Grushenka was somewhat downcast with this verdict. It would have been better if she had received a good beating and had stayed in the men's department. First of all, she liked men and not women; secondly, Madame Brenna was quite severe with her girls. She had mostly serf girls working for her and their backs, buttocks and thighs often showed signs of harsh treatment. What should Grushenka do-quit? Then what? She gave in and reported at the women's department the next noon. The equipment of this bathing hall was almost the same as that downstairs, except that on the floor and in the cabinets were some runners and rugs. Madame Brenna sat behind an elevated desk where she sold tea and cakes instead of beer and vodka. But she did not stay behind her bar as her husband always did. No, she ran about all the time, seeing to it that cabinets were cleaned after a customer left, chatting and gossiping with the women in the tubs and ceaselessly admonishing the girls to keep busy. With her commanding words usually went a pinch on the arm or on the buttocks. The girls lined up at the door when a customer came in. Each tried to get as many as possible because of the tips. The customers were the same kind as the men, middle class women of all ages. Many came only for a hot bath because there were no bathing accommodations in the houses of the middle class of that time.
Some wanted a massage and a rest, and many of them, not having any serfs at home, wanted something more. But all of them used the attendant bath girls as their private property, as serfs, rented for a time and on whom they could let their fancy go as it would.
Grushenka realized this with her first customer. This patroness was a young girl whose father had recently made some money with a pottery business. While this father refused to allow his family an elegant household with servants and the luxury of the upper class, there was enough cash available for his daughter to behave like a thorough snob when she was outside her four walls. She was decked out in a cloak with golden threads woven into it, her shoes had big silver buckles and she looked like a real lady. When she came in she eyed the ten girls who stood there naked and smiling. She took her lorgnette and slowly and carefully looked them over. Grushenka felt a chill when the eyes of this young girl wandered from her breasts down to her belly and then down her legs. She was not so happy when she was selected. She did not know why, because this young girl had a harmless and friendly face, though around her mouth were lines of haughtiness and disgust. Grushenka led her customer to a cabinet, closed the door and began devotedly to undress her. The girl stood perfectly still and did not make a move, not even opening a ribbon or slipping out of a single garment. Grushenka found it best to admire loudly all of her wearing apparel although the only answer with which she was met was that it was very costly and that Grushenka should lay each piece out or hang it up with great care. The girl demanded her hair undone and braided, so that it should not get wet. Meanwhile, she sat before the mirror studying her face and her decidedly good figure. After her hair was done, Grushenka asked whether she desired a massage and which way she wanted it. Instead of an answer, the girl turned around and began to study Grushenka's form and features. She became jealous of Grushenka's full and even breasts, her subtle waist, her straight belly and her good legs. Of a sudden, she put a finger into Grushenka's love-nest, shoved it all the way in and, drawing her nearer, asked: “All the men are crazy about you-aren't they?”
“Oh, no!” answered Grushenka instinctively. “Oh, no. Men usually don't like me.” “Not much, you liar,” sneered the fair patroness, and, letting her finger slip out of its lodging place, she gave her a resounding slap in the thigh. Grushenka drew back, holding her smarting thigh with her hands and groaning: “Oh, oh, please don't do that!” “Why not? Why shouldn't I give you a sound spanking if I like to?” retorted the girl with a sneer. “Didn't I hire you for my pleasure? Since when can I not do with Madame Brenna's girls what I like? Shall I call her in and ask her?” “Please don't call Madame Brenna,” answered Grushenka timidly. “I'll do everything you want me to- but please don't hurt me. You don't need to pay me if you don't want to,” she added. “We'll see about that, you little serf-girl,” replied the customer. “Now come here and turn around and bend over-yes, so-that's right. And don't dare move away or I'll teach you!” With that remark, she began to pinch Grushenka's bottom.
First she took the flesh of the right cheek between her thumb and index finger, squeezed the soft flesh firmly and turned her hand around. Grushenka put her own hand to her mouth so as not to cry out aloud, for it hurt her terribly. She leaned forward, trembling in her legs. The girl watched with pleasure. The pinched spot first turned snow white and then deep red. “Now you look all uneven,” she remarked. “We can't stand for that-“ and she pinched the left cheek in the same way. Not content with that, she attacked different points above and beneath the bruised area and admired her handiwork with laughter. Grushenka suffered under each pinch as if fire burned her buttocks. Between pinches, the girl reached through Grushenka's legs and pulled the hair of her Venus' Hill, not very hard, but hard enough to make her groan aloud. Meanwhile Grushenka had the feeling that she had to pass water. But she was afraid to do so over the customer's hand-Madame Brenna's whip would have been the consequence. Now the girl got bored with her doings. “Sorry,” she said, “that we haven't a whip or a switch here. Otherwise I would erase the nice design which I made on your bottom.” Grushenka straightened up and turned around. The girls' eyes were fastened on her full breasts. “How I'd love to whip your breasts,” she went on, “with a small leather strap, the one I have at home for my lap dog. It would be a pleasure to see your breasts, of which you're so proud, prettily striped with the lash. You see, I don't like to hit you with my hands because that hurts me and wouldn't go through your thick skin anyway, you slut.” Nevertheless, she made Grushenka hold her breasts with both hands while she struck her a couple of times with her bare hands. Grushenka was able to catch these slaps with her hands, but it stung her anyway not a little. This over, the girl demanded her satchel, out of which she took a large artificial male organ. She laid herself on the massage table, opened her legs, had Grushenka stand close to her and gave her the pseudo-phallus. Grushenka opened the lips of the love nest with her left hand and with the right she carefully sunk the dildo into the waiting orifice. The girl now became very passionate. She put her right hand between Grushenka's thighs, near the cleft, and clamped her hand into the flesh, sinking the nails into Grushenka's soft skin. At the same time, she held her left hand tightly on her own well-formed bosom and worked her buttocks against the false shaft in a quick rhythm. Grushenka duplicated this rhythm by easing the artifice into the love nest up and down. The girl heaved heavily, whispered the name of her imaginary lover and moved her buttocks up higher and higher until, when she reached her climax, she rested only on her shoulders and on the soles of her feet. She then fell back on the table and lay motionless while Grushenka removed the intruding shaft and cleaned the girl with a wet towel. Grushenka was glad that it was over, but that proved a mistake. As soon as the girl came to, she had another scheme. “Give me the dildo!” she commanded. “And you go down and give my sweet little nest a good licking and don't stop before I tell you. Understand? No, that's not the right spot. Stick out your tongue, you stupid fool! Deeper. Yes, that's it”
Grushenka had her head buried between the thighs of this newly rich girl who revenged her own poor childhood with its many whippings and humiliations by taking it out on another girl. Grushenka had practiced using the tip of her tongue for some time, and, although she knew how she had formerly done it, she worked too quickly and pressed her mouth too hard into the opening, so that she soon was breathless and her tongue became sore. The girl had crossed her legs behind Grushenka's neck and pressed her tightly against herself. She was not yet excited because she had just come under the pressure of Master Phallus. This dildo she held playfully in her hands, placing it between her breasts, tickling her nipples, finally kissing it all along the shaft and then inserting it into her mouth and sucking it with delight. She did not concentrate on the feelings of her love nest beyond the agreeable tickling which Grushenka's tongue-play produced.
Grushenka stopped for a moment, getting her breath and resting her tongue, and, looking up, saw the shaft disappearing and re-appearing from the mouth. The fair patroness was not willing to let her have a rest, and hit her on the back with the soles of her feet.
Grushenka resumed her occupation. This time she held the orifice open with her left hand and, coming from underneath, inserted the index finger of her right hand into the love cavern and massaged the passageway all the way along until the womb seconded the efforts of her tongue to make the little love place spend. This method apparently met with the approval of the buttocks, because they started to move up and down, first slowly, then increasing their tempo to such a degree that Grushenka had a hard time keeping the tip of her tongue exactly at the right spot. However, it was the desire of her patroness to prolong the play. She twisted away, even took the priceless shaft out of her mouth and ordered Grushenka to stop. But Grushenka hung on. She kept her mouth close to the target and made love to the girl with all her might. Finally the girl gave up fighting and reached a climax. She lay panting, while Grushenka took a soft towel and rubbed her legs, belly, breast and arms, removing the sweat and giving her at the same time a strengthening massage. Her customer had her eyes closed and seemed to sleep. Grushenka was about to leave, when the girl got up lazily, gave her a malicious look and started for the door. Grushenka thought she was going to the tub. Instead, the girl opened the door and motioned Madame Brenna, who, always on the watch, came swiftly inside. “I always pay well and you know I never complain,” said the girl, “but look at this serf girl here. She is so lazy that when I tell her to kiss me a little, she just gives me words. I don't care what you do about it, but you know that there are the aristocratic bath halls where I should have gone in the first place…” “Is that so?” asked Madame Brenna with a grin and a severe look in the direction of Grushenka. “I'll wake the bitch up, if you permit. Come here, Grushenka, and lie over this chair. Yes, the bottom up.” Grushenka did as told. Her head hung down. Her hands held the legs of the chair with an anxious grip. Hex poor buttocks were turned up. Madame Brenna took a towel, held it in water until it was soaking wet and put her left hand firmly on Grushenka's back. She saw the marks of the pinching and guessed the rest of the story. But Grushenka, trembling and weeping and protesting her innocence, now lost control of herself entirely. She not only felt like making water, nay, she made water! In a big stream the yellow liquid ran out of her orifice and over her thighs onto the carpet.
The girl laughed aloud. After the sadness and bad mood which had followed her two orgasms, she now felt delightfully happy. Madame Brenna, however, became really angry. The wet towel proved to be a more painful instrument than a switch or a leather strap. While the latter gave the kind of stinging cut suggested by its switching sound through the air, the wet towel gave only a thud when it hit, but it crushed the flesh, inflicting the pain of a contusion. Madame Brenna understood perfectly how to handle a wet towel on a naughty girl's buttocks. She had perfected herself through over a score of years, and Grushenka's buttocks were just another behind to her. “Such a lousy girl, to ruin that good rug,” she thought, and Grushenka soon was purple-red from the knees to the small of the back. She howled and squealed like a pig being killed. She tossed about in her awkward position. Her tear-dimmed eyes fixed on her own knees, which she saw underneath the chair seat. On her body, arched so that the buttocks were its highest point, the blows rained with awful strength- swap-swap-swap! Madame Brenna did not count the strokes.
Grushenka had roused her anger, and she'd know when it was time to stop. The girl customer looked on, highly amused. While she still laughed about the business of wetting the carpet, a gleam of perverted passion glowed in her eyes and a feeling of satisfaction crept through her loins. “Oh, if father would only buy some serf girls,” she thought, “I'd beat them myself-but with a good leather whip, not with a wet towel.” She herself had felt the switch and the strap not so many years ago when her father was still poor and she was the hired maid of a rich market woman. And how often the leather whip had cut her young breasts! In recollection, she caressed her full breasts with both hands, reassuring herself that those times were over forever.
Meanwhile Madame Brenna had finished her job and had motioned her customer out of the cabinet and into a tub. Grushenka let herself fall from the chair, and, lying on her stomach, felt her sore buttocks With careful fingers. This indulgence, however, was short lived. Madame Brenna soon was back again and made her clean up the room. Taking her roughly by the arm, she dried her face with a handkerchief and tied up her ruffled hair. “Not another sob,” she said, “Or I'll start again. Pull yourself together and go after your work. You see,” she added maliciously, “that's what comes of getting the biggest man in the neighborhood to squeeze it into you; you can't even hold your water.” Grushenka subdued her sobs. Under Madame Brenna's orders, she carried hot water for re-filling the tubs, she cleaned out a tub and so on. While Grushenka's back hung heavy with pain, she was given no time to sulk and mope. Furthermore, she soon had to take care of a customer of another kind. A middle-aged woman of a motherly type selected her; a woman with kind eyes and ruddy complexion, more stout than fat, more big than tall. While she undressed her, Grushenka admired her firm flesh, her large hard breasts, her muscular legs. The woman stroked Grushenka's head, called her all kinds of sweet names, complimented her on her lovely features and body and did not seem the least bit jealous of her beauty. After she was naked, she asked Grushenka to wash her love nest. When this was duly done she said, “Now, my sweet darling, please be a dear and wash me there again, only this time, use your own sweet tongue. You see, my old man hasn't touched me in over five years. I don't know whether he could find his way anymore, if he wanted to, and I can't help craving some excitement. You see, every so often it tickles me down there and so I come here once a week to have my little hot-house regaled with the apt play of a tongue like yours. And remember, I enjoy it most when a girl is willing and beautiful as you are.” With this, she moved Grushenka's head, carefully and with caresses, between her big thighs.
Grushenka started the job. She had plenty of operating field before her. The woman spread her big legs wide open; the small part of the belly, both sides of the cleft, the over-developed Venus Hill received soft kisses and slow ticklings with the tongue while Grushenka's well-formed hands gently took hold of the buttocks.
Grushenka took the. large, long lips of the grotto in her mouth alternately and caressed them with her lips and tongue, even biting them tenderly. Then she turned her efforts toward the main object, namely the large but juicy fruit of love, which lay, waiting to be devoured. The woman lay still except that her fingers tried to tickle Grushenka's ears, but Grushenka shook them off. When, however, the tongue nipped the limp stem of that great fruit, flicked around it and pressed and massaged it with stronger strokes, the tiny twig began to stand up and take notice. Now the woman changed her behavior.
She began to heave and to toss with passion, and her sweet words turned into sharp curses. Grushenka could not make out what she whispered so hoarsely, but words like 'take that damned thing away,' or 'you lousy old son-of-a-bitch,' frequently turned up in this randy monologue. When finally she reached her climax, the woman closed her strong legs behind Grushenka's head, drawing her so tightly towards her as to almost suffocate the poor girl. Releasing her, she sat up on the table, scratched her fat belly thoughtfully and muttered more to herself than to Grushenka: “It's a shame for an old woman and a mother of a grown up daughter- but what can you do?” Soon she sat in her tub, a respectable elderly woman with kind looks and refined behavior. Grushenka received a good tip from her.
Grushenka soon was greeted with many sarcastic remarks from the other customers and girls wherever she passed. Her first patroness had told the story of her making water on the floor and all the women considered it a huge joke. This same patroness annoyed and vexed her again when she was through with her bath. After she had been dried-an operation during which she found many faults with Grushenka and during which she pinched her with her sharp fingernails under the arms and in the sensitive flesh of the breasts (of which she was jealous)-she had another one of her striking ideas. “You little brat!” she snapped at Grushenka. “Do you know what you are good for! As a chamber pot!
Come, sit down on the floor and I will make water in your mouth.”
Grushenka did not obey. She brought a chamber pot from the corner and put it down. The girl clutched Grushenka's hair around the Venus' Hill and, raising her right hand, threatened to hit her.
But Grushenka remained firm, “I shall yell for Madame Brenna,” she said, and stood her ground. The girl wavered. “What else do you do all day long,” she retorted, “but wash out women with that fat, insolent tongue of yours? Why should you, you of all people, refuse to drink a little water?” Grushenka struggled free and went to the other side of the massage table. “I believe, Mademoiselle,” she said, “that another girl can serve you better than I can. May I call another one?” The girl shrugged her shoulders. “No! No!” she muttered, and had herself dressed without another word. Ready to go, she took a ruble's worth of coins out of her purse. Grushenka reached for them, but the girl had decided to give them to her in another manner.
“Wait,” she said. “Lie down on the table and open up. I'll put them inside you as a cork to stop the leak.” Grushenka did as she was told, hoping thus to get rid of her tormentor more quickly. She held her orifice open as wide as possible so as not to get hurt when the silver was slipped in. The girl, who already had her gloves on, opened the slit with two fingers and for a moment examined this finely made love nest. The lips were rosy and oval, the opening lay deeper than her own and in close neighborhood to the clearly visible back entrance. The sheath seemed narrow, and the tickler, being near the entrance, raised its head freshly. “What a treasure trove,” she thought, “Really, I never would make love to a woman, but this one-” Grushenka moved nervously. Her tender parts lay open to the aggression of this patroness whom one could not trust. The girl slipped the coins in, first the small silver coins, which had a higher value, then the big copper coins worth one or two kopecks. She had quite some fun when these pieces did not go in so easily, while Grushenka trembled anxiously, not hurt, but afraid of what might still come. Finished, the girl slapped Grushenka with her gloved hand over the open orifice. Grushenka jerked her legs together and jumped from the table, while the girl laughingly remarked from the door: “Keep it there and you'll never go broke.” During the many weeks which Grushenka worked in the women's department, she found out that women are crueler and meaner than men. The women had no humor or fun on their minds; they wanted only to be satisfied, utterly, selfishly.
They complained without cause, and, having power over their attendants, they tormented and vexed them without reason and often very unexpectedly. They might be very nice and considerate to Grushenka and all of a sudden pinch her or call for Madame Brenna to punish her. They tipped not half as well as the men did, and called attention to it heavily when they parted with a few kopecks. None of them ever kissed her or made love to her, while many requested that she bring their elderly ticklers to the climax. Grushenka did not mind that. She soon learned to work her tongue over their bodies and their love nests in a routine way, hardly considering what she was doing and faking passion and eagerness when she felt that her patronesses were about to spend. But what got her nervous was that she never knew when Madame Brenna would find fault with her and punish her. The punishments were of all kinds. Madame Brenna would whip her soles with a leather strap when she had not moved with enough alacrity; she would hit her breasts with a switch when a customer complained that she had admired herself in the mirror; she would tie stinging nettles on the inside of Grushenka's thighs or on her bare buttocks when she was tired or drowsy. While none of the women customers made love to her, they always liked to rub their thick fingers in her sheath, not in a friendly and teasing way, but roughly, . as if they wanted to enlarge her wonderfully small passage.
Unconsciously, perhaps, they were envious because Grushenka had the narrowest passageway of them all. Grushenka thought that Madame Brenna kept after her more than after the other girls because she was still angry about her husband. That was wrong. But her conscience soon was especially uneasy and for a good reason. One evening, when she had been in the woman's department only a few days and, through with work, had just reached her room, in came Mr. Brenna. As was his habit, he threw her over the bed and gave her one of his tremendous pokes. She did not dare to fight him or to yell for help. She just gave in, gasping. She did not enjoy his big shaft, for she kept watching the door, dreadfully afraid that they might be detected.
The next day he came again, and, from then on, every day. Since things seemed to go smoothly, Grushenka finally forgot her fear and concentrated again on his love power, which filled her with hot chills and stimulated her to the climax of sacrificing passion. This went on for weeks and then, of course, one fine day Madame Brenna stood in the room again and the same as before repeated itself. Only this time, after having beaten up her husband, Madame Brenna gave Grushenka a murderous look, drove her husband out of the room, went herself, slammed the door behind her and locked and bolted the door from the outside. For a moment Grushenka was horrified. She sat oh the edge of the bed, paralyzed, unable to move or to think. Then an idea flashed through her brain, an idea which drove her to feverish activity. Flight! Away! As quickly as possible, as quick as lightning! She dressed, wrapped her clothes into a bundle and stuck the handkerchief with her money into her bodice. Flight!
How to leave the room? The oak door did not budge. The Jock was of forged iron. But there was the window! Through the window, over the window sill, along the house ledge into the open window of the next room. A dash through that room, flight down the stairs, out of the house, along the street, around the first corner, the second, the next. Exhausted and with a beating heart, Grushenka leaned against a house wall. Nobody had followed her. Still breathless, she forced herself to move on. The twilight turned to darkness. She reached Marta's house and the girl friends kissed each other tenderly and with tears. For a long time, neither spoke a word.