The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop Read Free Book Online Page A

to implore the favours of the “souls of Purgatory,” as they naively call the infernal forces, and to practise the worship of bones.
    The skulls, often polished with wax, coiffed with wigs, and set on little private altars by the faithful, who are, for that matter, total strangers to them, make for the object of a very active trade on the guardians’ part. The atmosphere of these pagan catacombs — for that’s exactly what they are — is absolutely unreal. The murmured prayers, the shadows of women projected by the flickering candles onto the macabre, rocky stones, the skeletons and the clothed mummies in their niches, the odour of bones and of offerings form an indescribable environment. Straight off, I was enthusiastic.
    Finding myself in a less frequented gallery, my attention was suddenly solicited by the little games of one of the faithful. It was a fat little woman like they all are over there. She must have been around thirty years old and visibly belonged to the middle class; maybe she was the wife of a local merchant or a subordinate official. With one knee resting on the seat of a chair, she leaned over its back, her rump jutting out and her neck held forward, bringing her face closer until she touched a skull set on the molding. The profile of the woman and that of the skull detached themselves neatly in the reddish glare of a lamp, the one cupped under the smile of the other. The woman had succeeded in introducing her tongue into the jaw, and, lit from behind, I saw it lick and wriggle between the dead teeth, bent and pointed like a horn of coral — that old phallic symbol the Neapolitans wear against the evil eye.
    At times, the woman brought that tongue, which I guessed would be surprisingly hard and fleshy, up to the incisors of the dead, running it along the exterior of the teeth like a hand caressing a keyboard; at other times, she plunged it in as far as she could to lick the inside of the molars and the roof of the mouth.
    She was enjoying herself so much that she hadn’t heard me approach. I observed her for a while before she suddenly noticed my presence and sat up, stifling a cry.
    â€œYou have nothing to fear from me,” I told her, “but don’t you want to get back to what you were doing just now?”
    The woman studied me with distrust. I repeated my request, and the flash of an idea that no doubt seemed brilliant to her spread across her face:
    â€œIf someone sees me, I will say that it’s you that forced me to do it.”
    I confess that I was confounded by this vulgar ruse with which she managed to turn around the situation. But already, and without saying another word, she had returned to her skull, the eyes half-closed, the tongue stuck out.
    That which was unusual about the spectacle and the place, combined with the euphoria I felt as soon as I had entered the catacombs, had an effect on me that a necrophiliac doesn’t often experience. I wanted this woman, even though she was alive. I lifted up her black dress and, pulling down her cotton underwear, I discovered a large rump, polished and diaphanous as the wax of the candles around us. It was even smoother to the touch than the sight. Having slipped my hand into the crack, I pulled out my fingers soaked in an opaline liquor that disconcerted me — the dead don’t secrete anything like that — and would have repulsed me if its odour hadn’t recalled that of the sea, image and sister of the dead. And so, the thought that all flesh carries within itself the seed of its destruction revived the desire I had for this woman, but that desire abandoned me the very instant I tried to make deeper contact, like a house of cards that collapses as soon as it is touched. The woman turned towards me, her face distorted with anger:
    â€œI’m going to say that you tried to get violent with me.”
    I didn’t understand why her resentment led her to threaten me like that. In any