Little Birds Read Free Page A

towering over her, with his belly moving slightly forwards. Another time she pressed his penis between her breasts, making a cushion for it, holding it and letting it glide between this soft embrace. Dizzy, palpitating, vibrating from these caresses, they walked drunkenly.
    Then they saw a house and stopped. He begged her to conceal herself among the bushes. He wanted to come; he would not leave her until then. She was so aroused and yet she wanted to hold back and wait for him.
    This time when he was inside of her he began shaking, and finally he came, with a violence. She half climbed over his body to reach her own fulfillment. They cried together.
    Lying back resting, smoking, with the dawn coming upon them, lighting their faces, they now felt too cool and covered their bodies with their clothes. The woman, looking away from Louis, told him a story.
    She had been in Paris when they had hanged a Russian radical who had killed a diplomat. She was then living in Montparnasse, frequenting the cafés, and she had followed the trial with a passion, as all her friends had done, because the man was a fanatic, had given Dostoevskian answers to the questions put to him, faced the trial with great religious courage.
    At that time they still executed people for grave offenses. It usually took place at dawn, when no one was about, in a little square near the prison of the Santé, where the guillotine had stood at the time of the Revolution. And one could not get very near, because of the police guard. Few people attended these hangings. But in the case of the Russian, because emotions had been so much aroused, all the students and artists of Montparnasse, the young agitators and revolutionaries had decided to attend. They waited up all night, getting drunk.
    She had waited with them, had drunk with them, and was in a great state of excitement and fear. It was the first time she was to see someone die. It was the first time she was to see someone hanged. It was the first time she was to witness a scene that had been repeated many, many times during the Revolution.
    Towards dawn, the crowd moved to the square, as near as the rope, stretched by the policemen, would allow and gathered in a circle. She was carried by the waves of crowding and pushing people to a spot about ten meters away from the scaffold.
    There she stood, pressed against the rope, watching with fascination and terror. Then a stirring in the crowd pushed her away from her position. Still, she could see by standing on her toes. People were crushing her from all sides. The prisoner was brought in with his eyes blindfolded. The hangman stood by, waiting. Two policemen held the man and slowly led him up the stairs of the scaffold.
    At this moment she became aware of someone pressing against her far more eagerly than necessary. In the trembling, excited condition she was in, the pressure was not disagreeable. Her body was in a fever. Anyway, she could scarcely move, so pinned was she to the spot by the curious crowd.
    She wore a white blouse and a skirt that buttoned all the way down the side as was the fashion then—a short skirt and a blouse through which one could see her rosy underwear and guess at the shape of her breasts.
    Two hands encircled her waist, and she distinctly felt a man's body, his desire hard against her ass. She held her breath. Her eyes were fixed on the man who was about to be hanged, which made her body painfully nervous, and at the same time the hands reached for her breasts and pressed upon them.
    She felt dizzy with conflicting sensations. She did not move or turn her head. A hand now sought an opening in the skirt and discovered the buttons. Each button undone by the hand made her gasp with both fear and relief. The hand waited to see if she protested before proceeding to another button. She did not move.
    Then with a dexterity and swiftness she had not expected, the two hands twisted her skirt round so that the opening was at the back. In