He had hardly begun his tirade before she was fidgeting and catching her breath, her features turning coarse and brutal with glee. When he lowered his voice to a deeper pitch of gravity and his manner became grimmer yet, she made a bleating noise and settled herself clumsily at his feet.
‘But all that, even that,’ he was saying, ‘pales into insignificance beside your proposal to submit to the most ignominious indignities in order to be able to deal a deadly blow to your husband’s pride and honour! Your foulest cravings are innocence itself in comparison! But justice will be done, and you will receive fitting punishment!’
Mrs Korotchenko had taken off one of his boots and was in the act of taking off the other; they were really high shoes, finely but stoutly made by Lobb of St James’s, called boots because the name had never been changed in regulations. Now she halted her movements and gave him an eager glance.
‘You mean I can put these back on?’ she asked indistinctly.
‘No, Sonia, I can’t punish you for something you haven’t yet done. When you’ve brought me the list it’ll be a different matter, I promise you. This afternoon I’m just going to correct you for your vicious sexual behaviour.’
She gave a submissive nod, finished taking off the second boot and, with a longing look at them, put the pair aside. Moving on hands and knees, she went to a corner of the large Wilton rug that covered most of the floor of the room and threw it back, uncovering a surface of bare boards scattered with dust, fluff and a few dead insects. Here she lay down on her back, her limbs spread. It was Alexander’s part to trample on her mildly for a few minutes, as he had learned to do last time. Then as now he had resisted her desire that he should carry out this exercise with his boots on. He had very little objection to causing her physical pain, since she so clearly had none herself to suffering it, but it would not do to cause her any kind of actual physical injury or leave an obvious mark on her. As before, too, he tried ridiculously to make himself weigh less as he put his feet down, cursing silently at the boredom of it, trying to find it funny and not succeeding at all.
After a while she ceased to squirm about and make her ambiguous noises. Guided once more by previous experience he stepped off her at this point and waited while she got rather groggily to her feet. What now? She mumbled something about two minutes and the same room upstairs and slouched out. Yawning, he went back to his chair. He noticed for the first time that there were representations of human figures wherever he looked, on plates or mugs, as parts of clocks or candlesticks, in the form of dolls, puppets, statuettes. They had been collected without regard for consistency of material, scale or period, let alone style. Their presence seemed to make it less, not more, likely that two people lived here, ate, slept, saw friends, played the music-sounder, read newspapers, watched the PP projector, gave orders to servants and were waited on by them. It was not after all impossible that Mrs Korotchenko was domiciled somewhere else altogether and kept this place entirely for use as a sexual gymnasium.
What was the matter with her? That was no way to put it; that implied that there was one received norm of erotic behaviour from which other modes were deviations, and if the twentieth century had achieved nothing else it had finally put paid to that last and greatest citadel of bourgeois morality. At the same time it was hard to love someone who ignored endearments, who attempted no caresses, whose interests reached no further than one’s hands, feet, penis, not even mouth. Of course Latour-Ordzhonikdize had put it on record that he who had obstacles placed in his path to love deserved ten times more credit than he whose progress was unimpeded. What of it? Alexander felt he could do without credit (credit from whom, anyway?); he wanted Mrs Korotchenko to kiss him and stroke his neck and not even say she loved him, just tell him that he was a very sweet boy. He looked out of the window at the brilliant day and felt his spirits droop a little. Then he told himself not to be childish; a mature man took what came his way in the form it was offered and wasted no time fretting that it was not otherwise. The signal to move on would be that he was starting to tire of the lady’s charms, and for the moment there was no sign whatsoever of that.
The loud screeching of a pig from the other side of the house had the effect of recalling him to his immediate situation. The two minutes must be up, perhaps twice over. He went out, up the stairs, along the passage and into the end bedroom. Here Mrs Korotchenko proved to be spread-eagled on the bed with her wrists and ankles tied to its corners and a gag, in the form of what looked like a substantial scarf, tied round her face. Within the limits open to her she was jerking about. Alexander started to unbutton his tunic. At once she shook her head fiercely and made antagonistic sounds into the gag. He too shook his head and told her it was his turn this time. As he stripped he wondered briefly and shallowly how she had got herself tied up like that. A slip-knot, he assured himself; for her second wrist she had used a slip-knot. It was some time later that he had leisure to reflect that a hand might secure another hand with a slip-knot, but would find it remarkably difficult to secure itself, especially when the binding material was not rope or string but (as he now saw) handkerchiefs or further scarves. So as not to chafe. He sat on the side of the bed and undid the gag.
For the first time since they had met, Mrs Korotchenko laughed, a comfortable, almost happy sound. Her glance moved over his shoulder and he heard a similar laugh behind him. A girl of about twelve stood there; she was naked. He recognised her immediately without knowing who she was. Where had he seen her? In the photograph he had noticed on his previous visit to this room; a year or two younger there, but the same. And then, when she came and stood in front of him and looked him up and down, grinning, and he observed her large ill-shaped ears, he knew who she was.
‘Merciful God,’ he said in a low voice, and snatched up what had been the gag to cover himself.
‘There was no point in that,’ said Mrs Korotchenko. ‘Dasha’s seen dozens, haven’t you, darling?’
‘Of course I have, mummy.’
Alexander pushed the child aside and began collecting his clothes.
‘What are you doing? Wouldn’t you like to be nice to Dasha?’
‘No thank you. I don’t think I could be.’
Mrs Korotchenko laughed again and waited till he was almost at the door before she said, ‘Do you really want me to get that list for you?’
14
‘God save the Queen!’
‘Long live the gracious Queen!’
‘Hip hip hurray!’
The sitting-room with the hanging plants, with the conservatory at its further end, resounded with cheers, laughter and general loud talk. It was getting late at one of Ensign Petrovsky’s soirees in Dr Joseph Wright’s house. The vodka had long since begun to circulate and everyone was sweating in the late-summer humidity. The fattish young officer called Leo, the one with the flabby mouth, said heavily to Wright,
‘I could not see -I don’t think I saw you drinking that toast, doctor.
‘I have an early call in the morning.’
‘No doubt. I meant you deliberately and formally put your glass aside. It wasn’t just that you didn’t drink – you refrained from drinking of set purpose.
‘All right, but please don’t let’s discuss the matter.’ When the other assumed a look of theatrical puzzlement he hurried on, ‘Because I know from experience that it’s quite impossible to explain to a Russian how we feel about that. After what happened… there’s no point.’