Briar Rose & Spanking the Maid by Robert Coover

  ‘Neat and clean in habit, modest—’ WHACK! ‘– … in carriage, silent when—’ Whisp-SNAP! ‘OW!!’ ‘Be careful! If you move, the earlier blow won’t count!’ ‘I – I’m sorry, sir!’ Her soul, she knows, is his invention, and she is grateful to him for it, but exposed like this to the whining slashes of the cane and the sweet breath of mid-afternoon which should cool his righteous ardor but doesn’t (once a bee flew in and stung him on the hand: what did it mean? nothing: she got it on her sit-me-down once, too, and he took the swelling for a target), her thighs shackled by flannelette drawers and blood rushing to her head, she can never remember (for all the times he has explained it to her) why it is that Mother Nature has chosen that particular part of her for such solemnities: it seems more like a place for lettings things out than putting things in. ‘Well? Silent when—?’ ‘Silent when he is angry, willing to please, quick and—’ swish-CRACK! ‘– and of good disposition!’ ‘Sir,’ he reminds her: THWOCK! ‘SIR!’ she cries. ‘Very well, but you must learn to take more pleasure in your appointed tasks, however trivial or unpleasant, and when you are ordered to do anything, do not grumble or let your countenance betray any dislike thereunto, but do it cheerfully and readily!’ ‘Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!’ She is all hot behind, and peering over her shoulder at herself in the wardrobe mirror after the master has gone to shower, she can see through her tears that it’s like on fire, flaming crimson it is, with large blistery welts rising and throbbing like things alive: he’s drawn blood! She dabs at it with her drawers, recalling a dream he once related to her about a teacher he’d had who called his chastisements ‘scripture lessons,’ and she understands now what he’s always meant by demanding ‘a clean sheet of paper.’ Well, certainly it has always been clean, neat and clean as he’s taught her, that’s one thing she’s never got wrong, always washing it well every day in three hot lathers, letting the last lather be made thin of the soap, then not rinsing it or toweling it, but drying it over brimstone, keeping it as much from the air as possible, for that, she knows, will spoil it if it comes to it. She finishes drying it by slapping it together in her hands, then holding it before a good fire until it be thoroughly hot, then clapping it and rubbing it between her hands from the fire, occasionally adding to its fairness by giving it a final wash in a liquor made of rosemary flowers boiled in white wine. Now, she reasons, lifting her drawers up gingerly over the hot tender flesh, which is still twitching convulsively, if she could just apply those same two fairies, method and habit, to the rest of her appointed tasks, she might yet find in them that pleasure he insists she take, according to the manuals. Well, anyway, the worst is past. Or so she consoles herself, as smoothing down her black skirt and white lace apron, she turns to the bed. ‘Oh, teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to …’ What—? There’s something under there! And it’s moving …!

  ‘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 dr
udgery, 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.

  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 secr
et 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.