Chapter 7
There remained but two visits to make, and I must confess I felt uninclined to make them. As Carla's life or the stories of it delved more and more deeply into the patterns of degeneracy, I felt less and less involved with her, with the memory of her. I had found Baxter's tale faintly unpleasant; but I had not been moved. Carla's revenge had overstepped itself.
Still, I was determined to do the "honorable ".thing. I would go on with the visits.
Number five was a woman named Emma Deligny. Her address and telephone number indicated that she lived in the Montmartre area. I waited two days before I telephoned her, and it took a considerable amount of self-will to force myself to dial her number.
"Hello," a woman's voice screamed at me.
"Hello, may I speak with Emma Deligny?"
"Emma, Emma, Emma," she muttered.
"Yes, Emma Deligny."
"I am Emma." She sounded uncertain of this.
"You are Emma Deligny."
"No."
What an exasperating person. "Are you Emma Deligny?"
"Sometimes." She sighed deeply, and for an instant I thought she was going to burst into tears.
"My name is Howard Cunningham," I said, hoping this might mean something to her.
"I'm not well," she said softly.
"I'm sorry to hear that. I'm calling you to ask if you might remember a woman named Carla."
"Emma."
"No, not Emma-Carla. You are Emma."
"Yes."
"Do you think I might come by this afternoon to speak to you for a few moments?"
There was only silence at the other end of the line so I repeated my question.
"What do you want to say?" she asked.
"I would like to talk to you about Carla."
There was more silence and when I was once again about to speak, I heard a scream come at me.
"What's the matter?" I shouted.
"Where is she? Where is she?"
"Where is who?"
"Where is Carla? When is she coming home? Emma is waiting."
"I'll be right over," I said to her. "With Carla?"
I hung up without answering, went out, climbed into my car and drove to Montmartre. The house was on a small curious street, like a farm-road right in the middle of a city-block. I went through the gate and up to the house; it was a private home and it was more than half in ruins.
Having knocked at the door, I waited, ill at ease. It was not long before I once again heard the voice that had come to me over the telephone.
"Carla?" it asked, and ridiculously, I replied:
"Yes."
The door opened a crack and a face peered out at me. It was so white and the room behind it so dark that I had a momentary impression of a disembodied head. The face was old, old; the oldest face I could remember having seen. It was ghastly white, hung in great fleshy folds: the eyes and mouth slanted downward. The hair that bordered the face was a painful, alarmingly bright violet. It was tinted to match her huge crazed eyes.
"Carla?" she asked looking at me.
I could think of nothing to say. A finger appeared below the face; she crooked it at me, inviting me to enter. I obeyed and she shut the door behind me. I could see absolutely nothing in the darkness. I waited, then heard flat unpleasant footsteps flop across the room. A door opened and a flood of white electric light burst out at me. And in the light I saw the woman who had let me in.
She was naked but for a wide slave-band round her flabby upper arm. What I noticed first was the hair at her loins which had been dyed the same color as her head. I had a momentary impression of this madwoman sitting on a bidet full of purple ink, dipping her fleshy parts into the color. Her body was revolting. Long thin breasts hung to her belly and ended in enormous nipples that had been painted red; her navel was the same color. Fold after fold of pleated flesh hung from her-and yet she wasn't fat. Once, no doubt, she had been, but the substance was gone and there remained now only this hideous wrinkled coat of skin.
I followed her into the room whose door she had opened. A score of bulbs burned nakedly and scorched my eyes. When I could control my vision I looked round the room. Every inch of wall and window had been pasted over with photographs of Carla, lurid photographs which made Van Drooft's seem like child's play. An unmade bed occupied most of the room, but there was also a stool and a dressing table upon which stood the telephone. The mirror over the table had been pasted up with photographs of Carla.
"Where is Carla?" she asked me suddenly.
"When was the last time you saw her?"
She sank to the edge of the bed and her thighs moved apart, revealing her thick powdered crack.
"The last time?" she asked herself. "Last night. We had a party last night. They all came."
"It couldn't have been last night," I said softly.
Her face was full of hatred. "I tell you it was last night," she screamed. "You were here too. I remember. You were the one we nailed to the wall." She jumped up suddenly. "Have you got it?"
"Got what?"
She started digging at my trousers, and I backed away.
"You have got it," she cried. "I felt it. When Carla comes back, we'll finish you off. We'll take it away from you."
I realized there would be little use in trying to talk to this woman, but I made one desperate effort to penetrate her mind.
"Carla said," I told her, "that you were to tell me about that party."
"Don't lie to me," she sneered. "You managed to get away. You managed to live. You still have your bomb. Let me see it."
"No."
"Fuck me and then I'll cut it off."
"No."
Then she tried to tempt me. She moved round the room, mincing and waltzing. She dropped herself upon the bed, let her hands stray across the long flat breasts, circle over the belly and draw wide the lips of her purple ravaged woman.
"Put it into me here, " she moaned and began to cry.
"No. I'm afraid I'll have to be leaving."
"Fuck me a little; just a very little," she sighed through her tears.
I confess that I was saddened by her. I said, "If I do, will you tell me about the party?"
"Yes, all about the party. There were so many of them There were so many people."
I approached her and stood at the side of the bed. Her hands came away from her loins, reached to my trousers and undid the buttons. When she pulled my underwear down, I closed my eyes and let her play with my penis. It seemed like hours before it began to stiffen and rise. Her soft damp hands stroked me tenderly. With my eyes still closed, I lifted myself over her. The soft hand led my member to the flaming sheath.
"All at once," she hissed. "It must go in all at once."
She raised her body, poised my penis, and than thrust herself forward so that when contact was made, I was forced in to the hilt.
My scream echoed against the walls.
I have never known such agony as I experienced at that moment. It was as if blades were cutting into my rod. Opening my eyes, I stared down at the woman's insane ecstatic face.-I was afraid to move, fearing that I might damage myself seriously, but the pain was so intense, I could not think of leaving it in. With one blast of courage, I pulled myself back, going through hell as my organ emerged. When it was completely withdrawn, I looked down at it: it was a mess of scratches and abrasions.' and blood came from some of the cuts.
Emma Deligny's eyes were wide open and she stared with incredible excitement at my bruised member.
"More," she sighed. "More."
I wouldn't even answer her, and suddenly I saw her body begin to shake and tremble. Her knees shot open and closed, bringing her flabby thighs together again and again. I could tell, of course, that she was approaching her climax, and yet her eyes never moved from my instrument which now I was wiping clean with my handkerchief.
"Oh, oh," she sobbed. "Look how you suffer."
Her body heaved itself into the air and the bed groaned under her fall. Again she heaved, her thighs sprang together more and more rapidly, her moans were more frequent and noisier. At that moment I noticed the glass pitcher on her dressing table. Approaching it, I saw that it was full of coffee, turned cold. I took the pitcher up, returned to the woman, and as she throbbed toward her orgasm, I poured the coffee in one big splash at her body.
She sat up enraged, trying to catch her breath.
"What hideous device," I shouted, "have you got in your cunt, you filthy woman?"
That seemed to calm her down, and she said:
"It hurt you. It tore you."
"Not as badly, perhaps, as you would have liked."
I adjusted my trousers and started to the door of the room. She jumped out of bed and moved between me and the door.
"Carla," she said, remembering. "Did you bring Carla?"
"Yes," I told her. "She's outside. I'll tell her to come in."
With one violent wrench, I pulled her from the door, went from the room and through the first dark room, and fled from the house, slamming the door behind me.
Away, let me get away. Let me get away.
The words turned over and over in my head as my car sped from the street to the boulevard.