Nymphomaniac: Vol. II

Can I help you?

I have to go back a bit.

I was 12 years old

and on a school trip in the hills.

Are you making fun of me?

What do you mean?

You have this orgasm, not only an orgasm,

- but a spontaneous orgasm. - Yes, it was an orgasm,

though the doctor described it as a...

an epileptic seizure.

And during that orgasm,

you have this vision

of these two women on each side of you?

Was she holding the veil with two fingers like this?

What's the matter?

You don't even... you don't even know who these women were, do you?

No, but one of them did look like the virgin Mary,

now that you mention it.

Well, it wasn't the virgin Mary, I can tell you that.

From your description, it must've been

valeria messalina,

the wife of emperor claudius,

the most notorious nymphomaniac in history.

And the other woman,

the one astride the creature,

that was no one else but the great whore of Babylon

riding on nimrod in the form of a bull.

Your story is like a...

Blasphemous retelling

of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mount...

Which is one of the eastern church's

holiest passages.

It's when the humanity of Christ

is illuminated by the divine light of eternity.

If anyone else would have told me that story,

I would've seen it as a blasphemous joke,

spiced up with a biblical light

emanating from nothing less than a spontaneous orgasm.

And then later, you lost your orgasm altogether.

Wagner. "Das rheingold,

the descent into nibelheim."

Was it that bad?

Try to imagine that in one fell swoop,

you lost all desire to read

and all your love and passion for books and letters.

I don't even know if I can imagine that.

This is nothing less than zeno's paradox.

You are achilles

and the tortoise is the orgasm.

Oh, come on.

Because you were giving chase,

you couldn't reach satisfaction. That's the paradox.

I'm sorry, but it seems as if you're not taking this very seriously.

I'm telling you about the worst thing that's happened to me,

that I, at that point within seconds,

lost all sexual sensation.

My cunt simply went numb!

And immediately we have to hear

about this ridiculous mathematical problem.

In fact, I'm in doubt whether

you're even listening.

Why do you doubt that?

Whenever I've told other men about experiences,

episodes in my sex life,

it was easy to see that they became quite excited.

I got excited.

Yes, about the mathematical crap,

not about the story.

What kind of a person are you actually?

I...

You wouldn't know.

No, but I can guess.

Why didn't I get that earlier?

The fact you don't get excited over my dirty stories

is because you can't relate to them.

You've never been with a woman.

That's quite accurate.

Not with a man either.

Are you sorry about that?

Well yeah, but...

Out of curiosity.

Not out of lust, as you would think.

I consider myself... Asexual.

Of course I... Experimented

with masturbation when I was a teenager, but...

It didn't do much for me.

So there's nothing sexual about me.

It's not as uncommon as you would think.

And of course I've...

I've read a lot about sexual subjects:

"Canterbury tales," "decameron,"

"thousand and one nights."

You name it

and I've read it with great interest and enjoyment...

But only literary enjoyment.

But I... but I think maybe it makes me

a better listener to your story.

I have no preconceived notions or...

or preferences.

I'm actually the best judge you could give your story to.

And when it comes to deciding whether you're

a bad human being or not, I'm...

i have no problems with that.

Because I don't look at you through the glasses

colored by sexuality

or sexual experience.

I'm a virgin.

I'm innocent.

She's looking at me.

Yes.

It's an icon.

Is it Russian?

Yes, it's...

it's a skilled copy,

maybe in the manner of rublev.

Icons are usually connected to the eastern church.

The eastern church?

I might become a bit theoretical.

You may.

I'd like you to tell me about your picture.

Although the Christian church

was split up in 1054 because of differences in opinion

between the eastern church and the Western church...

what we today call the orthodox church

and the Roman catholic church.

This is a typical eastern church icon.

And it usually depicts the virgin Mary

and the infant Jesus, and more rarely,

for instance, the crucifixion,

which in the Western church was much more prevalent.

If you generalize, you could say that

the Western church is the church of suffering,

and the eastern church is the church of happiness.

If you imagine a mental journey from Rome eastward,

you feel how you move away

from guilt and pain towards joy and light.

But you say you didn't believe in God.

No, but the concept of religion is interesting...

Like the concept of sex.

But you won't find me on my knees with the regards to either.

Let's call this chapter,

um, "the eastern church and the Western church."

But it won't be... it won't be a story

about traveling east from Rome

towards the light, but rather the opposite.

So in order not to make it too sad,

I've pepped up the name of the chapter with an extra title.

In spite of my tireless efforts,

my cunt totally failed to respond.

I have to admit there came a time

when we had fun together.

I'll give you a fiver...

Uh-huh.

if you can put this

up inside your cunt.

A fiver?

Right.

Shit.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

- Didn't get any spoons? - No, we didn't.

The most grotesque thing was that it was during that period

where every sexual sensation was denied me...

a period, I must admit,

of secure and restful domestic comfort...

we had moved in together and so on...

that I became pregnant,

because I was careless about my birth control pills.

Consciously or unconsciously,

it was important for me to have a caesarean.

I mean, I was hoping that my cunt was going to fucking work again,

and I had a feeling that

a haphazard birth wouldn't make things better.

I may have been imagining things,

but as I lay there the noise from the instruments

rang out in a chord like

the one from the little flock.

Yes.

And it wasn't fear.

More like a kind of disgust.

I could've sworn i saw him laughing.

A laughing son?

In "doctor faustus," Thomas mann describes the birth of Noah's son ham,

who was laughing when he was born.

Another satanic omen.

Incidentally, the innocent child was named marcel,

after Mars, the Roman God of war.

And motherhood?

I assume maternal love

didn't quite live up to its expectations.

No, I didn't have any expectations.

And maternal love wasn't a problem.

It was just that each time

I looked into the child's eyes,

I had this unsettling feeling

of having been found out.

I know it's probably a strange thing

to say about a child...

that my love wasn't being returned...

but it was my perception.