Satisfaction Read online

  Satisfaction

  Also by Alina Reyes:

  The Butcher and Other Erotica

  Behind Closed Doors

  Satisfaction

  AN EROTIC NOVEL

  Alina Reyes

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

  DAVID WATSON

  Copyright © 2002 by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A., Paris

  Translation copyright © 2004 by David Watson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Reyes, Alina.

  [Satisfaction. English]

  Satisfaction: an erotic novel / Alina Reyes; translated from the French by

  David Watson.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9936-2

  I. Watson, David, 1959- II. Title.

  PQ2678.E8896S2813 2004

  843’.914—dc22

  2003068564

  Grove Press

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Satisfaction

  α

  It is in her mouth. Enormous, hard, good. Right into the back of her throat. Her cheeks, her palate, her tongue, her lips. It is fat and heavy. Hard, good. Rubbing, touching, prodding, it fills her. It fills her, it goes down to her stomach, overflows. It runs into the joints of her body.

  Afterward, she is in seventh heaven. Once freed, her mouth breaks into a grin. Her eyes glaze over, she is out of this world, absorbed in her own satisfaction.

  The breast, the teat, the cream, mother’s milk.

  Babe turns over in bed, again and again, without opening her eyes. And each time she leaves a door swinging open inside her through which her well-being slips out and anxiety seeps in. She is groaning, panting, her closed-up face is drawn with anxiety.

  A warm, milky death is spurting out of the dark; the sticky sheets turn cold around her body like a corset of stone. It wants to kill me, Babe thinks. It’s after my skin. The thing sticks to her skin, that snake, that cold, slimy snake that slides up from the bottom of the bed, wraps itself around her, encloses her, presses her thighs together, dislocates her vertebrae.

  Then at full speed a Southern Pacific train comes hurtling in through the window, throbbing, whistling, slicing through the night like a noisy asteroid.

  O God, You who know what we have done, Bobby and I, within this bed, and what our parents did before us, and their parents before them, the immemorial crime, the seed of Evil planted in the bodies of man and woman! Spare me, O Lord, perforate me with your forgiveness!

  Around the bed the deep, sparkling night pinned her with its staring owl eyes. She lay paralyzed, listening to the noisy silence of the shadows, their endless, amplified creaks and sighs, but in which she could no longer hear the dreary hooting that she thought had woken her from that cataleptic sleep in which, for years now, she had buried a good third of her life.

  Death had entered the house. She was sure of it. Images of knives, axes, saws and huge guns sent terrible, exquisite twinges stabbing through her mind and her chest.

  No time to breathe. The pages of the bed are sharp, closed. She is trapped in the middle of a book, one of those books with a cover in the shape of a tombstone, filled with large, scary gilded letters, one of those old stories where the corpse comes back to life beneath six feet of freshly dug earth. In the depths of terror, the corpse taps its fingers against the lid of its black, black coffin … And the cemetery, the macabre cemetery with its thousands of tombstones, lined up like an army in the moonlight, the dead souls, the earthworms, the decomposing flesh, the grinning skulls, all completely silent. No one can hear Babe, when she tries to tell the world there’s been a mistake, I WASN’T DEAD! Too late … Years later, grave robbers will open the fatal casket and find her frozen fingers gripping the side and, though there is not much left on the bones, her face twisted in sheer horror …

  Babe opened her eyes with a start, and lay there stiff and straight, eyes and ears on alert. An old record. This sudden awakening, this black, impenetrable night, this panic: the record of her life.

  Her lips opened in an O—small at first, but then wider—but her “O God” stuck in her throat, didn’t even produce a murmur.

  A nightmare? She tried to activate her memory, but she could scarcely remember who she was or where she was. Her limbs felt like lead due to the sleeping pills. It wasn’t until a vague but nonetheless even greater anxiety took hold of her that she could make the effort to sit up and feel around in the dark for the switch of the bedside lamp.

  The thin strap of her mauve satin nightie had slid down her dimpled arm, and a moon-white breast had slipped out. Her flesh gave off a smell that was both bitter and sweet; it made her want to massage it, eat it. Next to her, the pale pink pillow, color-coordinated with the comforter, bore the imprint of Bobby’s head. He wasn’t there.

  Babe laid her hand on her heart, which was pounding away inside her rib cage like that of an animal caught in a trap. She realized her breast was exposed and readjusted her nightie slowly, casting her eye round the room to flush out any intruder who might be watching her. A face pocked with holes stared at her with a surprised look from the mirror of the dark closet. And this creature, immersed in the dim light, looked more like the ghost of a supernatural child than a grown woman.

  She gathered her courage, and opened her mouth again to call for her husband. A moaning sound from the depths of the house stopped her in her tracks.

  A voice, a sort of sad but obscene song, was coming up from the cellar.

  She felt as if she had been whipped by a silken lash. She was now completely awake. Her hair—and her nipples—stood on end. She arched her back.

  It was a long moan, long like the noise of a cat in heat, and dismal like the howl of a pack of ghosts. She waited to hear what would happen next, tingling with electricity.

  She didn’t move for several minutes, stared at the closed door. If Bobby had gotten up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, why hadn’t he left it open?

  The house remained stubbornly silent. Babe threw back the covers and went out in her bare feet. When she opened the door of the bathroom next to the bedroom, the pale light from the window fell on the landing.

  Babe glanced round the room. It was ghostly. Cold gleams reflected off its ceramic fittings, its faucets and its mirrors in all directions. It looked more like an operating theater, or even a torture chamber. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find Bobby’s body lying there on the tiled floor, lifeless, contused, bloody. Disemboweled, hacked into pieces, decapitated, castrated, lying in a dark pool of coagulating fluid.

  She stayed there a moment, captivated by this vision. A cold sweat trickled slowly down between her breasts and from the inside of her thighs down to her knees, which began to tremble. On the floor next to the tub, a round puddle gleamed like a silver dish. Babe approached slowly and recognized the magnifying mirror that she used to apply her makeup. The metal-framed glass had rolled there of its own accord, just to incite her to do what she was about to do.

  She crouched down over it, legs apart, and tucked the hem of her nightie up in her neckline so that she could get a proper view of her crotch. In the m
agnifying mirror her open sex looked like a split tomato, or some large, blind mollusk. The cold air from the surface of the glass caressed the delicate skin. The red flesh glistened in the mirror; it seemed to ripple. The hairs licked round it like flames. The smell rose, as tangible and powerful as squids’ tentacles. Babe opened her mouth, and breathed in the intoxicating language of her intimacy. From the depths of her being her body spoke. Called out.

  The flesh became more and more moist, shiny like the devil himself. Babe knew he could get out through that doorway, but she didn’t want to see him, so she closed her legs and stood up abruptly. She left the room and started to feel her way along the wall of the landing, her breathing shallow.

  There was a faint glimmer of light on the top steps of the staircase, but then it tumbled away into a well of darkness. She started to descend, one hand on the banister, her body tensed. Every time she made the stairs creak, she stopped and lifted the hem of her nightie from her dark belly to wipe her brow.

  When she reached the ground floor, Babe found no sign of Bobby, dead or alive, in either the living room or the kitchen. Now in even deeper darkness, she placed her foot on the flight of stairs that led down to the cellar.

  At the first landing, the stairs made a right angle. From here Babe could see a line of light beneath the door. She could also hear muffled sounds, sporadic, incomprehensible snatches of words, like someone talking in his sleep.

  Babe was gripped by a desire to know what was going on. It made her forget her fear. She resisted the temptation to go place her ear against the door. She had a better idea. She was suddenly feverish, almost delirious. The curiosity excited her, filled her with something more burning than sexual desire. She hadn’t felt like this for ages; she was thrillingly alive, ready for anything.

  She dashed back up the stairs and, overcoming her fears, went outside the house, just in time to see the chalky, almost full moon disappear behind an enormous cloud as compact as a mountain. The garden was now pitch-black. She went out into it; her body lost all solidity and merged into the dark mass of the night, a fortress whose labyrinthine architecture reformed with every step she took. She felt her way around the walls, quickly, silently. She found her way to the back of the house, where a spot of light could be seen through the bushes.

  On all fours, Babe approached the skylight. The damp air and her own sweat stuck the satin to her white, warm, throbbing flesh, endowed with an animal life of its own, uncontrollable and triumphant. Her behind was exposed to the breeze, and the cool air felt like a blessing. A strong odor of earth and mud rose to her nostrils. Her peroxide hair tumbled down in front of her eyes. She brushed it aside and smeared her cheeks with her muddy fingers. She had a desire to eat the damp grass that smelled so sweet just inches from her face, even the earth itself. The earth was rich with all the dead it had absorbed. It was good, soothing. What body wouldn’t want to enter it, or take it into itself?

  Normally, Babe would have rushed off to have a wash, but now she couldn’t be in her right mind, for instead of this healthy reflex she had only strange ideas in her head; they filled her with an exaggerated sense of well-being so strong it almost hurt.

  Very slowly she inched forward until she could see through the grille into the cellar. The window was recessed into the wall and was covered in dirt. But she could immediately make out Bobby. The world turned on its head, and she had a dizzying view of Bobby fucking, and of herself, of herself spying on Bobby, sparkling with curiosity, herself concentrated, miniaturized by curiosity like a speck of stellar dust blasted at high speed across space by a monstrous, cosmic desire, dust to dust. She had this gripping, dizzying view of something she should have seen a long time ago.

  β

  Ah, les femmes …!” my father always used to say. These were the only words of French he brought back from the Normandy landings. That’s why I thought for ages that the Second World War had been one enormous battle to conquer some vague notion of Womanhood. Ideal woman? Little women? A man must devote himself to desiring them all, and only the man who has the power can possess them all.

  Obviously I didn’t think about it precisely in those terms; I’ve never been that hot in the brains department. But all the same I have my own way of seeing things. For example, if I made a film about the war, I’d show that millions of soldiers were sacrificed like … sperm on their way to the egg. An egg called Vital Space, or Peace …

  Yes, that’s it, it’s a sort of spell. Men battling for some glittering future … A fat mother … A giant … Ravenous … Orgasmic … Just think what they could do with special effects. I should have been a filmmaker—no one in Hollywood has ideas like mine. People in movies spend all their time killing one another. Obviously that gets you involved. But if I made films I’d introduce some poetry into the violence … For example, instead of an ordinary car chase, I’d have mine in the teeth of a hurricane, with all sorts of obstacles along the way: people, animals, trees, roofs etc. smashing into the windshield … A family killed by the mob? OK, but I say let’s have twins feeding at their mother’s breasts, and let’s see milk flowing with the blood … Whatever, this is just off the top of my head, I’m just trying to show that I’m not short on ideas. The real problem is that I just wouldn’t like the Hollywood lifestyle. It’s all sex, drugs, partying. I’m just a simple guy. If I got into that I’d end up sucked in, not knowing how to get out. Pity. I’d have knocked them dead with my ideas.

  Anyway, during the war, the real one, like in the movies, American men, among them Johnny Wesson, the future father of Bobby, who’ll never be half the man Johnny was, arrived like superheroes by air and sea and fed those half-ass Europeans a good slice of humble pie. My father never tired of telling us how the women they liberated threw themselves at their feet by the millions (or at their balls, as he put it once the empty beer cans started to pile up on and under the kitchen table where he and his pals would sit rehashing the same old stories of boozing and women year after year).

  Those European women fell for the American men big-time; they just loved their broad shoulders, their chewing gum, their sense of humor and their music. From then on, their own men, shamed and confused, like the rest of the world, had no choice but to settle for second place. That’s how we became the masters of the planet.

  Ah, les femmes …! Pa thought that all you had to do was keep them under your thumb, and he thought he managed that quite well. Maybe, but as he himself acknowledged out loud several times a day, that didn’t mean he could understand them. I don’t understand you, Mary … I’ll never understand women. What the fuck is going on in your head? Etc., etc.

  One night, Mom left the house while everyone was asleep. Pa must have been out of it, because he didn’t even hear her starting the old family Plymouth. My brother and I didn’t hear anything either. Or maybe I did wake up, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t move. Your memory can play tricks on you, so we’ll never know for sure, not you, not me.

  Mom drove all night. She parked on Daytona Beach, the only beach in the world where everyone drives, and then continued on foot, leaving the key in the ignition. It was the only car we had. Then someone stole it.

  She left her shoes on the sand, a pair of white pumps with short heels, like they made in those days, the late sixties. She headed straight for the sea in her sky-blue dress. She didn’t stop when she reached the water. She couldn’t swim; she knew what she was doing. She was the only mother we had. The sea could not refuse her.

  So that’s how we lost everything all at once. As Mom always used to say, “Troubles never come singly.” If she’d wanted to take revenge on Pa, she couldn’t have done any better than deprive him of his car and his wife at the same time.

  If she’d wanted to take revenge on Bobby and Timmy, who were always squabbling and giving her headaches (the consequences of which would be inflicted on Pa later in the evening), she couldn’t have done any better than deprive them of a mother and abandon them to their father.

  B
ut if she’d wanted to take revenge on herself, she could have done better than take her own life: she could have stayed with her husband.

  It was my eighth birthday. I didn’t get a party, because Mom wasn’t there to bake a cake and all the rest. Pa was mad—he was rapping his fingers, walking round in circles, holding his head in his hands to prevent his skull from exploding. He gave full vent to his annoyance, saying things like: “I can’t believe the slut has walked out on me!” and: “How am I going to get to work without the car?”

  Timmy was sobbing—he was four years old, he still acted like a baby with her (always in her skirts, while I just wanted to kill him).

  It’s like I grew up all at once. I took care of my brother: we dressed ourselves, I made breakfast, and before going to school I dropped him off with the woman next door, who would have liked to keep him.

  After that we never cried, Timmy and me. Even when we learned six days later that Mom had been found on a beach, green all over, completely naked, half eaten by crabs. And they never found the car. (Or else we cried a lot as we clung to Pa, himself shattered by the shock, and later as we clung together in my bed. I can remember violent, dramatic tears, but there’s no way of knowing whether I imagined them or actually experienced them.)

  I know, that explains a lot. Otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it. I’m not one to dwell on the past, but it’s well known that everyone needs to take stock at certain moments in their life, and this is such a moment for me. This is the first time I’ve tried to piece together the puzzle of my life; there aren’t many pieces, it shouldn’t take too long. I know Babe wouldn’t agree with that. She reads women’s magazines with all those personality tests, and she thinks we’re all extremely complicated, especially me (everyone thinks I’m complicated and mysterious, but the only mysterious thing about me is that I’m very simple—they’re all very simple, like a child’s puzzle, but they don’t want to admit it).