The Governess

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in Two Thirds North, Hotel by Masticadores “Hotel of the Broken Hearts” and Masticadores Philippines

The boy is thirteen years old. He sits by the window and peers out into the garden. Rocking back and forth on the garden swing is the boy’s frock-coated father. Two women lounge on the grass opposite. One of them is tracing with slender fingers the length of her languidly extended leg. This is the governess. It is she who addresses the boy as “boy”. A light black dress clings to her body, her pendulous breasts, her heavy hips. Hers are the hips of a peasant woman, so disconsonant with her shapely, thoroughbred legs. She is forty, dark of complexion, and her chestnut hair is tied back in a pigtail. On they slide, those slender fingers, on. The second of the pair, the boy’s mother, is a short-statured woman with a plain though agreeable face. The hem of her white airy dress flutters aloft, half-exposing her ungainly legs. Back and forth rocks Father, eyes on both women. Father’s yellow teeth grind against the stem of his extinguished Dutch pipe. Mother watches with back tensed the slide of the slender fingers along the long taut leg. Face pressed against the glass, the boy peers out into the garden. Father rises, dense, angular torso leant forward. Mother leaps to her feet. They wait. The governess’s hand freezes on her round knee. Up she stands now, sluggish, unhurried, and now, heavy hips sashaying, heads into the house. Gazes riveted on her back, Mother and Father follow, manoeuvring between the wicker chairs, the little table, the chaise longue. Mother’s foot knocks into a bowl left on the lawn. Apples scatter. The governess pauses in the doorway, turns around, slow, and smiles. Mother is transfixed. Again she smiles, and, jolting into motion, Mother hurries after her into the house. The boy tears himself from the window and runs to his door. He opens it no more than necessary, ensuring he remains unnoticed by the three adults passing along the corridor. The deep-pile carpet muffles the sound of their footsteps. They part at the doors of a trio of bedrooms. The doors, positioned facing one another, are upholstered with a fabric Father has brought back from Brussels, their green colour merging into the green of the walls. The adults tarry for a time, loath to part, but it is the governess who makes the first move, doing so with a smirk; Father, in his turn, emits a heavy sigh and flings open his door. Mother, left alone, continues to stand there, agonised, unmoving. At long last she too turns on her heel and retires. The boy tiptoes out of his room and sits down in the middle of the corridor. His bare feet sink into the soft carpet. With palpitating heart he makes himself more comfortable. He waits. Half-darkness shrouds the corridor. Half-darkness shrouds the trio of doorways at its far end. The boy is a long time waiting. He remains patient. His head tilts to his shoulder. The carpet flows into a soft infinity. It is without end, leading nowhere. He starts at a rustle. Someone cries out: he opens his eyes. Mother and Father have collided in the half-darkness, nightshirts white against the murk. They have collided by the governess’s doorway. The door opens a crack. The nocturnal light seeping in through the window enveils the governess’s form. There she is, on the threshold, in a flowing black silk slip. Her form is phantasmic, almost ethereal, but the slip is too short to conceal her peasant hips. The silk clings soft to her pendulous breasts. She stands there, powerful legs planted apart. And now, thrusting out her arms, she lets loose an abrupt guffaw, seizes   man and transfixed woman by the sleeves of their nightshirts, and pulls them both into the room. The door slams shut. The boy cannot breathe. He runs over on tiptoe, drops to his knees, puts an eye to the keyhole. He can see nothing, nothing at all! No light is lit inside, and only the faint glow of the moon enables him to discern the flitter of silks white and black. He wakes late to sun-blaze through the window. The motor is already out in the yard. Around it, periodically tugging at his gloves, saunters the moustachioed driver. On the seat lies a soft travelling bag full of beach things. Mother and Father are ready to set off. The governess emerges from the house and climbs into the motor. All at once they notice the boy’s absence. Mother throws up her hands. Father snorts, disgruntled. Light-footed as a schoolgirl, the governess sprints to the window, presses herself to the glass and mouths, Boy, boy, get up… Their faces are flush against either side of the glass, her eyes level with his. She smiles. “You mustn’t play Peeping Tom at night,” she says in a scarcely discernible whisper, giving each syllable emphasis. “Quickly, quickly!” she continues, shouting now. “We’re le-a-a-a-ving!” And she runs back to the motor, legs flicking comically high. Wrestling with his clothes, the boy scrambles to don his knickerbockers and his jacket, then flings open the window and bounds after the governess to the motor. A displeased look from Father. A kiss from Mother. The motor stirs. The governess’s thigh is pressed against his knee. The seaside is an entire hour’s drive away. He has an entire hour to sit stock-still and feel her leg on his. The sea remains the same, galloping shoreward as ever it has done. The sand still has its sparkle, and screeching children still surround sunworshippers clad in ridiculous bathing suits. The governess strides ahead, the boy labouring to keep pace. Her hips sashay before him. She escorts him to the changing rooms. An elderly gentleman in a striped bathing suit rocks on his heels, his arms folded behind his back and his neat round belly offered up to the sun. He notices the governess, winks in her direction and twitches his grey cockroach moustache with a content air. They enter a cubicle. The governess leaves it unlocked. She asks the boy to turn away. She stands him in the corner, face to a fragment of a large cracked mirror. She takes an age to peel off her dress, hand tracing the contours of her elongated torso. Her armour-like brassiere struggles to contain her breasts. The boy stands trembling before the mirror-fragment. It snaps open, this cuirass of hers, and out they tumble, hanging free at last. She freezes, gazing into space. Her hand flows tantalising-slow over her breasts. Click goes a metal clasp, then another, and another, and now, unhurried in her movements, she rolls her stockings down her thoroughbred legs. Her reflection skips and splinters in the mirror’s cracks. Doffing her drawers in a single fluid movement, she stills her body, legs planted apart on the floor. There’s a lump in the boy’s throat. He can’t seem to catch his breath. There they are: her immense thighs, her thickets of black hair. The cubicle begins to swim. The floor reels, and so too the governess. The walls crumble, collapse against each other. And now the governess soars aloft, body suspended in mid-air… Their gazes meet in the mirror. The cubicle stops swimming. The governess has donned her bathing costume. “Need me to help you put it on?” she asks in a light voice. “N-no,” mutters the boy, stripping off in a fury. She does not avert her eyes. She hands him his bathing suit. Her gaze settles on his belly. They emerge from the changing rooms like they’re two strangers, same as they were when they went in. In the doorway, though, the governess thrusts an arm behind her head, and the long thick hair in her pit leaves him forever dazzled. She stands stock-still an instant, as if posing for some unknown artist. Intoxicated by her mystery, the boy shuffles across the sand towards the deck chairs occupied by impatient, wait-weary Mother and Father. Sea, sand and throng recede from his vision. He sees nothing but her thrown-back arm and her astonishing black pit hair, hidden from strangers’ eyes. The four of them sit on the beach amidst a multitude of other bodies: Mother and Father on their deck chairs, the governess opposite, beneath an ample, gaily coloured parasol, and the boy on the sand. A young man in a grey bathing suit strolls about nearby. He passes them, flicking casual glances over at the governess. His eyes take in the outstretched, drawn-together legs, the nipples erect under the light silk bodice. On reaching the changing rooms, he does an about-face and turns back. He no longer glances at the governess: he’s just strolling now, and paying no attention to the sunworshippers. The governess smiles at the boy, smiles at Mother and Father. The young man sails past them for the third time, his gait all nonchalance. The governess rises to her feet and follows silent in his wake. He eases his pace now, and now she draws abreast. They walk side by side, not a word passing between them, towards some secluded dunes. Now she eases her pace, and, taking his hand in hers, guides his palm, slow, slow, along her shoulder. Three pairs of eyes watch her unblinking. She sways a little as she walks. As she vanishes behind the dunes, they swear they see her wave a hand in their direction. Mother and Father freeze in their deck chairs, nails digging into each other’s palms. When the governess returns, they’re still sitting there, postures unchanged, gazing into space, fields of vision brimful of sea and yellow sand, of untold children and their screeching mothers. She flops herself down on the sand, and smiles. The motor awaits them. The driver stows away the travelling bag. The boy trails behind the others, feet kicking up hot sand. A rotund woman stood amidst a gaggle of children with a towel about her hips struggles to peel off her bathing costume. The boy catches fleeting glimpses of fat white thighs, hoicked-up towel, drawers around ankles. He freezes in mid-step. Looking back and catching his gaze, the governess presses to his cheek the cool tips of her fingers. That evening Mother and Father shall be out at a reception. The boy is not to accompany them: there shall be no children in attendance. Mother issues a few final instructions. Father paces restless about the garden. He is decked out in a new suit, diamonds blazing from the stickpin in his tie. Their friends, a pair of gaunt, stiff gentleman whom the governess has dubbed “the sapped sirs”, arrive to collect them. The gentlemen sit ramrod straight in their gleaming motor and nod greetings at the quartet in the house. From afar they resemble mandarin dolls. One of them, impatient, drums his spindly fingers on the steering wheel.          Mother and the governess exchange a kiss so tender you’d swear they were parting for a week. Mother’s lips glide down the governess’s cheek, finding their way to her mouth. Father, feigning a frown and glancing askance at the waiting gentlemen’s motor, runs a swift, firm, accidental hand along her supple flank. The boy waves off the belching motor from the open doorway. The governess sweeps past into the house, grazing him with her breasts, her hip, her hand. The motor vanishes into the distance. The boy ensconces himself in the empty drawing room. He settles into Father’s seat, pencil in mouth in lieu of a pipe, and, clearing his throat à la Father, frowns as he surveys the vacant chairs. He opens an imaginary folder—notes of leather and tobacco—and jots down some memos, leaning back in his seat and puffing on his pencil. “Well now,” he says, his voice stern and scarcely tinged with irony, “is supper to be served to-night?” He swivels his great bulk, looking to express his disgruntlement to his wife or a maid, only for his gaze to fall upon the governess. She is stood in the drawing room doorway, hand clamped over mouth to keep from exploding with laughter. Fidgeting now, the boy scrambles down from the chair. But the governess blocks his escape route. Her mirth has vanished; she raises aloft her arms in a slow, languid motion. Casting a sidelong glance at the boy, she catches his gaze from beneath her upraised arms. “Shall we go for a ride?” she says simply, and, with the answer already known to her, makes for the yard.  The boy catches her up. “Shall we go for a ride?” she says, and makes a beeline for their motor. She positions herself at the steering wheel, looking every inch a real driver, and laughingly dons a chauffeur’s cap. “We shall go for a ride,” she declares, her brown almond eyes fixed unblinking on the boy’s. The motor moves off. Leaning his head out of the window, the boy sees the receding house, the garden, the gardener with his watering can, their shaggy mutt in hot pursuit. He glances at the governess, but she is all focus, body tense, hands gripping the wheel. Passenger and driver remain silent, do not broach the question of their destination. The suburbs give way to the outskirts with their multi-coloured street lights. The governess gives off a self-possessed, aloof air, save for the march-like beating of her foot upon the pedal. Presently they pull into a street lined with hideous painted women. One of them sports scarlet hair adorned with a peacock feather. Another’s skirt is short enough to expose the lilac bloomers hugging her thick meaty thighs. The women are all scantily clad, and the boy fancies himself at a grotesque wondrous masquerade. The women smile painted smiles, their glued-on lashes fluttering like those of dolls. All at once the governess decelerates. Without turning her head, she drives, sedate, solemn,  along the row of lurid bodies. The car moves ever slower. Now a woman pokes her bleached-blonde head into the window. Shooting the governess a quizzical glance, she winks and breaks into a gap-toothed grin. The governess spits out a curt “No”, and the motor continues on its way. The blonde shouts a word after them: a terrible word. The boy shudders and freezes, but the governess flashes him an abrupt smile. At the very end of the endless row stands a gargantuan woman. Her heavy breasts are spilling out of her purple corset. Her stubby, thickset legs are planted apart on the ground, her fleshy calves are clad in warmers, and her feet are shod in a man’s ankle boots. Her monstrous thrust-out backside resembles the backside of a mare. Stretched over her hips is a torn tutu. The boy screws up his eyes. There are no underdrawers beneath the tutu. He opens his eyes. The giantess is standing by the motor door. The governess gives her a nod, turns to the boy, runs her fingers lightly down his cheek. He freezes. Before he knows it—swing of the leg, vault—she’s beside him on the back seat. The door is thrown wide, and an enormous breast fills the entire opening. Mouth agape, body pressed into the seat, he stiffens.    A massive bulk collapses onto him. Short stubby fingers fumble with his fasteners. He manages to turn his head. The governess watches him, lips pursed, gaze riveted on his face. All at once she rolls her sleeve up and throws back her arm, dazzling him with this revelation of her black abyss. The boy shudders. The last thing he sees is the steering wheel digging into the giantess’s meaty flank. A paroxysm seizes him. He surrenders to it, this sweet, languid agony at work in his hips and knotting his stomach. An immense crimson nipple fills his mouth. His lips tighten, and the ferocity of the ensuing eruption jolts the giant body sprawled atop his own.  He cries out, spluttering, and feels on his face the cool light fingers of the governess. They graze his cheek, his forehead, his mouth. “There it is,” she whispers. “There it is: I’ve fallen for you!” The boy opens his eyes. The big woman is still stood by their motor. She’s wiping her tutu with a man’s checkered handkerchief. Leaning over him, the governess brushes her full open mouth against his dry, wind-chapped lips. They drive home in silence. The boy sits motionless, painfully clutching the governess’s fingers. Back in the house she undresses him and tucks him into bed. Perched on the bed’s edge, she purrs out a ditty she takes to be a lullaby, and, quivering, runs a hot slender hand through his hair. Then, all at once, she thrusts her bulk against him, all atremble. The boy closes his eyes. A giant breast descends anew over his mouth. The immense legs and the rugged ankle boots and the torn tutu and the steering wheel in the fat meaty flank and the black abyss under the governess’s arm all bear down on him and whirl in the air and morph one into the other and crash down on the boy with the weight of heavy slumber. As he plummets sleepward, he manages to flash the governess a smile with the corner of his puffy childish mouth.