Catherine Robbe-Grillet is the 83-year-old widow of Alain Robbe-Grillet, theoretician, novelist, filmmaker, sadist, member of the Académie Française, and acknowledged “pope” of the avant-garde literary movement known as the nouveau roman. He is perhaps best remembered as the writer of Alain Resnais’s 1961 masterpiece, Last Year at Marienbad.

“Catherine is my secret garden,” she says quietly when I inquire about the nature of their intimacy. “I have given myself to her, body and soul. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with either or both, according to her pleasure—and her pleasure is also my pleasure.” When I ask what she will do when Catherine dies, she starts to cry.

A complex, paradoxical portrait emerges. Beverly is a heterosexual, a dominatrix of men, submissive only to one particular person—who is a woman. “Is your driving desire to please Catherine?” I ask. She doesn’t miss a beat: “Absolutely. Yes.”