Story of O by Pauline Reage

Author:Pauline Reage [Reage, Pauline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-54840-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

III

Anne-Marie and the Rings

O had believed, or wanted to believe, in order to give herself a good excuse, that Jacqueline would be uncommonly shy. She was enlightened on this score the moment she decided to open her eyes.

The modest air Jacqueline assumed—closing the door to the mirrored make-up room where she dressed and undressed—was in fact clearly intended to inflame O, to instill in her the desire to force the door which, had it been left wide open, she would never have made up her mind to enter. That O’s decision finally came from an authority outside herself, and was not the result of that basic strategy, could not have been further from Jacqueline’s mind. At first O was amused by it. As she helped Jacqueline arrange her hair, for example, after Jacqueline had taken off the clothes she had posed in and was slipping into her turtleneck sweater and the turquoise necklace the same color as her eyes, O found herself amazingly delighted at the idea that the very same evening Sir Stephen would be apprised of Jacqueline’s every gesture—whether she had allowed O to fondle, through the black sweater, her small, well-spaced breasts, whether she had lowered her eyelids till those lashes, fairer than her skin, were touching her cheeks; whether she had sighed or moaned. When O embraced her, she became heavy, motionless, and seemingly expectant in her arms, her lips parted slightly and her hair cascaded back. O always had to be careful to hold her by both her shoulders and lean her up against the frame of a door or against a table. Otherwise she would have slipped to the floor, her eyes closed, without a sound. The minute O let go of her, she would again turn into ice and snow, laughing and distant, and would say: “You’ve got lipstick on me,” and would wipe her mouth. It was this distant stranger that O enjoyed betraying by carefully noting—so as not to forget anything and be able to relate everything in detail—the slow flush of her cheeks, the smell of sage and sweat. Of Jacqueline it was impossible to say that she was forbearing or that she was on her guard. When she yielded to the kisses—and all she had so far granted O were kisses, which she accepted without returning—she yielded abruptly and, it seemed, totally, as though for ten seconds, or five minutes, she had become someone else. The rest of the time she was both coquettish and coy, incredibly clever at parrying an attack, contriving never to lay herself open either to a word or gesture, or even a look which would allow the victor to coincide with the vanquished or give O to believe that it was all that simple to take possession of her mouth. The only indication one had as a guide, the only thing that gave one to suspect troubled waters beneath the calm surface of her look was an occasional, apparently involuntary trace of a smile

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