Pierre Louys - The She-Devils

“From behind? But where?”

She showed her teeth ferociously but good-naturedly, a look that seemed to say, “Ah? You don't get it?” Then, with her natural facility for improvisation, she took up once more her role of innocent and continued:

“Mama made me a clown costume with an inch long buttonhole right between my thighs so that I have room for my finger and a little removable panel in the back. You see?”

“But what good does that do?”

“She told me when I was getting dressed, 'Remember to be good now, show that you've been brought up properly, don't say any bad words, but when you see that he's getting a hard-on, you take his prick, you stick some butter into your asshole, and you open your buttocks saying to him that it's the first time you've ever done it. Then you say that it's shameful to do things like that, that you don't even dare confess it at church, and that you'd throw yourself in the river if your mother ever found out about it.' You understand?”

“Is that all she said?”

“No. When she was kissing me good-bye at the door, she said, 'Be sure to finger yourself when he's cornholing you and don't ask him where in the bordello you can shit out the come. But wash yourself out, my child, from your ass to your mouth. Discharge into your slip, puke into the piano, piss into the carafe, earn your fifty francs with your asshole, and above all don't say any bad words.' Don't you understand yet?”

“Less and less. It's your modest nature, miss. You seem to have some difficulty in explaining these things clearly…”

I was becoming twice as malicious and three times as odious, for Mauricette had been playing her role extremely well. And as happy and gay as was her heart and soul, I saw that she was on the brink of flying into a rage. I barely had time enough to say to her while touching her forehead lightly, “Ah! Now I understand!”

“Miracle of Saint Mauricette!” she sighed patiently.

“This little flap of cloth… can I lift it?”

“You still trying to be funny?”

“And see what's underneath, like the little girls at La Rochelle do?”

But we had finished. With my lips on hers I prevented her from replying. My wisecracks were less funny than her act, and I had only prolonged them so that I might draw her out to greater length. I was afraid that at the first contact of our bodies she would put an end to her act, but the love of the stage in young girls is almost as strong as their love of sensual pleasure. For several minutes more, therefore, Ricette kept up her role of beginner alone with a man in a private dining room.

“You see, sir,” she said, “the difference there is between vice and virtue. The shameless women who dance nude wear nothing but a small cloth in front over their sex. While the virgins who give themselves to be cornholed have a little panel that lifts up from the rear and are otherwise completely dressed.” She began laughing uproariously.

“I don't know the secrets that young girls keep too well and I'm afraid that I won't…”

“No, no, kind sir. Let me do it. Mama taught me one thing if nothing else: 'If your customer is a shit, let him cornhole you!'“

She laughed even more this time, but I was fed up. I don't like that kind of joke and she only objected in vain to me that a virgin has the right to be indulged in a few eccentricities while she is being sodomised. Ricette received, for the principle of the thing, two or three little slaps that she well merited. And then… (I forgot to mention one small detail: the room was enormous. Teresa, Charlotte, and Lili were grouped together at the far end of the divan, and we were playing a good distance from them, as in a real theatre. So that Mauricette could speak to me in a low voice without being heard by the other.)… She stopped laughing, turned her head, and said to me ardently but in a low voice, “Is that what you call a slap? Your dick hurts me more than your hand did. Do it again.”

“Certainly not!”

“Yes. Listen to what I'm going to say. I'm going to speak in a very low voice. Remember what you did to Mama without wanting to? Grab me by the hairs, they won't see anything. They'll just think you're beating me off… No, not those hairs there… lower… around the lips… yes, there… pull… pull them… pull them, damn it!.. What the hell are you waiting for? Pull! I'm going to come…”

And she grabbed my hand to make me pull out the hair like a handful of weeds.

The intermission only lasted a minute. To give us a little time to rest up, Lili in her schoolgirl outfit went up to Charlotte dressed like a whore and said with a suspicions air, “You're already sick? I thought your brother's prick had a funny taste this morning.”

When Charlotte's emotions rose to the surface she could retain neither hilarity nor tears. Surprised by this unexpected opening sentence, she laughed behind her hand before replying. Then the scene began, but on a completely different level than Mauricette's. Between she and her two sisters stretched out the long distance from the boarding school to the primary school. Occasionally, Lili could leap the gap, carried by her natural instinct for fantasy; however, Charlotte spoke only the language of obscene and sentimental realism. The role that she had accepted, had in fact demanded, hardly resembled those famous types of Bruant. It was, on the other hand, that of the weary, faint-hearted girl who is used to submitting to all manner of humilities and injuries and (almost a saint without realizing it) who accuses herself first of all as the cause of her troubles.

She therefore assumed an unhappy air and when Lili repeated, “A very funny taste.” she spoke with the same manner.

“It's not enough that he should go around sticking his tail into little snipes only ten years old,” said Charlotte sadly, “but then the kid comes and starts complaining to me about the taste. Those things never happen to anyone but me!”

“Little snipe's ten years old? Even if she is only ten, she's less of a fathead than you! She's beat off the secretary of the chief of police and when she decides to suck him, she'll get you sent off to the pokey.”

“Ah! That's all I need now. That's the one thing that hasn't happened to me yet. But what have I ever done to you?”

“You emptied your brother's balls before I got there and then you wiped his cock off with your cunt.”

This new expression of Lili's ravished Mauricette, who raised herself up on one elbow to follow the scene.

“The lock-up!” shuddered Charlotte. “Probably Saint-Lazare! No, my pretty little child, have pity on me. I'll do anything you want… for nothing.”

“Too expensive,” said Lili unperturbed.

“Do you want to see my hairs? My knockers? Do you want me to eat you out?”

“I've got my lesbians already.”

The detached voice the schoolgirl assumed here was so comic and so disdainful that everyone started laughing, even Charlotte. Lili continue however, without ever changing expression after having pulled a piece of bread out of her basket.

“Make me a nice come sandwich. Then go and get some honey to sweeten it. Bring it back to me and have one ready every day so I can take it to school for lunch. And no foolishness! If you try to screw me up, I'll have you clapped into the can so quick it'll make your head swim! Is that understood?”

“Ah! I could even make you two with the come that I get from earning my forty-five sous. There, under the bridge, there's a puddle every evening… And every time I go there I stick my mouth into it to have some… Is that all you want?”

“I want to watch you doing it too. Look! There's a passerby for you! Go ahead! I'll hide!”

This last sentence, “I'll hide!” was really a ten-year-old's; however, I hardly had time to appreciate the merits of her acting for I suddenly realized that the passer-by was supposed to be me. Charlotte quickly said, “You know what you're supposed to do? You stick it in my mouth, but nothing happens. You don't get a hard-on.” This conception of dramatic art was so simple that it reminded me rather more of Aeschylus than of the modern theatre. The scene to follow should therefore have three sections. And the third would be so easy to act in the state in which Mauricette left me that I decided to go along with the second as naturally as possible to try to satisfy poor Charlotte's mania. The second part also was as disagreeable for me as the one preceding, and I only followed it as in a dream. All of this was probably caused by the fact that I played my role very poorly. I had not been in the least ashamed to have held up my end with less distinction than Mauricette, but I was rather put off to find that even the simple Charlotte knew better than I how to carry out this role and expand her characterization.