Woman in Battle Dress by Antonio Benítez-Rojo

Author:Antonio Benítez-Rojo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers

14

1811 WOULD PROVE AN INTERESTING and meaningful year in my life. It was a preparatory year, a year in which the muscles of my spirit grew strong; a necessary year. Through the course of it, the bonds that linked me to Fauriel became so close that, one day, I spoke of her to Uncle Charles. I wanted to share my small family with her, wanted her to know what they were really like—not just through my stories about them—Françoise, Pierre, and Uncle Charles, and even Madame Bagnol, who was now Madame Cavent, since my uncle had made good use of his long convalescence and married her. Once admitted into my most intimate circle, Fauriel and I went to dinner at the house on Rue Sainte-Honoré almost every Sunday. We always arrived quite early, eager to hear Uncle Charles’ war stories and tales of the surgical exploits he’d performed on the battlefield. One afternoon he told us that there had always been women serving in the various armies. In Egypt he’d met a woman from Marseilles serving with the artillery. He had amputated one of her legs without complications. “What happens is that they’re only discovered when they turn up in the hospital,” he’d explained. When I asked him if he knew personally of other cases he’d said yes, two others, a Spaniard and a Prussian, but he’d heard of still more from his colleagues. Fauriel also asked him questions, although hers were always related to the practice of medicine. Despite the fact that several of our professors had belonged to the armies of the Republic, we had received very little in the way of instruction in military medicine. I can still see us, sitting around a huge platter of cheese, drinking Anjou wine while Madame Cavent gazed, love-struck, at Uncle Charles, seeing him as a sort of old-fashioned and dignified Knight of the Round Table whose feats of bravery—she always insisted—should be collected in a book.

My passion for Bousquet, though it did diminish with the passing months, had not disappeared completely. Sometimes, when Fauriel was asleep, I would creep, on tiptoe, into the forbidden room. With my ear to the wall and my hand between my legs, I’d indulge in the sounds of pleasure. Since Bousquet kept us abreast of his conquests, I had learned to identify the howls of an Italian soprano named Angelina, the discrete moans of the fourteen-year-old grisette with the Renaissance backside, and the hoarse death rattles of Mademoiselle Rouge and Mademoiselle Brune, who’d become regular visitors. Once or twice a week, despite Fauriel’s furious protests the entire way there, we would eat with him at the Café Procope. His conversation was as boring and superfluous as ever. Lately, we’d noticed that it focused increasingly on the erotic. Soon, he stopped talking about his lovers in order to offer his candid opinions on aphrodisiacs, pleasure-enhancing instruments, the virtues of unnatural intercourse, and Oriental perversions, which he detailed with an insider’s precision.

“We’re still in diapers here in Europe,” he assured us during one of our last dinners together.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.