Grushenka looked at the hanging figure. The twitching face was not beautiful, but still had good looking features. The breasts, too large and too full, drooped, but the belly was flat and without fat.
The best parts were, without doubt, the firm, shapely thighs.
Grushenka could not help stepping close up to the woman and studying her, even feeling the cleft which was wide open due to the outstretched position of the legs. The woman was strung up so high that the entrance to the orifice was exactly at the height of Grushenka's mouth, and she could not help making a sarcastic remark.
While fumbling around with her fingers, she said to the matron: “I guess she has opened her legs so wide because she wants to be kissed, don't you think so?” But the matron, who had meanwhile carefully looked for a knout, pushed her rudely away. “You'll see what I'll give her, and, as you call my attention to her grotto, it's a good suggestion. I'll let her have it there.” The knout, a short wooden handle to which were fastened eight or ten short leather straps, began its work. Standing alongside and at an angle to her victim, the matron began slowly and with precision to beat her. She directed the end of the leather straps at the open orifice and at the surrounding flesh on the inside of the thighs. She did not count the strokes. She did not hurry. She took good aim, swung her arm out and-swish!-the blow crashed into the most tender parts of the hysterical, screaming woman. Not so many blows, only ten or twelve, because suddenly the woman became pale and her head dropped down. She had fainted. The matron released her leisurely, slung her over her shoulder as if she were a bundle of clothes and threw her roughly on the cot in her cell. When weeping was heard from that cell, the matron looked after the prisoner again. The woman consented to write another letter, but the outcome was far from what the matron had expected. The constable stayed unusually long and when he came back there was a distinguished-looking man with him who had a release for the prisoner. He swore by heaven and hell that he would get even with the matron when he saw the state that the woman was in, and he left with her in a hurry. The matron only shrugged a shoulder. Let them complain. Nothing would come of it, even if the Czar was their cousin-and she was right. Punishments were not usually so cruel, unless the object was to make a prisoner speak. Very often, however, the captain, sitting as judge and jailer at the same time, ordered a beating on general principles when a woman had to stay in prison only a few. days for a minor offense. These minor offenders were not sent to the State prison nor brought before a jury, but did their time, mostly less than a week, in the police prison. Such cases were handled similarly to the following, which was entrusted to Grushenka. Two young whores, hardly sixteen years of age, had been picked up soliciting in the streets. Women were permitted to do that, but only during certain hours of the evening and on certain avenues. Perhaps these girls, who were friends, had sought to make a better haul in the lighter main-streets; anyway, they had become the prey of the law and were each sentenced to five days in jail. As an added punishment, they had to sit every morning for one hour in the stocks and to receive twelve strokes with the switch. The girls had no money and were turned over by the matron to Grushenka. At first they cried bitterly, but, having a cell together, they began to make plans for the future almost before they had started to do their time. They were more curious than afraid when Grushenka led them to the black chamber. They took their clothes off meekly and climbed by themselves into the stocks. Grushenka used only the hand and foot stocks on them, not the head stocks, and she saw to it that the boards did not crush their skin. They sat next to each other on the floor, hands and feet close together through the boards. They did not seem to mind that their bare buttocks rested on the hard stone floor. They were good-looking girls, joking with each other and teasing each other that their lean buttocks had to carry their whole weight. They had small round breasts and there was something young and fresh about them. Grushenka, who for a long time had not had a good party for her love-nest, got slightly excited. She bent down and teased the girl's nipples and was curious about their love-nests. But they pressed their thighs close together and said, “No, Madame, it costs fifty kopecs to make us open up; that's our price.” Grushenka suggested that they kiss her between the legs a little. They claimed that they did that to each other and could not be untrue to each other. But if she would promise not to give them the switch- Grushenka said that she would have to beat them a little in order to make some marks lest the matron should interfere, and they agreed on that. Grushenka then let them out of the stocks, sat herself on the whipping blocks and had one girl kissing her between the legs while she got hold of the other one.
Kissing her with rising passion on the mouth, she licked her teeth and tongue and began to let her hands ramble over the girl's body.
Moving her hands down toward the girl's buttocks, Grushenka at first fingered the love nest a little. This the girl did not mind.
Then with passion she began to feel around the back alley. But to this the girl did not agree. She moved her buttocks out of reach of Grushenka's hands, which so much more wanted to feel the perversely erotic little spot. Grushenka however, reached a climax before she succeeded. But she kept it in mind. She now had the girls hold each other in turn over the other's back. Then she laid six strokes over each girl's buttocks, just stinging the skin a little. When she was through, he girls laughed and protested that they could stand more than that. The next morning Grushenka used the head stocks on them. In these the prisoner stood erect and had to put his head and his hands through openings, which were closed by boards laid on top of them. Having secured them that way, Grushenka went leisurely around the stocks and began to pinch and fondle their naked bodies. Finally she shoved a finger of her left hand into the love-nest of one of the girls and took possession of her rear passageway with the index finger of her right hand. The girl kicked and shouted and moved around uneasily, but was, of course, unable to avoid this treatment.
“You must get used to it someday,” smiled Grushenka. “You soon enough will feel bigger things than that move in and out-some men like it only that way.” And she gave the girl a long finger-poking while she thought of the many Italian men, handsome too, who had taught her to reach a climax with the same ease whether the shaft was in the front or in the back entrance. But the girl disliked the rubbing finger thoroughly and protested that she never, never would stand for that. When Grushenka applied the same playful method to the other girl she had a surprise. This girl was seemingly satisfied with it. “You see,” explained this girl, “it is this way. Next to my father's store there was a cobbler, who was the first man to make love to me. At first I had only to take his shaft in my hands, but then he wanted better things. He was afraid to make me pregnant. I was only fifteen then, mind you, and he did not dare put his machine into the right place. So he poked me in the back. That was the first time I ever had a shaft in me. I screamed a bit-not too much because I was afraid of detection-and then got used to it. So rub me there a bit, I don't mind-” which of course made Grushenka desist from doing so.
While this and other things went on, the captain made use of Grushenka for his purposes quite often. And time his impudent sweetheart came to see him, he had Grushenka apply her skillful tongue to his back alley. But he did not allow her to make love to his little whore again, and she, in turn, was angry at Grushenka's presence.
A few weeks passed by, until one day she openly rebelled and refused to let him have her as long as Grushenka was around. He swore at her and beat her, but she answered with not less flowery words and hit back. All the while his shaft stood at attention. Grushenka, seeing the row, had an inspiration. Tearing her clothes off, she got a sudden hold of the captain, encircled him in her arms and threw herself and him to the carpet. Before the astonished man knew what it was all about, she had her thighs around him, his little bird was in her nest and she was making love to him with the circling movements of her hips. He really was worked up and soon answered her thrusts.