The Image (12 page)

As soon as the grave voice of Isolde is heard (a cassette player has been hidden within my reach), I relieve Sebastian of his mask, and the Black comes with a tray, offering me my silver cigarette holder, long and thin with a black "Galalith" mouthpiece, the truncated cigarette, and a tortoise-shell lighter. I light the cigarette and return the lighter to the tray which the Black removes immediately.

I have imagined the course of events so thoroughly and exactly that nothing should surprise me now. This group – I have already seen it precisely like this: hieratic, bathed in a chapel light, without contrast, which gives the masks an appearance of old ivory.

I have already observed the reddening of the cigarette that is being consumed puff by puff; I have seen Sebastian's gaze, fixed on my face. Rivulets of sweat run down his arms, and my heart beats quickly. Caught in the snare of his captive eyes, I watch him watching me through the exhalations of diaphanous smoke. It seems as if he does not hear the song, no longer hears it, that lament of a lost lover rising slowly in successive waves, higher and higher, inexorably, toward a paroxysm that is always imminent, always deferred, cresting, suspended to the point of vertigo... At the apogee of anguish I strike, plunge the incandescent cigarette into the center of the star – at the very moment when the last wave, finally breaking, unfurls into a dazzle of voluptuous pleasure that carries Isolde, submerged in it, into the white brilliance of death.

With a groan, the sacrificial victim bends as if struck by a hard gust of wind. I go with that motion, and the ember stays fixed to his chest. I am quite calm. Beginning in my hand, a brutal wave of pleasure passes through me. My breath stopped by his hoarse whimpering, I experience the intense and overwhelming frenzy of the huntress reaching her prey... Now you are mine, for a few more seconds...

Slowly, Sebastian returns to an upright position. His eyes are as blue as a calm sea. During the last bars of the opera, the return to serenity, F. offers me the small gilded bowl into which I deposit my instrument which holds the crushed butt of the extinguished cigarette, now only a few millimeters long.

The final chord reverberates in the silence. Everything has been accomplished.

Then, the tallest of the women takes off her mask to let Sebastian see her face for the first time, reflected in the altar mirror. Does he really see it? He seems contemplative, huddled within himself. Walking backward so that her image, fading into the penumbra, disappears gradually, Françoise withdraws, holding her mask in her hand, toward the door which the Black opens without a sound. Marie and F. leave in the same manner.

***

We are alone. Sebastian rubs his head between my thighs, embracing my knees. He hugs them to the point of hurting, with a sudden passion to which I abandon myself. There even are some endearments and perhaps a few tears... a moment...

Then I put a stop to these caresses and proceed to untie the stocking that is garroting his penis. The bronze ring falls to the floor and I tell him: "Now you'll jerk off – I want your come in this glass." He starts stroking himself right away. When I put my index finger on the aching and tumescent flesh, his eyes close, his face hardens and the sperm flows into the glass, splattering the crystal sides. I gather the milky substance with my finger and spread it on his lips in a thick, shiny layer, transparent like mother-of-pearl. We engage in a long, creamy kiss; I sink into his mouth, which tastes of sperm, until it becomes sticky.

(Tonight, the park is suffused by a sweet and insinuating smell of sperm, just as every year on hot June evenings when the chestnuts are in bloom at the far end of the big oval lawn. Quite soon, at nightfall, I'll take a walk over there.)

The scent of gluey lips... Once again, the thread is broken.

There's nothing left in my memory between that kiss and what comes next: Sebastian, standing, already dressed (or almost), in the weakening candlelight. It is time for him to leave: I'm sure of that...

I have offered him a gauze bandage to protect the burnt epidermis from contact with his clothes. He thanks me, but refuses: he'd rather leave the burn uncovered.

Now I still have to lay the blackened fragment of a cigarette and the earring into a small Oriental box decorated with enamel cloisonne and lined with crimson satin. I give him this reliquary, and then he leaves, by himself, just as he'd arrived-under the rough fabric of his shirt, a vivid scarlet seal, the mark of his submission.

When F. has sent the Black home, his duties accomplished, we women remain in each other's company in the red salon...