Briar Rose & Spanking the Maid by Robert Coover
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 anymore. 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, where-upon 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 know
Distantly blows are falling, something about freedom and government, but he is strolling in the garden with a teacher he once had, discussing the condition of humanity, which keeps getting mixed up somehow with homonymity, such that each time his teacher issues a new lament it comes out like slapped laughter. He is about to remark on the generous swish and snap of a morning glory that has sprung up in their path as though inspired (‘Paradox, too, has its techniques,’ his teacher is saying, ‘and so on …’), when it turns out to be a woman he once knew on the civil surface. ‘What? WHAT—?!’ But she only wants him to change his position, or perhaps his condition (‘You see!’ remarks his teacher sagely, unbuckling his belt, ‘it’s like a kind of callipygomancy, speaking loosely – am I being unfair?’), he’s not sure, but anyway it doesn’t matter, for what she really wants is to get him out of the sheets he’s wrapped in, turn him over (he seems to have imbibed an unhealthy kind of dampness), and give him a lecture (she says ‘elixir’) on method and fairies, two dew-bejeweled habits you can roast chestnuts over. What more, really, does he want of her? (Perhaps his teacher asks him this, buzzing in and out of his ear like the sweet breath of solemnity: whirr-SMACK!) His arm is rising and falling through great elastic spaces as though striving for something fundamental like a forgotten dream or lost drawers. ‘I – I’m sorry, sir!’ Is she testing him, perched there on his stout engine of duty like a cooked bird with the lingering bucket of night in her beak (see how it opens, closes, opens), or is it only a dimpled fever of the mind? He doesn’t know, is almost afraid to ask. ‘Something about a higher end,’ he explains hoarsely, taking rueful refuge, ‘or hired end perhaps, and boiled flowers, hard parts – and another thing, what’s left of it …’ She screams. The garden groans, quivers, starts, its groves radiant and throbbing. His teacher, no longer threatening, has withdrawn discreetly to a far corner with diagonal creases, where he is turning what lilacs remain into roses with his rumpled bull’s pizzle: it’s almost an act of magic! Still his arm rises and falls, rises and falls, that broad part of Mother Nature destined for such inventions dancing and bobbing soft and easy under the indulgent sun: ‘It’s a beautiful day!’ ‘What? WHAT—?! An answering back to a reproof?’ he inquires gratefully, taunting her with that civility and kindness due to an inferior, as – hiss-WHAP! – flicking lint off one shoulder and smoothing the ends of his moustache with involuntary vertical and horizontal motions, he floats helplessly backwards (‘Thank you, sir!’), twitching amicably yet authoritatively like a damp towel, down a bottomless hole, relieving himself noisily: ‘Perhaps today then … at last!’
Robert Coover, Briar Rose & Spanking the Maid