The Prussian Girls (7 page)

“Ow!” Monika looked back with a grinning squirm.

Many of the girls had put their tunics under their mattresses the night, in order to press them neatly for the new day's wear. The dormitory was now a tangle of tightening knickers, pulled-high stockings, and polished shoes. After which the girls tidied their lockers and made their beds. Seckendorff, making her prefectorial stroll past these when they had finished, dropped out laconically, “Erland. Untidy corner. Come and see me after breakfast, would you.”

Breakfast was at seven, but punctually at a quarter of the school formed up for morning inspection by the day's Duty Mistress, in the big hall before the dining-room. They paraded in classes, like soldiers. The Duty Mistress inspected them before and behind, walking along their ranks close followed by the Duty Prefect for the day who carried the dreaded Duty Book. The mistress herself carried her switch, unclipped from her belt. For this was no laughing matter, at all. Though the so-called hunting stripes seldom amounted to more than three or four, these long eel-dark switches cut like fury, being used principally about the backs of the legs.

This morning the presiding Duty Mistress had roamed the front rank of the Juniors without especial event, except for a passing reprimand here and there, when she stopped before one striking brunette.

“I don't think you require soap behind the ear, Ingrid,” she said quietly. When she had passed on, the Prefect behind her snapped, “Stand out, Forster,” and the girl took three smart military paces forward. One more girl did the like, from a rear rank, only in her case she stepped backward. She had not dried herself sufficiently, it seemed, notably between the legs.

Inspection completed, the Prefect ordered:

“Forster. Right turn. Touch your toes.”

Each girl was accorded three hissing kisses with the lash across the top of the legs, across, in fact, that band of ivory white between her knickers and stocking-tops. Ingrid Forster had to blink back tears marching into a breakfast.

After breakfast there was a so-called free period until first class at eight thirty. In fact, each girl had to evacuate her bowels under penalty. Prefects and seniors were exempt from supervision but the rest had to line up in the chilly exterior area of planked latrines, known as “Groves,” perhaps sarcastically, and have their contributions to a bucket approved by a Prefect before proceeding back to the building. These were usually quite copious since the diet had a large admixture of psyllium seeds within it, and the bulk of even a scum's Wurstchen was considerable. Each had to wash out her bucket afterwards. Anyone “missing” was sent to the Matron, where she soon knew about it.

Thus, Anna Erland, possessor by this point of a slip of paper which began “Request for permission to give the bearer six stripes…” was tensely costive, and climbed the stairs fearfully to the Matron. This good woman lost no time in bending her over and administering a rectal evacuator, of glycerine and castor oil, and long suppository slid in high. Then pigeon-toed, and plucking at her tunic in front, the girl had to stand in a line of four, “controlling” her insides for a ten-minute wait. One offender was fairly griped double, and begged to relieve herself, or else. Unfortunately the alternative, if she let fly as her inner person so demanded, would have been a really sound caning from the implacable Steinkopf. Most held out, squatting over a pan in turn and in public. Each knew, as she left, that were she to miss again that week, it would be a long-beaked clyster up her anus, compared to which the suppository would seem a Sunday-school picnic. And after this little Anna Erland draggled to her Prefect's private den, or study, having first passed by the Duty Mistress to have her chit signed.

The Praelictor's room was sparely and simply furnished. It had, so far as the curtseying entrant was concerned, a low leather hassock, on which was a solid strap.

“Did you get it signed, scum?”

“Yes, Seckendorff.”

“Good. Give it me. I'm going to give you six for an untidy bed. Feeling nice and shivery behind?”

“Yes,” came the glum answer. “Pull up your knickers.”

The Prefects were not allowed to beat on “the bare.”

“They're pulled up, Seckendorff.”

“Well, pull them up higher. If I split them I'll let you off the rest.”

The big girl took up the strap which was about four inches wide and some two feet long; she brought it down with all her strength, and the testimonial of a puff of dust, on the leather hassock set out there. Then thoughtfully, if anything harder, she repeated the gesture. Watching, Anna Erland, aged thirteen, felt the back of her throat dry suddenly; she was nearly in tears.

“Looking forward to it?”

“Ner-ner-no, Seckendorff.”

“Disgusting little scum, ask for it like the filth you are.”

“Per-please may I have a, a… I mean six stripes,” the girl was crying steadily now, her dark hair shaking, “across my bottom, for, for leaving my bed untidy.”

“Idiot! I want an adjective before each noun. Invent. Imagine.”

“P-p-please may I have six stinging stripes… across my wretched bottom, for, for leaving my miserable bed untidy.”

“Not bad. Now three adjectives, and different nouns. Come on, make it colorful. I'm waiting.” So was the swinging strap, it was plain.

The girl bent her head-“I beg to receive six whippy licking juicy strokes of the strap across my small unworthy deserving bottom… arse… for leaving…”

“That's enough. Lie across here.”

Tremors shook the liquid little bottom, when the tunic had been drawn off it. It was small, indeed. The Prefect struck it mercilessly, from in front, at the girl's head, bringing the tail-end of her strap cracking into the underbottoms-three each side- and when it was over, little Anna Erland rolled on the floor in pain.

Simultaneously, in the distant Duty Room, another sinner was feeling sorry for herself, hissing and twisting under two thoughtfully placed “hunting” flicks, both of which plucked up her butties, for having made two errors in Recitation, lines from Cicero set her the previous day.

Promptly at eight thirty-which was to say five minutes beforehand, since everything happened “on the stroke” at the Schloss-classes started to another bell. They were naturally conducted in complete silence and total attention on the girls' part; they continued, with a short break for physical exercises, and milk, until noon. Luncheon was at one.

These classes were not normally punctuated by punishment; the Head discouraged wasting valuable intellectual study in the infliction of bodily pain. All the same, a mistress would and did mete out a few juicy slices with her switch, or crack a slouching back so hard it would twist like a snake for a few seconds or so. Ordinarily a frown sufficed. Else it might be: “Take twenty lines of Recitation”…”Write out a hundred times, Helen, 'I must not yawn in class' ”… “You will have an hour's Detention, Maud”… “See me after school” (and it would not be, the offender knew, in order to play post office exactly), or finally, the most dreaded and serious of all, “Put yourself down in the Book, Clavdia.”

In order not to interrupt the train and concentration of these morning classes, a system of chits had been perfected. The girl was given a 'Zettel (or Strafzettel) of a certain color to take along to the Duty Mistress for completion, and signing. These chits were succinct and to the point, thus:

Schillerin:

Erika Treppe

Unter-Tertia

2

Unaufmerksamkeit.

Klasse:

Stunde:

Fehler:

It was signed by the reporting mistress, and dated.

Pretty Erika Treppe, already frowning with anxiety, watched the mistress writing on the little blue form, and curtseyed as she accepted it. Inattention nearly always merited a “Blue,” as it was called, which was invariably a destiny of seven, with a thin lithe classroom cane across absolutely nothing at all. No matter how tender of flesh the girl in question was, the Duty Mistress took her time, and aim, and cut just as hard as she could. The girl then rejoined her class, presented her now signed chit to the mistress in charge, and tried to look nonchalant.-not as if she was longing to rub all that fiendishly stinging flesh behind.

Anna Erland got a “Yellow” that morning. In a History Class, devoted to the growth of the new German Sparta, she had really been unable to sit still. The glycerine suppository had been too strong. She still had to… go. She plucked desperately at her little brown Grecian chlamys, changing the position of her bottom this way and that on the hard oak seat. The mistress had checked her once, and then accorded the 'Zettel. In a hoarse muffled whisper Anna had asked to be allowed to visit the Matron first; her colleagues hid their grins as she hurried out, crimson-faced. All concerned knew this would mean yet another punishment since there was one time, and one only, permitted for bowel evacuation at Schloss Rutenberg.

Anna took the stairs two at a time, grimacing. Matron Steinkopf presided in a series of chambers at the top of the house. She was a tall, grim-faced woman of over fifty, with a thin mustache lining her upper lip, and she wore a long sweeping black gown. Second only to the Head in power, she performed the function of doctor to the establishment, effecting most of her cures, to be sure, with clyster and castor oil, and she was universally dreaded. It was not that her strokes cut harder than those of any other mistress, but she had a way, a manner of crushing and bruising the soul, rather than the body. There was never any flippancy of lightness on Matron Steinkopf's lips. Nor was there now when she surveyed the slender, twisting youngster, her knickers off already and her skirt tucked into her chain-belt; scum were shaved but this round mound, darkly slit, looked polished as a billiard ball, at the top of the entwining legs.

“Ach, Matrone… please… I can't help… I have to go!”

The good woman moved slowly, and without speaking. First she ranged two hard kitchen chairs back to back, half a yard apart. She placed a bucket between them. She put some oil to heat on a flame, and next reversed an empty hour-glass. Then from some canisters and pans she produced a copper cylinder-the dreaded clyster.

“Please, Matrone, please. I can go without that. In fact, in fact… I can go… any moment.”

The girl followed the deliberate preparations with wide eyes. It was all taking so horribly long. Her skin was goosing all over. Ach Gott, o weh… the nozzle, which was being greased ready now, was so dreadful, she could never… and the yellow chit in her little breast pocket assured her of five frightful cuts afterwards, more if Matron…

“Come here.”

Anna shuffled forward. The oil had started to smoke. The flame was extinguished and the end of the nozzle inserted into the bowl; with a long straight drawing motion the Matron loaded the cylinder with her charge, and took it out. The girl looked at it wildly. It was such a small thing, why should it cause her such irrational fear?

“Lean forward.”

The Matron greased the anus, in between the trim cheeks ruddied by the strap. Then she slid in the cylinder an inch. Anna Erland gasped. It was hot! Then the entire tube was thrust up her, quickly. She stumbled and looked back, impaled as she was, her eyes imploring, her hands wringing before her. There were ways of administering the clyster, more or less mild. A series of squirts hurt less, but incontinency of this sort had to be stopped and with a single, solid drive Matron Steinkopf injected the heated olive oil until the ring in the handle of the clyster clicked audibly home as the cylinder emptied.

Anna cried out. She jerked erect, staggering forward a step so that the Matron had to follow, ramming the nozzle well up her until it had voided itself completely into the young bowel.

“Um Gotteswillen… liebe, liebe Matrone…”

Striving hands clutched back, in vain. Having extracted the slippery clyster the Matron then secured the anus with a bung. This resembled a double mushroom, black and of a flexible, rubbery substance that swelled under heat. One head of this was inserted inside the sphincter, which was gripped by the other, outside. Since the core joining the two “mushrooms” was thick, no more than a mild oozing was permitted this natural orifice. It was uncomfortable for the wearer for the first minute, but after two she felt she wanted to tear it out-so strongly did the clyster constrain her. It was for this reason that, before comfortably resuming her seat by the fire, the Matron secured Anna Erland's arms behind her, in elbow-cuffs which held each opposing wrist. Then she turned over her hour-glass.

“Ten minutes,” was what she said.

The girl panted in something close to a panic. She could not conceivably wait that long. She was supposed to stand to attention, like a guardsman- but her belly looked swollen above its slit. The ghastly gripings began. They made her pace in place, long to hug her thighs, and duck her knees, and gasp, and writhe from side to side, stirring her budlike breasts. The sand was spilling with such intolerable lenity.

“Please, Matron. I can't… it's coming down…”

Matron Steinkopf said nothing. Only once, when Anna's squirmings became too insistent, did she get up, unclip her switch, and very methodically deliver three lashing slices to the writhing thighs. Then she sat down again. For Anna the new pain was at least something; it was a call to her body in a new place, to endure and combat. Then suddenly she heard her release.

“Da steigst Du drauf und setzi Dich so auf die Lehne…”

She was running to obey as if her life depended on it. The girl stood on either chair-seat and lowered her pronounced “Popo” onto the backs of each, where the sharp edges bit into her and parted her bottom to splitting. With a pronounced plop the Matron extracted the now oily bung and a sturdy, gleaming turd began instantly and gratefully, to exude from the girlish gut. Arms still bound behind her, Anna frowned tin concentration as she pressed. There were tears at the edges of her lashes, but she was thankful, oh how thankful… the sensation was the greatest relief she had known in her life. The bucket beneath her thumped to two healthy, darkish sausages which looked far too big, somehow, to have come from such a girlish belly. The Matron watched them drop from between the reddened cheeks ruminatively; she was already writing out her yellow 'Zettel for the girl-this for Incontinence.