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"Behold the lovely lady," said the valet as he entered. And he seized both her hands. He slipped one of the bracelet hooks into the other, so that her wrists were tightly joined, then clipped both these hooks to the ring of the necklace. Thus her hands were joined as in an attitude of prayer, at the level of her neck. All that remained to be done was to chain her to the wall with the chain that was lying on the bed, and was attached to the ring above. He unfastened the hook by which the other end was attached and pulled on it in order to shorten it." |  |
| "Would you please stand up," and when she was on her knees, a position she managed by pulling herself up with the chain, he gave her a hand, taking her by the elbows so that she could stand up straight with her face to the wall. The square of light on the bed, which was faint, since the bed was black, illuminated her body, but not his gestures. She guessed, but could not see, that he was undoing the chain to rehook it to another link, so that it would remain taut, and she could feel it growing tighter. |  |
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She felt Pierre's left hand on her waist, the Mattress gave a little as, to steady himself, he put his right foot on it. At the same time as she heard a whistling noise in the semi-darkness, O felt a terrible burning across her back, and she screamed. Pierre flogged her with all his might. He did not wait for her screams to subside, but struck her again four times, being careful each time to lash her above or below the preceding spot, so that the traces would be all the clearer. Even after he had stopped she went on screaming, and the tears streamed down into her open mouth. | |
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A gardener appeared on the path, pushing a wheelbarrow. The iron wheel could be heard squeaking over the gravel. If he had come over to rake the leaves that had fallen in among the asters, the window was so tall and the room so small and bright that he would have seen O chained and naked and the marks of the riding crop on her thighs. |
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| She never saw the men who came in, for each time a valet preceded them to blindfold her eyes, and removed it only after they had left. She also lost track of them, of who they were and how many there were, and neither her soft hands nor her lips blindly caressing were ever able to identify who they were touching. At times there were several, more often only one, but each time, before they came near her, she was made to kneel down facing the wall, the ring of her collar fastened to the same eye-bolt to which the chain was attached, and whipped. |  |
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She placed her palms against the wall and pressed her face against the back of her hands, to keep from scratching it against the stones; but scraped her knees and her breasts on them. Thus she lost track of the tortures and screams which were smothered by the vault. She waited. Suddenly time no longer stood still. In her velvet night her chain was no unfastened. She had been waiting for three months, three days, or ten days, or ten years |  |
| Like a soothsayer, she saw unbearable images in the spreading brown stain on the tablecloth: Jacqueline's glazed eyes confronting the valet Pierre; her flanks, doubtless as golden as her breasts, though O had never seen them, exposed to view below the folds of her long red velvet dress with its tucked-up skirt; her downy cheeks stained with tears and her painted mouth open and screaming, and her straight hair, in a Dutch bob along her forehead, straight as new-mown hay - no, it was impossible, not her, not Jacqueline |  |
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"Story of O 2" (1985) |