One morning shortly after my eighteenth birthday, my curiosity won. I dared to go inside, grab the ladder and read the imprints along a row of ridges. Most of the books were in foreign languages and I couldn't tell much from the titles. I did not dare to take any of the books off of the shelves. One book caught my eye with elegant golden letters on a black back: "Histoire d'O, Pauline Réage." From the worn out grayish back I could see that father must have read it often.
Without being seen, I managed to escape from the library, to be called in by father that same afternoon. Why had I broken his prohibition, what did I think he would not notice if I had been to the library? "To prevent you from doing this again, I will have to punish you," he said, keeping his back to me.
"Bare your bottom, child!" I pulled my skirt above my waist. If I had been naughty or had been mischievous, he would punish me this way with his riding crop, which was always in a corner of the library, tapping my buttocks.
"Take off your underpants!" He turned and looked at me sadly. In his hand he did not have the crop, but a leather belt that I had never seen before. I looked at him not understanding. What did he want? "Should I lend a hand?" His tone was bleak. I shook my head and took off my panties.
Father sat down at his desk and pushed his chair against the bookcase behind him. "Come here and lean over the desk." I obeyed reluctantly. I was just bending over when I heard a whistling sound and then felt a sharp pain on my thighs. I screamed it out.
"HUSH, or this will take a very long time." Father had stood up. The next hit was higher and hit my left buttock. I held my teeth together and tears filled my eyes. "You ..." The whistling sound and the blow now hit my right buttock faster. "Will ..." again he touched my thighs. "Never ..." left buttock. "Ever ..." right buttock. "Do ..." Aaaaww, he hit me on the inside of my thigh. "This..." Higher now. I moaned and gritted my teeth, but I didn't want to admit it. "Again ..." Oooohh, he hit me with a flat hand on my left buttock. "Do ..." on the right. "You ..." left. "Understand ..." on the right.
That day I was punished differently from when I was young. Father had used a belt on my bare butt, while he forbade me to ever come into the library again. It hurt me so much that I couldn't sit straight for more than a week.
When he finished he had turned me around. "Dito look at me"
Through my tears I saw that he was crying. It was the first and only time I saw my father cry.
Mama, who apparently had been there all the time, pulled me away from the desk and led me out of the library and brought me upstairs to my room.
"Don't try this again Dito, father will have to punish you even harder if you do such a thing again. Come now and I'll take care of your wounds." She brought me to my bathroom and took a jar of soothing cream from one of the cupboards. I could not walk well for a week. The belt had left deep marks on my body. The traces of humiliation were etched indelibly in my soul.
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03 In the library
While you read this part of the story, listen to:
Dance Macabre (Camille Saint-Saens) performed by Gerhard & Beatrice Marie Weinberger
Father and Mama were killed in March, 1990 in a head on collision while driving in the Eldorado when they hit a truck. On a sunny September morning, I finally overcame my reluctance to enter the library for the first time since Father had declared it forbidden terrain for me.
The library appeared unchanged though 20 years had passed. The chairs were jaded; there was a smell of cigar smoke even though Father had abandoned smoking when he became seventy-five. The sunlight fell through the large windows on the desk that was on the left of the entrance. It was placed in the middle of the room, in front of the bookcases. An open book with father's glasses on top lay in front of his chair. Softly, as not to wake the dead, I walked past the desk, shifted father's chair and sat down. Relieved, because no one came, nothing happened, I breathed. I gently pushed father's glasses from the book. It was an old book, possibly a facsimile. I kept my finger on the page that would never be read by him again and closed the book. "Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue by Marquis de Sade" I read aloud.
I had heard of de Sade before. Male classmates used that name when they had been playing perverted games with less wealthy girls. They boasted that they had imitated de Sade, or could tell that a particular prostitute could match with any of the concubines of the Marquis. Often they were just loud to make their female classmates blush. For me personally it didn't do much. None of the guys I found were interesting enough to share my bed with.
There was a girl I often dreamed of and very occasionally, when I masturbated, her body came to my mind. Several times, I had seen her while she was undressing in the locker room of the pool. Especially her buttocks with red welts from the tight bathing suit she often wore. In my dreams they were always marks caused by a leather strap.
I opened the book back to the page where father's glasses were and put his glasses back again. Affected by my discovery, I got up and walked out of the library towards the kitchen. From the wine cellar under the stairs, I took a bottle of Burgundy and uncorked it in the kitchen. I grabbed a wine glass and walked with glass and bottle back to the library. My head was spinning with all the thoughts I had. The first thing I had to do was to get a good picture from all the "treasures" that were concealed in the library. I filled the glass and put the bottle on a mat on the desk. With the glass I walked back to the entrance where to the right of the door, there was a small antique cabinet.
On top of the cabinet was an Art Deco-like table lamp with a naked, kneeling woman's figure in bronze whose head was hidden under a lampshade. Behind the polished glass doors of the cabinet stood three rows of books and some stacks of paper. The doors were locked and the key was missing. A disappointment. I was not put off, although for a moment I doubted if I would smash the glass, I abandoned this idea because I didn't want to damage it. I took a sip of wine. While I was still looking at the cabinet, a thought occurred that I might first have to read the book. I walked towards the desk, meanwhile looking around to see if I remembered anything of this impressive space.
Sunlight reflected on the desk, and suddenly I was hit by a brief glint in my peripheral vision. I looked in the direction where I had seen the brilliance and could not see at first what had caused the glare. I hesitated and started walking towards where I supposed I would find it. Near the right window, behind one of the chairs was a small side table, which had a thick leather belt with a large silver buckle on it. I picked up the band. This was not the belt that my father used on me so many years ago. It was too short for a belt but too long for a wristband. Attached in the middle of the band was a ring. A strange thing, maybe a dog collar, although I could not remember that we had dogs. I put it back on the table and returned to the desk.
In front of it, I stopped, and I looked at my hand where the empty wineglass looked back at me. I grabbed the bottle and shaking, I poured more wine in. My feet felt heavy when I sat down on the chair behind the desk. Very carefully, I took father's glasses off the page and picked up the book. I read the last page that father had read:
In a word, one was brutal by taste, the other by refinement. Jerome, the eldest of the four recluses, was also the most debauched; every taste, every passion, every one of the most bestial irregularities were combined in this monk's soul; to the caprices rampant in the others, he joined that of loving to receive what his comrades distributed amongst the girls, and if he gave (which frequently happened), it was always upon condition of being treated likewise in his turn: all the temples of Venus were, what was more, as one to him, but his powers were beginning to decline and for several years he had preferred that which, requiring no effort of the agent, left to the patient the task of arousing the sensations and of producing the ecstasy.
The mouth was his favorite temple, the shrine where he liked best to offer, and while he was in the pursuit of those choice pleasures, he would keep a second woman active: she warmed him with the lash. This man's character was quite as cunning, quite as wicked as that of the others; in whatever shape or aspect vice could exhibit itself, certain it was immediately to find a spectator in this infernal household.
What was this about? What was this book? Intrigued and fearful of what I might find out I closed the book, opened it again on the first page and began to read. When it began to get dark in the room, I looked up and picked up my glass. It was empty. The bottle also proved to be empty. I caught myself after a few seconds or it might have been minutes staring at the belt on the table. Suddenly it dawned on me that I knew the band, I had seen it before worn by someone ... but by whom and why?
