Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan Read Free Book Online Page A

while Marie-Anne examined her face. Then Marie-Anne abruptly changed her tactics. Her voice became caressing.
    “Anyway, why on earth should you have been faithful to him? There was no reason for you to deprive yourself.”
    “I didn’t deprive myself. There was no one I wanted. It’s quite simple.”
    Marie-Anne pursed her lips, reflected, then asked, “Are you saying that if there had been someone you wanted, you’d have made love with him?”
    “Certainly.”
    “How can you prove it?” Marie-Anne challenged, in the acid tone of a quarrelsome child.
    Emmanuelle looked at her undecidedly, then said all at once, “I did it.”
    Marie-Anne seemed electrified. She jumped up, sat down again, cross-legged, and put her hands on her knees.
    “You see?” she said in an outraged and hurt tone of voice. “And you tried to make me think you didn’t!”
    “I didn’t do it in Paris, ” Emmanuelle explained patiently. “I did it on the plane . The plane that brought me here. Now do you understand?”
    “With whom?” Marie-Anne asked skeptically.
    Emmanuelle took her time before answering. “With two men. I don’t know their names.”
    If she had thought she was going to cause a sensation, she was disappointed. Marie-Anne resumed her interrogation without showing any reaction. “Did they come in you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Were they very deep inside you?”
    “Oh, yes!” Emmanuelle instinctively put her hand to her belly.
    “Caress yourself while you tell me about it,” Marie-Anne ordered. But Emmanuelle shook her head. She seemed to have been suddenly tongue-tied. Marie-Anne examined her critically. “Go on,” she said, “talk!”
    Emmanuelle obeyed. She was reluctant and embarrassed at first, but soon, excited by her own story, she gave all the details without having to be questioned. She stopped after telling how the Greek statue had ravished her. Marie-Anne had been listening with a studious expression, changing her posture several times, but she did not seem to be particularly impressed.
    “Have you told Jean?” she asked.
    No.”
    “Have you seen those two men again?”
    “Of course not!”
    It seemed that, for the moment, Marie-Anne had nothing more to ask.
    Emmanuelle called the little servant girl—straight out of one of Gauguin’s dreams, with her flowery black hair, her ocher body, and her scarlet sarong—and asked her to make some tea. She put on her shorts again. Marie-Anne put on her panties, but left her skirt on the floor. She then demanded to see all of Emmanuelle’s pictures of herself naked. When Emmanuelle had brought them to her, she recovered her caustic attitude.
    “Listen, you’re not going to tell me you didn’t do anything with the photographer, are you?”
    “He didn’t even touch me!” Emmanuelle protested. “And,” she added, with pretended rancor, “besides, I didn’t have a chance—he was a fag.”
    Marie-Anne turned down the corners of her lips. She was still skeptical. She studied the pictures again. “I think an artist should always go to bed with his model before making a portrait of her. It was silly of you to choose someone who didn’t like women.”
    “I didn’t choose him,” said Emmanuelle, beginning to feel genuinely irritated. “It was his idea. As I’ve already told you, he was a friend of Jean’s.”
    Marie-Anne made a gesture that seemed to sweep away that past. “You really ought to have yourself painted by a good artist. It’ll be too late when you’re old.”
    The image of what Marie-Anne must have meant by a “good artist,” and the idea of the imminence of her own old age, sent Emmanuelle into a fit of laughter. “I don’t like to pose, not even for a photograph, so for a painting . . .”
    “And haven’t you done anything with men since you’ve been here?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous!” Emmanuelle said indignantly.
    Marie-Anne seemed preoccupied and almost disheartened. “One of these days you’ll have to find yourself a