Thérèse and Isabelle Read Free Page A

simplicity of our two names.
    She swaddled my shoulders in the ermine of her arm, placed my hand in the channel between her breasts, on the fabric of her nightgown. Enchantment of my hand beneath hers, of my neck, my shoulders clothed by her arm. Yet my face was alone, my eyelids growing cold. Isabelle knew it. Trying to warm me up all over, her tongue danced at my teeth. I closed up, barricaded myself inside my mouth. She waited: this is how she taught me to open myself, to blossom. She was my body’s secret muse. Her tongue, her little flame, charmed my blood, my flesh. I responded, provoked, fought, tried to be more violent than she. The slap of lips, the hiss of saliva became nothing to us. We labored hard, but as we slowed oncemore, in unison, grew careful, the draught grew richer. After so much saliva passed between them, our lips parted in spite of us. Isabelle dropped into the hollow of my shoulder.
    â€œA train,” she said, so as to catch her breath.
    Something is crawling in my belly. I am frightened: there is an octopus in my belly.
    Isabelle drew a childish mouth shape on my lips with her finger. The finger dropped from my lips to my neck. I seized it, drew it along my eyelashes:
    â€œThey are yours,” I told her.
    Isabelle is silent. Isabelle does not move. If she’s asleep, it’s over. Isabelle has returned to her ways. I don’t believe in her anymore. I have to go. Her box is no longer mine. I cannot get up. We have not finished. I don’t know anything but I know we haven’t finished. If she’s asleep, it is abduction. Isabelle drives me away while she sleeps. Make her not sleep, make it sothe night will not end our night. Isabelle is not asleep!
    She lifted my arm, she nuzzled at my armpit. My hips were growing pale. I felt a cold pleasure. I was not used to receiving so much. I listened to what she took and what she gave, I shimmered with gratitude: I suckled her. Isabelle threw herself elsewhere. She smoothed my hair, she stroked the midnight in my hair and the midnight trickled down my cheeks. She stopped, marked an interval. Forehead to forehead, we listened to the swirl, we abandoned ourselves to the silence, gave ourselves to it.
    A caress is to a shiver as dusk is to a lightning flash. Isabelle shone a rake of light from my shoulder all the way to my wrist, ran her five-fingered reflector along my neck, over my nape, behind me. I was following her hand, I saw through half-closed eyes a neck, a shoulder, an arm that were not my neck, my shoulder, my arm. She ravished my ear as she had ravished mymouth with her mouth. The move was cynical, the sensation singular. I froze, I was frightened by this refinement of animality. Isabelle took me again, held me still by the hair, began again. The icy fingering shocked me, Isabelle’s serenity reassured.
    She leant out of the bed and opened a drawer in her night table. I seized her hand:
    â€œA lace! Why a shoelace?”
    â€œI’m tying up my hair. Be quiet or you’ll get us caught.”
    Isabelle was tightening the knot, preparing herself.
    She whom I awaited had come prepared. I was listening to what is huge, what is alone: the heart. A small blueish egg fell from her lips where she had left me, where she took me up again. She opened the collar of my nightgown, confirmed my shoulder’s curve with her forehead, with her cheek. I accepted the wonders she was imagining on the curve of my shoulder. She was givingme a lesson in humility. I took fright. I am flesh and blood, I am alive. I am not an idol.
    â€œNot so much!” I begged.
    She closed my collar.
    â€œAm I too heavy for you?” she asked gently.
    â€œDon’t leave . . .”
    I wanted to clasp her in my arms but I didn’t dare. The clock spat out quarter hour after quarter hour; Isabelle was tracing a snail with her finger in that poor little space we have beneath our earlobes. She was tickling me in spite of herself. It was