The first one I saw was Mauricette wearing; a clown costume, the same one, no doubt, that Charlotte had had when she was the same age and of which she had spoken to me at such length in connection with her famous be..
Charlotte, following her, struck me first of all by the expression on her face. She seemed excited to be able to “play a role” in both senses of the expression for, even more than me perhaps, she had sensed how useless and even importunate her presence had been before. Still driven by the mania she had for debasing herself, she had put on a black dress, a large apron, a red ribbon around her throat, and her hair was arranged, or perhaps disarranged, in such a fashion that you would have thought that you could have given her twenty sous for her virtue under the Notre Dame bridge and been generous at that.
The last was Lili, dressed like a schoolgirl: black apron and pigtails. I was a little young myself to play the role of satyr in front of her.
The first thought that came to my mind was that we could never evolve a plot between three so dissimilar characters and the one young leading man. Either that or the whole thing would be ridiculously absurd. How I wish that all this were not true! And how I would choose the costumes they were to wear if it were not! However, back to the story. Have you guessed yet what happened? Young whores and young girls who are not so openly whores never draw back before the manifest absurdities of the little comedies they concoct. In fact, the more extravagant they are the better they like them. Their youth overrides all else.
Once more, Ricette took me aside and said laughing, “Play this role fast! I'm in a hurry! I've got a fire like the fires of hell in my behind!”
At that, she laughed so hard that she could not utter another word for several moments. However, she got hold of herself again and said, “And I'm out of luck because I'm the last one. After me, naturally, there will be an intermission.
Charlotte interrupted us, but with an expression of joy on her face that I had not seen before that evening.
“You know what we're going to do?”
“Me? Haven't the least idea. In fact, I'm curious to know how you're going to be able to construct anything at all out of a whore, a clown, and a schoolgirl. You three must have good imaginations!”
“We're not so clever. We just do scenes like in a revue, one after the other.”
That was more like it. Not for you, I suppose, but for me. When you're getting ready to deflower a young girl it's better not to wear out your faculties in advance. I therefore let the three girls split up their roles and even dole one out to their mother although she had no costume. But Ricette, who could not hold herself in, and was hopping from one foot to another like a young girl who needs to take a piss, insisted that her act be the curtain raiser. This upset the whole order of things but did not seem to shock anyone. Ah! How easy it is to run a theatre!
“Sir,” she said to me, “I've come to dine privately with you, but only on the condition that you behave yourself.”
“Why do you want me to behave myself?”
“Because I'm a little tight.”
“But not enough.”
“And because I'm a virgin.”
“Too much. Show it to me. God! What an unfortunate infirmity! How long have you been like this?”
“Ah! Good sir! Ever since birth.”
“Do you suffer?”
“Horribly. It burns me constantly.”
“Are you taking any treatment for it?”
“Oh, yes! Massages. With the end of my finger.”
Despite the laughter from her sisters, Ricette remained sober-faced and serious. She added, softly:
“Four times a day.”
“And nothing else?”
“Oh, yes. But I can't tell you. It's a secret we little girls keep to ourselves.”
“I won't tell a soul!”
“Cross your heart?”
“I swear to you on the perfections of your patron saint, Saint Mauricette.”
“That's not worth anything. She's not on the calendar. I was given a Christian education, sir. I know the three theological virtues and history up to Moses. But Saint Mauricette, since she doesn't exist, has nothing to do with the thing I sit on! And it's not she who will punish me if you give away my secret… Oh! How my head reels! Wonder what I drank to cause that? Can you tell that I'm drunk, sir?”
“No, no. But what is your secret?”
“Mama told me… that to calm down their cherries… without losing them, young girls should… Whew! It's hot in here!.. should massage themselves from behind at the same time that they massage themselves from the front.”
“From behind? But where?”
She showed her teeth ferociously but good-naturedly, a look that seemed to say, “Ah? You don't get it?” Then, with her natural facility for improvisation, she took up once more her role of innocent and continued:
“Mama made me a clown costume with an inch long buttonhole right between my thighs so that I have room for my finger and a little removable panel in the back. You see?”
“But what good does that do?”
“She told me when I was getting dressed, 'Remember to be good now, show that you've been brought up properly, don't say any bad words, but when you see that he's getting a hard-on, you take his prick, you stick some butter into your asshole, and you open your buttocks saying to him that it's the first time you've ever done it. Then you say that it's shameful to do things like that, that you don't even dare confess it at church, and that you'd throw yourself in the river if your mother ever found out about it.' You understand?”
“Is that all she said?”
“No. When she was kissing me good-bye at the door, she said, 'Be sure to finger yourself when he's cornholing you and don't ask him where in the bordello you can shit out the come. But wash yourself out, my child, from your ass to your mouth. Discharge into your slip, puke into the piano, piss into the carafe, earn your fifty francs with your asshole, and above all don't say any bad words.' Don't you understand yet?”
“Less and less. It's your modest nature, miss. You seem to have some difficulty in explaining these things clearly…”
I was becoming twice as malicious and three times as odious, for Mauricette had been playing her role extremely well. And as happy and gay as was her heart and soul, I saw that she was on the brink of flying into a rage. I barely had time enough to say to her while touching her forehead lightly, “Ah! Now I understand!”
“Miracle of Saint Mauricette!” she sighed patiently.
“This little flap of cloth… can I lift it?”
“You still trying to be funny?”
“And see what's underneath, like the little girls at La Rochelle do?”
But we had finished. With my lips on hers I prevented her from replying. My wisecracks were less funny than her act, and I had only prolonged them so that I might draw her out to greater length. I was afraid that at the first contact of our bodies she would put an end to her act, but the love of the stage in young girls is almost as strong as their love of sensual pleasure. For several minutes more, therefore, Ricette kept up her role of beginner alone with a man in a private dining room.
“You see, sir,” she said, “the difference there is between vice and virtue. The shameless women who dance nude wear nothing but a small cloth in front over their sex. While the virgins who give themselves to be cornholed have a little panel that lifts up from the rear and are otherwise completely dressed.” She began laughing uproariously.
“I don't know the secrets that young girls keep too well and I'm afraid that I won't…”
“No, no, kind sir. Let me do it. Mama taught me one thing if nothing else: 'If your customer is a shit, let him cornhole you!'“
She laughed even more this time, but I was fed up. I don't like that kind of joke and she only objected in vain to me that a virgin has the right to be indulged in a few eccentricities while she is being sodomised. Ricette received, for the principle of the thing, two or three little slaps that she well merited. And then… (I forgot to mention one small detail: the room was enormous. Teresa, Charlotte, and Lili were grouped together at the far end of the divan, and we were playing a good distance from them, as in a real theatre. So that Mauricette could speak to me in a low voice without being heard by the other.)… She stopped laughing, turned her head, and said to me ardently but in a low voice, “Is that what you call a slap? Your dick hurts me more than your hand did. Do it again.”
“Certainly not!”
“Yes. Listen to what I'm going to say. I'm going to speak in a very low voice. Remember what you did to Mama without wanting to? Grab me by the hairs, they won't see anything. They'll just think you're beating me off… No, not those hairs there… lower… around the lips… yes, there… pull… pull them… pull them, damn it!.. What the hell are you waiting for? Pull! I'm going to come…”
And she grabbed my hand to make me pull out the hair like a handful of weeds.
The intermission only lasted a minute. To give us a little time to rest up, Lili in her schoolgirl outfit went up to Charlotte dressed like a whore and said with a suspicions air, “You're already sick? I thought your brother's prick had a funny taste this morning.”
When Charlotte's emotions rose to the surface she could retain neither hilarity nor tears. Surprised by this unexpected opening sentence, she laughed behind her hand before replying. Then the scene began, but on a completely different level than Mauricette's. Between she and her two sisters stretched out the long distance from the boarding school to the primary school. Occasionally, Lili could leap the gap, carried by her natural instinct for fantasy; however, Charlotte spoke only the language of obscene and sentimental realism. The role that she had accepted, had in fact demanded, hardly resembled those famous types of Bruant. It was, on the other hand, that of the weary, faint-hearted girl who is used to submitting to all manner of humilities and injuries and (almost a saint without realizing it) who accuses herself first of all as the cause of her troubles.
She therefore assumed an unhappy air and when Lili repeated, “A very funny taste.” she spoke with the same manner.
“It's not enough that he should go around sticking his tail into little snipes only ten years old,” said Charlotte sadly, “but then the kid comes and starts complaining to me about the taste. Those things never happen to anyone but me!”
“Little snipe's ten years old? Even if she is only ten, she's less of a fathead than you! She's beat off the secretary of the chief of police and when she decides to suck him, she'll get you sent off to the pokey.”
“Ah! That's all I need now. That's the one thing that hasn't happened to me yet. But what have I ever done to you?”
“You emptied your brother's balls before I got there and then you wiped his cock off with your cunt.”
This new expression of Lili's ravished Mauricette, who raised herself up on one elbow to follow the scene.
“The lock-up!” shuddered Charlotte. “Probably Saint-Lazare! No, my pretty little child, have pity on me. I'll do anything you want… for nothing.”
“Too expensive,” said Lili unperturbed.
“Do you want to see my hairs? My knockers? Do you want me to eat you out?”
“I've got my lesbians already.”
The detached voice the schoolgirl assumed here was so comic and so disdainful that everyone started laughing, even Charlotte. Lili continue however, without ever changing expression after having pulled a piece of bread out of her basket.
“Make me a nice come sandwich. Then go and get some honey to sweeten it. Bring it back to me and have one ready every day so I can take it to school for lunch. And no foolishness! If you try to screw me up, I'll have you clapped into the can so quick it'll make your head swim! Is that understood?”
“Ah! I could even make you two with the come that I get from earning my forty-five sous. There, under the bridge, there's a puddle every evening… And every time I go there I stick my mouth into it to have some… Is that all you want?”
“I want to watch you doing it too. Look! There's a passerby for you! Go ahead! I'll hide!”
This last sentence, “I'll hide!” was really a ten-year-old's; however, I hardly had time to appreciate the merits of her acting for I suddenly realized that the passer-by was supposed to be me. Charlotte quickly said, “You know what you're supposed to do? You stick it in my mouth, but nothing happens. You don't get a hard-on.” This conception of dramatic art was so simple that it reminded me rather more of Aeschylus than of the modern theatre. The scene to follow should therefore have three sections. And the third would be so easy to act in the state in which Mauricette left me that I decided to go along with the second as naturally as possible to try to satisfy poor Charlotte's mania. The second part also was as disagreeable for me as the one preceding, and I only followed it as in a dream. All of this was probably caused by the fact that I played my role very poorly. I had not been in the least ashamed to have held up my end with less distinction than Mauricette, but I was rather put off to find that even the simple Charlotte knew better than I how to carry out this role and expand her characterization.
She cane to me, her head raised, her hips weaving, and took me by the sleeve. “Want to have some fun, dearie?”
“No.”
“Come on. I haven't had it yet this evening and I just washed my pussy not fifteen minutes ago. Come on under the bridge. I'll lift up my skirt and you can screw me. Come on.”
“Me screw you?”
“I'm all right. I'm clean. I just went for a checkup today. And even if you don't want that we can do something else. I'm a good kid. Listen…”
“Fuck off, lady.”
“No, listen! I've had to take a piss for two hours. You want me to piss in your hands? You can wipe it on me afterwards.”
“You disgust me. Don't touch my sleeve with those hands.”
“Let me tell you at least… I'm a real pig! All you got to do is ask and I'll do whatever you want. Come on and I'll suck your dick. You can come in my mouth.”
“I don't need a whore for that! I can get a girl to do the same thing.”
“Do you think they can do the breathing fish like me? You know what that is? Listen and I'll tell you…”
“No! Hit the road! First of all I've only got ten sous and it'll take me four to catch a streetcar home,” I added, rather ashamed of these imbecilities.
“All right. Give me six sous, that's all. You'll be more generous the next time. Give me the six sous and I'll do the breathing fish for you. That's when I suck you and I blow the come out through my nose.”
Charlotte was making me nauseous. I still had a vague smile plastered across my face, but to hasten the end of the scene I said violently, “Will you get out of here or do I have to cornhole you!”
This is a formula that is often very efficacious for getting rid of streetwalkers; however, occasionally, it backfires and makes it even harder to shake them off.
Charlotte, who was playing her part up to the hilt, replied in a low, indifferent voice, as if I had asked her to do her breathing fish through either the right or left nostril, “Go ahead and cornhole me. I don't care. You don't think that I'll do it for six sous? I have to live. And then you can screw me if you want. Stick it in good and far. Don't be afraid of getting your clothes dirty. I'll wipe them off with the inside of my skirt.”
“Charlotte, you're filthy!” I whispered into one of her ears.
“This is a role I can really feel,” she replied sadly.
Despite the disagreeable sentiments with which the scene filled me, and which I hardly need to explain here, it was finally terminated by an accident which the young ladies who read this may not understand but at which the young men will be less surprised.
One thing that every young girl should learn before her first date is that there is no relation between love and the erection. On the contrary, to fail a woman is often to prove that you love her to the point where your senses are blinded. However, to unexpectedly find oneself with an erection before a woman that one does not in the least love is to treat her like a whore, gallantly but categorically.
And that's what happened to me in Charlotte's mouth. “In her mouth?” you say. “Some miracle. An octogenarian could have done as much.”
Even so, neither I nor anyone else expected it. First of all, I was supposed to remain cold, and nothing had seemed to me easier to do, for Charlotte's comedy had not in the least excited me. Then too I had just left Mauricette's arms. However, therein lies the explanation. That had been a half an hour before. Using her mouth had not been too wise.
My accident threw everyone into a turmoil. Understandably, it flattered Charlotte, but Teresa laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks. I blushed for I didn't find anything funny in it. Neither did Mauricette, although I motioned to her not to be worried.
Fortunately, Charlotte's sketch was constructed so loosely that even this unexpected development changed neither the intrigue nor the characters. It even added more force to the final scene.
Charlotte, still in her role as streetwalker, intoned dully, “I told you that I was a real bitch, that you'd get a hard-on in my mouth. And a very pretty one it is, too dearie. Listen! My brother has been fooling around with a kid and she's listening now… Listen! I don't want your sous. Cornhole me good and deep, let me finger myself, and if you make me come you don't have to give me anything. There! Look, there's my ass! Put it in there! Quick!”
She stood up, leaned forward, raised her black skirt up over her buttocks in an attitude which she assumed naturally and which represented the extreme of servility in prostitution. And then she asked in a sad voice, “Where is it?”
“I don't know,” I said distractedly. “You'll have to find another.”
“Oh! I make you hard, I suck you like I should, I tell you to cornhole me, that it won't cost you anything, and you don't lose your erection, but you fail me all the same. Do I disgust you? Doesn't it please you to cornhole a whore? What do I have to do now to get my six sous? Do you want to piss on my face while I close my eyes and open my mouth?”
“Listen, Charlotte. You're exaggerating!” I said, trying to stop her.
Then, stepping out of her role and speaking for me alone with an expression that I'll never forget, she murmured:
“No.”