By the bright light coming in through the French doors, a slightly sloping circular building could be seen at the far end of the room, with a shallow curved ceiling, supported by two thin columns six feet apart. The stage was about four feet high, nestled between the two columns, with the front edge arching outward slightly. The stage, like the rest of the room, was covered with a red felt carpet. The walls were white and hung with red curtains. Facing the stage in a fan shape were some sofa chairs covered with the same red felt as the carpet. At the other end of the room, which was rectangular in shape, there was a large fireplace, very wide but not too deep, with a large jukebox and radio across the fireplace, and racks of records on either side, which was why the room was called the music room. A door next to the fireplace opened into Anne Marie’s room. A door next to the fireplace led directly to Anne Marie’s room, and an identical door on the other side of the fireplace led to a closet. Apart from the record player and the sofa, there was no other furniture in this room.
In the middle of the two pillars, with the edge of the stage at a perpendicular angle to the ground, and with the steps set on the outside of the pillars, Collette made O sit on the edge of the stage right in the middle, while the other two girls first closed the Venetian blinds slightly together, and then closed the large French door, which, to O’s amazement, she found to be a double-decker door.
Anne Marie laughed and said, “Then no one will ever hear you scream again. Anne-Marie laughed and said, “No one will ever hear you scream again. The walls are corked, so don’t worry, no one will be able to hear even the slightest sound from here. Now lie back.”
She grabbed O’s shoulders and laid her on her back, then pulled her upward again. Yvonne locked her hands on one of the rings on the stage and O gripped the edge of the stage with both hands, her hips dangling in the air, as Anne Marie pulled her legs up towards her chest. Mary pulled her legs up towards her chest, and then O suddenly felt her curled up legs being straightened and tensed: the two straps on her ankle bracelets pulled her legs apart and tied them to the pillars on either side, so that she was lying on the raised stage between the two pillars. From the stage, the only visible part of her entire body was the two gaping cracks in her pussy and ass, where Anne Marie was stroking her big, fat ass. Mary was stroking the insides of her thighs.
“It’s the most tender part of the body,” she said, “be careful not to hurt it. Don’t hit it too hard, Collette.”
Collette stood tall at O’s waist-high level, and under the bridge formed by her dark thighs, O saw the leather strips on the whip swaying in her hand. O groaned as the burning-like first blow arrived.
Collette turned from the left to the right, paused, and took another swipe. o struggled desperately, feeling as if the belts were going to dismember her. She did not want to grovel or plead for mercy, yet that was exactly what Anne Marie was trying to force out of her. But that was exactly what Anne-Marie was trying to force out of her.
“Faster,” she said to Collette, “and harder.”
O tried desperately to hold it back, but it was no use. After only a minute she could bear it no longer, and she wailed shrilly, with tears streaming down her face, as Anne. Mary stroked her face.
“Bear with me a little longer,” she said, “it’s almost over. There’s five minutes to go; she can cry and yell for five minutes. It’s been twenty-five minutes, Collette, and stop when I tell you to stop at thirty.”
But O was screaming, “No, no, for God’s sake!” She cried and cried, she couldn’t take it any more, no, she couldn’t take the punishment for another second, and yet, she made it to the end. Collette left the little stage, and Anne B. Mary was smiling at her.
“You’re going to thank me for this,” she said to O. So O thanked her.
She knew very well why Anne-Marie’s favorite thing to do was to whip her. One of Mary’s favorite things to do was to whip her. Women were as cruel as men, if not more so, and O never doubted it. But O guessed that Anne-Marie was not interested in creating her own image of authority. O never really understands, but she eventually accepts this undeniably important truth, this mixture of emotional conviction and ambivalence: she enjoys the physical punishment, but when it is she who is being tortured, she will do anything to avoid it; yet, when the punishment is over, she is happy for the fact that she is being tortured, and that she has been tortured by a woman. However, when the punishment is over, she is happy with what she has gone through, and the more brutal and prolonged the punishment, the stronger the feeling of happiness.
Anne Marie was right. Mary was right to anticipate O’s acquiescence and her defiance, knowing that her pleas for mercy were indeed heartfelt. She also explains to O. the third reason for this: she is determined to prove to every girl who comes to her and who is destined to live in a purely feminine world that a person’s femininity should not be weakened or diminished just because she is surrounded by women; on the contrary, her femininity should be deepened and strengthened.
This is why she requires the girls to remain nude, and the way O is whipped and the position she is tied up in is no less to that end. Today it was O who had three hours left in the rest of the afternoon on stage with her legs up and apart for public display. Tomorrow, it would be Clarie, or Collette, or Ivonne, while O watched. This technique is a much more gentle and subtle way of doing things (including the use of the whip) than Rosie’s.
But O would see how effective it was, and in addition to the iron ring she would wear and the letters she would print when she left this place, she would return to Mr. Stephen in a more open posture, falling deeper into slavery, much deeper than she had expected.
The next morning, after breakfast, Anne B. Mary asked O and Ivoni to come with her to her bedroom.
She took a green leather case from her writing desk, placed it on the bed, and opened it. The two girls crouched beside it.
“Did Ivoni tell you about this?” Anne B. Mary asked O.
O shook her head. What would Ivoni tell her?
“And as far as I know, Mr. Stephen hasn’t mentioned it either. It doesn’t matter. That’s the iron ring he wanted to put on you.”
The rings were of stainless steel, unpolished, and of the same dull color as the gold-encrusted iron rings. They were oval, like one of those iron rings that join together in a heavy chain, and the thickness of the metal ring was about the diameter of a large colored pencil. Anne Marie told O to look closely at each ring. Mary showed O that each ring consisted of two U-shaped semicircles, the two halves just fitting together.
“This is just a test model,” she said “It can still be taken off when you put it on. And look at the permanent kind, it has a spring in it, you just press it and it locks with the other half of the ring and can only be opened with a steel file.”
Each ring was as long as two sections of a small thumb, and a small thumb could fit in the ring. The rings hung in a row like earrings, and on the equivalent of an earlobe was a circular piece of metal, similar in size to the diameter of the ring, with a gold-encrusted emblem on one side and nothing on the other.
“On the blank side of this will be printed your name, your title, and Mr. Stephen’s name,” said Anne. Mary,” said she, “and above the names are the marks of a leather whip crossed with a riding crop. Yvonne’s collar wears such a piece of metal, but yours will be worn on the pubic area.”
“But…” said O, gathering her courage.
“I know,” replied Anne-Marie. Mary replied, “that’s why I asked Evony to come with me. Let us see yours, Evony.”
The redhead stood up and then lay down on her back on the bed as Anne-Marie spread her thighs. Mary parted her thighs and O saw that a very round hole had been punched in one of the labia, just below the center of the labia, just enough to put the iron ring in.
“I’ll have you perforated in a minute, O,” said Anne B. Mary said, “it is not at all difficult; the most time-consuming thing is to put a little clip into the hole, so that the outer skin grows in with the inner, which is much easier to bear than whipping.”
“You mean you won’t anesthetize me?” O shrieked, trembling.
“Of course not,” replied Anne-Marie. “Just tie you up a little tighter than yesterday,” replied Anne-Marie. That will be enough. Now come on.”
A week later, Anne-Marie removed the small clips and put them in the test model. Mary removed the small clip and put it into the test model. It was lighter than it looked because it was hollow, but O could still feel its weight. The hard metal pierced the flesh so conspicuously that it looked like a torture device. What would happen when the weight of the second ring was added? This barbaric instrument of torture was so conspicuous that one would immediately notice it in a casual glance.
“Of course it will be found,” said O., when she pointed this out to Anne Marie. When O. pointed this out to Anne-Marie, she said, “Don’t you see by now what Mr. Stephen is asking for? What he’s asking is that anyone, whether in Rosyth or anywhere else, whether it’s Mr. Stephen or anyone else, even when you stand in front of a mirror yourself, just lift up your skirt and you’ll immediately see his ring on your pussy; just turn around and you’ll see his initials on your buttocks. You may file the ring away to remove it at some future date, but the mark on your buttocks will never go away.”
“I think it’s possible to mess up a tattoo’s pattern.” Collette said.
(Ivoni is tattooed, on the snowy white skin above her pussy, Master Ivoni’s initials with tattooed there in fancy blue letters, just like the letters you embroider.) “O, not a tattoo,” Anne. Mary replied.
O looked at Anne Marie. Collette and Evonne were also surprised, but didn’t say anything. Anne-Marie was searching for words. Anne-Marie was searching for words.
“Say it.” O said.
“My poor girl, I haven’t the courage to tell you: you will be branded: Mr. Stephen sent the branding iron two days ago.”
“Branding?” Yvonne called out, “With a red-hot branding iron?”
From the very first day, O shared the common life in this house. Idleness, absolute idleness, intentionally created idleness, this was the daily life, punctuated by a few dull diversions. The girls were free to walk in the garden, to read, to draw, to play cards, to play a single card game; they could sleep in their own rooms or sunbathe on the lawn; sometimes the two of them chatted for hours at a time; sometimes they sat in silence beside Anne-Marie. Sometimes they sat by Anne-Marie’s side in silence. Meals were always taken at the same time, and at dinner the table was lighted with candles, tea was brought into the garden, and the commonplace manner in which the two servants waited on the naked ladies who sat around the banquet table was a little absurd.
At night, Anne-Marie appointed one of the girls to sleep with her. Anne-Marie appointed one of the girls to sleep with her, and sometimes the same girl slept with her for several days. She stroked and caressed her chosen companion, and she always went to bed towards dawn, and was fast asleep, and before she went to bed she bade the girl go to her own room. The purple curtains were half-open and half-open, leaking on the fuchsia of dawn. Evonne had said that Anne-Marie appeared both beautiful in her pursuit of pleasure. Ivonne had said that Anne-Marie was both beautifully arrogant and insatiable in her pursuit of pleasure.
No one had ever seen her naked, and she only gently pulled up or slightly opened her white nylon robe a little at a time, never taking it off. Neither the pleasure she had tasted the night before nor her choice of partner would in any way affect her decision the next afternoon, which was always decided by lot. At three o’clock in the afternoon, under the reddish-bronze beech tree, with the garden chairs arranged in a circle around the white marble table, Anne-Marie took out the lottery box. Mary took out the lottery box.
Each girl draws a stick, and whoever draws the stick with the lowest score is taken to the music room and tied to the stage as she was the first day O arrived. Then she had to point to Anne Marie’s right or left hand (O didn’t have to.) Mary’s right or left hand (O did not have to do this until she left the place), and in one of her hands was a black ball and in the other a white ball. If she points to the black, she is whipped, and if she points to the white she is not whipped.
Anne Marie. Mary was never accommodating, whether chance brought a girl down for days on end or released her.
It was for this reason that little Ivoni’s punishment lasted for four days as she cried out her lover’s name, her thighs and forehead covered in spiderweb-like bloodstains, her open legs revealing the pink flesh pierced by a thick iron ring between them.
She finally got on that ring at last, and since her pubic hair had been shaved all over, the sight was even more remarkable.
“But why?” O wanted to know, “Why do you need an iron ring when you already wear a metal piece on your collar?”
“He said when I shave there it will look more naked. The ring, I think, the ring is for tying me there.”
Every time he saw Ivoni’s green eyes and her pointy little face, O would always think of Jacklynn. Had Jacklyn gone to Rosie? Would Jacklynn have gotten here sooner or later, and would she have been tied to this stage on her back?
“I don’t,” O wanted to say, “want or will have any part in getting her here. That’s just it, and I’ve said too much already; Jacqueline’s not the type to take a whipping and be branded.”
But how well those whippings and iron rings applied to little Evony heh! How lovely her moans and sighs were, how lovely when her body was drenched in sweat, and how exciting and pleasant it was to make her moan and sweat! Twice Anne-Marie handed O. Mary handed O the whip made of a tuft of leather strips and both times she was whipped it was Ivoni who made her use it. The first time she had felt hesitant at the beginning, and had flinched at the first scream, but as soon as she had resumed, and Ivoni’s cries had resumed, she had been overwhelmed by an immense sensation of pleasure.
The sensation was so intense that she found herself laughing uncontrollably, and found it nearly impossible to restrain the urge to whip Ivoni as hard as she could. After the whipping was over, she kept watch over Ivoni, who continued to be tied to the stage, and embraced her again and again. In a sense she resembled Ivoni, at least that was how Anne-Marie saw them both. That was how Anne-Marie saw them both.
Was it O’s reticence and her docility that made Anne-Marie so fond of her? Was it O’s silence and her docility that made Anne-Marie so fond of her? When O’s wound had not yet healed, Anne-Marie said to her.
“How I regret not whipping you myself heh! …when you come again… But let’s not talk about this, no matter what, I want to open you every day.”
Each day, when the girl who had been brought to the music room was untied, O took her place until it was time for the dinner bell to ring. Anne-Marie was right. Mary was right: during those two hours she could think of only one thing, and that was that her body was open, that the iron ring hung heavily on her body (after she had put on one ring), and after they had put on a second ring, it became even heavier, and she could not think of anything but her state of slavery, and the symbols that indicated that state.
One evening Clarie and Collette went from the garden to O and checked the two iron rings on either side.
“When you went to Rossi,” asked Clarie, “was it Anne. Did Anne-Marie take you there?”
“No.” O said.
“It was Anne B. Mary took me there, two years ago. I’m going back there the day after tomorrow.”
“Do you belong to someone?” O asked.
“Clarie belongs to me,” said Anne Marie. “Clarie belongs to me,” said Anne-Marie, who had suddenly appeared in front of them at some point, “and your master will be here tomorrow, O. You’ll sleep with me tonight.”
It wasn’t even four o’clock on a short summer night before the sky began to glow and the light of day drowned out the last of the stars.
O was asleep with her legs together when she was suddenly awakened by Anne Marie’s hand probing between her thighs. O was suddenly awakened by Anne-Marie’s hand between her thighs. What Anne-Marie was doing was waking O up and letting her touch her. All Mary had to do was wake O up and let her touch her.
Her eyes sparkled in half-light, her dark hair with strands of gray streaked upward on the pillow: a little curly, cut short, making her look like an aristocratic man in exile, one of those brave, fearless prodigal sons. o rubbed her lips against her hardening nipples, and she slid her hand gently over her groin.
Anne Marie soon succumbed, but not to O. The pleasure that made her gaze wide-eyed at the growing light was an impersonal one in which O was only a tool. Mary soon succumbed, but not to O. The pleasure that made her gaze wide-eyed at the growing light of day was an impersonal pleasure in which O was merely an instrument. Anne Marie did not care for O’s adoring gaze. Mary neither cared that O gazed adoringly at her face and lips, nor that O heard her moan; her face became for a moment radiant with the glitter of youth. Her lovely lips were half-open, half-closed, and she let out a moan as O’s lips and teeth nipped at the tiny peak of flesh hidden in her pussy. She grabbed O’s hair and pressed her tighter against her, releasing her each time just for the next command, “More, more.”
O had loved Jaclyn in the same way that had brought her completely into her arms. She had possessed her, or at least she thought she had. But the mere resemblance of the action meant nothing. O had not possessed Anne-Marie. O had not possessed Anne-Marie, no one had possessed Anne-Marie. No one has ever possessed Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie demanded caresses but did not care how those who offered them felt, she surrendered herself with a haughty freedom. Yet she was extremely kind and gentle to O, kissing her on the lips and breasts, and holding her tightly for an hour before letting her go to her room.
She took off her gauntlet.
“These are your last few bells here,” she said, “you can take off your iron ring and go to sleep, and in a little while we’ll put it on you, and you’ll never be able to take it off.”
She stroked O’s buttocks gently and for a long time, then took her to her own dressing room, the only room in the entire house with a three-way mirror. She turned the mirror on so that O could see herself in it.
“This is the last time you will see your complete and undamaged self,” she said, “and here, in this flat, round place, is the part where Mr. Stephen’s name is to be typed, on the two bulges of your buttocks. The day before you leave this place, I will bring you here again and show you another image of yourself, and you will not recognize yourself. But Mr. Stephen is right. Now go get some sleep, O.”
But O was so anxious and restless that she had trouble sleeping. When Ivoni came to call her at ten o’clock the next morning, O was trembling and had to ask Ivoni to help her with her bath, combing her hair, and applying lipstick. She heard the garden gate open and it was Mr. Stephen arriving.
“Come now, O,” said Ivoni, “he’s waiting for you.”
The sun was already high, there was not a breath of wind, the leaves on the beech tree did not move a muscle as if it were really made of beaten copper, and the dog was driven by the heat to lie down beside the roots. As the sun was not entirely hidden by the thick shade of the tree, light poured through the branches and leaves, and the marble tabletop was sprinkled with brilliant, warm spots of light.
Mr. Stephen stood motionless at the stone table, and Anne B. Mary sat behind him.
“Here she is,” said Anne B., when Ivoni brought O to them. Mary said, “you can put that iron ring on her any time you like; she’s already pierced.”
Mr. Stephen did not answer, but took O in his arms, kissed her on the lips, picked her up, laid her on the stone table, and leaned over her; then he kissed her again, and stroked her brow and hair, and then stood up straight, and said to Anne Marie. Then he stood up straight, and said to Anne-Marie.
“Assuming you think it’s appropriate, now.”
Anne B. Mary took out the leather case she had brought with her, sat down in a chair, and handed Mr. Stephen the iron rings, which were open, and on which were engraved the names O. and Mr. Stephen.
“It’s ready to go.” Mr. Stephen said.
Yvonne lifted O’s knee, and when Anne. O felt the coldness of the metal as Mary put the iron ring on her. As she slipped the second ring into the first, she took care to keep the gold-encrusted side against her thigh and the side with the name engraved on it toward the center. But the spring was so tight that the socket lock was difficult to lock into place, and they had to send Ivoni for the hammer. Then they had O sit up, leaning back slightly, legs apart, and placed on the edge of the tabletop as if on an anvil, and hit the other end of the ferrule with the hammer so that it finally came into place. Mr. Stephen watched silently from beginning to end, not saying a word.
After everything was done, he thanked Anne Marie. He thanked Anne-Marie and helped O to stand up. It was then that she realized that the new ring was much heavier than the temporary one she had been wearing for the past few days, and this time it was permanent.
“It’s your name now, isn’t it?” Anne B. Mary said to Mr. Stephen.
Mr. Stephen nodded his approval and wrapped his arm around O’s waist she hobbled a bit as if she was going to fall.
She wasn’t wearing the black corset, but her body shape had been molded more ideally; her waist was now so slender that it looked as if it would snap if she wasn’t careful, and her hips and breasts appeared fuller as a result.
Mr. Stephen scarcely led O, but dragged her into the music-room, where Collette and Clarrie were seated at the side of the stage, and both girls rose at the same time as they approached. There was a large cylinder stove with a roaring fire on the stage, and Anne B. Mary took the straps out of the closet and tied O’s waist and knees tightly to the post so that her stomach was pressed against it, and they tied her hands and feet as well.
O was in a state of extreme fear, only to feel Anne Marie. Mary’s hand toweling up to her hip, pointing out the exact location of the brand. In the dead silence, O heard the hissing of the fire and the sound of the window closing. In fact, she could have turned her face to look, but she didn’t have the courage.
A sharp stab of pain slammed through her entire body, causing her bound body to tense up at once and a scream to split her lips, and she would never know who it was that branded those two irons at the same time on top of the twin peaks of her buttocks, or whose voice slowly counted from one to five, or whose hand signaled the withdrawal of the irons.
When they had untied her, she collapsed in Anne B. Mary’s arms, and had not time to catch a glimpse of Mr. Stephen’s pale face before it became black and finally unconscious.
On the tenth day before the end of July, Mr. Stephen drove O back to Paris. She was already Mr. Stephen’s personal property, as the bold black lettering on the iron ring on her left labia solemnly indicated, which dangled about a third of the way up her thighs, swaying back and forth with every step, like the tongue of a bell, and where the piece of metal hung heavier and longer than the ring. The two branded letters were 3 inches long and 1.5 inches wide, burned into the flesh like a chisel, almost half an inch deep: a finger could feel them clearly.
O was immensely proud of this iron ring and brand, and she had no intention of ever concealing these marks of hers from Jacqueline again, any more than she had endeavored to hide the whip-marks which Mr. Stephen had made with his riding-whip a few days before she left home. She would find Jacklyn as soon as possible and show her these marks of hers. But Jacqueline would not be back for another week, and René was away.
During that week, in accordance with Mr. Stephen’s instructions, O ordered several summer dresses, and nightgowns sewn from extremely light and soft materials. He only allowed her to buy two styles of dress, but several of each: one with a zipper down the front (O already had several of these); and the other a long, easy-to-lift skirt, always topped with a corset that covered her breasts at the lower edge, and paired with a sleeveless waistcoat that was placketed in the front. Once the undershirt is removed, the shoulders and breasts are fully exposed, and if anyone wants to see her breasts, just unbutton them.
The bathing suit, of course, was not needed at all; the iron ring would show from under it anyway. Mr. Stephen had told her that whenever she went swimming this summer she must be completely nude, and that she was not to wear a beach bathing suit. The rules about those two basic styles were suggested by Anne-Marie, who understood that Mr. Stephen was not a nude swimmer, but a nude swimmer. Mary, who knew Mr. Stephen’s favorite way to use the O, suggested that the O could wear a bathing suit with a long zipper on each side so that her buttocks could be exposed without having to take off her bathing suit.
But Mr. Stephen refused Anne B. He used O’s mouth, and other than that he almost always used O as he would a boy, but O had noticed many times that whenever she was near him, even when he didn’t want her very much, he loved to hold her pussy in his hand, just mechanically holding it in his hand, playing with the hairs that covered it, opening it up with his hand and poking his fingers deep inside.
O had taken pleasure from Jacqueline in the same way, and the dampness and burning heat that she had once felt on her fingers was the very assurance of the evidence of the pleasure that Mr. Stephen had taken from her, and she quite understood why he was unwilling to let any external obstacle stand in the way of his happiness.
With no hat on her head, no makeup at all, letting her hair go completely loose, and wearing a striped or dotted blue and white or off-white crinkled saree, a close-fitting camisole that buttoned all the way up to her neck, or one of those long black nylon dresses of hers that were more conservatively styled, O looked like a very domesticated little girl.
Wherever Mr. Stephen accompanied her, she was always treated as his daughter or niece, and one of the reasons for this misunderstanding was that he always used the word “you” when addressing her, whereas she used the word “you” to him.
As they wandered together through the streets of Paris, visiting the window displays, or strolling along the gravel paths of the quayside, dusty from the dry weather, people rising up to meet them smiled at them, the kind of smiles people give to people who look happy, and they accepted them with aplomb.
Occasionally Mr. Stephen would push her into a doorway or under the vaulted canopies of a building, which was always darker and smelled like an old musty cellar, and he would kiss her and tell her he loved her.
O would hook his heels on the stone steps of the doorway and the gate was often blocked.
They would catch a glimpse of a family’s backyard with a row of clothes drying in the window. A blonde reclined on the lanai, and she would stare fixedly at them. A cat burrowed between their legs.
And so they strolled through the Gobelins neighborhood, past St. Michael’s, along the Rue de la Mouffetard, past a place known as the Temple, and finally to the Bastille.
On one occasion, Mr. Stephen suddenly led O into a hotel in such deplorable condition that it resembled a brothel, where the bellboy first asked them to fill out a form, but then said that if it was only for an hour, they needn’t bother. The room had blue paste wallpaper dotted with many golden peonies, and the windows flushed out onto a patio that reeked of garbage cans. Despite the dim lighting, they could see the marks on the mantelpiece from when someone had put powder on it, as well as the bobby pins that had been left there. A large mirror hung from the ceiling above the bed.
Once, and that was the only time, Mr. Stephen invited O. to lunch with two fellow Englishmen who were passing through Paris. He arrived at her house an hour early, but this time, instead of taking her to his place, he drove her to the B arrondissement.
O had showered by then, but hadn’t brushed her hair and makeup or gotten dressed. She was surprised to find that Mr. Stephen was carrying a golf bag on his person, although it did not look like there were golf clubs inside. Mr. Stephen soon satisfied her curiosity by instructing her to open the bag, which revealed several whips: two rather heavy red leather whips; two long, thin black leather whips; a whip made of a bunch of green leather strips tied together, with one end of the strip folded over to form a loop; a dogwhip made of thick leather straps, with the handles braided with strips of leather; and leather bracelets of the kind that were used in Rossi, plus some rope.
O took them out, one by one, and arranged them on the bed that hadn’t been made up since she got up. No matter how used to whips she had become, or how determined she was to face them, she shivered uncontrollably. Mr. Stephen embraced her.
“Which one do you like, O?” he asked her.
But she couldn’t say a word, and cold sweat dripped straight down her skeleton.
“Which one do you like?” He asked again, “Well,” seeing that she couldn’t say anything, he said instead, “You come and help me first.”
He instructed her to fetch some nails and arrange the whips in a decorative way that crossed and overlapped them, finally making a pattern of whips that was ideally situated between the dressing mirror and the fireplace, just opposite her bed.
He hammered some nails into the wood, and on the handle of each leather whip was a small iron ring with which the whip could be hung from the nails, and the effect of this arrangement was to make it easy to take down each whip, and hang it back on the wall in its original position when it was used.
Together with the bracelets and cords, O will see a complete arrangement of her instruments of torture on the wall opposite the bed. This beautiful set of tools goes together in perfect harmony, looking like the wheel and spikes on the portrait of the Virgin Catherine, and like the nails, hammer, crown of thorns, spear, and whip on the Crucifixion.
By the time Jacqueline came back… But all this should have included Jacqueline, who was already deeply involved, and O had to answer Mr. Stephen’s question: she couldn’t, so he chose the dogwhip himself.
In a small single room on the third floor of the Bellows Hotel, next to the Left Bank Pier, the dark walls were painted in bright colors and pointillist brushwork with human figures that looked like puppeteers in a puppet theater.O was seated individually on a sofa, with one of Mr. Stephen’s friends in an easy chair to her right, another to her left, and Mr. Stephen sitting across from her.
She recalled one of them as someone she had met in Rossi, but she couldn’t remember if he had ever possessed her. The other was a tall, red-haired boy with a pair of gray eyes who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old.
Mr. Stephen told them the reason why he had invited O. to come here, and what she was, in a sentence or two.
Listening to his introduction, O was once again shocked by the rudeness of his terminology. Yet, how could she expect to be introduced to others? Even though she wasn’t a whore, but a girl, she had unzipped her corset in front of three men (not to mention the waiters coming in and out as they continued to serve the food), exposing her breasts and showing them nipples painted red with lipstick, and they had been able to tell that she had been whipped before, by the purple whip marks on her creamy white skin.
Lunch took a long time, and the two Englishmen drank a lot of wine. After coffee had been served, when another round of wine was brought up, Mr. Stephen pushed the table against the opposite wall and lifted up O’s skirt so that his friends could see the brand and the iron ring on her. Having done this he excused himself, leaving her with the two men.
The man she’d met at Rosie’s hadn’t delayed at all: he hadn’t left the easy chair where he’d settled, hadn’t even toweled her with the tips of his fingers, and had ordered her to kneel in front of him, caressing him until he’d ejaculated in her mouth. When he was done, he instructed her to put his clothes in order and left.
The red-haired lad, however, was so completely overcome by O’s tame meekness, the iron ring on her, the whip marks on her body, that instead of pouncing on her, as she had expected, he took her by the hand and went downstairs, without paying the slightest attention to the ambiguous smiles of the waiters, hailed a cab, and took her back to his hotel room.
He didn’t let her go back until dark, and in that time he frantically took her from the front and from behind, doing it in both places with both relentless and excessive ferocity and violence. He was highly unusual in size and hardness, and reveled entirely in the freedom he had suddenly acquired, a freedom which permitted him to enter a woman in two ways, and which also permitted him to let her caress him in another way, the way in which he had seen the man order her to do so not so long before (a way he had never dared to ask of anyone before).
The next day, when O arrived at Mr. Stephen’s lodgings at two o’clock in the afternoon, in answer to a call, she found him as if he had grown older, and that worry was written all over his countenance.
“Eric is hopelessly in love with you, O,” he told her, “He called me this morning and begged me to set you free. He told me that he wants to marry you, that he wants to save you. You already know what I would do with you if you were mine.O, if you were mine you would have no right to refuse my orders; but you also know that you have always had the freedom to choose not to belong to me any longer. That’s what I told him, and he’s to be here again at three o’clock.”
O can’t help but laugh out loud, “Isn’t it a little too late for that?” She said, “You’re both crazy enough. If Eric hadn’t been here before this morning, what were you going to have me do this afternoon? We might have gone for a walk, what else? Then let’s go for a walk. Maybe you didn’t intend for me to come this afternoon? In that case, I’ll leave now…”
“No,” Mr. Stephen interrupted, “I did intend to call you here, but not to go for a walk, I thought…”
“Go ahead.”
“Here, let’s show you it’s a little easier.”
He stood up and opened a door on the wall facing the fireplace, which was identical to the one leading to his office.
O had thought that the door contained a discarded closet, but what she now saw before her was a small bedroom, freshly painted, with crimson silk curtains over the windows. A circular platform took up half the room, with a column on each side, an exact replica of the stage in Seamus’s music room.
“The walls and ceilings are paneled with cork, right?” O guessed, “The doors are soundproofed and you have double-paned windows?”
Mr. Stephen nodded in acknowledgement.
“When was this renovated?” O asked.
“From your return.”
“Why? ….”
“Why did I wait until today? Because I wanted to give you to another man at first, and now I’m punishing you for it. I’ve never punished you before, O.”
“I belong to you,” O said, “Punish me! When Erik comes…”
An hour later the boy was brought to this room, and when he saw O, who was bound there in that peculiar manner between two posts, he grew pale, and fell to stuttering as he did so.
O thought she would never see him again in her lifetime, but she scarfed him again in Rossi, at the end of September. At his request, she stayed under his name for three consecutive days. During those days he enjoyed and abused her with great cruelty.