The Totems of Abydos (31 page)

“I do not understand you,” she said.

Brenner was silent. He did not suppose he was so different from other men, at least those of the home world.

“Do you like the way you are?” she asked.

Brenner would not reply to this question.

“I have met men other than you,” she said. “You need not be as you are.”

“I do not think I am so different from other men,” said Brenner, “at least those of the home world.”

“Your friend does not seem like you,” she said.

“He has been on other worlds,” said Brenner.

“It is true,” she said, “that you remind me of many of the putative males I met, I do not say “men,” on the home world.”

“I have striven to be a true person,” Brenner admitted.

“I had hoped you might prove to be a man,” she said.

“I am not an uncivilized brute,” he said.

“That is true,” she said.

“Doubtless you would prefer a rough, callous, insensitive beast,” he said, “a tyrant who would make demands upon you, and treat you as a thing.”

“A thing of beauty,” she said, “whom he will have serve him according to his dictates.”

“Do not joke,” said Brenner.

“What you do not understand,” she said, “is that there is no ultimate incompatibility between refinement and the beast, nor between learning and power, that one need not languish that the other may thrive, that it is possible to be both cultivated and strong, sensitive and forceful, intelligent and strict. Civilization need not imply weakness. Civilization need not be rejected. It, rather, can be the setting in which nature finds its grandest fulfillment. There is no ultimate antitheticality between the poem and the whip, between the sonata and the chain.”

Brenner was silent.

She sobbed.

“Do not weep,” he said, angrily.

“What of my needs?” she asked.

“They are not permitted to exist,” said Brenner.

She threw her head back, against the covers.

“They are nothing,” said Brenner.

“And what of yours?” she asked.

“They, too,” said he, “must be nothing.”

“But you have chained me,” she said.

“A moment’s aberration,” he said.

He then, suddenly, turned away, again. He went to the side of the room. He kept his back to her.

“You act as though you are weak,” she said. “I wonder if you truly are.”

“Weakness is true strength,” said Brenner. “The proper employment of masculine power is self-subversion. Manhood’s greatest triumph is to overcome itself. The truest man is he who is least like a man.”

“That is stupid,” she said.

Brenner did not respond to this. The slogans he had uttered had, to be sure, rung hollowly, even in his own ears. He supposed they had been invented as political instruments, to serve one end or another. Too, they provided valuable rationalizations for certain sorts of males, for example, those whose low drive levels would never enable them to comprehend greater forces, those active in creatures of stronger passion. It seemed they did not even, really, share the same form of life. For a moment Brenner envied the creatures of low drives, those who had never experienced more than ripples and stirrings, those who had no concept of tidalities, of hurricanes, of raging seas. Then he did not envy them, no more than the hawk would envy the worm, no more than the lion the lamb.

“You chained me,” she said.

Brenner was silent.

“You chained me,” she said. “Come, look upon me.”

Brenner did not move. He did not even wish to turn about, to see her lying there, covered with the sheet.

“From the first moment you saw me,” she said, “surely you must have been curious as to what I would look like, in chains.”

Brenner was silent. There was a sense, he supposed, in which this, or something like it, was true. He had found her attractive, even as long ago as their brief encounter in the rain, in the muddy street. And chains, though they are surely, indisputably, effective custodial devices, both from the point of view of he who chains and she who is chained, are, perhaps even more, a symbol amongst symbols for a symbol-using animal. They speak of a relationship, of a propriety deeper than those of convention, of a claim of an animal of its rightful complement, and the expression of this claim in terms as graphic, as explicit and real as the piling of stones to mark a border, as the touch of steel in the conferring of knighthood, as the exchanging of a handful of earth between lord and vassal. He had, of course, wondered what she might look like, stripped, and his, and, in the sense in which chains would make clear by whom she was claimed, to whom she was subject, it was in its way true. In this sense one might, metaphorically, consider the woman as, so to speak, “in chains.” Earlier, of course, when he had imagined the directress on the ship, and later, of course, when he had been downstairs in the bar, his thoughts along these lines had been much more explicit. Then he had, not only symbolically, and metaphorically, but literally, thought of explicit signs of claiming, and ownership, and chains, of course, in their beauty, their primitiveness, their simplicity, like vines, like cords or ropes, come quickly, naturally, to mind.

“You chained me,” she said, irritably. “Surely you must have been curious to see what I would look like, in chains.”

Brenner was silent.

“So, come, look upon me,” she said.

He turned about, angrily, and went to the side of the bed. She looked up at him, defiantly.

“Look upon me!” she challenged.

He drew down the sheet a little, from about her throat. He could then see the metal collar on her neck. To the side, half lost under her hair, was the ring by means of which it was attached to the chain. Then the chain went up, behind her, to where it was fastened about the bar at the head of the bed.

“Look upon me!” she challenged.

He put his hand to the sheet, and then, after holding it a moment, tore it down and away. She cried out, startled, a little frightened, for she had not anticipated that this action would be done so suddenly, so decisively. She lay there before him. He noted that she seemed frightened, now. She was not as bold, it seemed, as she had pretended. Then, again, she spoke boldly. “Do you like what you see?” she asked.

He did not respond. Never had he seen anything so tantalizing, so beautiful, and, in its way, so ungracious, so unpleasant, so irritating.

“Unchain me!” she said.

He regarded her.

“Unchain me!” she demanded.

He looked her over. His eye rested on the chain and disk, that fastened on her left ankle. He had been curious about that. He had not dared, really, hitherto, to look at it.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He took her left ankle in his hand and lifted it, and looked at the device fastened there. He ran his finger about, under the chain. He examined the small, stout, cylindrical lock. Then he turned the metal disk, from one side to the other, it with its own link to the chain, looking at it. It was about an inch and a half in diameter, larger than that worn by the maids at the hostel. On one side Brenner read the inscription giving the name and address of her contract holder. On the other side was another inscription, perhaps with the same content, but one unintelligible to Brenner. It was, of course, in one of the several zardian languages. She tried to pull her ankle away from Brenner, but was unable to do so. In a moment, realizing her inability to free her ankle, that her strength was insignificant as compared to his, she turned her head to the side, desisting in the contest which could have been continued only to her further embarrassment. He then considered the smallness of her foot, the slenderness of the ankle, encircled by the chain and disk, the lovely curve of the calf, above the chain. He then again regarded the chain and disk. “You are under contract,” he said. He then opened his hand, letting her pull her ankle away. She put down her leg, flexed, so that the sole of her foot was on the bed.

She looked up at him, angrily.

“Unchain me,” she said.

“You are under contract,” he said.

She struggled up on her left elbow, half lying on the bed, the chain now looping back to the bar.

“You wished to see me in chains,” she said. “Now you have done so. Now release me.”

“You are under contract,” he said.

“I do not understand,” she said.

He undid the top button at his collar. “Do not protest, or make noise,” he said.

“And if I do?”

“Then you will be gagged,” he said, dropping his shirt to the side.

“What is your intention?” she asked.

“Surely you are woman enough to guess,” he said. He touched her lightly, at the side of the leg, and she pulled her leg back, higher. And then she struggled back, half sitting up, thrusting her back against the back of the bed, pulling her legs up.

“You will beg my touch,” he said.

“Is that a command?” she asked.

“No,” said Brenner, stepping from the clothing at his feet, “it is a prediction.”

“Never!” she said.

“Am I to gather,” asked Brenner, “that it is your intention to be found less than fully pleasing?”

She turned white. “No!” she said. “No! Please do not report me to the zard in the morning as not having been fully pleasing!”

“I have no intention of doing so,” said Brenner.

“Thank you!” she breathed.

“Do you know why?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Because you are not going to be less than fully pleasing,” he said.

She looked at him, startled, stunned.

He then went to the wall and took down a short, stout whip which hung there.

“Do not strike me!” she begged.

Brenner gathered that she must, at one time or another, have felt the touch of such a device, surely at least once, for example, on the block, on Damascus. “I trust that it will not be necessary,” he said.

“You, you, could not strike me!” she said.

“Do you wish to put that to the test?” he asked.

“But you are a true man,” she said, suddenly, “tender, soft, kindly, weak, gentle, mild, indecisive, vacillating, compliant, anxious to please women, obedient to their wishes!”

“I am tired,” said Brenner, “of being denied, of being hungry, of being humiliated and tormented, of being cheated of my rights.”

“You have no rights!” she cried.

“If not,” said Brenner, “I now create them.”

“It will not be necessary to whip me!” she said. “Let me rather kiss the whip, to show my deference, my respect, my submission!”

“‘Submission’,” said Brenner. “I like that word on your lips. It well becomes them.”

He held the whip to her lips, and she kissed it, and then, softly, licked it, and then looked up at him.

He then replaced the whip on the wall.

“See where it is?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“It may do you good,” he said, “from time to time, to look over here, and see it.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He entered upon the bed.

He drew her down a little, from the head of the bed.

She looked up at him.

“If you are going to be a man,” she said, “then I will have no choice but to be a woman.”

He touched her, softly, delicately.

“Ohhh,” she said, softly.

“A woman under contract,” said Brenner, “should be beautiful, humble, and useful.”

“It is my hope that I am beautiful,” she said.

“And?” asked Brenner.

She, now on her back, turned her head to her right, and looked at the whip, on its peg on the wall.

“I am humble,” she assured him.

He again touched her, and she squirmed, helplessly. “Oh,” she said, softly, “oh!” Her small wrists, encircled in the bracelets, moved behind her back. “Oh!” she breathed.

He kissed her.

“It is my hope,” she whispered, “that I will prove useful.”

“I will see to it,” said Brenner.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.

* * *

Some time later he had freed her wrists of the bracelets, but he had not seen fit, for whatever whim, to release her neck from the clasp of the collar, this, by means of the chain, fastening her to the bar at the head of the bed. To be sure, lest it be feared that he was showing her too little respect, and even treating her as though she might not be free, but bond, a vendible article, a property, a domestic animal, it might be mentioned that slaves are often chained not on the bed itself, but at the
foot
of the bed, on the floor, and used there, upon covers or furs. It is not a foregone conclusion, you see, that a slave is permitted upon the surface of a bed, or couch. It is something of an honor for a slave, or a privilege, for her to be permitted there. It is something to obtain which she may have to strive for months, for which she, though a mere slave, must try to prove herself worthy. The passage to the surface of the couch is one calling for heat, devotion, and dutifulness. It is not something, strictly, which she can earn, for its gift is in the treasury of the master, and no bargains are struck with slaves, but it is something for which she may eventually hope, assuming that her zeal and her increasing slave excellences render such a hope not unrealistic.