Anonymous - Grushenka. Three Times a Woman

He stayed in her bed joking with her. He played around with her, laughed to see that she was shaved and pinched her bottom, good-heartedly. She discovered with amazement that he was ready again and she did not fight him off when he put it in anew. This time her fright was gone. She thought, “Really, it's not so bad.” Still she did not get a thrill out of it, although it felt rather pleasant.

Every night after dinner, a man came to her. Sometimes they were elderly and brutal and did not undress, just laid her over the bed, gave her a slap on the behind and disappeared. Sometimes, they were mere boys, who were shy, and Grushenka had a great time teasing them and working them up and finally seducing them many times so that they walked from the room with weak knees. Grushenka learned to love it. She could not say when she climaxed for the first time, but after it had happened, she succeeded in getting the supreme thrill with every man; half a dozen times if she liked her partner. She learned how to make love and soon became a passionate lover. The male servants in the house who had tried her out, praised her with glittering eyes.

What a girl! What a figure! A volcano! These were fine weeks, weeks of thrills, weeks during which her body filled out and her mind became clear, weeks without dreams, full of reality. She looked at other girls with searching curiosity. She learned from them about their love affairs; she studied her mistress with appraising eyes.

Couldn't she manage to get a nice boy as a husband and a little house with some acres and have children too? Why not? She learned who was influencing the master and the mistress, she made plans, she laid eyes on one of the best body servants of the Prince, and though she never spoke with him or had intercourse with him, she believed she had fallen in love with him. All that ended suddenly, and it was again her mistress who effected the change, her mistress who was by right and law Grushenka's destiny. Nelidowa used to start many things, give many orders, and forget about them again. Her mind wandered.

Everything that did not pertain to her lover (of whom we will have to speak later) was done in a haphazard way. But Nelidowa remembered, one night when she came from the bedroom of her husband, that Grushenka was to have been her means for finding out how continuous love-making would change a woman's body; so she sent for her. Grushenka had had a quick and meaningless bout with an elderly man that night about an hour before, and was still awake when the handmaid of Nelidowa came for her. She put a bed sheet around her shoulders and walked nude to Her Highness' bedchamber. (It must be remembered that all people, high or low, male or female, slept without nightshirts at that time, and it is said that Marie Antoinette, some fifty years later, was the first one to create the mode). Nelidowa had just washed herself and sat naked before her toilet table, while one of her maids braided her long black hair into pigtails. Nelidowa was in a good mood and told Grushenka to wait until her hair was done. In a few minutes, she took the nude girl on her lap. She inquired whether Grushenka had been poked daily, whether the instruments had been big and long, whether she had learned to make love properly and whether she liked it.

Grushenka answered automatically, “Yes,” to every question. Then Nelidowa gently opened the girl's legs and examined her. There was no change to be seen. The little love-nest was tender and innocent, as though it had never held big male machines. The lips were perhaps more red, and fuller, but still firmly closed and thin. The Princess moved her more towards her knees, opened her own legs a little and wondered at her own unattractive pleasure garden.

Apparently it was not love-making, but the hand of nature which had made the difference. Everything seemed to go well and the princess was about to send her double to bed again, but in her dissatisfaction with the imperfect loving she had received from her husband, she felt induced to play more with Grushenka's body.

Grushenka leaned closely on the shoulder of her mistress, and allowed her access to her secret parts. She knew that some servant girls were supposed to do this same thing to each other. Lady's love was at that time more common than it is today. It was an art practised with great finesse in the harems, and the Russian household was still very much like a harem. Just when Grushenka began to feel fine, the Princess got vexed that the girl should get a kick out of it, while she herself felt nothing. With her old meanness, she pinched Grushenka's thighs with her sharp finger nails, hurting the tender flesh terribly. Startled and with a cry Grushenka leapt from the woman's lap, holding the injured spot with her hands, instinctively ducking away from her mistress. Nelidowa, upset by the girl's screams, her nerves offended, said the guilty one had to be punished.

As she reached for a leather slipper, her eyes had a gruesome expression. She scolded the girl and made her lie down over her lap.

Cracking slaps fell on Grushenka's backside and thighs, the pain shot in lightning heat with each stroke through her body. The slipper was merciless. Grushenka wiggled and kicked, cried and screamed, then subdued her cries to sobs. Her buttocks and legs felt as if a red hot iron was being applied. The struggling bare form before her eyes did not leave the Princess without feeling. She started to feel rather good, and she acted accordingly. She let Grushenka fall to the carpet, then took hold of her head and forced it between her own legs. One of her hand-maids, seeing what was going on, rushed behind her mistress, embraced her and, coming with her arms from behind, drew her gently back, thus placing her in a position in which to enjoy herself.

Grushenka did not know what to do. Nelidowa took that as obstinate resistance. She let her go and pushed her away with a firm kick of her bare feet. One of her bed-maids immediately took Grushenka's place (the girl said later she had done so to avert murder, so wild were the eyes of her mistress) and with apt and learned strokes she brought the passionate young Princess to fulfillment. Finally she closed her eyes and hung exhausted in the arms of the serf girl who held her. The bed-maids carried her to her bed and put her softly between the sheets. Grushenka slipped out of the room, hoping all would be forgotten the next day. She made up her mind to ask one of the girls how to satisfy Madame in case she should again be called to this duty. The next afternoon it was clear that Nelidowa had not forgotten. Katerina was ordered to appear with Grushenka. The Princess instructed briefly and without explanation, “Give that girl fifty lashes with the cowhide and don't let her make love from now on.” Katerina closed her lips tight. If she followed her mistress' order, the girl would be dead by sunset. She could never stand it. Men died with less than that number of blows.

She led the trembling and loudly sobbing girl to the basement, where in a far corner a room for the punishment of serfs was equipped with instruments of torture. Katerina led her to the whipping block and Grushenka, her eyes full of tears, stripped without resistance and laid herself over the saddle-like middle of the block. Katerina chained her arms and feet to rings. Then she questioned the frightened girl and Grushenka, her head hanging to the floor, related the happenings of the night before. Katerina was thinking hard while she fingered the different whips to find one of lighter weight. She looked at the white body, stripped for punishment, and at the whip, then threw the whip away. “Listen!” she said. “One should not trust such a bitch as you, but I will spare you if you can keep your mouth shut. Right after this you will go to bed and stay there for two days and be sick, and you'll tell everybody that I put a wet linen over you, so as not to blister your skin. If you do as I say, you'll get off lightly, because you did not know better and it was not your fault.” Whereupon Katerina hit her several times with her hand, which did not hurt less than the slipper the night before. “And one thing more. You are going to learn how to love perfectly so that you know better next time. Understand?” Katerina had something on her mind when she made this decision. Nelidowa was using up her maids in quick order and Katerina had always to supply new ones. The Princess, cruel and beastly as she could be (like many people who come from nothing into power), was equally good-hearted and carelessly friendly when she was in a good mood. None of her personal maids liked to stay long with her. The small leather whip with the golden handle was always too near and the moods of the mistress changed too quickly. The way to get away from her was to get married. They sometimes asked her for it outright and got what they wanted, including the men they had picked for themselves. Sometimes they did what they could to get pregnant and then they were scolded or even put for a few days in a dark room with water and bread. They were never severely punished (oriental women have a religious respect for a pregnant woman) and in the end were usually supplied with a husband. Then it was up to Katerina to find another maid: handsome, with a good figure, well trained in washing and clothing the mistress, alert, keen and also a good Lesbian.