The Sleepwalkers by Paul Grossman

round. Her big white breasts bouncing in rhythm. He watched as if in a dream, thinking: My God, she’s magnificent.
    When she bowed, breathless, he applauded joyfully. She really was terribly good, he thought. Perhaps, had fate dealt her a different hand, it might have been her on the silver screen. And her demanding people about at the Hotel Adlon. But it wasn’t. And inside something tugged at his heart. If only she’d sung about something a tad less . . . autobiographical.
    “What is it, Willi?” She climbed back into bed and wrapped them both under the faded roses. “Don’t you like my singing?”
    “I love it.” He kissed her.
    The moment her tongue penetrated his mouth, the animal leapt back awake, ravenous again. How had he lived all this time neglecting its demands? But even as his body burned with delight, he couldn’t help hearing her song playing over and over like a broken record:
The boys all love my music. I can’t keep them away. So my little pianola . . . keeps working night and—
    Oh!
    He felt himself nearing climax, but she pushed him away, hard.
    “Don’t you dare, buster.”
    He laughed, glad she wasn’t a woman to hide her needs and make a man pay for it later. Kissing his way lovingly down her stomach, he gently lifted her legs.
    “No. Not that. Do as I tell you.”
    A cold panic shot through him, threatening to send even the hungry beast into retreat. He saw those purple spike-heeled boots.Heard her asking if he’d been a naughty boy. Felt himself bound tightly to the bed, his back and butt mercilessly whipped by her leather riding crop. But she surprised him, flipping onto her stomach, slowly, enticingly raising her buttocks.
    “Spank me, Willi,” she commanded. “And don’t be gentle about it.”
    Now he really recoiled. Even more terrible than the thought of being bound and whipped was the idea of having to do it to someone else.
    “You don’t understand,
Liebchen
.” She turned and looked back at him, her green eyes flaming with desire. “It’s how I get my pleasure. Please, Willi. For me.”
    Arching, she raised her full white backside to him again.
    And still he could not bring himself to hit her.
    “Do it!” she commanded.
    But it only made him shrink.
    “For God’s sakes, Willi.” She was begging now. “You know how little pleasure I get in li—”
    He smacked her hard with his open palm, then stared at the bright red fingers emerging on her flesh.
    “Yes,” she whimpered. “More please, Willi. Until I beg you to stop.”
    He awoke in the morning as if in a dream. No idea where he was. When he realized the weight on his arm was Paula, he pulled her to him and began making love to her the way he felt she should be made love to: gently, worshipfully. But again, at the height of their passion, she wanted him to spank her. He couldn’t this time. He climbed from bed and looked around in a daze, stunned to realize it was seven o’clock, and that he was going to have to go to work in the same clothes he wore yesterday.
    “You’ll call again, I know.” Paula pulled him by the tie as he tried to get out the door.
    He kissed her quickly on the lips.
    “Yes,” he said. “But only because you’re getting me onto the Great Gustave’s yacht, my dear. Not because you want some schoolmaster to whip you into shape.”
    As he fled the dingy building, he made a note to call his cousin Kurt the moment he got to the office.
    On the S-Bahn, even he got a jolt by the morning headlines: Hindenburg Appoints New Chancellor—von Schleicher Vows Iron Fist!
    Von Schleicher, chancellor now. The third in as many years. “Stick with me, Kraus,” the words reverberated. “You won’t regret it.”
    Willi sure prayed not.
    Down the long flight of steps from the station he emerged onto Alexanderplatz, the smell of grilled sausages from an open cart reminding him he hadn’t had breakfast. It had got cold out. Cold enough to snow, he thought, although the sky was bright blue.