Delta of Venus

by Anais Nin

  He would escort her to the opera and to the theaters famed for their dark boxes, and make love to her while they watched a spectacle. He would make love to her in taxis, in a barge anchored in front of Notre Dame that rented cabins to lovers. Everywhere but at home, on the marital bed. He would drive her to little far-off villages and stay at romantic inns with her. He would take a room for them in the luxurious houses of prostitution he had known. Then he would treat her like a prostitute. He would make her submit to his whims, ask to be whipped, ask her to crawl on her hands and knees and not to kiss him but to pass her tongue all over him like an animal.

  These practices had aroused her sensuality to such a degree that she was frightened. She was afraid of the day when André would cease to be sufficient for her. Her sensuality was, she knew, vigorous; his was the last burst of a man who had spent himself on a life of excess and now gave her the flower of it.

  A day came when André had to leave her for ten days for a trip. Linda was restless and feverish. A friend telephoned her, André’s friend, the painter of the day in Paris, the favorite of all women. He said to her, ‘Are you bored with yourself, Linda? Would you care to join us in a very special kind of party? Do you have a mask?’

  Linda knew exactly what he meant. She and André had often laughed at Jacques’s parties in the Bois. It was his favorite form of amusement: on a summer night, to gather society people wearing masks, drive to the Bois with bottles of champagne, find a clearing in the wooded section and disport themselves.

  She was tempted. She had never participated in one. That, André had not wanted to do. He said playfully that the question of the masks might confuse him and that he did not want to make love to the wrong woman.

  Linda accepted the invitation. She put on one of her new evening dresses, a heavy satin dress which outlined her body like a wet glove. She wore no underwear, no jewelry that could identify her. She changed her hair style, from a page-boy frame around her face to a pompadour style, which revealed the shape of her face and neck. Then she tied the black mask on her face, pinning the elastic to her hair for greater security.

  At the last minute she decided to change the color of her hair and had it washed and tinted blue-black instead of pale blond. Then she put it up again and found herself so altered that it startled her.

  About eighty people had been asked to meet at the big studio of the fashionable painter. It was dimly lit so as to preserve the guests’ identities better. When they were all there, they were whisked to the waiting automobiles. The chauffeurs knew where to go. In the deepest part of the woods there was a beautiful clearing covered with moss. There they sat, having sent the chauffeurs away, and began to drink champagne. Many of the caresses had already begun in the crowded automobiles. The masks gave people a liberty that turned the most refined ones into hungry animals. Hands ran under the sumptuous evening dress to touch what they wanted to touch, knees intertwined, breaths came quicker.

  Linda was pursued by two men. The first of them did all he could to arouse her by kissing her mouth and breasts, while the other, with more success, caressed her legs under her long dress, until she revealed by a shudder that she was aroused. Then he wanted to carry her off into the darkness.

  The first man protested but was too drunk to compete. She was carried away from the group to where the trees made dark shadows and lowered onto the moss. From nearby there were cries of resistance, there were grunts, there was a woman shrieking, ‘Do it, do it, I can’t wait any more, do it, do it to me!’

  The orgy was in full bloom. Women caressed one another. Two men would set about teasing a woman into a frenzy and then stop merely to enjoy the sight of her, with her dress half-undone, a shoulder strap fallen, a breast uncovered, while she tried to satisfy herself by pressing obscenely against the men, rubbing against them, begging, lifting her dress.

  Linda was astonished by the bestiality of her aggressor. She, who had known only the voluptuous caresses of her husband, found herself now in the grip of something infinitely more powerful, a desire so violent it seemed devouring.

  His hands gripped her like claws, he lifted her sex to meet his penis as if he did not care if he broke her bones in doing so. He used coups de belier, truly like a horn entering her, a goring thatdid not hurt but which made her want to retaliate with the same fury. After he had satisfied himself once with a wildness and violence that stunned her, he whispered, ‘Now I want you to satisfy yourself, fully, do you hear me? As you never did before.’ He held his erect penis like a primitive wooden symbol, held it out for her to use as she wished.

  He incited her to unleash her most violent appetite on him. She was hardly aware of biting into his flesh. He panted in her ears, ‘Go on, go on, I know you women, you never really let yourself take a man as you want to.’

  From some depths of her body that she had never known, there came a savage fever that would not spend itself, that could not have enough of his mouth, his tongue, his penis inside of her, a fever that was not content with an orgasm. She felt his teeth buried in her shoulder, as her teeth bit into his neck, and then she fell backward and lost consciousness.

  When she awakened, she was lying on an iron bed in a shabby room. A man was asleep beside her. She was naked, and he too, but half-covered by the sheet. She recognized the body which had crushed her the night before in the Bois. It was the body of an athlete, big, brown, muscular. The head was handsome, strong, with wild hair. As she looked at him admiringly, he opened his eyes and smiled.

  ‘I could not let you go back with the others, I might never have seen you again,’ he said.

  ‘How did you get me here?’

  ‘I stole you.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘In a very poor hotel, where I live.’

  ‘Then you’re not …’

  ‘I’m not a friend of the others, if that is what you mean. I am simply a workman. One night, bicycling back from my work, I saw one of your partouzes. I got undressed and joined it. The women seemed to enjoy me. I was not discovered. When I had made love to them, I stole away. Last night I was passing by again and I heard the voices. I found you being kissed by that man, and I carried you off. Now I have brought you here. It may make trouble for you, but I could not give you up. You’re a real woman, the others are feeble compared to you. You’ve got fire.’

  ‘I have to leave,’ said Linda.

  ‘But I want your promise that you will come back.’

  He sat up and looked at her. His physical beauty gave him a grandeur, and she vibrated at his nearness. He began to kiss her and she felt languid again. She put her hand on his hard penis. The joys of the night before were still running through her body. She let him take her again almost as if to make sure that she had not dreamed. No, this man who could make his penis burn through her whole body and kiss her as if it were to be the last kiss, this man was real.

  And so Linda returned to him. It was the place where she felt most alive. But after a year she lost him. He fell in love with another woman and married her. Linda had become so accustomed to him that now everyone else seemed too delicate, too refined, too pale, feeble. Among the men she knew, there was none with that savage strength and fervor of her lost lover. She searched for him again and again, in small bars, in the lost places of Paris. She met prizefighters, circus stars, athletes. With each she tried to find the same embraces. But they failed to arouse her.

  When Linda lost the workman because he wanted to have a woman of his own, a woman to come home to, a woman who would take care of him, she confided in her hairdresser. The Parisian hairdresser plays a vital role in the life of a French-woman. He not only dresses her hair, about which she is particularly fastidious, but he is an arbiter of fashion. He is her best critic and confessor in matters of love. The two hours that it takes to get one’s hair washed, curled and dried is ample time for confidences. The seclusion of the little cabinet protects secrets.

  When Linda had first arrived in Paris from the little town in the
South of France where she was born and she and her husband had met, she was only twenty years old. She was badly dressed, shy, innocent. She had luxuriant hair which she did not know how to arrange. She used no make-up. Walking down the Rue Saint-Honoré admiring the shop windows, she became fully aware of her deficiences. She became aware of what the famous Parisian chic meant, that fastidiousness of detail which made of any woman a work of art. Its purpose was to heighten her physical attributes. It was created largely by the skill of the dressmakers. What no other country was ever able to imitate was the erotic quality of French clothes, the art of letting the body express all its charms through clothes.

  In France they know the erotic value of heavy black satin, giving the shimmering quality of a wet naked body. They know how to delineate the contours of the breast, how to make the folds of the dress follow the movements of the body. They know the mystery of veils, of lace over the skin, of provocative underwear, of a dress daringly slit.

  The contour of a shoe, the sleekness of a glove, these give the Parisian woman a trimness, an audacity, that far surpasses the seductiveness of other women. Centuries of coquetry have produced a kind of perfection that is apparent not only in the rich women but in the little shop girls. And the hairdresser is the priest of this cult for perfection. He tutors the women who come from the provinces. He refines vulgar women; he brightens pale women; he gives them all new personalities.

  Linda was fortunate enough to fall into the hands of Michel, whose salon was near the Champs Elysées. Michel was a man of forty, slender, elegant and rather feminine. He spoke suavely, had beautiful salon manners, kissed her hand like an aristocrat, kept his little mustache pointed and glazed. His talk was bright and alive. He was a philosopher and a creator of women. When Linda came in, he cocked his head like a painter who is about to begin a work of art.

  After a few months Linda emerged a polished product. Michel became, besides, her confessor and director. He had not always been a hairdresser of well-to-do women. He did not mind telling that he had begun in a very poor quarter where his father was a hairdresser. There the women’s hair was spoiled by hunger, by cheap soaps, carelessness, rough handling.

  ‘Dry as a wig,’ he said. ‘Too much cheap perfume. There was one young girl – I have never forgotten her. She worked for a dressmaker. She had a passion for perfume but could not afford any. I used to keep the last of the toilet water bottles for her. Whenever I gave a woman a perfume rinse, I saw to it that a little was left in the bottle. And when Gisele came I liked to pour it down between her breasts. She was so delighted that she did not notice how I enjoyed it. I would take the collar of her dress between my thumb and forefinger, pull it out a little, and drop the perfume down, stealing a glance at her young breasts. She had a voluptuous way of moving afterward, of closing her eyes and taking in the smell and reveling in it. She would cry out sometimes, “Oh, Michel, you’ve wet me too much this time.” And she would rub her dress against her breasts to dry herself.

  ‘Then once I could not resist her any more. I dropped the perfume down her neck, and when she threw her head back and closed her eyes, my hand slipped right to her breasts. Well, Gisele never came back.

  ‘But that was only the beginning of my career as a perfumer of women. I began to take the task seriously. I kept perfume in an atomizer and enjoyed spraying it on the breasts of my clients. They never refused that. Then I learned to give them a little brushing after they were ready. That’s a very enjoyable task, dusting the coat of a well-formed woman.

  ‘And some women’s hair puts me in a state which I cannot describe to you. It might offend you. But there are women whose hair smells so intimate, like musk, that it makes a man – well, I cannot always keep myself under control. You know how helpless women are when they are lying back to have their hair washed, or when they are under the dryer, or having a permanent.’

  Michel would look a client over and say, ‘You could easily get fifteen thousand francs a month,’ which meant an apartment on the Champs Elysées, a car, fine clothes, and a friend who would be generous. Or she might become a woman of the first category, the mistress of a senator or of the writer or actor of the day.

  When he helped a woman reach the position due her, he maintained her secret. He never talked about anybody’s life except in disguised terms. He knew a woman married for ten years to the president of a big American corporation. She still had her prostitute’s card and was well known to the police and to the hospitals where the prostitutes went for weekly examinations. Even today, she could not become altogether accustomed to her new position and at times forgot that she had the money in her pocket to tip the men who waited on her during her Clipper trip across the ocean. Instead of a tip she handed out a little card with her address.

  It was Michel who counseled Linda never to be jealous, that she must remember there were more women in the world than men, especially in France, and that a woman must be generous with her husband – think how many women would be left without a knowledge of love. He said this seriously. He thought of jealousy as a sort of miserliness. The only truly generous women were the prostitutes, actresses, who did not withhold their bodies. To his mind, the meanest type of woman was the American gold digger who knew how to extract money from men without giving herself, which Michel thought a sign of bad character.

  He thought that every woman should at one time or another be a whore. He thought that all women, deep down, wished to be a whore once in their lives and that it was good for them. It was the best way to retain a sense of being a female.

  When Linda lost her workman, therefore, it was natural for her to consult Michel. He advised her to take up prostitution. That way, he said, she would have the satisfaction of proving to herself that she was desirable entirely apart from the question of love, and she might find a man who would treat her with the necessary violence. In her own world she was too worshiped, adored, spoiled, to know her true value as a female, to be treated with the brutality that she liked.

  Linda realized that this would be the best way to discover whether she was aging, losing her potency and charms. So she took the address Michel gave her, got into a taxi and was taken to a place on the Avenue du Bois, a private house with a grandiose appearance of seclusion and aristocracy. There she was received without questions.

  ‘De bonne famille?’ That was all they wanted to ascertain. This was a house which specialized in women de bonne famille. Immediately the caretaker would telephone a client: ‘We have a newcomer, a woman of most exquisite refinement.’

  Linda was shown into a spacious boudoir with ivory furniture, brocade draperies. She had taken off her hat and veil and was standing before the large gold-framed mirror arranging her hair, when the door opened.

  The man who came in was almost grotesque in appearance. He was short and stout, with a head too big for his body, features like an overgrown child’s, too soft and hazy and tender for his age and bulk. He walked very swiftly toward her and kissed her hand ceremoniously. He said, ‘My dear, how wonderful it is that you were able to escape from your home and husband.’

  Linda was about to protest when she became aware of the man’s desire to pretend. Immediately she fell into the role but trembled within herself at the thought of yielding to this man. Already her eyes were turning towards the door, and she wondered if she could make her escape. He caught her glance and said very quickly, ‘You need not be afraid. What I ask of you is nothing to be frightened about. I am grateful to you for risking your reputation to meet me here, for leaving your husband for me. I ask very little, this presence of yours here makes me very happy. I have never seen a woman more beautiful than you are, and more aristocratic. I love your perfume, and your dress, your taste in jewelry. Do let me see your feet. What beautiful shoes. How elegant they are, and what a delicate ankle you have. Ah, it is not very often that so beautiful a woman comes to see me. I have not been lucky with women.’

  Now it seemed to her that he looked more and more like a child, ev
erything about him, the awkwardness of his gestures, the softness of his hands. When he lit a cigarette and smoked, she felt that this must be his first cigarette, because of the awkward way he handled it and the curiosity with which he watched the smoke.

  ‘I cannot stay very long,’ she said, impelled by the need to escape. This was not at all what she had expected.

  ‘I will not keep you very long. Will you let me see your handkerchief?’

  She offered him a delicate, perfumed handkerchief. He smelled it with an air of extreme pleasure.

  Then he said, ‘I have no intention of taking you as you expect me to. I am not interested in possessing you as other men do. All I ask of you is that you pass this handkerchief between your legs and then give it to me, that is all.’

  She realized that this would be so much easier than what she had feared. She did it willingly. He watched her as she leaned over, raised her skirt, unfastened the lace pants and passed the handkerchief slowly between her legs. He leaned over then and put his hand over the handkerchief merely to increase the pressure and so that she would pass it again.

  He was trembling from head to foot. His eyes were dilated. Linda realized that he was in a state of great excitement. When he took the handkerchief away he looked at it as if it were a woman, a precious jewel.

  He was too absorbed to talk. He walked over to the bed, laid the handkerchief on the bedspread and then threw himself on it, unbuttoning his trousers as he fell. He pushed and rubbed. After a moment he sat up on the bed, wrapped his penis with the handkerchief and then continued jerking, finally reaching an orgasm which made him cry out with joy. He had completely forgotten Linda. He was in a state of ecstasy. The handkerchief was wet from his ejaculation. He lay back panting.

  Linda left him. As she walked through the hallways of the house she met the woman who had received her. The woman was amazed that she should want to leave so soon. ‘I gave you one of our most refined clients,’ she said, ‘a harmless creature.’