Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book I

What a misfortune for me and naturally for you, too!

I have always tried to be so careful, to protect you whom I had so much joy in imagining to be my daughter; so that for once, neglecting prudence, I had myself in a pitiful position, for what causes me enormous grief, of which you cannot form the slightest idea, is that you have no longer confidence in me.

I am sad, weary, disgusted with life and all its defeats, illnesses, and wounds. One has so little happiness in this world, and such… oh! such trouble!

But you are young and you cannot understand at all what I feel. In a few short years, when you will have been able to appreciate life better, when you will have seen other things and other men, then you will think of me and render me justice. Today, I hope for nothing.

I pray you, excuse the serious tone of this letter of complaint. There is nothing so silly as a man who groans and laments, but if I go mad with rage in front of this paper; if I choke in my throat as if I were about to be weak enough to weep, it is because I think that you have attributed to me: lies, villany, and meanness. You have believed that my soul was base and paltry, as vilely low as that of a huckstering shopkeeper! But enough; perhaps I ought not to send you this sad scrawl?

Let me conclude with an effort to be gayer. I dreamt of you all night. Irony of the fates… we were on our honeymoon! I had just married you!

This was an effect of cerebral impression, caused by my conversation with you in the station, the railway ride, etc.

I thank you for your kiss, for your slight caress.

Do not forget to tell your brother, as I can see that he does not have all necessary advice given him, to cease having a will of his own directly he enters the barracks, and never to answer a superior even if a hundred times in the right. Let him become a machine-if I may venture to say so-and not a man.

Make him wear flannel, and woolen socks. It is impossible to walk with cotton hose; he would soon get blistered and bleeding feet.

Tell him also never to say: “In England we do this or that.” He will find such conduct more prudent-at least for the moment.

He loves you well, that I saw. He will listen to this advice coming from you. Make out as if these were your own ideas.

And I love you also.

J.S.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

(No date or place.) Received November 15, 1898

My little Father,

I will not let you have a moment of sadness through any fault of mine, so I come quickly to tell you that I have no longer the least doubt about you, for a man who can have the kindliness and the delicacy to be able to understand all you have understood, cannot be base one instant.

Therefore all is forgotten and I am once more your loving “daughter.”

I wish to believe that the wretched month I have just passed was only a nightmare, a bad dream.

I have suffered greatly. I found myself so lonely, so neglected. But all this is quite finished, is it not?

My brother left yesterday by the midnight train. I gave him all your advice and I thank you a thousand times.

Yes, you have guessed rightly. I love him very much. He is so gentle, so good, and then he loves me fondly, too.

If you have dreamt truly when you supposed we were on our wedding trip, how proud and happy I should be; and I am certain that you would regret nothing, for I would make you so happy that the horrible sentence you write to me in your good letter would never enter your mind.

You are sad, fatigued, tired of life, say you? That is because you have no tie to make existence a pleasure. But if you had a good little wife, very loving, full of care for you; a pretty little household-“home”-in all the true sense of the word, your ideas would be quite different. And you have only a word to say to possess all this. Do not suppose that I speak lightly. I have reflected seriously and I am convinced that we should be mutually happy. Do you think it is so very amusing for me to see you only during a few short moments, now and again, and always with a little apprehension? And it will always be the same if we continue like this-but I will no longer.

I kiss you madly as on certain days,

LILIAN.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris, November 16, 1898.

My darling daughter,

I must hold my pen tight today so that it shall not escape and bolt away across the paper to express to you all the sweet joy your delicious letter, which I received yesterday, has given me. I can only see one thing: you love me!

That letter is you: my Lilian, my daughter, my slave, my love, all mine; your heart to excuse me, to console me, and your body a hundred times offered for my pleasure, my lust, my enjoyment… and a little for yours, by the sole fact of the pleasure you bestow. For I often remarked that you found your pleasure in provoking mine. I would ask you: “What do you want now?” And you would answer: “You!”

When you are near me, you feel that movement which opens the sources of pleasure in your inmost being. I am proud to have been the first who produced in you that effect, and you always experience it when I am by your side; when I rub against you; when I look at you. I remember the first time I came to this conclusion; we were in that café where we drank some champagne. You looked at me, your nostrils quivered, you were spending and yet our conversation was commonplace. You were near me and you loved me as you loved me today. I never have understood your love and your passion better.

You talk of “certain days” and of your mad caresses.

Impudent girl! Do you wish to awaken in me all my lust, and excite and provoke all my desires-all the yearning I have for you? You make me remember my imaginations of slavery. I wish to call to you to come to my arms. I wish to command you to run to me, to execute all the voluptuousness of which I dream when my thoughts wander towards you-as it happens too often.

I have still a little virgin paint-brush in a corner of a drawer, wrapped in tissue paper. I would also teach you the bicycle race, when your saddle would be my mouth and face, and the handlebar the head of the bed, or you could turn round and….Will you, say, Lilian, my little incestuous daughter?…

But I stop and read over what I have just written. I ought not write thus to you. I am mad. So much the worse for me…! I send you my incoherent thoughts. Excuse me. I will try to be more cold and reasonable.

My dream, which was delicious, for you gave me your mouth in the railway carriage, and then your thighs and the rest, is impossible to realize for reasons which I will give you some day by word of mouth. It would be too long and useless to tell all here. I must be brutally frank and say that I can give you nothing that you deserve. You have come too late in my life. I am unfortunate-not by your fault, I hasten to say-and if I could have foreseen that our love would have become what it is today, I think I should have fled. Besides, you must remember how long I resisted? Yet I regret nothing, I shall always have the remembrance of the exquisite joys given and taken. But there is no future for us. All you write to me is just and sensible and when you say, “You will not continue like that,” I have only to bow my head. I have nothing to say. You are right.

I ought to have been stronger and not have succumbed, but your eyes were too beautiful; your lips, rosy and moist, too sweet; your passion caused mine to grow. I took you and chanced it. It was so lovely. I say I took you. I do not say I hold you now, and yet you are mine, despite that I love you too religiously to profit by your delicious weakness and make you a woman. That word “religiously” may not match the rest of my letter, but you will understand what I mean-what passes through my brain. And if I am forced to disappear tomorrow from your life, even by your orders, you will always be mine for your whole life, in spite of yourself, free or married, by the sheer strength of the feelings I excite in you. Therefore, fly from me, for I have nothing to offer you but a little sensual pleasure and that is not enough. Leave me alone with my wasted life. It will be better for both of us.