Hervé Le Tellier - The Sextine Chapel

Anna and Ben. Afterward, Ben opens the curtains. It’s January and already night. The red and blue neon lights of the Holiday Inn on Place de République make Anna’s willowy body turn yellow as she lies on her back, naked on the sheet. He kneels by the edge of the bed, kisses her feet, spreads her thighs, grabs her hips and draws her towards him. Anna closes her eyes. She can’t understand a word of what Ben is saying as he penetrates her and starts his slow to and fro. She feels sorry she took German and Spanish at school.

Suddenly, she catches the word darling. It sounds so terribly off.

Ben and Chloe. In a leafy suburb of Houston, Texas, on the double bed belonging to Ben’s parents — whose holiday in Nassau is going just swell, we’ll be back home Monday — he feels his penis stiffen between Chloe’s fingers while she kisses him shyly, then more and more boldly. On television, CNN is showing again and again a terrorist attack that has just occurred in New York. Chloe goes so far as to lick the tip of his penis. Right there, she feels, the skin is as dry and soft as a kitten’s paw. But Ben doesn’t even purr.

Chloe thinks that if she were a man, she’d be gay. Then, a second later, what an absurd thought that just was.

Chloe and Dennis. In an ivory Kimberley Clark bathtub, Chloe has crouched down over Dennis, turning her tanned back and short-cropped brown hair towards him, while taking in his phallus (after a deal of wriggling). Once the bathroom floor has been drenched, she decides to pull the plug. So it’s now in an empty tub that she’s rising and descending and groaning with all the requisite energy. Their genitals shunt with a slight sucking sound and, from time to time, air escapes as though from a puncture.

Dennis has a backache, finds the lighting too bright, and his arms aren’t long enough to reach her breasts and so convince him that he really is with a girl.

Dennis and Elvire. The ART elevator (for two people, load 180 kilos) is taking Dennis and Elvire up to the seventh floor of their Parisian apartment block (“Go up with our friend,” Elvire’s husband just told her, “Chloe and I’ll take the next one”). On the first floor, Dennis kisses Elvire’s nape and strokes her buttocks through her dress. On the third, his hand slips round her hips, raises the cloth, and his fingers slip between the material to touch her belly. On the fifth, his middle finger is inching its way ever deeper between her moist flesh. On the seventh, his finger recedes (regretfully) after a final caress. The door opens, Dennis delicately removes his hand, and they get out. The elevator goes down again at once.

Nothing is more reassuring than a woman’s wet, salty desire, Dennis thinks, as he sniffs at his scented hand.

Elvire and Farid. Elvire is amazed at the power of the jaws of the crocodile of the pit of the aquarium of the Museum of African and of Oceanic Art of the Porte Dorée of Paris, but not of the number of genitives in this sentence. While whispering sweet nothings into Farid’s ear, she rapidly slips her hand between the young man’s belt and belly. His beige parka conceals what she’s doing. Her index finger moves back and forth, stroking the centre of his testicles. His rising erection slowly wrinkles their skin. Her fingers squeeze them gently, before letting go and re-emerging from his trousers. Farid feels petrified.

Unbeknown to Farid, several years later, he will masturbate while thinking back over the scene of the crocodile of the pit of the aquarium, etc.

Farid and Galata. The orange tent has been pitched on the edge of the Aiguille du Midi. Galata and Farid are pretending to sleep so as not to wake up their two companions. Farid, staring into the darkness, has managed to open Galata’s duvet and slip his right arm through the gap. Galata is trembling as much from excitement as from the cold, because an icy blast of air is giving her gooseflesh. Farid’s hand reaches her tawny fleece and his middle finger tries to enter her twat, her snatch, her pussy, whatever.

Farid thinks: there are fifty words in French for a woman’s sex, and even more for a man’s, but how few that it is given that there are 366 for curdled milk.

Galata and Harry. The old Audi 80 turns off the A46 for the La Voulte rest area. Harry pulls up beneath a tree, then turns off the headlights and engine. The yellow streetlight makes Galata’s naked legs look even slenderer. She’s sobbing, in staccato bursts. Harry leans over to kiss her mascara-stained cheek. She kisses him back, opening his mouth with her tongue, almost by force, while stroking the grey hairs of his chest. She straddles Harry, as best she can, still sobbing, undoes his belt, unzips him, and squeezes his rapidly hardening penis between her fingers. Swiftly, she lowers her panties and slips his already hard member inside her: she has never been so wet, he has never seemed so big.

I love you, you bastard, I love you, you bastard, I love you. . are the words that Galata’s lips keep just unspoken each time Harry shoves deeply inside her.

Harry and Irma. Harry, on his knees, is holding Irma by her hips and penetrating her from behind (though not via the vas illegitimum ). This position is bending his penis downward, giving him a feeling of exceptional stiffness. From time to time, he leans on his hand and Irma nibbles his thumb and groans. Her lovely face is being crushed against the sheet, where she leaves several blonde strands of hair with brown roots. As for the slats of the bed, each of Harry’s thrusts is making one fall, then two, leading to the risk of total collapse.

Harry admires Irma’s delighted behind, then his stare wanders through the dormer window, over Paris’s zinc roofs, where a grey pigeon with tiny round eyes is cooing indifferently.

Irma and Johann. In the kitchenette of a show condominium (with two bedrooms on the outskirts of Lyon), Johann is negotiating — blueprints spread out on the Brazilwood bar — with the real estate agent, who has stayed on the “living-room” side. Irma studies the blueprints then slips behind Johann and runs her hand through her fiancé’s brown hair, while discreetly placing an index finger on his fly. She smiles at the young salesman, and as her caresses grow increasingly precise, listens with delight while her future husband stammers on about mortgages and interest rates.

I’m crazy, extremely well-behaved Irma says to herself, quite thrilled at the idea that, yes, she might just be slightly nuts.

Johann and Katia. The steam train bursts out of the chimney, in a frame of (fake) elm burr. This Magritte poster is partly hidden from Johann’s eyes by the muscular roundness of Katia’s buttocks. Just like every Thursday, from three to five p.m., in this one-bedroom Belleville flat, his nose is hidden in her dark rigid pussy, while he licks the crimson petals of her vulva, at the same time as she is sitting on his solid hairy body and greedily gobbling his thick penis. They alternate speed and slowness, gentleness and vigor, without really knowing who is dictating the tempo to whom.

Why, Katia wonders in amazement, do I so enjoy sucking off this charmless guy whom I do not love and who loves me even less?