Midnight… A very magnificent, very ornate and exciting bedroom… Before me a body beyond imagination… Stretched out on the wide green silk-covered divan, with greedy and bewildered eyes, under the purple-colored, sleep-laden dawn light of the electric lamp seeping through the shade, I was watching the mirage-like movements of this beautiful woman undressing, soft and tender like a captive fairy stolen from other worlds, as if brought to life and embodied from unknown tales. The bed with blue curtains, standing calm and non-human like a nest of angels drunk and exhausted with heavenly and pious whiteness—at its foot, as she slowly undid her corset looking at the large mirror, her white arms, white shoulders were shining with an indescribable illumination that shook all the nerves of feeling, the soul, all existence; as she bent to remove her skirt, with her full hips, her pink luminous back, she appeared spiritual, ambiguous and far from reality like a goddess of poetry and dreams. My heart was beating. I wanted to watch this dream of beauty and youth that would transform in a few minutes into a pink and trembling sweet reality in my burning embrace of passion until morning, eternally like this, to take pleasure from afar with a cerebral delight. I was trembling all over; a hot, invisible and unconscious wind was touching my face; a violent chill was coming to my hands in the pockets of my trousers; my mind was scattering, my judgment was being destroyed.
Here was a night of love bought for three hundred francs! The hand of chance—no, marriage’s coarse and old hand—could not possibly present me with such exquisite and extraordinary perfect beauty. This hairy, hard and wrinkled hand—how it destroys, how it poisons the beauty it sometimes gives us by mistake, unwillingly, after the honeymoon… With the cold demands of subsistence, the most eye-catching decorations of the marriage stage collapse. What else do we see besides this tragic gradual collapse? Tell me. Finally one day we understand that we’re in the middle of an irreparable, tragic ruin… Our hair turns gray. We suffer with a causeless and deep regret. Debt notes, account slips fatten the inner pockets of our jackets. And we no longer think at all that these bulges diminish the impression of our figure. We begin to live a gloomy, sorrowful, vulgar life far from poetry and imagination. Then our doctor too, as if discovering something, tells us one day: “My friend, you have neurasthenia. Don’t read, don’t think, don’t get sad. Walk in the open air. Live in places far from the city.” But how? He doesn’t know; it’s not his duty to know. If you explain your helplessness, he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t want to understand. In fact, he considers even your details an involuntarily manifested symptom of disease.
She was taking off her stockings. Ah, what feet… What plump, what regular knees… This woman shining in her low-cut squirrel-colored thin silk nightgown resembled a dream goal. I imagined myself before a mythological and colorful cinematograph plate. In a moment, she would be completely mine in that white and waiting bed. And this happiness was coming to me thanks to three hundred francs. Thus, in an age of progress, didn’t we have the right to consider ourselves truly happy for being born in such an age of tolerance and coexistence’s favorable environment? Once upon a time, an entire life was given for one night’s contact with extraordinary beauty. Cleopatra would kill her lovers the day after union; wars would be fought not for years but for centuries for one love, one woman; hundreds of thousands of men would slaughter each other, tear each other apart like the ape-men living in pre-history and pre-religion forests, like those tailed fathers of ours. How far we are from them now. There’s no need anymore for heroism, blood, excitement, courage, even virtue. Three hundred francs… Only one night! But what difference is there between a thousand nights and a thousand and one nights? Since it will pass, the nights of centuries will also have an endless tomorrow. Since everything will become past and dream!… I was thinking and looking at her; she was getting into bed, stretching out with a nimble and vigorous exhaustion. Under the squirrel-colored thin silk nightgown, the half-visible, swelling full hips, the delicate and coquettish waist, the exquisite thighs that must be so exciting, who knows… I was hearing my heart beating violently. I was feeling my mouth drying, my lips sticking to each other.
Laughing, she was saying, “Enough watching now, undress and be quick, morning will come…” I didn’t answer. Instead of extracting the right of pleasure of three hundred francs practically and seriously to the maximum, I was spending time with empty thoughts, with sensitivity and poetry, that is, with clear and involuntary inappropriateness; I was abusing such an opportunity of pleasure that I could only get once or twice a year. I got up quickly and began to undress. Inside myself, at every moment of feeling—that is, during that daze called moment of feeling—I was repeating the inner advice I addressed to myself: “Let’s be materialistic!” She was undressing. Completely freed from my thoughts and wonders, I was looking at her from the corner of my eye. She was so beautiful, nevertheless, so exciting, so stimulating! Smiling, again inside myself, I was saying, “What if I believed in love…” Yes, what if I loved this distinguished beauty whose one night costs three hundred francs? To worship for a month… I was mentally calculating. Nine thousand francs!… What!.. Four hundred fifty liras… The salary of three ministers, nine deputies… More than the money I could spend in only two years… Suddenly turning, I was looking at this exquisite body lying face down, watching me undress distractedly. This exceptional woman who delighted me so much, for an innocent person—for an uneducated, unread, uncomprehending naive young man—had the capacity to be what a terrible disaster. Before her perfect beauty, she could drive a poor wretch whose judgment she illuminated and enchanted to extravagance, madness, theft, murder, even suicide. This time, without smiling, covering her face in the pillow, she was saying: “Please, don’t look. With that strange gaze… Don’t look at me like that… I’m afraid, I’m afraid…”
Undressing, to myself I was saying, “Here’s a hysterical woman,” predicting that I would have to work a bit harder to take pleasure, nevertheless that I would take much more pleasure by getting tired. I undressed completely. She was still lying face down, her head between her arms. Her exquisite and inviting nape had opened like a pink rose, as if for a kiss. I approached slowly. And I touched my lips very lightly, very delicately. Suddenly she screamed as if burning fire had touched her skin and jumped. Then falling exhausted again, she covered her face with her hands. And began to cry. I was annoyed. “But my dear,” I said, “why are you doing this, am I distressing you?” In the same position, face in her hands, crying, she was answering: “You’re scaring me. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of your eyes, your gaze. Please, pity me, leave this room, don’t speak to me. Don’t touch your hand. If you approach, I’ll scream. For God’s sake, leave, leave.” I was truly annoyed. This was a tasteless, inappropriate, pleasureless, tiresome crisis. A bit harshly I asked: “But why are you afraid of me?”
Between nervous sobs she was answering: “Ah, you’re a sadistic man. I understood from your gaze, premonition told me. Ah, you’re a terrible sadist…” In wonder I was asking again: “Sadist what?”
The wonder arising from my question was greater than her excitement. She lifted her face from the pillow, which had become more beautiful, whiter, blushing under her disheveled hair. She looked: “Don’t you know what sadism is?”
With a light and pleading smile I answered: “No!…” She paused a bit. In her slightly reddened eyes—you know that gaze we all know—the foreign and external gleam of reflection saying “Here’s another powerful ignoramus from the Young Turks…” suddenly flashed. Looking confidently, having suddenly found calm, she was asking: “Are you serious?”
“Quite serious.”
She was smiling and still looking. As if she was slowly becoming sure of me. Taking advantage of this pause of silence, I sat on the edge of the bed. I was saying her fear was quite inappropriate, asking her to find calm, to be confident. I held her hands. They were like fire. And how soft they were. I was repeating my request. She was giving short answers and I was seeing that she was finding calm. I got a bit bolder. I got completely into bed. My face toward her, I had stretched out on my side. I wanted to kiss her bare shoulder. She screamed again: “Oh, at least don’t kiss, don’t kiss,” she was saying, “when being kissed I tremble with the delusion that they’re tearing me apart. If you knew how terrified I am of kissing…”
**
I had fainted. So much so that I couldn’t even feel I was being harassed anymore. Her red and small lips, her always refusing coquettish manners, her arms pushing away every embrace seemed more poetic to me, suggesting the imaginary pleasure of unattainable desires.
Finally just to talk I asked: “Tell me, what is sadism?”
She had found considerable calm. She was answering confidently and tenderly: “Sadism?… Oh, this is a terrible male disease. The man afflicted with this takes pleasure in crushing the woman, beating the woman, oppressing and violating the woman. Sometimes, without reason, by pulling the woman’s hair, gouging out her eyes, pouring vitriol on her face, sticking pins and needles in her body, cutting her nose or ears, he cannot satisfy his sick inclination—he kills. But how? In the most tragic and heinous way… Either he cuts her head with a small knife, or slits her belly with a razor, or slowly strangles her with his fingers. Murderer Jacques Levantreur, murderer Vacher—these are semi-conscious patients, victims of this disease. This disease, this condition also exists in animals. All beaked creatures seem afflicted with this disease. The rooster beats the hen he loves most; the pigeon violates his mate so much with that famous affection all poets have composed… Pheasants are especially terrible in this regard. Farmers often find the poor female in their cages dead, with feathers plucked, head shattered. What killed her is the male’s beak, the male’s sick love, more correctly, sadism.”
**
The bed was spreading a sweet and swooning warmth from the fire-like body I had just touched; I was lying next to her, very close to her, stretched out full length, getting drunk in this indescribable heat. She was continuing: “Sadism—ah, even this word was taken from a madman’s name. Have you read Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue? You haven’t. Here’s the author of this work: Marquis de Sade… This poor man was exhibiting and describing the phases, episodes, crises of this sick condition on every page of his book. Finally his own name became a term for the disease he described…”
I had slowly put my arm around her waist. She was now behaving favorably. She even extended her bare arm over my hand. My happy hand was fainting, going numb with a special pleasure. Coming closer and progressing further: “Then you can be completely sure of me,” I’m saying. “There’s nothing more foreign to my feeling, my inclination than violating a woman. On the contrary, with an ambiguous desire I want a woman to oppress me, beat me, insult me, make me suffer, for me to cry, fall at her feet. For her to hit my head. To make my lips bleed while I kiss her shoes. To kick me out, for me to beg. To kick me out again. For me to grovel on the ground. For her to continue her oppression. Even to kill me. Ah, the surrender before a beloved body, the pleasure in this humiliation… How can I describe it?…”
**
She was listening with a smile and gradually surrendering to my skillful embrace. Running her hands through my hair, she was saying: “My dear, then you’re still sick. You’re still not completely healthy and natural. But your disease isn’t sadism, it’s the opposite. Masochism, which I like very much. A man obedient, submissive as a dog, tolerant of all the oppressions of my nervousness, my bad moods, my crises, even taking pleasure from them… A dream goal!” In her arms, pulling her warm breast, her breasts shining with transparent and lively freshness toward me, she was laughing at my saying “I’m a terrible masochist” and answering, “If you also had ten thousand francs a month income, then you’d be my real dream goal…” Now she had completely become mine. We had made peace. I was squeezing her on my chest. I leaned in. I wanted to kiss. She stopped my mouth with her hand.
“Ooo, that’s forbidden,” she was saying, “I absolutely cannot tolerate kissing, absolutely…” I didn’t insist. But I was curious and asked why this woman, more knowledgeable than our youngest nerve and gynecological disease specialists, wouldn’t let me kiss her. “Why? I can’t imagine anything uglier than a kiss,” she was saying. “That’s also something from sadism signs, a terrible memory… What was the primitive form of the kiss? Do you know? Undoubtedly, no… Right! Biting, it was biting. Our fathers who lived in very ancient centuries were terrible sadists. Like pheasants that kill their females with their beaks, they were biting our mothers. Time, passing centuries treated their disease, softened their inclinations. This biting lightened. Slowly it finally became a kiss.”
**
And she added, a bit excited: “Kiss, kiss… Like the walking stick men haven’t been able to throw away for forty centuries—the memory of virgin and primitive forests, of savagery, of animality, of bestiality… The sick pleasure of sadistic men who don’t recognize women’s rights, deny feminism, consider women slaves and a prolific instrument of pleasure and reproduction… I detest this. I know that behind hairy lips touching with bestial and vulgar heat there are hard and sharp, cutting and tearing teeth. True, these teeth that bit our mothers, wounded our mothers, made our mothers scream during eras are not active today! But all their greed has been undertaken by impudent and spoiled lips. Sucking on their behalf, destroying our feeling. Dirtying. Disgusting us. The man takes pleasure in kissing. Because no matter how much he evolves, how much he changes, atavism still bequeaths him a sick boldness, a bit of sadism. But no woman is pleased with this savage pleasure of the man, this imitation of oppression that’s a memory of biting. She detests it.” She was falling silent, resting her head on my arm as if listening, asking quietly with a pleading gaze: “Do you promise? You won’t kiss me, do you promise?…” Squeezing with all my strength on my chest, I’m promising, confirming my promise with the truest and most sincere oaths. But unfortunately I couldn’t keep this unenforceable promise. Two hours had passed. Neither she nor I had tired, our arms wrapped around each other hadn’t loosened. While I was now forcibly and continuously kissing her with the primitive form of the kiss, that is, biting, she—bewildered, exhausted and terrified by my fire of passion and care that was increasing rather than decreasing—was only whispering, “Mercy, cannibal, mercy!” but never resisting…
Ömer Seyfettin
