The 120 Days of Sodom (22 page)

    "Ah, by God's balls," said Curval, "that's a very delicious passion indeed, but none the less susceptible of improvement."

    "And how?" asked Durcet in a voice broken by signs of lubricity.

    "How?" Curval repeated, "why, by the choice of food and of partner."

    "Partner? Oh, but of course. You'd prefer a Fanchon."

    "To be sure!"

    "And the food?" Durcet continued, while Adelaide frigged him.

    "Food?" the President murmured, "why, I think I'd force her to give me back, and in the same manner, what I'd just introduced into her."

    "That is to say," stammered the financier, beginning to lose all control of himself, "you'd spew into her mouth, she'd swallow and then have to blow it back at you?"

    "Precisely."

    And each rushing into his closet, the President with Fanchon, Augustine, and Zelamir; Durcet with Desgranges, Rosette, and Invictus: proceedings were halted for roughly thirty minutes. Then the two lechers returned.

    "Ah," the Duc said chidingly to Curval, the first to reappear, "you've been up to some nastiness or other?"

    "Ah, a little of this, a little of that," the President replied, "it's my life's happiness, you know. I've not much patience with mild or tidy pleasures."

    "But I trust you were also purged of a little fuck?"

    "Enough of that nonsense," the President said, "do you suppose everyone is like you, flinging fuck this way and that every six minutes? Why no, I leave those efforts and that unconscionable prodigality to you and to vigorous champions like Durcet," he went on, watching the financier stagger weakily from his closet.

    "Yes," said Durcet, "yes, it's true, there was no resisting the girl. Desgranges is so filthy in word, deed, and body, she is so adroit, so suitable in every way…"

    "Well, Duclos," the Duc said, "go on with your story, for if we don't quiet him down, the indiscreet little fellow will tell us everything he did, and never once consider what a dreadful breach of good manners it is to boast of the favors one has received from a pretty woman."

    And Duclos obediently returned to her tale.

    Since, said our chronicler, these gentlemen are so fond of that kind of drollery, I greatly regret they were unable to restrain their enthusiasism yet another minute, for the effects of what I have still to relate this evening might, it seems to me, have better found their mark. Precisely that which Monsieur le President declared to be lacking to the perfection of the passion I have just described was entirely present in the one that follows; what a pity, I repeat, that I was unable to get to it in time. The example of the elderly President de Saclanges affords, in every particular and word for word, all the singularity Monsieur de Curval appeared to desire. By way of a partner for him, Guerin had chosen the dean of our chapter: a tall, sturdy lass of about thirty-six, a great and chronic drunk, loutish, foulmouthed, rather a fishmonger's wife, although by no means unattractive; the good President arrives, they are served supper, both get blind drunk, both become unreasonable, one vomits in the other's mouth, the one swallows the stuff, then the other vomits into the mouth of the first, now he swallows, and so forth and so on, and they finally collapse into the supper's debris, that is to say, into the filth they've just splashed all over the floor. And then I am sent into the fray, for my co-worker has not an ounce of strength left, indeed she has lost consciousness. But this, however, is the crucial moment from the libertine's point of view: I find him prone, his prick straight and hard as a crowbar; I seize his instrument, the President stammers, swears, draws me to him, sucks my mouth, and discharges like a bull, the while twisting and turning and continuing to wallow in his ordure.

    The same girl, somewhat later, participated in a drama which was surely not much less filthy; a monk of some consequence, who paid her very liberally, threw himself astride her belly after having spread and immobilized my companion's thighs by tying them to heavy articles of furniture. Several kinds of food were brought in and served the monk, who had the dainties placed on the girl's naked belly. The merry fellow then picks up the morsels he is to eat, and dips them one by one in his Dulcinea's open cunt, and only consumes them after they have been completely impregnated with the spices the vagina secretes.

    "Ha!" cried the Bishop, "an entirely novel manner of dining."

    "And one which wouldn't suit you, eh, my Lord?" said Duclos.

    "By God's belly, no!" replied the man of the Church, "I'm not that fond of the cunt."

    Very well, our storyteller replied, lend an ear to the item with which I am going to close this evening's narrations, I am persuaded it will amuse you more.

    I had been with Madame Guerin for eight years - had just reached the age of seventeen - and during this period not a day had passed without my seeing a certain farmer-general arrive at the house every morning and be received with the warmest welcome. He was thought very highly of by the management; a man of roughly sixty, rotund, short, he resembled Monsieur Durcet in a good many points. Like Monsieur, he had an air of freshness and youth, and was also plump; he required a different girl every day, and those of the house were never used save in emergencies or when someone contracted abroad failed to meet her appointment. Monsieur Dupont, so was our financier called, was just as discriminating in his choice of girls as he was fastidious in his tastes, he simply would not have a whore to attend to his needs except in the rare and extreme cases I mentioned; he had to have, on the contrary, working women, shopgirls, especially milliners or seamstresses. Their age and coloring also had to meet specification: they had to be between fifteen and eighteen, neither more or less, and, most important of all, they needed to have a sweetly moldered ass, an ass so absolutely clean that the least blemish, a mere grain of matter clinging at the hole was sufficient grounds for rejection. When they were maids, he paid twice as much.

    They had made plans for, and were that day actually expecting the arrival of, a young lacemaker of sixteen whose ass was generally acclaimed by connoisseurs as a true model of what an ass should be; Monsieur Dupont did not know the treasure that was to be offered him, and as it turned out the young lady had word sent that on this particular morning she was unable to leave her parents' house and that matters would have to proceed without her. Guerin, knowing Dupont had never set eyes on me, ordered me to dress in a shopgirl's costume at once, to go out, take a cab at the end of the street, and alight again at the brothel, all this fifteen minutes after Dupont entered the house; I was to play my role with care and pass myself for a milliner's apprentice. But the most important consideration of all was the anise water: I was to fill my stomach at once with half a quart of it, and directly afterward I was to drink the large glass of balsamic liqueur she gave me; you shall shortly learn for what its effect was intended. Everything went forward very smoothly; fortunately, we had been given several hours' notice, and in this time were able to make thorough preparations. I arrived at the house with a very silly air, I was presented to the financier who directly scrutinized me very closely, but as I was keeping a sharp eye on my conduct, he could discover nothing about my person which might contradict the story that had been invented for him.

    "Is she a maid?" Dupont asks.

    "Not in that place," says Guerin, pointing to my belly, "but I will answer for the other side."

    And it was a most impudent lie she told. Little does it matter; our man believed her, and that alone was necessary.

    "Lift your skirts, hurry it up," says Dupont.

    And Guerin raises my skirts from behind, drawing me toward her as she does so and thus entirely exposing the temple at which the libertine performed his worship. He stares, for a moment he fingers my buttocks, he spreads them with both hands, and evidently satisfied, he announces that the ass is suitable for his purposes. Next, he asks me several questions relating to my age, my trade, and content with my feigned innocence and the look of having been born yesterday that I affect, he has me accompany him to his apartment, for there was one reserved exclusively for him at Guerin's: he did not like being observed while at work, he was certain not to be in this place. Both of us having entered, he carefully shuts and secures the door, considers me for a moment, then in a rather brutal fashion - brutality characterized him throughout the scene - he inquired me whether it were indeed true that I had never been fucked in the ass. As my role called for total ignorance of the meaning of such an expression, I had him repeat it, declared I still understood nothing, and when by means of the most unambigious gestures he conveyed what he wished to say, I replied, with a stimulated look fo fright and modesty, that I should be a very unhappy girl indeed if ever I had lent myself to such infamies. Whereupon he told me to remove my skirts, but only my skirts, and once I had obeyed him, leaving my blouse down to hide my front, he raised it above my buttocks to the height of my bodice; but while he was undressing me my neckerchief slipped down, revealing my breasts. He became incensed.

    "Devil take those damned tits of yours," he cried; "who asked you for tits? That's what I can't bear about these creatures, every single impudent one of them is wild to show you her miserable bubs."

    Hastening to cover them over, I approached him to beg his pardon, but observing that I was going to exhibit my cunt thanks to the posture I was about to assume, he lost his temper a second time:

    "But, sweet Jesus! Can't you stay put?" he demanded, seizing my haunches and turning me so that there was no danger he would catch a glimpse of anything but my ass, "stay that way, fuck your eyes, I don't care any more of your cunt than I do for your chest, your ass is all you need with me."

    So saying, he stood up and guided me to the edge of the bed upon which he installed me in such wise the upper half of my body rested on the bed, then, seating himself on a very low stool, he found himself situated between my wide-flung legs and his head on a level with my ass. He peers at me for another instant, then, deciding I am not yet adjusted as I ought to be, up he gets, fetches a cushion, fits it under my belly, thus arching my ass more sharply; he sits down again, examines, and goes about everything with the sangfroid and confidence of the seasoned and mature libertine. A moment passes, then he grasps my two buttocks, spreads them, poses his open mouth upon the hole, fastens his lips hermetically to it, and immediately, pursuant to the signal he gives me and in obedience to the considerable pressure that has built up within me, I unleash a booming fart, possibly the most explosive one he has received in all his life; it shoots down his gullet and he backs away, furious.

    "What the devil!" he cries, "so you are so bold as to fart into my mouth, are you?"

    And he straightway claps his mouth to my asshole again.

    "Yes, Monsieur," I say as I release a second stifler, "that's how I deal with gentlemen who kiss my ass."

    "Very well then! fart, if you must, you little rascal, since you can't help it, fart, I say, fart as hard as you like and as often as you can."

    From this moment onward I cast off all restraint, nothing can express the urgency of my desire to give vent to the boisterous winds produced by the potion I had drunk earlier; our man is thrilled by them, he receives some in his mouth, the others in his nostrils. After fifteen minutes of this exercise, he lies down upon the couch, draws me to him, his nose still wedged between my buttocks, orders me to frig him and meanwhile to continue a ceremony which gives rise in him to such exquisite pleasures. I fart, I frig, I manipulate a slack little prick neither much longer nor much thicker than my finger, but by dint of buffets, jerks, and farts the instrument finally stiffens. The augmentation of our gentleman's pleasure, the critical instant's approach is announced by a new iniquity: it is now his tongue that provokes my farts, 'tis his tongue that, like a flail, darts deep into my anus in order to stir up the winds, 'tis against his tongue he wants me to blow those zephyrs, he becomes unreasonable, he is no longer in possession of his wits, 'tis clear, and his wretched little engine sadly sprinkles seven or eight drops of watery, brownish sperm upon my fingers; and now he is restored to his senses. But as his native brutality fomented his distraction, so now it replaces it at once, and he barely gives me enough time to readjust myself. He scolds, he mutters and swears, in one word he offers me the abhorrent image of vice that has slaked its thirst, and I am made the butt of that unthinking indelicacy which, once its glitter has paled, seeks to find revenge in scorn for the worshiped object that latterly captivated the senses.

    "Now that's a man I prefer to all the others," said the Bishop. "And do you know if he had his little sixteen-year-old apprentice the next day?"

    "Yes, Monseigneur, he did indeed, and the day after that a maid of fifteen far prettier yet. As few men used to pay as much, few were better served."

    This passion having stimulated heads so well acquainted with that species of disorder, and having put them in mind of a taste they all relished. Messieurs simply could not bear waiting any longer to make use of it. Each of them plucked what windy fruits there were to be had, neglecting no likely sources, then supper arrived, with their gourmandizing pleasures they blended nearly all the infamies they had just heard described, the Duc got Fanchon tipsy and had the befuddled old thing vomit into his mouth, Durcet had the whole harem fart, and in the course of the evening swallowed at least threescore mouthfuls of unwholesome air. As for Curval, in whose brain all kinds of extravagances danced gaily, he declared he was moved to perform some solitary orgies and went off to the remote boudoir, accompanied by Fanchon, Marie, Desgranges, and thirty bottles of Champagne wine. Later on, all four had to be carried back into society, for they were discovered floating in a very tide of their own ordures, and the President was found asleep, his mouth fastened to that of Desgranges, who was still wearily retching into it. The three other friends aquitted themselves no less brilliantly, performing feats in like kind or somewhat different; they too had spent their orgy period drinking, they had got the little girls to fart, I truly haven't space to tell you all they did, and had it not been for Duclos, who coolly kept her wits about her, who when it was abandoned by the others assumed the government of the revels, preserved order, and put the merrymakers to bed, I repeat that had it not been for Duclos, it is very probable indeed that rosy-fingered Dawn, opening the gates of Apollo's palace, would have found them lying still plunged in their excrements, rather more after the example of swine than like heroes.