The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (16 page)

“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir!”

He grabs a towel and wraps it around him, but she snatches it away again: “That one’s damp, sir!” She dashes out to fetch him a fresh one and he is moved by her transparent
enthusiasm, her eagerness to please, her seemingly unquenchable appetite for hope: perhaps today . . . ! But he has already noticed that she has forgotten her lace cap, there’s a dark stain
on the bib of her apron, and her garters are dangling. He sighs, reaches for the leather strap. Somehow (is there to be no end to this? he wonders ruefully) it should be easier than this.

She does not enjoy the discipline of the rod, nor does he – or so he believes, though what would it matter if he did? Rather, they are both dedicated to the fundamental
proposition (she winces at the painful but unintended pun, while peering over her shoulder at herself in the wardrobe mirror, tracing the weals with her fingertips) that her daily tasks, however
trivial, are perfectible, her punishments serving her as a road, loosely speaking, to bring her daily nearer God, at least in terms of the manuals. Tenderly, she lifts her drawers up over her
blistered sit-me-down, smoothes down her black alpaca dress and white lace apron, wipes the tears from her eyes, and turns once more to the unmade bed. Outside, the bees humming in the noonday sun
remind her of all the time she’s lost. At least, she consoles herself, the worst is past. But the master is pacing the room impatiently and she’s fearful his restlessness will confuse
her again.

“Why don’t you go for a stroll in the garden, sir?” she suggests deferentially.

“You may speak when spoken to!” he reminds her, jabbing a finger at her sharply.

“I – I’m sorry, sir!”

“You must be careful not only to do your work quietly, but to keep out of sight as much as possible, and never begin to speak to your master, unless –?”

“Unless it be to deliver a message, sir, or ask a necessary question!”

“And then to do it in as few words as possible,” he adds, getting down his riding whip. “Am I being unfair?”

“But, sir! you’ve already –!”

“What?
What?!
Answering back to a reproof?”

“But –!”

“
Enough!
” he rages, seizing her by the arm and dragging her over to the bed.

“
Please!
”

But he pulls her down over his left knee, pushes her head down on the stripped mattress, locking her legs in place with his right leg, clamps her right wrist in the small of her back, throws her
skirts back and jerks her drawers down.

“
Oh
,
sir!
” she pleads, what is now her highest part still radiant and throbbing from the previous lesson.

“SILENCE!” he roars, lifting the whip high above his head, a curious strained expression on his face. She can hear the whip sing as he brings it down, her cheeks pinch together
involuntarily, her heart leaps: “
He
’
ll draw blood!
”

Where does she come from? Where does she go? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that every day she comes here, dressed in her uniform and carrying all her paraphernalia
with her, which she sets down by the door; then she crosses the room, opens up the curtains and garden doors, makes his bed soft and easy, first airing the bedding, turning the mattress, and
changing the linens, scrubs and waxes the tiled floor, cleans the bathroom, polishes the furniture and all the mirrors, replenishes all supplies, and somewhere along the way commits some
fundamental blunder, obliging him to administer the proper correction. Every day the same. Why does he persist? It’s not so much that he shares her appetite for hope (though sometimes, late
in the day, he does), but that he could not do otherwise should he wish. To live in the full sense of the word, he knows, is not merely to exist, but to give oneself to some mission, surrender to a
higher purpose, but in truth he often wonders, watching that broad part destined by Mother Nature for such solemnities quiver and redden under his hand (he thinks of it as a blank ledger on which
to write), whether it is he who has given himself to a higher end, or that end which has chosen and in effect captured him?

Perhaps, she thinks, I’d better go out and come in again . . . And so she enters. As though once and for all, though she’s aware she can never be sure of this. She
sets down beside the door all the vital paraphernalia of her office, checking off each item on her fingers, then crosses the room (circumspectly etc.) and flings open the curtains and garden doors
to the midday sun. Such a silence all about? She tries to take heart from it, but it is not so inspiring as the song of birds, and even the bees seem to have ceased their humming. Though she has
resolved, as always, to be cheerful and good-natured, truly serving with gladness as she does, she nevertheless finds her will flagging, her mind clouded with old obscurities: somehow, something is
missing. “Teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to see,” she recites dutifully, but the words seem meaningless to her and go nowhere. And now, once again, the hard part. She
holds back, trembling – but what can she do about it? For she knows her place and is contented with her station, as he has taught her. She takes a deep breath of the clean warm air blowing in
from the garden and, fearing the worst, turns upon the bed, hurls the covers back, and screams. But it is only the master. “Oh! I beg your pardon, sir!”

“A . . . a dream,” he explains huskily, as his erection withdraws into his pajamas like a worm caught out in the sun, burrowing for shade. “Something about a lecture on civil
severity, what’s left of it, and an inventory of soaps . . . or hopes . . .”

He’s often like that as he struggles (never very willingly, it seems to her) out of sleep. She leaves him there, sitting on the edge of the bed, squinting in the bright light, yawning and
scratching himself and muttering something depressing about being born again, and goes to the bathroom to change the towels, check the toothpaste and toilet paper, wipe the mirror and toilet seat,
and put fresh soap in the shower tray, doing the will of God and the manuals, endeavoring to please. As he shuffles groggily in, already reaching inside his fly, she slips out, careful not to speak
as she’s not been spoken to, and returns to the rumpled bed. She tosses back the blankets afresh (nothing new, thank you, sir), strips away the soiled linens, turns and brushes the mattress
(else it might imbibe an unhealthy kind of dampness and become unpleasant), shakes the feather pillows and sets everything out to air. While the master showers, she dusts the furniture, polishes
the mirrors, and mops the floor, then remakes the bed, smooth and tight, all the sheets and blankets tucked in neatly at the sides and bottom, the top sheet turned down at the head, over the
blankets, the spread carried under, then over the pillows, and hanging equally low at both sides and the foot: ah! it’s almost an act of magic! But are those flyspecks on the mirror? She rubs
the mirror and, seeing herself reflected there, thinks to check that her apron strings are tied and her stocking seams are straight. Peering over her shoulder at herself, her eye falls on the
mirrored bed: one of the sheets is dangling at the foot, peeking out from under the spread as though exposing itself rudely. She hurries over, tucks it in, being careful to make the proper diagonal
fold, but now the spread seems to be hanging lower on one side than the other. She whips it back, dragging the top sheet and blankets part way with it. The taps have been turned off; the master is
drying himself. Carefully, she remakes the bed, tucking in all the sheets and blankets properly, fluffing the pillows up once more, covering it all with the spread, hung evenly. All this bedmaking
has raised a lot of dust: she can see her own tracks on the floor. Hurriedly she wipes the furniture again and sweeps the tiles. Has she bumped the bed somehow? The spread is askew once again like
a gift coming unwrapped. She tugs it to one side, sees ripples appear on top. She tries to smooth them down, but apparently the blankets are wrinkled underneath. She hasn’t pushed the dresser
back against the wall. The wardrobe door is open, reflecting the master standing in the doorway to the bathroom, slapping his palm with a bull’s pizzle. She stands there, downcast, shoulders
trembling, her arms pressed to her sides, unable to move. It’s like some kind of failure of communication, she thinks, her diligent endeavors to please him forever thwarted by her
irremediable clumsiness.

“Come, come! A little arrangement and thought will give you method and habit,” he reminds her gravely. “Two fairies that will make the work disappear before a ready pair of
hands!”

In her mind, she doesn’t quite believe it, but her heart is ever hopeful, her hands readier than he knows. She takes the bed apart once more and remakes it from the beginning, tucking
everything in correctly, fluffing the pillows, laying the spread evenly: all tight and smooth it looks. Yes! She pushes the dresser (once he horsed her there: she shudders to recall it, a flush of
dread racing through her) back against the wall, collects the wet towels he has thrown on the floor, closes the wardrobe door. In the mirror, she sees the bed. The spread and blankets have been
thrown back, the sheets pulled out. In the bathroom doorway, the master taps his palm with the stretched-out bull’s pizzle, testing its firmness and elasticity, which she knows to be
terrifying in its perfection. She remakes the bed tight and smooth, not knowing what else to do, vaguely aware as she finishes of an unpleasant odor. Under the bed? Also her apron is missing and
she seems to have a sheet left over. Shadows creep across the room, silent now but for the rhythmic tapping of the pizzle in the master’s hand and the pounding of her own palpitating
heart.

Sometimes he stretches her across his lap. Sometimes she must bend over a chair or the bed, or lie flat out on it, or be horsed over the pillows, the dresser or a stool, there
are manuals for this. Likewise her drawers: whether they are to be drawn tight over her buttocks like a second skin or lowered, and if lowered, by which of them, how far, and so on. Her responses
are assumed in the texts (the writhing, sobbing, convulsive quivering, blushing, moaning, etc.), but not specified, except insofar as they determine his own further reactions – to resistance,
for example, or premature acquiescence, fainting, improper language, an unclean bottom, and the like. Thus, once again, her relative freedom: her striped buttocks tremble and dance spontaneously
under the whip which his hand must bring whistling down on them according to canon – ah well, it’s not so much that he envies her (her small freedoms cost her something, he knows that),
but that he is saddened by her inability to understand how difficult it is for him, and without that understanding it’s as though something is always missing, no matter how faithfully he
adheres to the regulations.

“And –?”

“And be neat and clean in your –” whisp-
CRACK!
“–
OW! habit! Oh! and wash yourself all over once a day to avoid bad smells and
–”
hiss-SNAP!
“– and –
gasp!
– wear strong decent underclothing!”

The whip sings a final time, smacks its broad target with a loud report, and little drops of blood appear like punctuation, gratitude, morning dew.

“That will do, then. See that you don’t forget to wear them again!”

“Yes, sir.” She lowers her black alpaca skirt gingerly over the glowing crimson flesh as though hooding a lamp, wincing at each touch. “Thank you, sir.”

For a long time she struggled to perform her tasks in such a way as to avoid the thrashings. But now, with time, she has come to understand that the tasks, truly common, are
only peripheral details in some larger scheme of things which includes her punishment – indeed, perhaps depends upon it. Of course she still performs her duties
as
though
they
were perfectible and her punishment could be avoided, ever diligent in endeavoring to please him who guides her, but though each day the pain surprises her afresh, the singing of the descending
instrument does not. That God has ordained bodily punishment (and Mother Nature designed the proper place of martyrdom) is beyond doubt – every animal is governed by it, understands and fears
it, and the fear of it keeps every creature in its own sphere, forever preventing (as he has taught her) that natural confusion and disorder that would instantly arise without it. Every state and
condition of life has its particular duties, and each is subject to the divine government of pain, nothing could be more obvious, and looked on this way, his chastisements are not merely necessary,
they might even be beautiful. Or so she consoles herself, trying to take heart, calm her rising panic, as she crosses the room under his stern implacable gaze, lowers her drawers as far as her
knees, tucks her skirt up, and bends over the back of a chair, hands on the seat, thighs taut and pressed closely together, what is now her highest part tensing involuntarily as though to reduce
the area of pain, if not the severity. “It’s . . . it’s a beautiful day, sir,” she says hopefully.

“What?
WHAT?!
”

Relieving himself noisily in the bathroom, the maid’s daily recitals in the next room (such a blast of light out there – even in here he keeps his eyes half closed)
thus drowned out, he wonders if there’s any point in going on. She is late, has left half her paraphernalia behind, is improperly dressed, and he knows, even without looking, that the towels
are damp. Maybe it’s some kind of failure of communication. A mutual failure. Is that possible? A loss of syntax between stroke and weal? No, no, even if possible, it is unthinkable. He turns
on the shower taps and lets fall his pajama pants, just as the maid comes in with a dead fetus and drops it down the toilet, flushes it.

“I found it in your bed, sir,” she explains gratuitously (is she testing him?), snatching up the damp towels, but failing to replace them with fresh ones. At least she’s
remembered her drawers today: she’s wearing them around her ankles. He sighs as she shuffles out. Maybe he should simply forget it, go for a stroll in the garden or something, crawl back into
bed (a dream, he recalls now: something about lectures or ledgers – an inventory perhaps – and a bottomless hole, glass breaking, a woman doing what she called “the hard
part” . . . or did she say “heart part”?), but of course he cannot, even if he truly wished to. He is not a free man, his life is consecrated, for though he is
her
master,
her failures are inescapably
his
. He turns off the shower taps, pulls up his pajama pants, takes down the six-thonged martinet.