Pierre Louys - The She-Devils

When I had kissed all four of them, adding on the side a few pats and caresses such as Christian morality disapproves of but of the type which nude women generally greet rather warmly, Teresa took Mauricette by the shoulders and before both the assemblage and any other question asked me, “Did this kid really suck your prick without puking? Did you really come in her mouth? And she really swallowed it? She could never do it before, you must be a magician.”

“No. As a matter of fact, it was easier with her than with your highness, madame.”

Mauricette was thrilled by this response, and Teresa, hands on hips, still good-naturedly, spoke again.

“So! Is that the kind of answer I should get? I who have sucked three thousand men in my time?”

“But not that one,” said Lili. “You're the only one in the family who doesn't know what his come tastes like. Even Ricette knows! Even she's sucked him before you have! That's terrific!”

“And you want to take this child's cherry!” continued Teresa.

“Some child!” said Lili. “If I had as many hairs on my cunt as she has between her buttocks…”

“Shut up! White of a bidet! Losing a cherry is a serious thing. Look at Charlotte. See if she feels like laughing.”

And Charlotte, who had been barely able to keep back her tears before, had thrown herself on the sofa and was crying her head off. I took the opportunity to rejoin her and say a few affectionate words. She was so pitiful… But Teresa interrupted me.

“Let her alone! You don't know Charlotte. When she has finished crying she'll feel like beating off, and when she's finished coming, she'll feel like crying again. It's like that around here from morning to night. I sometimes think she discharges tears and cries out come. But wait! Wait! There! What did I tell you?”

And, as a matter of fact, Charlotte was wiping her eyes dry with her left hand while her right was already busy between her legs. As her mother spoke she opened her eyes, saw ours fixed on her, and said, getting up, “Oh! If you're all going to watch me…”

She slid her hand into a dresser drawer and took out two dildoes which she then inserted, one after the other, into front and back. Then, lying once more on the sofa, but with her thighs spread far apart this time, she started the work of her finger again and said with a sad smile, “Is it more interesting now?”

We left her alone. Teresa again took Mauricette by the shoulders and arranged and straightened her hair as if she were offering her to some new customer. Then she repeated:

“You want to take this fourteen year-old's cherry!”

“Yes. We swore it between us, she and I. We have dispensation from the archbishop.”

“But what will you agree to swear to between you and I, if I give her to you?”

“I don't know, what?”

“You won't give this kid a kid, will you? She discharges like a dike breaking, you know, and that always takes easily. So watch yourself. I'll have my face right between and if you give her so much as a drop of come, you'll get something else from me.”

“Don't do that. I'll be good.”

“So where will you wind up at?”

“Ah, decisions…”

“My mouth? It's a good time.”

“Ah!” cried Mauricette. “I knew it! It's because your prick will be all red with my blood! That's what she wants! I told him you wouldn't want to lose a drop! That you'd stick your tongue in it! That you'd wind up with your mouth full of blood and come!”

“Huh? Do you think she's really old enough to lose her cherry?” said Teresa simply.

“Oh! Yes, yes, I'm old enough!” repeated the girl. “Mama, let me say something to him just for him alone.”

To be sure that she was speaking in secret, Mauricette took me into another room and closed the door. You can guess whether or not we kissed.

“My wedding night?” she said prettily. “Mine too.”

“You love me? I love you so much!”

“I love you with all my heart.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“Mauricette!”

“Tell me that you'll hurt me more than yesterday! More than yesterday! Rip away everything! Tear me! Make me bleed like a slit pig!” She probably would have continued in the same vein had the door not opened. Teresa appeared and, as if she had heard Mauricette's first sentence, said, “You're not getting all excited are you children? I'm not going to marry you until midnight.”

“Oh! Why!” cried Mauricette angrily. “You two must both be nothing but a couple of big kids if you don't know why!”

Since my education meant less to her than did Ricette's, it was the latter that she now addressed. “What? Think a minute. Don't you know that men can pull it out before they discharge better after they've had a piece already than they can the first time around? And do you think that taking your cherry will be like leaping through a paper hoop? Do you think that you'd still be a virgin after all the fingers that have been in you if I hadn't made you a leather cherry as well as a leather asshole?”

Ricette blushed, annoyed to have received a lesson in front of me; but Teresa hadn't yet finished.

“What will happen if I let you go at it alone? Either, after five minutes he'll come in your hair and it'll all be finished, or he'll be so shaken that he'll have forgotten to pull it out in time, and then…! Ah! Then! You'll have had it, girl! I'd cut off his balls, but it would be too late. You get me?”

It was the language of wisdom with a vocabulary which, though it was not that of a sermon, nevertheless had force and even a certain amount of eloquence. In crying out her “and then…! Ah! Then!” Teresa had no doubt been unaware that she was introducing a prosopia into her discourse, but it isn't necessary to know the terms of rhetoric by their names in order to, like Bourdaloue, press them into the service of persuasion.

Was it the apostrophe, the hypothesis, the exhortation, or the prosopia that carried the argument? I don't know. However, Ricette lowered her head and asked only, “Who will get the first shot if I can only have the second?”

“Come back in. We'll draw straws.”

That time rhetoric failed in its reply.

Mauricette was furious, and she sunk immediately into the worst excesses of the language.

“Ah! No! Now you're trying to screw me, all three of you! He's my lover! I found him! I'm the one who gave him a hard-on first! And then I was honest enough, stupid enough, to tell you about him, and for three days you've been wetting your pants under him, the lot' of you, and even this evening when he's supposed to take my cherry I have to be satisfied with what's left!”

And when Teresa smiled unemotionally, without seeming surprised, Mauricette, crazy with rage, made a terrible scene. The words she used surpassed anything I had heard yet. I never thought that a girl, even one trained to the profession of vice, could use words like that when addressing her own mother. She raved at random in a low, trembling voice, spouting out every outrage she knew, but without order, without reason, simply in the joy of hurting, in the disorder and incoherence in which they came to her mind. “Don't touch me! Shit on you! Shit on you! I'm getting out of this dump tonight! I shit on you, you dirty bitch! Dirty beast! Dirty fairy! Dirty slut! Dirty fucker! Dirty whore! You don't like to be called that, do you? Good! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore! Daughter of a whore! Mother of whores! Whore licker! 'Whore smeller! I'm no whore like you! I'm a virgin! You let your whore of a mother sell your cherry, but I'm not a strumpet like you! I'm not going to let my cherry be sold, I'm going to give it away! Look! Look here, dirty trollop! Look, my fine bitch! You wanted a hundred louis for it, didn't you? Well, you're not even going to get a hundred sous! The only thing you're going to get is blood and come in your filthy trap!”