Kajira of Gor (21 page)

and then lifting her head, piteously, to him. “Buy me, Master,” she said. “I

will give you much pleasure..”

“Next!” barked the trainer.

The next woman then hurried to Drusus and, threw herself to her belly before

him, kissing his feet. She then rose slowly to her knees, kissing him from the

ankles to the waist.

Kneeling before him, then, close to him, holding his legs she looked up at him.

“Buy me, Master,” she whispered. “I will give you much pleasure.”

How furious I was that these women were being sent to the feet of Drusus

Rencius. They were naked and beautiful, but who would want to buy them? They

were only slaves. That could be told by the collars they wore, bars of rounded

iron which, here, in the house, had been curved about their necks and hammered

shut. I stood in the background, angry, braceleted, helpless.

“You!” said the trainer, gesturing to another girl with his Whip. “To his feetl

Beg for love!”

This girl hurried forward and knelt before Drusus Rencius.

“I beg for love, Master,” she whispered.

“You!” said the trainer, indicating another girl. She, too, hurried forward. She

knelt before Drusus Rencius, her palms on the floor, her head to the very tiles.

“I beg for love,” she whispered. “I beg for love, Master.”

I was startled. I realized, suddenly, that these two women, indeed, were begging

for love. “Beg elsewhere, sluts!” I thought. “Leave Drusus Rencius alone!” And

how offensive that a woman should beg for love! Surely her intimate, desperate

needs for attention, for affection and love were better concealed even from

herself, if possible, and certainly, at least, from others! And if they must

beg, the helpless sluts, did they not know how a woman be~, by looks, by

glances, by small, hopeful services. Surely a woman should not be expected to

speak honestly in such matters. What brute would force her to such extremities?

Too, how vulnerable a woman would make herself, placing herself so at the mercy

of men, subject to being spurned, subject to his scorn and rejection.

Yet how simple, how straightforward and liberating might be such a confession.

How beautiful it might be to so express one’s vulnerability, and femininity, so

tenderly, so piteously, so openly. To be sure, one would expect such a

confession only from a woman whose needs were both desperate and deep, a woman

who had needs such as might characterize slaves.

“Come along,” said Hermidorus.

“Please, Drusus,” I said. “My hands have been braceleted long enough. I am

beginning to feel too helpless, too much like a slave. Please release me.”

“I will release you in the room,” he said. I then continued to follow him, still

braceleted, through the alleys, toward the inn of Lysias.

“Slowly, more humbly,” cautioned the trainer, half crouching over, watching

carefully, moving slowly beside the girl. Then he moved about her, more quickly,

varying his perspective. Then he moved to the end of the room, where he might

wait for her to approach. “Head lower,” he said. “Better, better.” I watched her

approach him, head down, on her hands and knees, her breasts depending

beautifully. Then she dropped the whip from her teeth before his booted feet.

She then remained there, head down, in position. “Better,” he said. He then

picked up the whip and tossed it across the tiles. “Again,” he said. She then

rose lightly to her feet and hurried to the whip, where, once more, she dropped

to her hands and knees. She picked up the whip delicately in her teeth, and

looked at him. He snapped his fingers. Again, then, head down, slowly, she

approached him, the whip held in her mouth.

“Kneel, back on your heels,” said the trainer to the dark haired woman.

“Straighten your back, suck in your gut, put your shoulders back, thrust out

your breasts, spread your knees, widely, lift your chin, put your hands on your

thighs.

You are not going to be sold as a tower slave, Lady Tina. You are going to be

sold as a pleasure slave.”

The whip cracked, and I jumped. But it had not touched the girl, only startled

her.

She knelt behind the dark, smooth post, facing it, her knees on either side of

it, her belly and breasts against it, her hands embracing it.

“this may be done to music,” said Hermidorus, “and, as you know, there are many

versions to the post dance, or pole dance, singly, or with more than one girl,

with or without bonds, wand so on, but here we are using it merely as a training

exercise.

The whip cracked again and the girl, suddenly and lasciviously, became active.

I gasped.

She began to writhe about the pole. “Kiss it, caress it, love It!” commanded the

trainer, snapping the whip. “Now more slowly, now scarcely moving, now use your

thighs, and breasts more, moving all about it, holding it. Touch it with your

tongue, lick it! Use the inside of your thighs more, your breasts, turn about

it, slowly, sensuously. Lift your hands above your head, palms to the pole,

caressing it. Turn about the pole! Twist about it! Now to your knees, holding

it!” He then cracked the whip again. “Enough!” he said. She was then as she had

been before, kneeling behind the post, her knees on either side of it, her belly

and breasts pressed against it, her hands embracing it. The girl was looking at

me. She was wondering, perhaps, if I were the next to be put to the post. I

looked away, angrily. Did she not know I was not a lowly thing like she? Did she

not know I was free?

“It is a useful exercise,” said Hermidorus to Drusus.

‘Obviously,” agreed Drusus.

I looked back at the girl. She was now looking away. I looked at the post. It

was dark, and shiny. It had been polished smooth, apparently, by the bodies of

many girls.

The girl looked suddenly at me. There was a hostility in our looks toward one

another. She saw, I think, in my eyes, that I thought I could have done better

at the post than she.

Then I looked away. What would I care for her opinionsi

Were we competitive women?

“Come along,” said Hermidorus.

“These women,” said Hermidorus, “are practicing their floor movements.”

A trainer stood among them, with a whip. Occasionally he would snap this whip

near a girl. I did not doubt but what the girls on the tiles, if they were found

sufficiently displeasing to the trainer, or too frequently required the

admonitory signal of the cracking leather, would soon hear the snap of the lash

not in their mere vicinity but on their own bared bodies. Two of the girls, I

saw, had stripes on them, one on the thigh, and one on the side. The trainer was

not now paying them much attention. They were now, apparently, doing well.

“Come along,” said Hermidorus.

“How beautiful!” I breathed.

Drusus Rencius looked sharply at me. I feared for a moment I might be struck.

Hermidorus, on the other hand, did not seem to notice. My exclamation, perhaps,

had seemed sufficiently inadvertent, involuntary and irrepressible, to be

ignored; or perhaps it was to be ignored because I was not a slave, but a free

woman. I did not meet Drusus Rencius’s eyes. It was not like I had just decided

to speak and had spoken. In a place like this I did not know if I was subject to

discipline or not. I did not think so, for I was a free woman. On the other hand

I knew I was here on the sufferance of the house of Kijomenes. Indeed, on these

premises, I knew that Drusus Rencius even held a license on me.

The drummer and the flautist prepared once more to play.

The girl in the long, light chain smiled at me. She, at any rate, was pleased by

my response.

A wrist ring was fastened on her right wrist. The long, slender, gleaming chain

was fastened to this and, looping down and up, ascended gracefully to a wide

chain ring on her collar, through which it freely passed, thence descending,

looping down, and ascending, looping up, gracefully, to the left wrist ring. If

she were to stand quietly, the palms of her hands ~n her thighs, the lower

portions of the chain, those two dangling loops, would have been about at the

level of her knees, just a little higher. The higher portion of the chain, of

course, would be at the collar loop.

The musicians began again to play. There is much that can be done with such a

chain. It was a dancing chain. Its purpose was not to confine the girl but to

allow her to incorporate it in her dance, enhancing the dance with its movements

and beauty. It is, of course, symbolic of her bondage, this adding fantastic

dimensions of significance to the dance.

It is not merely a beautiful woman who dances, but one who can be bought and

sold, one who is subject to male ownership. Too, of course, the wrist rings, and

the collar, are truly locked on her. There is no doubt about it. It is a slave,

with all that that means, who is dancing.

I watched her, my breath almost taken away by her beauty.

“She is a valuable woman,” said Hermidorus.

I did not doubt it.

“’Come along,” he said.

We are readying her for her sale,” said Hermidorus.

I watched her naked on the block, under the tutelage of a whip-carrying trainer.

It was small, rounded room, with mirrors. He was putting her through slave

paces.

“She is to be auctioned in five days,” said Hermidorus.

My eyes and those of the girl met. At that instant her weight was on the palms

of her hands, her arms straight, and the sides of her feet, her body lifted from

the block, her legs ~ight and spread widely behind her.

I realized then, with a shock, that she was going to be sold

Then she was being put through further slave paces.

“Come along,” said Hermidorus.

I was trembling. The hand of Drusus Rencius on my arm drew me, bodily, from the

room.

‘I have changed my mind!” wept the girl. “I will be pleasing! I will be

pleasing!”

I looked through the heavy bars of the cell, some three inches in thickness,

reinforced with crosspieces, to the opposite wall. It was hard to see. There,

kneeling on straw, trying to pull towards us, her wrists tied behind her hack to

a ring set in the wall, was a blond girl. “I will be pleasing!” she wept. “I

will be pleasing! I will be pleasing!”

I then turned away from her, following Hermidorus and Drusus Rencius.

“She is not yet begging to be pleasing,” said Hermidorus to Drusus.

“Correct,” he said.

I looked behind myself, following them, at the dark cells, most of them empty,

along the corridor. This was certainly not my favorite part of the house. It was

dark, and cold, and clammy. Occasionally my bare feet stepped in puddles of cold

water, seeped to this level, and caught in concavities or irregularities in the

corridor flooring. And, here and there, I could see passages, narrow, crooked

and dark, leading to even lower levels. I was pleased that we were not going to

traverse them. It had seemed frightening enough to me to come even to this

level. Sometimes, in our descent, bn cat-walks, we had even passed over pit

cells, little more than holding holes, ceilinged with locked iron gates, sunk in

the floor of the corridor. I had cried out with misery and terror in passing

over one of these for a large hand, emerging suddenly through the grating, had

seized my ankle. Drusus Rencius had pried open the fingers ‘and thrust the hand

away. I then kept closely to the center of the catwalks. There were male slaves

in this house, too, I had learned. Had the slave known I was free, I do not

think he would have touched me.

He might have remained crouching in his hole, thinking what thoughts he might,

but I do not think he would have dared to touch me. A male slave can be slain

for touching a free woman. “She is not here for punishment,” Hermidorus had

informed the dark shapes beneath the grating. I then realized that a slave girl,

perhaps for purposes of her discipline, might be lowered through the grating

hole, doubtless into eager hands, the grating then being resecured.

In the corridors, in our movements through them, particularly in the upper

levels, we would sometimes encounter slaves, usually employed in domestic tasks,

such as running errands, carrying burdens, dusting or cleaning. These women were

usually naked, except for their collars, which, I gathered, was the way women

were usually kept in a slaver’s house. At the approach of the free men,

Hermidorus and Drusus, they would immediately position themselves, usually with

their knees wide, kneeling back on their heels, their heads up, their bands on

their thighs, in the position I had come to understand was that of the pleasure

slave, but sometimes, instead; kneeling with the palms of their hands on the

tiles, their heads down, too, to the same tiles.

There was one temporary, partial exception to this, which I wrn mention. After

we had left some carpeted corridors, higher in the house, and were moving to the

lower levels, and traversing heavy, ftagstonelike tiles, we approached a

slender, dark-haired girl who, on her hands and knees, in chains, with a bucket

of water, cloths and a brush, in that portion of the corridor, was scrubbing

tiles.