Gianini accelerated the beat until the music throbbed savagely like a
jungle tom-tom. Then she began to
dance. Not a trained dance. It was hardly a dance at all, strictly speaking,
but the movements, still hesitant, of a being who was slowly coming to life. A deep, long breath. A
frightened, anxious look into the dark space around her, and Maud slipped one
hand behind her back to unfasten her brassiere. At that instant Celita realized the new girl
had just won a victory, that neither she nor any of the other girls had ever
been able to hold an audience in such breathless suspense. After another crash on
the cymbals, Gianini, with beads of sweat on his forehead, abruptly changed the
beat again; the instruments made the music seem to pant, hesitatingly at first,
plaintively, then bit by bit almost triumphantly. Unlike Marie-Lou, she
did not merely mime the stages of love-making. She was living them, defying the
people who were watching her. They could see the tremors run across her skin,
and both men and women alike forgot her breasts, her stomach, her buttocks, to
stare into the wild light in her eyes. When she fell to her
knees, everybody stood up, a few applauding; they were quickly silenced, for,
with her eyelids half-closed, her body was sustaining a mysterious struggle
until, at last, she fell down backwards, drained of all strength.
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