Thérèse and Isabelle by Violette Leduc

breast, at my left. I was drinking with her, I suckled on shadows when her mouth moved away. The fingers returned, encircling, weighing the breast’s warmth; the fingers finished in my belly, hypocritical wrecks. A tribe of slaves all sharing Isabelle’s face was fanning my forehead, my hands.
    She knelt on the bed:
    â€œDo you love me?”
    I led the hand up to those rare tears of joy.
    Her cheek wintered between my thighs. I turned my flashlight on her, saw her fanned-out hair, saw my belly raining silk. The flashlight slipped, Isabelle veered into a new tack.
    We seemed to be marrying with fangs in our skin, horsehairs in our hands: we were reeling on the teeth of a rake.
    â€œHarder, harder,” she said.
    We bit each other, we thrashed at the shadows.
    We slowed, we came back with our plumes of smoke, with black wings at our heels. Isabelle leapt out of the bed.
    I wondered why Isabelle was redoing her hair.
    With one hand she laid me down flat on the bed, with the other she tormented me with the yellow light.
    I hid behind my arms:
    â€œI’m not pretty. You’re intimidating me,” I said.
    She saw our future in my eyes, she was looking an instant ahead, she was keeping it in her blood.
    She got back into bed, she lusted for me with gold-sifter’s fingers.
    I was flattering her; I preferred failure to preparations. Making love with her mouth was enough for me: I was afraid and Icalled for help with my finger stumps. Two fine paintbrushes were wandering among my folds. My heart was beating in a molehill, my head was full of compost. Suddenly everything changed. Two alternating fingers were attending on me. How masterly her caress, how inevitable her caress . . . Closed, my eyes were listening: the finger grazed my pearl, the finger waited. I wanted to be capacious, to help it.
    The regal and diplomatic finger was advancing, withdrawing, choking me, beginning to enter, offending the octopus deep inside, bursting the cloud of unease, stopping, starting up, waiting close to viscera. I was clenching, I enclosed the flesh of my flesh, its marrow and its vertebrae. I rose and fell back again. The finger that had not hurt me, the finger come in gratitude came out. The flesh ungloved it.
    â€œDo you love me?” I asked.
    I was hoping for confusion.
    â€œYou mustn’t shout,” said Isabelle.
    I crossed my arms over my face, I listened beneath my eyes squeezed tight.
    Two fingers entered, two pirates. Isabelle was tearing open and beginning the deflowering. They were oppressing me; they wanted, my flesh did not want.
    â€œMy love . . . You’re hurting me.” She put her hand over my mouth.
    â€œI won’t complain,” I said.
    The gag was a humiliation.
    â€œIt hurts. It must. It hurts . . .”
    I gave myself to the night and without wanting to I helped the fingers.
    â€œYou can, you can . . .”
    I leant forward so as to tear myself, to make Isabelle’s fingers crack, to be closer to her face, to be near my injured sex: she threw me onto the pillow.
    She was pounding, pounding, pounding . . . We could hear loud slaps of flesh on flesh. She was putting out the virgin eye.I was in pain: I was approaching freedom but I couldn’t see what was happening.
    We listened to the sleeping girls, we sobbed for breath. Her fingers had left a line of fire.
    â€œLet’s rest,” she said.
    My recollection of the two fingers grew sweeter, my swollen flesh began to recover, bubbles of love rose up. But Isabelle was there again, the fingers turned faster and faster. Where had this mounting wave come from? Smooth wrappings inside my knees. My heels were drugged, my visionary flesh was dreaming.
    â€œI can’t go on.”
    â€œQuiet.”
    I lost myself with her in this tender gymnastics.
    The fingers were too short, the knuckles were obstructing our fever, the knuckles would go no further.
    â€œI want to,” Isabelle grieved.
    The springs creaked,