The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre Read Free Book Online Page B

like I did the other time.’ He combed his hair carefully over the basin, to see whether it was falling out. But not one hair dropped on to the white porcelain. When he had put on his pyjamas, he opened the door and went back into the bedroom.
    Lola was outstretched on the bed, completely naked. It was another Lola, sluggish and menacing, watching him from beneath her eyelids. Her body, on the blue counterpane, was silvery-white, like the belly of a fish, and on it a triangular tuft of reddish hair. She was beautiful. Boris approached the bed, and eyed her with an eagerness not unmingled with disgust. She stretched out her arms.
    ‘Wait,’ said Boris.
    He switched off the light and the room was promptly filled with a red glow: at the third storey of the building opposite, an illuminated sign had been recently installed. Boris lay down beside Lola, and began to stroke her shoulders and her breasts. Her skin was so soft that it felt exactly as though she had kept her silk wrap on. Her breasts were slackening, but Boris liked that; they were the breasts of a woman who has lived. It was in vain that he had turned out the light, he could still see, in the glare from the electric wall sign, Lola’s face, pale in the red glow, and black-lipped: she looked as though she was in pain, and her eyes were hard. Boris felt oppressed with the sense of tragedy to come, just as he had done at Nîmes, when the first bull bounded into the arena: something was going to happen, something inevitable, awesome, and yet rather tedious, like the bull’s ensanguined death.
    ‘Take off your pyjamas,’ pleaded Lola.
    ‘No,’ said Boris.
    This was a ritual. Every time Lola asked him to take off his pyjamas, and Boris was obliged to refuse, Lola’s hands slipped under his jacket, and caressed him gently. Boris began to laugh.
    ‘You’re tickling me.’
    They kissed. A moment passed, Lola took Boris’s hand and laid it on her body, against the tuft of reddish hair: she always had odd caprices, and Boris had to protect himself sometimes. For an instant or two he let his hand hang inert against Lola’s thighs, and then slid it gently upwards to her shoulders.
    ‘Come,’ said Lola, pulling him on to her, ‘come, I adore you — come, come!’
    She was beginning to moan, and Boris thought, ‘Now I’m for it.’ A clammy thrill ran up his body from waist to neck. ‘I won’t,’ said Boris, and he clenched his teeth. But then he had a sudden sense of being picked up by the neck, like a rabbit, and he sunk upon Lola’s body, lost in a red, voluptuous dazzlement of passion.
    ‘Darling.’
    She let him gently slip aside, and got out of bed. Boris remained prostrate, his head on the pillow. He heard Lola open the bathroom door, and he thought: ‘When this is over, I don’t want any more affairs. I loathe making love. No — to be honest, that isn’t what I loathe most, it’s the entanglement of it all, the sense of domination; and besides, what’s the point of choosing a girl friend, it would be just the same with anyone, it’s physiological.’ And he repeated with disgust ‘physiological’. Lola was getting ready for the night. The water ran into the basin with a pleasant, limpid gurgle which Boris rather enjoyed. Men suffering from the hallucinations of thirst, in the desert, heard just such sounds, the sound of running water. Boris tried to imagine that he was under a hallucination. The room, the red light, the splashes, these were hallucinations, he would soon find himself in the middle of the desert, lying on the sand with a cork helmet over his eyes. Mathieu’s face suddenly appeared to him: ‘It’s fantastic,’ he thought: ‘I like men better than girls. When I’m with a girl I’m not half as happy as with a man. And yet I wouldn’t dream of going to bed with a man.’ He cheered himself with the thought: ‘A monk, that’s what I’ll be when I’ve left Lola.’ He felt arid and austere. Lola jumped into the bed, and