“What’s this about?” I queried.
Gwendolyn said nothing, her face now like a mask. Wolfgang giggled.
“Well,” he said, “it’s actually the immemorial and time-honored custom in Grotum, at the end of a day’s haul, for the draywoman to provide sexual service for the draymaster.”
My face must have flushed red. Partly from embarrassment, partly—I cannot deny it—because the image his words brought to my mind caused a sudden rush of passion to fall over me.
“Barbarous!” I cried. “Barbarous!” I broke into a fit of coughing. Once recovered, I looked at Gwendolyn and said: “I assure you, Gwendolyn, I have no intention of respecting such an infamous custom.”
Contrary woman!
Far from bringing praise for my couth gentility, my words brought down on my unoffending head a veritable torrent of abuse! The gist of which was:
And who was I, the slimy Ozarine, to give myself great airs and sneer at the barbarous backwardness of Grotum, when that barbarous state was maintained with Ozarine influence and money?
This was but the prelude to an impassioned speech on the nefarious imperial plots of Ozarae, its vampiric grasp on Grotum, its suborning of all official Groutch institutions (not, to hear her speak, that she was filled with any great admiration for these institutions to begin with!), and so on, and so on, and so on. I was lost after a few minutes—not so much because I disagreed with her logic but because I simply couldn’t follow it. Politics, statesmanship, all that, were of no interest to me whatsoever. I was an artist, not a diplomat! Ironic, actually, in light of subsequent events.
Finally, she wound down. Wolfgang cackled.
“I do believe you’ve left the poor confused lad out at sea without a compass,” he giggled.
“But surely,” I protested to Gwendolyn, “you have no liking for this hallowed Groutch draymaster’s custom?”
“Of course not!” she snarled. “Of course it’s barbarous! Women are treated like beasts of burden in Grotum, for the most part. And most of the sexual customs belong in a cesspool. I’ve met few enough draymasters I wouldn’t cheerfully butcher. Will butcher some of them, come the revolution. Reactionary dogs! Not much better than slavers!”
She growled, then burst into a sudden grin.
“I will admit you handle that whip well. The hardest part of the whole day, that was, trying to keep from laughing at the sight of the draymasters howling and scurrying for cover. And I thoroughly enjoyed trampling the two of them.”
She eyed me speculatively. “You might want to get rid of those scalps, by the way. They’re drawing flies.”
I had forgotten them. I yanked them out of my belt and flung them into the woods. When I turned back, alas, the fierce scowl was back on her face.
“I just don’t want to hear it from an Ozarine. I think it’s what angers me the most. If the Ozarines were honest about their imperialism, it’d be bad enough. But to have to listen to the vultures chide we crude and uncouth Groutch for our uncivilized ways—while they plunder us like pirates!” She took a deep breath. “Damn all hypocrites!”
I made an unwise attempt to mollify her.
“Actually, Gwendolyn, there’s quite a great admiration and fascination for Grotum among many Ozarines. Myself included! Why, as a—”
“Oh, spare me!” She snorted. “Think I don’t know every Ozarine bratling isn’t brought up on tales of mysterious and romantic Grotum? Hah! I’ve even read a few of those romantic adventure novels which are so popular in Ozar. One of them even had the hero magically incarnated as a Groutch himself. A knight, naturally, gallivanting about the countryside with noble Groutch companions, rescuing fair maidens. Typical Ozarine horseshit! Why doesn’t somebody write a true novel? You know, where the hero’s magically incarnated as a Groutch peasant—better yet, the wife of a Groutch peasant! It’d be such a jolly romantic book! Half her children—and she’ll drop ’em once a year till she dries up or dies—dead of disease or hunger before they’re five years of age. Plowing the fields day after day, toil from the time she’s old enough to walk to the time she can’t move from her deathbed. A despairing, beaten down husband, drunk half the time—and why not?—except all his rage will fall on her and the children.”