Suddenly she spoke to me: “My cousin, do you already have an older sister?”

I shook my head to mean no.

“Why not? All the girls in the Side Court have sisters.”

I flushed so deeply that I felt my ears burning. How could I tell her that I wanted to remain faithful to her?

“You are not beautiful,” she went on. “But there is something unusual about you that is very striking. The way you look, your body… Has a woman ever offered to take you in hand?”

Then she leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear: “Have you ever been kissed?”

I wanted to be swallowed up by the ground.

“Come, I’ll show you my secret garden.”

She stood up and I followed her, with my eyes lowered. I heard her flash an impetuous order at my servants: “You may go home. Tell your governess that I shall keep my cousin here to dine. I shall send her back later.”

I was ashamed and embarrassed, unable to breathe a word.

After going through a string of rooms and courtyards, she pushed open a crimson door set into a wall painted with the white of pear trees in blossom. The servants stopped and closed the door behind us. There were mauve lanterns lighting a walkway that ran past pomegranate trees laden with fruit on one side and went around a pond covered with lotus flowers on the other.

She took my hand and led me toward a pavilion. My heart beat frantically, and I no longer had any strength in my arms. I sensed that something was about to happen, and it was too late to flee.

The door opened onto a mysterious embracing perfume. I saw a hexagonal room with the dusk filtering through the windowless wooden walls in which craftsmen had carved thousands of apertures in the shape of five-petaled flowers.

“I had this pavilion built so that I could watch the sunset without being dazzled. It’s the only time of day when the sky is a faithful reflection of life. Look over there, look at the crimson, the deep red, the violet, the scarlet. Tonight, somewhere in our empire, innocent blood is flowing!”

I opened my eyes wide. In that eruption of red and gold, I could make out her face, a hazy circle of black drawing closer. She took me in her arms. I was amazed when I felt her tongue probing my mouth. She leaned the full weight of her body against me, and I fell down into the cushions with her. Her expert hands untied my belt and peeled off my dress, trousers, and silk slippers.

“Undress me,” she said.

I did not know that when sisters slept together they had to be naked, but I obeyed her without hesitating. She removed the golden pin with the pearl, and her long hair tumbled endlessly over her neck. She lay down on this sheet of gleaming hair and drew me on top of her. She put her hand between my thighs. Almost before I felt the agile serpents of her fingers, I gave an involuntary groan.

I started to cry over this undeserved happiness, this little corner of love in my lonely life. My sobbing aroused my cousin. She slid against my body, whispering instructions. I did as she asked. I imitated what she did and watched her face express itself with smiles or frowns. She was trembling and peculiarly tense. Her cheeks grew red and droplets of sweat formed on her brow. The sun slipped off her body. It lingered on the ceiling for a moment, then disappeared through the partitioned wall. She lay in the dark, no longer moving. She was silent for a long time. I was starting to think that she might be dead when she rubbed the flint and lit a candle. Her face was framed by her messy hair, and she looked pale as a ghost.

“I hate night time,” she said darkly. “The shades are my enemies. I know that all these women are jealous of my beauty, and they wait until it’s dark to cast evil spells over me. Can you hear their voices?”

The garden was quiet; I could hear the rustle of leaves, the earth breathing. But she blocked her ears with her hands to escape the malevolent incantations. In the candlelight the roses of her breasts were so pale that her body seemed almost unreal. Then her face was filled with a grimace of pain, as if a strident sound had just pierced her ear-drums; she shuddered and whipped her hands away. A strange snigger of distress distorted her face, and she started throwing the cushions we had been lying on to the four corners of the room. It was only then that I saw that the floor was made of bronze and mercury-it was a mirror.

“Spread your legs,” she said, bringing the candle closer. “Look!”

It was the first time I had seen it, seen that cleft: hairy, convoluted, red-a monstrous lesion.

“Have a good look. It’s with that hideous mouth that they sing, they curse, and they spit their venom! Can’t you hear their hideous music?”

I tried to put my arms around her. She slapped me and started screaming: “Go away! Go away! You disgust me! You’re just a whore, a spy from the Delicate Concubine, a poisoner! Go away!”

“Highness, you’re wrong, I mean you no harm. I love you.”

I knelt before her with my forehead to the ground. She spat at me like a fury and struck me repeatedly. I hid my face in my hands and wept. Then she collapsed, exhausted; the demon left her, and her lucidity was restored. She crawled over to me and begged me to kiss her. We made love again, but I no longer felt anything. Suddenly she started moaning as if in her death throes, and she drenched me in her moment of ecstasy.

IN THE SIDE City eyes were constantly spying, ears constantly listening: Soon I was treated to mysterious smiles expressing irony and envy. A feeling of pride mingled with aching sorrow overwhelmed me. What did they know of this wounded, damaged woman’s madness? When I kissed the Gracious Wife, I believed I was tasting of some delicacy, but I was just drinking the first draught of a terrible poison. I went over the events of that late afternoon a thousand times, throwing myself into that incandescent pavilion as a fisherman throws his net into the river. As I studied every moment, slowly, minutely, forgotten details emerged. Pleasure, shuddering, uneasiness, disgust-the most contradictory emotions caught at my throat in the day and kept me awake at night.

I was determined not to see her again, not to go back to that abyss that swallowed the sunlight, but this woman who was in thrall to demons could surely read the secrets in my heart. Days passed, and I received no further invitation, and absence-that wily magician-turned my aversion to desire. Daily life came to the fore again, with all its weariness and filth. The women around me were walking wounds. I felt an urgent longing to love, to raise myself to the skies through whatever obsession brought me new hope. The Gracious Wife was a lie, a liberating lie!

The violence erased itself from my memory, and only her astonishing beauty remained to obsess me. What torture it was to feel her gentle breasts on my face and her stomach soft as a newly hatched chick only to wake from this impotent dream! I now missed her cries of ecstasy that had frightened me. At night I smelled the air to try and catch the scent of her hair. One strand at a time, it slid over my breast, but I could not hold it. My life had become more unbearable than before I knew her. Now, I had to stand by my choice even if it would be the death of me!

One afternoon, in the grip of madness, I ran to her palace. She received me with no sign of surprise. We had barely exchanged a few polite words before she dismissed her servants, led me to the Pavilion of Dusk, and pushed me to the floor. She lay on top of me, and once again I let myself be beaten. Her pleasure became more intense as she inflicted more pain and humiliation on me. I cried. I hated myself. I despised myself for loving such a monster. My tears fuelled her ecstasy. When she had mortified me with insults, when she had stripped me, abused me, and violated me, she sent me back to the women in the Side Court.