Fernando Arrabal: Lis

XXVIII

Lis came in wearing a blue dress. So I went and hid behind the wardrobe and put on my yellow suit.
I asked her if I might place one hand on her neck when I spoke to her and the other on her hair. And she said, 'Yes.'
Since her breasts were bare I laid white roses on her bosom but I noticed that like all flowers they smelled bad. So I asked her if she'd prefer to watch me draw a goat on the wall. She smiled and I smiled.
I went over to the wall to draw her a goat. But it was a green horse that took shape beneath my fingers. And she smiled. And I didn't smile, but later on I smiled.
Then I drew a blue fish, then a red cockerel. And I asked her if I might place one hand on her neck when I spoke to her and the other on her hair. She said, 'Yes.'
She said, 'Yes,' or she smiled or she kept silent. And as for me, I spoke to her with one hand on her hair and the other on her neck.

XXXII

When Lis arrived I closed the window and I didn't climb onto the wardrobe.
Lis came to see me from time to time and brought me insects with their bodies pierced with a pin: wasps and scarabs and ants, and I fixed them to the head of my bed.
Lis came alone. I asked her why she didn't stay in my room all the time. And she didn't reply. I told her that I could show her many things Altagora had taught me or else I could draw on the wall. She didn't reply, but she smiled.
Then she asked me, 'Do you know how to kiss?' I answered that Altagora had taught me how. And Lis kissed me. And I told her that it was different with her. She smiled.
I noticed two bruises on her arms. I asked her, 'Who did that to you ?' And Lis said, 'A woman who lives with me.' Then she undid her bodice and I saw scars on her back. And as she carefully buttoned her blouse again, she smiled without saying a word.
I fixed the speared insects Lis brought me to the head of my bed the better to see them when I awoke.

XXXVI

When Lis arrived, Altagora had already gone. Before I had even opened my mouth she sat down and began smoking a cigarette. She set it exactly half-way across her lips; it looked as if it were fixed there. She wasn t really smoking, but a wisp of smoke kept rising from the end She didn't move. Then she put a kind of crest on her head which jutted out like a horn or an enormous finger-nail. She didn't move; I saw the tears start into her eyes but she didn't seem to be crying.
And I spoke to her, but she didn't reply.
After a few moments she took off her clothes. There was a kind of mask drawn on her belly and the lips were those of her sex. There in the middle as if it were fixed there she placed the cigarette she had had in her mouth and the wisp of smoke kept rising.
And I spoke to her, but she didn't reply.
After a few minutes she extinguished the cigarette and carefully undressed me. Then she took some carnations out of her bag and laid them on my back, below the kidneys. And I saw that tears were falling from her eyes which were not crying.

XL

Lis came alone. She brought me a dish of lentils. I sat down and ate them. I think she was watching me. As for me, I stared at my plate. Then I wiped my lips with a paper serviette. Lis gave me a glass of water and asked me to rinse my mouth.
Then I heard a voice coming from I don't know where. It sounded like Altagora's voice. It was murmuring, 'Excite him, excite him.'
And then Lis came over to me and put my sex in her mouth. And she touched it with her tongue.
And once again I heard the voice coming from outside and saying, 'Tie him up so he can't finish.'
Lis moved away from me. I felt very hot and I begged her to go on. It was then that she handcuffed my hands behind my back and danced in front of me. I felt hotter and hotter. Outside I heard the sound of a woman's laughter. It sounded like Altagora.

XLIV

And sitting on the chair Lis listened to me without speaking. I asked her if she liked my stones. And I wanted to tell hger one, but I realised I didn't know any, and I told her whatever came into my head and she gazed at me, Amoving. And then I became aware that she was sleeping with her eyes wide open.
I carried her to the bed and I closed her eyes. And I saw her sleeping and breathing. And then I drew a little hand in her hand, a little foot on her foot, a little ear on her ear and on her nose a talisman. And she slept.
I lay down beside her. I made a great effort to sleep, but in vain. And then I realised I had woken up and Lis wasn't there any longer.
I went to the window and I heard her voice. Lis was saying, amidst lascivious laughter, 'He lay down beside me. He didn't so much as touch a hair of my head. He just painted imbecilities on me with a paintbrush.'
And she gave a burst of laughter. And then I heard Altagora's laugh as well. All at once Altagora murmured, in a sober voice, 'Yes, there, there, a little higher, a little higher.' And she sighed. Then after a silence Lis said, 'He slept beside me like an angel, like an angel...'
And she burst out laughing.

LX

Neither Lis nor Altagora spoke to me. They spoke to each other, and the same name kept on recurring in their conversation: 'Sire Peladan.' Little by little, Altagora drew several demoniacal symbols on Lis's body. She drew a green sun round her breasts and a red flame tound the lips of her sex. Then Altagora put long wire ear-rings on Lis's ears and very long, blue artificial nails | on her toes and fingers.
Kneeling, they read a few pages from a book. And Altagora told me to get undressed and she whipped me five times. When she had finished they kissed each other at great length.
Lis lay down on the bed and Altagora caressed her. Then Altagora told me they had decided to reduce my sex and for that to happen I would have to wear a metal belt all the time. She flung icy water between my legs. Then she fixed the belt round my waist and locked it with a key. Lis was on the bed watching me and caressing herself. It seemed to me she was smiling at me and so I smiled back at her.
All at once I felt the belt hurting me. (It was a kind of metal shell with a tap attached to it, into which Altagora had fitted my sex.)
Lis came over and kissed me. And Altagora caressed me. And I told them it was hurting. And Lis stopped kissing me for a moment and smiled at me. But it was hurting me very much and I couldn't smile back at her. Then she went on kissing me and Altagora went on caressing me.

LXVIII

Lis came dressed in trousers, tie and jacket. Her hair was short and she was smoking a pipe.
I called her, 'Lis.' And she answered, 'What?' And I realised her voice wasn't feminine any longer. So I told her she looked like a green horse and I liked looking at her. And Lis did not smile.
I thought I heard Altagora's voice through the wall murmuring insistently, 'Ask him to do that to you.'
Lis laughed. Then she put my hand between her legs. And I felt something voluminous. I heard Altagora's voice once again, seeming to come from the neighbouring room: 'Ask him to do that to you.'
So Lis opened her fly and told me to do it. And I did it. Then she took out a whip. I begged her, 'Not you, not you.'
And Lis hit me. Then Lis got up and went. On the bed she left the man's sex made of rubber which she had been wearing between her legs.

From The Burial of the Sardine
Translated from the French by Patrick Bowles