The 120 Days of Sodom (37 page)

    "Hither, come to me, whore," said he, "after having bolted some fish one needs a little sauce, good white sauce. Come get a mouthful."

    Well, there was no escaping that ordeal either, and Curval, who, while operating, was having Augustine shit, opened the sluices and let fly into the mouth of the Duc's miserable wife, and at the same time swallowed the fresh and delicate little turd the interesting Augustine had hatched for him.

    The inspection tours were conducted, Durcet found shit in Sophie's chamber pot. The young lady sought to excuse her error by maintaining that she had been suffering from indigestion.

    "Not at all," Durcet observed as expertly he handled the turd, "that is not true: indigestion produces diarrhea, soup, my dear, and this article looks very sound to me."

    And straightway taking up his baneful notebook, he wrote down the name of that charming creature, who did her best to hide her tears and refrained, at Durcet's request, from deploring her situation. Everyone else had abided by the regulations, but in the boys' chamber, Zelamir, who had shitted the previous evening during the orgies and who had been told not to wipe his little bum, had tidied it up none the less, disobeying the orders. These were the crimes of the first magnitude: Zelamir's name was inscribed. Notwithstanding the boy's delinquency, Durcet kissed his ass and had himself sucked for a brief moment, then Messieurs passed on to the chapel, where they beheld the shitting of two subaltern fuckers, Aline, Fanny, Therиse, and Champville. The Duc received Fanny's performance in his mouth, and he ate it, the Bishop's mouth caught the two fuckers' turds, one of which the prelate devoured, Durcet made Champville's his own, and the President, despite his discharge, gulped down Aline's with all the avidity he had exhibited while consuming what Augustine had done for him.

    Constance's scene had heated the company's imagination, for it had been a long time since Messieurs had indulged themselves in such extravagances so early in the morning. Dinner conversation dealt with moral science. The Duc declared he could not understand why in France the law smote so heavily against libertinage, since libertinage, by keeping the citizens busy, kept them clear of cabals and plots and revolutions; the Bishop observed that, no, the laws did not exactly aim at the suppression of libertinage, but at its excesses. Whereupon the latter were analyzed, and the Duc proved that there was nothing dangerous in excess, no excess which could justly arouse the government's suspicion, and that, these facts being clear, the official attitude was not only cruel but absurd; what other word was there to describe bringing artillery to bear upon mosquitoes?

    From remarks they progressed to effects, the Duc, half-drunk, abandoned himself in Zephyr's arms, and for thirty long minutes sucked that lovely child's mouth while Hercule, exploiting the situation, buried his enormous engine in the Duc's anus. Blangis was all complacency, and without stirring, without the flicker of an eyelash, went on with his kissing as, virtually without noticing it, he changed sex. His companions all gave themselves over to other infamies, and then they sallied forth to coffee. As they had just played a multitude of silly little pranks, the atmosphere was calm, and this was perhaps the one coffee hour during the entire four months' outing when no fuck was shed. Duclos was already upon the tribune, awaiting the company; when everyone had taken his place, she addressed her auditors in this wise:

    I had recently suffered a loss in my house, and it had a deep effect upon me in every sense. Eugenie, whom I loved with a passion and who, thanks to her most extraordinary complaisance in whatever was connected with the possibility of earning me money, had been especially useful to me, Eugenie, I say, had just been spirited away. It happened in the strangest fashion: a domestic, having first paid the price settled upon, came to conduct her, so he said, to a supper that was to be held outside the city; her participation in the affair would be worth seven or eight louis. I was not at the house at the time the transaction took place, for I should never have allowed her to leave with someone I didn't know, but the domestic applied directly to her and she agreed to go… I have never seen her since.

    "Nor shall you ever again," said Desgranges. "The party proposed was her last one, and it will be my agreeable task to add the denouement to that lovely girl's history."

    "Great God!" cried Duclos. "She was so beautiful, that girl… only twenty, her face was so sweet, she was so delicate…"

    "And, one might add, her body was the most superb in Paris," Desgranges said. "All those charms conspired to her undoing, but go on with what you were saying, let's not become mired down in circumstances."

    Lucile was the girl who took her place, Duclos continued, both in my heart and in my bed, but not in the household's activities, for she had not by any means Eugenie's submissive temper nor her great understanding.

    All the same, it was to her hands I entrusted, not long afterward, that certain Benedictine prior who used to pay me a visit now and again, and who had in past times been wont to frolic with Eugenie. After the good father had warmed her cunt with his tongue and thoroughly sucked her mouth, the major phase of the process began: Lucile took the whip and plied it lightly over his prick and balls, and he discharged from a limp machine; the gentle rubbing, the mere application of the lash produced his orgasm. His greatest pleasure used to consist in watching the girl slash with her whip at the drops of fuck as they spattered from his prick.

    The next day, I myself took charge of a gentleman upon whose bare behind one had to lay one hundred carefully counted whip strokes; before his beating he prepared himself by kissing one's behind and while being lashed he frigged himself. A third, with whom I had dealings some time later, had even heavier demands to satisfy; he also gilded each detail with additional ceremony: I received notice of his intended arrival a week in advance, and during that time I had to avoid washing any part of my body, and above all was to spare my cunt, my ass, my mouth; and furthermore, as soon as I learned he was to come, I selected three cat-o'-nine-tails and immersed them in a pot full of mixed urine and shit, and kept the whips soaking there until he presented himself. He was an elderly collector of the salt tax, a man of considerable means, a widower, without children, and he treated himself to such parties all the time. The first thing that interested him was to determine whether I had scrupulously abstained from ablutions, as he had enjoined me; I assured him I had followed his instructions to the letter; he wished proof, and began by applying a kiss to my lips. This experience must have convinced him, for he then suggested we go up to the room, and I realized that had he, upon kissing me, discovered I had cleansed my mouth in any way at all, he would not have wished to continue with the party. We go up together, as I say, he regards the whips steeping in the pot, then, bidding me undress, he sets to sniffing every part of my body, above all the orifices he had expressly forbidden me to wash; as I had honored his prescription in perfect faith and in every article, he doubtless discovered the aroma he desired to be there, for I saw him grow restless, appear anxious to be off, and heard him exclaim: "Ah, by fuck, that's what I want, that's just what I want!" I proceeded to fondle his ass: it was sheathed in what positively resembled boiled leather in color, texture, and toughness. After having spent a minute caressing, handling, poking about those gnarled, storm-beaten hindquarters, I seized a cat-o'-nine-tails and, without drying it, I gave him ten stinging cuts, putting all my strength into the blows; but this beginning produced not a tremor, he not only remained impassive, but my blows put not so much as the faintest scratch upon that unshakable citadel. Having opened with this prologue, I sank three of my fingers into his anus, took firm hold, and began to rattle him with might and main, but our man was insensible to the same degree here as elsewhere; my struggles failed to be acknowledged by so much as a sigh. These two initial ceremonies completed, his turn came to act; I lay belly down upon the bed, he knelt, spread my buttocks, and alternately shot his pilgrim tongue into this hole and into the other, and they, one may be sure, were, in keeping with his instructions, not entirely unaromatic. After he had done considerable sucking, I took up another whip, laid on a second time and socratized him again, he knelt as before and returned to his licking, and so it went, each of us doing his part at least fifteen times over. Finally, giving me further instructions and bidding me guide my movements in consonance with the state of his prick, which I was to observe carefully but which I was not to touch, when next he knelt I unleashed my turd. It shot squarely into his face, he fell back, exclaimed that I was an insolent creature, and discharged while frigging himself and while uttering cries that might have been heard in the street had I not taken the precaution of drawing the shutters. But the turd fell to the floor, he did naught but stare at and smell it, neither putting it in his mouth nor even touching it; he had received at least two hundred lashes, and I may assure you… his body bore not a trace of what it had sustained, his horny ass, fortified by years of rude usage, betrayed not the least mark.

    "Well, by God's bum button!" chortled the Duc, "there's an ass, President, worth as much as the curiosity you drag about."

    "Oh yes, yes," said Curval, a stammer in his voice, for Aline was frigging him, "yes indeed, that fellow seems to have both my buttocks and my tastes, for, you know, I am infinitely opposed to the use of the bidet, but I prefer a longer abstinence: I usually set the period at a minimum of three months."

    "President, your prick's stiff," the Duc said.

    "Do you think so?" Curval replied. "Faith, you'd best consult Aline here, she'll be able to tell you what's what, as for myself, you know, I'm so accustomed to that particular state of affairs that I rarely notice when it ends or when it begins. There is only one thing I can tell you with complete confidence, and that is that at this very moment I'd hugely like to have my hands upon a very impure whore; I'd like her to present me with a bucketful of shit, fill a bowl to above the rim, I'd like her ass to stink from shit, I'd like her cunt to smell like a beach covered with dead fish. But hold! Therиse, O thou whose filth is as old as the hills, thou who since baptism hast not wiped thine ass, and whose infamous cunt breeds a pestilence three leagues on every side, come bring all that to my nose's delectation, I beg thee, and to that put a fine wet turd, if 'twould please thee."

    Therиse approaches, with foul and evil charms, with parts disgusting and withered and wounded she rubs the magistrate's face, upon his nose she excretes the desired turd, Aline does frig amain, the libertine discharges, and Duclos therewith resumes the story she has to tell.

    An elderly rascal, who used to receive a new girl every day for the operation I am going to describe, besought one of my friends to persuade me to visit him, and at the same time I was given information about the ceremony regularly performed at the lecher's home. I arrive, he examines me with a phlegmatic glance, the kind of glance one encounters among habitual libertines, and which in an instant arrives at an infallible estimate of the object under scrutiny.

    "I have been told you have a fine ass," said he in a drawling tone, "and as for the past sixty years I have had a decided weakness for fine cheeks, I should like to see whether there is any foundation to your reputation… lift your skirts."

    That last phrase, energetically spoken, sufficed as an order; not only did I offer a view of the treasure, but I moved it as near as possible to his connoisseur's nose. At first I stand erect, then little by little I bend forward and exhibit the object of his devotion in every form and aspect most apt to please him. With each movement, I feel the old scoundrel's hands wander over the surface, scouting the terrain, probing the geography, sometimes creating a more consolidated effect, sometimes attempting to give it a more generous cast, compressing here, broadening there.

    "The hole is ample, very ample," says he, "appearances attest a furious sodomistical prostitution."

    "Alas, Monsieur," I concede, "we are living in an age when men are so capricious that in order to please them, one must indeed be prepared for virtually anything, and consent to it all."

    Whereupon I feel his mouth glue itself hermetically to my asshole, and his tongue strive to penetrate into the chasm; I seize my opportunity, as I have been advised, and profiting from my situation, slide out, directly upon his probing tongue, the warmest, most humid, densest eructation. The maneuver displeases him not at all, but on the other hand does little to animate him; finally, after I have unleashed half a dozen winds, he gets to his feet, leads me to his bed, and points to an earthenware crock in which four cat-o'-nine-tails are marinating. Above the crock hang several whips suspended from gilded hooks.

    "Arm yourself," murmurs the roue, "take a cat-o'-nine-tails and one of those other weapons, here is my ass. As you observe, it is dry, lean, and exceedingly well seasoned. Touch it."

    I do so; he continues:

    "You notice," says he, "that it's old, toughened by severe treatment, and it's not to be warmed save by the most incredibly excessive attacks. I am going to keep myself in this posture," and while speaking he stretched out upon the bed and rested his knees on the floor. "Employ those instruments, first one, then the other, now the cat-o'-nine-tails, now the whip. This is going to take a little time, but you will receive an unequivocal sign when the climax approaches. As soon as you see something out of the ordinary happening to this ass of mine, hold yourself in readiness to imitate what you see it doing; we will then exchange places, I shall kneel down before your splendid buttocks, you shall do what you shall have observed me do, and I'll discharge. But above all do not become impatient; I warn you once again: this business is not to be accomplished in haste."