An odd piece of news doesn't require newspapers. The intelligence that the daughter of the foundry's owner was ready to sleep with any man that took her fancy became public knowledge almost overnight.
The men at the foundry came in washed. Their shirts were so stiff with starch that their neck would bruise by the end of the day. Some men wore their best suit to work, some even borrowed money to buy a small bottle of Cologne. All in the hope of catching the eye of the young maiden.
The only people of their little town who knew nothing of this affair were Odile's family members, who, overnight, became the topic of much gossip.
Odile, careless of the disrepute she was bringing onto her lineage, showed up with the first shift; she looked at the men, and calculated what each one carried with him within his pants, what pleasure she could exact from him. She was so eager to be satisfied that she never waited until the line of men had reached its half point.
'You!' she could say, and she would lead the man into that small alcove the workers had prepared for her.
The room itself, nothing more than a cupboard, quickly became the real heart of the factory. Every man thought about it. Some brought flowers to make it gayer. Some walked past its door dreaming of the day Odile would lead them through its threshold.
The room was so small it barely fit the little frame of the wrought-iron bed. There was a little table and a chair, where the lovers could hang their clothes, and a small basin and a carafe, that could be used to clean the bodies upon arrival, in preparation for those embraces and those caresses Odile so desperately craved, as well as before departure, once the lovers' congress had come to its natural, albeit often dirty, conclusion.
Odile enjoyed trying different types of men. Unlike girls of her age and her extraction, she cared little for age or looks.
One day, she could fancy an attractive young man with broad shoulders and kind manners; the next, she might desire an older person with a pot belly and a bald patch on his head.
'How would he love me?' she would wonder with each pick.
She quickly realised that it was her desire, as well as that of the chosen lover, and their own imagination that contributed to the success of each session.
Good looks and manners had little influence on this result.
Even the size of the man's genitals, their shape, their size and vigour, although in appearance so essential to the act, matter littler than she had expected.
If she was taken by the idea of a particular man, her desire was brought to such height that she would shiver with pleasure at the lightest touch.
She also discovered that older men, who had had more experience, also knew how to extend and heighten her pleasure. They knew whether to say something or to hold their judgment at a particular moment. They knew that a woman's pleasure can be distilled from many places.
A man showed her a trick with his tongue. Another with his finger. She didn't care whether these men had learned a certain movement in the arms of his lawful wives or on the mattress of a brothel. Her only concern was for the effect they could produce.
Soon, she began proposing this thought or suggesting that variation to more inexperienced men. Soon, she learned the pleasure of seducing, not just that, much more congenial to the well-educated young woman, of being seduced.
She also began to like the sound of a man who begged her to stop a certain activity, finding it too daring. How she liked to use her fingers and her tongue, to stare them in their surprised eyes.
'No, miss!' they would say, only to cave under the weight of the undeniable pleasure she could command.
'Please don't stop!' they all ended up saying.
One day, she would let them take her. She would open herself, allowing them free reign on her body. One day, she would ride them, dominate them, control them.
She also learned the subtle pleasure of bringing these men to the edge of their pleasure and hold them there.
'Please keep going!' they would say.
But that phrase, if she was in such a cheeky mood, would only mean a longer respite.
'You can't leave me like this!' was the inevitable retort.
She would watch them beg her. She would command them not to touch themselves: they couldn't relieve their urges without her explicit permission.
Finally, she would relent and resume the coitus, almost bringing tears to these men's eyes.
Odile enjoyed each coupling and took them for their own merit, but she knew that no partner interested her more than Hercule.
As I have said, this was a kind of giant of unusual proportions. He was taller than any of the men; his arms were long and muscular; his torso was wide. The effect was completed by his face: large bones protruded from under the skin; his eyes were large and wild, like those of an animal ready to strike. He kept his hair longer than the other men, in an unkempt manner that truly made him look like a savage or some kind of beast.
While the other men often walked in little groups and conversed with each other, Hercule always came alone and spoke to nobody.
It was as if the other men feared him, and as if he had nothing to communicate to his fellow workers, or if he was conscious of a fundamental difference that passed between him and them.
Odile desired this man greatly. She desired him and was scared of him. Wishing to be possessed by this being seemed like an unnatural act she wasn't supposed to make, and yet she couldn't resist the thought of it.
Odile often made eyes to him, and he did return her gaze, but she never chose him. As I said, she was fearful of him, but she also wanted to slowly increase his desire for her. She wanted him to think about her, what he would want to do to her, how he would take her.
Finally, Odile thought:
'Tomorrow is the day!'
That day, she didn't go to the factory. She wanted to give her body a rest, as if she could seal her pussy, that had been exercised with such constancy and fervour, only for Hercule to open it again and increase the pleasure that penetration of a tighter orifice would give her.
She could barely concentrate. Nothing seemed to interest her: she couldn't rest her eyes on a book; her feet wouldn't carry her on a walk for more than a few steps; she couldn't converse, or embroider, or play a game of Patience. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw him – Hercule. She saw the little room.
She was sure that his body was too long for the bed, too heavy for it. And she was sure that his dick was too big for her opening.
This thought made her laugh, despair, desire even more.
'Tomorrow is the day!' she kept thinking.
Odile spent the day at the house, not knowing how to occupy herself.
It was nearly time for supper. The sun was still high on the horizon, and the day was warm. Odile was sitting in the drawing room, fanning herself, mentally counting the hours that separated her from the encounter with Hercule. She was thinking about the time it would take her to walk to the foundry, how long she would have to wait, the sight of the men coming up to the gates, and finally Hercule's monumental frame appear, towering over the rest.
'You!'
Odile looked up.
Her father was standing on the doorway. He was dishevelled and pale. His hands, resting on his sides, were twitching, clawing at the air. His eyes were filled with anger.
'You!' he repeated.
Odile knew without the need of hearing it.
'Father!' she said.
She didn't show any curiosity at the cause of his agitation. Odile stood up, suddenly beginning to tremble, knowing that her behaviour amounted to a confession.
The man lounged at her, rising his hands.
Odile screamed.
The room was now full of people: servants, her mother, one of Odile's sisters.
'What has happened?' one asked.
'What's he doing?' asked another.
People were trying to restrain Odile's father.
Odile knew that, in that moment, he was ready to murder her. She had turned him into the joke of the town. His own daughter, with his own workers! She could have done nothing worse.
'What has she done?' asked Odile's mother.
But he wouldn't explain. He wouldn't repeat. How could he?
Odile later wondered how he had heard, but that hardly mattered.
Finally, the man fell on a chair and sobbed:
'She has disgraced her… We're done for…'
'Odile, what have you done?' someone asked.
'Please speak!' echoed another.
But Odile couldn't speak. How could she explain what she felt for those men, how she desired them.
If she tried to articulate what she had done, she found her actions revolting and inexcusable, and yet part of her felt that her actions had been very natural.
'She must leave,' Odile's father said in the end.
'But why?' Odile's mother asked.
'We've been disgraced. I wonder if we must leave as well.'
'Father!' Odile's sister asked.
It was decided that, for the moment, Odile would leave and stay with an aunt in the Ain.
Odile knew she would not see Hercule the next day when she heard the sound of the latch of her bedroom door lock.
The next morning, she was awake before dawn. It was still dark outside.
A few servants helped her with her luggage. Her father watched the proceedings at a distance, without saying a word. Nobody else was there.
Odile mounted on a carriage along with an old maid. She looked outside the window, but her father was already gone.
The girl stared at the image of the town becoming smaller and finally disappearing. The familiar views soon vanished.
The maid was busy knitting and would not talk to her. If Odile spoke, the maid would answer as curtly as possible.
Odile felt that everything was lost: she had enjoyed too much, perhaps. All that pleasure was not to be enjoyed. Yes, a woman was supposed to marry a man and submit to the same tedious caresses each night, as the fancy would take him. Now, she was going to live with some unfamiliar relative in isolation, probably kept under lock and key.
One moment, Odile felt ready to submit to that punishment, bemoaning the sinful appetites that infected her flesh, for, surely, her appetites were so extraordinary and unlike those of any other woman, she must have been born with that sickness; and another moment, she was thinking about Hercule and the little room. She was thinking about what that beast would do to her: she would let him do everything!
They changed horses at a post house, where they ate a few bites. The maid watched her with suspicion, and Odile said nothing.
Finally, when the meal was over and it was time to leave, Odile asked:
'Aren't you curious?'
The maid looked up and shook her head, averting her eyes.
'You know?' Odile asked again.
The maid looked at Odile again but didn't answer or confirm that suspicion. She simply said:
'We must leave, mademoiselle, please don't let's the coachman wait.'
Odile was filled with great resentment for this woman, such hatred for how her father had treated her, such tedium for the long travel ahead.
What was the point of living the life of a nun. It was better to be dead already than to be alive but no more than a corpse without any appetites or any joy.
'I will need to use the lavatory,' Odile said.
The maid replied there was a chamber pot in the carriage, and they were late already.
'I won't defecate before you, whatever my crime might be!' Odile protested.
The maid blanched at this language.
'Very well,' she said with the face of a woman who has just drank a glassful of vinegar.
The lavatory was at the back of the building. It was so close to the wood that surrounded the post house that the branches of two large chestnut trees scraped against the back wall.
Odile simply walked into the lavatory, closed the door, and, almost not believing her luck at finding a second door which opened to the opposite side, walked out from this second opening.
She stepped through the trees and, when she turned back after a minute, realised that she could no longer see the post house. She walked calmly.
Initially, she didn't know where to go or what to do. She had no clear design. Then, slowly, she told herself, noticing how the pieces of sky that could be seen through the foliage appeared brighter in a certain direction:
'That must be West. And that is East.'
Yes, that must have been so: she knew that the post house was directly behind her, and she considered from which direction they had approached this building.
'Home must be that way,' she told herself, turning towards that direction.
That was where Hercule was.
The desire that instantly filled her made her turn and moved her feet.
'I will not bother you with the story of those two days in the woods. I ate no food, and I didn't sleep,' Odile told me when she arrived at this point, with such a grandiose but vague tone, that I instantly realised that it was much more likely that she had bribed the maid and the coachman to bring her back and pretend she had escaped their care.
I also wondered if the rest of the tale was in any way false or embellished, but I said nothing. I liked listening to my friend during those first days. It didn't matter much to me whether she was lying or if she was telling me the truth: either way, she was showing me her secret, lustful side.
Odile arrived back to her hometown. Her dress was torn in many parts, and her feet were bloody. She was weak from having not had any food in days, but her great need to have Hercule inside her made her feel no cold and no pain; she felt no hunger or thirst.
She knew that everybody was looking for her, and she could not just show up at the factory.
Instead, Odile waited until it was nighttime, like some wolf who ventures into the valley from the mountains, looking for its prey.