The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (18 page)

“Sir,” he sighs.

It never ends. Making the bed, she scatters dust and feathers afresh or tips over the mop bucket. Cleaning up the floor, she somehow disturbs the bed. Or something does.
It’s almost as if it were alive. Blankets wrinkle, sheets peek perversely out from under the spread, pillows seem to sag or puff up all by themselves if she turns her back, and if she
doesn’t, then flyspecks break out on the mirror behind her like pimples, towels start to drip, stains appear on her apron. If she hasn’t forgotten it. She sighs, turns once more on the
perfidious bed. Though always of an humble and good disposition (as she’s been taught), diligent in endeavoring to please him, and grateful for the opportunity to do the will of God from the
heart by serving him (true service, perfect freedom, she knows all about that), sometimes, late in the day like this (shadows are creeping across the room and in the garden the birds are beginning
to sing again), she finds herself wishing she could make the bed once and for all: glue down the sheets, sew on the pillows, stiffen the blankets as hard as boards and nail them into place. But
then what? She cannot imagine. Something frightening. No, no, better this trivial round, these common tasks, and a few welts on her humble sit-me-down, she reasons, tucking the top sheet and
blankets in neatly at the sides and bottom, turning them down at the head just so far that their fold covers half the pillows, than be overtaken by confusion and disorder.

“
Teach me
,
my God and King
,” she sings out hopefully, floating the spread out over the bed, allowing it to fall evenly on all sides, “
in all things thee to
–” But then, as the master steps out of the bathroom behind her, she sees the blatant handprints on the wardrobe mirror, the streamers of her lace cap peeking out from under the
dresser, standing askew.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, bending over the foot of the bed, presenting to him that broad part destined by Mother Nature for the arduous invention of souls. But he ignores it.
Instead he tears open the freshly made bed, crawls into it fully dressed, kicking her in the face through the blankets with his shoes, pulls the sheets over his head, and commences to snore.
Perhaps, she thinks, her heart sinking, I’d better go out and come in again . . .

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 any more. 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, whereupon 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 . .
.”

She enters, as though once and for all, circumspectly deposits her vital paraphernalia beside the door, then crosses the room to fling open (humbly yet authoritatively) the
curtains and the garden doors: there is such a song of birds all about! Excited by that, and by the sweet breath of late afternoon, her own eagerness to serve, and faith in the perfectibility of
her tasks, she turns with a glad heart and tosses back the bedcovers: “Oh! I beg your pardon, sir!”

“A . . . a dream,” he mutters gruffly, his erection slipping back inside his pajamas like an abandoned moral. “Something about glory and a pizzle – or puzzle – and
a fundamental position in the civil service . . .”

But she is no longer listening, busy now at her common round, dusting furniture and sweeping the floor: so much to do! When (not very willingly, she observes) he leaves the bed at last, she
strips the sheets and blankets off, shaking the dead bees into the garden, fluffs and airs the pillows, turns the mattress. She hears the master relieving himself noisily in the bathroom: yes,
there’s water in the bucket, soap too, a sponge, she’s remembered everything! Today then, perhaps at last . . . ! Quickly she polishes the mirror, mops the floor, snaps open the fresh
sheets and makes the bed. Before she has the spread down, however, he comes out of the bathroom, staggers across the room muttering something about “a bloody new birth”, and crawls back
into it.

“But, sir –!”

“What, what?” he yawns, and rolls over on his side, pulling the blanket over his head. She snatches it away. He sits up, blinking, a curious strained expression on his face.

“I – I’m sorry, sir,” she says, and, pushing her drawers down to her knees, tucking her skirt up and bending over, she presents to him that broad part preferred by him
and Mother Nature for the invention of souls.

He retrieves the blanket and disappears under it, all but his feet, which stick out at the bottom, still slippered. She stuffs her drawers hastily behind her apron bib, knocks over the mop
bucket, smears the mirror, throws the fresh towels in the toilet, and jerks the blanket away again.

“I – I’m sorry, sir,” she insists, bending over and lifting her skirt: “I’m sure I had them on when I came in . . .”

What? Is he snoring? She peers at him past what is now her highest part, that part invaded suddenly by a dread as chilling as his chastisements are, when true to his manuals, enflaming, and
realizes with a faint shudder (she cannot hold back the little explosions of wind) that change and condition are coeval and everlasting: a truth as hollow as the absence of birdsong (but they are
singing!) . . .

So she stands there in the open doorway, the glass doors having long since been flung open (when was that? she cannot remember), her thighs taut and pressed closely together,
her face buried in his cast-off pajamas. She can feel against her cheeks, her lips, the soft consoling warmth of them, so recently relinquished, can smell in them the terror – no, the painful
sadness, the divine drudgery (sweet, like crushed flowers, dead birds) – of his dreams, Mother Nature having provided, she knows all too well, the proper place for what God has ordained. But
there is another odor in them too, musty, faintly sour, like that of truth or freedom, the fear of which governs every animal, thereby preventing natural confusion and disorder. Or so he has taught
her. Now, her face buried in this pungent warmth and her heart sinking, the comforting whirr and smack of his rod no more than a distant echo, disappearing now into the desolate throb of late
afternoon birdsong, she wonders about the manuals, his service to them and hers to him, or to that beyond him which he has not quite named. Whence such an appetite? – she shudders, groans,
chewing helplessly on the pajamas – so little relief?