Belle

by Tamara Vincent

  It had taken her about one hour to take a quick survey of the piled books and of the disorganized shelves, and by the end of her tour, her hands dirty with dust, she had no doubt of the fact that each and every one of the volumes in the library was in some way obscene.

  From dirty, yellowed paperbacks with lurid covers to thick incunabula from centuries gone filled with the lewd notes of bored amanuenses, from collections of libertine prints from before the French Revolution to compendiums of Chinese erotic poetry, every single book, a single page, a single word in that enormous, dark library was of a sexual and explicit nature.

  Such was the sheer volume of lewdness concentrated between those four walls, that Annabelle’s original shock soon was replaced by an almost hysterical sense of ridicule. She could understand, if not justify, that some people, mostly—she was sure—men, did find such literature delectable, but here she was obviously in the presence of a case of overkill. She chuckled at the idea of someone, anyone, going through the whole contents of this library.

  She remembered, vaguely, a rumor about the Master of the House having lost his humanity and acquired a beastly form, due to his sinful pursuits. If that was the case, she had to admit that here the Master had all the fuel he needed for such pursuits.

  She laughed a little laugh, thinking that it was not, evidently, just the palms of the hands that might sprout hair under certain circumstances. Her laughter echoed under the tall, darkened ceiling of the library.

  Then she sighed, rolled up her sleeves, and set out to do the work she was expected to do.

  The day passed swiftly, among stacks of old paperbacks. Books printed on cheap paper, with garish covers and titles like “Registered Nympho”, “Pervert Wife”, “Virgins for the Cardinal”, “Trailer Tramp”, “The Stepdaughters” and, which caused much mirth, “Nympho Librarian”.

  She piled the books and placed them into cardboard boxes, affixing a sheet of paper to the exterior, listing all the titles contained in each box. A copy of the list, including a progressive number for the boxes, was also preserved in the library registry.

  In one day, she filled forty-seven boxes, finding just the time for a quick lunch of sandwiches, that she found ready in the small dining room she had been using since her arrival.

  Halfway through the afternoon, she decided she had done a good day’s work, and she went to her room for a quick shower, and then down to dinner. Tonight the Master did not join her, and she consumed her food in silence, before retreating to her room. Again she ran herself a bubble bath, just as the chimes and bells sounded through the house, and then spent some time in bed updating her diary.

  She was going through the last paragraph of today’s entry when she again heard the sound of steps from outside, and she squinted at the door, seeing the handle move, as someone tested the door and tried to get in.

  Then the steps retreated.

  With a quick note in which she asked herself the reason of such behavior, she closed the diary, and put her head down on the pillow. In the long minutes it took her to finally sink in a deep slumber, twice more she heard someone come to her door, and test the handle.

  A whole set of shelves, protected by glass doors, was devoted to books about the perverted practices of nuns and monks through the centuries. From obscene incunabula illustrated with cartoon-ish sketches of unlikely couplings, to process papers from the Inquisition, to diaries and confessions of depraved nuns from the Age of Enlightenment, every conceivable permutation was described and detailed. Men and women, men and men, women and women, in twos, threes and even larger groups, young and old, even some stories about nuns and animals. As long as it was people wearing the habit and supposedly serving the Lord, the library was a wild catalog of obscenities.

  Annabelle spent almost one hour reading the diary of a French adventuress that pretended to be a nun in order to enter a convent and seduce a novice. The book did not hold back anything of their lesbian tryst, and caused her to blush violently over a few passages.

  She put the books in chronological order, and updated the catalog, and then retreated for dinner. She was surprised to find the Master of the House at the table.

  He greeted her courtly.

  “How is the work proceeding?” he asked as she sat down at the table.

  There were the usual silver bells protecting a steaming bowl of rich soup, and a fair-sized serving of stewed rabbit.

  “Nicely, I should say,” she replied. “Though I admit a certain—shall we say surprise, at the rather mono-thematic nature of your collection.”

  The dark lips curled in a savage smile, showing long, sharp teeth. “One is allowed a hobby,” he replied.

  “One certainly is,” she conceded.

  “Do you disapprove?”

  “It is not the job of the librarian to approve or disapprove of the books. But variety is to me a good thing.”

  The Master gave a chuckle that sounded like a low, feral growl. “But my collection is as varied and diverse as they come, I assure you.”

  “So it may be. I admit I have not much familiarity with pornography.”

  “A state of affairs that will change by the time you finish your job,” the Master said.

  “I am glad you find the situation amusing,” she scoffed.

  “Don’t you?”

  She shrugged. A single drop of gravy fell on her blouse. She hissed, and hastily dipped her napkin in her glass of water, and daubed the stain.

  “This will be hell to clean,” she said with a sigh.

  “I have provided you with ample opportunity to change,” the Master said.

  “The closet, yes,” she said. “I don’t think it proper—”

  “Aren’t household staff supposed to wear a livery? I have furnished your clothes with ample choice of livery.”

  “You have a way of twisting facts to suit your purposes,” she replied. “You provided me with dozens of dresses, and none of them has anything to do with a work uniform.”

  “You like uniforms? I’ll see that a selection is delivered to you. They will include riding crops and shiny boots.”

  And with another rumbling laugh, he stood. “And now if you will pardon me, the sun is about to set, and you must retire.”

  Annabelle took one orange from the table, and with a defiant look wished him good night, and went to her room.

  The clothes were delivered as promised, a selection of uniforms, tight trousers and jodhpurs, jackets loaded with gold braids and medals, and yes, high-heeled shiny boots, and a selection of riding crops and whips. Annabelle shook her head, hanging a black hussar’s uniform on the rack. She chose instead a simple white blouse and a smock, but she had to go through a few combinations to finally find something modest and comfortable enough. All the gowns the Master had provided had cuts and necklines that were not simply daring, but downright unsuitable to everyday work. She did not need, Annabelle thought, for her graces to spill out of her dress as she climbed a library stepladder or bent down to pick a stack of books.

  Once properly attired, she went on with her cataloging work. She waded through a swamp filled with libertine narratives and epistolary novels from the eighteenth century, and later she unearthed, ordered and classified a colossal collection of obscene prints, mostly taken from French girly magazines from the turn of the century. Pages upon pages of scantly clad women talking casually about their debauchery, showing their legs or their breasts in unlikely fashion numbers, dancing and drinking and flirting, or rolling alone in huge beds lamenting their loneliness; bare-chested sirens and nymphs dancing with satyrs, and women in a variety of historical costumes, each of them more than eager to take those costumes off, in a multi-colored, crisp paper monument to lasciviousness and loose morals.

  Soon the nightly visits at her door became customary, and ceased to cause her any worry or perplexity. It looked to her like the Master was becoming more impatient in his nightly prowls. His steps were louder and faster, his hand on the door handle heavier. She herd
him growl and snort.

  Was he really expecting her to forget to lock the door or, even, to purposefully leave the door open, in open contradiction of his orders? Was he counting on her rebellion? And why?

  And yet he was always courteous when they dined together. He asked about her work, made some risqué jokes about it, maybe, but remained respectful and kind. He was a good conversationalist, if sometime a little gruff, and Annabelle had never mt someone so well-read and articulate. She sometimes wished their dinners lasted longer, and they could go on talking books, and literature and poetry.

  But then the nights would come, and with the nights the huffing and puffing and the scratching at her door. And as she laid in her bed, writing in her diary, or tossing and turning, waiting for sleep to come, she started perceiving a sense of frustration, of growing impatience, of increasing restlessness, seeping through the door, as the prowler in the corridors of the house lingered longer by her room. And in one occasion she found signs on the wood of the door itself, as if sharp claws had tried to dig through.

  She felt worried, and also vaguely excited at that discovery.

  Then, one evening, just as Annabelle was retreating to her apartments, the Master came home in his long dark car, in the company of some guests.

  Annabelle watched them get out of the car, two women in brightly colored dresses, skirts trailing on the ground, and short fr capes. One had her dark hair combed in a high complicate do, while the other’s blond tresses fell freely over her shoulders. The Master took them by the hand, and led them inside. The women were laughing, and there was in their walk something that did not fit their elegant clothes.

  Annabelle bit her lower lip, her curiosity piqued, but just then the chimes and bells of the clocks started sounding, and she crossed the corridor and went into her room, locking the door behind her.

  The sound of the revels echoed in Annabelle’s chambers, music and laughter and voices talking, too dim for her to understand what was being said, only a rhythm, broken by bursts of loud merriment.

  She listened while she luxuriated in her bathtub, idly wondering how three people could make such a fuss. Then she wrapped herself in a bathrobe and went back to her bedroom, and noticed how, muffled by the carpets and draperies, still the sounds coming from downstairs sounded in her room. She sighed, wondering whether she would be able to sleep at all.

  She sat on her bed and recovered her pen and her diary, and she was leafing through the pages when something distracted her.

  It took her a moment to pinpoint what it was.

  The voices, seeping through the floor, had changed in tone and rhythm, and the music had quieted down. There were no longer long strands of unintelligible discourse, but rather short, loud words, haltingly intermingled with more frankly animal sounds. Gasps, and shouts, high-pitched laughter and growls, moans and banshee-like cries.

  Annabelle was not naive enough not to know what the sounds were. Her diary momentarily forgotten, she strained to listen, as what she could only imagine like an orgy unfolded out of her sight. The books she had been dusting and arranging and cataloging had on the other hand provided her with ample fuel for imagination, and she stood still, perched on the edge of the bed, while the two women wailed and screeched in the grip of passion, the low basso growl of the Master joining them rhythmically.

  With a deep shiver, Annabelle shook herself from her obscene reverie. She put the diary and the pen back in their drawer and she slipped under the covers, pushing her head on the pillow, eyes tightly shut, trying to push the sounds and the images they evoked out of her mind.

  Finally, after what seemed to her an eternity, the voice quieted down, and she sighed with relief, and a minuscule pang of disappointment. Now she could finally sleep.

  Or so she thought.

  Because soon the voices came again, amplified through the well of the stairs, as the Master and his two guests climbed up to his apartments. She heard then laugh and chuckle and snort along the corridor, dresses rustling, heels clicking. They talked in hushed voices, only a loud gasp or a shrill laugh breaking through the surface.

  Then there was a loud bang on her door.

  Annabelle sat up in bed, while a drunken voice howled “Oooh, you beast!”, followed by another loud thump against the locked door. And another. Moans, now, and gasps, and the laughter of the other woman, an the Master growling and groaning. One more bang on the door, and another, in increasing tempo, each one now accompanied by a loud guttural squawk, breathless, obscene.

  Annabelle stared at the door as the sounds grew frantic, louder, unstoppable, and finally a high-pitched screech joined a low rumbling roar, and then there was silence.

  Something rustled against the door.

  “I will never walk again,” a woman said drunkenly, and the other laughed, and then the paces walked away, and a door slammed shut.

  It was maybe ten minutes before the screeches and shouts started anew, with renewed energy.

  Annabelle tried to concentrate on the work at hand, ignoring the sounds of the Master and his two companions throughout the morning and a fair part of the afternoon. The lack of sleep made her careless, and she was almost buried by the collapse of a tall pile of books, most of them dedicated to the practice of prostitution through the centuries.

  Somewhat appropriate, she reasoned, given the situation. She put the books back in order, the catalogs of licensed courtesans in London and Paris and the instructional handbooks for cat-house owners, the sacred texts detailing the duties of temple heterae and an exquisitely bound little booklet called “Being a Whore for Fun and Profit”, that contained, judging from the index, everything a girl might need to turn into a professional sex worker.

  Then finally silence fell, and Annabelle went up to her room to freshen up, and then down again for dinner, and she was surprised to find the Master and his two guests sitting at the table. When she walked in, and stopped on the door, they turned to her.

  The two women were a portrait of dissipation, their faces slack and their hair in disarray, their clothes hastily fastened and looking slept-in. The blonde was holding a chicken drumstick in one hand, and chewing slowly, while the other sat sprawled on a chair, and smoked a cigar. Only the Master was his usual self, a wolfish smile on his snout-like face, and his mane falling in a cascade of brown curls over the shoulders of his blue velvet jacket.

  Annabelle sat at her usual place and lifted the silver bells that protected her dinner.

  “It is a pleasure that you’ve been able to join us,” the Master said.

  “For me it’s been like we’ve been together the whole day,” she replied.

  The blonde laughed out loud at that.

  “Did our indiscretion bother you?” the Master asked.

  “Not in the least,” she replied, a little stiffly.

  “You could have joined us,” he said.

  She gave him a hard stare. “It is not that the reason you are employing me,” she said.

  Then she jumped. A foot was running up and down h er leg. She looked at the brunette, that winked and leaned forward, her big breasts almost spilling out of her neckline. She blew out a cloud of cigar smoke. Annabelle pulled her leg back and tucked it under the chair. The brunette pouted, and retreated.

  “I am not interested,” Annabelle said, forcibly.

  The brunette shrugged.

  “A pity,” the Master said, distractedly.

  The blonde was leaning against the master’s side, feeding him a slice of pear with one hand, while with the other she caressed his crotch.

  Annabelle stood. “I think I better retire to my rooms,” she said.

  The brunette extracted a small pillbox from her cleavage, shook two pills in the palm of her hand, and swallowed. The blond gasped and hastily stretched her hand.

  “Nice dreams,” the master said.

  Annabelle walked away. She heard the blonde say something, in a hushed voice, and then both women laughed out loud.

  Why was he doing
this to her?, she wondered.

  Annabelle locked herself up and prepared herself to another night in the company of the sounds of the Master and his guests as they entertained each other. And indeed, she had not to wait for long before the unequivocal sounds of what she had no difficulty imagining as frantic couplings to rise through the floor, first from the dining room and then from the salon.

  She skipped her bubble bath and she rummaged in the drawers of the closet until she found a set of cotton hankies. She ripped one into strips, and rolled two up, fashioning a pair of earplugs that finally canceled the annoying noises.

  She laid in bed, in the dark, and the fatigue of the previous sleepless night soon caused her to slip into a fitful slumber. The dreams swallowed her up.

  The sun rose in the most absolute silence.

  After taking her belayed bubble bath, Annabelle walked into the closet and started selecting what she would wear for the day.

  A pair of white fishnet stockings, with white lace and blue ribbon garters. A pair of frilly culottes, that hugged her hips and caressed her butt in a silken whisper. A white silk guepiere, with blue accents, and reinforced cups that gave her a deep, vertiginous cleavage.

  She checked herself out in the mirror, before she selected a gold dress, like the one in the portrait that hung on her wall. She laced her tight corset and pulled the shoulder straps down.

  From the ample choice of cosmetics the Master had provided, she chose blush and eye-shadow. She applied pencil and mascara to her eyes, and then painted her lips a deep dark red. She pouted in the mirror, and pulled her hair up in a tall do. She held it in place stabbing it through with long wooden pins.

  Again she inspected her looks in the mirror, and found herself to be more than satisfactory. From the closet, she pulled a pair of high-heeled platform pumps, as golden as her dress, and she experimented walking up and down on the carpet.