Return to the Château by Pauline Réage

Author:Pauline Réage
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

VII

The luncheon in Anne-Marie's bedroom was a strange affair. A servant had brought the meal on a heated serving table. Monique, in her community uniform, had served them, after having set four places at the table: Anne-Marie's, O's, Noelle's, and her own. Before lunch, O had tried on several more dresses. Anne-Marie had chosen, and set aside, the gray and yellow dress, which O would wear that same day; another blue dress; a thing which was a paler blue mixed with green; and lastly, a very tight-fitting knitted dress which opened in front from the waist down. It was dark purple, and O's pale thighs and loins, so naked and so weighted with their metal rings, were visible even when she did not move, as were her naked breasts. The servant had taken all the dresses, except the yellow one that Anne-Marie had chosen, into O's room, which adjoined Noelle's. Monique would take all the others back to the storeroom.

O watched Noelle, who was seated opposite her, laughing. She was laughing because the black horsehair of the chair on which she was sitting tickled her; O glanced over at Anne-Marie, who was trying to control her temper but was on the verge of losing it, then at Monique, who was concentrating on her domestic table duties. On two occasions, when Monique got up from her place, O saw Anne-Marie, as Monique passed to her right, slip her hand into the slit in Monique's dress. Monique froze, and O realized, or rather guessed, from the slight yielding of her body, that she was accommodating herself to the probing hand.

"Why didn't he say anything to me about it?" O kept repeating to herself, over and over. "Why didn't he?"

And sometimes she had the feeling that, quite simply, she had been abandoned, and that Sir Stephen had sent her to Roissy, turned her over to Roissy, as Anne-Marie had put it, in order to get rid of her. And then again she imagined that the opposite was true, that he had done it because he desired her all the more. Then Anne-Marie was right: whatever he wanted was of no concern of hers, nor were his reasons any of her business; all that mattered was that he had his own good reasons. And at that point the whole cycle would begin all over again: "Why didn't he say anything to me? Why didn't he?" And what could she do, at this juncture, to keep the tears from flowing, or at least to keep the others from seeing them flow? Noelle saw them. She gave her a slight but very tender smile and shook her finger at her, signifying that O ought to control herself. O smiled in return and dried her eyes with both her fists, the way children do when they've been scolded. She didn't have any napkin, and she was naked. Luckily, Anne-Marie, who had removed the pin holding Monique's scarf and was busy caressing the brownish tips of her breasts, was not looking at O.

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