Pierre Louys - The She-Devils

Standing, her thighs spread, her head bent forward, she opened the lips of her sex with both hands. Then she closed them again and spoke once more in the same heavy, hateful voice:

“Yes! I've had enough of showing my knockers in your bordello of cornholers! In your bordello of cocksuckers and whores who'll do anything! I've had enough of sitting down to dinner at your table and seeing you pull out a thread of come with your toothpick and laugh because you don't even know who it belongs to! I've had enough of sleeping in sheets where there isn't even a dry spot because a whole bordello has been coming there, the whoremongers, the pimps, the fairies, and the whores! I've had enough of finding shit on my face towel every time one of your lovers wipes his penis on it. Pig! Garbage! Manure! Bitch! Daughter of a slut! Cocksucker! Shit-for-mouth! Hot-piss seller! Behind licker! Turd-eater! Cunt-eater! Count on me! Count on me now, chippy feeler! Count on me to curl your cunt hairs and lipstick your asshole! I don't want any more of your tongue nor of your dirty teats rubbing against me! And I shit on you! I shit on you, mama!”

That last word, that “mama,” made me shiver. Mauricette started to come to me, but seeing the stunned way in which I had been listening to her, she stopped short and threw herself onto a bed, her face in the pillow.

AH during that terrible scene I had watched only Mauricette. But now when I raised my eyes and my hands towards Teresa to prevent her from killing her daughter, as I thought she was going, to, I saw before me a woman as calm as if she had just been directing a stage rehearsal. She was tapping the ends of the fingers of one hand into the palm of her other, as if to simulate a little bravo without making a sound, and she looked at me, surprised at the paleness of my face, and said, “Don't you understand what she wants?”

My God! What had I been thinking of? No, I hadn't gotten it, but her sentence was clear. I saw what she meant and I replied hurriedly, “No! No! Never in front of me!”

“Fine. Go away and leave us alone.”

“Not this evening, please. Not this evening.” Teresa sighed and, with a patience that was customary in her, said from within closed lips, “Ah! Lovers! All right. Stay here. But don't do anything. Promise?”

And I stayed in the room along with Mauricette.

There was a twenty minute intermission, then we returned and, not eagerly but not pouting either, daughter and mother embraced as if nothing had happened.

And, like a student at the Conservatory might make the leap suddenly from tragedy to comedy, Mauricette, as gay now as she had been furious, improvised a carnival pitch with an amazing facility of language.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, here you have the young savage announced outside our tent. We present her to you completely nude, after the custom of her country. This is the genuine article, nothing faked, nothing changed. Go ahead and touch her if you want. There is no padding in the thighs; the stomach is guaranteed, ladies, genuine virgin skin; there is a little horsehair between the buttocks but that is for ornamentation. You want to tap her teats, miss? Go ahead, it doesn't cost a sou. Pull her pubic hair. You can see that at no point are they glued on, neither on her cunt nor under her arms. This is the real, the inimitable, the celebrated Mauricette whose name you have read on our posters.

“This young female savage, ladies and gentlemen, is almost extraordinary creature. She makes love through her asshole… You say you do not understand, miss? When she has a man on top of her with an erection, she does not fuck like you. Instead, she turns gracefully over, takes his prick delicately in her hand, and guides it skillfully into her ass like all the women of her family, a fact that does not prevent her from coming better than you, miss, with your hairless little pussy! What are you making faces about? Be careful! When you laugh in front of the savage girl she becomes enraged and eats little girls beneath their tummies.”

Lili was dying of laughter. Even Charlotte was laughing. But Teresa was the happiest of the three. Evidently, the preceding scene had held no importance whatsoever for her. Mauricette, flushed by her success, continued her monologue:

“The savage girl that you see before your very eyes, ladies and gentlemen, carries her cherry between her legs. You cannot see this cherry because her body is so bent over by her habit of presenting her rear to lovers, but for the slight supplement of fifty centimes per person, we will show you this phenomenon at close range… Has everyone paid? Yes? We now have the pleasure and the honor of presenting the savage girl's cherry. Come closer, please. Don't be afraid. It's very red, but it isn't vicious. The young savage masturbates with all the ferocious refinements of young cannibal women; she puts mustard on the end of her finger when she's beating herself off and then… Oh! Madame! You think that her cherry is blushing out of shame? No, it is only onanism that makes it red like that. Please do not touch the cherry, miss. You will make it all hot. Look closely, ladies and gentlemen, but please do not touch. And now listen, everyone, as the program of the evening will be announced.

“At the end of the show you will see the solemn taking of Mauricette's cherry before the honorable assemblage. The young savage will present herself dog fashion… That shocks you miss? Young ladies who like to be cornholed think very highly of this position. She will therefore present herself dog fashion over her mother's face and between two excited sisters, who will, in their turn, sob, finger themselves, kiss, cry… And that is nothing, ladies and gentlemen. We will begin the program with another complete number, a completely new performance that the celebrated Mauricette perfected only yesterday and that she will give before the public for the first time this evening!”

“She'll suck?” cried Lili, clapping her hands. “Oh! For Ricette that's even more wonderful than losing her cherry!”

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our advertisement told the truth. For the first time publicly the young savage girl will suck a man. And what is more, instead of letting him come in mid-air, she will permit him to discharge in her mouth; and instead of spitting out the come like you do (a vicious habit, miss), the celebrated Mauricette will swallow everything while licking her lips with a gracious smile! We thank you for your attention.”

“There is a girl born into a circus family,” said Teresa proudly.

No doubt. But she was also the only one of the three who had had enough formal education to be able to give to her pitch the proper amount of buffoonery.

Quickly, Ricette whispered something in my ear. I replied, “Yes, if you wish.” Then, out loud, spontaneously, in front of her sisters and I, she made a sort of public apology.

“A few minutes ago I was nasty to you, mama. I ask your forgiveness and to show I mean it, I want him to fuck you the first.”

“Me?” said Teresa.

“Yes. You on top of me, as later we'll do it the other way around. And then he can finish in my mouth, so that I'll have both your come and his at the some time.”

“What a love, this kid of mine!” cried Teresa, clasping her in her arms. “See!” she said to me. “Don't I know her better than you?”

Lili couldn't believe her ears.

“What an evening! Ricette sucking! Mama fucking! And the taking of a cherry at the end of it! You couldn't do more to entertain the King of England!”

“And is that so rare? That 'mama fucking'?” asked Teresa gayly.

“I guess so!” said the imp. “You didn't even fuck to make me!”

The reply was true, prompt, and spoken in Lili's droll little voice, but the excess of laughter that greeted it was out of all proportion to its value. Charlotte, who had been weeping for over an hour, was racked by spasms of laughter interspersed with groans, as if she suffered more from her hilarity than from her melancholy. Teresa was gasping and clung onto her to keep from falling. “Hold me up, Charlotte!” Ricette herself… Laughter is contagious, and Ricette burst out into shrieks last of all. Only Lili remained to laugh in moderation at her crack. And I began to think that one day she would be the most thoughtful and intelligent of the four.