Part III: Anne-Marie and the Rings
O had believed, or wanted to believe, in order to give herself a good excuse, that Jacqueline
would be uncommonly shy. She was enlightened on this score the moment she decided to open
her eyes.
The modest air Jacqueline assumed - closing the door to the mirrored make-up room where she
dressed and undressed - was in fact clearly intended to inflame O, to instill in her the desire to
force the door which, had it been left wide open, she would never have made up her mind to
enter. That O's decision finally came from an authority outside herself, and was not the result of
that basic strategy, could not have been further from Jacqueline's mind. At first O was amused by
it. As she helped Jacqueline arrange her hair, for example, after Jacqueline had taken off the
clothes she had posed in and was slipping into her turtle -neck sweater and the turquoise necklace
the same color as her eyes, O found herself amazingly delighted at the idea that the very same
evening Sir Stephen would be apprised of Jacqueline's every gesture - whether she had allowed
O to fondle, through the black sweater, her small, well-spaced breasts, whether she had lowered
her eyelids till those lashes, fairer than her skin, were touching her cheeks; whether she had
sighed or moaned. When O embraced her, she became heavy, motionless and seemly expectant
in her arms, her lips parted slightly and her hair cascaded back. O always had to be careful to
hold her by both her shoulders and lean her up against the frame of a door or against a table.
Otherwise she would have slipped to the floor, her eyes closed, without a sound. The minute O
let go of her, she would again turn into ice and snow, laughing and distant, and would say:
"You've got lipstick on me," and would wipe her mouth. It was this distant stranger that O
enjoyed betraying by carefully noting - so as not to forget anything and be able to relate
everything in detail - the slow flush of her cheeks, the smell of sage and sweat. Of Jacqueline it
was impossible to say that she was forbearing or that she was on her guard. When she yielded to
the kisses - and all she had so far granted O were kisses, which she accepted without returning -
she yielded abruptly and, it seemed, totally, as though for ten seconds, or five minutes, she had
become someone else. The rest of the time she was both coquettish and coy, incredibly clever at
parrying an attack, contriving never to lay herself open either to a word or gesture, or even a look
which would allow the victor to coincide with the vanquished or give O to believe that it was all
that simple to take possession of her mouth. The only indication one had as a guide, the only
thing that gave one to suspect troubled waters beneath the calm surface of her look was an
occasional, apparently involuntary trace of a smile on her triangular face, similar to the smile of a
cat, as fleeting and disturbing, and as uncertain, as a cat's. Yet it did not take O long to realize
that this smile could be provoked by two things, and Jacqueline was totally unaware of either.
The first was the gifts that were given to her, the second, any clear evidence of the desire she
aroused - providing, however, that the person who desired her was someone who might be useful
to her or who flattered her vanity. In what way was O useful to her? Or was it simply that O was
an exception and that Jacqueline enjoyed being desired by O both because she took solace in O's
manifest admiration and also because a woman's desire is harmless and of no consequence? Still
in all, O was convinced that if, instead of bringing Jacqueline a mother-of-pearl brooch or the
latest creation of Hermes' scarves on which I Love You was printed in every language under the
sun, she were to offer Jacqueline the hundred or two hundred francs she seemed constantly to
need, Jacqueline would have changed her tune about never having the time to have lunch or tea
at O's place, or would have stopped evading her caresses. But of this O never had any proof. She
had only barely mentioned it to Sir Stephen, who was chiding her for her slowness, when Rene
stepped in. The five or six times that Rene had come by for O, when Jacqueline had happened to
be there, the three of them had gone together to the Weber bar or to one of the English bars in the
vicinity of the Madeleine; on these occasions Rene would contemplate Jacqueline with precisely
the same mixture of interest, self-assurance, and arrogance with which he would gaze, at Roissy,
at the girls who were completely at his disposal. The arrogance slid harmlessly off Jacqueline's
solid, gleaming armor, and Jacqueline was not even aware of it. By a curious contradiction, O
was disturbed by it, judging an attitude which she considered quite natural and normal for
herself, insulting for Jacqueline. Was she taking up cudgels in defense of Jacqueline, or was it
merely that she wanted her all to herself? She would have been hard put to answer that question,
all the more so because she did not have her all to herself - at least not yet. But if she finally did
succeed, she had to admit it was thanks to Rene. On three occasions, upon leaving the bar where
they had given Jacqueline considerably more whisky than she should have drunk - her cheeks
were flushed and shining, her eyes hard - he had driven her home before taking O to Sir
Stephen's.
Jacqueline lived in one of those lugubrious Passy lodging houses into which hordes of White
Russians had piled immediately following the Revolution, and from which they had never
moved. The entrance hall was painted in imitation oak, and on the stairway the spaces between
the banisters were covered with dust, and the green carpeting had been worn down till it was
threadbare in many places. Each time Rene wanted to come in - and to date he had never got
beyond the front door - Jacqueline would jump out of the car, cry "not tonight" or "thanks so
much," and slam the car door behind her as though she had suddenly been burned by some
tongue of flame. And it was true, O would say to herself, that she was being pursued by fire. It
was admirable that Jacqueline had sensed it, even though she had no concrete evidence of it as
yet. At least she realized that she had to be on her guard with Rene, whose detachment did not
seem to affect her in the slightest. (Or did it? And as far as seeming unaffected, two could play at
that game, and Rene was a worthy opponent for her).
The only time that Jacqueline let O come into the house and follow her up to her room, O had
understood why she had so adamantly refused Rene permission to set foot in the house. What
would have happened to her prestige, her black-and-white legend on the slick pages of the posh
fashion magazines, if someone other than a woman like herself had seen the sordid lair from
which the glorious creature issued forth every day? The bed was never made, at most the
bedclothes were more or less pulled up, and the sheet which was visible was dirty and greasy, for
Jacqueline never went to bed without massaging her face with cold cream, and she fell asleep too
quickly to think of wiping it off. Sometime in the past a curtain had apparently partitioned off the
toilet from the room: all that remained on the triangular shaped curtain rod were two rings and a
few shreds of cloth. The color was faded from everything: from the rug, from the wallpaper
whose pink and gray flowers were crawling upward like vegetation gone wild and become
petrified on the imitation white trellis. One would have had to throw everything out and start
again from scratch: scrape off the wallpaper, throw out the rug, sand the floors. But without
waiting for that, one could in any case have cleaned off the dirt that, like so many strata, ringed
the enamel of the basin, immediately wiped off and put into some kind of order the bottles of
make-up remover and the jars of cream, cleaned up the powder box, wiped off the dressing table,
thrown out the dirty cotton, opened the windows. But, straight and cool and clean and smelling
of eau de Cologne and wild flowers, dirt-proof and impeccable, Jacqueline could not have cared
less about her filthy room. What she did care about, however, what caused her no end of
concern, was her family.
It was because of her hovel, which O was frank enough to have mentioned to Rene, that Rene
made a proposal which was to alter their lives, but it was because of her family that Jacqueline
accepted. Rene's suggestion was that Jacqueline should come and live with O. "Family" was a
gross misunderstatement: it was a clan, or rather a horde. Grandmother, mother, aunt, and even a
maid - four women ranging in age from fifty to seventy, strident, heavily made up, smothered
beneath onyx and their black silks, sobbing and wailing at four in the morning in the faint red
light of the icons, with the cigarette smoke swirling thickly about them, four women drowning in
the clicking of the tea glasses and the harsh hissing of a language Jacqueline would gladly have
given half her life to forget - she was going out of her mind having to submit to their orders, to
listen to them, merely having to see them. Whenever she saw her mother lifting a piece of sugar
to her mouth before drinking her tea, Jacqueline would set down her own glass and retreat to her
dry and dusty pigsty, leaving all three of them behind, her grandmother, her mother, and her
mother's sister, with their hair dyed black, their closely knit eyebrows, and their wide, doelike,
disapproving eyes - there in her mother's room which doubled as a living room, there where,
besides, the fourth female, the maid, ended by resembling them. She fled, banging the doors
behind her, and they called after her: "Choura, Choura, little dove," just as in the novels of
Tolstoy, for her name was not Jacqueline. Jacqueline was her professional name, a name chosen
to forget her real name, and with it this sordid but tender gynaeceum, and to set herself up in the
French sun, in a solid world where there are men who do marry you and not disappear, as had the
father she had never known, into the vast arctic wastes from which he had never returned. She
took after him completely, she used to tell herself with a mixture of anger and delight, she had
his hair and high cheekbones, his complexion and his slanting eyes. All she was grateful for to
her mother was having given her this blond devil as a father, this demon whom the snows had
reclaimed as the earth reclaims other men. What she resented was that her mother had forgotten
him quickly enough to have given birth one fine day to a dark-complexioned little girl the issue
of a short-lived liaison, her half-sister by an unknown father, whose name was Natalie. Now
fifteen, Natalie only saw them during vacation. Her father, never. But he provided for Natalie's
room and board in a lycee not far from Paris, and gave her mother a monthly stipend on which
the three women and the maid - and even Jacqueline till now - had subsisted, albeit poorly, in an
idleness which to them was paradise. Whatever remained from Jacqueline's earnings as a model,
after she had bought her cosmetics and lingerie, and her shoes and dresses - all of which came
from the top fashion houses and were, even after the discount she received as a model, frightfully
expensive - was swallowed by the gaping maw of the family purse and disappeared, God only
knows where.
Obviously, Jacqueline could have chosen to have a lover to support her, and she had not lacked
the opportunity. She had in fact had a lover or two, less because she liked them - not that she
actually disliked them - than because she wanted to prove to herself that she was capable of
provoking desire and inflaming a man to the point of love. The only one of the two - the second -
who had been wealthy and made her a present of a very lovely pearl with a slight pink tint which
she wore on her left hand, but she had refused to live with him, and since he had refused to marry
her, she had left him, with no great regrets, merely relieved that she was not pregnant (she had
thought she was, for several days had lived in a state of dread at the idea). No, to live with a
lover was lose face, to forsake one's chances for the future, it was to do what her mother had
done with Natalie's father, and that was out of the question.
With O, however, it was quite another matter. A polite fiction made it possible to pretend that
Jacqueline was simply moving in with a girl friend, with whom she was going to share all costs.
O would be serving a dual purpose, both playing the role of the lover who supports, or helps to
support, the girl he loves, and also the theoretically opposite role of providing a moral guarantee.
Rene's presence was not official enough, really, to compromise the fiction. But who can say
whether, behind Jacqueline's decision, that very presence might not have been the real
motivation for her acceptance? The fact remained that it was left up to O, and to O alone, to
present the matter to Jacqueline's mother. Never had O been more keenly aware of playing the
role of traitor, of spy, never had she felt so keenly she was the envoy of some criminal
organization as when she found herself in the presence of that woman, who thanked her for
befriending her daughter. And at the same time, deep in her heart O was repudiating her mission
and the reasons which had brought her there. Yes, Jacqueline would move in with her, but never,
never would O acquiesce so completely to Sir Stephen as to deliver her into his hands. And yet!
... For no sooner had she moved into O's apartment, where she was assigned, at Rene's request,
the bedroom he sometimes pretended to occupy (pretended, given that he always slept in O's big
bed), than O, contrary to all expectations, was amazed to find herself obsessed with the burning
desire to have Jacqueline at any price, even if attaining her goal meant handing her over to Sir
Stephen. After all, she rationalized to herself, Jacqueline's beauty is quite sufficient protection
for her, and besides, why should I get involved in it anyway? And what if she were to be reduced
to what I have been reduced to, is that really so terrible? - scarcely admitting, and yet so
overwhelmed to imagine, how sweet it would be to see Jacqueline naked and defenseless beside
her, and like her.
The week Jacqueline moved in, her mother having given her full consent, Rene proved to be
exceedingly zealous, inviting them every other day to dinner and taking them to the movies
which, curiously enough, he chose from among the detective pictures playing, tales of drug
traffic and white slavery. He would sit down between them, gently hold hands with them both
and not utter a word. But whenever there was a scene of violence, O would see him studying
Jacqueline's face for the slightest trace of emotion. All you could see on it was a hint of disgust,
revealed by the slight downward pout at the corners of her mouth.
Afterward he would drive them home in his convertible, with the top down, and in the open car
with the windows rolled down, the speed and the night wind flattened Jacqueline's generous head
of blond hair against her cheeks and narrow forehead, and even blew it into her eyes. She would
toss her head to smooth her hair back into place and would run her hand through it the way boys
do.
Once she had accepted the fact that she was living with O and that O was Rene's mistress, she
consequently seemed to find Rene's little familiarities quite natural. It did not bother her in the
least to have Rene come into her room under the pretense of looking for some piece of paper he
had left there, and O knew that it was a pretense, for she had personally emptied the drawers of
the big Dutch writing desk, with its elaborate pattern of inlay and its leather- lined leaf, which
was always open, a desk so utterly unlike Rene. Why did he have it? Who had he gotten it from?
Its weighty elegance, its light-colored woods were the only touch of wealth in the somewhat dark
room which faced north and overlooked the courtyard and the steel gray of its walls and the cold,
highly waxed surface of the floor provided a sharp contract with the cheerful rooms which faced
the river. Well, there could be a virtue in that: Jacqueline would not be happy there. It would
make it all the easier for her to agree to share the two front rooms with O, to sleep with O, as on
the first day she had agreed to share the bathroom and kitchen, the cosmetics, the perfumes, the
meals. In this, O was mistaken. Jacqueline was profoundly and passionately attached to anything
that belonged to her - to her pink pearl, for instance - and completely indifferent to anything that
was not hers. Had she lived in a palace, it would have interested her only if someone had told
her: the palace is yours, and then proved it by giving her a notarized deed. She could not have
cared less whether the gray room was pleasant or not, and it was not to get away from it that she
climbed into O's bed. Nor was it to show her gratitude to O, for she in fact did not feel it, though
O ascribed the feeling to her and was delighted to abuse it, or think she was abusing it.
Jacqueline enjoyed pleasure, and found it both expedient and pleasant to receive it from a
woman, in whose hands she was running no risk whatever.
Five days after she had unpacked her suitcases, whose contents O had helped her sort out and put
away, when for the third time Rene had brought them home about ten o'clock after having dined
with them, and had then left (as he had both other times), she simply appeared, naked and still
wet from her bath, in O's doorway and said to O:
"You're sure he's not coming back?" and without even waiting for her answer, she slipped into
the big bed. She allowed herself to be kissed and caressed, her eyes closed, not responding by a
single caress; at first she moaned faintly, hardly more than a whimper, then louder, still louder,
until finally she cried out. She fell asleep sprawled across the bed, her knees apart but her legs
flat again on the bed, the upper part of her body slightly turned on one side, her hands open, her
body bathed in the bright light of the pink lamp. Between her breasts a trace of sweat glistened.
O covered her and turned out the light. When, two hours later, she took her again, in the dark,
Jacqueline did not resist but murmured:
"Don't wear me out completely, I have to get up early tomorrow."
It was at this time that Jacqueline, in addition to her intermittent assignments as a model, began
to engage in a more absorbing but equally unpredictable career: she was signed up to play bit
parts in the movies. It was hard to tell whether she was proud of this or not, whether or not she
considered this the first step in a career which might lead to her becoming famous. In the
morning she would drag herself out of bed more in anger than with any show of enthusiasm,
would take her shower, quickly make herself up, for breakfast would accept only the large cup of
black coffee that O barely had time to make for her, and would let O kiss the tips of her fingers,
responding with no more than a mechanical smile and an expression full of malice: O was soft
and warm in her white vicuna dressing gown, her hair combed, her face washed, looking for all
the world like someone who plans on going back to bed. And yet such was not the case. O had
not yet found the courage to explain why to Jacqueline. The truth of the matter was that every
day, when Jacqueline left for the film studio at Boulogne where her picture was being shot, at the
same time as the children left for school and the white-collar workers for their offices, O, who in
the past had indeed whiled away the morning in her apartment, also got dressed.
"I'm sending you my car," Sir Stephen had said, "to drive Jacqueline to Boulogne, then it will
come back to pick you up."
Thus O found herself headed for Sir Stephen's place every morning when the sun along the way
was still striking the eastern faces; the other walls were still cool in the shade, but in the gardens
the shadows were already growing shorter.
At the rue de Poitiers, the housework was still not finished. Norah, the mulatto maid, would take
O into the small bedroom where, the first evening, Sir Stephen had left her alone to sleep and
cry, wait till O had put her gloves, her bag, and her clothes on the bed, and then she would take
them and put them away, in O's presence, in a closet to which she alone had the key. Then,
having given O the patent-leather high-heeled mules which made a sharp clicking sound as she
walked, Norah would precede her, opening the doors as they went, till they reached Sir Stephen's
study, when she would stand aside to let O pass.
O never got used to these preparations, and stripping in front of this patient old woman, who
never said a word to her and scarcely looked at her, seemed to her as dangerous and formidable
as being naked at Roissy in the presence of the valets there. On felt slippers, the old lady slipped
silently by like a nun. As she followed her, O could not take her eyes off the twin points of her
Madras kerchief and, every time she opened a door, off her thin, swarthy hand on the porcelain
handle, a hand that seemed as hard as wood.
At the same time, by a feeling diametrically opposed to the terror she inspired in her - a
contradiction O was unable to explain - O experienced a kind of pride that this servant of Sir
Stephen (and just what was her relation to Sir Stephen, and why had he entrusted her with this
task as costume and make-up assistant for which she assumed so poorly suited?) was a witness to
the fact that she too - like so many others, perhaps, whom she had guided in the same way, and
why should she think otherwise? - was worthy of being used by Sir Stephen. For perhaps Sir
Stephen did love her, without a doubt he did, and O sensed that the time was not far off when he
would no longer be content to let her suspect it but would declare it to her - but to the very
degree that his love and desire for her were increasing, he was becoming more completely, more
minutely, and more deliberately exacting with her. Thus retained by his side for whole mornings,
during which he sometimes scarcely touched her, waiting only to be caressed by her, she did
whatever he wanted of her with a sentiment that must be qualified as gratitude, which was all the
greater whenever his request took the form of a command. Each surrender was for her the pledge
that another surrender would be demanded of her, and she acquitted herself of each as though of
a duty performed; it was odd that she would have been completely satisfied by it, and yet she
was.
Sir Stephen's office, situated directly above the yellow and gray drawing room where he held
sway in the evening, was smaller and had a lower ceiling. It contained neither settee nor sofa,
only two regency armchairs upholstered in a tapestry with a floral pattern. O sat in one
occasionally, but Sir Stephen generally preferred to keep her near at hand, at arm's length, and
while he was busy with other things, to none the less have her seated on his desk, to his left. The
desk was set at right angles to the wall, which allowed O to lean back against the shelves which
contained some dictionaries and leather-bound phone books. The telephone was snug against her
left thigh, and every time the phone rang she jumped it. It was she who picked up the receiver
and answered, saying: "May I ask who's calling?" then either repeating the name out loud and
passing the receiver to Sir Stephen, or, if he signaled to her, making some excuse for him.
Whenever had a visitor, old Norah would announce him, Sir Stephen would have him wait long
enough for Norah to conduct O back to the room where she had undressed and where, after Sir
Stephen's visitor had left, she would come to fetch her again when Sir Stephen rang for her.
Since Norah entered and left the study several times each morning, either to bring Sir Stephen
his coffee or to bring in the mail, to open or draw the blinds or to empty the ashtrays, and since
she alone had the right to enter and had been expressly instructed never to knock, and since,
finally, she always waited in silence whenever she had something to say, until Sir Stephen spoke
to her to ask her what it was she wanted, it so happened that on one occasion when Norah came
into the room O was bent over the desk with her rear exposed, her head and arms against the
leather top, waiting for Sir Stephen to impale her. She raised her head. If Norah had not glanced
at her, and she invariably never did, that would have been the only movement O would have
made. But this time it was obvious that Norah was trying to catch O's eye. Those black, beady
eyes fastened on her own - and it was impossible for O to tell whether they bespoke indifference
or not - those eyes set in a deeply furrowed, impassive face so bothered O that she made a
movement to try and get away from Sir Stephen. He gathered what it was all about, and with one
hand pinned her waist to the table, while prying her open with the other. She who was constantly
striving to cooperate and do her best was now, quite involuntarily, tense and contracted, and Sir
Stephen was obliged to force his way. Even when he had done so, she felt that the ring of her
buttocks was tightening around him, and he had trouble forcing himself all the way into her. He
withdrew only when he was certain he could come and go with ease. Then as he was on the point
of taking her again, he told Norah to wait, and said that she could help O get dressed when he
had finished with her. And yet, before he dismissed her, he kissed O tenderly on the mouth. It
was that kiss which, several days later, gave her the courage to tell him that Norah frightened
her.
"I should hope so," he retorted. "And when you wear my mark and my irons, as I trust you soon
will - if you will consent to it - you'll have much more reason to be afraid of her."
"Why?" O asked, "and what mark and what irons? I'm already wearing this ring...."
"That's completely up to Anne-Marie, to whom in fact I've promised to show you. We're going to
pay her a visit after lunch. I trust you don't mind? She's a friend of mine, and you may have
noted that, till now, I've refrained from ever introducing you to my friends. When Anne -Marie is
finished with you, I'll give you genuine reasons for being afraid of Norah."
O did not dare to pursue the matter any further. This Anne-Marie whom they had threatened her
with intrigued her more than Norah. Sir Stephen had already mentioned her when they had
lunched together at Saint-Cloud. And it was quite true that O knew none of Sir Stephen's friends,
nor any of his acquaintances. In short, she was living in Paris, locked in her secret as though she
had been locked in a brothel; the only persons who had the key to her secret, Rene and Sir
Stephen, at the same time had the only key to her body. She could not help thinking that the
expression "open oneself to someone," which meant to give oneself, for her had only this
meaning, for she was in fact opening every part of her body which was capable of being opened.
It also seemed to her that this was her raison d'etre and that Sir Stephen, like Rene, intended it
should be, since whenever he spoke of his friends as he had done at Saint-Cloud, it was to tell
her that those to whom he might introduce her would, needless to say, be free to dispose of her
however they wished, if indeed they did. But in trying to visualize Anne-Marie and imagine what
it might be that Sir Stephen expected from Anne-Marie as far as she, O, was concerned, O was
completely at sea, and not even her experience at Roissy was of any help to her. Sir Stephen had
also mentioned that he wanted to see her caress another woman: could that be it? (But he had
specified that he was referring to Jacqueline....) No, it wasn't that. "To show you," he had just
said. Indeed. But after she left Anne-Marie, O knew no more than before.
Anne-Marie lived not far from the Observatoire in Paris, in an apartment flanked by a kind of
large studio, on the top floor of a new building overlooking the treetops. She was a slender
woman, the same age more or less as Sir Stephen, and her black hair was streaked with gray. Her
eyes were such a deep blue they looked black. She offered O and Sir Stephen some coffee, a very
strong bitter coffee which she served steaming hot in tiny cups, and which reassured O. When
she had finished her coffee and got up from her chair to put down her empty cup on a coffee
table, Anne-Marie seized her by the wrist and, turning to Sir Stephen, said:
"May I?"
"Please do," Sir Stephen said.
Then Anne-Marie, who tell then had neither spoken to nor smiled at O, even to greet her or to
acknowledge Sir Stephen's introduction, said to her softly, with a smile so tender one would have
thought she were giving her a present:
"Come, my child, and let me see your belly and backside, but better yet, why don't you take off
all your clothes."
While O obeyed, she lighted a cigarette. Sir Stephen had not taken his eyes off O. They left her
standing there for perhaps five minutes. There was no mirror in the room, but O caught a vague
reflection of herself in the black-lacquer surface of a screen.
"Take off your stockings too," Anne-Marie said suddenly. "You see," she went on, "you
shouldn't wear garters, you'll ruin your thighs." And with the tip of her finger she pointed to the
spot just above O's knees where O rolled down her stockings around a wide elastic garter. There
was in fact a faint mark on her leg.
"Who told you to do that?"
Before O had a chance to reply, Sir Stephen said:
"The boy who gave her to me, you know him, Rene." And he added: "But I'm sure he'll come
around to your opinion."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Anne-Marie. "I'm going to give you some long, dark stockings, O, and
a corset to hold them up. But it will be a whalebone corset, one that will be snug at the waist."
When Anne-Marie had run a young blonde, silent girl had brought in some very sheer, black
stockings and a tight-fitting corset of black nylon taffeta, reinforced and sustained by wide,
close-set stays which curved in at the lower belly and above the hips. O, who was still standing,
shifting her weight from one foot to the other, slipped on the stockings, which came to the top of
her thighs. The young blonde helped her into the corset, which had a row of buckles along one of
the busks on one side near the back. Like the bodices at Roissy, this one could be laced up as
tightly or as loosely as desired, the laces being at the back. O fastened her stockings to the four
garter-belt snaps in front and on the sides, then the girl set about lacing her up as tight as she
could. O felt her waist and belly being pressed inward by the pressure of the stays, that in front
descended almost to the pubis, which they left free, as they did her hips. The corset was shorter
behind and left her rear completely free.
"She'll be much improved," Anne -Marie said, speaking to Sir Stephen, "when her waist is a
fraction of its present size. And what's more, if you're too pressed for time to have her undress,
you'll see that the corset is no inconvenience. Now then, O, step over this way."
The girl left: O went over to Anne-Marie, who was sitting in a low chair, a small easy chair
upholstered in bright red velvet. Anne-Marie ran her hand lightly over her buttocks and then,
toppling her over on an ottoman similar to the red velvet chair and ordering her not to move,
seized both her nether lips.
This is how they lift the fish at the market, O was thinking, by the gills, and how they pry open
the mouths of horses. She also recalled that the valet Pierre, during her first evening at Roissy,
had done the same to her after having fastened her in chains. After all, she was no longer
mistress of her own fate, and that part of her of which she was least in control was most
assuredly that half of her body which could, so to speak, be put to use independently of the rest.
Why, each time that she realized this, as she - surprised was not really the right word - once
again persuaded, why was she paralyzed each time by the same feeling of profound distress, a
sentiment which tended to deliver her not so much into the hands of the person she was with as
into the hands of him who had turned her over to alien hands, a sentiment which drew her closer
to Rene when others were possessing her and which, here, was tending to draw her closer to
whom? To Rene or to Sir Stephen? She no longer knew.... But that was because she did not want
to know, for it was clear that she had belonged to Sir Stephen now for ... how long had it been?
Anne-Marie had her stand up and put her clothes back on.
"You can bring her to me whenever you like," she said to Sir Stephen. "I'll be at Samois
(Samois... O had expected: Roissy. But if it did not mean Roissy; then what did it mean?) in two
days time. That will be fine." (What would be fine?)
"In ten days, if that suits you," Sir Stephen said, "at the beginning of July."
In the car which was driving back home, Sir Stephen having remained behind at Anne-Marie's
she remembered the statue she had seen as a child in the Luxembourg Gardens: a woman whose
waist had been similarly constricted and seemed so slim between her full breasts and plump
behind - she was leaning over limpid water, a spring which, like her, was carefully sculptured in
marble, looking at her reflection - so slim and frail that she had been afraid the marble waist
would snap. But if that was what Sir Stephen wanted...
As for Jacqueline, she could handle her easily enough merely by telling her the corset was one of
Rene's whims. Which brought O back to a train of thought she had been trying to avoid
whenever it occurred to her, one which surprised her above all not to find more painful: why,
since Jacqueline had moved in with her, had he made an effort not so much to leave her alone
with Jacqueline, which she could understand, but to avoid being alone with O any more? July
was fast approaching, and he would be going away and would not be coming to visit her at this
Anne-Marie's where Sir Stephen was sending her; must she therefore resign herself to the fact
that the only times she would see him would be those evenings when he was in the mood to
invite Jacqueline and her, or - and she didn't know which of the two possibilities upset her most
(since between them, at this point, there was something basically false, due to the fact that their
relationship was so circumscribed) - on those occasional mornings when she was at Sir Stephen's
and Norah ushered Rene in, after having announced his arrival? Sir Stephen always received
him, invariably Rene kissed O, caressed the tips of her breasts, coordinated his plans with Sir
Stephen for the following day - plans which never included O - and left. Had he given her to Sir
Stephen so completely that he had ceased to love her? The thought threw O into such a state of
panic that, mechanically, she got out of Sir Stephen's car in front of her house, instead of telling
the chauffeur to wait, and after it had pulled away she had to dash off in search of a taxi. Taxis
are few and far between on the quai de Bethune. O had to run all the way to the boulevard Saint-
Germain, and still she had to wait. She was all out of breath, and in a sweat, because her corset
made it hard for her to breathe, when a taxi finally slowed down at the corner of the rue
Cardinal-Lemoine. She signaled to it, gave the driver the address of Rene's office, got in without
knowing whether Rene would be there, and if he was, whether he would see her; it was the first
time she had gone to his office.
She was not surprised by the impressive building on a side street just off the Champs-Elysees, or
by the American-style offices, but what did disconcert her was Rene's attitude, although he did
receive her immediately. Not that he was aggressive or full of reproaches. She would have
preferred reproaches, for he had never given her permission to come and disturb him at his
office, and it was possible that she was creating a considerable disturbance for him. He dismissed
his secretary, told her that he did not want to see anyone, and asked her to hold all calls. Then he
asked O what was the matter.
"I was afraid you didn't love me any longer," O said.
He laughed. "All of a sudden, just like that?"
"Yes, in the car coming back from..."
"Coming back from where?"
O remained silent.
Rene laughed again:
"But I know where you were, silly. Coming back from Anne -Marie's. And in ten days you're
going to Samois. Sir Stephen just talked to me on the phone."
Rene was seated in the only comfortable chain in the office, which was facing the table, and O
had buried herself in his arms.
"They can do whatever they want with me, I don't care," she murmured. "But tell me you still
love me."
"Of course I love you, darling," Rene said, "but I want you to obey me, and I'm afraid you're not
doing a very good job of it. Did you tell Jacqueline that you belonged to Sir Stephen, did you
talk to her about Roissy?"
O assured him that she had not. Jacqueline acquiesced to her caresses, but the day she should
learn that O...
Rene stopped her from completing her sentence, lifted her up and laid her down in the chair
where he had just been sitting, and bunched up her skirt.
"Ah ha, so you have your corset," he said. "It's true that you'll be much more attractive when you
have a smaller waistline."
Then he took her, and it seemed to O that it had been so long since he had that, subconsciously,
she realized she had begun to doubt whether he really desired her any longer, and in his act she
saw proof of love.
"You know," he said afterward, "you're foolish not to talk to Jacqueline. We absolutely need her
at Roissy, and the simplest way of getting her there would be through you. Besides, when you
come back from Anne-Marie's there won't be any way of concealing your true conditioning any
longer."
O wanted to know why.
"You'll see," Rene went on. "You still have five days, and only five days, because Sir Stephen
intends to start whipping you again daily, five days before he sends you to Anne-Marie's and
there will be no way for you to hide the marks. How will you ever explain them to Jacqueline?"
O did not reply. What Rene did not know was that Jacqueline was completely egotistical as far as
O was concerned, being interested in her solely because of O's manifest, and passionate, interest
in her, and she never looked at O. If O were covered with welts from the floggings, all she would
have to do would be to take care not to bathe in Jacqueline's presence, and to wear a nightgown.
Jacqueline would never notice a thing. She had never noticed that O did not wear panties, and
there was no danger she would notice anything else: the fact was that O did not interest her.
"Listen to me," Rene went on, "there's one thing anyway I want you to tell her, and tell her right
away, and that is that I'm in love with her."
"Is that true?" O said.
"I want her," Rene said, "and since you can't - or won't - do anything about it, I'll take charge of
the matter myself and do what has to be done."
"You'll never get her to agree to go to Roissy," O said.
"I won't? In that case," Rene retorted, "we'll force her to."
That night, after dark, when Jacqueline was in bed and O had pulled the covers back to gaze at
her in the light of the lamp, after having said to her: "Rene's in love with you, you know" - for
she had delivered the message and delivered it without delay - O, who a month before had been
horrified at the idea of seeing this delicate wisp of a body scored by the lash, these narrow loins
quartered, the pure mouth screaming, and the far down on her cheeks streaked with tear, O now
repeated to herself Rene's final words and was happy.
"Story of O" by Pauline Reage
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