Robert Coover - Briar Rose & Spanking the Maid

‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘I know that perfection is elusive,’ he explains, putting away his stout engine of duty, while she staggers over, her knees bound by her drawers, to examine her backside in the wardrobe mirror (it is well cut, he knows, and so aglow one might cook little birds over it or roast chestnuts, as the manuals suggest), ‘but what else is there worth striving for?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ She shows no tears, but her face is flushed, her lips are trembling, and she breathes as though she has been running. He goes to gaze out into the garden, vaguely dissatisfied. The room is clean, the bed stripped and made, the maid whipped, why isn’t that enough? Is there something missing in the manuals? No, more likely, he has failed somehow to read them rightly. Yet again. Outside in the sleepy afternoon heat of the garden, the bees are humming, insects chattering, gentler sounds to be sure than the hiss of a birch rod, the sharp report as it smacks firm resonant flesh, yet strangely alien to him, sounds of natural confusion and disorder from a world without precept or invention. He sighs. Though he was thinking ‘invention,’ what he has heard in his inner ear was ‘intention,’ and now he’s not sure which it was he truly meant. Perhaps he should back off a bit — or even let her off altogether for a few days. A kind of holiday from the divine government of pain. Certainly he does not enjoy it nor (presumably) does she. If he could ever believe in her as she believes in him, he might even change places with her for awhile, just to ease his own burden and let her understand how difficult it is for him. A preposterous idea of course, pernicious in fact, an unthinkable betrayal … yet sometimes, late in the day, something almost like a kind of fever of the mind (speaking loosely) steals over — enough! enough! no shrinking! ‘And another thing!’ he shouts, turning on the bed (she is at the door, gathering up her paraphernalia) and throwing back the covers: at the foot on the clean crisp sheets there is a little pile of wriggling worms, still coated with dirt from the garden. ‘WHAT DOES THIS MEAN—?!’ he screams. ‘I–I’m sorry, sir! I’ll clean it up right away, sir!’ Is she testing him? Taunting him? It’s almost an act of madness! ‘Am I being unfair?’ ‘But, sir, you’ve already—!’ ‘What? WHAT—?! Is there to be no end to this—?!’

He holds her over his left knee, her legs locked between his, wrist clamped in the small of her back, her skirt up and her drawers down, and slaps her with his bare hand, first one buttock, reddening it smartly in contrast to the dazzling alabaster (remembering the manuals) of the other, then attacking its companion with equal alacrity. ‘Ow! Please, sir!’ ‘Come, come, you know that the least show of resistance means ten extra cuts of the rod!’ he admonishes her, doubling her over a chair. ‘When you are ordered to do anything, do not grumble or let your countenance betray any dislike thereunto, but do it cheerfully and generously!’ ‘Yes, sir, but—’ ‘What? WHAT—?! ’ Whish- CRACK! ‘OW!’ SLASH! Her crimson bottom, hugged close to the pillows, bobs and dances under the whistling cane. ‘When anyone finds fault with you, do not answer rudely!’ Whirr- SMACK! ‘NO, SIR!’ Each stroke, surprising her afresh, makes her jerk with pain and wrings a little cry from her (as anticipated by the manuals when the bull’s pizzle is employed), which she attempts to stifle by burying her face in the horsehair cushion. ‘Be respectful—?’ ‘Be respectful and obedient, sir, to those—’ swish- THWOCK! ‘— placed — OW! — placed OVER you — AARGH!’ Whizz- SWACK! ‘With fear and trembling—’ SMASH! ‘— and in singleness of your heart!’ he reminds her gravely as she groans, starts, quivers under his patient instruction. ‘Ouch! Yes, sir!’ The leather strap whistles down to land with a loud crack across the center of her glowing buttocks, seeming almost to explode, and making what lilies there are left into roses. SMACK! Ker- WHACK! He’s working well now. ‘Am I being unfair?’ ‘N-no, sir!’ WHAP! SLAP! Horsed over the dresser her limbs launch out helplessly with each blow, ‘ Kneel down! ’ She falls humbly to her hands and knees, her head bowed between his slippered feet, that broad part destined by Mother Nature for such devotions elevated but pointed away from him toward the wardrobe mirror (as though trying, flushed and puffed up, to cry out to itself), giving him full and immediate access to that large division referred to in the texts as the Paphian grove. ‘And resolve every morning —?’ ‘Resolve — gasp! — resolve every morning to be cheerful and—’ He raises the whip, snaps it three times around his head, and brings it down with a crash on her hinder parts, driving her head forward between his legs. ‘And — YOW! — and good-natured that … that day, and if any … if any accident — groan! — should happen to —’ swish- WHACK! ‘— to break that resolution, suffer it … suffer it not—’ SLASH! ‘Oh, sir!’ SWOCK! He’s pushing himself, too, hard perhaps, but he can’t — ‘Please, sir! PLEASE! ’ She is clinging to his knee, sobbing into his pajama pants, the two raised hemispheres upon which the strokes have fallen making involuntary motions both vertically and horizontally as though sending a message of distress, all the skin wrinkling like the surface of a lake rippled by the wind. ‘What are you doing?! WHAT DOES THIS MEAN—?!’ He spanks her with a hairbrush, lashes her with a cat-o’-nine-tails, flagellates her with nettles, not shrinking from the hard service to be done, this divine drudgery, clear-browed in his devotion to duty. Perhaps today …! ‘SIR!’ He pauses, breathing heavily. His arm hurts. There is a curious strained expression on her face, flushed like her behind and wet with tears. ‘Sir, if you … if you don’t stop—’ ‘What? WHAT—?! ’ ‘You — you won’t know what to do next! ’ ‘Ah.’ He has just been smacking her with a wet towel, and the damp rush and pop, still echoing in his inner ear, reminds him dimly of a dream, perhaps the one she interrupted when she arrived. In it there was something about humidity, but it kept getting mixed up somehow with hymnody, such that every time she opened her mouth (there was a woman in the dream) damp chords flowed out and stained his ledgers, bleached white as clean sheets. ‘I’m so old,’ he says, letting his arm drop, ‘and still each day …’ ‘Sir?’ ‘Nothing. A dream …’ Where was he? It doesn’t matter. ‘Why don’t you go for a stroll in the garden, sir? It’s a beautiful day.’ Such impudence: he ignores it. ‘It’s all right,’ he says, draping the blood-flecked towel over his shoulder, scratching himself idly. He yawns. ‘The worst is past.’

Has he devoted himself to a higher end, he wonders, standing there in the afternoon sunlight in his slippers and pajama bottoms, flexing a cane, testing it, snapping it against his palm, or has he been taken captive by it? Is choice itself an illusion? Or an act of magic? And is the worst over, or has it not yet begun? He shudders, yawns, stretches. And the manuals …? He is afraid even to ask, takes a few practice strokes with the cane against a horsehair cushion instead. When the riddles and paradoxes of his calling overtake him, wrapping him in momentary darkness, he takes refuge in the purity of technique. The proper stretching of a bull’s pizzle, for example, this can occupy him for hours. Or the fabrication of whipping chairs, the index of duties and offenses, the synonymy associated with corporal discipline and with that broad part destined by Mother Nature for such services. And a cane is not simply any cane, but preferably one made like this one of brown Malacca — the stem of an East Indian rattan palm — about two and a half feet long (give or take an inch and a half) and a quarter of an inch thick. Whing- SNAP! listen to it! Or take the birch rod, not a mere random handful of birchen twigs, as often supposed, but an instrument of precise and elaborate construction. First, the twigs must be meticulously selected for strength and elasticity, each about two feet long, full of snap and taken from a young tree, the tips sharp as needles. Then carefully combining the thick with the thin and slender, they must be bound together for half their length, tightly enough that they might enjoy long service, yet not too tightly or else the rod will be like a stick and the twigs have no play. The rod must fit conveniently to the hand, have reach and swing so as to sing in the air, the larger part of all punishment being the anticipation of course, not the pain, and must immediately raise welts and blisters, surprising the chastised flesh afresh with each stroke. To be sure, it is easier to construct a birch rod than to employ it correctly — that’s always the hard part, he doesn’t enjoy it, nor does she surely, but the art of the rod is incomplete without its perfect application. And though elusive, what else is there worth striving for? Indeed, he knows he has been too indulgent toward her up till now, treating her with the civility and kindness due to an inferior, but forgetting the forging of her soul by way of those ‘vivid lessons,’ as a teacher he once had used to put it, ‘in holy scripture, hotly writ.’ So when she arrives, staggering in late with all her paraphernalia, her bucket empty and her bib hanging down, he orders her straight to the foot of the bed. ‘But, sir, I haven’t even—’ ‘Come, come, no dallying! The least show of resistance will double the punishment! Up with your skirt, up, up! for I intend to — WHAT?! IS THERE TO BE NO END TO THIS—?!’ ‘I–I’m sorry! I was wearing them when I came — I must have left them somewhere …!’ Maybe it’s some kind of communication problem, he thinks, staring gloomily at her soul’s ingress which confronts him like blank paper, laundered tiffany, a perversely empty ledger. The warm afternoon sun blows in through the garden doors, sapping his brave resolve. He feels himself drifting, yawning, must literally shake himself to bring the manuals back to mind, his duties, his devotion … ‘Sir,’ she reminds him. ‘Sir,’ he sighs.