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.
"Pani Felicia, that's why I came," said pannochka a little embarrassed, "your nephew, Marek, has offended me…"
Pani Felicia's beautiful ruddy face turned pale.
"What has he done again, he rascal?"
Katarzhina sighed. She took the cup and sipped carefully the hot tea. She was looking through the aunt at the garden, at the fence between the bushes. Katarzhina smiled sadly.
"I'm so sorry," pani Felicia. "You know, Marek and I were friends. I don't want to tell lies! But I can't stand his mischief anymore! When Marek came to see you, he wouldn't let me through. It was fun at first! Marek is a cute boy! He confessed his feelings, gave flowers. Molested me with the kisses… When I went swimming in the lake he spied on me. He would sneak into our dacha in the evenings and look in my window…"
"What an impudent fellow!"
"And today we had another conversation," the girl continued. "I told Marek I didn't want to see him again! My fiance is coming to see me next week and I want Marek to leave me alone! I turned and walked away. And he… and your Marek… He picked up mud from a forest puddle and threw it at my back! Hit me right between the shoulder blades! Here, look what happened to my favorite sundress!"
Katarzhina sobbed and untied the bundle. She placed a lace sundress stained with green swamp mud on the table in front of Pani Felicia. At first glance it was clear that the sundress was ruined!
In the country house of Pani Felicia a small cozy room was set up for the library. There were three high shelves in the middle of the room, and bookshelves lined the walls. In the corner of the room near the window, there was an old worn leather sofa and a low table next to the sofa. Marek closed the door behind him trying not to creak and began to walk between the shelves, peering carefully at the book spines. Finally he found the book in French that had pictures of women in transparent lace clothes. Marek took the book down from the shelf and began leafing through it hastily…
The door opened with a loud creak and the young man, startled, dropped the book on the floor.
Alisha, the maid, stood in the doorway. She had an expressionless flat face and a small mouth with bright full lips. Her smooth black hair lay like a helmet on the head. Alisha stared at Marek with her dark eyes. From this sight Marek fell ill at ease.
"Your aunt forbade you to come here," Alisha said in a thin voice.
The young man picked up a book from the floor. The book swung open from his clumsy hands. On the opposite page there was the picture of a naked woman with a curvaceous figure. A woman covered with something looked like fishing net was lying on a low sofa, her hands behind her head. Alisha giggled, covering her mouth with the hand.
"What do you want?" Marek asked roughly.
"Your aunt is calling you to the gazebo," Alisha replied.
The maid laughter sounded like a crystal bell.
Marek ran out of the library, down the steps and toward the gazebo. In the summer-house he saw Katarzhina and Aunt Felicia. Katarzhina's sundress lay on the table, smeared with green mud…
It was a nightmare! This could not have happened to him in reality!
Marek met Katarzyna few years ago when he first came to the country to visit his aunt. The young man was charmed by the pannochka and instantly fell in love with her. Katarzhina with a charming husky laugh, with a twinkle in her eyes, with a smile that made Marek's heart ache… She, Katarzhina, thin and flexible as a reed, stood near the bench and painfully whipped the young man's bare buttocks with rods. Katarzhina was angry with Marek and did not feel sorry for him at all. Pannochka steadily lowered her hand and the rod whistled thinly. And there was another purple stripe on the boy's thin narrow ass.