"Pani Felicia, why?" Marek shouted.
"You know why," said his aunt.
Pani Felicia whipped him slowly and counted out loud.
"Four!… Five!… Six!…"
Trying to avoid the rod, the young man twisted on the bed and wobbled his buttocks. He tried to suppress a scream and mumbled, biting his lip… Gracia was leaning over Marek at the head of the bed but the young man didn't know who was holding his legs. Turning his head he saw Alisha. The maid was smiling and staring at Marek with her narrow black eyes.
"Eight!… Nine! I will wean you from this sin!"
"I won't! Never again! Excuse me, Pani Felicia!" Marek shouted swallowing his tears.
"Ten!" the aunt lashed out with the rod one last time and threw it on the floor.
Probably Pani Felicia lashed the rod with all her strength to sum up the punishment. The young man jerked his whole body and even screamed from the unbearable pain.
The maids let go of Marek and walked out of the room. Pani Felicia held out her hand to Marek and the young man kissed her strong fingers with dark cherry-colored nails several times.
"Thank you for the spanking, Aunt Felicia," Marek said.
"Get dressed quickly and go down to the living room. I'll expect you for breakfast."
The aunt left. Marek was lying on the couch. His buttocks were burning unbearably from being whipped by the rod, and Alisha's smiling impudent face was in front of his eyes. Resentment, pain and humiliation almost made him crying. And for some unknown reason, Marek felt a strong sexual arousal; his penis began to rise and hardened again.
On that June evening Pani Felicia was sitting in a corner of the garden in an old arbor covered with ivy. Red sunlight glinted in the apple trees. Pani Felicia was reading a novel by the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov. The woman forgot the time reading it and heard neither the gate creak nor the light footsteps of a girl on the garden path.
"Pani Felicia, good evening!" Katarzhina called out.
The aunt looked up from her book. She saw a slim girlish silhouette and red hair spilling over her shoulders in the evening light.
"Katarzhina, good evening! I'm so glad you've come to visit us. Let them bring us the samovar."
Pannochka sat down on a chair and placed a bundle on the other side of her.
"Alisha, my dear, bring us the samovar!" Pani Felicia shouted.
Katarzhina looked back over the carved fence of the gazebo and saw the lanky maid Gratia who was cutting long twigs from a young birch tree growing in the garden.
"Is this for the rods?" asked the young pannochka with interest.
"And why," sighed the aunt, "Pan Kazimir will come to teach Marek tomorrow. He always requires the fresh rods to be."
Katarzhina was thinking about something. She looked wonderful this evening, in a white blouse and cream-coloured long skirt. Katarzhina was wearing soft-soled sandals with three leather laces on her narrow feet.
"I keep wondering whether corporal punishment is good for Marek," Pani Felicia confessed, "and I feel sorry for him! Sometimes the boy gets down! I can't watch without tears when the master Kazimir thrashes him, and when I punish him myself…"
Meanwhile Alisha brought the samovar, cups and a bowl of jam to the gazebo. The maid was wearing a modest dark ankle-length dress and a white apron with lace trim. The aunt and her guest began drinking tea.
