Kneeling on the wooden floor of her cell, in the thin, white dress, she looked up at him.
It came high up her thighs.
He did not tell her to rise. She remained kneeling. He looked at her, for a long time.
It was the first time he had seen her adorned.
It was a quite different Brenda Hamilton on whom he now looked, than on whom he had looked before. It was a Brenda Hamilton who was now a woman.
“Hello. Gunther,” said Brenda Hamilton.
He drew up one of the cane chairs, its back to her, and sat across it, facing her, looking at her. He did not. speak. After a time, Brenda whispered, “Do you like me as I am now, as you see me now?”
He did not answer her. His face betrayed no emotion. He turned about. “Lock the door,” he said to someone outside, one of the blacks.
It was shut and locked.
He regarded her.
“We are now alone,” he said. “We will not be disturbed.”
“Yes, Gunther,” she whispered.
Gunther regarded her. “You are now, without inhibition,” he said, “to do precisely what you wish.”
She regarded him, startled. Then she smiled. “No,” she said.
“What is it that you feel like doing?” he asked. “What secret thought do you fight? What impulse do you repudiate, rejecting it as too terrible, too degrading?”
“It is not terrible,” she laughed, “it is only silly.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“A silly impulse,” she said. “You would laugh, if I told you.”
“Tell me,” he said.
“It is too silly,” she laughed.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I have a silly impulse,” she said, “to crawl to you on my belly and kiss your boots.” She laughed.
“Do it,” said Gunther.
“No!” she cried. “No!”
“Do so,” he said. His eyes were stern.
“No, please, no!” whispered Brenda Hamilton.
“Do so,” said Gunther.
Brenda Hamilton, possessor of a doctorate in mathematics, a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, slipped to her stomach. She approached Gunther. Her hair fell over his boots. She took them in her hands and, again and again, kissed them. She tasted the leather, the dust of the Rhodesian bush, in her mouth. Tears in her eyes, she lifted her head, helplessly looking at him.
“Go to the cot,” he said.
“Yes, Gunther,” said Brenda Hamilton. She went to the cot. She knelt on the cot. She waited for him to come to her.
He slipped from the chair and went to the cot, and sat on it, his body turned, regarding her.
He placed his hands on her upper arms, and drew her toward him.
“What do you want?” asked Gunther.
She turned her head away.
“Speak,” said Gunther.
She looked at him. “Must I?” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Gunther. “What do you want?”
“I’m a prisoner,” she said. “I want to be fucked like a prisoner, used!”
“Oh?” asked Gunther.
“By you, Gunther,” she whispered, “-by you!”
He said nothing.
“You are the most attractive man I have ever seen, Gunther,” she whispered. “You see,” she said, “as a prisoner I must speak the truth. Ever since I have seen you I have wanted you to take me. Fuck me, Gunther. I’m your prisoner. You can do with me what you want. Fuck me, Gunther, please! I beg you to fuck me!”
“You are an American,” said Gunther.
“Please, Gunther,” she whispered.
“Do you not want candlelight?” asked Gunther, amused. “Soft music, sentiment, romance?”
He held her arms, she in the thin, white dress, under the single light bulb, high over their heads, under the tin roof, on the flat, thin striped mattress on an iron cot, in a stifling cell in Rhodesia.
“No,” she said, “Gunther. I want sex. I want you to be hard with me, show me no mercy. Throw me down on my back, you, loveless and powerful, and treat me as what I am, and only as what I am, your female prisoner. Please, Gunther!”
“You seem quite different from what I knew before,” said Gunther.
“I’m begging you to fuck me, Gunther,” pleaded Brenda Hamilton.
“You are a virgin,” said Gunther.
Brenda Hamilton stiffened. This would have been established in London, in William’s gynecological examination. Tears came to Brenda Hamilton’s eyes. The results had obviously been made available to the men.
Doubtless they were familiar with all of her records, her measurements.
“Yes,” said Hamilton. “I’m a virgin.”
“And twenty-four years old,” laughed Gunther.
“Yes!” wept Hamilton.
“Virgin,” laughed Gunther.
“I give you my virginity, Gunther,” she wept.
His hands were hard on her arms. She cried out with pain, he held her so tightly.
“You give nothing,” said Gunther. “If I want it, I will take it.”
“Yes, Gunther,” she whispered.
Suddenly Gunther thrust her from him. She was startled.
“Gunther!” she cried.
Gunther stood up. He seemed very tall.
“Please, Gunther!” she wept.
“Beg on your knees to be fucked,” said Gunther.
Brenda Hamilton slipped to her knees, on the floor, before him. She lifted her head to him, tears in her eyes. “I beg to be fucked,” she said.
“No,” said Gunther. He laughed.
Brenda Hamilton looked up at him, in disbelief.
Gunther turned and stepped away from her. Near the mirror he bent down and picked up the cardboard box of cosmetics. He threw the brush and comb on the cot. The box, with the rest of its contents, he held in his left hand.
She had not moved. With his right hand, one after the other, he jerked the clip earrings, those with pendants, from her ears. “Oh!” she cried, her head jerked to one side. “Oh!” she wept, her head jerked to the other side. She put her fingertips to her ear lobes and felt blood. “Gunther!” she wept. He dropped the earrings in the box. He shook the contents of the box before her. “You will not be needing these any longer,” he said. “They have done their work.”
Brenda Hamilton shook her head negatively. “Gunther,” she whispered. “I do not understand.”
“Wash yourself,” said Gunther. “Get rid of the powder, the makeup, the lipstick.”
She looked at him.
“Hurry,” he said.
Obediently, Brenda Hamilton went to the water bucket and filled the bow). With the tiny sliver of soap, and the reverse side of the piece of toweling allotted to her, she washed, and wiped, her face.
She faced him.
“Again,” he said. “And swiftly!” ‘
She turned again to the bowl, the soap, the towel. Quickly, clumsily, she cleaned her face. She then turned again to face him, to be inspected.
“Come here,” said Gunther.
With his hand in her hair, he inspected her. He bent to smell her shoulder. “The perfume,” he said, “lingers, but it will dissipate in a day or so.”
By the hair he threw her to the cot..
He went to the door and knocked twice, sharply.
Brenda heard the padlocks being removed from the staples, heard them fall on their chains against the door. Then the door was ajar.
“Gunther,” she said.
He turned to face her.
“Why did you not rape me?” she asked.
“It is not mine to rape you,” he said.
“Not-yours?” she asked.
“No,” said Gunther.
She looked at him, not understanding.
He turned away.
Quickly she rose from the cot. She went to him. She put her hand on his arm. He looked down into her eyes. “Gunther,” she whispered, looking down, “please, please do not tell anyone what occurred in this room tonight – 2’
“Kneel,” he said.