Transgressions (1997) by Sarah Dunant. The excerpts are mostly taken from
Amazon book preview but I had to supplement with chapters of my own translation
as the preview doesn’t contain every single page of the book and I had access
only to the Finnish book. The parts between # marks are those I’ve translated
and will thus probably differ from the original English text.
CHAPTER 3.
A drug mule abused during delivery.
She slid both hands slowly up her legs and
under her skirt, shimmying her ass down to help her reach the top of her
panties. She teased them loose, letting them slip down onto the floor and
stepping carefully out of them. She pushed a lock of hair back from her face
and lifted her right foot onto the chair, the skirt pulling up high over her
thighs to reveal a line of naked leg right up to the curve of her buttocks.
Then, slowly, she slid the fingers of her hand up into her crotch.
She moved her way inside for a moment,
probing, playing, all the time keeping her eyes fixed on the man who was
sitting opposite. Her face showed no signs of pleasure, no emotion at all, just
a cool expressionless stare.
He kept on looking. He was thin and
sallow-skinned, a man who hadn’t seen the sun for so long he had started to
feed on darkness. His eyes flicked between her face and her fingers, lips
parted in a half-smile, his breath an echo of sound.
After she had played for a little longer
she slowly removed her fingers. Between them she held up a thick plastic tube,
six or eight centimeters long, glistening, its covering slightly wet. She
tossed it across the room. The man caught it neatly, lifting it briefly to his
nose before peeling off the wrapping. Released from its covering, a heavy
little bag unfolded, packed with white stuff. He held it up, weighing it
casually in his palm.
“Ninety percent pure,” she said softly, as
if amused at the ritual, both his and hers. “A thank-you from Jerome. He says
to remember who it came from.”
“Tell him I already have,” he said quietly.
“I’ll also remember from where.”
She nodded, then sat back down and reached
for her panties: the gesture this time more ordinary, more self-absorbed–a
woman getting dressed after the show, regardless of who was watching her.
“Uh-uh.”
She glanced up at him, as if surprised to
still find him there.
“Why don’t you open your legs again,” he
said quietly.
She gave a shrug, her hand already under
the chair, the white lace curled up in her fingers. “Sorry. I’m not part of the
free gift,” she said coolly.
“I said open your legs.” This time the
voice was harsh. “Or I’ll open them for you.”
She sighed slightly, as if threats bored
her, but she did as she was told, moving her knees just far enough apart to
show the pubic bush under her skirt.
He sat staring directly at her snatch. She
let him stare. She almost seemed to like it. Slowly she shifted her buttocks
forward on the chair, spreading her legs farther apart, so the view was better
and more insolent. He laughed, tossing the bag down onto the table and walking
lazily over to her. With one hand he lifted her chin up and held it cupped in
his palm, a little too high for comfort. Then he slipped his other hand up into
her. “Just checking that everything that’s mine is out of there,” he said
slyly, his fingers working overtime.
She sat absolutely still, apparently
oblivious to his touch.
“Satisfied?” she said after a while, and
this time the voice dripped with scorn.
He slammed a finger farther in and up,
savagely deep, and this time she cried out. “Bastard,” she said between
clenched teeth.
“And what other kind of men do you know?”
he said as he used his other hand to unzip his fly. “Let’s get on with it, eh?”
“Yeah, well, you’d better get your finger
out if you want to fit anything else in. Unless, of course, it’s even smaller
than I think.”
“Bitch, he said, as he hit her hard across
the face. “That’s not where I’m going to put it.” And he hit her again.
Her eyes glazed over, the look of a woman
on automatic pilot. “Shit,” she said under her breath as the skin around her
right eye began to swell.
“You got it, sweetheart.”
CHAPTER 13.
X complies with her rapist during a night time home invasion to save her life.
The man has seen her translations of sex scenes and imagines she’s gagging for
it.
“Why don’t you put down the hammer?” she
said at last, and to her amazement her voice sounded almost loving. “You don’t
need it, you know, I can’t go anywhere and I swear to you I won’t try to
escape.”
She felt rather than saw his fingers
twitch, then tighten further around it. She counted to ten in her head, then
slowly, so slowly that he could see her every move, she lifted her finger to
his face. He let out a kind of growl, and his right hand whipped up and grabbed
her wrist, forcing it down onto the bedspread, twisting the skin savagely as he
did so. She registered the pain, but also the fact that the hammer had been
left behind.
“Bitch,” he hissed under his breath.
“Bitch.”
“You’re hurting me, she said between
clenched teeth as the burn worsened. “You’re hurting me. Let me go.”
He was breathing hard now, too hard to
speak.
“Please,” she said, and they both heard the
way the words came out, as much a quiet command as a plea. His response was to
squeeze even tighter, his hand shaking with the force of the grip. She let out
a small yelp of pain, though she didn’t take her eyes away from his face. The
burn made her want to cry, then, just at the point where she couldn’t hold out
any longer, she felt the pressure reduce, until gradually his fist relaxed and
her hand was almost free. It took all her courage not to snatch it back, but
instead to let it lie limply in his, both of them registering the touch without
violence.
This time, as she moved her hand to his
face, the air between them was alive with anticipation. And this time he let
her touch connect. Her fingers fluttered over his cheekbone. She held them
there till they were steady, then slowly traced the line of his cheek down to
his mouth, and, after a beat of hesitation, played across his lips. His mouth
fell open slightly. She took a breath, then with her forefinger she pulled down
his bottom lip, feeling the moistness, exposing the fleshy bit inside. He made
a sound, halfway between a moan and a growl, and bit backward. At first she
thought he would take her fingers with him, crush and break them between his
teeth, but it was more by reflex than design, like someone recoiling from a
flame.
Relax, she thought. Relax. Maybe she said
it out loud. It was meant for both of them.
She waited, then began again, now pushing
her fingers inside. She encountered the edge of his bottom teeth, uneven and
jumbled, as if they had grown crooked and never been properly corrected, then
moved further in to find the tongue. The flesh was alive with muscle, rough and
quivering, almost like the feel of her own vagina. It sent a shudder through
her and she had to steel herself not to pull out. No time for the fainthearted
now.
She lifted herself up from where she was
sitting on the bed and moved toward him. Their joint breaths sounded huge in
the night. As if neither of them could get enough air in their lungs. She felt
his hand clutch at his side, searching instinctively for the hammer, his
fingers closing over it.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t need it.
You don’t have to hurt me. That’s not how it has to be.”
She waited, counting off her heartbeats. At
ten she moved again.
Where she had first used her fingers, now
she used her tongue. His lips trembled, then parted to let her in. Slipping in
through the portcullis of his teeth, she made herself think of all the lovers
she had known who could turn a kiss into making love–teasing and catching at
your lips, pulling them into theirs, making the kiss its own act of seduction,
a kind of devouring that made you want to take off your clothes and guide their
pricks into you. Making you ache for them, all from a kiss.
Remember it now, she thought. Remember it
now because your life depends on it. She pushed her tongue in. His mouth was
limp. “Kiss me back, “ she whispered. “Use your tongue.”
She could almost hear his heart beating.
The tongue fluttered, then whipped out, like a lizard. She could feel the
tension in him, like some uncontrollable seismic buildup, and she felt the
hammer hand jerk across the coverlet. The kiss continued, his tongue darting,
still lost but still trying. God help me, she thought. God help me here to know
what to do.
She brought her hands up to cup his face.
“That’s better,” she murmured. “Again.”
This time he did as he was told and the
kiss connected. They both felt it. As it went deeper, she slid her hands over
his neck, then slowly down his back. The wool of the sweater he was wearing was
coarse and prickly and damp to the touch. Under his clothes he would be
sweating. Who says it’s only the woman who feels the fear. She pulled up at the
sweater to discover a shirt underneath and some kind of vest. Too many clothes.
He was dressed as she had been, smothering the desire, hoping it might go away.
As her hands finally reached his bare skin he let out another noisy breath. She
stopped, waiting, reading the signs, then slowly continued the caress. Again he
relaxed. She let her hands linger, then slid one of them down over the edge of
his trousers onto the bed and toward his right hand. At her touch the fist
clenched. She kept her hand cupped over it, waiting, then slowly the fist
opened itself, the hammer slipping onto the bedspread. She slid it as far away
as she could without risking the noise of its falling on the floor. She took
his hand in hers, entwining their fingers, using her thumb to play with the
inside of his palm. The skin was surprisingly soft, almost like a girl’s, soft
and wet with sweat. She felt a sudden shaft of power.
And as she did so she thought of the woman
in the Prague apartment. And the girl in the attic. And she knew that there had
to be another way, a female way, where redemption is as powerful as violence.
This time when she moved away from his
lips, he came toward her, his mouth messy, greedy. For a second the taste of
him repelled her, the saliva and the smell making her want to puke. She pushed
away the thought and sucked his lips back into hers.
She had released the rest of the clothing
from his trousers and was exploring his chest. The skin underneath was rough
and dry, with wiry little curls around small nipples. Not cared for. Not loved.
How does it happen to some people? she thought. How do they miss out? If you’ve
never been touched, how do you know how to touch? If you’ve never felt, how do
you know how to feel? So unfair. So dangerous. She brought his hand up and
guided it slowly to her body, cupping it over her breast.
The first contact made him shudder. Before
he could pull away she moved her body into his hand, pushed the weight of her
flesh against his palm and heard him groan, a dark, painful sound dragged out
from a long way down. To her astonishment the noise delighted her, as if the
control she was feeling really did contain its own sexuality, the pleasure of
her control. Don’t show it, she thought. Whatever you do don’t let him know.
She was about to help him further when his
fingers found her nipples, hard from the cold and the fear and a sudden
muddied, confused kind of desire. The first squeeze was too tight, it made her
draw a breath too quickly. “Gently,” she said in a whisper. And this time he
heard her and did as he was told. Slowly they toppled from sitting to lying on the
bed. And as they did so she brought up her right leg and used the bottom of her
foot to locate the hammer on the coverlet and push it gently toward the edge.
It hit the floor with a thud.
The sound, or maybe the sudden weight of
him pinning her down onto the bed, brought back a flash of fear. They both felt
it, both sensing the change and tensing themselves away from the other. She
recovered first, reaching up to kiss him again, maneuvering herself half out
from under him, at the same time moving her hand to the top of his trousers,
fumbling to free the button. She used the ball of her palm to push down the
zipper, then slid her hand inside, slipping under the frayed elastic of the
underpants until she found his penis, limp and curled. You’re not ready, she
thought with a sudden panic. Is that your problem? Or is this what you need the
hammer for, to get a hard-on?
Maybe he heard the thought. At her touch he
pulled back violently, and for a moment she thought she had lost it, could feel
him trashing around in search of some way back into control. In search of a
weapon that would give it to him.
“It’s all right,” she said quickly. “It’s
all right.”
She kept her hand over his softness,
holding it there almost tenderly, as she pulled her T-shirt farther up her body
and over her head, rubbing herself against him, letting him feel her nakedness
underneath him. Instinctively his hands went out to touch her again, moving
down from the breasts to her stomach, clumsy, urgent caresses, until his fingers
slid into the tangle of pubic hair. And as he did so she heard herself moan.
The sound had not been deliberate. In fact,
if anything it was more a release of fear than anything to do with pleasure.
But somehow it helped. Both of them.
He hesitated and she knew he was frightened
to go further. Knew that at that moment he was more frightened of her than she
was of him.
I am here, she said to herself, although
the thought didn’t make sense. This is me doing this. Here. Now. It’s not
someone else.
“I’m here,” she said, this time out loud.
“And I’m not pretending. Anything you want to do to me is okay.”
And as she said it, his penis took a jerky
leap in her hand, and he let out a sharp groan of pain and pleasure. At the
same time his fingers slid into her, pushy and overeager, a sudden haste to
everything, the onslaught of a frenetic kind of lust. To her amazement she
realized she was wet. The discovery sent its own shock wave through the pit of
her stomach. She ran her hand gently up and down his prick, her own breath
coming quicker now, teasing him into further erection. Then, registering the
sudden urgency of his need, she slid herself underneath him so she could guide
him into her. It wasn’t that easy, as he was still only half erect, but as he
moved inside the mouth of her he stiffened further, then slid in all the way,
letting out another shattering groan. She heard her own voice join his. And so,
almost without giving her time to move, she felt him rise up, and, with two or
three thrusts, come inside her, a juddering, jerky orgasm that was too hurried
and crude to bring any lasting pleasure.
AIDS, she thought, in a sudden blind moment
of panic. AIDS, and the clap, and a million other diseases that will rot me
slowly for my sins. But even as she recited the litany, those thoughts were
overwhelmed by another. The realization that he was crying.
He had fallen heavily onto her body after
the orgasm. Now he tried to pull himself off, the sobs clutched and angry,
searching frantically around him, groping for something that she knew would be
a weapon. But this time, rather than his violence, all she could feel was his
pain.
“It’s okay. You’re all right,” she said
fiercely, pulling herself up with him and putting both her arms around him,
hugging him hard to her and holding on to him, despite his attempts to wrench
her off. “It’s all right,” she said again. “Really. You don’t have to do
anything more. It’s done. You did it. It was fine.”
And
slowly, as she clung to him, reading the battle in his body between the rage
and the release, she felt the fury diminish and the crying win out.
So it was that she sat there in the winter
night, her body shivering with the cold and the adrenaline, holding on to a man
sobbing his heart out for the fact that the rape he had planned had turned into
an act of lovemaking.
Time passed. And eventually the sobbing
subsided so that now when he started to pull away she knew to let him go. she
stood up and took a robe from the door to cover herself, as she did so feeling
the cold trickle of his semen running down the inside of her thigh. Cold, she
thought. Why is it always cold when it has just erupted from such hot depths?
She used the inside of the robe to wipe it away, and then, as she tied the belt
around her, she felt about the floor with her feet until she came across the
cold edge of the hammer and slid it farther under the bed.
