Angelica's Grotto

36 Gynocracy

‘How am I going to get through the time between now and the auction?’ said Klein to himself. ‘I don’t want to call Melissa until I have something to tell her, some bargaining power.’

He went to his computer, put his last Klimt page up on the screen. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m no longer interested in Klimt.’ He went to his shelves and got The Drawings of Bruno Schulz, edited and with an introduction by Jerzy Ficowski. The first drawing he turned to was the cliché-verre engraving, Eunuch with Stallions. There was the naked woman prone on the tousled bed, indolently looking back over her shoulder as a white stallion, rampantly crouching, licked her bottom. Rearing up beside the white stallion was a black one. Little pariah-men watched from behind the bed, and in front of it the dwarfish eunuch, face black with lust and impotence, grovelled on the floor.

‘Is there anything new to be said about Schulz and sado-masochism?’ said Klein. ‘Is there in all men a secret desire to abase themselves at the feet of a woman who has contempt for them? Or is it simply that I’m naturally depraved and losing control of myself?’

Wild thing, said Oannes.

‘Are you taking the piss or what? You think I should lose control more than I already have? Speak, Oannes.’

No answer.

‘I’m getting tired of your one-liners,’ said Klein. ‘Why do you always chicken out of a real conversation?’

No answer.

Klein turned the pages, looking at drawing after drawing of the ghastly little wretch at the feet or under the feet of beauties naked and clothed who spurned him. He turned back to the introduction, in which Ficowski explained:

The mode of expression and the subject matter of this early cycle of engravings [The Book of Idolatry] are governed by the principal idea of ‘idolatry’ — veneration of a Woman-Idol by a totally submissive Man-Slave. That motif dominates all of Schulz’s graphic works — the proclamation and celebration of gynocracy, the rule of a woman over a man who finds the highest satisfaction in pain and humiliation at the hands of his female Ruler. Suffering does not kill but nourishes and intensifies love.

‘Of course,’ said Klein, ‘I’m not in love with Melissa: what I feel for her is nothing more than some kind of kinky impotent old-man thing that makes me replay that night with her over and over — what she did and what she said when I was face-down on the floor. The feel of her nakedness against my back! Her not-to-be-questioned authority, her physical strength, and her utter contempt!’

He put on a new CD, Garbage: ‘I’m only happy when it rains,’ sang Shirley Manson, sounding naked under her mac, ‘I’m only happy when it’s complicated.’

‘Me too,’ said Klein.