I thought about what she had told me. I knew that I was not in love with Sandra—there were a thousand remnants of Chico in her that I could not abide—but I could not deny that I needed her very much. What Helen had made me see clearly was the extent to which I had failed to keep Sandra a slave. I did not know whether it was her scheming that had brought it about, or my slackness, or whether, as I suspected, something of both. Some of the more liberal writers on the subject say, of course, that such development is intrinsic in the situation for anyone in our cultural milieu. It is a problem recognized by the FSB in its handbook. But the handbook advises the master who finds himself in my predicament to trade his slave for another, preferably some stodgy, uninteresting number or one who is deficient in the proper qualities—in my case, as I thought, copulating. The trouble with this sound advice was that I didn’t want to get rid of Sandra. She made me comfortable.
In fact, she made me so comfortable that I thought I was happy. I wanted to show my gratitude to her. After she had straightened up the kitchen that evening I called her into the living room where I was sitting over the paper.
“Yes, sir?” she said, standing demurely on the other side of the coffee table.
“Sandra,” I began, “I’m very fond of you. I would like to do something for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sit down”
“Thank you, sir.”
As she sat, she took a cigarette from the box, without asking my permission, and lighted it. The way she arched her lips to smoke it, taking care not to spoil her lipstick, annoyed me, and the coy way she batted her eyelids made me regret I had called her in. “Still,” I thought, “the Chico in her can be trained out. She’s sound.”
“What can I give you, Sandra?” She did not answer for a moment. Every slave knows the answer to that question, and knows it is the one answer for which he won’t be thanked.
“Whatever you wish to give me, sir, would be deeply appreciated.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to buy for her. Magazines, movies, television, clothes, jewelry, book club books, popular records, a permanent wave every four months, what else could I get her? Yet I had started this offer; I had to follow up with something. In my uneasiness and annoyance with myself, and knowing so well what it was she wanted, I went too far.
“Would you like freedom, Sandra?”
She dropped her eyes and seemed to droop a little. Then tears rolled down her cheeks, real mascara-stained tears of sadness.
“Oh yes, sir,” she said. “Oh, my God, yes. Don’t tease me about it. Please don’t tease me.”
So I promised her her freedom. I myself was moved, but I did not want to show it.
“I’m going for a short walk,” I said. “You may go to your room.”
I went for my walk, and when I came back she had prepared my foot bath. She had burned two pine boughs in the fireplace so that the room smelled wonderful. She had put on her loveliest dress, and had brushed her hair down as I liked it best. She did not speak as she washed my feet, nor even look up at my face. All her gratitude she expressed in the tenderness with which she caressed my feet and ankles. When she had finished drying them, she kissed them and then pressed them for a time against her breast. I do not think either of us, during these past years, has ever been happier than at that moment.
Well, I had my lawyer draw up a writ of substantial manumission, and Sandra took the brass ring out of her left ear, and that was that. And that was about all of that, so far as I could see. She was free to go as she wanted, but she didn’t want. She got wages now, it is true, but all she did with them was to buy clothes and geegaws. She continued to take care of my house and me, to sleep in my bed and keep her own possessions in her own room, and to wash my feet as before. The manumission was nothing in itself, only a signpost that there had been some changes made. Continually and slowly changes kept being made.
For one thing, we began to eat together, unless I had guests in to dinner. For another, she began to call me Mr. Oakes. It seemed strange to have her go where she wanted, without asking me about it, on her nights out. I became so curious about what she could be doing that finally I asked her where she went. To night school, she said, learning how to type. I was delighted to hear that she had not been wasting her time at public dances, but I could not imagine why she wanted to learn typing. She had even bought a portable typewriter which she practiced on in her room when I was away. “Why?” she said. “My mother always said to me, ‘Sandra, they can’t fire slaves.’ Well, I’m not a slave any longer. That was one nice thing about it, I wasn’t ever afraid you’d fire me.”
“But, my darling,” I cried, “I’m never going to fire you. I couldn’t possibly get along without you.”
“I know it,” she replied, “and I never want to leave either. All the same, I’m going to learn how to type.” She had her own friends in to visit her; she even gave a bridge party one evening when I was not at home. But she never called me by my first name, she never checked up on me, she never asked me the sort of intrusive, prying question which a man hates answering. She kept her place.
Then she discovered she was pregnant. I immediately said I would assume all the financial responsibilities of her pregnancy and of rearing the child. She thanked me, and did not mention the subject again. But she took to sleeping in her own bed most of the time. She would serve breakfast while still in her robe and slippers. Her eyes were often red and swollen, though she always kept some sort of smile on her face. She mentioned something about going back to Chico. She began serving me canned soup at dinner. I drove her off to Reno and married her.
Helen had been right, I had married Sandra; but I had been right too, it wasn’t for love. Oh, I loved her, some way or other, I don’t know just how. But I had married her simply because it was the next thing to do; it was just another milestone.
Nothing much happened for a while after we were married, except that she called me Dell and didn’t even take the curlers out of her hair at breakfast. But she hadn’t got to be free and equal overnight. That was to take some months of doing.
First of all, as a wife, she was much frailer than she had been as a slave. I had to buy all sorts of things for her, automatic machines to wash the clothes and the dishes, a cooking stove with nine dials and two clocks, an electric ironer that could iron a shirt in two minutes, a vacuum cleaner, one machine to grind the garbage up and another to mix pancake batter, a thermostatic furnace, an electric floor waxer, and a town coupe for her to drive about to do her errands in. She had to get other people to wash her hair now, and shave her legs and armpits, and polish her toenails and fingernails for her. She took out subscriptions to five ladies’ magazines, which printed among them half a million words a month for her to read, and she had her very bathrobe designed in Paris. She moved the television set into the living room and had a tear-drop chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling. When she had a miscarriage in her sixth month, she had a daily bouquet of blue orchids brought to her room; she had to rest, and pale blue orchids are so restful. She became allergic to the substances of which my mattress and pillows were composed, and I had to get a foam rubber mattress and foam rubber pillows, which stank. She finally insisted that we go to visit her family in Chico, so we finally did, and that we go visit my family in Boston, so we finally did. The visits were equally painful. We began to go to musical comedies and night clubs. Helen had been right: my friends did not drop by to see us, and they were apt to be sick when I invited them to dinner. Still we weren’t all the way.
One night I came home late from work, tired and hungry. Dinner was not yet started, because Sandra had been delayed by her hairdresser. She fixed pork chops, frozen green beans, and bread and butter, with canned apricots for dessert. I could have done better myself. After dinner, after the machine had washed the dishes, I asked her if she would bathe my feet. I was so tired, I told her, my feet were so tired; it would be very soothing to me. But she said, in an annoyed voice, that she w
as feeling nervous herself. She was going to go to bed early. Besides, the silence she left behind her said, besides I am your wife now. She went to bed and I went to bed. She was restless; she twisted and turned. Every time I would shift my position or start to snore a little, she would sigh or poke me. Finally she woke me clear up and said it was impossible for her to sleep like this. Why didn’t I go sleep in her former room? She couldn’t because of her allergy, she had to stay in the foam rubber bed. So I moved into her room. And then I knew that she was equal, for most of the equal wives of my friends lived like this.
Another night, I came home wanting very much to make love to her. She had avoided my embrace for a long while. She was always too nervous, or too tired, for the less she worked the tireder she became; or she was busy, or simply not in the mood. But tonight I would admit of no evasion. She was beautiful and desirable, and I knew how well she had once made love with me. Finally, I held her in my arms. She knew I wanted her, and in a way as odd as mine she loved me too. But there was no sensuous pressure of her body against mine, no passion in her kiss. She put her arms about my neck not to caress me but to hang like an albatross against me. She pressed her head against my shoulder not for amorous affection but to hide her face, to shelter it, in loneliness and fear and doubt. She did not resist me, or yield to me, or respond to me, or try to overcome me. She only went away and left me her body to do with as I pleased. And then I knew that she was free, for most of the free wives of my friends were like this with their husbands.
I had four choices, as I saw it: divorce her, have her psychoanalyzed, kill her, or return her to slavery. I was strongly tempted to kill her, but I was an optimist, I thought she was salvageable. Besides, who would do my housework for me? I made her a slave again.
It is a wise provision of the law that says no slave may be completely manumitted. Even substantial manumission provides for a five-year probationary period. Sandra had not passed probation. I had the necessary papers drawn up, told her, an hour before the men came, what was happening, and had her sent to the FSB Rehabilitation School in Colorado for a month.
She came back with the ring in her ear, saying sir to me, and the very first night she washed my feet. Furthermore she made love better than she had done for a year. I thought we were to be happy again, and for a week we seemed to be. But the machines are still there to do most of the work, and she still has her allergy. She does what a slave is supposed to do, but she is depressed about it. She has tasted the fruit of freedom; though it is a bitter fruit it is habit-forming. She does what she is supposed to do, but it is an effort, she has to will it, it exhausts her.
One evening six months ago, I came home to find no dinner cooking, no foot bath waiting for me, no sign of Sandra in her room. I found her lying on my bed reading McCall’s and smoking with a jewel-studded holder I had given her when she was my wife. She flicked an ash onto the rug when I entered the room, waved a langorous Hi! at me, and kept on reading. I had my choice; she had clearly set it up for me. I hesitated only a moment. I went down to the basement where I had stored away the three-thonged lash which had been provided along with the manual of instructions when I had first bought her, and I beat her on the bed where she lay.
I think I was more upset by the beating than Sandra was. But I knew I had had to do it. I knew I had neglected my duty as a master not to have done it long ago. I think, now, that all this trouble could have been avoided if formerly I had only kept a firm hand, that is to say, had beaten her when she had risen too presumptuously. For the truth is, Sandra is happiest as a slave.
But the beatings I should have given her formerly would simply have hurt; she would simply have avoided them. Now, I am not so sure.
For she repeated the offense, exactly, within a month, and I repeated the punishment. It wasn’t so bad for me the second time. She began seeing just how far she could go before I would bring out the lash. She cooked more and more badly till I gave her warning one evening. When I had finished speaking, she sank to the floor, pressed her forehead against my foot, looked at me, and said, “Your wish is my command.” The irony was all in the act and words, if irony there was, for there was none in the voice or face. The truth was, as she discovered the next evening when she served me corned beef hash and raw carrots for dinner, my lash is her command. She seems happier, in a way, after these distasteful blow-ups, comes to my bed voluntarily and with the welts still on her back, does her work well, hums sometimes. Yet she falls back into her old stubborn mood, again and again. There seems to be nothing else for me to do but beat her. The FSB manual supports me. Yet I find it repugnant, and it cannot be good for Sandra’s skin. I had to lash her a week ago, and already, from the dirt she is allowing to collect on the living room rug, it looks as though I’ll have to do it again.
It seems a pity to have to resort to this, when it was all quite unnecessary. It’s my own fault of course; I lacked the training, the matter-of-fact experience of being a master, and I did not set about my duties as a master so conscientiously as I should have. I know all this, but knowing it doesn’t help matters a bit. Sometimes I think I should have killed her: it would have been better for both of us; but then she will do some little act of spontaneous love, as now bringing me a cup of hot chocolate and kissing me lightly on the back of the neck, which makes me glad to have her around. Yet tomorrow I shall have to beat her again. This is not what I had wanted, and it cannot be what she wants, not really. We were uneasy and felt something lacking when she was a slave before, though we were happy too. We were altogether miserable when she was free. Yet, this is not what either of us had ever wanted, though we are both of us doing what we must.
Copyright 1953 by Epoch Associates.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
BEYOND SPACE AND TIME
by Joel Townsley Rogers
CHAPTER ONE
WE MADE THE ROCKET (said Gunderson) to penetrate beyond the earth’s atmosphere, out of the sun’s orbit, and out of the galaxy, if possible. The conception and the mathematical formulae were Hartley’s, the details of the construction mine. It was our purpose to explore outer space, to investigate the mystery of the cosmos, to solve the riddle of the fourth dimension, Time, and to reach that roof of heaven where, eighteen million light-years or more away, according to the best available data of mathematics, infinity curves and returns upon itself in a parabolic trajectory—to find the answer to the last question, in short, and the solution of the ultimate equation. An unparalleled venture, yes. But it was time, as Hartley said, that it be done.
At no time ever before in the world’s history had there existed contemporaneously two men whose capabilities and geniuses so complemented and dovetailed each other as did our own; and it might well happen that there would not be again two men like us for fifty thousand years, if ever.
Consider briefly who we were: Hartley, the greatest mathematician and theoretical physicist that the world has ever known, the perfect exponent of completely idealistic and abstract thought, a man beside whom Galileo was only an ignorant schoolboy and Archimedes no more than a primitive barbarian; and myself, Helver Gunderson, of Gunderson Laboratories, the developer of the make-and-break ray, of the spinning wing, the watch-type televisor, the roadless sky pavement, and the atom engine, to speak of only a few—a man with an intellect on a far lower and humbler plane than Hartley’s (I would be the last to dispute it), but still a man who at the very least has shown himself the greatest pragmatic inventor since Edison.
There we were. The combination might never happen again. Perhaps we had been put here for something, by a distant Mind which had controlled our conception. If for no purpose, still we must milk the blind cow, Chance, and obtain some nourishment from the circumstance.
To probe the final mystery. There could be no venture greater. Only the two of us knew anything about our plan and purpose, and, of course, Nivea, my wife—Hartley himself was unmarried, except to his science and his mind. We worked on the blueprints nine mon
ths together, after Hartley had brought me his calculations and equations, which had taken him ten years to produce. The actual building of the rocket was done in one of my own plants, the Gunderson, Engineering Three, at Bridgeport, which was specialized for experimental work of the most confidential sort and staffed with a picked corps of super-skilled and loyal technicians.
Even so, we had to go carefully. Each workman, working on his individual part, did not know the purpose of the whole. It was rumored that it was a great new submarine, that it was an invention for boring toward the center of the earth into that great core of compressed and adamantine gold on which all the continents float. I let them think as they wished to think. If they had known the real purpose of that unprecedented ship, they would have thought I was insane.
The building of it took six months, and I was with it night and day, hardly sleeping in all that time more than two hours at a stretch, and frequently neglecting to eat for days, working in an increasing tension as it neared completion. There were many problems to be met, many seemingly insuperable difficulties to be overcome. There were times when I almost despaired, when my inventive skill seemed to have run up against a blank and impenetrable wall. As if there were a Hand which stood pushed out against me, and said: Thus far, and no farther!
Yet who could say that to me, Gunderson? One by one I broke down and overcame those problems, solved the last difficulty. There came the dawn when the last rivet had been driven, the last delicate instrument tested and installed, and the machine was trundled onto the cradle prepared for its christening and launching on the shore of the Sound in front of the factory, on—what day is this?—on May the 7, 1968.
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