pelled

her to pleasure when they took her, and at the same time delighted in

their own without paying the slightest heed to hers, seemed to her the

very redemption of her sins. There had been embraces she had found

foul, hands that had been an intolerable insult on her breasts, mouths

which had sucked in her lips and tongue like so many soft, vile

leeches, and tongues and sexes, viscous beasts which, caressing

themselves at her closed mouth, at the double furrow, before and

behind, which she had squeezed tight with all her might, had stiffened

her with disgust and kept her stiffened so long that it was all the

whip could do to unbend her, but she had finally yielded to the blows

and opened, with disgust and abominable servility. And what if, in

spite of that, Sir Stephen was right? What if she actually enjoyed her

debasement? In that case, the baser she was, the more merciful was

Rene to consent to make O the instrument of his pleasure.

   As a child, O had read a Biblical text in red letters on the white

wall of a room in Wales where she had lived for two months, a text

such as the Protestants often inscribe in their houses:

          IT IS A FEARFUL THING TO FALL

         INTO THE HANDS OF THE LIVING GOD

 No, O told herself now, that isn't true. What is fearful is to be

cast out of the hands of the living God. Every time Rene postponed, or

was late to, a rendezvous with her, as he had done today-for six

o'clock had come and gone, as had six-thirty-O was prey to a dual

feeling of madness and despair, but for nothing. Madness for nothing,

despair for nothing, nothing was true. Rene would arrive, he would be

there, nothing was changed, he loved her but had been held up by a

staff meeting or some extra work, he had not had time to let her know;

in a flash, O emerged from her airless chamber, and yet each of these

attacks of terror would leave behind, somewhere deep inside her, a

dull premonition, a warning of woe: for there were also times when

Rene' neglected to let her know when the rea-son for the delay was a

game of golf or a hand of bridge, or perhaps another face, for he

loved O but he was free, sure of her and fickle, so fickle. Would a

day of death and ashes not come, a day in the long string of other

(lays which would give the nod to madness, a day when the gas chamber

would reopen? Oh, let the miracle continue, let me still be touched by

grace, Rene don't leave me! Each day, O did not look, nor did she care

to look, any further than the next day and the day after; nor, each

week, any further than the following week. And for her every night

with Rene was a night which would last forever.

 Rene finally arrived at seven, so happy to see her again that he

kissed her in front of the electrician who was re-pairing a

floodlight, in front of the short, red-haired model who was just

coming out of the dressing room, and in front of Jacqueline, whom no

one expected, who had come in suddenly on the heels of the other

model.

  "What a lovely sight," Jacqueline said to 0. "I was just passing, I

wanted to ask you for the last shots of me you took, but I gather this

isn't the right moment. I'll be on my way.

 "Mademoiselle, please don't go," Rene called after her, without

letting go of 0, whom he was holding around the waist, "please don't

go!"

  o introduced them: Jacqueline, Rene; Rene, Jacque-line.

  Piqued, the red-haired model had gone back into her dressing room,

the electrician was pretending to be busy. o was looking at Jacqueline

and could feel Rene's eyes following her gaze. Jacqueline was wearing

a ski outfit, the kind that only movie stars who never go skiing wear.

Her black sweater accentuated her small, widely spaced breasts, her

tight-fitting. ski pants did the same for her long, winter-sports-girl

legs. Everything about her looked like snow: the bluish sheen of her

gray sealskin jacket was snow in the shade; the hoar-frost reflection

of her hair and eyelashes, snow in sunlight She had on lipstick whose

deep red shaded almost to purple, and when she smiled and lifted her

eyes till they were :fixed on O, O said to herself that no one could

resist the desire to drink of that green and moving water beneath the

silvery lashes, to rip off her sweater to lay his hands on the fairly

small breasts. There, you see: no sooner had Rene returned than,

com-pletely reassured by his presence, she recovered her taste for

others and for herself, her zest for life itself,

  They left together, all three of them. On the rue Royale the snow,

which had been falling in large flakes for two hours, fell now in

eddies of thin little white flies which stung the face. The rock salt

scattered on the sidewalk crunched beneath their feet and melted the

snow, and O felt the icy breath it emitted rising along her legs and

fasten on her naked thighs.

   O had a fairly clear idea of what she was looking for in the young

women she pursued. It wasn't that she wanted to give the impression

she was vying with men, nor that she was trying to compensate by her

manifest masculinity for a female inferiority which she in no wise

felt.' It's true that when she was twenty she had caught herself

courting the prettiest of her girl friends by doffing her beret, by

standing aside to let her pass, and by offering a hand to iielp her

out of a taxi. In the same vein, she would not tolerate not paying

whenever they had tea together in some pastry shop. She would kiss her

hand and, if she had a chance, her mouth, if possible in the street.

But these were so many affectations she paraded for the sake of

scandal, displayed much more from childishness than from convic-ton.

On the other hand, her penchant for the sweetness of sweetly made-up'

lips yielding beneath her own, for the porcelain or pearly sparkle of

eyes half-closed in the half-light of couches at five in the

afternoon, when the curtains are drawn and the lamp on the fireplace

mantel lighted, for the voices that say: "Again, oh, please, again..,"

for the marine odor clinging to her fingers: this was a real,

deeply-rooted taste. And she also enjoyed the pursuit just as much.

Probably not for the pursuit itself, however amusing or fascinating it

might be, but for the complete sense of freedom she experienced in the

act of hunting. She, and she alone, set the rules and directed the

proceed-ings (something she never did with men, or only in a most

oblique manner). She initiated the discussions and set the rendezvous,

the kisses came from her too, so much so that she preferred not to

have someone kiss her first, and since she had first had lovers she

almost never allowed the girl whom she was caressing to return her

caresses. As much as she was in a hurry to behold her girl friend

naked, she was equally quick to find excuses why she herself should

not undress. She often looked for excuses to avoid it, say-ing that

she was cold, that it was the wrong time of the month for her. And,

what is more, rare was the woman m whom she failed to detect some

element of beauty. She remembered that, just out of the lycee, she had

tried to seduce an ugly, disagreeable, constantly ill-natured little

girl for the sole reason that she had a wild mop of blond hair which,

by its unevenly cut curls, created a forest of light and shade over a

skin that, while lusterless, had a texture which was soft, smooth, and

totally flat. But the little girl had repelled her advances, and if

one day pleas-ure had ever lighted up the ungrateful wench's face, it

had not been because of 0. For O passionately loved to see faces

enveloped in that mist which makes them so young and smooth, a

timeless youth that does not restore. child-hood but enlarges the

lips, widens the eyes the way make-up does, and renders the iris

sparkling and clear. In this, admiration played a larger part than

pride, for it' was not her handiwork which moved her: at Roissy she

had ex-perienced the same uncomfortable feeling in the presence of the

transfigured face of a girl possessed by a stranger. The nakedness and

surrender of the bodies overwhelmed her, and she had the feeling that

her girl friends, when they simply agreed to `display themselves naked

in a locked room, were giving her a gift which. she could never repay

in kind. For the nakedness of vacations, in the sun and on the

beaches, made no impression on her-not simply because it `was public

but because, being public and not absolute, she was to some extent

protected from It The beauty of other women, which with unfailing

gen-erosity she was inclined to find superior to her own,

never-theless reassured her concerning her own beauty, in which she

saw, whenever she unexpectedly caught a glimpse of herself in a

mirror, a kind of reflection of theirs. The power she acknowledged

that her girl friends held over her was at the same time a guarantee

of her own power over men. And what she asked of women (and never

re-turned, or ever so little), she was happy and found it quite

natural that men should be eager and impatient to ask of her. Thus was

she constantly and simultaneously the ac-complice of both men and

women, having, as it were, her cake and eating it too. There were

times when the game was not all that easy. That O was in love with

Jacqueline, no more and no less than she had been in love with many

others, and assuming that the term "in love" (which was saying a great

deal) was the proper one, there could be no doubt But why did she

conceal it so?

   When the buds burst open on the poplar trees along the quays, and

daylight, lingering longer, gave lovers time to sit for a while in the

gardens after work, she thought she had at last found the courage to

face Jacqueline. In winter, Jacqueline had seemed too triumphant to

her be-neath her cool furs, too iridescent, untouchable,

inacces-sible. And Jacqueline knew it. Spring put her back into suits,

flat-heeled shoes, sweaters. With her short Dutch bob, she finally

resembled those fresh school girls whom 0, as a lycŽe student herself,

used to grab by the wrists and drag silently into an empty cloakroom

and push back against the hanging coats. The coats would tumble from

the hangers. Then O would burst out laughing. They used to wear

uniform blouses of raw cotton, with `their initials embroidered in red

cotton on their breast pockets. Three years later, three kilometers

away, Jacqueline had worn the same blouses in another lycee. It was by

chance that O learned that one day when Jacqueline was modeling some

high-fashion dresses and said with a sigh that, really, if only they

had had as pretty dresses at school, they would have been much happier

there. Or if they had been al-lowed to wear the jumper they gave you,

without any-thing on underneath. "What do you mean, without any-thing

on?" O said. "Without a dress, naturally," Jacqueline replied. To

which O began to blush. She could not get used to being naked beneath

her dress, and any equivocal remark seemed to her to be an allusion to

her condition. It did no good to keep on repeating to herself that one

is always naked beneath one's clothes. No, she felt as naked as that

woman from Verona who went out to offer herself to the chief of the

besieging army in order to free her city: naked beneath a coat, which

only needed to be opened a crack. It also seemed to her that, like the

Italian, her nakedness was meant to redeem something. But what? Since

Jacqueline was sure of herself, she had nothing to redeem; she had no

need to be reassured, all she needed was a mirror. O looked at her

humbly, thinking that the only flowers one could offer her were

magnolias, because their thick, lusterless petals slowly turn to

blister as they fade and wither, or else camellias, because their

waxen whiteness is sometimes infused with a pink glow. As winter

waned, the pale tan that gilded Jacqueline's skin vanished with the

memory of the snow. Soon, only ca-mellias would do. But O was afraid

of making -a fool of herself with these melodramatic flowers. One day

she brought a big bouquet of blue hyacinths, whose odor is

overwhelming, like that of tuberoses: oily, cloying, cling-ing,

exactly the odor camellias ought to have but don't. Jacqueline buried

her Mongolian nose in the warm, stiff-stemmed flowers, her small nose

and her pink lips, for she had been wearing a pink lipstick for the

past two weeks, and not red any longer.

 Are they for me?" she said, the way women do who are used to

receiving gifts.

  Then she thanked O and asked her if Rene were com-ing for her. Yes,

he was coming, O said. He's coming, she repeated to herself, and it

will be for him that Jacqueline will lift her icy, liquid eyes for a

second, those eyes which never look at anyone squarely, as she stands

there falsely motionless, falsely silent. No one would need to teach

her anything: neither to remain silent nor how to keep her hands

unclenched at her sides, nor indeed how to arch her head half back. O

was dying to seize a handful of that too blond hair at the nape of the

neck, and pull her docile head all the way back, to run at least her

finger over the line of her eyebrows. But Rene would want to do it

too.

 She was fully aware why she, once so daring and bold, had become so

shy, why she had wanted Jacqueline for two months without betraying it

by the least word or gesture, and giving herself lame excuses to

explain her timidity. It was not true that Jacqueline was intangible.

The obstacle was not in Jacqueline, it lay deep within O herself, its

roots deeper than anything she had ever before encountered. It was

because Rene was leaving her free, and because she loathed her

freedom. Her freedom was worse than any chains. Her freedom was

separating her from Rene. She, could have taken Jacqueline by the

shoul-ders any number of times and, without saying a word, pinned her

against the wall with her two hands, the way a butterfly is impaled;

Jacqueline would not have moved, and probably not even done so much as

smile. But O was henceforth like those wild animals which have been

taken captive and either serve as decoys for the hunter or, leap-ing

forward only at the hunter's command, head off the game for him.

   It was she who sometimes leaned back against a wall, pale and

trembling, stubbornly impaled by her silence, bound there by her

silence, so happy to remain silent. She was waiting for more than

permission,, since she already had permission. She was waiting for an

order. It came to her not from Rene, but from Sir Stephen.







   As the months went by since the day Rene had given her to Sir

Stephen, O was terrified o note the growing importance Sir Stephen was

assuming in her lover's eyes. Moreover, she realized at the same time

that, in this mat-ter, she was perhaps mistaken, imagining a

progression in the fact or the feeling where actually the only

progression had been in the acknowledgment of this fact or the

ad-mission of this feeling. Be that as it may, she had been quick to

note that Rene chose to spend with her those nights, and only those

nights, following those she had spent with Sir Stephen (Sir Stephen

keeping her the whole night only when Rene was away from Paris). She

also noticed that when Rene remained for one of those evenings at Sir

Stephen's he would never touch O except to make her more readily

available or an easier offering to Sir. Stephen, if she happened to be

struggling. It was extremely rare for him to stay, and he never did

unless at Sir Stephen's express request Whenever he did, he re-mained

fully dressed, as he had done the first time, keep-ing quiet, lighting

one cigarette after another, adding wood to the fire, serving Sir

Stephen something to drink-but not drinking himself. O felt that he

was watching her the way a lion trainer watches the animal he has

trained, careful to see that it performs with complete obedience and

thus does honor to him, but even more the way a prince's bodyguard or

a bandit's second-in-command keeps an eye on the prostitute he has

gone down to fetch in the street. The proof that he was indeed

yielding to the role of servant or acolyte resided in the fact that he

watched Sir Stephen's face more closely than he did hers -and beneath

his gaze O felt herself stripped of the very voluptuousness in which

her features were immersed: for this sensual pleasure Rene paid

obeisance, expressed ad-miration and even gratitude to Sir Stephen,

who had en-gendered it, pleased that he had deigned to take pleasure

in something he had given him.



  Everything would probably have been much simpler if Sir Stephen had

liked boys, and O did not doubt that Rene, who was not so inclined,

still would have readily granted to Sir Stephen both the slightest and

the most demanding of his requests. But Sir Stephen only liked women.

  O realized that through the medium of her body, shared between them,

they attained something more mys-terious and perhaps more acute, more

intense than an amorous communion, the very conception of which was

arduous but whose reality and force she could not deny. Still, why was

this division in a way abstract? At Roissy, O had, at the same time

and in the same place, belonged both to Rene and to other men. Why did

Rene, in Sir Stephen's presence, refrain not only from taking her, but

from giving her any orders? (All he ever did was pass on Sir

Stephen's.) She asked him why, certain beforehand of the reply.

  "Out of respect," Rene replied.

  "But I belong to you," O said.

  "You belong to Sir Stephen first.*

 And it was true, at least in the sense that when Rene had surrendered

her to his friend the surrender had been absolute, that Sir Stephen's

slightest desires took prece-dence over Rene's decisions as far as she

was concerned, and even over her own. If Rene had decided that they

would dine together and go to the theater, and Sir Stephen happened to

phone an hour before he was to pick up 0, Rene would come by for her

at the studio as agreed, but only to drive her to Sir Stephen's door

and leave her there. Once, and only once, O had asked Rene to please

ask Sir Stephen to change the day, because she so much wanted to go

with Reii6 to a party to which they were both in-vited Rene had

refused.

  "My sweet angel," he had said, "you, mean you still haven't

understood that you no longer belong to me, that I'm no longer the

master who's in charge of you?"

  Not only had he refused, but he had told Sir Stephen of 0's request

and, in her presence, asked him to punish her harshly enough so that

she would never again dare even to conceive of shirking her duties.

  "Certainly," Sir Stephen had replied.

 The scene had taken place in the little oval room with the inlaid

floor, in which the only piece of furniture was a table encrusted with

mother-of-pearl, the room adjoining, the yellow and gray living room.

Rene remained only long enough to betray O and hear Sir Stephen's

reply. Then he shook hands with him, smiled at 0, and left. Through

the window, O saw him crossing the courtyard; he did not turn around;

she heard the car door slam shut, the roar of the motor, and in a

little mirror imbedded in the wall she caught a glimpse of her own

image: she was white with fear and despair. Then, mechanically, when

she walked past Sir Stephen, who opened the living-room door for her

and stood back for her to pass, she looked at him: he was as pale as

she. In a flash, she was absolutely certain that he loved her, but it

was a fleeting certainty that vanished as fast as it had come.

Although she did not believe it and chided herself for having thought

of it, she was com-forted by it and undressed meekly, on a mere signal

from him. Then, and for the first time since he had been making her

come two or three times a week, and using her slowly, sometimes making

her wait for an hour naked without coming near her, listening to her

entreaties without ever replying, for there were times when she did

beg and be-seech, enjoining her to do the same things always at the

same moments, as in a ritual, so that she knew when her mouth was

supposed to caress him and when, on her knees, her head buried in the

silken sofa, she should offer him only her back, which he now

possessed without hurt-ing her, for the first time, for in spite of

the fear which convulsed her-or perhaps because of that fear-she

opened to him, in spite of the chagrin she felt at Rene's betrayal,

but perhaps too because of it, she surrendered herself completely. And

for the first time, so gentle were her yielding eyes when they

fastened on Sir Stephen's pale, burning gaze, that he suddenly spoke

to her in French, employing the familiar tu form with her:

  "I'm going to put a gag in your mouth, 0, because I'd like to whip

you till I draw blood. Do I have your per-mission?"

  "I'm yours," O said.

  She was standing in the middle of the drawing room, and her arms,

raised and held together by the Roissy bracelets, which were attached

by a chain to a ring in the ceiling from which a chandelier had

formerly hung, thrust her breasts forward. Sir Stephen caressed them,

then kissed them, then kissed her mouth, once, ten times. (He had

never kissed her.) And when he had put on the gag, which filled her

mouth with the taste of wet canvas pushed her tongue to the back of

her throat, the gag so arranged that she could scarcely clench it in

her teeth, he took her gently by the hair. Held in equilibrium by the

chain, she stumbled on her bare feet

  "Excuse me, 0," he murmured (he had never before begged her pardon),

then he let her go, and struck.







When Rene returned to 0's apartment after midnight, after having gone

alone to the party they had intended to go to together, he found her

in bed, trembling in the white nylon of her long nightgown. Sir

Stephen had brought her home and put her to bed himself and kissed her

again. She told Rene that She also told him that she no longer had any

inclination not to obey Sir Stephen, realizing full well that from

this Rene would conclude that she deemed it essential, and even

pleasant, to be beaten (which was true; but this was not the only

reason). What she was also certain of was that it was equally

essential to Rene that she be beaten. He was as horrified at the idea

of striking her--so much so that he had never been able to bring

himself to do it-as he enjoyed seeing her struggle and hearing her

scream. Once, in his presence, Sir Stephen had used the riding crop on

her. Rene had forced O back against the table and held her there,

motionless. Her skirt had slipped down; he had lifted it up. Perhaps

he. needed even more to know that `while he was not with her, while he

was away walking or working, O was writhing, moan-ing, and crying

beneath the whip, was asking for his pity and not obtaining it-and was

aware that this pain and humiliation had been inflicted on her by the

will of the lover whom she loved, and for his pleasure. At Roissy, he

had had her flogged by the valets. In Sir Stephen he had found the

stern master he himself was unable to be. The fact that the man he

most admired, in the world could take a fancy to her and take the

trouble to tame her, only made Rene's passion all the greater, as O

could plainly see. AU the mouths that had probed her mouth, all the

hands that had seized her breasts and her belly, all the members that

had been thrust into her and so perfectly provided the living proof

that she was indeed prostituted, had at the same time provided the

proof that she was worthy of being prostituted and had, so to speak,

sanctified her. But this, in Rene's eyes, was nothing compared to the

proof Sir Stephen provided. Each time she emerged from his arms, Rene'

looked for the mark of a god upon her. O knew full well that if he had

betrayed her a few hours before, it was in order to provoke new, and

more cruel, marks. And she also knew that, though the reasons for

provoking them might disappear, Sir Stephen would not turn back. So,

much the worse. (But to herself she was thinking the exact opposite.)

Rene', impressed and overwhelmed, gazed for a long time at the thin

body marked by thick, purple welts like so many ropes spanning the

shoulders, the back, the buttocks, the belly, and the breasts, welts

which some-times overlapped and crisscrossed. Here and there a little

blood still oozed.

  "Oh, how I love you," he murmured.

 With trembling hands he took off his clothes, turned out the light,

and lay down next to 0. She moaned in the darkness, all the time he

possessed her.







 The welts on 0's body took almost a month to disappear. In places

where the skin had been broken, she still bore the traces of slightly

whiter lines, like very old scars. If ever she were inclined to forget

where they came from, the attitude of Rene and Sir Stephen were there

to remind her.

 Rene, of course, had a key to 0's apartment He hadn't thought to give

one to Sir Stephen, probably because, till now, Sir Stephen had not

evinced the desire to visit 0's place. But the fact that he had

brought her home that night suddenly made Rene realize that this door,

which only he and O could open, might be considered by Sir Stephen as

an obstacle, a barrier, or as a restriction de-liberately imposed by

Rene, and that it was ridiculous to give him O if he did not at the

same time give him the freedom to come and go at 0's whenever he

pleased. In short, he had a key made, gave it to Sir Stephen, and told

o only after Sir Stephen had accepted it She did not dream of

protesting, and she soon discovered that, whi1e she was waiting for

Sir Stephen to appear, she felt incom-prehensibly peaceful. She waited

for a long time, wonder-ing whether he would surprise her by coming in

the mid dle of the night, whether he would take advantage of one of

Rene's absences, whether he would come alone, or indeed whether he

would even come at all. She did not dare speak about it to Rene.

 One morning when the cleaning woman happened not to be there and O

had gotten up earlier than usual and, at ten o'clock, was already

dressed and ready to go out, she heard a key turning in the lock and

flew to the door shouting: "Rene" (for there were times when Rene did

arrive in this way and at this hour, and she had not dreamed it could

be anyone' but he). It was Sir Stephen, who smiled and said to her:

  "All right, why don't we call up Rene."

 But Rene, tied up at his office by a business appointment, would be

there only in an hour's time.

  0, her heart pounding wildly (and she wondering why), watched Sir

Stephen hang up. He sat her down on the bed, took her head in both his

hands, and forced her mouth open slightly in order to kiss her. She

was so out of breath that she might have slipped and fallen if he had

not held her. But he did hold her, and straightened her up.

  She could not understand why her throat was knotted by such a

feeling of anxiety and anguish, for, after all, what did she have to

fear from Sir Stephen that she had not already experienced?     -

  He bade her remove all her clothes, and watched her, without saying

a word, as she obeyed. Wasn't she, in fact, quite accustomed to being

naked beneath his gaze, as she was accustomed to his silence, as she

was accustomed to waiting for him to decide what his pleasure would

be? She had to admit she had been deceiving herself, and that if she

was taken aback by the time and the place, by the fact that she had

never been naked in this room for any-one except Reu6, the basic

reason for her being upset was actually still the same: her own

self-consciousness. The only difference was that this

self-consciousness was made all the more apparent to her because it

was not taking place in some specific spot to which she had to repair

in order to submit to it, and not at night, thereby partaking of a

dream or of some clandestine existence in relation to the length of

the day, as Roissy had been in relation to the length of her life with

,Rene. The bright light of a May day turned the clandestine into

something public: hence-forth the reality of the night and the reality

of day would be one and the same. Henceforth-and O was thinking' at

last This is doubtless the source of that strange senti-ment of

security, mingled with terror, to which she felt she was surrendering

herself and of which, without under-standing it, she had had a

premonition. Henceforth there were no more hiatuses, no dead time, no

remission, He whom one awaits is, because he is expected, already

pres-ent, already master. Sir Stephen was a far more demand-ing but

also a far surer master than Rene. And however passionately O loved

Rene, and he her, there was between them a kind of equality (were it

only the equality of age) which eliminated in her any feeling of

obedience, the awareness of her submission. Whatever he wanted of her

she wanted too, solely because he was asking it of her. But it was as

though he had instilled in her, insofar as Sir Stephen was concerned,

his own admiration, his own-re-spect She obeyed Sir Stephen's orders

as orders about which there was no question, and was grateful to him

for having given them to her. Whether he addressed her in French or

English, employed the familiar tu or the less personal vous form with

her, she, like a stranger or a servant, never addressed him as

anything but Sir Stephen. She told herself that the term "Lord" would

have been more appropriate, if she had dared utter it, as he, in

re-ferring to her, would have been better advised to employ the word

"slave." She also told herself that all was well, since Rene was happy

loving in her Sir Stephen's slave.

  And so, her clothes neatly arranged at the foot of the bed, having

again put on her high-heeled mules, she waited, with lowered eyes,

facing Sir Stephen, who was leaning against the window Bright sunlight

was streaming through the dotted muslin curtains and gently warmed her

hips and thighs. She was not looking for any special effect, but it

immediately occurred to her that she should have put on more perfume,

she realized that she had not made up the tips of her breasts, and

that, luckily, she had on her mules, for the nail polish on her

toenails was begin-ning to peel off. Then she suddenly knew that what

she was in fact waiting for in this silence, and this light, was for

Sir Stephen to make some signal to her, or for him to order her to

kneel down before him, unbutton him, and caress him. But no. Because

she alone had been the one to whom such a thought had occurred, she

turned scarlet, and as she was blushing she was thinking what a fool

she was to blush: such modesty and shame in a whore!

   Just then, Sir Stephen asked O to sit down before her dressing

table and hear what he had to say. The dressing table was not,

properly speaking, a dressing table, but next to a low ledge set into

the wall, on which were arranged brushes and bottles, a large

Restoration swing-mirror in which 0, seated in her low-slung chair,

could see herself full length.

  Sir Stephen paced back and forth behind her as he talked; from time

to time his reflection crossed the mirror, behind the image of 0, but

his was a reflection which seemed far away, because the silvering of

the mirror was discolored and slightly murky.

   0, her hands unclasped and her knees apart, had an urge to seize

the reflection and stop it, in order to reply more easily. For Sir

Stephen, speaking in a clipped Eng-lish, was asking question after

question, the last ques-tions O would ever have dreamed he would ask,

even as-suming he would ask any in the first place. Hardly had he

begun, however, when he broke off to settle O deeper and farther back

in the chair; with her left leg over the arm of the chair and the

other curled up slightly, 0, in that bath of bright light, was then

presented, to her own eyes and to Sir Stephen's, as perfectly open as

though an invisible lover had withdrawn from her and left her slightly

ajar.

  Sir Stephen resumed his questioning, with a judgelike resolution and

the skill of a father-confessor. O did not see him speaking, and saw

herself replying. Whether she had, since she had returned from Roissy,

belonged to other men besides Rene' and himself? No. Whether she had

wanted to belong to any other she might have met? No. Whether she

caressed herself at night, when she was alone? No. Whether she had any

girl friends she caressed or who she allowed to caress her? No (the

"no" was more hesitant). Any girl friends she did desire? Well, there

was Jacqueline, but "friend" was stretching the term. Ac-quaintance

would be closer, or even chum, the way well-bred school girls refer to

each other in high-class board-ing schools.

  Whereupon Sir Stephen asked her whether she had any photographs of

Jacqueline, and he helped her to her feet so she could go and get

them. It was in the living room that Rene, entering out of breath, for

he had dashed up the four flights of stairs, came upon them: O was

standing in front of the big table on which there shone, black and

white, like' `puddles of water in the night, all of the pic-tures of

Jacqueline. Sir Stephen, half-seated on the table, was taking them one

by one as O handed them to him, and putting them back on the table;

his other hand was holding O's womb. From that moment on, Sir Stephen,

who had greeted Rene' without letting go of her-in fact she felt his

hand probe deeper into her-had ceased ad-dressing her, and ad, dressed

himself to Rene. She thought she knew why: with Rene there, the accord

between Sir Stephen and Rene' concerning her was re-established, but

apart from her, she was only the occasion for it or the object of it,

they no longer had to question her, nor she to reply; what she had to

do, and even what she had to. be, was decided without her.

  It was almost noon. The sun, falling directly on the table, curled

the edges of the photographs. O wanted to move them and flatten them

out to keep them from being ruined, but her fingers fumbled,, she was

on the verge of yielding to the burning probe of Sir Stephen's hand

and allowing a moan to escape from her lips. She failed to hold it

back, did in fact moan, and found herself sprawled fiat on her back

among the photographs, where Sir Stephen had rudely shoved her as he

left her, with her legs spread and dangling. Her feet were not

touching the floor; one of her mules slipped from her foot and dropped

noise-lessly onto. the white rug. Her face was flooded with sun-shine:

she closed her eyes.

  Later, much later, she must have remembered over-hearing the

conversation between Sir Stephen and Rene, but at the time she was not

struck by it, as though it did not concern her and, simultaneously, as

though she had already experienced It before. And it was true that she

had already experienced a similar scene, since the first time that

Rene had taken her to Sir Stephen's, they had discussed her in the

same way. But on that initial occasion she had been a stranger to Sir

Stephen, and Rene had done most of the talking. Since then, Sir

Stephen had made her submit to all his fantasies, had molded her to

his own taste, had demanded and obtained from her, as some-thing quite

routine, the most outrageous and scurrilous acts. She had nothing more

to give than what he already possessed. At least so she thought

  He was speaking, he who generally was silent in her presence, and

his remarks, as well as Rene's, revealed that they were renewing a

conversation they often engaged. in together, with her as the subject.

It was a question of how she could best be utilized, and how the

things each of them had learned from his particular use of her could

best be shared. Sir Stephen readily admitted that O was infinitely

more moving when her body was covered with marks, of whatever kind, if

only because these marks made it impossible for her to cheat and

immediately proclaimed, the moment they were seen, `that anything went

as far as she was concerned. For to know this was one thing, but to

see the proof of it, and to see the proof constantly re-newed, was

quite another. Rene, Sir Stephen said, was perfectly right in wishing

to have her whipped. They de-cided that she would be, irrespective of

the pleasure they might derive from her screams and tears, as often as

neces-sary so that some trace of the flogging could always be seen

upon her.

  0, still lying motionless on her back, her loins still aflame, was

listening, and she had the feeling that by some strange substitution

Sir Stephen was speaking for her, in her place. As though he was

somehow in her body and could feel the anxiety, the anguish, and the

shame, but also the secret pride and harrowing pleasure that she was

feeling, especially when she was alone in a crowd of strangers, of

passers-by in the street, or when she got into a bus, or when she was

at the studio with the models and technicians, and she told herself

that any and all of these people she was with, if they should have an

accident and have to be laid down on the ground or if a doctor had to

be called, would keep their secrets, even if they were un-conscious

and naked; but not she: her secret did not de-pend upon her silence

alone, did not depend on her alone. Even if she wanted to, she could

not indulge in the slight-est caprice and that was indeed the meaning

of one of Sir Stephen's questions-without immediately revealing

herself, she could not allow herself to partake of the most innocent

acts, such as playing tennis or swimming. That these things were

forbidden her was a comfort to her, a material comfort, as the bars of

the convent materially prevent the cloistered girls from belonging to

one an-other, and from escaping. For this reason too, how could, she

run the risk that Jacqueline would not spurn her, with-cut at the same

time running the risk of having to explain the truth to Jacqueline, or

at least part of the truth?

  The sun had moved and left her face. Her shoulders were sticking to

the glossy surface of the photographs on which she was lying, and

against her knee she could feel the rough edge of Sir Stephen's

suitcoat, for he had come back beside her. He and Rene each took her

by one hand and helped her to her feet Rene picked up one of her

mules. It was time for her to get dressed.

  It was during the lunch that followed, at Saint-Cloud on the barks

of the Seine, that Sir Stephen, who had re-mained alone with her,

began to question her once again. The restaurant tables, covered with

white tablecloths, were arranged on a shaded terrace which was

bordered by privet hedges, at the foot of which was a bed of dark red,

scarcely opened peonies.

  Even before Sir Stephen could make a sign to her, O had obediently

lifted her skirts as she sat down on the iron chair, and it had taken

her bare thighs a long time to warm the cold iron. They heard the

water slapping against the boats tied up to the wooden jetty at the

end of the terrace. Sir Stephen was seated across from her, and O was

speaking slowly, determined not to say anything that was not true.

What Sir Stephen wanted to know was why she liked Jacqueline. Oh! that

was easy: it was because she was too beautiful for 0, like the

full-sized dolls given to the poor children for Christmas, which

they're afraid to touch. And yet she knew that if she had not spoken

to her, and had not accosted her, it was because she really didn't

want to. As she said this she raised her eyes, which had been lowered,

fixed on the bed of peonies, and she realized that Sir Stephen was

staring at her lips. Was he listening to what she was saying, or was

he merely listen-ing to the sound of her voice or watching the

movement of her lips? Suddenly she stopped speaking, and Sir Stephen's

gaze rose and intercepted her own. What she read in it was so clear

this time, and it was so obvious to him that she had seen it, that now

it was his turn to blanch. If in-deed he did love her, would he ever

forgive her for having noticed it? She could neither avert her gaze

nor smile, nor speak. Had her life depended on it, she would have been

incapable of making a gesture, incapable of fleeing, her legs would

never have carried her. He would probably never want anything from her

save her submission to his desire, as long as he continued to desire

her. But was desire sufficient to explain the fact t4at, from the day

Rene had handed her over to him, he asked for her and kept her more

and more frequently, sometimes merely to have her with him, without

asking anything from her?

  There he sat across from her, silent and motionless. Some

businessmen, at a neighboring table, were talking as they drank a

coffee so black and `aromatic that the aroma was wafted all the way to

their own table. Two well-groomed, contemptuous Americans lighted

cigarettes halfway through their meal; the gravel crunched beneath the

waiters' feet-one of them came over to refill Sir Stephen's glass,

which was three-quarters empty, but what was the point of wasting good

wine on a statue, a sleep-walker? The waiter did not belabor the

point.

 O  was delighted to feel that if his gray, ardent gaze wandered from

her eyes, it was to fasten on her breasts, her hands, before returning

to her eyes. Finally she saw the trace of a smile appear on his lips,

a smile she dared to answer. But utter a single word, impossible! She

could scarcely breathe.

  "0     Sir Stephen said,

  "Yes," O said, faintly.

 `.0, what I'm going to speak to you about I have already discussed

with Rene and we're both in accord on it. But also, I..." He broke

off.

  O never knew whether it was because, seized by a sud-den chill, she

had closed her eyes, or whether he too had difficulty catching his

breath. He paused; the waiter was changing the plates, bringing O the

menu so she could choose the dessert. O handed it to Sir Stephen. A

souffle'? Yes, a souffl6. It will take twenty minutes. All right,

twenty minutes. The waiter left.

  "I need more than twenty minutes," Sir Stephen said.

  And he went on in a steady voice, and what he said quickly convinced

0, that one thing at least was certain, and that was, if' he did love

her, nothing would be changed, unless one considered this curious

respect a change, this ardor with which he was saying to her: "I'd be

most pleased if you would care to . . . ," instead of simply asking

her to accede to his requests. Yet they were still orders, and there

was no question of  O's not obeying them. She pointed this out to Sir

Stephen. He admitted as much.

  "I still want you to answer," he said.

  "I'll do whatever you like," O responded, and the echo of what she

was saying resounded in her memory: "I'll do whatever you like," she

was used to saying to Rene, the only difference being her use of the

tu form with Rene. Almost in a whisper, she murmured: "Rene..,,'

  Sir Stephen heard it'

 "Rene knows what I want from you. Listen to me."

   He was speaking English, but in a low, carefully con-trolled voice

which was inaudible at' the neighboring tables. Whenever the waiters

approached their table, he fell silent, resuming his sentence where he

had left off as soon as they had moved away. What he was saying seemed

strange and out of keeping with this peaceful, public place, and yet

what was strangest of all `was that he could say it, and O hear it, so

naturally.

  He began by reminding her that the first evening when she had come

to his apartment he had given her an order she had refused to obey,

and he noted that although he might have slapped her then, he had

never repeated the order since that night Would she grant him now what

she had refused him then? O understood that not only must she

acquiesce, but that he wanted to hear her say it her-self, in her own

words, say that she would caress herself any time he asked her to. She

said it, and again she saw the yellow and gray drawing room, Rene's

departure from: it, her revulsion that first evening, the fire glowing

between her open knees when she was lying naked on the rug. Tonight,

in this same drawing room ... No, Sir Stephen had not specified, and

was going on.

   He also pointed out to her that she had never been possessed in his

presence by Rene (or by anyone else), as she had been by him in Rene's

presence (and at Roissy by a whole host of others). From this she

should not con-clude that Rene would be the only one to humiliate her

by handing her over to a man who did not love her-and perhaps derive

pleasure from it-in the presence of a man who did. (He went on at such

length, and with such cruelty-she soon would open her thighs and back,

and her mouth, to those of his friends who, once they had met her,

might desire her-that O suspected that this coarse-ness was aimed as

much at himself as it was at her, and the only thing she remembered

was the end of the sen-tence: in the presence of a man who did love

her. What more did she want in the way of a confession?) What was

more, he would bring her back to Roissy sometime in the course of the

summer. Hadn't it ever struck her as surprising, this isolation in

which first Renee, then he, had kept her? They were the only men she

saw, either to-gether, or one after the other. Whenever Sir Stephen

had invited people to his apartment on the rue de Poitiers, O was

never invited. She had never lunched or dined at his place. Nor had

Rene ever introduced her to any of his friends, except for Sir

Stephen. In all probability he would continue to keep her in the

background, for to Sir Stephen was henceforth reserved the privilege

of doing as he liked with her. But she should not get the idea that

she be-longed to him, that she would be detained more legally on the

contrary. (But what hurt and wounded O most was the realization that

Sir Stephen was going to treat her in exactly the same way Rene had,

in the same, identical way.) The iron and gold ring that she was

wearing on her left hand-and did she recall that the ring had been

chosen so tight-fitting that they had had to force it on her ring

finger? she could not take it off-that ring was the sign that she was

a slave, but one who was common property. It had been merely by chance

that, since this past autumn, she had not met any Roissy members who

might have noticed her irons, or revealed that they had noticed them.

   The word irons, used in the plural, which she had taken to be an

equivocal term when Sir Stephen had told her that irons were becoming

to her, had in no wise been equivocal; it had been a mode of

recognition, a password. Sir Stephen had not had to use the second

formula: namely, whose irons was she wearing? But if today this

question were asked of 0, what would she reply? O hesitated.

  "Rene's and yours," she said.

  "No," Sir Stephen said, "mine. Rene wants you to be answerable first

of all to me.

  O was fully cognizant of this, why did she pretend she was not? In a

short while, and in any case prior to her return to Roissy, she would

have to accept a definitive mark, which would not absolve her from the

obligation of being a common-property slave but would, besides, reveal

her to be a personal slave, Sir Stephen's, and the trac6s of the

floggings on her body, or the marks raised by the riding crop, if

indeed they were inflicted again, would be discreet and futile

compared to this ultimate mark. (But what would this mark be, of what

would it consist, in what way would it be definitive? 0, terrified and

fascinated, was dying to know, she had to know immediately. But it was

obvious that Sir Stephen was not yet ready to explain it And it was

true that she had to accept, to con-sent in the real sense of the

term, for nothing would be inflicted upon her by force to which she

had not already previously consented; she could refuse, nothing was

keep ing her enslaved except her love and her sell-enslavement What

prevented her from leaving?) And yet, before this mark was imposed

upon her, even before Sir Stephen became accustomed to flogging her,

as had been decided by Rene and himself, to flogging her in such a way

that the traces were constantly visible, she would be granted a

reprieve-the time required for her to make Jacqueline submit to her.

Stunned, O raised her head and looked at Sir Stephen. Why? Why

Jacqueline? And if Jacqueline interested Sir Stephen, why was it in

relation to 0?

  "There are two reasons," Sir Stephen said. "The first, and least

important, is that I would like to see you kiss and caress a woman.

  But even assuming she gives in to me,,' cried 0, `how in the world

do you expect me to make her consent to your being present?"

  "That's the least of my worries," Sir Stephen said. "If necessary,

by betray, and anyway I'm counting on you for a great deal more than

that, for the second reason why I want you to seduce her is that

you're to be the bait that lures her to Roissy."

  O set down the cup of coffee she was holding in her hand, shaking so

violently that she spilled the viscous dregs of coffee and sugar at

the bottom of the cup. Like a soothsayer, she saw unbearable images in

the spreading brown stain on the tablecloth: Jacqueline's glazed eyes

confronting the valet Pierre; her flanks, doubtless as golden as her

breasts, though O had never seen them, exposed to view below the folds

of her long red velvet dress with its tucked-up skirt; her downy

cheeks stained with tears and her painted mouth open and screaming,

and her straight hair, in a Dutch bob along her forehead, straight as

new-mown hay-no, it was impossible, not her, not Jacqueline.

  "No, it's out of the question," she said.

  "Of course it's not," Sir Stephen retorted. "How do you think girls

are recruited for Roissy? Once you have brought her there, the matter

will be completely out of your hands, and anyway, if she wants to

leave she can leave. Come along now."

 He had gotten suddenly to his feet, leaving the money for the bill on

the table. O followed him to the car, climbed in, and sat down.

Scarcely had they entered the Bois de Boulogne when he turned in to a

side road, stopped the car in a narrow lane, and took her in his arms.



III



Anne-Marie and the Rings





   O had believed, or wanted to believe, in order to give herself a

good excuse, that Jacqueline would be un-commonly shy. She was

enlightened on this score the mo-ment she decided to open her eyes.

   The modest air Jacqueline assumed-closing the door to the mirrored

make-up' room where she dressed and un-dressed-was in fact clearly

intended to inflame 0, to instill in her the desire to force the door

which, had it been left wide open, she would never have made up her

mind to enter. That 0's decision finally came from an au-thority

outside herself, and was not the result of that basic strategy, could

not have been further from Jacqueline's mind. At first O was amused by

it. As she helped Jacque line arrange her hair, for example, after

Jacqueline had taken off the clothes she had posed in and was slipping

into her turtle-neck sweater ,and the turquoise necklace the same

color as her eyes, O found herself amazingly de lighted at the idea

that the very same evening Sir Stephen would be apprised of

Jacqueline's every gesture--- whether she had allowed O to fondle,

through the black sweater, her small, well-spaced breasts, whether she

had lowered her eyelids till those lashes, fairer than her skin, were

touching her cheeks; whether she had sighed or moaned. When O embraced

her, she became heavy, mo-tionless, and seemingly expectant in her

arms, her lips parted slightly and her hair cascaded back. O always

had to be careful to hold her by both her shoulders and lean her up

against the frame of a door or against a table. Otherwise she would

have slipped to the floor, her eyes closed, without a sound. The

minute O let go of her, she `would again turn into ice and snow,

laughing and distant, and would say: "You've got lipstick on me," and

would wipe her mouth. It was this distant stranger that O en-joyed

betraying by carefully noting-so as not to forget anything and be able

to relate everything in detail-the slow flush of her cheeks, the smell

of sage and sweat. Of Jacqueline it was impossible to say that she was

forbearing or that she was on her guard. When she yielded to the

kisses-and all she had so far granted O were kisses, which she

accepted without returning-she yielded abruptly and, it seemed,

totally, as though for ten seconds, or five minutes, she had become

someone else. The rest of the time she was both coquettish and coy,

incredibly clever at parrying an attack, contriving never to lay

her-self open either to a word or gesture, or even a look which would

allow the victor to coincide with the vanquished or give O to believe

that it was all that simple to take possession of her mouth. The only

indication one had as a guide, the only thing that gave one to suspect

troubled waters beneath the calm surface of her look was an

occa-sional, apparently involuntary trace of a smile on her

tri-angular face, similar to the smile of a cat, as fleeting and as

disturbing, and also as uncertain, as a cat's. Yet it did not take O

long to realize that this smile could be pro-voked by two things, and

Jacqueline was totally unaware of either. The first was the gifts that

were given to her, the second, any clear evidence of the desire she

aroused-' providing, however, that the person who desired her was

someone who might be useful to her or who flattered her vanity. In

what way was O useful to her? Or was it simply that O was an exception

and that Jacqueline enjoyed be-ing desired by O both because she took

solace in 0's mani-fest admiration and also because a woman's desire

is harmless and of no consequence? Still in all, O was con-vinced that

if, instead of bringing Jacqueline a mother- of-pearl brooch or the

latest creation of Hermes' scarves, on which I Love You was printed in

every language under the sun, she were to offer Jacqueline the hundred

or two hundred francs she seemed constantly to need, Jacqueline would

have changed her tune about never having the time to have lunch or tea

at 0's place, or would have stopped evading her caresses. But of this

O never had any proof. She had only barely mentioned it to Sir

Stephen, who was chiding her for her slowness, when Rene stepped in.

The five or six times that Rene had come by for 0, when Jac-queline

had happened to be there, the three of them had gone together to the

Weber bar or to one of the English bars in the vicinity of the

Madeleine; on these occasions Rene would contemplate Jacqueline with

precisely the same mixture of interest, self-assurance, and arrogance

with which he would gaze, at Roissy, at the girls who were completely

at his disposal. The arrogance slid harm-lessly off Jacqueline's

solid, gleaming armor, and Jacque-line was not even aware of it. By a

curious contradiction, O was disturbed by it, judging an attitude

which she con-sidered quite natural and normal for herself, insulting

for Jacqueline. Was she taking up cudgels in defense of Jacqueline, or

was it merely that she wanted her all to herself? She would have been

hard put to answer that question, all the more so because she did not

have her all to herself-at least not yet. But if she finally did

succeed, she had to admit that it was thanks to Rene. On three

oc-casions, upon leaving the bar where they had given Jacqueline

considerably more whisky than she should have drunk-her cheeks were

flushed and shining, her eyes hard-he had d1iven her home before

taking O to Sir Stephen's.

   Jacqueline lived in one of those lugubrious Passy lodg-ing houses

into which hordes of White Russians had piled immediately following

the Revolution, and from which they had never moved. The entrance hall

was painted in Imitation oak, and on the stairway the spaces between

the banisters were covered with dust, and the green carpeting had been

worn down till it was threadbare in many places. Each time Rene wanted

`to come in-and to date he had never got beyond the front

door-Jacqueline would jump out of the car, cry not tonight" or "thanks

so much," and slam the car door behind her as though she had suddenly

been burned by some tongue of flame. And it was true, O would say to

herself, that she was being pursued by fire. It was admirable that

Jacqueline had sensed it, even though she had no concrete evidence of

it as yet At least she realized that she had to be on her guard with

Rene, whose detachment did not seem to affect her in the' slightest

(or did it? and as far as seeming unaffected, two could play at that

game, and Rene was a worthy opponent for her).

 The only time that Jacqueline let O come into the house and follow

her up to her room, O had understood why she had so adamantly refused

Rene' permission to set foot in the house. What would have happened to

her prestige, her black-and-white legend on the slick pages of the

posh fashion magazines, if someone other than a woman like herself had

seen the sordid lair from which the glorious creature issued forth

every day? The bed was never made, at most the bedclothes were more or

less pulled up, and the sheet which was visible was dirty and greasy,

for Jacqueline never went to bed without massaging her face with cold

cream, and she fell asleep too quickly to think of wiping it off.

Sometime in the past a curtain had appar-ently partitioned off the

toilet from the room: all that re-mained, on the triangular shaped

curtain rod were two rings and a few shreds of cloth. The color was

faded from everything: from the rug, from the wallpaper whose pink and

gray flowers were crawling upward like vegetation gone wild and become

petrified on the imitation white trellis. One would have had to throw

everything out and start again from scratch: scrape off the wallpaper,

throw out the rug, sand the floors. But without waiting for that, one

could in any case have cleaned off dirt that, like so many strata,

ringed the enamel of the basin, immediately wiped off and put into

some kind of order the bottles of make-up remover and the jars of

cream, cleaned up the powder box, wiped off the dressing table, thrown

out the dirty cotton, opened the windows. But, straight and cool and

clean and smelling of eau de Cologne and wild flow-ers, dirt-proof and

impeccable, Jacqueline could not have cared less about her filthy

room. What she did care about, however, what caused her no end of

concern, was her family.

  It was because of her hovel, which O was frank enough to have

mentioned to Rene-- that Rend made a proposal which was to alter their

lives, but it was because of her family that Jacqueline accepted.

Rene's suggestion was that Jacqueline should come and live with 0.

"Family" was a gross, misunderstatement: it was a clan, or rather a

horde. Grandmother, mother, aunt, and even a maid-four women ranging

in age from fifty to seventy, strident, heavily made up, smothered

beneath their onyx and their black silks, sobbing and wailing at four

in the morning in the faint red light of the icons, with the cigarette

smoke swirling thickly about them, four women drowning in `the

clicking of tea glasses and the harsh hissing of a language'

Jacqueline would gladly have given half her life to forget she was

going out of her mind having to submit to their orders, to listen to

them, merely having to see them. Whenever she saw her mother lifting a

piece of sugar to her mouth before drinking her tea, Jacqueline would

set down her own glass and retreat to her dry' and dusty pigsty,

leaving all three of them behind, her grandmother, her mother, and her

mother's sister, with their hair dyed black, their closely knit

eyebrows, and their wide, doelike, disapproving eyes-there in her

mother's room which doubled as a living room, there where, besides,

the fourth female, the maid, ended by resembling them. She fled,

banging the doors behind her, and they called after her: "Choura,

Choura, little dove," just as in the novels of Tolstoy, for her name

was not Jacqueline. Jacqueline was her professional name, a name

chosen to forget her real name, and with it this sordid but tender

gynaeceum, and to set herself up in the French sun, in a solid world

where there are men who do marry you and not disappear, as had the

father she had never known, into the vast Arctic wastes from which he

had never returned. She took after him completely, she used to tell

herself with a mixture of anger and delight, she had his hair and high

cheekbones, his complexion and his slanting eyes. All she was grateful

for to her mother was having given her this blond devil as a father,

this demon whom the snows had reclaimed as the earth reclaims other

men. What she resented was that her mother had forgotten him quickly

enough to have given birth one fine day to a dark-complexioned little

girl, the issue of a short-lived liaison, her half-sister by an

un-known father whose name was Natalie. Now fifteen, Nat-alie only saw

them during vacation. Her father, never. But he provided for Natalie's

room and board in a lycee not far from Paris, and gave her mother a

monthly stipend on which the three women and the maid-and even

Jacque-line till now-had subsisted, albeit poorly, in an idleness

which to them was paradise. Whatever remained from Jacqueline's

earnings as a model, after she had bought her cosmetics and lingerie,

and her shoes and dresses-all of which came from the top fashion

houses and were, even after the discount she received as a model,

frightfully ex-pensive-was swallowed by the gaping maw of the family

purse and disappeared, God only knows where.

  Obviously, Jacqueline could have chosen to have a lover to support

her, and she' had not lacked the opportunity. She had in fact had a

lover or two, less because she liked them-not that she actually

disliked them-than because she wanted to prove to herself that she was

capable of provoking desire and inflaming a man to the point of love.

The only one of the two-the second-who had been wealthy had made her a

`present of a very lovely pearl with a slight pink tint which she wore

on her left hand, but she had refused to live with him, and since he

had refused to marry her, she had left him, with no great re-grets,

merely relieved that she was not pregnant (she had thought she was,

for several days had lived in a state of dread at the idea). No, to

live with a lover was to lose face, to forsake one's chances for the

future, it was to do what her mother had done with Natalie's father,

and that was out of the question.

  With 0, however, it was quite another matter. A polite fiction made

it possible to pretend that Jacqueline was simply moving in with a

girlfriend, with whom she was going to share all costs. O would be

setting a dual purpose, both playing the role of the lover who

supports, or helps to support, the girl he loves, and also the

theoretically opposite role of providing a moral guarantee. Rene's

presence was not official enough, really, to compromise the fiction.

But who can say whether, behind Jacqueline's decision, that very

presence might not have been the real motivation for her acceptance?

The fact remained that It was left up to 0, and to O alone, to present

the matter to Jacqueline's mother. Never. had O been more keenly aware

of playing the role of traitor, of. spy, never had she felt so keenly

she was the envoy `of some criminal organization as when she found

herself in the presence of that woman, who thanked her for befriending

her daughter. And at the same time, deep in her heart O was

repudiating her mission and the reasons which had brought her there.

Yes, Jacqueline would move in with her, but never, never would O

acquiesce so completely to Sir Stephen as to deliver her into his

hands.

And yet!... For no sooner had she moved into 0's apartment where she

was

assigned, at Rene's request, the bedroom he sometimes pretended to

occupy

(pre-tended, given that he always slept in 0's big bed), then 0,

contrary

to all expectations, was amazed to find herself obsessed with the

burning

desire to have Jacqueline at any price, even If attaining her goal

meant

handing her over to Sir Stephen. After all, she rationalized to

herself,

Jacque-line's beauty is quite sufficient protection for her, and

besides,

why should I get involved in it anyway? And what if she were to be

reduced

to what I have been re-duced to, is that really so

terrible?--scarecely

addmitting and yet overwhelmed to imagine, how sweet it would be to

see

Jacqueline naked and defenseless beside her, and like her.

   The week Jacqueline moved in, her mother having given her full

consent,

Rene proved to be exceedingly zealous, inviting them every other day

to

dinner and tak-ing them to the movies which, curiously enough, he

chose

from among the detective pictures playing, tales of drug traffic and

white

slavery. He would sit down between them, gently hold hands with them

both,

and not utter a word. But whenever there was a scene of violence, O

would

see him studying Jacqueline's face for the slightest trace of emotion.

All

you could see on it was a hint of disgust, revealed by the slight

downward

pout at the cor-ners of her mouth.





  Afterward he would drive them home in his convertible, with the top

down,

and in the open car with the windows rolled down, the speed and the

night

wind flattened Jacqueline's generous head of blond hair against her

cheeks

and narrow forehead, and even blew it into her eyes. She would toss

her head

to smooth her hair back into place and would run her hand through it

the way

boys do.

 Once she had accepted the fact that she was living with O and that O

was

Rene's mistress, she consequently seemed to find Rene's little

familiarities

quite natural. It did not bother her in the least to have Rene' come

into

her room under the pretense of looking for some piece of paper he had

left

there, and O knew that it was a pretense, for she had personally

emptied the

drawers of the big Dutch writing desk, with its elaborate pattern of

inlay

and its leather-lined leaf, which was always open, a desk so utterly

unlike

Rene. Why did he have it? Who had he gotten it from? Its weighty

elegance,

its light-colored woods were the only touch of wealth in the somewhat

dark

room which faced north and overlooked the court-yard, and the steel

gray of

its walls and the cold, highly waxed surface of the floor provided a

sharp

contrast with the cheerful rooms which faced the river. Well, there

could be

a virtue in that: Jacqueline would not be happy there. It would make

it all

the easier for her to agree. to share the two front rooms with 0, to

sleep

with 0, as on the first day she had agreed to share the bathroom and

kitchen,

the cosmetics, the perfumes, the meals. In this, O was mistaken,

Jacqueline

was profoundly and passionately attached to anything that belonged to

her-to

her pink' pearl, for instance-and completely indifferent to any-thing

that

was not hers. Had she lived in a palace, it would have interested her

only

if someone had told her: the palace is yours, and then proved it by

giving

her a notarized deed. She could not have cared less whether the gray

room

was pleasant or not, and it was not to get away from it that she

climbed

into 0's bed. Nor was it to show her gratitude to 0, for she in fact

did not

feel it though O ascribed the feeling to her and was delighted to

abuse it

or think she was abusing it. Jacqueline enjoyed pleasure, and found it

both

expedient and pleasant to receive it from a woman, in whose hands she

was

running no risks whatever.

   Five days after she had unpacked her suitcases, whose contents O

had

helped her sort out and put away, when for the third time Rene had

brought

them home about ten o'clock after having dined with them, and had then

left

(as he had both other times), she simply appeared, naked and still wet

from

her bath, in 0's doorway and said to 0:

  You're sure he's not coming back?" and without even waiting for her

answer,

she slipped into the big bed. She allowed herself to be kissed and

caressed,

her eyes closed, not responding by a single caress; at first she

moaned

faintly, hardly more than a whimper, then louder, still louder, until

finally she cried out. She fell asleep sprawled across the bed,. her

knees

apart but her legs fiat again on the bed, the upper part of her body

slightly turned on one side, her hands open, her body bathed in the

bright

light of the pink lamp. Between her breasts a trace of sweat

glistened. 0

covered her and turned out the. light. When, two hours later, she took

her

again, in the dark, Jacque-line did not resist, but murmured:

 "Don't wear me out completely, I have to get up early tomorrow."





   It was at this same time that Jacqueline, in addition to her

intermittent

assignments as a model, began to engage in a more absorbing but

equally

unpredictable career: she was signed up to play bit parts in the

movies. It

was hard to tell whether she was proud of this or not, whether or not

she

considered this the first step in a career which might lead to her

becoming

famous. In the morning she would drag herself out of bed more in anger

than

with any show of enthusiasm, would take her shower, quickly make

herself up,

for breakfast would accept only the large cup of black coffee that O

barely

had time to make for her, and would let O kiss the tips of her

fingers,

responding with no more than a mechanical smile and an expression full

of

malice: O was soft and warm in her white vicuna dressing gown, her

hair

combed, her face washed, looking for all the world like someone who

plans on

going back to bed. And yet such was not the case. O had not yet found

the

courage to explain why to Jacqueline. The truth of the matter was that

every

day, when Jacqueline left for the film studio at Boulogne where her

picture

was being shot' at the same time as the children left for school and

the

white-collar workers for their offices, 0, who in the past had indeed

whiled

away the morning in her apartment, also got dressed.

  "I'm sending you my car," Sir Stephen had said, "to'



drive Jacqueline to Boulogne, then it will come back to pick you up.

   Thus O found herself headed for Sir Stephen's place every morning

when

the sun along the way was still striking the eastern facades; the

other

walls were still cool in the shade, but in the gardens the shadows

were

already grow-ing shorter.

   At the rue de Poitiers, the housework was still not fin-ished.

Norah,

the mulatto maid, would take O into the small bedroom where, the first

evening, Sir Stephen had left her alone to sleep and cry, wait till O

had

put her gloves, her bag, and her clothes on the bed, and then she

would take

them and put them away, in 0's presence, in a closet to which she

alone had

the key. Then, having given O the patent-leather high-heeled mules

which

made a sharp' clicking sound as she walked, Norah would precede her,

opening

the doors as they went, till they reached Sir Stephen's study, when

she

would stand aside to let O pass.

   O never got used to these preparations, and stripping in front of

this

patient old woman, who never said a w6rd to her. and scarcely looked

at her,

seemed to her as dan-gerous and formidable as being naked at Roissy in

the

presence of the valets there. On felt slippers, the old lady slipped

silently by like a nun. As she followed her, O could not take her eyes

off

the twin points of her Madras kerchief and, every time she opened a

door,

off her thin,. swarthy hand on the porcelain handle, a hand that

seemed as

hard as wood.

 At the same time, by a feeling diametrically opposed to the terror

she

inspired in her-a contradiction O was un-able to explain-O experienced

a

kind of pride that this servant of Sir Stephen (and just what was her

relation to Sir Stephen, and why had he entrusted her with this task

as

costume and make-up assistant for which she seemed so poorly suited?)

was a

witness to the fact that she too-- like so many others, perhaps, whom

she

had guided in the same way, and why should she think otherwise?-was

worthy

of being used by Sir Stephen. For perhaps Sir Stephen did love her,

without

a doubt he did, and O sensed that the time was not far off when he

would no

longer be content to let her suspect it but would declare it to

her-but to

the very degree that his love and desire for her were increasing, he

was

becoming more completely, more minutely, and more deliberately

exacting with

her. Thus retained by his side for whole mornings, during which he

sometimes

scarcely touched her, wanting only to be caressed by her, she did

whatever

he wanted of her with a sentiment that must be qualified as gratitude,

which

was all the greater whenever his request took the form of a command.

Each

surrender was for her the pledge that an-other surrender would be

demanded

of her, and she ac-quitted herself of each as though of a duty

performed;

it was odd that she should have been completely satisfied by it, and

yet she

was.

  Sir Stephen's office, situated directly above the yellow and gray

drawing

room where he held sway in the eve-. fling, was smaller and had a

lower

ceiling. It contained neither settee nor sofa, only two Regency

armchairs

up-holstered in a tapestry with a floral pattern. O sat in one

occasionally,

but Sir Stephen generally preferred to keep her near at hand, at arm's

length, and while he was busy with other things, to none the less have

her

seated on his desk, to his left. The desk was set at right angles to

the

wall, which allowed O to lean back against the shelves which contained

some

dictionaries and leather-bound phone books. The telephone was snug

against

her left thigh, and every time the phone rang she jumped. It was she

who

picked up the receiver and answered, saying:

 "May I ask who's calling?" then either repeating the name out loud

and

passing the receiver to Sir Stephen, or, if he signaled to her, making

some

excuse for him. Whenever he had a visitor, old Norah would announce

him, Sir

Stephen would have him wait long enough for Norah to conduct O back to

the

room where she had undressed and where, after Sir Stephen's visitor

had left,

she would come to fetch her again when Sir Stephen rang for her,

 Since Norah entered and left the study several times each morning,

either

to bring Sir Stephen his coffee or to bring in the mail, to open or

draw the

blinds or to empty the ash trays, and since she alone had the right to

enter

and had been expressly instructed never to knock, and since, finally,

she

always waited in silence whenever she had something to say, until Sir

Stephen spoke to her to ask her what it was she wanted, it so happened

that

on one occasion when Norah came into the room O was bent over the desk

with

her rear exposed, her head and arms against the leather top, waiting

for Sir

Stephen to impale her. She raised her head. If Norah had not glanced

at her,

and she invariably never did, that would have been the only movement O

would

have made. But this time it was obvious that Norah was trying to catch

0's

eye. Those black, beady eyes fastened on her own-and it was

impos-sible for

0 to tell whether they bespoke indifference or not-those eyes set in a

deeply furrowed, impassive face so bothered O that she made a movement

to

try and get away from Sir Stephen. He gathered what it was all about,

and

with one hand pinned her waist to the table, while prying her open

with the

other. She who was constantly striving to cooperate and do her best

was now,

quite in-voluntarily, tense and contracted, and Sir Stephen was

obliged to

force his way. Even when he had done so, she felt that the ring of her

buttocks was tightening around him, and he had trouble forcing himself

all

the way into her. He withdrew only when he was certain he could come

and go

with ease. Then, as he was on the point of taking her again, he told

Norah

to wait and said that she could help O get dressed when he had

finished with

her. And yet' before he dismissed her, he kissed O tenderly on the

mouth. It

was that kiss which, several days later, gave her the courage to tell

him

that Norah frightened her.

 "I should hope so," he retorted. "And when you wear my mark and my

irons,

as I trust you soon will-if you will consent to it-you'll have much

more

reason to be afraid of her."

  "Why?" O asked, and what mark and what irons?  I'm already wearing

this

ring...

 "That's completely up to Anne-Marie, to whom in fact I've promised to

show

you. We're going to pay her a visit after lunch. I trust you don't

mind?

She's a friend of mine, and you may have noted that' till now, I've

refrained from ever introducing you to my friends. When Anne-Marie is

finished with you, I'll gi've you genuine reasons for being afraid of

Norah."

   O did not dare to pursue the matter any further. This Anne-Marie

whom

they had threatened her with intrigued her more than Norah. Sir

Stephen had

already mentioned her when they had lunched together at Saint-Cloud.

And it

was quite true that O knew none of Sir Stephen's friends, nor any of

his

acquaintances. In short' she was living in Paris locked in her secret

as

though she had been locked in a brothel; the only persons who had the

key to

her secret' Rene and Sir Stephen, at the same time had the only key to

her

body. She could not help thinking that the ezpression "open oneself to

someone," which meant to give oneself, for her had only one meaning, a

literal, physi-cal, and in fact absolute meaning, for she was in fact

opening every part of her body which was capable of being opened. It

also

seemed to her that this was her raison d'etre and that Sir Stephen,

like

Rene, intended it should be, since whenever he spoke of his friends as

he

had done at Saint-Cloud, it was to tell her that those to whom he

might

introduce her would, needless to say, be free to dispose of her

however they

wished, if indeed they did. But in trying to visualize Anne-Marie and

imagine what it might be that Sir Stephen expected from Anne" Marie as

far

as she, 0, was concerned, O was completely at sea' and not even her

experience at Roissy was of any help to her. Sir Stephen had also

mentioned

that he waited to see her caress another woman; could that be it? (But

he

had specified that he was referring to Jacqueline

 ..) No, it wasn't that. "To show your he had just said. Indeed. But

after

she left Anne-Marie, O knew no more than before.







   Anne-Marie lived not far from the Observatoire in Paris, in an

apartment

flanked by a kind of large studio, on the top floor of a new building

overlooking the treetops. She was a slender woman, the same age more

or less

as Sir Stephen, and her black hair was streaked with gray. Her eyes

were

such a deep blue they looked black. She offered o and Sir Stephen some

coffee, a very strong, bitter coffee which she served steaming hot in

tiny

cups, and which reassured 0. When she had finished her coffee and got

up

from her chair to put down her empty cup on a coffee table, Anne-Marie

seized her by the wrist and, turning to Sir Stephen, said:

  "May I?"

  "Please do," Sir Stephen said.

  Then Anne-Marie, who till then had neither spoken to nor smiled at

0, even

to greet her or to acknowledge Sir Stephen's introduction, said to her

softly, with a smile so tender one would have thought she were giving

her a

present:

  "Come, my child, and let me see your belly and back-side. But better

yet'

why don't you take off all your clothes."

 While O obeyed, she lighted a cigarette. Sir Stephen had not taken

his eyes

off 0. They left her standing there for perhaps five minutes. There

was no

mirror in the room, but O caught a vague reflection of herself in the

black

lacquer surface of a screen.

 `Take off your stockings too,,' Anne-Mario said sud-denly, `you see,"

she

went on, "you shouldn't wear garters, you'll ruin your thighs." And

with the

tip of her finger she pointed to the spot lust above 0's knees where 0

rolled down her stockings around a wide elastic garter. There was in

fact a

faint mark on her leg.

  "Who told you to do that?'

  Before O had a chance to reply, Sir Stephen said:

  "The boy who gave her to me, you know him, Rene." And he added: `But

I'm

sure he'll come around to your opinion."

 "I'm glad to hear it"' said Anne-Marie. "I'm going to give you some

long,

dark stockings, 0, and a corset to hold them up. But it will be a

whalebone

corset  one that will be snug at the waist."

   When Anne-Marie had rung and a young, blond, silent girl had

brought in

some very sheer, black stockings and a tight-fitting corset of black

nylon

taffeta, reinforced and sustained by wide, close-set stays which

curved in

at the lower belly and above the hips. 0, who was still standing,

shifting

her weight from one foot to the other, slipped on the stockings, which

came

to the top of her thighs. The young blonde helped her into the corset,

which

had a row of buckles along one of the busks on one side near the back.

Like

the bodices at Roissy, this one could be laced lip as tightly or

loosely as

desired, the laces being at the back. O fastened her stockings to the

four

garter-belt snaps in front and on the sides, then the girl set about

lac-

ing her up as tight as she could. O felt her waist and belly being

pressed

inward by the pressure of the stays, that m front descended almost to

the

pubis, which they left free, as they did her hips. The corset was

shorter

behind and left her rear completely free.

  She'll be much improved," Anne-Marie said, speaking to Sir Stephen,

"when

her waist is a fraction of its present size. And what's more, if

you're too

pressed for time to have her undress, you'll see that the corset is no

incon-venience. Now then, 0, step over this way."

   The girl left, O went over to Anne-Marie, who was sitting in a low

chair,

a small easy chair upholstered in bright red velvet. Anne-Marie ran

her hand

lightly over her buttocks and then, toppling her over an ottoman

simi-lar

to the red velvet chair and ordering her not to move, seized both her

nether

lips.

  This is how they lift the fish at the market, O was thinking, by the

gills,

and how they pry open the mouths of horses. She also recalled that the

valet

Pierre, during her first evening at Roissy, had done the same to her

after

having fastened her in chains. After all, she was no longer mistress

of her

own fate, and that part of her of which she was least in control was

most

assuredly that half of her body which could, so to speak:, be put to

use

independ-ently of the rest. Why, each time that she realized this, was

she-

surprised was not really the right word--once again persuaded, why was

she

paralyzed each time by the same feeling of profound distress, a

sentiment

which tended to deliver her not so much into the hands of the person

she was

with as into the hands of him who had turned her over to alien hands,

a

sentiment which drew her closer to Rene when others were possessing

her and

which, here, was tending to draw her closer to whom? To Rene or to Sir

Stephen? She no longer knew. . .. But that was because she did not

want to

know, for it was clear that she had belonged to Sir Stephen now for...

how

long had it been?..

 Anne-Marie had her stand up and put her clothes back on.

 "You can bring her to me whenever you like," she said to Sir Stephen.

,

,`Tll be at Samois  (Samois... O had ex-pected: Roissy. But it did not

mean

Roissy; then what did it mean?) in two days' time. That will be

fine."'

(What would be fine?)

 "In ten days, if that suits you," Sir Stephen said, "at the beginning

of

July."

 In the car which was driving her back home, Sir Stephen having

remained

behind at Anne-Marie's, she remembered the statue she had seen as a

child in

the Luxembourg Gardens: a woman whose waist had been similarly

con-stricted

and seemed so slim between. her full breasts and plump behind-she was

leaning over limpid waters, a spring which, like her, was carefully

sculptured in marble looking at her reflection-so slim and frail that

she

had been afraid the marble waist would snap. But if that was what Sir

Stephen wanted...

  As for Jacqueline, she could handle her easily enough merely by

telling

her the corset was one of Rene's whims. Which brought O back to a

train of

thought she had been trying to avoid whenever it occurred to her, one

which

suprised her above all not to find more painful: why, since Jacqueline

had

moved in with her, had he made an effort not so much to leave her

alone with

Jacqueline, which she could understand, but to avoid being al6ne with

o any

more? July was fast approaching, and he would be going away and would

not be

coming to visit her at this Anne-Marie's where Sir Stephen was sending

her;

must she therefore resign herself to the fact that the only times she

would

see him would be those evenings when he was in the mood to invite

Jacqueline

and her, or--and she didn't know which of the two possibilities upset

her

most (since between them, at this point there was something basically

false,

due to the fact that their relationship was so circumscribed) on those

occasional mornings when, she was at Sir Stephen's and Norah ushered

Rene in

after first having announced his arrival? Sir Stephen always re-ceived

him,

invariably Rene kissed 0, caressed the tips of her breasts,

coordinated his

plans with Sir Stephen for the following day-plans which never

included 0-

and left. Had he given her to Sir Stephen so completely that he had

ceased

to love her? The thought threw O into such a state of panic that,

mechanically, she got out of Sir Stephen's car in front of her house,

instead of telling the chauffeur to wait, and after it had pulled away

she

had to dash off in search of a taxi. Taxis are few and far between on

the

quai de Bethune. O had to run all the way to the boule-vard

Saint-Germain,

and still she had to wait. She was all out of breath and in a sweat,

because

her corset made it hard for her to breathe, when a taxi finally slowed

down

at the corner of the rue Cardinal-Lemoine. She signaled to it, gave

the

driver the address of Rene's office, got in with out knowing whether

Rene

would be there, and, if he was, whether he would see her; it was the

first

time she had gone to his office.

 She was not suprised by the impressive building on a side street just

off

the Champs-Elysees, or by the Ameri-can-style offices, but what did

disconcert her was Rene's attitude, although he did receive her

immediately.

Not that he was aggressive or full of reproaches. She would have

preferred

reproaches, for he had never given her per-mission to come and disturb

him

at his office, and it was possible that she was creating a

considerable

disturbance for him. He .dismissed his secretary, told her that he did

not

want to see anyone, and asked her to hold all calls. Then he asked O

what

was the matter.

 "I was afraid you didn't love' me any longer," O said.

 He laughed. "All of a sudden, just like that?"

 "Yes, in the car coming back from..

 "Coming back from where?"

 O remained silent.

 Rene laughed again:

  "But I know where you were, silly. Coming back froin Anne-Marie's.

And in

ten days you're going to Samois. Sir Stephen just talked to me on the

phone."

 Rene was seated in the only comfortable chair in the office, which

was

facing the table, and O had buried her-self in his arms.

 "They can do whatever they want with me, I don't care," she murmured.

"But

tell me you still love me."

 "Of course I love you, darling," Rene said, "but I want you to obey

me, and

I'm afraid you're not doing a very good job of it. Did you tell

Jacqueline

that you belonged to Sir Stephen, did you talk to her about Roissy?"

 O assured him that she had not. Jacqueline acquiesced to her

caresses, but

the day she should learn that ...

 Rene stopped her from completing her sentence, lifted her up and laid

her

down in the chair where he had just been sitting, and bunched up her

skirt.

  "Ah ha, so you have your corset," lie said. "It's true that you'll

be much

more attractive when you have a smaller waistline."

  Then he took her, and it seemed to O that it had been so long since

he had

that, subconsciously, she realized she had begun to doubt whether he

really

desired her any longer, and in his act she saw a proof of love.

  "You know," he said afterward, "you're foolish not to talk to

Jacqueline.

We absolutely need her at Roissy, and the simplest way of getting her

there

would be through you. Besides, when you come back from Anne-Marie's

there

won't be any way of concealing your true condition any longer."

  O wanted to know why.

 "You'll see," Rene went on. "You still have five days, and only five

days,

because Sir Stephen intends to start whip-ping you again daily, five

days

before he sends you to Anne-Marie's, and there will be no way for you

to

hide the marks. How will you ever explain them to Jacqueline?"

 O did not reply. What Rene did not know was that Jacqueline was

completely

egotistical as far as O was con-cerned, being interested in her solely

because of 0's mani-fest, and passionate, interest in her, and she

never

looked at 0. If O were covered with welts from the floggings, all she

would

have to do would be to take care not to bathe in Jacqueline's

presence, and

to wear a nightgown. Jacque-line would never notice a thing. She had

never

noticed that O did not wear panties, and there was no danger she would

notice anything else: the fact was that O did not interest her.

  "Listen to me," Rene went on, "there's one thing any-way I want you

to

tell her, and tell her right away, and that is that I'm in love with

her."

  "Is that true?" O said.

 "I want her," Rene said, "and since you can't-or won't --do anything

about

it, I'll take charge of the matter my-self and do what has to be

done."

  "You'll never get her to agree to go to Roissy," O said.

 "I won't? In that case," Rene retorted, "we'll force her to."

  That night, after dark, when Jacqueline was in bed and O had pulled

the'

covers back to gaze at her in the light of the lamp, after having said

to

her: "Rene's in love with you, you know"-for she had delivered the

message

and delivered it without delay-O, who a month before had been

horrified at

the idea of seeing this delicate wisp of a body scored by the lash,

these

narrow loins quartered, the pure mouth screaming, and the fair down on

her

cheeks streaked with tears, O now repeated to herself Rene's final

words,

and was happy.







 With Jacqueline gone and not due back until the be-ginning of August,

if

they had finished shooting the film she was making, there was nothing

further to keep O in Paris. July was around the corner, all the

gardens in

Paris were bursting with crimson geraniums, at noon all the shutters

in town

were closed, and Rene was complaining that he would have to make a

trip to

Scotland. For a moment O was hoping that he would take her along. But

apart

from the fact that he never took her anywhere to see his family, she

knew

that he would surrender her to Sir Stephen, if he were to ask for her.

  Sir Stephen announced that he would come for her the same day that

Rene'

was flying to London. She was on vacation.

 "We're going down to Anne-Marie's," he said, "she's expecting you.

Don't

bother packing a suitcase, you won't need anything."

  Their destination was not the apartment near the Ob-servatoire where

0

had first met Anne-Marie, but a low-lying two-story house at the end

of a

large garden, on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest. Since that

first day,

0 had been wearing the whalebone corset that Anne-Marie had deemed so

essential: each day she had tightened it a little more, until now her

waist

was scarcely larger than the circle formed by her ten fingers;

Anne-Marie

ought to be pleased.

  When they arrived it was two o'clock in the afternoon, the whole

house was

asleep, and the dog barked faintly when they rang the bell: a big,

shaggy,

sheepdog that sniffed at 0's knees beneath her skirt. Anne-Marie was

sitting

under a copper beech tree on the edge of the lawn which, in one corner

of

the garden, faced the windows of her bedroom. She did not get up.

  "Here's 0," Sir Stephen said. "You know what has to be done with

her.

"When will she be ready?"

 Anne-Marie glanced at 0. "You mean you haven't told her? All right,

I'll

begin immediately. You should probably allow ten days after it's over.

I

imagine you'll want to put the rings and monogram on yourself? Come

back in

two weeks. The whole business should be finished two weeks after

that."

  O started to ask a question.

  "Just a minute, 0," Anne-Marie said, "go into the front bedroom over

there,, get undressed but keep your sandals on, and come back.'

  The room, a large white bedroom with heavy purple Jouy print drapes,

was

empty. O put her bag, her gloves, and her clothes on a small chair

near a

closet door. There was no mirror. She went back outside and, dazzled

by the

bright sunlight, walked slowly back over to the shade of the beech

tree. Sir

Stephen was still standing in front of Anne-Marie, the dog at his

feet.

Anne-Marie's black hair, streaked with gray, shone as though she had

used

some kind of cream on it, her blue eyes seemed black. She was dressed

in

white, with a patent-leather belt around her waist, and she was

wearing

patent-leather sandals which revealed the bright red nail polish on

the

toenails of her bare feet, the same color polish she was wearing on

her

fingernails.

 "0," she said, "kneel down in front of Sir Stephen."

  O obliged, her arms crossed behind her back, the tips of her breasts

quivering. The dog tensed, as though he were about to spring at her.

 "Down, Turk," Anne-Marie ordered. Then: "Do you consent, 0, to bear

the

rings and the monogram with which Sir Stephen desires you to be

marked,

without knowing how they will be placed upon you?"

 "I do, "O said.

  "All right then, I'm going to walk Sir Stephen to his car. Stay

here."

 As Anne-Marie got up from her chaise longue, Sir Stephen bent down

and took

0's breasts in his hands. He kissed her on the mouth and murmured:

  "Are you mine, 0, are you really mine?" then turned and left her, to

follow Anne-Marie. The gate banged shut, Anne-Marie was coming back.

0, her

legs folded beneath her, was sitting on her heels and had her arms on

her

knees, like an Egyptian statue.

  There were three other girls living in the house, all of whom had a

bedroom on the second floor. O was given a small bedroom on the ground

floor,

adjoining Anne-Marie's. Anne-Marie called up to them to come down into

the

garden. Like 0, all three of them were naked. The only persons in this

gynaeceum-which was carefully con-cealed by the high walls and by

closed

shutters over the windows which overlooked a narrow dirt road --the

only

persons who wore clothes were Anne-Marie and the three servants: a

cook and

two maids, all of whom were older than Anne-Marie, three severe, dour

women

in their black alpaca skirts and stiffly starched aprons.

 "Her name is 0," said Anne-Marie, who bad sat down again. "Bring her

over

to me so I can get a better look a her. Two of the girls helped O to

her

feet: they were both brunettes, their hair as dark as their fleece

below,

and the nipples of their breasts were large and dark, almost purple.

The

other girl was a short, plump redhead, and the chalky skin of her

bosom was

crisscrossed by a terrifying network of green veins. The two girls

pushed 0

till she was right next to Anne-Marie, who pointed to the three black

stripes that showed on the front of her thighs and were repeated on

her

buttocks.

  "Who whipped you?" she asked. "Sir Stephen?"

  "Yes," O said.

  "When? and with what?"

  "Three days ago, with a riding crop."

  "Starting tomorrow, and for a month thereafter, you will not be

whipped.

But today you will, to mark your arrival, as soon as I've had a chance

to

examine you. Has Sir Stephen ever whipped you on the inside of your

thighs,

with you legs spread wide? No? It's true, men don't know how to. Well,

we'll

soon see Show me your waist. Yes, it's much better!"

  Anne-Marie pressed 0's waist to make it even more wasplike. Then she

sent

the redhead to fetch another cor-set and had them put it on her. It

was

also made of black nylon, but was so stiffly whaleboned and so narrow

that

it looked for all the world like an extremely wide belt. It had no

garter

straps. One of the girls laced it up as tight as. she could, with

Anne-Marie

lending her encouragement as she pulled on the laces as hard as she

could.

  "This is dreadful," O said. "I don't know whether I can bear it."

 "That's the whole point,  Anne-Marie said. "You're much much lovelier

than

you were, but the problem was you didn't lace it tight enough. You're

going

to wear it this way every day. `But tell me now, how did Sir Stephen

prefer

using you? I need to know."

  She had seized 0's womb with her whole hand, and O could not reply.

Two of

the girls were seated on the lawn, the third, one of the brunettes,

was

seated on the foot of Anne-Marie's chaise longue.

  "Turn her around for me, girls, so I can see her back," Anne-Marie

said.

  She was turned around and bent over, and the hands of both girls

vented

her.

  "Of course," Anne-Marie went on, "there was no need for you to tell

me.

You'll have to be marked on the rear. Stand up. We're going to put on

your

bracelets. Colette, go get the box, we'll draw lots to see who will

whip you.

. Bring the tokens, Colette, then we'll go to the music room.

  Colette was the taller of the two dark-haired girls, the other's

name was

Claire; the short redhead was named Yvonne. O had not noticed till now

that

they were all wearing, as at Roissy, a leather collar and leather

bracelets

on their wrists. They were also wearing similar bracelets around their

ankles.

 When Yvonne had chosen some bracelets that fit O and put them on her,

Anne-

Marie handed O four tokens and asked her to give one to each of the

girls,

without looking at the numbers on them. O handed out the tokens. The

three

girls each looked at theirs but said nothing, waiting for Anne-Marie

to

speak.

  "I have number two," Anne-Marie said. "Who has num-ber one?"

  Colette had number one.

 "All right, take O away, she's all yours."

 Colette seized 0's arms and joined her hands behind her back; she

fastened

the bracelets together and pushed O ahead of her. On the threshold of

a

French door that opened into a small wing which formed an L with the

front

of the house, Yvonne, who was leading the way, removed her sandals.

The

light entering through the French door revealed `a room the far end of

which

formed a kind of raised rotunda; the ceiling, in the shape of a

shallow

cupola, was supported by two narrow columns set about six feet apart.

This

dais was about four steps high and, in the area between the columns,

projected further into the room in a gentle arc. The floor of the

rotunda,

like that of the rest of the room, was covered with a red felt carpet.

The

walls were white, the curtains on the windows red, and the sofas set

in a

semicircle facing the rotunda were upholstered in the same red felt

material

as the carpet on the floor. In the rectangular portion of the room

there was

a fireplace which was wider than it was deep, and opposite the

fireplace a

large console-type combination record player and radio, with shelves

of

records on both sides. This was why it was called the music room,

which

communicated directly with Anne-Marie's bedroom via a door near the

fireplace. The identical door on the other "side of the fireplace

opened

into a closet. Aside from the record player and the sofas, the room

had no

furniture.

  While Colette had O sit down on the edge of the plat-form, which in

this

center portion between the columns made a vertical drop to the

floor-the

steps having been placed to the' left and right of the columns-the two

other

girls, after first having closed the Venetian blinds a trifle, shut

the

French door. O was surprised to note that it was a double door, and

Anne-

Marie, who was laughing, said:

 "That's so no one can hear you scream. And the walls are lined with

cork.

Don't worry, no one can hear the slightest thing that goes on in here.

Now

lie down."

  She took her by both shoulders and laid her back, then pulled her

slightly

forward. 0's hands were clutching the edge of the platform-Yvonne

having

attached them to a ring set in the platform-and her buttocks were thus

sus-

pended in mid-air. Anne-Marie made her raise her legs toward her

chest, then

0 suddenly felt her legs, still doubled-up above' her, being pulled

taut in

the same direc-tion: straps had been fastened to her ankle bracelets

and

thence to the columns on either side, while she lay thus between them

on

this raised dais exposed in such a way that the only part of her which

was

visible was the double cleft of her womb and her buttocks violently

quartered. Anne-Marie caressed the inside of her thighs.

  "It's the most tender spot of the whole body," she said, "be careful

not

to harm it. Not too hard now, Colette."

   Colette was standing over her, astride her at the level of her

waist, and

in the bridge formed by her dark legs O could see the tassles  of the

whip

she was holding in her hand. As the first blows burned into her loins,

0

moaned. Colette alternated from left to right, paused, then started

again. 0

struggled with all her might, she thought the straps would tear her

limb

from limb. She did not want to grovel, she did not want to beg for

mercy.

And yet that was precisely what Anne-Marie intended wringing from her

lips.

 "Faster,' she said to Colette, "and harder."



  O braced herself, but it was no use. A minute later she could bear

it no

more, she screamed and burst into tears, while Anne-Marie caressed her

face.

 "Just a second longer," she said, "and it will be over. Only five

more

minutes. She can scream for five minutes. It's twenty-five past,

Colette.

Stop when it's half past,

 when I tell you to."

  But O was screaming:

  "No, no, for God's sake don't!" screaming that she couldn't bear it,

no,

she couldn't bear the torture another second. And yet she endured it

to the

bitter end, and after Colette had left the little stage, Anne-Marie

smiled

at her.

 "Thank me," she said to 0, and O thanked her.

  She knew very well why Anne-Marie had wanted, above all else, to

have her

whipped. That the female of the species was as cruel as, and more

Implacable

than, the male, O had never doubted for a minute. But O suspected -

that

Anne-Marie was less interested' in making a spectacle of her power

than she

was in establishing between O and herself a sense of complicity. O had

never

really under-  - stood, but she had finally come to accept as an

undeniable

and important verity, this constant and contradictory jumble of her

emotions: she liked the idea of torture, but when she was being

tortured

herself she would have be-frayed the whole world to escape it, and yet

when

it was over she was happy to have gone through it, happier still if it

had

been especially cruel and prolonged. Anne-Marie had been correct in

her

assumptions both as to 0's acqui-escence and as to her revolt, and

knew

that her pleas for mercy were indeed genuine. There was still a third

reason

for what she had done, which she explained to 0. She was bent on

proving to

every girl who came into her house, and who was fated to live in a

totally

feminine universe, that her condition as a woman should not be

minimized or

denigrated by the fact that she was in contact only with other women,

but

that, on the contrary, it should be heightened and intensified. That

was why

she required that the girls be constantly naked; the way in which O

was

flogged, as well as the position in which she was bound, had no other

purpose. Today it was O who would remain for the rest of the

afternoon-for

three more hours-exposed on the dais, her legs raised and spread.

Tomorrow

it would be Claire, or Colette, or Yvonne, whom O would contemplate in

turn.

It was a technique much too slow and meticulous (as was the way the

whip was

wielded) to be used at Roissy. But O would see how efficient it was.

Apart

from the rings and the letters she would wear when she left, she would

be

returned to Sir Stephen -more open, and more profoundly enslaved, than

she

had ever before thought was possible.







   The following morning, after breakfast, Anne-Marie told O and

Yvonne to

follow her into her bedroom. From her writing desk she took a green

leather

coffer which she set on the bed and proceeded to open. Both girls

squatted

on their heels.

  "Hasn't Yvonne said anything to you about this?" Anne-Marie asked 0.

  O shook her head. What was there for Yvonne to tell her?

  "And I know Sir Stephen didn't either. No matter. Any-way, here are

the

rings he wants you to wear."

  The rings were of stainless steel, unburnished, the same dull finish

as

the gold-plated iron ring. They were oblong in shape, similar to the

links

of a heavy chain, the rounded metal being approximately as thick as

the

diameter of an oversized coloring pencil. Anne-Marie showed O that

each

 ring was composed of two U-shaped halves, one of which fitted into

the

other.

  "This is only the test model," she said, "which can be removed after

it's

been inserted. The permanent model, you see, has a spring inside, and

when

you press on it it locks into the female slot of the other half of the

ring

and cannot be removed, except by filing."

   Each ring was as long as two joints of the little finger and wide

enough

for the same little finger to slip through it. To each ring was

suspended,

like another ring, Qr as though to the supporting loop of an earring,

a ring

which was meant to hang parallel to the plane of the ear and form its

extension, a round disk made of the same metal, whose diameter was the

same

size as the ring was long. On one of its faces, a triskelion in gold

inlay;

on the oppo. site face, nothing.

  "On the blank side will be your name, your title, and Sir Stephen's

family

and given names," Anne-Marie said, "with, below it, a design composed

of a

crossed whip and riding crop. Yvonne is wearing a disk just like it on

her

necklace, but yours will be worn on your loins."

  "But . . . ;` O ventured.

 "I know," Anne-Marie replied, "That's why I brought Yvonne along.

Show

yours, Yvonne."

 The red-haired girl rose to her feet and lay back on the bed.

Anne-Marie

spread her thighs and showed O that one of the nether lobes had been

neatly

pierced, half way down and close to the base. The iron ring would just

fit

into it.

 "In a moment I'll pierce you, 0," Anne-Marie said. "It's nothing

really.

What takes the longest is placing the clamps so as to be able to

suture the

outer and inner layers, attach the epidermis to the inner membrane.

It's

much easier to bear than the whip."

 "You mean to say you won't put me to sleep?" O cried, trembling.

  "Of course not," Anne-Marie replied. "You'll merely be tied a little

more

tightly than you were yesterday. That's really quite sufficient. Now

come

along."

  A week later Anne-Marie removed the clamps and slipped on the test

ring.

It was lighter than it looked, for it was hollow, but still O could

feel its

weight. The hard metal, which was visibly piercing the flesh, looked

like an

instrument of torture. What would it be like when the weight of the

second

ring was added to it? This barbaric instrument would be immediately

and

glaringly apparent to the most casual glance. į "Of course it will,"

Anne-

Marie said, when O pointed this out to her. "But aren't you by now

fully

aware of what Sir Stephen wants? Anyone, at Roissy or anywhere else,

Sir

Stephen or any6ne else, even you in front of the mirror, anyone who

lifts

your skirts will immediately see his rings on your loins and, if you

turn

around, his monogram on your buttocks. You may possibly file the rings

off

one day, but the brand on your backside will never come off."

  "`I thought it was possible to have tattoos removed," Colette said.

(It

was she who had tattooed, on Yvonne's white skin just above the

triangle of

her belly, the initials of Yvonne's master in ornate blue letters,

like the

letters you find on embroidery.)

  "0 will not be tattooed," replied Anne-Marie.

  O looked at Anne'-Marie. Colette and Yvonne were stunned, and said

nothing.

Anne-Marie was fumbling for her words.

 "Go ahead and say it," O said.

  "My poor dear girl, I just couldn't work up the courage to tell you:

you're to be branded. Sir Stephen sent me the branding irons two days

ago.

  "Branded?" Yvonne cried, "with a red-hot branding iron?"

   From the first day, O had shared in the life of the house.

Idleness,

absolute and deliberate idleness was the order of the day,

interspersed with

dull distractions. The girls were at liberty to walk in the garden, to

read,

draw, play cards, play solitaire. They could sleep' in their rooms or

sunbathe on the lawn. Sometimes two of them would chat, or they would

talk

together in pairs for hours on end, and some-times they would sit at

Anne-

Marie's feet with6ut uttering a word. Mealtimes were always the same,

dinner

was by candlelight, tea was served in the garden, and there was

something

absurd about the matter-of-fact way in which the two servants served

these

naked girls seated around a festive table.

 In the evening, Anne-Marie would designate one of them to sleep with

her,

sometimes the same one several nights in succession. She caressed her

chosen

partner and was by her caressed, generally toward dawn, and then she

would

immediately fall asleep, after having sent her part-ner back to her

own

room. The purple drapes, only half closed, tinted the dawning day

mauve, and

Yvonne used to say that Anne-Marie was as beautiful and haughty in

receiving

pleasure as she was unstinting in her demands. None of them had ever

seen

her naked. She would pull up or open slightly her white nylon

nightgown, but

would not take it off. Neither the pleasure she may have tasted the

night

before nor her choice of partner the previous evening had the least

influence on her decision the follow-ing afternoon, which was always

determined by a drawing. At three in the afternoon, beneath the copper

beech

where the garden chairs were grouped about a round, white-marble

table,

Anne-Marie would bring out the token box. Each girl would take a

token.

Whoever drew the lowest number was then taken. to the music room and

arranged on the dais as O had been that first day. She then had to

point to

(save for 0, who was exempted until her departure) Anne-Marie's right

or

left hand, in each of which she was holding a white or black ball. If

she

chose black, she was flogged; white, she was not. Anne-Marie never

resorted

to chicanery, even if chance condemned or spared the same girl several

days

in a row. Thus the tor-ture of little Yvonne, who sobbed and cried out

for

her lover, was repeated four days running. Her thighs, like her

breasts

crisscrossed with a green network of veins, spread to reveal a pink

flesh

which was pierced by the thick iron ring,' which had finally been

inserted,

and the spectacle was all the more striking because Yvonne was

completely

shaved.

 "But why?" O wanted to know, and why the ring if you are already

wearing a

disk on your collar?"

  "He says I'm more naked when I'm shaved, The ring, I think the ring

is to

fasten me with."

 Yvonne's green eyes and her tiny triangular face re-minded O of

Jacqueline

every time she looked at her. What if Jacqueline were to go to Roissy?

Sooner or later, Jacqueline would end up here, would here be strapped

on her

back on this platform.

  "I won't," O would say, "I don't want to and I won't `lift a finger

to get

her there. As it is, I've already said too much. Jacqueline's not the

sort

to be flogged and marked."

 But how admirably suited to blows and irons was little Yvonne, how

lovely

it was to hear her moans and sighs, how lovely too to witness her body

soaked with per-spiration, `and what a pleasure to wrest the moans and

the

sweat from her. For on two occasions Anne-Marie had handed O the

thonged

whip--both times the victim had been Yvonne--and told her to use it.

The

first time for the first minute, she had hesitated, and at Yvonne's

first

scream O had recoiled and cringed, but as soon as she had started in

again

and Yvonne's cries had echoed anew, she had been overwhelmed with a

terrible

feeling of pleasure, a feeling so intense that she had caught herself

laughing in spite of herself, and she had found it almost impossible

to

restrain herself from striking Yvonne as hard as she could. Afterward

she

had remained next to Yvonne throughout the entire period of time she

was

kept tied up, embracing her from time to time. In some ways, she

probably

re-sembled Yvonne. At least one was led to suspect as much by the way

Anne-

Marie felt about them both. Was it 0's silence, her meekness that

endeared

her to Anne-Marie? Scarcely had 0's wounds healed than Anne-Marie re-

marked:

 "How I regret not to be able to whip you! . .. When you come back...

But

let's say no more about it. In any event, I'm going to open you every

day."

  And, daily, when the girl who was in the music room had been untied,

0

would replace her until the bell rang for dinner. And Anne-Marie was

right:

it was true that during those two hours all she could think of was the

fact

that she was opened, and of the ring, hanging heavily from her (after

one

had been placed there) which, after they had inserted the second ring,

weighed even more. She could think of nothing save her enslaved

condition,

and of the marks that went with it.

 One evening Claire had come in with Colette from the garden, come

over to 0

and examined both sides of the rings.

  "when you went to Roissy," she said, "was it Anne-Marie who brought

you

there?"

  "No,"O said.

  "It was Anne-Marie who brought me, two years ago. I'm going back

there the

day after tomorrow."

  "But don't you belong to anyone?" O said.

  "Claire belongs to me," said Anne-Marie, appearing from nowhere.

"Your

master's arriving tomorrow, 0. To-night you'll sleep with me."

  The short summer night waxed slowly brighter until, toward four

o'clock,

daylight drowned the last stars. 0, who was sleeping with her legs

together,

was awakened by Anne-Marie's hands probing between her thighs. But all

Anne-

Marie wanted was to awaken 0, to have O caress her. Her eyes were

shining in

the half light, and her black hair, with the streaks of gray

interspersed,

was pushed lip behind her on the pillow: only slightly curly, and cut

quite

short, it made her look like some mighty nobleman in exile, like some

brave

libertine. With her lips, O brushed the hard tips of her breasts, and

her

hand ran lightly over the valley of her belly. Anne-Marie was quick to

yield-but not to 0. The pleasure to which she opened her eyes wide,

staring

at the growing daylight, was an anonymous, impersonal pleasure of

which 0

was merely the instrument. It made no difference whatever to

Anne-Marie

that O admired her face, smooth and glowing with renewed youth, her

lovely

panting lips, nor did she care whether O heard her moan when her lips

and

teeth seized the crest of flesh hidden in the furrow of her belly. She

merely seized O by the hair to press her more closely to her, and only

let

her go in order to say to her:

 "Again, do it again."

 O had loved Jacqueline in the same way, had held her completely

abandoned

in her arms. She had possessed her; or at least so she thought. But

the

similarity of gestures meant nothing. O did not possess Anne-Marie. No

one

possessed. Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie demanded caresses without worrying

about

what the person providing them might feel, and she surrendered herself

with

an arrogant liberty. Yet she was all kindness and gentleness with 0,

kissed

her on the mouth and kissed her breasts, and held her close against

her for

an hour before sending her back to her own room. She had removed her

irons.

  "These are your final hours here," she said, "you can sleep without

the

irons. The ones we'll put on you in a little while you'll never be

able to

take off.

  She had run her hand softly, and at great length, over 0's rear,

then had

taken her into the room where she,' Anne-Marie, dressed, the only room

in

the house where there was a three-sided mirror. She had opened the

mir-ror

so that O could see herself.

  "This is the last time you'll see yourself intact," she said..

"Here, on

this smooth, rounded area is where Sir Stephen's Initials will be

branded,

on either side of the cleft in your behind. The day before you leave

I'll

bring you back here for another look at yourself. You won't recognize

yourself. But Sir Stephen is right. Now go and get some sleep, 0.',

 But O was too worried and upset to sleep, and when at ten the next

morning

Yvonne came to fetch her, O was trembling so that she had to help her

bathe,

arrange her hair, and put on her lipstick. She had heard the garden

gate

open; Sir Stephen was there.

 "Come along now, 0," Yvonne said, "he's waiting for you."

   The sun was already high in the sky, not a breath of air was

stirring in

the leaves of the beech tree, which looked as though it were made out

of

copper. The dog, overcome by the heat, was lying at the foot of the

tree,

and since the sun had not yet disappeared behind the main mass of

foliage,

its rays shot through. the end of the only branch which, at this hour,

cast

a shadow on the table: the marble top was resplendent with bright'

warm

spots of light.

 Sir Stephen was standing, motionless, beside the table, Anne-Marie

seated

beside him.

 "Here she is," said Anne-Marie, when Yvonne had brought O before

them, "the

rings can be put on whenever you like, she's been pierced."

 Without replying, Sir Stephen took O in his arms, kissed her on the

mouth

and, lifting her completely off her feet, lay her down on the table

and bent

over her. Then he kissed her again, caressed her eyebrows and her hair

and,

straightening up, said to Anne-Marie:

  "Right now, if it's all right with you."

  Anne-Marie took the leather coffer which she had brought Out with

her and

set down on a chair, and handed Sir Stephen the rings, `which were

unhooked,

and on which were inscribed the names of O and Sir Stephen.

 "Any time," Sir Stephen said.

  Yvonne lifted 0's knees, and O felt the cold metal as Anne-Marie

slipped

it into place. As she was slipping the second half of the ring into

the

first, she was careful to seQ that the side inlaid with gold was

against her

thigh, and the side which bore the inscription facing inward. But the

spring

was so tight that the prongs would not go in all the way. They had to

send

Yvonne to fetch the hammer. Then they made O sit up and lean over,

with her

legs spread, on the edge of the marble slab, which served as an anvil

first

for one then the other of the two links of the chain, while they hit

the

other end with a hammer to drive the prongs home. Sir Stephen looked

on in

silence. When it was over he thanked Anne-Marie and helped O to her

feet. It

was then she realized that these new irons were much heavier than the

ones

she had been wearing tempo-rarily for the past few days. But these

were

permanent.

 "And now your monogram, right?" Anne-Marie said to Sir Stephen.

   Sir Stephen nodded assent, and held O by the waist, for she was

stumbling

and looked as though she might fall. She was not wearing her black

corset,

but it had so molded her into the desired shape that she looked as

though

she might break, so slim was her waistline now. And, as a result, her

hips

and breasts seemed fuller.

   In the music room, into which Sir Stephen carried rather than led

0,

Colette and Claire were seated at the foot of the stage. When the

others

came m, they both got to their feet. On the stage was a big, round

single-

burner stove. Anne-Marie took the straps from the closet and had them

tie 0

tightly around the waist and knees, her belly hard against one of the

columns. They also bound her hands and feet. Consumed by fear and

terror, 0

felt one of Anne-Marie's hands on her buttocks, indicating the exact

spot

for the irons, she heard the hiss of a flame and, in total silence,

heard

the window being closed. She could have turned her head and looked,

but she

did not have the strength to. One single, frightful' stab of pain

coursed

through her, made her go rigid in her bonds and wrenched a scream from

her

lips, and she never knew who it was who had, with both branding irons

at

once, seared the flesh of her buttocks, nor whose voice had counted

slowly

up to five, nor whose hand had given the signal to with-draw the

irons.

   When they unfastened her, she collapsed into Anne-Marie's arms and

had

time, before everything turned black around her and she completely

lost

consciousness, to catch a glimpse, between two waves of darkness, of

Sir

Stephen's ghastly pale face.

   Ten days before the end of July, Sir Stephen drove O back to Paris.

The

irons attached to the left lobe of her belly's cleft, proclaiming in

bold

letters that she was Sir Stephen's personal property, came about a

third of

the way down her thigh and, at every step, swung back and forth

between her

legs like the clapper of a bell, the in-scribed disk being heavier and

longer than the ring to which it was attached. The marks made by the

branding iron, about three inches in height and half that in width,

had been

burned into the flesh as though by a gouging tool, and were almost

half an

inch deep: the lightest stroke of the finger revealed them. From these

irons

and these marks, O derived a feeling of inordinate pride. Had

Jacqueline

been there, instead of trying to conceal from her the fact that she

bore

them, as she had tried to hide the traces of the welts raised by the

riding

crop which Sir Stephen had wielded during those last days before her

departure, she would have gone running in search of Jacqueline, to

show them

to her. But Jacqueline was not due back for another week. Rene wasn't

there.

During that week, 0, at Sir Stephen's behest, had several summer

dresses

made, and a number of evening gowns of a very light material. He

allowed her

only two models, but let her order variations on both: one with a

zipper all

the way down the front (0 already had several like it), the other a

full

skirt, easy to lift, always with a corselet above, which came up to

below

the breasts and was worn with a high-necked bolero. All one had to do

was

remove the bolero and the shoulders and breasts were bare, or simply

to open

it if one desired to see the breasts. Bathing snits, of course, were

out of

the question; the nether irons would hang below the suit. Sir Stephen

had

told her that this summer she would have to swim naked whenever she

went

swimming. Beach slacks were also out. However, Anne-Marie, who was

responsible for the two basic models of dresses, knowing where Sir

Stephen's

preference lay in using 0, had proposed a type of slacks which would

be

supported in front by the blouse and, on both sides, have long

zippers, thus

allowing the back flap to be lowered without taking off the slacks.

But Sir

Stephen refused. It was true that he used 0, when he did not have

recourse

to her mouth, almost invariably as he would have a boy. But O had had

ample

opportunity to notice that when she was near him, even when he did not

particularly desire her, he loved to take hold of her womb,

mechanically as

it were, take hold of and tug at her fleece with his hand, to pry her

open

and burrow at length within. The pleasure O derived from holding

Jacqueline

in much the same way, moist and burning between her locked fingers,

was

ample evidence and a guarantee of Sir Stephen's pleasure. She

understood

`why he did not want any extraneous obstacles set in. the path of that

pleasure.

  Hatless, wearing practically no make-up, her hair com-pletely free,

0

looked like a well-brought-up little girl, dressed as she was in her

twilled

stripe or polka dot, navy blue-and-white or gray-and-white pleated

sun-

skirts and the fitted bolero buttoned at the neck, or in her more con-

servative dresses of black nylon. Everywhere Sir Stephen escorted her

she

was taken for his daughter, or his niece, and this mistake was abetted

by

the fact that he, in ad-dressing her, employed the tu form, whereas

she

employed the vous. Alone together in Paris, strolling through the

streets to

window shop, or walking along the quays, where the paving stones were

dusty

because the weather had been so dry, they evinced no surprise at

seeing the

pass-ers-by smile at them, the way people smile at people who are

happy.

  Once in a while Sir Stephen would push her into the recess of a

porte-

cochere, or beneath the archway of a building, which was always

slightly

dark, and from which there rose the musty odor of ancient cellars, and

he

would kiss her and tell her he loved her. O would hook her heels over

the

sill of the porte-cochere out of which the regular pedestrian door bad

been

cut. They caught a glimpse of a courtyard in the rear, with lines of

laundry

drying in the windows. Leaning on one of the balconies, a blond girl

would

be staring fixedly at them. A cat would slip between their legs. Thus

did

they stroll through the Gobelins dis-trict, by Saint-Marcel, along the

rue

Mouffetard, to the area known as the Temple, and to the Bastille.

   Once Sir Stephen suddenly steered O into a wretched brothel-like

hotel,

where the desk clerk first wanted them to fill out the forms, but then

said

not to bother if it was only for an hour-. The wallpaper in the room

was

blue, with enormous golden peonies, the window looked out onto a pit

whence

rose the odor of garbage cans. How-ever weak the light bulb at the

head of

the bed, you could' still see streaks of face powder and forgotten

hairpins

on the mantelpiece. On the ceiling above the bed was a large mirror.

 Once, but only once, Sir Stephen invited O to lunch with two of his

compatriots who were passing through Paris. He came for her an hour

before

she was ready, and instead of having her driven to his place, he came

to the

quai de Bethune.

  O had finished bathing, but she had not done her hair or put on her

rnake-

up, and was not dressed. To her sur-prise, she saw that Sir Stephen

was

carrying a golf bag, though she saw no clubs in it. But she soon got

over

her surprise: Sir Stephen told her to open the bag. Inside were

several

leather riding crops, two fairly thick ones of red leather, two that

were

long and thin of black leather, a scourge with long lashes of green

leather,

each of which was folded back at the end to form a loop, a dog's whip

made

of a thick, single lash whose handle was of braided leather and, last

but

not least, leather bracelets of the sort used at Roissy, plus some

rope. 0

laid them out side by side on the unmade bed, No matter how accustomed

she

became to seeing them, no matter what resolutions she made about them,

she

could not keep from trembling. Sir Stephen took her in his arms.

   "Which do you prefer, 0?" he asked her.

  But she could hardly speak, and already could feel the sweat running

down

her arms.

  "Which do you prefer?" he repeated. "All right," he said, confronted

by

her silence, "first you're going to help me."

  He asked her for some nails, and having found a way to arrange them

in a

decorative manner, whips and riding crops crossed, he showed O a panel

of

wainscoting be-tween her mirror and the fireplace, opposite her bed,

which

would be ideal for them. He hammered some nails into the wood. There

were

rings on the ends of the handles of the whips and riding crops, by

which

they could be suspended from the nails, a system which allowed each

whip to

be easily taken down and returned to its place on the wall. Thus,

together

with the bracelets and the rope, O would have, opposite her bed, the

complete array of her instruments of torture. It was a handsome

panoply, as

harmonious as the wheel and spikes in the paintings of Saint Catherine

the

Martyr, as the nails and hammer, the crown of thorns, the spear and

scourges

portrayed in the paintings of the Crucifixion. When Jacqueline came

back

   but all this involved Jacqueline, involved her deeply. She would

have to

reply to Sir Stephen's question: O could ;not' he chose the dog whip

himself.



 In a tiny private dining room of the La Perouse restau-rant, along

the

quays of the Left Bank, a room on the third floor whose dark walls

were

brightened by Watteau-like figures in pastel colors who resembled

actors of

the puppet theater, O was ensconced alone on the sofa, with one of Sir

Stephen's friends in an armchair to her right, another to her left,

and Sir

Stephen across from her. She remem-bered already having seen one of

the men

at Roissy, but she could not recall having been taken by him. The

other was

a tall, red-haired boy with gray eyes, who could not have been more

than

twenty-five. In two words, Sir Stephen told them why he had invited 0,

and

what she was. Listening to him, O was once again astonished at the

coarseness of his language. But then, how did she expect to be

referred to,

if not as a whore, a girl who, in the pres-ence of three men (not to

mention the restaurant waiters who kept trooping in and out, since

luncheon

was still being served) would open her bodice to bare her breasts, the

tips

of which had been reddened with lipstick, as they could see, as they

could

also see from the purple furrows across her milk-white skin that she

had

been flogged?

 The meal went on for a long time, and the two English-men drank a

great

deal. Over coffee, when the liqueurs had been served, Sir Stephen

pushed the

table back against the opposite wall and, after having lifted her

skirt to

show his friends how O was branded and in irons, left her to them.

 The man she had met at Roissy wasted no time with her: without

leaving his

armchair, without even touching her with his fingertips, he ordered

her to

kneel down in `front of him, take him and caress his sex until he dis-

charged in her mouth. After which, he made her straighten out his

clothing,

and then he left.

   But the red-haired lad, who had been completely over-whelmed by 0's

submissiveness and meek surrender, by her irons and the welts which he

had

glimpsed on her body, took her by the hand instead of throwing himself

upon

her as she had expected, and descended the stairs, paying not the

slightest

heed to the sly smiles of the wait-ers and, after hailing a taxi, took

her

back to his hotel room. He did not let her go till nightfall,. after

having

frantically plowed her fore and aft--both of which he. bruised and be-

labored unmercifully, he being of an uncommon size and rigidity and,

what is

more, being totally intoxicated by the sudden freedom granted him to

penetrate a woman doubly and be embraced by her in the way he had seen

her

ordered to a short while before (something he had never before dared

ask of

anyone).

  The' following day, when O arrived at Sir Stephen's at two o'clock

in

answer to his summons, she found him looking older and his face

careworn.

  "Eric has fallen head over heels in love with you, 0," he told her.

"This

morning he called on me and begged me to grant you your freedom. He

told me

he wants to marry you. He wants to save you. You see how I treat you

if

you're mine, 0, and if you are mine you have no right to refuse my

commands;

but you also know that you are always free to choose not to be mine. I

told

him so. He's coming back here at three."

 O  burst out laughing. "Isn't it a little late?" she said. "You're

both

quite mad. If Eric had not come by this morning, what would you have

done

with me this after-noon? We would have gone for a walk, nothing more?

Then

let's go for a walk. Or perhaps you would not have summoned me this

afternoon? In that case I'll leave..."

  "No," Sir `Stephen broke in, "I would have called you, but not to go

for a

walk. I wanted..."

 "Go on, say it."

  "Come, it will be simpler to show you.

  He got up and opened a door in the wall opposite the fireplace, a

door

identical to the one into his office.

 O had always thought that the door led into a closet which was no

longer

used. She saw a tiny bedroom, newly painted, and hung with dark red

silk.

Half of the room was occupied by a rounded stage flanked by two

columns,

identical to the stage in the music room at Samois.

 "The walls and ceiling are lined with cork, are they not?" O said.

"And the

door is padded, and you've had a double window installed?"

 Sir Stephen nodded.

  "But since when has all this been done?" O said.

  "Since you've been back."

  "Then why?..."

 "Why did I wait until today? Because I first wanted to hand you over

to

other men. Now I shall punish you for it. I 'e never punished you,

0.',

  "But I belong to you," O said. "Punish me. When Eric comes..."

   An hour later, when he was shown a grotesquely bo'und and

spread-eagled 0

strapped to the two columns, the boy blanched, mumbled something, and

disappeared. O thought she would never see him again. She ran into him

again

at Roissy, at the end of September, and he had her consigned to him

for

three days in a row, during which he savagely abused and mistreated

her.







IV



The Owl





   What O failed completely to understand now was why she had ever

been

hesitant to speak to Jacqueline about what Rene rightly called her

true

condition. Anne-Marie had warned her that she would be changed when

she left

Samois, but O had never imagined the change would be so great. With

Jacqueline back, more lovely and radiant than ever, it seemed natural

to her

to be no more reticent about revealing herself when she bathed or

dressed

than she was when she was alone. And yet Jacqueline was so

disinterested in

others, in anything that did not pertain directly to herself, that it

was

not until the second day after Jacqueline arrived back and by chance

came

into the bathroom Just as O was stepping out of the tub, that jingled

her

irons against the porce-lain to draw her attention to the odd noise.

Jacqueline turned her head, and saw both the disk hanging between her

legs

and the black Stripes crisscrossing her thighs and breasts.

 "What in the world's the matter?" she said.

 "It's Sir Stephen," O replied. And she added, as though it were

something

to be taken completely for granted: "Rene gave me to him, and he's had

me

pierced with his rings. Look." And as she dried herself with the bath

towel

she came over to Jacqueline, who was so staggered she had slumped onto

the

lacquered bathroom stool, close enough so that Jacqueline could take

the

disk in her hand and read the inscription; then, slipping down her

bathrobe

she turned around and pointed to the initials S and H engraved in her

buttocks and said:

  "He also had me branded with his monogram. As for the rest, that's

where I

was flogged with a riding crop. He generally whips me himself, but he

also

has a black maid whip me.

  Dumbfounded, Jacqueline gazed at 0. O burst out laughing and made as

though to kiss her. Terror-stricken, Jacqueline pushed her away and

fled

into her own room. O leisurely finished drying herself, put on her

perfume,

and combed her hair. She put on her corset, her stockings, her mules,

and

when she opened the bathroom door she encountered Jacqueline's gaze in

the

mirror, before which she was combing her hair, without having the

vaguest

notion what she was doing.

 "Lace up my corset, will you?" she said. `You really do look

astonished.

Rene's in love with you, didn't he say anything to you about it?"

  "I don't understand," Jacqueline said. And she lost no time

revealing what

surprised her the most. "You look as though you were proud of it, I

don't

understand."

  "You will, after Rene takes you to Roissy. By the way, have you

already

slept with him?"

 Jacqueline's face turned a bright crimson, and she was shaking her

head in

denial with such little conviction that once again O burst out

laughing.

 "You're lying, darling, don't be an ass. You have every right in the

world

to sleep with him. And I might add that that's no reason to reject me.

Come,

let me caress you and I'll tell you all about Roissy."

  Had Jacqueline been afraid that 0's jealousy would explode in her

face and

then yield to her out of relief when it did not, or was it curiosity,

did

she want to hear the promised explanations, or was it merely because

she

loved the patience, the slowness, the passion of 0's caresses? In any

event,

yield she did.

 "Tell me about it," she later said to 0.

  "All right," O said. "But first kiss the tips of my breasts. It's

time you

got used to it, if you're ever to be of any use to Rene."

  Jacqueline did as she was bade, so well in fact that she wrested a

moan

from 0.

  "Tell me about it," she said.

 0's tale, however faithful and clear it may have been, and

notwithstanding

the material proof she herself consti-tuted, seemed completely mad to

Jacqueline.

  "You mean you're going back in September?" she said.

 "After we've come back from the Midi," O said. 'I'll take you, or

Rene

will."

  "To see what it's like, I wouldn't mind that," Jacqueline went on,

"but

only to see what it's like."

 "I'm sure that can be arranged," said 0, though she was convinced of

the

contrary. But, she kept telling herself, if she could only persuade

Jacqueline to enter the gates at Roissy, Sir Stephen would be grateful

to

her-and once she was in, there would be enough valets, chains, and

whips to

teach Jacqueline to obey.

  She already knew that the summer house that Sir Stephen had rented

near

Cannes on the Riviera, where she was scheduled to spend the month of

August

with Rene, Jacqueline, and him (and with Jacqueline's younger sister,

whom

Jacqueline had asked if she could bring along, not because she cared

especially to have her but because her mother had been hounding her to

obtain 0's permission), she knew that her room, to which she was

certain she

could entice Jacqueline, who would be unable to refuse when Rene was

away,

was separated from Sir Stephen's bedroom by a wall that looked as

though it

was full but actually was not; the wall was decorated with a trompe

d'oeil

latticework which enabled Sir Stephen to raise a blind on his side and

thus

to see and hear as well as if he had been standing beside the bed.

Jacqueline would be surrendered to Sir Stephen's gaze while O was

caressing

her, and by the time she found out it would be too late. O was pleased

to

think that she would deliver Jacqueline by an act of betrayal, because

she

had felt insulted at seeing Jacqueline's contempt for her condition as

a

flogged and branded slave, a condition of which O herself was proud.





  O had never been to the south of France before. The clear blue sky,

the

almost mirror-like sea, the motionless pines beneath the burning sun:

everything seemed min-eral and hostile to her. "No real trees," she

remarked sadly to herself as she gazed at the fragrant thickets full

of

shrubs and bushes, where all the stones, and even the lichens, were

warm to

the touch. "The sea doesn't smell like the sea," she thought. She

blamed the

sea for washing up nothing more than an occasional piece of wretched

seaweed

which looked like dung, she blamed it for being too blue and for

always

lapping at the same bit of shore. But in the garden of  Sir Stephen's

villa,

which was an old farmhouse that had been restored, they were far from

the

sea. To left and right, high walls protected them from the neighbors;

the

servants' wing faced the entrance court' yard, while the side of the

house

overlooking the garden faced the east; 0's bedroom was on this side,

and

opened directly onto a second-story terrace. The tops of the tall

black

cypress trees were level with the overlapping hol-low tiles which

served as

a parapet for the terrace, which was protected from the noon sun by a

reed

latticework. The floor of the terrace was of red tile, the same as the

tiles

in her bedroom. Aside from the wall which separated 0's bedroom from

Sir

Stephen's-and this was the wall of a large alcove bounded by an

archway and

separated from the rest of the room by a kind of railing similar to

the

rail-ings of stairways, with banisters of hand-carved wood -all the

other

walls were whitewashed. The thick white rug on the tile floor was made

of

cotton, the curtains were of yellow-and-white linen. There were two

armchairs up-holstered in the same material, and some triple-layered

Oriental cushions. The only furniture was a heavy and very handsome

Regency

bureau made of walnut' and a very long, narrow peasant table in light-

colored wood which was waxed till it shone like a mirror. O hung her

clothes

in a closet. For a dressing table, she used the top of the bureau.

   Jacqueline's little sister Natalie had been given a room near 0's,

and in

the morning when she knew that O was taking a sunbath on the terrace,

she

came out and lay down beside her. She had snow-white skin, was a shade

plump,

but her features were none the less delicate and, like her sister, she

had

slanting eyes, but hers were black and shining, which made her look

Chinese.

Her black hair was cut in straight bangs across her forehead, just

above her

eyebrows, and in the back was almost cut straight' at the nape of the

neck.

She had firm, tremulous little breasts, and her adolescent hips were

only

beginning to fill out, She too had chanced upon 0, and taken her quite

by

sur-prise, one day when she had dashed out onto the ter-race expecting

to

find her sister but found O instead, lying there alone on her stomach

on the

Oriental pillows. But what had shocked Jacqueline filled Natalie with

envy

and desire. She asked her sister about it. Jacqueline's replies, which

were

intended to shock and revolt young Natalie by repeating to her what O

had

related, in no wise altered Natalie's feelings. If anything, it

accomplished

the con-trary. She had fallen in love with 0. For more than a week she

managed to keep it to herself, then late one Sunday afternoon she

managed to

be alone with 0.

  The weather had been cooler than normal. Rene, who had' spent part

of the

morning swimming, was asleep on the sofa of a cool room on the ground

floor.

Nettled at see-ing that he should prefer to take a nap, Jacqueline had

gone

upstairs and joined O in her alcove. The sea and sun had already made

her

more golden than before: her hair, her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her

nether

fleece, her arm-pits, all seemed to be powdered with silver, and since

she

was not wearing any make-up, her mouth was the same color pink as the

pink

flesh between her thighs.

 To make sure that Sir Stephen could see Jacqueline in detail-and O

thought

to herself that if she were Jacque-line she would have guessed, or

noticed,

his invisible presence-0 took pains to pull back her legs and keep

them

spread in the light of the bedside lamp which she had turned on. The

shutters were closed, the room almost dark, despite the thin rays of

light

that spilled in where the wood was not snug. For more than an hour

Jacqueline moaned to 0's caresses, and finally, her breasts aroused,

her

arms thrown back behind her head while her hands circled the wooden

bars of

the headboard of 0's Italian-style bed, she began to cry out when 0,

parting the lobes hemmed with pale hair, slowly began to bite the

crest of

flesh at the point between her thighs where the dainty, supple lips

joined.

0 felt her rigid and burning beneath her tongue, and wrested cry after

cry

from her lips, with no respite, until she suddenly relaxed, the

springs

broken, and she lay there moist with pleasure. Then O sent her back to

her

room, where she fell asleep.

  Jacqueline was awake and ready, though, when Rene came for her at

five

o'clock to go sailing, with Natalie, in a small sailboat, as they had

grown

accustomed to doing. A slight wind usually came up at the end of the

afternoon.

  "Where's Natalie?" Rene said.

  Natalie was not in her room, nor was she anywhere in the house. They

went

out to the garden and called her. Rene went as far as the thicket of

scrub

oak at the end of the garden; no one answered.

 "Maybe she's already down at the inlet," Rene said, "or in the boat."

  They left without calling her any more.

 It was at that point that 0, who was lying on the Ori-ental pillows

on her

terrace, glanced through the tile banisters and saw Natalie running

toward

the house. She got up, put on her dressing gown-it was still so warm,

even

this late in the afternoon, that she was naked-and was tying her belt

when

Natalie erupted into the room like one of the Furies and threw herself

at 0.

  "She's gone,"' she shouted, "she's finally gone. I heard her, 0, I

heard

you both, I was listening behind the door. You kiss her, you caress

her. Why

don't you caress me, why don't you kiss me? Is it because I'm dark,

because

I'm not pretty? She doesn't love you, 0, but I do, I love you!" And

she

broke down and began to sob.

  "All right, fine," O said to herself.

  She eased the child into an armchair, took a large hand-kerchief

from her

bureau (it was one of Sir Stephen's), and when Natalie's sobs had

subsided a

little, wiped her tears away. Natalie begged her forgiveness, kissing

0's

hands.

  "Even if you don't want to kiss me, 0, keep me with you. Keep me

with you

always. If you had a dog, you'd keep him and take care of him. And

even if

you don't want to kiss me but would enjoy beating me, you can beat me.

But

don't send me away.

 "Keep still, Natalie, you don't know what you're saying," O murmured,

almost in a whisper.

  The child, slipping down and hugging 0's knees, also replied in a

near-

whisper:

 "Oh, yes I do. I saw you the other morning on the ter-race. I saw the

initials, I saw the long black-and-blue marks. And Jacqueline has told

me...

 "Told you what?"

  "Where you've been, 0, and what they did to you there."

 "Did she talk to you about Roissy?"

 "She also told me that you had been, that you are...

 "That I was what?"

  "That you wear iron rings."

  "That's right," O said, "and what else?"

  "That Sir Stephen whips you every day."

 "That's correct,  O repeated, "and he'll be here any second. So run

along,

Natalie."

 Natalie, without shifting position, raised her head to 0, and 0's

eyes

encountered her adoring gaze.

  "Teach me, 0, please teach me," she started in again, "I want to be

like

you. I'll do anything you tell me. Promise me you'll take me with you

when

you go back to that place Jacqueline told me about."

 "You're too young," O said.

 "No, I'm not too young, I'm fifteen going on sixteen," she cried out

angrily. "I'm not too young. Ask Sir Stephen," she said, for he had

lust

entered the room.

 Natalie was granted permission to remain with 0, and extracted the

promise

that she would be taken to Roissy. But Sir Stephen forbade O to teach

her

the least caress, not even a kiss on the lips and also gave strict

instructions that O was not to allow Natalie to kiss her. He had every

intention of having her reach Roissy completely un-touched by hands or

lips.

By way of compensation, what he did demand, since Natalie was loath to

leave

0, was that she not leave her for a single moment, that she wit-ness 0

caressing both Jacqueline and himself, that she be present when O

yielded to

him and when he whipped her, or when she was flogged by old Norah. The

kisses with which O smothered her sister, 0's mouth glued to hers,

made

Natalie quiver with jealousy and hate. But, cowering on the carpet in

the

alcove, at the foot of 0's bed, like little Dinarzade at the foot of

Scheherazade's bed, she watched each time that 0, tied to the wooden

balus-

trade, writhed and squirmed beneath the riding crop, saw O on her

knees

humbly receiving Sir Stephen's massive, upright sex in her mouth, saw

her,

prostrate, spread her own buttocks with both hands to offer him the

after

pas-sage --she witnessed all these things with no other feel-ings but

those of admiration, envy, and impatience.

   It was about this same time that a change took place in Jacqueline:

perhaps O had counted too heavily both on Jacqueline's indifference

and her

sensuality, perhaps Jac-queline herself naively felt that surrendering

herself to O was dangerous for her relations with Rene'; but whatever

the

reason, she suddenly ceased coming to 0. At the same time, she seemed

to be

keeping herself aloof from Rene', with whom, however, she was spending

almost every day and every night. She had never acted as though she

were in

love with him. She studied him coldly, and when she smiled at him, her

eyes

remained cold. Even assuming that she was as completely abandoned with

him

as she was with 0, which was quite likely, O could not help thinking

that

this surrender was superficial. Whereas Rene was head over heels in

love

with her, paralyzed by a love such as he had never known before, a

worrisome,

un-certain love, one he was far from sure was requited, a love that

acts

not, for fear of offending. He lived, he slept in the same house as

Sir

Stephen, the same house as 0, he lunched, he dined, he went on walks

with

Sir Stephen, with 0, he conversed with them both: he didn't see them,

he

didn't hear what they said. He saw, he heard, he talked through them,

beyond

them, and, as in a dream when one tries to catch a departing train or

clings

desperately to the parapet of a collapsing bridge, he was forever

trying to

understand the raison d'etre, the truth which must have been lurking

somewhere inside Jacqueline, under that golden skin, like the

mechanism

inside a crying doll.

  "Well," thought 0, "the day I was so afraid would arrive is here,

the day

when I'd merely be a shadow in Rene 5 past. And I'm not even sad; the

only

thing I feel for hiiu is pity, and even knowing he doesn't desire me

any

longer, I can see him every day without any trace of bitterness,

without the

least regret, without even feeling hurt. And yet only a few weeks ago

I

dashed all the way across town to his office, to beg him to tell me he

still

loved me. Was that all my love was, all it meant? So light, so easily

gone

and forgotten? Is solace that simple? And solace is not even the right

word:

I'm happy. Do you mean to say it was enough for him to have given me

to Sir

Stephen for me to be detached from him, for me to find a new love so

easily

in the arms of another?"

 But then, what was Rene' compared to Sir Stephen? Ropes of straw,

anchors

of cork, paper chains: these were the real symbols of the bonds with

which

he had held her, and which he had been so quick to sever. But what a

de-

light and comfort, this iron ring which pierces the flesh and weighs

one

down forever, this mark eternal, how peaceful and reassuring the hand

of a

master who lays you on a bed of rock, the love of a master who knows

how to

take what he loves ruthlessly, without pity. And O said to herself

that, in

the final analysis, with Rene she had been an apprentice to love, she

had

loved him only to learn how to give herself, enslaved and surfeited,

to Sir

Stephen. But to see Rene', who had been so free with her -and she had

loved

his free ways-walking as though he were hobbled, like someone whose

legs

were ensnarled in the water and reeds of a pond whose surface seems

calm but

which, deeper down, swirls with subterranean cur-rents, to see him

thus,

filled O with hate for Jacqueline. Did Rene' dimly perceive her

feelings?

Did O carelessly reveal how she felt? In any case, O committed an

error.

  One afternoon she and Jacqueline had gone to Cannes together to the

hairdresser, alone, then to the Reserve Caf6 for an ice cream on the

terrace.

Jacqueline was superb in her tight-fitting black slacks and sheer

black

sweater, eclipsing even the brilliance of the children around her she

was so

bronzed and sleek, so hard and bright in the burning `sun, so insolent

and

inaccessible. She told O she had made an appointment there with the

director

whose picture she had been playing in in' Paris, to arrange for taking

some

exteriors, probably in the mountains above Saint-Paul-de-Vence. And

there he

was, forthright and determined. He didn't need to open his mouth, it

was

obvious he was in love with Jacqueline. All one had to do was see the

way he

looked at her. What was so surprising about that? Nothing; but what

was

surpris-ing was Jacqueline. Half reclining in one of those adjust-able

beach chairs, Jacqueline listened to him as he talked of dates to be

set,

appointments to be made, of the prob-lems of raising enough money to

finish

the half-completed picture. He used the tu form in addressing

Jacqueline,

who replied with a mere nod or shake of her head, keeping her eyes

half-

closed. O was seated across from Jacqueline, with him between them. It

took

no great act of perception to notice that Jacqueline, whose eyes were

still

lowered, was watching, from beneath the protection of those

mo-tionless

eyelids, the young man's desire, the way she al-ways did when she

thought

no one was looking. But strangest of all was how upset she seemed, her

hands

quiet at her side, her face serious and expressionless, with-out the

trace

of a smile, something she had never dis-played in Rene's presence. A

fleeting, almost impercepti-ble smile on her lips as O leaned forward

to

set her glass of ice water on the table and their eyes met, was all O

needed

to realize that Jacqueline was aware that O knew the game was up. It

didn't

bother her, though; it was rather O who blushed.

 "Are you too warm?" Jacqueline said. "We'll be leaving in five

minutes. Red

is becoming to you, by the way."

  Then she smiled again, turning her gaze to her inter-locutor, a

smile so

utterly tender that it seemed impossible. he would not hasten to

embrace her.

But he did not. He was too young to know that motionlessness and

silence can

be the lair of immodesty. He allowed Jacqueline to get up, shook hands

with

her, and said good-by. She would phone him. He also said good-by to

the

shadow that O repre-sented for him, and stood on the sidewalk watching

the

black Buick disappear down the avenue between the sun-drenched houses

and

the dark, almost purple sea. The palm trees looked as though they had

been

cut out of metal, the strollers like poorly fashioned wax models,

animated

by some absurd mechanism.

  "You really like him all that much?" O said to Jacque-line as the

car

left the city and moved along the upper coast road.

  "Is that any business of yours?" Jacqueline responded.

 "It's Rene's business," she retorted.

 "What is Rene's business, and Sir Stephen's, and, if I understand it

correctly, a number of other people's, is the fact you're badly

seated.

You're going to wrinkle your dress."

 O failed to move.

  "And I also thought," Jacqueline added, "that you weren't supposed

to

cross your legs."

  But O was no longer listening. What did she care about Jacqueline's

threats? If Jacqueline threatened to inform on her for that

peccadillo, what

did she think would keep her from denouncing Jacqueline in turn to

Rene? Not

that O lacked the desire to. But Rene' would not be able to bear the

news

that Jacqueline was lying to him, or that she had plans of her own

which did

not include him. How could she make Jacqueline believe that if she

were to

keep still, it would be to avoid seeing Rene lose face, turning pale

over

someone other than herself, and perhaps revealing himself to be too

weak to

punish her? How could she con-vince her that her silence, even more,

would

be the result of her fear at seeing Rene's wrath turned against her,

the

bearer of ill tidings, the informer? How could she tell Jacqueline

that she

would not say a word, without giving the impression she was making a

mutual

non-betrayal pact with her? For Jacqueline' had the idea that O was

terrified, terrified to death at what would happen to her if she,

Jacqueline,

talked.

 From that point on, until they got out of the car in the courtyard of

the

old farm, they did. not exchange another word. Without glancing at 0,

Jacqueline picked a white geranium growing beside the house. O was

following

closely enough behind to catch a whiff of the strong, deli-' cate odor

of

the leaf crumpled between her hands. Did she believe she would thus be

able

to mask the odor of her own sweat, which was making darkening circles

beneath the arms of her sweater and causing the black material to

cling to

her armpits.

 In the big whitewashed room with the red-tile floor, Rene was alone.

 "You're late," he said when they came in. "Sir Stephen's waiting for

you in

the next room," he added, nodding to 0. "He needs you for something.

He's

not in a very good mood."

  Jacqueline burst out laughing, and O looked at her and turned red.

  "You could have saved it for another time," said Rene, who

misinterpreted

both Jacqueline's laugh and 0's con-cern.

 "That's not the reason," Jacqueline said, "but I might say, Rene',

your

obedient beauty isn't so obedient when you're not around. Look at her

dress,

you see how wrinkled it is?"

  O was standing in the middle of the room, facing Rene. He told her

to turn

around; she was rooted to the spot

 "She also crosses her legs," Jacqueline added, "but that you won't be

able

to see, of course. As you won't be able to see the way she accosts the

boys."

 "That's not true," O shouted, "you're the' one!" and she leaped at

Jacqueline.

 Rene grabbed her just as she was about to hit Jacque line, and she

went on

struggling in his arms merely for the sake of feeling weaker than he,

of

being at his mercy, when, lifting her head, she saw Sir Stephen

standing in

the doorway looking at her.

  Jacqueline had thrown herself down on the sofa, her tiny face

hardened

with anger and fear, and O could feel that Rene', though he had his

hands

full trying to subdue her, had eyes only for Jacqueline. She ceased

resisting and, crestfallen at the idea of having been found wanting in

the

presence of Sir Stephen, she repeated, this time al-most in a whisper:

 "It's not true, I swear it's not true."

  Without uttering a word, without so much as a glance at Jacqueline,

Sir

Stephen made a sign to Rene to let O go, and to O to go into the other

room.

But on the other side of the door 0, who was immediately wedged

against the

wall, her belly and breasts seized, her lips forced apart by Sir

Stephen's

insistent tongue, moaned with happiness and deliverance. The points of

her

breasts stiffened beneath his hand's caress, and with his other hand

Sir

Stephen probed her loins so roughly she thought she would faint. Would

she

ever dare tell him that no pleasure, no joy, no figment of her

imagination

could ever compete with the happiness she felt at the way he used her

with

such utter freedom, at the notion that he could do anything with her,

that

there was no limit, no restriction in the manner with which, on her

body, he

might search for pleasure. Her absolute certainty that when he touched

her,

whether it was to fondle or flog her, when he ordered her to do

something it

was solely because he wanted to, her cer-tainty that all he' cared

about

was his own desire, so over-whelmed and gratified O that each time she

saw

a new proof of it, and often even when it merely occurred to her in

thought,

a cape of fire, a burning breastplate extending from the shoulders to

the

knees, descended upon her. As she was there, pinned against the wall,

her

eyes closed, her lips murmuring "I love you" when she could find the

breath

to say them, Sir Stephen's hands, though they were as cool as the

waters of

a bubbling spring on the fire cours-ing through her from head to toe,

made

her burn even hotter. Gently he released her, dropping her skirt down

over

her moist thighs, closing her bolero over her quiver-ing breasts.

 "Come, 0," he said, "I need you."

 Then, opening her eyes, O noticed that they were not alone. The big,

bare,

whitewashed room, identical in all respects to the living room, also

opened,

through a French door, onto the garden. Seated in a wicker chair on

the te

-race, which lay between the house and garden, an enor-mous man, a

giant of

a creature with a cigarette be-tween his lips, his head shaved and his

vast

belly swelling beneath his open shirt and cloth trousers, was gazing

at O He

rose and moved toward Sir Stephen, who was shoving O ahead of him. It

was

then that O noticed, dangling at the end of his watch chain, the

Roissy

insignia that the man was sporting. Still, Sir Stephen politely

introduced

him to O, simply as "Commander," with no name attached, and much to

0's

surprise she saw that he was kissing her hand, the first time it had

happened since she had been Involved with Roissy members (with the

exception

of Sir Stephen).

 All three of them came back into the room, leaving the door open. Sir

Stephen walked over to one end of the fire-place and rang. On the

Chinese

table beside the sofa, O saw a bottle of whisky, some soda water, and

glasses. So he was not ringing for something to drink. At the same

time she

noticed a large cardboard box on the floor beside the fireplace. The

man

from Roissy had sat down on a. wicker chair, Sir Stephen was

half-seated on

the edge of the round table, with one leg dangling. 0, who had been

motioned

over to the sofa, had meekly raised her skirt and could feel the

prickly

cotton of the roughly woven Provencal upholstery.

   It was Norah who came in. Sir Stephen ordered her to undress O and

remove

her clothing from the room. O allowed her to take off her bolero, her

dress,

her whale-bone belt which constricted her waist, and her sandals. As

soon

as she had stripped O completely, Norah left, and 0, automatically

reverting

to the rules of Roissy, and certain that all Sir Stephen wanted from

her was

perfect submis-siveness, remained standing in the middle of the room,

her

eyes lowered, so that she sensed rather than saw Natalie slip in

through the

open window, dressed in black like her sister, barefoot and silent.

Sir

Stephen had doubtless ex-plained who she was and why she was there; to

his

visitor he merely mentioned her name, to which the visitor did not

respond,

and asked her to make them a drink. As soon as she had handed them

some

whisky, soda water, and ice cubes (and, in the silence, the clink of

the ice

cubes against the sides of the glasses made a harrowing racket), the

Commander got up from his wicker chair, in which he had been sitting

while 0

was being undressed and, with his glass in his hand, walked over to 0.

0

thought that, with his free hand, he was going to take her breast or

seize

her belly. But he did not touch her, confining himself to scrutinizing

her

closely, from her parted lips to her parted knees. He circled her,

studying

her breasts, her thighs, her hindquarters, inspecting her in detail

but

offering no com-ment, and this careful scrutiny and the presence of

this

gigantic body so close to her so overwhelmed O that she wasn't sure

whether

she wanted to run away or, on the contrary, have him throw her down

and

crush her. So up-set was she that she lost control and raised her eyes

toward Sir Stephen, searching for help. He understood, smiled, came

over to

her, and, taking both her hands, pulled them behind her back, and held

them

in one of his. She leaned back against him, her eyes closed, and it

was in a

dream, or at least in the dusk of a near-sleep born of exhaustion, the

way

she had heard as a child, still half under the influ-ence of ether,

the

nurses talking about her, thinking she was still asleep, of her hair,

her

pallor, her flat belly where only the faint early signs of pubescence

were

showing, it was in a dream that she heard the stranger complimenting

Sir

Stephen on her, paying special due to the pleasant contrast between

her

ample bosom and the narrow waist, the irons which he found longer,

thicker,

and more. visible than usual. At the same time, she learned that Sir

Stephen

had in all probability consented to lend her to him the following

week,

since he was thanking Sir Stephen for something. At which point Sir

Stephen,

taking her by the nape of the neck, gently told her to wake up and,

with

Natalie, to go upstairs and wait in her room.

 Had she good reason to be so upset, and to be so an-noyed at Natalie

who,

elated at the prospect of seeing O opened by someone other than Sir

Stephen,

was doing a kind of wild Indian dance around her and shouting:

  Do you think he'll go into your mouth too, 0? You should have seen

the way

he was looking at your mouth! Oh, how lucky you are to be desired like

that!

I'm sure that he'll whip you: he came back three times to those marks

where

you can see you've been whipped. At least you won't be thinking about

Jacqueline then!"

 `I'm not always thinking about Jacqueline, you silly fool," O

replied.

 "No! I'm not silly and I'm not a fool. I know very well you miss

her," the

child said.

  It was true, but not completely. What O missed was not, properly

speaking,

Jacqueline, but the use of a girl's body, with no restrictions

attached. If

Natalie had not been declared off-limits to her, she would have taken

Natalie, and the only reason she had not violated the re-striction was

her

certainty that Natalie would be given to her at Roissy in a few weeks'

time,

and that, some time previously, Natalie would be handed over in her

presence,

by her, and thanks to her. She was burning to demolish the wall of

air, of

space, of-to use the only correct term void between Natalie and her,

and yet

at the same time she was enjoying the wait imposed upon her. She said

so to

Natalie, who only shook her head and refused to believe her.

 "If Jacqueline were here, and were willing," she said, "you'd caress

her."

 `Of course I would," O said with a laugh.

 "There, you see," the child broke in.

 How could she make her understand-and was it even worth the

effort?-that it

wasn't so much that she was in love with Jacqueline, nor for that

matter

with Natalie or any other girl in particular, but that she was only in

love

with girls as such, girls in general-the way one can be in love with

one's

own image--but in her case she always thought the other girls were

more

lovely and desirable than she found herself to be. The pleasure she

derived

from seeing a girl pant beneath her caresses, seeing her eyes close

and the

tips of her breasts stiffen beneath her lips and teeth, the pleasure

she got

from exploring her fore and aft with her hand-and from feeling her

tighten

around her fingers, then sigh and moan-was more than she could bear;

and if

this pleasure was so intense, it was only because it made her

constantly

aware of the pleasure which she in turn gave when she tightened around

who-

ever was holding her, whenever she sighed or moaned, with this

difference,

that she could not conceive of being given thus to a girl, the way

this girl

was given to her, but only to a man. Moreover, it seemed to her that

the

girls she caressed belonged by right to the man to whom she belonged,

and

that she was only present by proxy. Had Sir Stephen come into her room

during one of those previous afternoons when Jacqueline had been wont

to nap

with her, and found O caressing her, she would have spread her

charge's

thighs and held them apart with both hands, without the slightest

remorse,

and in fact with the greatest of pleasure, if it had pleased Sir

Stephen to

possess her, rather than peering at her through the trellised wall as

he had

done. She was apt at hunting, a naturally trained bird of prey who

would

beat the game and always bring it back to the hunter. And speaking of

the

devil.

 It was at this point, just as she was thinking again with beating

heart of

Jacqueline's lips, so pink and dainty beneath her downy fur, of the

even

more delicate and pinker ring between her buttocks, which she had only

dared

force on three occasions, that she heard Sir Stephen moving about in

his

room. She knew that he could see her, although she could not see him,

and

once again she felt that she was fortunate indeed to be constantly

exposed

this way, constantly imprisoned by these all-encompassing eyes. Young

Natalie was seated on the white rug in the middle of the room, like a

fly in

a bowl of milk; while 0, standing `in front of the massive bureau

which also

served as her dressing table, and able to see herself from head to

waist in

a slightly greenish antique mirror which was streaked like the

wrinkles in a

pond, looked for all the world like one of those late

nineteenth-century

prints in which the women are wandering naked through their chambers

in a

subdued light, even though it is mid-sum-mer.

 When Sir Stephen pushed open the door, she turned around so abruptly

that

one of the irons between her legs struck one of the bronze knobs of

the

bureau upon which she was leaning, and jingled.

  "Natalie," Sir Stephen said, "run downstairs and get the white

cardboard

box in the front living room."

 When Natalie came back, she set the box down on the bed, opened it,

and one

by one removed the objects inside, unwrapping the paper in which they

were

packed, and handing them to Sir Stephen. They were masks, a

com-bination

headpiece and mask; it was obvious they had been made to cover the

entire

head, with the exception of the mouth and chin-and of course the slits

for

eyes. Sparrow-hawk, falcon, owl, fox, lion, bull: nothing but animal

masks,

but scaled to the size of the human head, made of real fur and

feathers, the

eye crowned with lashes when the actual animal had lashes (as the

lion), and

with the pelts or feathers descending to the shoulders of the person

wearing

them. To make the mask fit snugly along the upper lips (there was an

orifice

for each nostril) and along both cheeks, all one had to do was adjust

a

fairly loose strap concealed inside this cope-like affair which hung

down

the back. A frame made of molded, hardened cardboard located between

the

outside facing and the inner lining of skin, kept the shape of the

mask

rigid. In front of the full-length mirror, O tried on each of the

masks. The

most striking, and the one she thought transformed her most and was

also

most natural, was one of the owl masks (there were two), no doubt

because it

was composed of tan and tawny feathers whose color blended beautifully

with

her tan; the cope of feathers almost completely con-cealed her

shoulders,

descending half way down her back and, in front, to the nascent curve

of her

breasts. Sir Stephen had her rub the lipstick from her lips, then said

to

her as she took off the mask:

  "All right, you'll be an owl for the Commander." But 0, and I hope

you

forgive me, you'll be taken on a leash. Natalie, go look in tile top

drawer

of my desk, you'll find a chain and a pair of pliers."

 Natalie came back with the chain and pliers, which Sir Stephen used

to

force open the last link, fastened It to the second ring that O was

wearing

In: her loins, then forced it closed again. The chain, similar to

those used

for dogs-- in fact that was what it was-was between four and five feet

long,

with a leather strap on one end. After O had again donned tile mask,

Sir

Stephen told Natalie to take the end of tile chain and walk around the

room,

ahead of 0. Three times Natalie paraded around the room, trading O

behind

her by the rings, O being naked and masked.

 "Well, I must say," Sir Stephen remarked, "the Com. mander was right-

all

the hair will have to be removed. But that can wait till tomorrow.

Meanwhile,

keep your chain on"'

  That evening, and for the first time in the company of Jacqueline

and

Natalie, of Rene and Sir Stephen, O dined naked, her chain pulled up

between

her legs and across her buttocks and wrapped around her waist.

Norah-was

alone serving, and O avoided her gaze. Two hours before, Sir Stephen

had

summoned her.

  What shocked and upset the girl at the beauty parlor tile following

day,

more than the Irons and the black and blue marks on her lower back,

were the

brand new lacera-tions. O had gone there to have the offending hair re

moved,. and it did no good to explain to her that this wax-type

depilatory,

a method in which tile wax is applied and allowed to harden, then

suddenly

removed, taking the hair with it-was no more painful than being struck

with

the riding crop. No matter how many times she repeated it, or made an

attempt to explain, if not what her fate was, at least that she was

happy,

there was no way of reassur-ing her or allaying her feeling of disgust

and

terror. The only visible result of 0's efforts. to soothe her was

that,

instead of being looked upon with pity, as she had been at first, she

was

beheld with horror. It made no difference how kind and profuse were

her

thanks when she left the little alcove where she had been

spread-eagled as

though for love, nor did it matter how generous a tip she gave as she

left,

when it was all over, she had the feeling that she was being evicted

rather

than leaving of her own free will. What did she care? It was obvious

to her

that there was something shocking about the contrast between the fur

on her

belly and the feathers on her mask, as it was obvious that this air of

an

Egyptian statue which this mask lent her, and which her broad

shoulders,

narrow waist, and long legs only served to emphasize, to demand that

her

flesh be perfectly smooth. Only the effigies of primitive goddesses

portrayed so proudly and openly the cleft of the belly between whose

outer

lips appeared the more deli-cate line of the lower lips. And had any

ever

been seen sporting rings in their nether lips? O recalled - the plump

red-

haired girl at Anne-Marie's who had said that all her master ever used

the

belly ring for was to attach her to the foot of the bed, and she had

also

said that the reason he wanted her shaved was because only in that way

was

she completely naked. O was worried about displeasing Sir Stephen, who

so

enjoyed pulling her over to him by the fleece, but she was mistaken:

Sir

Stephen found her more moving that way, and after she had donned her

mask,

having removed all trace of lipstick above and below, the upper and

nether

lips then being so uncommonly pale, that he caressed her almost

timidly, the

way one does with an animal one wants to tame.

  He had told her nothing about the place to which he was taking her,

nor

indicated the time they would have to leave, nor had he said who the

Commander's guests would be. But he came and spent the rest of the

afternoon

sleep-ing beside her, and in the evening had dinner brought up to the'

room,

for the two of them.

  They left an hour before midnight, in the Buick, O swathed in a

great

brown mountaineer's cape and wearing wooden clogs on her feet.

Natalie, in a

black sweater and slacks, was holding her chain, the leather strap of

which

was attached to the leather bracelet Natalie was wearing on her right

wrist.

Sir Stephen was driving. The moon was almost full, and illuminated the

road

with large snowlike spots, also illuminating the trees and houses of

the

villages through which they passed, leaving everything else as black

as

India ink. Here and there, groups of people were still clustered, even

at

this hour, on the thresholds of streetside doors, and they could feel

the

people's curiosity aroused by the passage of that closed car (Sir

Stephen

had not lowered the top). Some dogs were barking. On the side of the

road

bathed in moonlight, the olive trees looked like silver clouds

floating six

feet above the ground, and the cypresses like black feathers. There

was

nothing real about this country, which night had turned into

make-believe,

nothing except the smell of sage and lavender. The road continued to

climb,

but the same warm layer of air still lay heavy over the earth. O

slipped her

cape down off her shoulders. She couldn't be seen, there was not a

soul left

in sight.

 Ten minutes later, having skirted a forest of green oak on the crest

of a

hill, Sir Stephen slowed down before a long wall into which was cut a

porte-

cochere, which opened at the approach of the car. He parked in some

forecourt as they were closing the gate behind him, then got out and

helped

Natalie and O out, first having ordered O to leave her cape and clogs

in the

car.

 The door he pushed open revealed a cloister with Renaissance arcades

on

three sides, the fourth side being an extension of the flagstone court

of

the cloister proper. A dozen couples were dancing on the terrace and

in the

courtyard, a few women with very low-cut dresses and some men in white

dinner Jackets were seated at small tables lighted by candlelight; the

record player was in the left-hand gallery, and a buffet table had

been set

up in the gallery to the right.

  The moon provided as much light as the candles, though, and when it

fell

full upon 0, who was being pulled forward by her black little shadow,

Natalie, those who noticed her stopped dancing, and the men got to

their

feet. The boy near the record player, sensing that something was

happening,

turned around and, taken com-pletely aback, stopped the record. O had

come

to a halt; Sir Stephen, motionless two steps behind her, was also

waiting..

  The Commander dispersed those who had gathered around O and had

already

called for torches to examine her more closely.

  "Who is she," they were saying, "who does she belong to?"

  "You, if you like," he replied, and he led O and Natalie over to a

corner

of the terrace where a stone bench cov-ered with cushions was set

against a

low wall.

  When O was seated, her back against the wall, her hands lying on her

knees,

with Natalie on the ground to the left of her feet, still holding onto

the

chain, he turned around to them. 0's eyes searched for Sir Stephen,

and at

first could not find him. Then she sensed his presence, re-clining on

a

chaise longue at the other corner of the ter-race. He was able to see

her,

she was reassured. The music had begun again, the dancers were dancing

again.

As they danced, one or two couples moved over in her direction, as

though by

accident at first then one of the couples dropped the pretense and,

with the

woman leading the way, marched boldly over. O stared at them with eyes

that,

beneath her plumage, were darkened with bister, eyes opened wide like

the

eyes of the nocturnal bird she was impersonating, and the illusion was

so

extraordinary that no one thought of questioning her, which would have

been

the most natural thing to do, as though she were a real owl, deaf to

human

language, and dumb.

 From midnight till dawn, which began to lighten the eastern sky at

about

five, as the moon waned and de-scended toward the west people came up

to

her several times, and some even touched her, they formed a circle

around

her several times and several times they parted her knees and lifted

the

chain, bringing with them one of those two-branched candlesticks of

Provencal earthenware -and she could feel the flames from the candles

warming the inside of her thighs-to see how she was attached

 There was even one drunken American who, laughing grabbed her, but

when he

realized that he had seized a fistful of flesh and the chain which

pierced

her, he sud-denly sobered up, and O saw his face fill with the same

expression of horror and contempt that she had seen on the face of the

girl

who had given her a depilatory; he turned and fled.

  There was another girl very young, a girl with bare shoulders and a

choker

of pearls around her neck, wearing one of those white dresses young

girls

wear to their first ball, two tea-scented roses at her waist and a

pair of

golden slippers on her feet, and a boy made her sit down next to 0, on

her

right. Then he took her hand and made her caress 0's breasts, which

quivered

to the touch of the cool, light fingers, and touch her belly, and the

chain,

and the hole through which it passed, the young girl silently. did as

she

was bid, and when the boy said he planned to do the same thing to her,

she

did not seem shocked. But even though they thus made use of 0, and

even

though they used her in this way as a model, or the subject of a

demonstration, not once did anyone ever speak to her directly. Was she

then

of stone or wax, or rather some creature from another world, and did

they

think it point-less to speak to her? Or didn't they dare?

 It was only after daybreak, after all the dancers had left' that Sir

Stephen and the Commander, awakening Natalie who was asleep at 0's

feet,

helped O to her feet, led her to the middle of the courtyard,

unfastened her

chain and removed her mask and, laying her back upon a table,

pos-sessed

her one after the other.







    In a final chapter, which has been suppressed, O returned to

Roissy,

where she was abandoned by Sir Stephen.

 There exists a second ending to the story of 0, accord-ing to which

0,

seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer

to die.

Sir Stephen gave her his consent.