Perhaps I should go for a stroll in the garden, he muses, dutifully reddening one resonant cheek with a firm volley of slaps, then the other, according to the manuals. I’m so old, and still … He sighs ruefully, recalling a dream he was having when the maid arrived (when was that?), something about a woman, bloody morning glories (or perhaps in the dream they were ‘mourning’ glories: there was also something about a Paphian grave), and a bee that flew in and stung him on his tumor, which kept getting mixed up somehow with his humor, such that, swollen with pain, he was laughing like a dead man … ‘Sir?’ ‘What? WHAT—?!’ he cries, starting up. ‘Ah …’ His hand is resting idly on her flushed behind as though he meant to leave it there. ‘I … I was just testing the heat,’ he explains gruffly, taking up the birch rod, testing it for strength and elasticity to wake his fingers up. ‘When I’m finished, you’ll be able to cook little birds over it or roast chestnuts!’ He raises the rod, swings it three times round his head, and brings it down with a whirr and a slash, reciting to himself from the manuals to keep his mind, clouded with old obscurities, on the task before him: ‘Sometimes the operation is begun a little above the garter—’ whish-SNAP! ‘— and ascending the pearly inverted cones —’ hiss-WHACK! ‘— is carried by degrees to the dimpled promontories —’ THWOCK! ‘— which are vulgarly called the buttocks!’ SMASH! ‘Ow, sir! PLEASE!’ She twists about on his knee, biting her lip, her highest part flexing and quivering with each blow, her knees scissoring frantically between his legs. ‘Oh, teach me,’ she cries out, trying to stifle the sobs, ‘my God and—’ whizz-CRACK! ‘— King, thee — gasp! — to—’ WHAP! ‘— SEE!’ Sometimes, especially late in the day like this, watching the weals emerge from the blank page of her soul’s ingress like secret writing, he finds himself searching it for something, he doesn’t know what exactly, a message of sorts, the revelation of a mystery in the spreading flush, in the pout and quiver of her cheeks, the repressed stutter of the little explosions of wind, the — whush-SMACK! — dew-bejeweled hieroglyphs of crosshatched stripes. But no, the futility of his labors, that’s all there is to read there. Birdsong, no longer threatening, floats in on the warm afternoon breeze while he works. There was a bee once, he remembers, that part of his dream was true. Only it stung him on his hand, as though to remind him of the painful burden of his office. For a long time after that he kept the garden doors closed altogether, until he realized one day, spanking the maid for failing to air the bedding properly, that he was in some wise interfering with the manuals. And what has she done wrong today? he wonders, tracing the bloody welts with his fingertips. He has forgotten. It doesn’t matter. He can lecture her on those two fairies, confusion and disorder. Method and habit, rather … ‘Sir …?’ ‘Yes, yes, in a minute …’ He leans against the bedpost. To live in the full sense of the word, he reminds himself, is not to exist or subsist merely, but to … to … He yawns. He doesn’t remember.
While examining the dismal spectacle of her throbbing sit-me-down in the wardrobe mirror (at least the worst is past, she consoles herself, only half believing it), a solution of sorts to that problem of genesis that’s been troubling her occurs to her: to wit, that change (she is thinking about change now, and conditions) is eternal, has no beginning — only conditions can begin or end. Who knows, perhaps he has even taught her that. He has taught her so many things, she can’t be sure anymore. Everything from habitual deference and the washing of tiffany to pillow fluffing, true service and perfect freedom, the two fairies that make the work (speaking loosely) disappear, proper carriage, sheet folding, and the divine government of pain. Sometimes, late in the day, or on being awakened, he even tells her about his dreams, which seem to be mostly about lechers and ordure and tumors and bottomless holes (once he said ‘souls’). In a way it’s the worst part of her job (that and the things she finds in the bed: today it was broken glass). Once he told her of a dream about a bird with blood in its beak. She asked him, in all deference, if he was afraid of the garden, where-upon he ripped her drawers down, horsed her over a stool, and flogged her so mercilessly she couldn’t stand up after, much less sit down. Now she merely says, ‘Yes, sir,’ but that doesn’t always temper the vigor of his disciplinary interventions, as he likes to call them. Such a one for words and all that! Tracing the radiant weals on that broad part of her so destined with her fingertips, she wishes that just once she might hear something more like, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant, depart in peace!’ But then what? When she returned, could it ever be the same? Would he even want her back? No, no, she thinks with a faint shudder, lifting her flannelette drawers up gingerly over soul’s well-ruptured ingress (she hopes more has got in than is leaking out), the sweet breath of late afternoon blowing in to remind her of the time lost, the work yet to be done: no, far better her appointed tasks, her trivial round and daily act of contrition, no matter how pitiless the master’s interpretation, than consequences so utterly unimaginable. So, inspirited by her unquenchable appetite for hope and clear-browed devotion to duty, and running his maxims over in her head, she sets about doing the will of God from the heart, scouring the toilet, scrubbing the tiled floor, polishing the furniture and mirrors, checking supplies, changing the towels. All that remains finally is the making of the bed. But how can she do that, she worries, standing there in the afternoon sunlight with stacks of crisp clean sheets in her arms like empty ledgers, her virtuous resolve sapped by a gathering sense of dread as penetrating and aseptic as ammonia, if the master won’t get out of it?
She enters, encumbered with her paraphernalia, which she deposits by the wall near the door, crosses the room (circumspectly, precipitately, etc.), and flings open the garden doors, smashing the glass, as though once and for all. ‘Teach me, my God and King,’ she remarks ruefully (such a sweet breath of amicable violence all about!), ‘in all things thee to — oh! I beg your pardon, sir!’ ‘A … a dream,’ he stammers, squinting in the glare. He is bound tightly in the damp sheets, can barely move. ‘Something about blood and a … a … I’m so old, and still each day—’ ‘Sir …?’ He clears his throat. ‘Would you look under the bed, please, and tell me what you see?’ ‘I–I’m sorry, sir,’ she replies, kneeling down to look, a curious strained expression on her face. With a scream, she disappears. He awakes, his heart pounding. The maid is staring down at his erection as though frightened of his righteous ardor: ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir!’ ‘It’s nothing … a dream,’ he explains, rising like the pink clouds of dawn. ‘Something about …’ But he can no longer remember, his mind is a blank sheet. Anyway, she is no longer listening. He can hear her moving busily about the room, dusting furniture, sweeping the floor, changing the towels, taking a shower. He’s standing there abandoned to the afternoon sunlight in his slippers and pajama bottoms, which seem to have imbibed an unhealthy kind of dampness, when a bird comes in and perches on his erection, what’s left of it. ‘Ah—!’ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir!’ ‘It’s — it’s nothing,’ he replies hoarsely, blinking up at her, gripped still by claws as fine as waxed threads. ‘A dream …’ But she has left him, gone off singing to her God and King. He tries to pull the blanket back over his head (the bird, its beak opening and closing involuntarily like spanked thighs, was brown as a chestnut, he recalls, and still smoldering, but she returns and snatches it away, the sheets too. Sometimes she can be too efficient. Maybe he has been pushing her too hard, expecting too much too soon. He sits up, feeling rudely exposed (his erection dips back into his pajamas like a frog diving for cover — indeed, it has a greenish cast to it in the half-light of the curtained room: what? isn’t she here yet?), and lowers his feet over the side, shuffling dutifully for his slippers. But he can’t find them. He can’t even find the floor! He jerks back, his skin wrinkling in involuntary panic, but feels the bottom sheet slide out from under him — ‘What? WHAT—?!’ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir!’ ‘Ah … it’s nothing,’ he gasps, struggling to awaken, his heart pounding still (it should be easier than this!), as, screaming, she tucks up her skirt. ‘A dream …’