‘Neat and clean in habit, modest—’ WHACK! ‘— … in carriage, silent when—’ Whisp-SNAP! ‘OW!!’ ‘Be careful! If you move, the earlier blow won’t count!’ ‘I–I’m sorry, sir!’ Her soul, she knows, is his invention, and she is grateful to him for it, but exposed like this to the whining slashes of the cane and the sweet breath of mid-afternoon which should cool his righteous ardor but doesn’t (once a bee flew in and stung him on the hand: what did it mean? nothing: she got it on her sit-me-down once, too, and he took the swelling for a target), her thighs shackled by flannelette drawers and blood rushing to her head, she can never remember (for all the times he has explained it to her) why it is that Mother Nature has chosen that particular part of her for such solemnities: it seems more like a place for lettings things out than putting things in. ‘Well? Silent when—?’ ‘Silent when he is angry, willing to please, quick and—’ swish-CRACK! ‘— and of good disposition!’ ‘Sir,’ he reminds her: THWOCK! ‘SIR!’ she cries. ‘Very well, but you must learn to take more pleasure in your appointed tasks, however trivial or unpleasant, and when you are ordered to do anything, do not grumble or let your countenance betray any dislike thereunto, but do it cheerfully and readily!’ ‘Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!’ She is all hot behind, and peering over her shoulder at herself in the wardrobe mirror after the master has gone to shower, she can see through her tears that it’s like on fire, flaming crimson it is, with large blistery welts rising and throbbing like things alive: he’s drawn blood! She dabs at it with her drawers, recalling a dream he once related to her about a teacher he’d had who called his chastisements ‘scripture lessons,’ and she understands now what he’s always meant by demanding ‘a clean sheet of paper.’ Well, certainly it has always been clean, neat and clean as he’s taught her, that’s one thing she’s never got wrong, always washing it well every day in three hot lathers, letting the last lather be made thin of the soap, then not rinsing it or toweling it, but drying it over brimstone, keeping it as much from the air as possible, for that, she knows, will spoil it if it comes to it. She finishes drying it by slapping it together in her hands, then holding it before a good fire until it be thoroughly hot, then clapping it and rubbing it between her hands from the fire, occasionally adding to its fairness by giving it a final wash in a liquor made of rosemary flowers boiled in white wine. Now, she reasons, lifting her drawers up gingerly over the hot tender flesh, which is still twitching convulsively, if she could just apply those same two fairies, method and habit, to the rest of her appointed tasks, she might yet find in them that pleasure he insists she take, according to the manuals. Well, anyway, the worst is past. Or so she consoles herself, as smoothing down her black skirt and white lace apron, she turns to the bed. ‘Oh, teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to …’ What—? There’s something under there! And it’s moving …!
‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘I know that perfection is elusive,’ he explains, putting away his stout engine of duty, while she staggers over, her knees bound by her drawers, to examine her backside in the wardrobe mirror (it is well cut, he knows, and so aglow one might cook little birds over it or roast chestnuts, as the manuals suggest), ‘but what else is there worth striving for?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ She shows no tears, but her face is flushed, her lips are trembling, and she breathes as though she has been running. He goes to gaze out into the garden, vaguely dissatisfied. The room is clean, the bed stripped and made, the maid whipped, why isn’t that enough? Is there something missing in the manuals? No, more likely, he has failed somehow to read them rightly. Yet again. Outside in the sleepy afternoon heat of the garden, the bees are humming, insects chattering, gentler sounds to be sure than the hiss of a birch rod, the sharp report as it smacks firm resonant flesh, yet strangely alien to him, sounds of natural confusion and disorder from a world without precept or invention. He sighs. Though he was thinking ‘invention,’ what he has heard in his inner ear was ‘intention,’ and now he’s not sure which it was he truly meant. Perhaps he should back off a bit — or even let her off altogether for a few days. A kind of holiday from the divine government of pain. Certainly he does not enjoy it nor (presumably) does she. If he could ever believe in her as she believes in him, he might even change places with her for awhile, just to ease his own burden and let her understand how difficult it is for him. A preposterous idea of course, pernicious in fact, an unthinkable betrayal … yet sometimes, late in the day, something almost like a kind of fever of the mind (speaking loosely) steals over — enough! enough! no shrinking! ‘And another thing!’ he shouts, turning on the bed (she is at the door, gathering up her paraphernalia) and throwing back the covers: at the foot on the clean crisp sheets there is a little pile of wriggling worms, still coated with dirt from the garden. ‘WHAT DOES THIS MEAN—?!’ he screams. ‘I–I’m sorry, sir! I’ll clean it up right away, sir!’ Is she testing him? Taunting him? It’s almost an act of madness! ‘Am I being unfair?’ ‘But, sir, you’ve already—!’ ‘What? WHAT—?! Is there to be no end to this—?!’
He holds her over his left knee, her legs locked between his, wrist clamped in the small of her back, her skirt up and her drawers down, and slaps her with his bare hand, first one buttock, reddening it smartly in contrast to the dazzling alabaster (remembering the manuals) of the other, then attacking its companion with equal alacrity. ‘Ow! Please, sir!’ ‘Come, come, you know that the least show of resistance means ten extra cuts of the rod!’ he admonishes her, doubling her over a chair. ‘When you are ordered to do anything, do not grumble or let your countenance betray any dislike thereunto, but do it cheerfully and generously!’ ‘Yes, sir, but—’ ‘What? WHAT—?!’ Whish-CRACK! ‘OW!’ SLASH! Her crimson bottom, hugged close to the pillows, bobs and dances under the whistling cane. ‘When anyone finds fault with you, do not answer rudely!’ Whirr-SMACK! ‘NO, SIR!’ Each stroke, surprising her afresh, makes her jerk with pain and wrings a little cry from her (as anticipated by the manuals when the bull’s pizzle is employed), which she attempts to stifle by burying her face in the horsehair cushion. ‘Be respectful—?’ ‘Be respectful and obedient, sir, to those—’ swish-THWOCK! ‘— placed — OW! — placed OVER you — AARGH!’ Whizz-SWACK! ‘With fear and trembling—’ SMASH! ‘— and in singleness of your heart!’ he reminds her gravely as she groans, starts, quivers under his patient instruction. ‘Ouch! Yes, sir!’ The leather strap whistles down to land with a loud crack across the center of her glowing buttocks, seeming almost to explode, and making what lilies there are left into roses. SMACK! Ker-WHACK! He’s working well now. ‘Am I being unfair?’ ‘N-no, sir!’ WHAP! SLAP! Horsed over the dresser her limbs launch out helplessly with each blow, ‘Kneel down!’ She falls humbly to her hands and knees, her head bowed between his slippered feet, that broad part destined by Mother Nature for such devotions elevated but pointed away from him toward the wardrobe mirror (as though trying, flushed and puffed up, to cry out to itself), giving him full and immediate access to that large division referred to in the texts as the Paphian grove. ‘And resolve every morning —?’ ‘Resolve — gasp! — resolve every morning to be cheerful and—’ He raises the whip, snaps it three times around his head, and brings it down with a crash on her hinder parts, driving her head forward between his legs. ‘And — YOW! — and good-natured that … that day, and if any … if any accident — groan! — should happen to —’ swish-WHACK! ‘— to break that resolution, suffer it … suffer it not—’ SLASH! ‘Oh, sir!’ SWOCK! He’s pushing himself, too, hard perhaps, but he can’t — ‘Please, sir! PLEASE!’ She is clinging to his knee, sobbing into his pajama pants, the two raised hemispheres upon which the strokes have fallen making involuntary motions both vertically and horizontally as though sending a message of distress, all the skin wrinkling like the surface of a lake rippled by the wind. ‘What are you doing?! WHAT DOES THIS MEAN—?!’ He spanks her with a hairbrush, lashes her with a cat-o’-nine-tails, flagellates her with nettles, not shrinking from the hard service to be done, this divine drudgery, clear-browed in his devotion to duty. Perhaps today …! ‘SIR!’ He pauses, breathing heavily. His arm hurts. There is a curious strained expression on her face, flushed like her behind and wet with tears. ‘Sir, if you … if you don’t stop—’ ‘What? WHAT—?!’ ‘You — you won’t know what to do next!’ ‘Ah.’ He has just been smacking her with a wet towel, and the damp rush and pop, still echoing in his inner ear, reminds him dimly of a dream, perhaps the one she interrupted when she arrived. In it there was something about humidity, but it kept getting mixed up somehow with hymnody, such that every time she opened her mouth (there was a woman in the dream) damp chords flowed out and stained his ledgers, bleached white as clean sheets. ‘I’m so old,’ he says, letting his arm drop, ‘and still each day …’ ‘Sir?’ ‘Nothing. A dream …’ Where was he? It doesn’t matter. ‘Why don’t you go for a stroll in the garden, sir? It’s a beautiful day.’ Such impudence: he ignores it. ‘It’s all right,’ he says, draping the blood-flecked towel over his shoulder, scratching himself idly. He yawns. ‘The worst is past.’