Charlotte smiled when we came back in. She had only had to fix her hair, wipe off her rouge, take off her apron, and replace her ribbon with a prim little collar… And now, in her black dress and soft, sad air, she was an orphan girl given a position as governess in a family.
She sat down in front of a small table with her little charge and said without the least hope of obtaining a correct reply, “What are the provinces of Outer Mongolia?”
“If you only knew how little I really give a damn!” said Lili.
“You haven't learned your lessons?”
“Oh, yes. I learned one of them. Ill tell it to you, but first let's see the hair under your skirt.”
“Oh my God, what a brat! I suppose that because I made the mistake of letting you do that once you're now going to want me to do it every day.”
“I wouldn't be surprised.”
“I'm your governess and you're supposed to obey me. But not only don't you do that, you now want me to bend to all your caprices.”
“That's about right.”
“And afterwards you'll recite the one lesson you did study?”
“Yes.”
“Really! I don't know! I'm much too indulgent for a child as spoiled as you.”
“Oh! Quit flapping your trap!” said the little one in an outrageous voice. “That'll be enough! Don't try to give me any more shit! Shut your mouth, open your legs, show me what you've got there and swallow the rest of that claptrap. When I ask to see a cunt I'm talking about part of you, not all of you.”
And Charlotte fell silent. Her laugh was as quick to come as her tears and, clapping a hand over her mouth to suppress it, she lifted her skirts and let Lili wander off into her own fantasies of improvisation.
“Good! Good! I got a good look at it this time and I know what it's like to the last detail. Now, if you don't do what I want you to, I'll tell everyone that you were trying to pervert me and that you showed it to me then.”
“What do you want from me, then, you little devil?” asked Charlotte in her sad voice.
“I'm the one who stole that packet of letters you've been receiving from your girlfriend, and I know all about it now. Nothing but filth in any of them, is there? You two have really been up to some pretty little tricks!”
“Oh, I'm lost…”
“Screw that! But no! Go ahead and say it as much as you want. It won't dirty your tongue half as much as licking my behind like you're going to do will.”
“Me?”
“Who else? And if you don't, I'll run and tell mama that you wanted to!”
Of all Lili's lines, this last one was that which surprised me the least. I have always thought that the wife of Potiphar must have been about fifteen and not forty as certain painters have imagined her. I appeal first of all to those who have lived in the Orient and second of all to you, if you know anything about child psychology, for support.
The little student obtained what she wanted from her governess without much trouble, an act which governesses and charges perform more often than parents realize.
Lili remained silent while Charlotte, on her knees before her, always ready to stoop to any humiliation, prolonged the scene. But Lili never left her role, and if she took a good deal of time before making her next crack, it was only to set it in greater relief. What the indifferent little voice finally came out with was:
“I much prefer this, my dear governess, to reciting the provinces of Outer Mongolia.”
Then she added in a kindly voice:
“Now me from in front.”
Charlotte sat down and lifted her skirt with her two hands. Lili knelt in front of her, but stopped, staring at the state her sister was in.
“Oh! You're flowing too much for me, Miss Charlotte! That's too much for a little girl my age. That's the adult dosage, not the children's… But wait… What's going on here? She's beating herself off! Hey! That's enough! No floods please!”
She took Charlotte's finger away and glued her mouth to the same spot… and the scene had hardly begun when it was interrupted by an unforeseen development in the plot.
Teresa in a dressing gown suddenly crossed the room with great strides in the role of Lili's mother and Charlotte's employer crying, “Ah! So that's the kind of lesson you give my daughter, eh?”
“Oh! Madame!”
“I put a child of ten into your charge for you to teach her history, geography, mathematics, and foreign tongues and that's the sort of tongue you show her how to use? Get into your room, Lili! And you, miss, come into mine!”
Then, out of the blue, Teresa turned to Mauricette who was sitting on my knees and said, “I don't feel like acting, I feel like coming. Also it doesn't take so long.”
Then taking Charlotte by the arm, she said in a softer voice, “A little while ago I found the packet of letters in my little girl's dresser drawer that she stole from you. Your friend treats you like a lesbian, a whore… it's terrible! She can't seem to stop talking about your tongue… She's always asking how many times you beat yourself off thinking about her.”
“Ah! Madame! Should I kill myself?”
“Don't bother.”
“Oh, I'm nothing but a poor miserable creature.”
“Confess all to me and I'll pardon you.”
“But I have practically every known vice.”
“Me too.”
And Teresa shot us a glance to show how easily she could change the drama to suit her own purposes. The conclusion of the piece was easily foreseen, and the only interesting aspect of it for me came from the fact that Lili had enough tact not to bother her mother out of revenge for the dirty trick she had played her.
She waited patiently until Teresa and Charlotte were finished, then, her imagination still working overtime, ran to them and spoke in a low voice to tell them their roles in the next sequence. She turned, at this point, and announced to us: “Second act! Eight days later!” As at the beginning of the first act, the governess and the schoolgirl sat down in front of the little table.
“You know your lessons much better now than you did a week ago,” said Charlotte. “But what's so funny? Be a little more respectful, please!”
“It's one of the hairs from your ass stuck between my teeth. It's tickling my tongue… No, maybe it's one of mama's hairs. Anyway, that's what I'm laughing at. Certainly not because you have a moronic expression on your face.”
“Lili! Come on now! Recite those two pages that you learned yesterday. What is a little girl?”
Mauricette, as soon as she heard that, squirmed around on my knees and said, “Listen to this! It's that catechism that was written for Charlotte when she was small. Lili knows it by heart!”
Charlotte repeated the question after the interruption, and Lili replied in a monotone, as if she understood nothing of what she was Baying.
“What is a little girl?”
“It's a little bitch that doesn't think of any-thing but handling pricks and cunts, that fingers itself from morning to night, that pisses everywhere, and that is always lifting its dress to show its ass so it can see the asses of others in exchange.”
“What is a little girl good for?”
“No one knows.”
“What miracle has God wrought out of the goodness of his heart to make little girls happy?”
“That miracle is the gift that nearly all little girls have of making men get hard-ons like they would in front of fully-matured women.”
“Explain yourself.”
“It's a mystery.”
“And what else has the goodness of the Creator done for them?”
“The Creator poked two holes in them and gave them one mouth in addition so that they should not be humiliated to find that they had given any man a hard-on for nothing and so that, miraculously, they can be of some use to them.”
“And in exchange for these divine gifts, what is the duty of a little girl?”
“Every little girl that gives a man an erection must make him discharge also.”
“Is it up to her to choose the hole that she prefers?”
“She has no choice in the matter. She has only to give the hole that is asked of her.”
“Should she wait for one to be asked of her?”
“No. The little girl that finds herself alone with a man should raise her dress as high as possible, excuse herself for not having any hair, and say politely: 'Would you like to fuck me? Would you like to cornhole me? Or would you rather I suck you?'
“And if the man should reply, 'Go beat yourself off somewhere else. I only screw women?' what should the little girl do?”
“In this case, the little girl should go away, but she can abstain from any form of masturbation without being considered lax in her religious duty.”
At this point, Lili left her role in the middle of the act, something she rarely did, and said to me:
“You don't think they taught me some real idiocies?”
And Charlotte immediately added, 'This is nothing for her. But me! I had to learn this at the same time that I was learning my catechism! When we got to the church I got all screwed up and I just missed reciting the wrong things to the priest about twenty times!”
Then, at a sign from Lili, they returned to their roles.
“Very good. Is that all you know for today?”
“Oh, no. I know something else. I know that the worst little bitches that walk the earth aren't little girls. They're governesses.”
“Ah! Something like that was bound to happen sooner of later! I'm only getting what I deserve. I've been saying to myself: 'What must this child think of me?'“
“Would you like to know?”
Ricette whispered into my ear, “If she tells her, Charlotte will start fingering herself.” But Lili knew it as well as she and, like the famous captain who followed his men wherever they wanted to go because he was their leader, she ordered what she was unable to prevent.
“Don't waste any more time! Give me the lesson in masturbation I'm supposed to have and I'll tell you before you finish.”
“Where have I fallen?” wailed Charlotte, raising her skirts. “Did I pass all my exams in order to give lessons in masturbation?”
“Which exams? Your whore's exams? And you didn't cheat to do it?”
“You dare to speak to me like that? You would treat your governess like a whore?”
“Look at the beard! I'm waiting, miss. I'm awaiting my lesson. Discharge first, you can rave at me afterwards.”
There was the same ease to be found in the tone of voice in which Lili delivered her remarks as in the choice of expressions she employed. But these are things that are impossible to describe.
“I'm ashamed of myself for two reasons,” began Charlotte. “First of all I have to teach you horrors like this, and secondly, I can't teach them as they should be taught.”
“That's; easy to see. I know you're pretty stupid, but go ahead anyway. I understand everything.”
“Beginning with the elementary course… That's the one I know the best,” said Charlotte laughing. “It isn't hard. First you wet your middle finger like this… Then you stick it in here, and you move it back and forth like this… There, see?”
“And serve it hot, eh?” asked Lili. “Hey! Stop! Look who's fingering herself while I haven't learned a damn thing! What a dolt this governess is! She's as stupid as she is whore! Will you please continue with my lesson?” she said, grabbing her sister's hand.
“To repeat,” said Charlotte, patiently, looking for more technical terms, “this here is called my vulva.”
“You would have thought it was a cunt,” observed Lili.
“You stick your finger here, in the vagina, and you wet it with the… the… what do you call a woman's come?”
“You can tell me tomorrow. Continue.”
“Then if you can wait, you tickle yourself inside here with two fingers or pull these little lips here on the outside. If you're in a hurry, you touch the clitoris right away; you push against it, you rub it from left to right or else you go around…”
“And look who's doing it again! And at top speed this time!”
“I can't anymore…!” murmured Charlotte.
“What an education!” sighed Lili turning toward lie. “Disgusting to have a mistress like that! Instead of teaching me how to write, she teaches me how to finger myself! Me, a little girl who doesn't even know the provinces of Outer Mongolia!”
“Neither do I.”
“She drips juice all over all the furniture, she whacks away at mama's pussy, mama who is such a saintly woman, she smells come like I do orange blossoms, and when you look in her work table what do you find?” And here Lili pulled a dildoe from her pocket.
“Oh! In that child's hands…!”
“You really disgust me, miss!”
“I disgust myself even more.”
“And now you're going to see how much I respect you. But first finish beating yourself off… That's enough!” Lili pulled Charlotte's arm so her hand should leave its occupations.
“Oh! Lili! Lili! I was just going to come! I'll have an attack!”
However, Lili got a moment from her. She donned the dildoe by fastening the over-large belt attached to it with a pin and, fixing her dress so that the instrument protruded like the enormous phallus of a grotesque little god, she said:
“A whore of a governess can at least be as polite as a little girl, right? Remember what you just made me recite?”
“What?” groaned Charlotte, almost deranged.
“Even more bitch than “whore!” said Lili compassionately. “Look here, my good woman. Look at me. You'll get it in good time. Look. I'm a man and you have just given me an erection. That's obvious isn't it? So, what do you show me now? Well? Raise your skirts, damn it! Oh! Oh! I'm hot as a firecracker!”
“I don't even know what she's saying,” murmured Charlotte, lifting her clothes as if in a dream.
“And when a filthy beast like you shows her two holes to a man, what does she say?”
“Will you… screw me… cornhole me… or should I… suck you…”
“On your knees! Give me your buttocks! No, but look how she opens them! And how I enter there! What a calamity to have a governess who shows her ass all the way through a lesson and then lets her little charge stick a dildoe into it at the end… What disgusts me the most, miss, is not that you are a whore, but that you're stupid enough to let me cornhole you.”
And then…
Then what happened? The saddest, most unfortunate incident of this whole story.
Had Charlotte overestimated the capacity of her morbid taste for humiliation? Lili, like all children, didn't know where to stop in farce of this kind; had she gone too far in her role?
No. The explanation that I read from what had preceded is entirely different, and all the more difficult to explain since I am writing this book in the first person. But, faced with Charlotte's love, “there is nothing to brag about” as Lili said. It is certainly not this story that I would have chosen from among my experiences if I had wished to impress on anyone the brilliance of my attractions or the effect of my seductions. And I hope that you will not he moved to any such condemnations, young lady, if I say that during that evening when I scarcely left Mauricette's side for a moment, Charlotte, who grew more and more nervous from minute to minute, seemed to me much more unfortunate. My presence was responsible for her state.
It was Mauricette that finally unleashed the crisis. She laughed. I do not know why. Lili's last line had been one of the least funny she had spoken in an hour or so, but it bad been injurious and Mauricette had laughed. Immediately, Charlotte had burst out sobbing.
And what sobs! I thought I knew Charlotte's sobs, but I was wrenched heart and soul by what I heard.
She lie on the floor like a dying beast, holding her skirt in one lifeless hand while Lili, unnerved, continued to ram her from the rear. And all the time she sobbed out great wailing cries. Not tears, but racking, choking, rending cries that shook her body unceasingly.
Teresa said quickly as she passed by me, “They kept her from coming. It's the kid's fault. She should never have tried to keep her from coming when she was ready. That's what always happens.”
Even so, the crisis was so strong this time that it frightened even her sisters as much as it did me. With Teresa, they picked her up and stretched her out on the divan, taking her in their arms. But the storm didn't cease as quickly as it had burst, and it was only some time before Charlotte could overcome her sobs enough to gasp out these few despairing sentences:
“You're right, my Lili… I'm as stupid as… as a whore… I'm nothing but a bitch and a moron… Everyone mocks me… And no one will ever love me.”