Grushenka. Three Times a Woman Page 19

  If they had been poked previously at all, they had just lain still when the rough men of their sections were working on them. They did not understand yet how there can be a great difference between an expert courtesan and a peasant girl who just holds her legs open. They should know better soon. When Grushenka felt that she was ready, she held the great and boisterous opening of her establishment.

  According to the custom of her time, she had an invitation printed which was quite a document, prettily lithographed and adorned with vignettes displaying love scenes. Here you could read that the famous Madame Grushenka Pawlovsk, just returned from an extensive tour over Europe in search of new and never-dreamed-of sex excitements, was inviting the Honorable Dukes, Counts and Barons for the great opening of her establishment. Here the customer, from the moment that he passed the threshold, would be drowned in an ocean of pleasure, etc., etc., followed by the most startling announcement, namely, that for the opening gala banquet, no charge would be made! On this night, every one-of-the famous beauties would satisfy every whim free of charge and a free lottery would be played, the prizes being five virgins to be raped by the winners! Here-according to the style of the time-a special specification also was made: that the winners could deflower their prizes either in private chambers or “in state.”

  It must be known that most marriages of that time started with deflowering “in state,” which means that the bridegroom put his bird into the little nest in the presence of all the near relatives, often all the wedding guests, in order to give a proof by witness that the marriage had been consummated. This habit flourished in the families of reigning houses of Russia right through the better part of the 19th century. The opening party turned out to be a riotous bacchanal.

  It lasted not only one day and one night, but more than-three days and nights, until it was finally disbanded by the discreet and quiet interference of the police. Grushenka received the guests in a gorgeous gown, very audacious, as was becoming for this occasion. From the waist down she wore a purple brocade skirt with a long train which encircled her in gracious swirls wherever she went. From the waist up she had on only a thin silver veil, which left her magnificent breasts and full rounded back bare to the view of the admiring men. She wore a large white wig with many curls which, because she had no diamonds at that time, was adorned with dark red roses. Her girls wore smart evening gowns which just left the nipple free and which were close-fitting in-the waist but wide around the hips and buttocks. They had no undergarments on whatsoever, and, while the men were eating, Grushenka introduced them on a platform, one after the other, lifting their gowns up in front and in the back, displaying and covering up their undercarriages from every angle. Grushenka had counted on about seventy visitors. Over two hundred came. Two oxen had been slaughtered and been roasted in the garden over an open fire, but she soon had to send out for more food. The battalion of bottles of wine and vodka drunk during those days will never be known. A small army of lackeys were busy opening bottles and piling empty ones in the corners. The first feature after the dinner was the lottery for the virgins. After long and more-rowdy-than-witty speeches, the men decided among themselves that anyone who should not “poke in state” should be excluded from participation. The men all were from the aristocratic class, mostly landowners or their offspring, officers of regiments, government officials, and so on. But they were drunk and found that this was one occasion to break down barriers. They cleared a space in the middle of the great dining hall and herded the five young girls into the middle, where they stood sheepishly. Numbers were hung around their necks, and every man received a numbered card, the winners being those who held numbers corresponding with those of the girls. The girls now were told to slip out of their dresses, while the winners proudly stood next to them. The rest of the crowd lay, sat or stood all around the room in a circle. Some had climbed to the window sills to see better. The girls were frightened and began to cry. The crowd answered with cheers and boos. Grushenka stepped into the circle and got her wards close together. She spoke to them with quiet determination, but threatening them if they did not cheerfully obey. They slipped out of their gowns and lay meekly down on the carpet, closed their eyes and kept a hand on their love-nests.

  But their ravishers now found themselves also in a predicament.

  Two, it is true, had nice, hard shafts when they opened their trousers. But the other three could not so quickly find the trick of how to raise a rod in this noisy crowd. They discarded their coats and opened their trousers and lay on top of their girls alright, but good intentions don't mean a job accomplished. Madame Grushenka now stepped into the breach. She devoted her services at first to those who had their guns ready to fire. Soon enough a piercing cry came from one of the girls and the struggling of her buttocks announced that Madame Grushenka had, with her apt fingers, put the shaft of the first customer into a love-nest. The second outcry came soon afterwards. With the third one-the man in question was a young lieutenant of the cavalry-she had more difficulty. While her left hand tickled his cleft, her right hand massaged his sword so cleverly that she soon inserted it into the sheath. Number four proved a futile attempt. The gentleman in question was more than anxious, his weapon full but flappy. As soon as Grushenka touched him he gushed into the air and over the hairy Venus' Hill of the little virgin underneath.

  When he got up, crimson in face and ashamed of his misfortune, the watching crowd did not at first understand what had happened. When they finally did, a bedlam broke loose. Of course, a substitute was quickly found and the maidenheads of numbers four and five were duly pierced. For a moment the half-clothed men lay breathing on top of the nude white forms of the girls whom they covered. The heavy air in the room was filled with rankness. Each fellow, after the climax, got up and proudly exhibited his throbbing tool covered with blood.

  Grushenka had a devilish time getting the freshly deflowered girls safely out of the room. She had to fight through the crowd of men who clutched and pawed the scared girls on whose thighs was smeared the blood of their rape. Grushenka turned them all over to the old housekeeper who administered to them in a room on the third floor.

  When Grushenka came back, she got into another melee with the excited men. They wanted to auction off the other girls also. A suggestion came from some corner demanding another maidenhead, namely that of the rear entrance. Grushenka did not want to hear anything of that and tried to joke her guests out of it. They started to manhandle her and, as she was about to leave the room, tore the thin veil, even her wide skirt, from her, so that she was left only in her lace pants. They crowded in on her, half good-heartedly and joking, half threatening. She became frightened and promised everything. She reached her ten remaining girls, who were waiting in a room upstairs to hear what was demanded of them. She made a resolution to bundle them all in a. carriage and to hustle them out of the house, leaving the drunken men to get sober and to disperse. But on second thought she remembered how dependent she was on the success of this event. Her very last money had gone, even the house having been mortgaged to provide the food and the wine. Furthermore, it might be good to let the girls get some rough treatment from the start. They would not be the worse thereafter. She had them take their gowns off before she marched them into the room where the men waited impatiently. She did not care that her wig was crooked on her head and that she had only her trousers left to cover her body. She was now all energy, resolved to play the game and to do it in great style.

  The men behaved well when she brought the girls in nude. They had put ten chairs in the middle of the room and had arranged for a complete lottery which took some time to carry out. Meanwhile they stared at the ten naked beauties in their midst. Many randy comments and jests flew through the air. The girls in turn, stimulated by Madame and not knowing what was in store for them, answered the men with no less cheery remarks. They threw them kisses, touching their lips and then their breasts or love-nests in salutation to the fellows who, they said, they would like to
win and get poked by. The winners having been decided on, Grushenka picked out for every group two helpers who should stand by and give assistance. The girls were told to kneel down on the chairs and to hold their buttocks in the air ready for aggression. They did so laughingly and opened their knees, for of course they thought they were going to be poked in the love-nest. It was a wise move of Madame that she had selected those helpers. They now stood alongside each couple, held the girls' heads down, played with their nipples and made excursions towards their ticklers. It was lucky because every one of these simple girls, as soon as she felt a shaft trying to force her back-door, howled and began fighting. They jumped from the chairs, rolled over on the carpet, kicked with their legs and were utterly inclined to put up a good fight. And how the watching crowd enjoyed it! Bets were made on who would be the first man to succeed and who would be the last girl to be deflowered. None of the men ever had seen such a spectacle, and the party became a huge success. The gladiators took their weapons in their bands and rubbed them quite openly. Self-restraint or shame was by now entirely lost. Grushenka herself, standing in the middle of the circle was caught by the atmosphere and, if the men had demanded that the girls should first be whipped, she would have agreed to it gladly-for her own pleasure as well as that of her guests. The girls were overpowered in different positions: some lying on the floor on their bellies, others with their heads between the legs of a helper bending over them, one in such a way that the man sat on a chair while the two helpers put the girl on his lap, holding her in the air by her knees so that she could not stave off the attack. Only one girl was still fighting on the floor: a small, young girl, very blonde, her long hair loosened and dishevelled over her breasts and shoulders.

  Grushenka stepped in and settled that matter herself. She waved away the man whom the girl had each time skillfully shaken off at the moment when he thought he was about to succeed. Then she made the girl get up and took hold of her by the hair between her legs and by one breast. Hypnotizing her by putting the whole weight of her personality into a few commanding words, she subdued the girl completely. She made her kneel on the chair and bend very low. Then she opened up the cleft and cleverly fingered the tight passageway for a few moments. She now invited the winning man to come and take what was his. The girl did not stir and did not dare make an outcry when she felt her back-entrance filled with a big love-instrument. She was, incidentally, the only girl who got poked kneeling on a chair in the way the men had intended it for all of them. But none the less, every one of them was devirginated. When this spectacle was over, Grushenka ordered every girl to go to her room and to wait for visitors. She invited the men, after the girls had left, to go into the rooms and to have a good time with the girls. She computed that every girl would have to take care of about ten men, which could be done very handily. The men did not ask for a second invitation, and went not alone but in groups, friends and strangers together, just as it happened. For the next few hours some fellows were sitting in every girl's room. While one man lay on top of a beauty who wiggled her buttocks strenuously in order to get through as quickly as possible, others were waiting their turn. If the men had gone home afterwards, as Grushenka had planned, everything would have been fine. But after achieving their goals, they returned downstairs and lay and sat around, drinking. Songs filled the air, jokes were told, glasses were emptied, food was devoured. Some slumbered for a while only to wake up ready to begin again. After they had beguiled themselves enough downstairs, they would explore the whole house again, watching the love making and mixing in it themselves. Many scenes of lust and depravity took place in the girls' chambers. One group of fellows, for example, remembering the deflowered virgins, broke into their rooms and let them have some back-door poking in spite of their tears and protests. Grushenka was everywhere and anywhere, first animated and cheery, then weary and tired. She slumbered in an easy chair, took a drink or two again, comforted her girls or got drunken men out of the way. Finally she sent a lackey to her captain, who tactfully succeeded in getting the drunken guests out. The mansion was in a state of disorder and dirt. The tired-out whores and their mistress slumbered in a deathlike sleep for forty-eight hours. But the excitement, costs and lasciviousness of the strenuous task had not been for nothing. Madame Grushenka Pawlovsk had put her establishment on the map, and she handled it afterwards in a spirit very much to the advantage of her purse. She became rich and famous-in fact, so much so that, after her death and after her famous salon had long been closed, anyone in Moscow could point out her house, just as in Paris is still pointed out the famous establishment of Madame Gourdan, who one hundred-and fifty years ago was known all over Europe as the best Madame in the world, under the pet name “the little Countess.” How Madame Grushenka ended her own love life is not known. It might be that she found her satisfaction through the aid of the friendly tongues of her girls; maybe she married a solid young man to whom she clung quietly without the public's knowledge. The last time that we hear of her is in the official document of the police, of which we told in the preface to this story, where she is described as “a distinguished lady in her prime, well formed and refined, with bold blue eyes and a full smiling mouth, which is able to talk adroitly and to the point.” May this description of her have been fitting to her until her end.