Emmanuelle II

Emmanuelle II

Emmanuelle II

EMMANUELLE ARSAN

Translated by

Anselm Hollo

Grove Press

New York

This translation copyright © 1974 by Grove Press, Inc.

Originally published in French as Emmanuelle, l’Anti-Vierge,

copyright © 1968 by Le Terrain Vague, Paris.

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Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-0-8021-2236-0

eISBN: 978-0-8021-9270-7

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc

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Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

To Ph. and D.B.

The world is real only after I have rearranged it.

Alain Bosquet,

The Second Testament

Contents

1 It Is the Love of Loving That Makes You

the World’s Betrothed

2 The Invitation

3 The Battle of Eve

4 The Night of Maligâth

5 The Hetairion

6 To Ariane’s Happiness

7 The Age of Reason

8 Deus Escreve Direito Por Linhas Tortas

9 The Birds Unmasked

10 The Noblest Talent

11 The Glass House

12 Her Bare Legs on Your Fiery Beaches

Emmanuelle II

1

It Is the Love of Loving

That Makes You

the World’s Betrothed

We who must, perhaps, die one day, shall declare

man immortal on the very threshold of that instant.

—Saint-John Perse, Amers

Anna Maria Serguine.

In sounding the i in the young woman’s first name, Mario had held it, for the longest time, on a high, isolate note, thus giving the remainder of the syllables an air of abrupt and tender confidentiality.

She remained seated behind the steering wheel of her car. Mario took her hand and presented the long, ringless fingers to Emmanuelle, holding them on his own palm.

Anna Maria, says the echo within Emmanuelle, as she tries to recapture the caressing thrill of the sound that had followed upon the Florentine roll of the r. Fragments of plainchant come to her mind, and with them, the scents of incense and melting wax. Panis angelicus. Young girls’ knees under the decent cover of skirts. Delicious daydreams. O res mirabilis! And throats, prolonging the i-sounds, tongues, moistening them with their saliva, lips, opening, offering up their teeth. . . . O salutaris hostia. . . . With the light shining through a stained-glass window, from the other end of the world, Emmanuelle gilds this unfamiliar face, reproaching herself for her inability to transcend a schoolgirl’s vocabulary in her response to its beauty:

She’s marvelous! Emmanuelle whispers to herself. And of a purity so sure of herself, so jubilant, so happy. It is almost breaking her heart. Such grace can only be a dream!

It’s up to you to make it real, says Mario, and she asks herself whether she hasn’t, after all, been thinking out loud.

Anna Maria laughed, a peal of amusement so unembarrassed that Emmanuelle regained her composure. She decided to take the visitor’s hand into her own.

But not right now, Anna Maria said with a smile. I mustn’t be late for this ladies’ tea party I’m going to.

Then she turned toward Mario, looking him over as if he had grown since she had last seen him. Her car was a very low-slung affair.

I’m sure you’ll find some good soul to take you back?

"Via, cara, via!"

The wheels spun in the gravel, skidded off. No windshield, no mudguards, no top! Emmanuelle thought, anxiously looking up at the dark sky. Instantly unhappy, she watched the dream fading into the distance.

And I had thought I knew the most beautiful creatures on this earth! Where did you ever find that archangel?

Oh, she’s related to my family, Mario said. Sometimes I have her drive me around.

Then, sounding curious:

You find her interesting?

Emmanuelle looked inscrutable.

She’ll be back tomorrow, he said.

After a moment’s silence, he went on:

I have to tell you this: you would have to get her more than just a little excited. But I’m sure that you’ll be able to make her listen to reason.

Me? protested Emmanuelle. But how do you think I could do such a thing? I’m just a beginner.

A twinge of spite entered her feelings. Was it perhaps that he, as far as he was concerned, regarded their affair as finished, after one single lesson?

They had walked across Emmanuelle’s garden and terrace, and were now standing in the living room, in front of the large mobile sculpture constructed out of black metal. Mario breathed on its leaves and made them turn.

Emmanuelle said:

But I’m sure you must have taken care of her education, yourself. What would I be able to add to that?

It isn’t Anna Maria we’re talking about. It’s you.

He stopped to wait for a reply from her, but she only rearranged her features in an expression meant to look skeptical. So he went on, explaining:

"You see, the act that makes you new, is the one that you have to accomplish. There is no form that is yours to such a degree as the one that turns you into another being. But perhaps you are satisfied with what you are?"

Emmanuelle shook her great black mane.

No, I’m not, she said, resolutely.

Well, then. Do it. Mario sounded weary.

Nevertheless, he went on:

As a woman, your love for yourself quite certainly is a fitting preoccupation. But you are a goddess, as well: therefore the well-being of others has to be an equal concern of yours.

She smiled, remembering the boardwalk, the temple, the night. He looked at her, with a questioning mien:

And have you started enlightening your husband?

She shook her head, looking half defiant, half ashamed.

But wasn’t he surprised by how long you were gone?

He was.

What did you tell him?

I told him that you had taken me to an opium den.

And he didn’t give you a lecture?

He made love to me.

She read the question in her father confessor’s eyes.

Yes, she said, I was thinking about it, all the time.

And you liked it that way?

Emmanuelle’s face was eloquent: in her mind, she was reliving the tremendous new thrill she had experienced when her husband’s semen had spurted forth to mingle with the sam-lo’s.

You’d like to do it again, right now, Mario observed.

But I told you, I believe in your law.

And it was true. At this moment, she found herself unable even to remember what could have raised any doubts in her mind. In order to convince Mario, she repeated the maxim that he had caused her to formulate, the day before:

All time spent in other pursuits but that of making love, embraced by an ever-increasing number of arms, is time lost.

Then she wanted to know:

And what does Anna Maria believe she ought to spend her time on?

On the preparation for other times; on self-mortification in this world, in order to achieve endless ecstasy in the other.

Emmanuelle’s voice sounded impartial:

Well, that means that there are other values in her life, besides those of eroticism. She, too, has her gods and her laws.

Mario looked at her quizzically:

‘What I’m waiting to see, he said, is whether the dream of heaven is going to lead a daughter of man to damnation, or if the love of the real is going to win a soul, here on earth."

Emmanuelle puts her hand on his arm.

But I’m such a miserable hostess. I haven’t even offered you a drink, not even a cigarette.

She wants to guide him over to the bar, but he holds her back.

I hope, to say the very least, that you’re not wearing anything under those shorts? he asks, looking roguish.

Look again.

The shorts are so minimal that they’re hardly visible beneath the coral-red sweater. Emmanuelle’s black, curly pubic hair is peeking out both sides of the crotch.

Mario looks, but has still further comment to make:

I don’t like this kind of clothing. A skirt may be raised: it is a gate permitting entry. Those shorts are like a wall. I’ll get bored with your legs, as long as I see them emerging from that little bag.

I’ll take them off, Emmanuelle says, good-humoredly. But first you have to tell me what you would like to drink?

He has another bee in his bonnet:

Why stay in here? I like the trees in your garden.

But it’s going to rain!

It isn’t raining yet.

He takes Emmanuelle where he wants to go: out to the wide ledge of flat rocks bordering the terrace. A lightning-bolt turns the spaces between the motionless, flamboyant flowers a vivid hue of green.

Oh, Mario, look at that beautiful boy walking by in the street!

Yes, he’s handsome all right.

Why don’t you call him over here and make love to him?

There is a time for everything under heaven, saith the Preacher: a time to run after the boys, and a time to let them run.

I’m positive he never said anything like it. Listen, Mario, I’m thirsty!

He crosses his arms, in a display of patience. She knows what he is waiting for. She shrugs, looking obstinate, and examines her naked thighs: naked up to the groin, where the edge of her shorts draws a red line across the skin. To expose oneself beyond that line is incompatible with dignity.

Well, then?

Please, Mario, not out here! They can see us from the house across the street. Look!

She points at a pair of curtains moving in one of the windows.

You know these Siamese. There’s always someone skulking around.

But that’s perfect! Mario exclaims. Didn’t you tell me that you like people admiring your body?

Emmanuelle’s shamefaced look makes him smile. Then he gets going, once again.

"Remember: nothing that’s discreet can be erotic. The erotic heroine is not unlike the chosen of God: she is the one who brings about strife and scandal. A masterpiece always scandalizes the world. What nakedness is it that hides itself in order to be naked? Your lechery makes little sense, if you draw the curtains of your bedroom on it: it won’t liberate your neighbor from his ignorance, his shame, his fear. The important thing is not that you get naked, but that you are seen naked; not that you cry out with pleasure, but that you can be heard; not that you count your lovers, but that he can count them; not that your own eyes have been opened to the truth of loving love, but that that other one, who is still groping about amongst his own chimeras, and in his own night, may discover, by seeing you, that there is no other light, and see your gestures testify to the fact that there is no other beauty."

His voice assumes a more urgent tone:

Every relapse into false shame will demoralize a multitude. Each time you start worrying about causing a scandal, think of those who secretly yearn for you to show them the way. Do not betray them. Don’t make light of the hope they put in you, whether they know it or not! If out of timidity or doubt you should ever—yes, even just once—prevent the accomplishment of an erotic act, no future audacity or merit would ever make up for such backsliding.

He pauses to draw breath, and then, with an almost imperceptible note of disdain in his voice:

Or is it propriety you’re thinking about? Is it that you only want to do as others do—or that you want all others to act like you? Is it Emmanuelle you want to be . . . or just anybody?

But surely I can respect the beliefs of my neighbors, she defends herself. That doesn’t mean that I share them, does it? And if they do not like my kinds of pleasure, why should I enjoy shocking them, or creating a scandal? It’s no skin off my back to let them conduct their lives according to their own lights. Is it possible to live at all, without a little discretion, tolerance, politeness? What is wrong with letting those people persuade themselves that I really do think and act like them—society is made out of such conventions, compromises.

"If one behaves like the people across the street, one is the people across the street. Instead of changing the world, one merely becomes the reflection of what one would like to destroy."

Emmanuelle looks impressed. Mario hastens to add:

Well, that’s not by me, that’s Jean Genet.

He continues in a gentler vein:

"As another playwright puts it: in the matter of love, too much isn’t even enough. If you already have done well, it is necessary to do even better. You must constantly surpass yourself, as well as all others. You can not afford to have anyone match your achievement, much less allow him to transcend it. It is not enough to be exemplary, you have to be exemplary before anyone else."

Emmanuelle stares into the distance. She has nothing to say. She sits down on the low wall, folding her arms round her crossed legs and resting her chin on the double pommel of her knees. After a while, she asks, sounding tense, almost hostile:

And why is it that I have to do all that? Why me?

Why you? Because you’re capable of doing it. As others are able to solve equations, to write symphonies, your genius lies in physical love and beauty. Or let’s put it this way: you become what you can do. Surely you don’t want to live out your life without making some mark on the world?

But I’m only nineteen years old! I’m not about to end my life. . . .

"Do you have to wait any longer to even begin to live? Are you just a little kid? It’s true, I’m telling you to be heroic. But the world needs that. Your species demands it from you."

My species?

"Yes, indeed: that ancient amino acid, that ancient amoeba, that ancient tarsier, that unbelievable that has to be believed—always destined to turn into something else. Animal? Vertebrate? Mammal? Primate? Hominid? Homo? Homo sapiens? Outdated labels, all of them! The forerunner of those to come: man of space-time, man of boundless thought-power, man of multiple bodies and a single spirit, man, the creator and modifier of men, always threatened by his own creatures, and bleeding, stigmatized, by his errors and his mysteries. Don’t you want to help him?"

So if I take my shorts off, that’s helping him?

What use is it to perpetuate illusion, swindles, phobias? To perpetuate modesty?

Listen, do you really believe that it’s important, for past and future mankind, whether one bares one’s pubis or keeps it covered?

The future depends on your powers of imagination, on your courage. Not on your fidelity to old customs. What once was the wisdom of the caves may have become our idiocy. Let’s take modesty: is that an innate virtue, a positive or negative value for all time? As a matter of fact, it is nothing of the sort. Originally, a sound notion, a smart idea, fitting and salutary: but today, a mere pretense, a sophism, senseless, a false jewel of absurdity, a refuge of iniquity, a vessel of perversion. . . .

You know very well that I’m no prude. And I find your litanies quite ravishing. But is it necessary to take all that so seriously?

"Man came down into the underbrush, still holding on to the saving lianas hanging from the branches. He was scared of the claws and teeth of the competition, and spent more time in climbing, jumping, hopping about on the ground among the thorns and flints than in caressing his females in the saline humidity of his caves. And the first one who got the idea to protect those organs on which the creation and number of his progeny depended, true, he rendered the species a service. If he hadn’t managed to turn this simple precaution into an ethical law, a ritual, a matter of elegance, a charm, who knows if he would have been able to impose his supremacy on the rest of creation? What was to become bigotry initially was a kind of biological clairvoyance: it was an initiative in the direction of evolution, a good thing, in the most moral sense."

Mario sits down, facing Emmanuelle:

Then, later, the invention of clothing saved the species from perishing in the great freeze.

With an irritated gesture, he pinches the material of his shirt, now lightly stained with perspiration:

"But now, look! The reindeer have retreated, the great glaciers have melted away. Nevertheless we go on disguising ourselves, just because it would be bad to go naked!"

A dramatic sigh. Then:

Our resting places are covered with velvet, our gardens are lovely lawns. Our domestic animals have no armor, no fangs. But we are still afraid something might hurt our genitals. Its function accomplished, its true meaning forgotten, the pair of panties has become sacred. And you’re asking me why it is necessary to rid oneself of it, as urgently as if it were Dei­anira’s tunic? Clinging to a myth that has outlived its purpose is bound to stultify mankind. The energy wasted in the service of a mere superstition saps our creative powers.

Mario’s face brightens, as he shifts gears:

In fact, the task the ancient Greeks felt to be the most urgent one, once they’d gotten it into their heads to civilize us, was: to take their clothes off! In the beginning, still harking back to the Stone Age, they went on concealing their ­phalloi—but once the age of reason and high culture began, their statuary became nude. If those great warriors and philosophers hadn’t realized, in time, how ridiculous their jockstraps were, we might still be barbarians, to this day.

There is a sly gleam in the Italian’s eyes.

"And don’t you believe that the Dorian ephebes chose to compete in their pentathlons with nothing on only because it granted them maximal freedom of movement! Surely their prime intention was to show off their beauty to their admirers, who then went on to immortalize them. In the gymnasium, the statue of Eros stood next to that of Pallas Athena, and it was at his feet that man achieved his first insights into philosophy."

For a moment, Mario seems lost in reverie about an epoch which Emmanuelle knows he would have liked to live in. Then he goes on, emphasizing his words with sweeping gestures:

"What I’ve just said about the history of modesty goes just as well for the other sexual taboos. Your peers would heap such immense opprobrium on you if you were to admit, openly, that you just love to feel a male member entering your mouth and taking its pleasure there, right to the very end! That you delight in the caresses your own fingers provide you, every day! And that you take pleasure in sharing your bed with other bodies besides your husband’s! Once upon a time, all those taboos made sense. When it was man’s task to populate the planet, wasting sperm didn’t make much sense, and it seemed an excellent idea to proclaim masturbation a sin. Now that the proliferation of human beings has become a menace, men should be forbidden the practice of coming inside the female vagina: it ought to be regarded a virtue to spill one’s semen only in those places where there is no risk of fertilizing an ovum. Once that is recognized, the husband’s archaic fear that his wife might bear another man’s child loses its raison d’être—even more so since we can now rely on our arts of contraception, in addition to those of our lips and tongues and fingers. It’s surely ridiculous, in this century, and offensive to the intelligence, to regard the search for sensual pleasure outside of the reproductory mechanism as in any sense ­blameworthy—and it’s time, too, for us men to recognize our wives’ taste for new penises as both inoffensive and legitimate."

Mario seems to expect a reply from Emmanuelle, but she does not say anything, and so he continues:

"If we wish our children to have greater mental capabilities than our own, we must bequeath to them an earth delivered, by our courage, from absurd prohibitions and useless anguish. A prudish, a devout scholar is a shackled one: what might Pascal or Pasteur not have discovered, more, and greater things, had they not been such trapped spirits? And what is there to say about the artist if he allows himself to be blinkered and tethered? None are worthy of the name of man, that glory of tomorrow, if they believe or pretend to believe that the body showing itself must be damned! These stamens, these pistils, the gift to our eyes of these naked graces, for which we praise nature who adorns its flowers with them—surely some perverse god did not give them to his best-loved creature merely to constrain him and to cause his downfall? But, of course, you have nothing to worry about! That strange little pretense that your shorts are will amply suffice to guarantee the favors of Eternity. . . . Oh! please forgive me my anger, my dearest, but does it bear thinking about? That the entire, great nation of human beings, capable of so much intelligence and skepticism, tempered by so many millennia of bravery and risk, so strong in its laughter, so beautiful in its poetry—that it should now be such a frightened Achilles, looking for his salvation in the frippery, the false modesty, the simpering of virgins? The task of eroticism is this: to rid the living from the hair shirts that constrain them, and from the virtue-mongers who make them look ridiculous."

Emmanuelle is serenely contemplating her thin sweater, her nipples pointing out through it. Mario, however, pays no attention, but continues to remind her of her duty:

"I don’t even care for eroticism as an end in itself. All I know is that it gives one a distaste for stupidity and hypocrisy, a desire to be free, and the strength to achieve this. When the world turns into a prison, eroticism is the file that can cut through the bars, it is the ladder, it is the password! I don’t know of any secret that could, better than this lucidity, free man from his most sterile terrors, give him the chance to tear himself away from the Paleozoic burden and to pene­trate outer space, without any assistance from the stars. And, as it is repugnant to me that in our age, the age of great wings, such prehistoric self-immolations, pruderies, and artifices continue to determine your actions, I do beseech you to parade your naked beauty and your senses openly, so that they may cause your beholders to found a new lineage—one that will be less ugly, more potent, less credulous and servile, and not so obsessed by simulacra as they themselves have been."

Mario stretches himself out on his back, his head at Emmanuelle’s feet.

For humans who are running the risk of becoming dehumanized by the laws of nature, which are too young, and by the laws of the city, which are too old, the challenge of your bare cunt, on this slab of stone, may provide an upsurge of their spirits, of the love of danger.

He gets up again.

"If it is the task of intelligence to know the truth, our moral sense provides us with the means of recognizing it—by a very simple method, that of opening one’s eyes, and one equally simple rule, that of telling no lies. An easy task altogether, or so it would seem. And yet, and yet!"

A dramatic shrug.

But, patience. You know the saying of one of your countrymen, a mathematician: Truth never triumphs, but its adversaries end up dying.

Some sudden vision seems to cheer him up:

Who knows, he says, with a smile, perhaps it wouldn’t be all that wise to await its arrival too long? In an era that likes to admire robots more than human beings, we ought to hurry to put our bodies to the test, to glorify their powers, if we want to remain in charge. We already know that our clearest distinction from the other fauna of this world lies in our ability to drink even when we aren’t thirsty—and to make love at any time. I wouldn’t be surprised if—not too long from now—the only way to distinguish a human being from a machine would be based on the former’s insistence on defying the sexual order through the disorder of eroticism. No doubt about it, the transistorized androids who will pilot our rocket ships will also, one day, acquire the knack of reproduction through sexual intercourse—and have a whale of a good time doing it, too! But as long as they won’t question the laws of nature and common sense by preferring to masturbate, as long as their females have not acquired a taste for the juices of orgasm on their lovers’ cocks, we’ll still be ahead in the game.

Emmanuelle appears quite enchanted. Mario relaxes for a moment, looking at her, but not for long. His subject has a most urgent grasp on him.

Humanity doesn’t need only transfinite numbers, synchrotrons, cortisone, and heart transplants. Of course, it is wonderful that it is now able to disarm the attackers of metabolism, to turn mesons and molecules into its servants. But in a world where man knows his rhesus factor, and is capable of measuring, with the aid of some solenoid of his own invention, the wavelengths of his desires, he does run the danger of remaining forever ignorant of the true value of his own life.

Mario’s voice grows more impassioned:

"As long as that form of barbarism that prides itself on eating meat tenderized under the saddle can coexist, no matter how indecent the spectacle, with the embryo whose chromosomes have been changed, with the atom whose structure has been altered, we have to watch out not to let that precious Ariadne’s thread slip from between our fingers which alone saves us from beating our heads against the wall and losing heart, in the midst of such confusion, such madness: our passion for beauty. Our love of loving, as well: because love is not only our means of entering the workings of the entire universe while still in our bodies, it is also the most beautiful of all works of beauty: it is an art, created by man, the art of creating man, and it is man become art! Let art be exactly that, the love of our own flesh, a prodigious eternalizer! Thus we shall become perennial as the stones, or as those alluvial deposits of the infinite the great quanta-rivers are forever hurling across the great