The Prussian Girls Read online

  In order not to interrupt the train and concentration of these morning classes, a system of chits had been perfected. The girl was given a 'Zettel (or Strafzettel) of a certain color to take along to the Duty Mistress for completion, and signing. These chits were succinct and to the point, thus:

  Schillerin:

  Erika Treppe

  Unter-Tertia

  2

  Unaufmerksamkeit.

  Klasse:

  Stunde:

  Fehler:

  It was signed by the reporting mistress, and dated.

  Pretty Erika Treppe, already frowning with anxiety, watched the mistress writing on the little blue form, and curtseyed as she accepted it. Inattention nearly always merited a “Blue,” as it was called, which was invariably a destiny of seven, with a thin lithe classroom cane across absolutely nothing at all. No matter how tender of flesh the girl in question was, the Duty Mistress took her time, and aim, and cut just as hard as she could. The girl then rejoined her class, presented her now signed chit to the mistress in charge, and tried to look nonchalant.-not as if she was longing to rub all that fiendishly stinging flesh behind.

  Anna Erland got a “Yellow” that morning. In a History Class, devoted to the growth of the new German Sparta, she had really been unable to sit still. The glycerine suppository had been too strong. She still had to… go. She plucked desperately at her little brown Grecian chlamys, changing the position of her bottom this way and that on the hard oak seat. The mistress had checked her once, and then accorded the 'Zettel. In a hoarse muffled whisper Anna had asked to be allowed to visit the Matron first; her colleagues hid their grins as she hurried out, crimson-faced. All concerned knew this would mean yet another punishment since there was one time, and one only, permitted for bowel evacuation at Schloss Rutenberg.

  Anna took the stairs two at a time, grimacing. Matron Steinkopf presided in a series of chambers at the top of the house. She was a tall, grim-faced woman of over fifty, with a thin mustache lining her upper lip, and she wore a long sweeping black gown. Second only to the Head in power, she performed the function of doctor to the establishment, effecting most of her cures, to be sure, with clyster and castor oil, and she was universally dreaded. It was not that her strokes cut harder than those of any other mistress, but she had a way, a manner of crushing and bruising the soul, rather than the body. There was never any flippancy of lightness on Matron Steinkopf's lips. Nor was there now when she surveyed the slender, twisting youngster, her knickers off already and her skirt tucked into her chain-belt; scum were shaved but this round mound, darkly slit, looked polished as a billiard ball, at the top of the entwining legs.

  “Ach, Matrone… please… I can't help… I have to go!”

  The good woman moved slowly, and without speaking. First she ranged two hard kitchen chairs back to back, half a yard apart. She placed a bucket between them. She put some oil to heat on a flame, and next reversed an empty hour-glass. Then from some canisters and pans she produced a copper cylinder-the dreaded clyster.

  “Please, Matrone, please. I can go without that. In fact, in fact… I can go… any moment.”

  The girl followed the deliberate preparations with wide eyes. It was all taking so horribly long. Her skin was goosing all over. Ach Gott, o weh… the nozzle, which was being greased ready now, was so dreadful, she could never… and the yellow chit in her little breast pocket assured her of five frightful cuts afterwards, more if Matron…

  “Come here.”

  Anna shuffled forward. The oil had started to smoke. The flame was extinguished and the end of the nozzle inserted into the bowl; with a long straight drawing motion the Matron loaded the cylinder with her charge, and took it out. The girl looked at it wildly. It was such a small thing, why should it cause her such irrational fear?

  “Lean forward.”

  The Matron greased the anus, in between the trim cheeks ruddied by the strap. Then she slid in the cylinder an inch. Anna Erland gasped. It was hot! Then the entire tube was thrust up her, quickly. She stumbled and looked back, impaled as she was, her eyes imploring, her hands wringing before her. There were ways of administering the clyster, more or less mild. A series of squirts hurt less, but incontinency of this sort had to be stopped and with a single, solid drive Matron Steinkopf injected the heated olive oil until the ring in the handle of the clyster clicked audibly home as the cylinder emptied.

  Anna cried out. She jerked erect, staggering forward a step so that the Matron had to follow, ramming the nozzle well up her until it had voided itself completely into the young bowel.

  “Um Gotteswillen… liebe, liebe Matrone…”

  Striving hands clutched back, in vain. Having extracted the slippery clyster the Matron then secured the anus with a bung. This resembled a double mushroom, black and of a flexible, rubbery substance that swelled under heat. One head of this was inserted inside the sphincter, which was gripped by the other, outside. Since the core joining the two “mushrooms” was thick, no more than a mild oozing was permitted this natural orifice. It was uncomfortable for the wearer for the first minute, but after two she felt she wanted to tear it out-so strongly did the clyster constrain her. It was for this reason that, before comfortably resuming her seat by the fire, the Matron secured Anna Erland's arms behind her, in elbow-cuffs which held each opposing wrist. Then she turned over her hour-glass.

  “Ten minutes,” was what she said.

  The girl panted in something close to a panic. She could not conceivably wait that long. She was supposed to stand to attention, like a guardsman- but her belly looked swollen above its slit. The ghastly gripings began. They made her pace in place, long to hug her thighs, and duck her knees, and gasp, and writhe from side to side, stirring her budlike breasts. The sand was spilling with such intolerable lenity.

  “Please, Matron. I can't… it's coming down…”

  Matron Steinkopf said nothing. Only once, when Anna's squirmings became too insistent, did she get up, unclip her switch, and very methodically deliver three lashing slices to the writhing thighs. Then she sat down again. For Anna the new pain was at least something; it was a call to her body in a new place, to endure and combat. Then suddenly she heard her release.

  “Da steigst Du drauf und setzi Dich so auf die Lehne…”

  She was running to obey as if her life depended on it. The girl stood on either chair-seat and lowered her pronounced “Popo” onto the backs of each, where the sharp edges bit into her and parted her bottom to splitting. With a pronounced plop the Matron extracted the now oily bung and a sturdy, gleaming turd began instantly and gratefully, to exude from the girlish gut. Arms still bound behind her, Anna frowned tin concentration as she pressed. There were tears at the edges of her lashes, but she was thankful, oh how thankful… the sensation was the greatest relief she had known in her life. The bucket beneath her thumped to two healthy, darkish sausages which looked far too big, somehow, to have come from such a girlish belly. The Matron watched them drop from between the reddened cheeks ruminatively; she was already writing out her yellow 'Zettel for the girl-this for Incontinence.

  Three minutes later Anna Erland was presenting these to the Duty Mistress in her dreaded chamber. This today was Mademoiselle Bellais, the French mistress, a neat, smiling woman in her early thirties who looked fashion personified in her ultra-short white silk costume and almost crease-less leather boots. A contrast to the Matron in every way. As she surveyed the wretched expression of the pretty little underschool above her flexed cane, it was all she could do not to burst out laughing. With a bit of luck the silly thing would burst out crying in a moment.

  “How would you like the first five, Anna?” she chaffed, and, receiving for answer but a finger twisting at a chain-ring, went on briskly, “Let's try them across that fidgety little bottom of yours, shall we. Come here.”

  These 'Zettel were meant to be deterrent, but not intolerably severe. Each Duty Mistress could pay them off as desired, and only a lighter, or “classroom,�
� cane was employed. This was a flicky, whippy instrument, rather than one that bruised deeply. Its sting was considerable, however.

  Anna was bent over a stool, her hands on its far edge and her legs straight behind but at an angle- her feet positioned some yard to the rear. Divested once more of its underclothing, her rump quivered in apprehension. Jacqueline Bellais was highly grateful to the Prefect who had strapped those cheeks downwards like that-the well-reddened undersides would react well.

  “Who gave you those?”

  “Seckendorff, Miss.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Hhrsss!”

  “Ooooo…”

  The mistress cut up quickly into the underfat. It was not a very hard stroke but it finished in a stingy flick that made the skin of her victim cringe in. Four more wristy cuts and Anna was in agony. She was given five minutes' pause and took the second 'Zettel in an unusual way. Sitting on the stool, with her bottoms over its edge, she was made to bend right forward, head between her knees. Then the French mistress cut sharply down, in a rigidly vertical stroke that bit in deeply. Anna had never been corrected like this and was squirming like a cut worm on the stool before it was over. And then her chits were signed, as effectuated, and she had to hurry back to her classroom and present them to her teacher, trying not to show her suffering. The latter made her stand for the rest of the period, and had her do so with knickers down and skirt up, exposing her weals-five nice and high, five nice and low- “Lots of room for some more in between,” as she commented to the snickering class.

  And thus, it was-as little Anna was already rapidly learning. You were never free of that beastly biting cane. It hung over your head like a Damoclean sword, descending with that awful tingly dread that took your breath away and yet set you on edge and made even the youngest clit stiff, throbbing in anticipation.

  At ten thirty each morning there was a break period, of a half-hour, when the girls performed calisthenics in the yard outside, under the eagle eye of Frau Dick, gym mistress elect. They did these in rows, with maximal vigor, not simply because punishment awaited the slovenly, but since for most of the year it was bitterly cold outside, certainly in the tiny tunics, and also since the girls enjoyed the exercises. These only, in any event, lasted some ten minutes or so, after which they ran back in, hugging their friends, laughing and joking, their faces red and ready for the glass of hot milk each had to take in the Hall.

  It was here, daily, at approximately a quarter of eleven that the Headmistress addressed the gathered school. The girls lined either side of the Great Hall by classes, the mistresses sat in front on a dais, from which Frau Grumkow gave out the letters (already, of course, perused), made various announcements about coming activities, and in general encouraged that wholesome fidelity to duty for which the Schloss was celebrated. It was usually a moment of camaraderie and affection, for though all looked up to the Frau Direktrice they did so with an admiring glow. This period was also, however, that allotted to “Head's corrections,” namely by the birch.

  So far this term there had only been one of these but it had been, as always, a salutory spectacle. It had involved a sturdily built seventeen-year-old, one Joyce Hall, daughter of the British Ambassador to Pomerania (now ceded to Prussia), and with a niece of Charles XII of Sweden one of the most distinguished foreigners attending the academy. In brief, Joyce had been found secreting cakes from the dining-table in her knickers and eating them under her sheets, after Lights Out.

  These birchings were notoriously elaborate, involving much ritual, so much so that after Frau Grumkow's long lecture even the most steel-hearted were longing for the cuts to begin, and to get it over with. For the Schloss endeavored to harden and prepare their charges for life in ways both mental as well as physical. Even an experienced Senior could be reduced to a jelly of nervous emotion by one of the Headmistress's addresses. Joyce, a generally liked girl despite her nationality, endured hers phlegmatically, and stark naked in the center of Great Hall, save for high heels and smoky stockings, high-tethered by her garters. Perhaps this was partly due to the fact that German was not her native tongue. She had thin fairish hair which must have been bleached in the sun since her bush was a short crisp curly black, flattened to her belly by her wearing of panties. Her thighs were particularly well-muscled-she was a strong runner-and her arse-cheeks solid; she was a girl, most would have said, destined to grow stout later in life, altogether an appetizing specimen to flog with the birch, and more than one eye of those watching this flesh which seemed to challenge the rod was bright. But her sentence produced no less than a gasp around the hall; it was thirty-five strokes with the birch, plus five of the celebrated “master's stripes,” and three days' solitary confinement. The girl's eyes blinked unbelievingly when she heard it. After further preliminaries she was bent over the block-“All ass,” as Ingeborg Untermacher remarked to her friend Maria Daunitz after-her thick cheeks awaiting the achingly long twigs which Fraulein Katte, allotted the first dozen, drew dripping from a tub.

  These branches stung like fury and it was not long before little spasmodic clenchings were visible testimony of their bite. They hissed like asps in the silence. The hands, manacled behind, fisted and scratched. But she endured her first dozen without a sound. A second mistress came forward for the second and, anxious to show her mettle, soon drew up lively wales and grazed blisters of skin. The twigs dug in pitilessly on the right as the punishment began to be worthy of the name. Each cut now drew a violent jerk and a strangled gasp. The buttock masses tightened frantically and the mistress was able to draw out the strokes considerably. A skilful bircher could keep a girl at the summit of pain with no more than four a minute, though the pace was usually faster than this in order to effect that psychological and most absolute victory of correction-when the whipped girl simply could not get her senses to believe she could take another. This final stage of utter absolution was effected for Joyce by the third mistress, who delivered the last eleven after the girl had been thoroughly revived for the ordeal with smelling salts and a bucket of brine emptied over her buttocks.

  These were now, on the right at least, a hatched crisscrossing of purplish wales and weals, flecked with ruby pearls where the skin had broken under some particularly toughly pickled bud. These final strokes, of supreme severity, drove all color from the faces of the junior classes watching. They ended in a flurry of passionate tears from the victim, a sudden sobbing that broke out as much at the degradation of being made, at last, to show her pain as anything. The whole birching had probably taken six or seven minutes and after it was over, the Headmistress came down to inflict her five master's cuts with the whalebone. These were quite excruciating on the tenderized flesh and each drew a cry from the Amazonic English girl. Finally, let down and restored with salts, she had to stand on a dunce's stool at the door while the school filed out past her ruined cheeks in silence.

  A wry smile fled over the lips of the mistress with the birch as she supervised there that each girl had a good look at the effects of punishment-the chest still heaving with sobs and pulled back by the fettered hands, the purpled bottoms quivering as if terrified, huddled together-before turning to curtsy to the Head and return to work. The mistress noted the gleam in the eyes of the Seniors, as, connoisseurs of the rod, they observed such details as drops of blood on one sturdy calf-such lively glances were followed by the ashen faces of the younger. Finally, the girl herself was hurried off in chains to the cellars for her three days of Solitary Confinement where, if she was lucky, she would have to face no more than bread and water, bondage, and a morning beating.

  The noon hour, then, was a free one. It was a happy moment of the day when the girls gathered in groups before luncheon at one to exchange stories, make friendships, renew old ones-discuss the com-the idea of discipline had lodged deep within the mnemonic processes of these impressionable maidens, each of whom felt especially privileged to be accepted at Schloss Rutenberg, and much chitchat entered on what school slang knew a
s klitschklatsch! Gossip was rife. Was it true that the young Prince Frederick was now his father's prisoner, no less? That his best friend was to be executed? That Austria were being as insolent as ever? Well, was the common assent, to much tossing of puerile shoulders, the Austrians would have to learn their lesson, that was all. Like the English, and the French, and the Russians… heavens, didn't everyone?

  There was but one flagellatory feature of this noon recess; any girl who had received Detention, and was due to suffer it that afternoon, might get dispensation from the Duty Mistress to pay it off in stripes. Five for an hour, ten for two-and all ten had to be taken together. The character of this little amnesty was more light-hearted than most whippings in the Schloss, and close to some athletic activity. For it was really incumbent on any Senior (at least) awarded an hour to show her Prussian pluck by taking a simple “fiver” with the light classroom cane. Should she not do so, she would hardly rate. Moreover, Detention was extremely unpleasant in these parts.

  Accordingly, when the list for it went up at noon, a group of excited younger girls-many with “crushes” on their older colleagues-could be seen clustered in the hall outside the Duty Room. The door of this was left open and any girl could tap on it and enter. The chattering would shush and cease as some Senior strode in and made her request. Then, with hot-gripped hands, the listeners would strain excitedly in the silence so that each single biting snip of the cuts came clearly to them, each dry rap like the snapping of a twig of wood. Then the Senior would emerge, red-faced perhaps but not seriously the worse for wear, though walking rather fast. If forced by pain to grasp and puff she would grin at her audience, and probably take to her heels. But if she could saunter controlledly out, a burst of applause would greet her. And she would blush, and signal to her special friend among the scum to follow her, for a little gentle relief.