On the other side of the house, Margarete Hansen woke up and stretched luxuriously. Her body was alive with the aliveness that comes from total fulfilment. She thought of the thrashings that she had given her employer the previous night, and she thrilled at the thought that she could repeat them whenever she had the slightest desire to do so. The only thing that she must be careful about was discretion: neither the servants nor the children must be allowed to have the least suspicion that the relationship between her employer and herself had changed since the evening before.
She looked at Peter the Punisher and her birch. They were lying on the side of her dressing-table. The room was flooded with daylight, for she never drew her curtains, and she could see the dark colour of blood on the end of them. She would have to wash them before using them again. She would, indeed, have to wash them in any case, and straight away. If any of the servants happened to see them in her wardrobe in this condition, they would think that she had been terribly brutal with one or more of the children, and this was something she did not want them to think.
She had said, she remembered, that she would buy a whalebone switch and a whip today. She decided now that she would buy more than just these two things. But where should she buy the whips? There were plenty of shops in Kiel that sold switches for riding, but whips? It was a pity, she thought, that she was not in London. She could buy all sorts and sizes of whips there; she could even, she had heard, buy a cat-o'-nine-tails if she wanted one. She thought that the possession of a cat-o'-nine-tails would be very sweet. She would like one made of wire, not simply leather. A cat-o'- nine-tails made of wire would give a really terrible pain.
She began to feel very sadistic again. She put her hands to her breasts, underneath her silk nightdress, and caressed them as she day-dreamed. She wished that there were some deep cellar to the house which she could transform into a real torture chamber. She would have rings set in the ceiling and she would string Per Petersen up to them. She would whip him back and front with the wire cat-o'-nine-tails until he fainted. She might even keep him locked up in her torture chamber for a whole week, after having made him announce to his office and his household that he was going away somewhere for the week. She could have a burning brazier in which she could heat branding-irons, and she could brand him with red-hot irons on whatever part of his body she desired. His bottom would be a wonderful place…
She sighed, and then shook her head a little crossly. Such ideas were very stupid. They could never be put into practice. She should be satisfied-more than satisfied-with the situation as it was. She had her own personal masochist under her thumb. She could whip him whenever she wanted.
That was quite enough. She must stop these stupid thoughts of torture chambers and branding irons.
She began to consider again where she could buy a whip, or whips, in Kiel. A shop, perhaps, that sold dog-leads. Sometimes leads were made in the form of whips. Yes, that was the best idea. She would go down to Kiel immediately after breakfast.