Dolorosa Soror by Florence Dugas Read Free Book Online

longer with us, I often ask Florence to wear these silk souvenirs for me, and for her—as if we could resuscitate her in an imperfect mirror.
    3.Everyone knows, obviously, that there is something phallic in the lens of a camera—especially when, if you're using a zoom, it suddenly lengthens toward the object of its desire. There is no doubt that photography was a substitute for Florence. As for me, my fascination with photography was more complicated. Why had I always associated it with the taste I had for a woman's ass—as if I only dared to be homosexual with women?
    4.Nathalie was left-handed, and as soon as they were intertwined, it was like seeing a doubled image, as if one were approaching the other from the other side of a mirror.
    5.As long as Florence thinks of Nathalie in the present tense, she is still with us. Nathalie is in her, in her head, her heart, her belly, like an immortal fetus one is never rid of. She is there, at night, between her empty hands. She skims over her skin, always, the phantom vessel of her memory. She is in the least of her silences. And sometimes, in mine.
     
    Chapter V
    November, Continuation
    J. P. would see me sometimes, either in order to fuck me or to work with me on the Sophocles text, as I have already said.
    “Why Sophocles?” he asked, and never, “Why Oedipus?” "Because Cocteau is too simple and Seneca too dark. Sophocles is a pure tragedy, one of misunderstanding and recognition—but Aristotle said that well before I did."
    He would see her, too, but I heard only bits and pieces of what happened. 1
    I had given her a set of keys, telling her she could come and go as she liked. She would drop by, sometimes between classes, whether I were there or not.
    I would find a rose in a metal vase, an open book on the bed, or simply the unreadable imprint of her body on the comforter. Or else I would be there, and she would come by fresh from the rain and kiss me, or ask me sometimes, in very crude terms, to make her come. Standing before me, she would lift her skirt. I would drop to my knees, take off her underwear (when she was wearing any), and eat out her ass. Very quickly her cunt would weep with pleasure, and I would make her come, my thumb bored deep in her vagina, my fingers on her clitoris, my tongue buried in her asshole. She would have strong anal contractions that would push me out and suck me in by turns. Then she would leave as quickly as she had arrived.
    She would sometimes disappear for a whole week, and no one would run into her. Then she would show up one morning, her hands full of croissants.
    "Your hair smells of the sea," I said to her one day. "Really? It's possible."
And I never knew more than that.
    Twice she arrived very late. The first time, she forced herself not to wake me—the discreet princess who did not want to disturb her sleeping beauty. I had fallen asleep while reading, and by the light of the reading lamp, through the hypocritical filter of my eyelashes, I watched her undress in silence and slide in next to me. Taking off her skirt and sweater, she had the grace of a cat. There was a movement in her arms I always found captivating because each time her breasts seemed to burst forth like snow.
    This time, in the uncertain light, I thought I had not seen correctly. But when she leaned forward to undo the straps of her shoes, I realized I had not been wrong: she had been beaten on the breasts with a brutality I had never dared. Deep horizontal stripes, the proof that someone had slept with her before beating her. One nipple, darkened with blood, was nearly torn off. The creases of scars, the rectitude of gashes, evoked the imprint of a hard lash: a riding whip, perhaps.
    She laid down next to me and kissed me lightly on the temple. The instant afterwards, she was asleep. For a long time I remained awake with my nightmares.
    She did not try to hide the marks the next morning. "What? Oh, that. Who did it? It's not important." But ten minutes