Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan

Author:Emmanuelle Arsan [Arsan, Emmanuelle]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2014-03-11T07:00:00+00:00

5

The Law

Come, my friends, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

Thou didst create night and I made the lamp,

Thou didst create clay and I made the cup,

Thou didst create the deserts, mountains, and forests,

I produced the orchards, gardens, and groves;

It is I who turn stone into a mirror,

And it is I who turn poison into an antidote.

—Mohammed Iqbal

Mario seated Emmanuelle on the sofa covered with red leather as supple as satin, between the Japanese lamps. A houseboy, wearing only a pair of tight, bright blue shorts that were open to expose his thighs, brought in a tray of glasses and knelt to set it down on the long, narrow table, covered with leather.

Mario’s house was made of logs, overhanging a shimmering black canal. With only one floor, it looked like a hunting lodge from the outside. The luxury of its interior decor was all the more startling when one entered. One whole side of the drawing room opened onto the khlong. From where she was sitting, Emmanuelle could see boats made of bark, laden with sweet beverages, durians, coconuts, and lengths of bamboo filled with cooked rice gliding past the islets of vines and leaves that were drifting with the current. The man or the woman who stood straining over the single oar at the stern, swinging one foot, would glance placidly into the drawing room before melting away in the night. From the gable of a nearby temple, a little brass bell whose clappers, stirred by the wind, had the shape of a bodhi fig leaf, was tinkling in two notes, one high, the other low, as though wounded. In the distance, a gong was calling the Buddhist priests to sleep. A woman’s voice began singing a shrill lullaby at a child’s bedside.

“A friend will soon be here,” said Mario.

His softened voice was in harmony with the shadows of Buddhist figures cast on the wall by the laconic light of the lamps. Emmanuelle felt a kind of physical apprehension, so much so that she gulped down half a glass of the strong cocktail that the houseboy had served her. But the shock of the alcohol was not enough to loosen the knot that had formed inside her. She rebuked herself for that shapeless fear, and tried to break the absurd enchantment.

“Do I know him?” she asked.

Only after she had spoken did she feel disappointment— so Mario didn’t even care about being alone with her! She had thought he wanted to have her at his mercy, he had refused to let her bring her husband, and now he had invited someone else, a chaperon!

“No,” he answered. “I met him only two days ago myself, at a social gathering. He’s English. An engaging personality. And what amazing skin! The sun of this country has given him an even, toasted complexion . . . how shall I say? . . . a color that smells good. You’ll like him.”

Jealousy and humiliation clawed at Emmanuelle’s heart. Mario spoke

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