Pierre Louys - The She-Devils

“Tell him then. Tell him yourself, in front of your virgin sister. Tell him what you are.”

“A poor prostitute.”

“Why are you as naked as a girl in a bordello? Aren't you lower than any of them?”

“Oh, yes! They won't do the things that I'll do!”

“Okay, then. Go with Lili. Put on your whore's costume and come back. We'll have some words with you.”

“Me too!” cried Mauricette.

I no longer understood. But while Charlotte left the room slowly and sadly as usual, Ricette dragged me with all her might to the far corner of the room and said in a low voice, “Ha! You know what mama stuck up my ass? Fire! I'm going mad. I'll go put on my costume, but when I come back you'll cornhole me! You will! You will! You will! You will! You can have my cherry later, I'll come back with Charlotte and we'll do a scene, but be sure to play your role. Call her whore and take me, you know. Understand?”

A strange declaration! The more I knew this woman and her three daughters the less I understood them.

Alone with me, Teresa began to speak. I thought that she was going to explain my role, but she had other things to talk about.

“Lili was right,” she said. “Coming in Mauricette's mouth is much more sensational than taking her cherry. What kind of come do you have that she swallows it so well?”

With her body and her lips Teresa was becoming even more pressing than with the words she had just spoken, and, since she was, in any case, far from being a woman to chill me, I replied while kissing her, “Ask your daughters. All three of them have drunk it.”

“Which mouth do you like best?”

“Yours.”

And I wasn't lying. I preferred it before the act as if I had already tried it. Teresa, however, started at this reply. I was afraid that the door would open at any moment and, above all, that I would not be able to continue with her in this tone. I spoke quickly therefore, trying to find out, in addition, what was going on.

“What's up, anyway? What are they doing in there?”

“Screw that,” said Teresa, pressing her lips against mine.

I cut the kiss off with difficulty and brought her back to the subject in a suppliant voice. After a minute of silence during which time I feared the arrival of one of those crescendos that I have already described, she kept her voice under control and replied to me with her face so close to mine that her hair brushed against my cheeks, “How long have you been like that? It's nothing but a game. It makes her happy. You know as well as I do that she likes the role.”

“Who?”

“My Charlotte,” she said tenderly. “I don't get to see what those two are up to together, but I know. Charlotte dresses up like a woman of the streets, and Mauricette is something else. Neither one of them is anything but a kid. They even put on little comedies when they're by themselves, so play with them this time, huh?”

Then getting up, she added, “I've had them fucking away stark naked in your bed for long enough now. If you don't know what they're like by this time…”

But all three of them came back in at that moment, each dressed in the most unlikely outfits.

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.”