The cuck in Literature 12
I decided to spy on her instead.
One afternoon I hired a coupé and ordered the driver to wait near her house. I sat inside with the curtains drawn. I waited for some time. At last she came out. I told the driver to follow her at a distance.
Marta walked down a sidestreet, then turned left up an avenue parallel to the one she lived in and where there were still only a few houses. She stopped at a small building with a façade of green tiles. She went in without knocking.
God, how I suffered! I had followed her in search of proof that she had another lover. I must have been mad. For then, even if I had wanted to, I could no longer delude myself.
And how deceived I had been before to think I would not care if my lover betrayed me in the flesh, that it would matter little to me if she belonged to others.
Then began my final torment …
I made an entirely fruitless effort to forget what I had discovered, to hide my head beneath the sheets the way c***dren do on winter nights, for fear of thieves.
When I embraced her, I flew into such wild ecstasies, bit her so passionately, that once she cried out.
Indeed, whilst it wounded my very soul to know she was possessed by another lover, it also excited me, inflamed my desire …
Yes – the truth flickered before me in livid purple – that splendid, glorious body had given itself to three men, three males had covered it, profaned it, drunk of it. Only three? Perhaps a whole multitude. And even while that idea was still lacerating my mind, I was also filled by a perverse desire for it to be true.
When I clutched her convulsively to me, it was in fact as if, with my monstrous kisses, I was also possessing all the male bodies that had passed through hers.
I became obsessed with finding on her flesh some mark, some wound left by love, some trace of one of her other lovers.
And, at last, one triumphant day, I found a great black bruise on her left breast. On an impulse, I glued my mouth furiously to that mark, sucking, biting, tearing at it.
Marta, however, did not cry out. Nothing would have been more natural than for her to cry out at my v******e, for I could even taste blood in my mouth. But she made not a murmur. She seemed not even to notice that brutal caress.
When she left, in fact, I was unable to recall that kiss of fire, some strange doubt would not allow me to remember it.
Excerpt From: Mario de Sa-Carneiro. “Lucio's Confession” (1913).
One afternoon I hired a coupé and ordered the driver to wait near her house. I sat inside with the curtains drawn. I waited for some time. At last she came out. I told the driver to follow her at a distance.
Marta walked down a sidestreet, then turned left up an avenue parallel to the one she lived in and where there were still only a few houses. She stopped at a small building with a façade of green tiles. She went in without knocking.
God, how I suffered! I had followed her in search of proof that she had another lover. I must have been mad. For then, even if I had wanted to, I could no longer delude myself.
And how deceived I had been before to think I would not care if my lover betrayed me in the flesh, that it would matter little to me if she belonged to others.
Then began my final torment …
I made an entirely fruitless effort to forget what I had discovered, to hide my head beneath the sheets the way c***dren do on winter nights, for fear of thieves.
When I embraced her, I flew into such wild ecstasies, bit her so passionately, that once she cried out.
Indeed, whilst it wounded my very soul to know she was possessed by another lover, it also excited me, inflamed my desire …
Yes – the truth flickered before me in livid purple – that splendid, glorious body had given itself to three men, three males had covered it, profaned it, drunk of it. Only three? Perhaps a whole multitude. And even while that idea was still lacerating my mind, I was also filled by a perverse desire for it to be true.
When I clutched her convulsively to me, it was in fact as if, with my monstrous kisses, I was also possessing all the male bodies that had passed through hers.
I became obsessed with finding on her flesh some mark, some wound left by love, some trace of one of her other lovers.
And, at last, one triumphant day, I found a great black bruise on her left breast. On an impulse, I glued my mouth furiously to that mark, sucking, biting, tearing at it.
Marta, however, did not cry out. Nothing would have been more natural than for her to cry out at my v******e, for I could even taste blood in my mouth. But she made not a murmur. She seemed not even to notice that brutal caress.
When she left, in fact, I was unable to recall that kiss of fire, some strange doubt would not allow me to remember it.
Excerpt From: Mario de Sa-Carneiro. “Lucio's Confession” (1913).
6 years ago