Girl Who Was Not Called Mistral 01

He's beside her. His hand moves swiftly to cover her mouth. No words. He turns her back to face the car. Gently but firmly pressing her forward. The metallic-green is cool on her hands as he bends her over. His hands slip her dress up without preamble, hooks her panties, and in one swift movement jerks them down to her knees. Obediently she steps the right foot out of them, then the left. She feels vulnerable, excited. He hasn't kissed her yet. He's treating her like a whore. Like a slut. He's fumbling behind her. She hears the sound of a zip. Then a warm and insistent hardness against her bottom. No – she wants to see him, wait! His knee prises her legs apart, searching out the fleshiness between. She flinches as he locates its softness, her legs weakening as he directs himself into her. His cock pulses like a warm heart. She gasps out loud as he slides home. This is raw and ludicrous. He's deep and penetrating deeper.

He's treating her like a pétasse (slut). Her back arches like an animal. Her face goes down onto the car bonnet. He slides back, holding her, then plunges in so hard she feels the weight of his balls swaying up against her. It happens quickly. He's working furiously in and out with a rhythm that has her squirming, until – all too soon she hears him grunt low. He curses – "merde", with a guttural sound, and he explodes into her with long tremors of ejaculation. He stays embedded for a long moment. But when he withdraws she feels drained and hollow, shivering either from chill, or from sexual excess. Beads of sweat glisten on her body. As she looks up she sees the huge circular crypt. Why has he brought her here, exactly to this place? Who lies in that crypt? – a dead wife? A former lover? Has this whole encounter been staged for the benefit of its occupant?

As she turns, holding onto the car for support, he's using her panties to wipe himself. Then he throws them into the night. "You won't need these from now on."

She nods her acquiescence. Without a word he's back inside the car. Holding the door open for her. She smiles awkwardly. Shyly, despite his sperm oozing within her. And she climbs in beside him. The car pulls away. She finds herself sleeping intermittently as he drives. When she wakes, the wipers are ticking away, like in a movie –'Un Homme Et La Femme'perhaps? Then morning mist is dispersing through pale countryside. The Pèage Toll-Booths on the Autoroute south from Paris? There's a Police Car watching as they pass. And Malian Rap on the in-car digital stereo. They eat croissants and drink coffee at a Routier. Then, for a moment, she's standing alone outside on the asphalt as he settles the billet. She watches slow drifts of traffic moving beyond the sliproad. Standing carefully, conscious that her dress is short and that she's no longer wearing her Janet Règer underwear.

A coach draws in. Its destination board says 'PARIS'. She has time to board. Time to escape this weirdness. Who is this man? She can't believe this is happening. This is madness. She's married. He could be a pervert, a psycho-killer. He used no condom. His body-fluids could be tainted, with... anything. Then he's beside her again, grasping her shoulder with surprising tenderness. She smiles, "I like the feel of your hands on me." They kiss, sucking tongues. She wants him with a physical urgency she's not known since adolescence. "So when do I get to find out, where you are taking me?"

He doesn't answer until they're back in the car. "Surely you don't expect me to tell you without some... inducement?" He changes gear and accelerates smoothly. They've left the autoroute. A long empty avenue of trees now.

"What must I do?", flirtatiously.

He curls his lip – as if in indecision, making a twisting motion with his free hand. There's a gold chain that trickles down as he does so. "Shall we say... uh... you must reveal to me, in this mirror," he screws the rear-view round onto her, "your right nipple."

"And you will tell me if I do this?"

He nods.

She giggles. "I cannot. It is ridiculous." A silence for long moments. She watches trees spoke by, and beyond them the great empty expanse of fields. "I don't negotiate" she says, suddenly serious. "I don't even know where we are. Youmusttell me."

He indicates the mirror. She pouts in mock-petulance, moves her fingers to the small pearl buttons of her dress, and unhooks the first. Then – "no, I cannot."

"You remember how I stared when I first saw you at'Les Café Des Poetès'? Perhaps you imagined I thought you to be a victim, a target for seduction. But no. I stared because I recognised you as the beautiful woman I'd made love to at the 'Ophelia Presse' Literary party. I recall you were less than shy on that occasion, on that one night we had together." He looks across at her. "Still, you remain the same. As though I'd never left you."

"No, it was not me, you are deceived."

"You have no memory?"

She laughs. "I've caught you out. I know this dialogue. Alain Resnais.'Last Year In Marienbad'.Next you will say 'your eyes still dream, still you look faraway'. And I will say 'ages passed as I stood still for you'."

He sighs irritably, and pauses for perhaps twenty seconds. Then, "it was a bizarre party – you must remember. A grand house, in the country. Some of the guests wear elaborate Venetian masks of white or inlaid porcelain which give them the anonymity of androids, or cold statues. Some are rumoured to be politicians, diplomats. One woman has her dress cut low to arrogantly reveal her breasts, luxuriating in the attention and furtive glances she attracts. One nipple is pierced and adorned with a diamond-starred filigree ring. It quivers with a delicate tinkling sound as she moves. I'm talking to a writer from Zaire when you break in on us so suddenly. So beautifully, and you kiss me with such an exquisite tongue. You – a complete stranger, kiss me so passionately. And as you draw back you nuzzle my ear to whisper to me that the dull Englishman overthereis making clumsy advances to you, and to escape his attentions you've told him I'm your lover, that I'm notoriously jealous of other men – and that I must play along with this charade.

"You smell of camellias. I'm so enchanted I do as you suggest, but as the Englishman continues to haunt you I find myself monopolising your attentions throughout the evening. Until couples begin pairing off. Some in threes. There's nudity and intimacy. A naked woman crawls on all fours across the dining table between cutlery, wine glasses and bowls of fruit. A circle of men spill red wine onto her body then vie with each other to lick it off. The 'Englishman' watches us walk together up the stairs. In the corridor on the first landing two naked youths of perhaps eighteen or nineteen kiss and caress each other's faces and tousled hair with tender and loving passion. While a plain middle-aged woman in an elegant evening gown crouches to suck their inflamed penises alternately, mouthing them with desperate eagerness in a way that's both reverent, and ravenous. She's straining her lip-sticked lips wide in an attempt to accommodate both large erections simultaneously. While, totally and exclusively engrossed in each other, they kiss and suck each other's tongues seemingly oblivious to her attentions. Her make-up is smeared, her mouth distended out of shape, but I feel sure I recognise her. The dowdy wife of one of the masked politicians?

"You see me watching them, and smile an invitation that promises so much. The 'Englishman' observes us, as at last we enter the empty bedroom, I'm able to lock the door, and dim the lights. You undress for me. To express your gratitude, you say, in full. We gulp wine, and exchange it mouth to mouth. Then love is the banquet on which we feed. Your lips fluttering on my penis. My tongue tunnelling deep into your vagina, worrying at your clit until my tongue is sore and your juices are moist on my chin. And although we fuck all night, you never tell me your name... and I'm left wondering, imagining. Is therereallyan 'Englishman' you wish to avoid? – or is he a husband or a lover, and you are both playing an elaborate game with me? But it seems I'm never to find out, and never see you again... until last night, at'Les Café Des Poetès'."

As he talks she slides the buttons open one by one down the front of her dress, slowly. Drawing the material back. No underwear.

His eyes flick from the highway to the mirror. The dark erect nipple like part of a collage slotted onto the speeding asphalt, a slight tremor.

"Are you satisfied? Does it please you?"

He licks his lips, as though tasting her. "Yes. But you, too, must fantasise. Tell me what you dream when you masturbate, when you are alone."

She makes no attempt to re-cover her breast.

"You are alone" he prompts. "You are in your bedroom..."

She nods.

"You lie on the bed. Are you nude?"

Again she nods. "The coverlets are cool and silky on my skin. I watch myself in the mirror. Holding myself as if my hands and fingers belong to an imaginary lover. I moisten my finger with saliva and run it gently around each nipple in turn until they stand out. I get up and approach the mirror. I look into the mirror. I say 'look at my breasts'. The strange woman in the mirror obediently looks possessively at my breasts. My reflection answers my desires. I press myself up against the mirror so my nipples indent into it. The mirror dissolves. It is water, and I sink into it slowly, submerging, the water rippling and shimmering over my bare stomach and between my legs. It flows into my nostrils, blinking out sound from my ears. It laps around my ankles and I breathe it deep into my lungs. And later – when I awake, I'm with my lover. Sometimes she is a dark-skinned woman...

"At other times, a man who has tied my hands to the bed-head with silk ribbons, and he has me lie – legs spread wide, so I can't move. And he's licking the soles of my feet. My lover is naked and fiercely aroused. He has the kind of male hosepipe I need to douse the raging lust within me. I ache for him. But first he must earn the right of penetration. First he must prove his need. So he licks his way up my inner thigh, his tongue wet and slightly rough as it stirs my pubic hair intimately but insistently, seeking entry between my vaginal lips. His penis is tall and red, on the point of eruption, it bobs up and down, quivering with the intensity of his exertions. I look down and see his face framed between my thighs. He's already drunk on the odours of my body, and he tastes my increasing moistness as if it's the most exquisite wine. His tongue probes deeper as he sucks and teases at me. He's hungry for me. He thirsts for me, drunk on my vagina, and I thrust down into his face now because I know that – although it is me who is tethered, it is he who is inmypower. His eyes are closed. His tongue slithers and flickers across my clitoris, then deeper inside me. His breathing comes harder and faster. His eyes close as his mouth feasts. His cock pulses and jerks, aroused beyond all reason by my sexuality. He grunts hopelessly and squirts a long jet of white semen he can no longer control over my leg and over the coverlet..." She hesitates. "Do you have a cigarette?"

He indicates the glove compartment. She flips it open. Route maps. Gum. A crushpack of Gauloise. And a revolver. The metallic-green Renault climbs through a small village clustered along low hills. Of course she recognises it, but pretends she doesn't. Incongruously there's an advertising hoarding for'L'Evènement'magazine. A huge face on the hoarding, a chic fashion model wearing only peacock feathers.

She glances back from the hoarding, and watches his profile as he drives. "You have a gun."

"I need one. It is my profession."

She relaxes back into the upholstery. Sensing something. "Go on..."

"Yes, I'll tell you, Mistral."

"My name is not Mistral..."

"It is, tonight..."

She senses there will be more, much more, before these events have run their course...

BY TRISTAN TROTSKY