Norman, John - Gor 19 - Kajira of Gor.txt

by Kajira of Gor [lit]

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “The silk?” she asked. “That is a collar stocking, or a collar sleeve. They may

  be made of many different materials. In a cooler climate they are sometimes of

  velvet. in most cities they are not used.”

  Under the silk I touched sturdy steel.

  “That, Mistress, of course,” she said, “is my collar.”

  “Would you take it off,” I asked, “please? I would like to see it.”

  She laughed merrily. “Forgive me, Mistress,” she said. “I cannot take it off.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It is locked on me,” she laughed. She turned about.

  “See?” she asked.

  Feverishly I thrust apart the two sides of the silken sleeve at the back of the

  girl’s neck. To be sure, there, below her hair, at the back of her neck, at the

  closure of the steel apparatus on her neck, there was a small, heavy, sturdy

  lock. I saw the keyhole. It would take a tiny key.

  “You do not have the key?” I asked.

  “No, Mistress,” she laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Then you have, personally, no way of removing this collar?” I said.

  “Yes, Mistress,” she said. “I have no way of removing it.”

  I shuddered.

  “May I ask you ‘an intimate question, Susan?” I asked.

  “Of course, Mistress,” she said.

  “Are you a virgin?” I asked,

  The girl laughed. “No, Mistress,” she said. “I was opened by men long ago for

  their pleasures.”

  “Opened?” I whispered.

  “Yes, Mistress,” she said.

  “For their pleasures?” I asked.

  “Yes, Mistress,” she said.

  You have called me ‘Mistress,’ I said. ‘Why

  “That is the customary way in which girls such as I address all free women,” she

  said.

  “What sort of girl are you?” I asked.

  “A good girl, I hope, Mistress,” she said. “I will try to serve you well.”

  “Are- you a slave?” I whispered.

  “Yes, Mistress,” she said.

  I stepped back. I had tried to fight this understanding. I had told myself that

  it could not be, that it must not be. And yet, now, how simple, how obvious and

  plausible, seemed such an explanation of the girl’s garb, and of the mark on her

  body, and of the collar on her neck.

  “I am the slave of Ligurious, first minister of Corcyrus,” she said. She slid

  the collar sleeve about the collar and, feeling with her fingers, indicated some

  marks on the collar. I could see engraving there. I could not read the writing.

  “That information,” she said, “is recorded here.”

  “I see,” I said, trembling.

  She slid the collar sleeve back about the collar, arranging it in place. “I was

  purchased almost two years ago, from the pens of Saphronicus, in Cos,” she said.

  “The purpose of the collar sleeve is to hide the collar,” I said.

  “No, Mistress,” she said. “Surely the collar’s presence within the sleeve is

  sufficiently evident.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I can see now that it is.”

  The girl smiled.

  “The yellow fits in nicely with the yellow of your belt,” I said, “and the

  yellow flowers on the tunic.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” smiled the girl. The sleeve I saw now could function rather

  like an accessory, perhaps adding to, or completing, an ensemble. It did, in

  this case, at least, make its contribution to the girl’s appearance. “The belt

  is binding fiber, Mistress,” said the girl, turning before me. “It may be used

  to tie or leash me, or even, coiled, to whip me.”

  “I see,” I said. It was a part of her ensemble.

  “And the flowers,” said the girl, “are talenders. They are a beautiful flower.

  They are often associated with love.”

  “They are very pretty,” I said.

  “Some free women do not approve of slaves being permitted to wear talenders,”

  she said, “or being permitted to have representations of them, like these, on

  their frocks. Yet slaves do often wear them, the masters permitting it, and they

  are not an uncommon motif, the masters seeing to it, on their garments.”

  “Why do free women object?” I asked.

  “They feel that a slave, who must love whomever she is commanded to love, can

  know nothing of love.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “But I have been both free and slave,” she said, “and, forgive me, Mistress, but

  I think that it is only a slave, in her vulnerability and helplessness, who can

  know what love truly is.

  “You must love upon command?” I asked, horrified.

  “We must do as we are told,” she said. “We are slaves.”

  I shuddered at the thought of the helplessness of the slave.

  “We may hope, of course,” she said, “that we come into the power of true

  masters.”

  “Does this ever happen?” I asked.

  “Often, Mistress,” she said.

  “Often?” I said.

  “There is no dearth of true masters here,” she said.

  I wondered in what sort of place I might be that there might here be no dearth

  of true masters. In all my life, hitherto, I did not think I had ever met a man,

  or knowingly met a man, who was a true master. The nearest I had come, I felt,

  were the men I had encountered before being brought to this place, those who had

  treated me as though I might be nothing, and had incarcerated me in the straps

  and iron box. Sometimes they had made me so weak I had felt like begging them to

  rape or have me. I had the horrifying thought that perhaps I existed for such

  men.

  “How degrading and debasing to be a slave!” I cried.

  “Yes, Mistress,” said the girl, putting down her head. I thought she smiled. She

  had told me, I suspected, what I had wanted to hear, what I had expected to

  hear.

  “Slavery is illegal!” I cried.

  “Not here, Mistress,” she said.

  I stepped back.

  “Where Mistress comes from,” said the girl, “it is not illegal to own animals,

  is it?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not.”

  “It is the same here,” she said. “And the slave is an animal.”

  “You are an animal-legally?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Horrifying!” I cried.

  “Biologically, of course,” she said, “we are all animals. Thus, in a sense, we

  might all be owned. It thus becomes a question as to which among these animals

  own and which are owned, which, so to speak, count as persons, or have standing,

  before the law, and which do not, which are, so to speak, the citizens or

  persons, and which are the animals.”

  “
It is wrong to own human beings,” I said.

  “Is it wrong to own other animals?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then why is it wrong to own human beings?” she asked.

  “I do not know,” I said.

  “It would seem inconsistent,” she said, “to suggest that it is only certain

  sorts of animals which may be owned, and not others.”

  “Human beings are different,” I said.

  The girl shrugged. “So, too, are tarsks and verr,” she said.

  I did not know those sorts of animals.

  “Human beings can talk and thinkl” I said.

  “Why should that make a difference?” she asked. “If anything, the possession of

  such properties would make a human being an even more valuable possession than a

  tarsk or verr.”

  “Where I come from it is wrong to own human beings but it is all right for other

  animals to be owned.”

  “If other animals made the laws where you come from,” she said, “perhaps it

  would be wrong, there to own them and right to own human beings.”

  “Perhapsl” I said, angrily.

  “Forgive me, Mistress,” said the girl. “I did not mean to displease you.”

  “It is wrong to own human beings” I said.

  “Can Mistress prove that?” she asked.

  “Nol” I said, angrily.

  “How does Mistress know it?” she asked.

  “It is self-evident” I said. I knew, of course, that I was so sure of this only

  because I had been taught, uncritically, to believe it.

  “If self-evidence is involved here,” she said, “it is surely self-evident that

  it is not wrong to own human beings. In most cultures, traditions and

  civilizations with which I am familiar, the right to own human beings was never

  questioned. To them the rectitude of the institution of slavery was

  self-evident.”

  “Slavery is wrong because it can involve pain and hardship,” I said.

  “Work, too,” she said, “can involve pain and hardship. Is work, thus, wrong?”

  “No,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “Slavery is wrong,” I said, “because slaves may not like it.”

  “Many people may not like many things,” she said, “which does not make those

  things wrong. Too, it has never been regarded as a necessary condition for the

  rectitude of slavery that slaves approved of their condition.”

  “That is true,” I said.

  “See?” she asked.

  “How could someone approve of slavery,” I asked, “or regard it as right, if he

  himself did not wish to be a slave?”

  “In a sense,” she said, “one might approve of many things, and recognize their

  justifiability, without thereby wishing to become implicated personally in them.

  One might approve of medicine, say, without wishing to be a physician. One might

  approve of mathematics without desiring to become a mathematician, and so on.”

  “Of course,” I said, irritably.

  “It might be done in various ways,” she said. “One might, for example, regard a

  society in which the institution of slavery, with its various advantages and

  consequences, was an ingredient as a better society than one in which it did not

  exist. This, then, would be its justification. In such a way, then, be might

  approve of slavery as an institution without wishing necessarily to become a

  slave himself. In moral consistency, of course, in approving of the institution,

  he would seem to accept at least the theoretical risk of his own enslavement.

  This risk he would presumably regard as being a portion of the price he is

  willing to pay for the benefits of living in this type of society, which he

  regards, usually by far, as being a society superior to its alternatives.

  Another form of justification occurs when one believes that slavery is right and

  fit for certain human beings but not for others. This position presupposes that

  not all human beings are alike. In this point of view, the individual approves

  of slavery for those who should be slaves and disapproves of it, or at least is

  likely regret it somewhat, in the case of those who should not be slave. He is

  perfectly consistent in this, for he believes that if he himself should be a

  natural slave, then it would be right, too, for him to be enslaved. This seems

  somewhat more sensible than the categorical denial, unsubstantiated, that

  slavery is not right for any human being. Much would seem to depend on the

  nature of the particular human being.”

  “Slavery denies freedoml” I cried.

  “Your assertion seems to presuppose the desirability of universal freedom,” she

  said. “This may be part of what is at issue.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Is there more happiness in a society in which all are free,” she asked, “than

  in one in which some are not free?”

  “I do not know,” I said. The thought of miserable, competitive, crowded,

  frustrated, hostile populations crossed my mind.

  “Mistress?” she asked.

  “I do not know!” I said.

  “Yes, Mistress,” said the girl.

  “Slavery denies freedom!” I reiterated.

  “Yes, Mistress,” she said.

  “It denies freedom I said.

  “It denies some freedoms, and precious ones,” said the girl.

  “But, ,,too, it makes others possible, and they, too, are precious.

  “People simply cannot be owned!” I said, angrily.

  “I am owned,” she said.

  I did not speak. I was frightened.

  “My Master is Ligurious, of the city of Corcyrus,” she said.

  “Slavery is illegal,” I said, lamely.

  “Not here,” she said.

  “People cannot be owned,” I whispered, desperately, horrified.

  “Here,” she said, “in point of fact, aside from all questions of legality or

  moral propriety, or the lack thereof, putting all such questions aside for the

  moment, for they are actually irrelevant to the facts, people are, I assure you,

  owned.”

  “People are in fact owned?” I asked.

  ~ she said. “And fully.”

  “Then, truly,” I said, “there are slaves here. There are slaves in this place.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And generally.”

  Again I did not understand the meaning of “generally.”

  She spoke almost as though we might not be on Earth, somewhere on Earth. My

  heart was heating rapidly. I put my hand to my bosom. I looked about the room,

  frightened. It was like no other room I had ever been in. It did not seem that

  it would be in England or America. I did not know where I was. I did not even

  know on what continent I might be. I looked at the girl. I was in the presence

  of a slave, a woman who was owned. Her master was Ligurious, of this city, said

  to be Corcyrus. I looked to the barred window, to the soft expanses of that

>   great, barbaric couch, to the chain at its foot, to the rings fixed in it, and

  elsewhere, to the whip on its hook, to the door which I could not lock on my

  side. I was again terribly conscious of my nudity, my vulnerability.

  “Susan,” I said.

  “Yes, Mistress,” she said.

  “Am I a slave?” I asked.

  “No, Mistress,” said the girl.

  I almost fainted with relief. The room, for a moment, seemed to swirl about me.

  I was unspeakably pleased to discover that I was not a slave, and then,

  suddenly, unaccountably, I felt an inexplicable anguish. I realized, suddenly,

  shaken, that there was something within me that wanted to be owned. I looked at

  the girl. She was owned In that instant I envied her her collar.

  “I am a slave!” I said, angrily. “Look at me Do you doubt that I am a slave? I

  am wearing only an anklet and perfume”

  “Mistress is not marked. Mistress is not collared,” said the girl.

  “I am a slave” I said. I wondered, when I said this, if I was only insisting

  that I was a slave, that I must be a slave, because of such things as the barred

  window and the anklet, or if I was speaking what lay in my heart.

  “Mistress is free,” said the girl.

  “I cannot be free,” I said.

  “If Mistress is ‘not free,” she said, “who is Mistress’ master?”

  “I do not know,” I said, frightened. I wondered if I did belong to someone and

  simply did not yet know it.

  “I know Mistress is free,” said the girl.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Ligyrious, my master, has told me,” she said.

  But I am naked,” I said.

  “Mistress had not yet dressed,” she said. She then went to the sliding doors at

  the side of the room, and moved them aside. Thus were revealed the habiliments

  of what was apparently an extensive and resplendent wardrobe.

  She brought forth a lovely, brief, lined, sashed, shimmering yellow-silk robe

  and, holding it up, displayed it for me.

  I was much taken by it, but it seemed almost excitingly sensuous.

  “Have you nothing simpler, nothing plainer, nothing coarser?” I asked.

  “Something more masculine?” asked the girl.

  “Yes,” I said, uncertainly. I had not really thought of it exactly like that, or