Little Birds Read Free Page B

the heaving crowd, now all she could feel was a penis slowly being slipped into the opening of her skirt.
    Her eyes remained fixed on the man who was mounting the scaffold, and with each beat of her heart the penis gained headway. It had traversed the skirt and parted the slit in her panties. How warm and firm and hard it was against her flesh. The condemned man stood on the scaffold now and the noose was put around his neck. The pain of watching him was so great that it made this touch of flesh a relief, a human, warm, consoling thing. It seemed to her then that this penis quivering between her buttocks was something wonderful to hold on to, life, life to hold while death was passing...
    Without saying a word, the Russian bowed his head in the noose. Her body trembled. The penis advanced between the soft folds of her buttocks, pushed its way inexorably into her flesh.
    She was palpitating with fear, and it was like the palpitation of desire. As the condemned man was flung into space and death, the penis gave a great leap inside of her, gushing out its warm life.
    The crowd crushed the man against her. She almost ceased breathing, and as her fear became pleasure, wild pleasure at feeling life while a man was dying, she fainted.
    After this story Louis dozed off to sleep. When he awakened, saturated with sensual dreams, vibrating from some imaginary embrace, he saw that the woman had gone. He could follow her footprints along the sand for quite a distance, but they disappeared in the wooded section that led to the cottages, and so he lost her.

Lina
    Lina is a liar who cannot bear her real face in the mirror. She has a face that proclaims her sensuality, lightning in her eyes, an avid mouth, a provocative glance. But instead of yielding to her eroticism, she is ashamed of it. She throttles it. And all this desire, lust, gets twisted inside of her and churns a poison of envy and jealousy. Whenever sensuality shows its blossom, Lina hates it. She is jealous of everything, of everybody else's loves. She is jealous when she sees couples kissing in the streets of Paris, in the cafés, in the park. She looks at them with a strange look of anger. She wishes nobody would make love because she can't do it.
    She bought herself a black lace nightgown like mine. She came to my apartment to spend a few nights with me. She said she had bought the nightgown for a lover, but I saw the price tag still fastened on it. She was ravishing to look at because she was plump and her breasts showed where her white blouse opened. I saw her wild mouth parted, her curly hair in a wild aureole around her head. Every gesture was one of disorder and violence, as if a lioness had come into the room.
    She began by asserting that she hated my lovers, Hans and Michel. "Why?" I said. "Why?" Her reasons were confused, inadequate. I was sad. That meant secret meetings with them. How could I amuse Lina while she stayed in Paris? What did she want?
    "Just to be with you."
    So we were reduced to each other's company. We sat at cafés, we shopped, we strolled.
    I liked to see her dress up for the evening in barbaric jewelry, her face so vivid. She was not for gentle Paris, for the cafés. She was meant for the African jungle, orgies, dances. But she was a not a free being, rippling in natural undulations of pleasure and desire. If her mouth, body, voice, were made for sensuality, its true flow was paralyzed in her. Between her legs she was impaled on a rigid pole of puritanism. All the rest of her body was loose, provocative. She always looked as if she had just come from lying in bed with a lover, or as if she were just about to lie down with one. She had circles under her eyes and such a great restlessness, an energy smoking from her whole body, impatience, avidity.
    She did everything to seduce me. She liked our kissing on the mouth. She held my mouth, and excited herself, and then drew away. We had breakfast together. She lay in bed and raised her leg so that