“Oh, all right.” She shrugged off her puzzlement.
“Barry parked the car in the lot behind this mansion he said used to be some kind of embassy building. We all went up on a veranda in back there, and this attendant in livery right out of Bismarck ushered us inside, clicking his heels like Prussian castanets. Barry introduced us to our host, Herr Von Koerner. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Never mind what I remember. Go on.”
“Well, Von Koerner was dressed formally, white tie and tails. I remember I had a hard time not giggling, he was such a stereotype. Bald, a scar on his cheek, jaw stuck out like a Panzer attack, even a monocle—it was too much. And that riding crop he was carrying and kept thwacking against the palm of one hand -- that was really the end. There he was, the Hun with Kultur, the Prussian turned Gestapo agent, leering formality all set for an evening of minor atrocities-—he looked like one of those Grade C propaganda movies Hollywood used to turn out during the Second World War, the kind you see on the Late Show and think to yourself that the character would be ludicrous if not for the fact that his real-life counterparts were much worse. Anyway, when we were introduced, you spoke to him in German, and that impressed him. I could see that he took to you right away. I didn't know you could speak German so fluently, Steve.”
“Neither did I,” I muttered to myself.
“What?” When I didn’t answer, Hortense continued. “Well, Herr Von Koerner introduced us around, and then—”
“About how many people were there would you say?” I interrupted.
“Oh, a dozen, I guess, besides the four of us.”
“Girls and boys?”
“What else is there‘? Never mind, I withdraw the question. Yes, it was split evenly. But you know that! I really don’t see why—”
“I’m a kook! Okay? Now please, Honey, go on.”
“Ooh! When you call me Honey like that, I go all shivery. Can you imagine? A girl with my experience? Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Steve!”
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I was only kidding. Honest. Now will you please get on with it?”
“Well, all right.” Her tone said she was only half mollified. “Von Koerner served us some light wine, and then the entertainment began.”
“Entertainment? ”
“More like a calculated warm-up, I guess. Prussian precision. Remember? Barry called them the Reichstag Rockettes. Six Brunhilds right out of Wagner, all got up with those idiotic breastplates and the Viking helmets, with their bare bottoms sticking out and their muscles bulging when they snapped those whips. It was like a military drill with choreography by the Marquis de Sade. And the precise way they lashed each other! It was too much — a Hitlerian sadist’s version of the Easter spectacle at the Radio City Music Hall. And that finale!”
“Yeah, it was really something. Describe it to me, though, in case I missed something.”
“The three girls lashing out at the other three in unison, just the perfectly timed six strokes, and then the reverse, until all six derrieres were crisscrossed with those thin lines of blood forming six perfect swastikas.”
“Swastikas? I’ll be damned! ”
“That’s how I felt. It gave me the chills. But you explained to me that under the circumstances it didn’t have any political significance, and I felt better.”
“I did explain that, huh?”
“Yes. You even wisecracked about how with a little training the girls might learn to carve out the design of a hammer and sickle.”
“I didn’t know I dared indulge in such heresies.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Go on with the story.”
“Well, after that we had a little more wine, and then we began pairing off. Von Koerner had taken a fancy to me, and so I was his little whipping boy—his phrase, not mine, and make of it what you will, Dr. Freud—-for the evening. I lost track of Elsa and Barry. You were corralled by a hefty blonde type name of Gretchen, I believe. I guess some men go for that sort of obvious female with too much of everything. I don’t see why, though. They’re so terribly obvious. There‘s nothing subtle about their appeal. Your friend Gretchen was waving those mammaries and hips of hers around like they were a red flag and you were a bull whose attention she was trying to attract. You did mean it when you said later that she disgusted you, didn’t you, Steve?” Hortense was anxious.
“Absolutely,” I assured her. “Go on. Tell me what happened with Von Koerner.”
“Are you sure you won’t find it painful, dear? I mean, now that we’ve discovered what we mean to each other—-”
“I’ll grit my teeth.”
“No, darling, really—”
“It’s all right,” I assured her. “I’m a big boy now. I promise not to be jealous.” .
“All right then. He took me upstairs to his little room and he made me pull my skirt up. Then he pulled my bloomers down.”
“Bloomers? I didn’t know girls wore bloomers any more."
“I’m an old-fashioned girl,” Hortense told me demurely. “Anyway, then he made me bend over across his lap and he spanked me.”
“With his bare hand?”
“Yes. He kept calling me his naughty baby and his bad girl and things like that, and he really laid it on. I tell you, he kept it up until it was really swollen a bright red.
“How could you tell?”
“Mirrors. They were all over the place. I could see every part of me and of him. As a matter of fact, I could see my poor backside in triplicate all the time he was punishing me. I tell you, Steve, in my business I’ve made some wild scenes, but this was really bizarre.”
“Bizarre how?”
“Well, while he was spanking me, I naturally assumed he was leading up to sex. I mean, I’ve known sadists before. Stretched over his lap that way, I could feel him getting excited and I figured that sooner or later we’d get to it. But he didn’t swing quite that way. He was even further out than I’d suspected. He wasn’t working up to sex plain and simple, but to more kooky discipline.”
“Like what?”
“Like when I began yelling ‘Uncle!’ he started us on the next phase. My pain excited him. But it excited him so that he wanted to feel pain himself, not so that he wanted sex with me right away. He made me stand up. He tucked my skirt up around my waist so that I was naked from the hips down. Then he took off his pants, took off the belt, and handed it to me. He wrapped both fists around himself, and then bent over so that I could beat him with the belt.”
“And you obliged?”
“Why not? Better him than me.” Hortense was realistic about it. “Besides, by that time I was feeling some hostility of my own. My derriere was pretty damn sore from his smacking it and pinching it. To tell the truth, I kind of liked the idea of getting my licks in. Even if he enjoyed it, the way I was feeling, he deserved it.”
“Understandable,” I assured her.
“Yes. Well, I laid it on with the belt, and that nut kept saying ‘Harder! Harder!’ until my arm was getting tired. He let me rest for a minute, and then he showed me how to use the belt so that the metal buckle would cut him when I struck. I did what he wanted, and that really sent him into ecstasy. Both his hands were going on all eight cylinders, and he just kept getting bigger and bigger. Watching him grow, I began to be afraid then that he would want sex. I’m built pretty normally myself—as you know, darling—and I knew that this outsize Prussian would really hurt me. But that still wasn’t what he wanted.”
“What did he want?”
“Wait. You’ll see. He made me sit in this armchair, and then he sat on my lap, facing me. Then he made me slap him across the face with the belt-—just the leather part, not the buckle. And then he said I should tell him what a bad boy he was and how he deserved to be punished. ‘Nein, Mutter! Bitte, Mutter! Nein! Mutter! Mutter! Mutter!’ He kept protesting and carrying on that way. But he didn’t want me to stop. When I tried, he got angry, and so I kept on humoring him. Finally, he was on the verge. Then came the sickest part of all.”