Receiving the gift of suffering
The silence in the house is unbearable. She's cutting onions. Aggressively
urging them to give her answers to her questions while they part under her
knife. Why doesn't he contact her? Has she done something wrong? She goes over
events of the past weeks. Fuck. There must be a reason. There are so many ways
of reaching her. The phone rings. Surprised by the suddenness of the sharp noise
she cuts herself. "Hello". "Can I speak to Jenny, please"? "I'm sorry, you
dialled the wrong number". "Oh, excuse me. Thank you. Goodbye". "Goodbye".
She leans against the sink, shaking. Phone, please, phone me. Tears are rolling
over her cheeks. Tears no longer caused by the onions. Damn those onions. "Peel
and slice 2 kilograms of onions". The instructions read. "Collect them in a
bowl, place them on the sink and leave them there until further instructions".
She could always mail him. A simple mail would do. Something like "Please" would
get the message across. Maybe. It would be a severe breach of rules to contact
him without specific orders to do so. She sighed. Bad idea. She sighed again. No
use in sobbing. Better get on with it.
She turned her attention to the onion peels. Carefully she put them in a plastic
bag. On the white label on the bag she wrote the date, time and contents. She
then closed the bag and put it in the garbage bin. The bin was inspected and
weighed regularly. She wasn't allowed to waste anything, had to recycle and
re-use leftovers and garbage was only tolerated in small quantities. She took
out the logbook and completed the earlier started entry for peeling and slicing
onions. She now added the time she had finished the task including cleaning up
the knife and chopping board and handling the garbage. She also wrote down the
phone interruption and the length of the interval it had caused.
Again she looked at the instructions: "You are to eat 50 grams of the raw onions
at 6pm, 9 pm and 11 pm". Great! She took the scales and carefully weighed the
assigned quantity. If he were to catch a divergence of as little as 0.5 grams
she would be in trouble. Big trouble. As always precision was of the essence.
Slowly her hand moved towards the small heap of onion rings and started munching
the food. Six o'clock.
It was a week exactly since he had been in contact. Normally, he checked on her
daily by phone or mail or the net and indeed in person at least several times a
week. He never told her when or how and so she was always expecting him, at
every hour, day or night. Never before though had he left her on her own for
such an extended period of time. It frightened her. It worried and saddened her.
What was she to think? She received her instructions on the dot each morning.
Her first tasks of the day were checking her email, synchronizing her logbook
and downloading the detailed daily instructions. Sometimes it would be a short
list with only a few tasks and relative freedom to do things of her own choice
or to devote her time and energy to her work as a translator. At other days the
list would be spelling out in minute detail how to spend the day ahead. The past
few days had been severe even to her standards with a lot of chores and a modest
diet. It has been hard to do all he had required of her but most difficult of
all had been the overwhelming sense of loneliness without him.
6.05 pm: The instructions told her to drink a small glass of water. From the jar
she had filled this morning she poured the last of the water. That would be all
she was allowed to drink for the rest of the evening unless there were
instructions to refill the jar. Yet she knew from her read through this morning
that such instructions were not to be found in the remainder of the list. At
least for now some of the horrid onion taste would be gone. Thank god for small
mercies.
The phone rang again. Her heart missed a beat. It was her mum. They chatted for
more than 45 minutes and afterwards she felt better for a few minutes. Dutifully
she mentioned the call in her logbook. She was allowed to receive incoming calls
and usually her roster had little rest periods built in and that she could
easily make up for lost time. Today she was not so lucky. She would have to
either work considerably faster than planned or disregard the appointed bedtime.
Both solutions were flawed. She could never regain 45 minutes by working faster.
Yet going to bed later would mean a certain penalty for breaking the rule as
well as working in darkness since all the lights in the house were regulated by
a timer. Light switches were sealed and breaking the seal equalled punishment.
She sighed again.
Fool! She should have told her mum to call back another day when the schedule
was less demanding. But her mum didn't know about schedules and she had been
happy to hear at least one familiar voice today. All of a sudden she felt
tired, so very tired. For her happiness meant little or nothing to him. But he
was gone. And she had lost her focal point in life. His infrequent appearances
had been important to her. His remarks on her performance, his punishments, the
small treats he rarely allowed had all been acknowledgements of her existence in
his life. Small and unimportant but present. Now he had cut off that presence
and she was smaller, humbler than she had been in a long time.
7:00 pm: upload and synchronize logbook. She took the small palmtop and plugged
it into her computer. She typed the last entrance: "6:08 - received a phone call
from my mother. Chatted about various things. Phone call ended at 6:55. Failed
to iron the duvet covers and blankets". No personal comments were allowed. This
was not the time or the place to apologize for her failure. "6:55 - reflected on
feelings of loss and loneliness. Arrived at insight that happiness or sadness
are of no importance. 7:00 - uploading and synchronizing of logbook". Five
minutes later she held the palmtop in her hands and looked at the instructions
for the next 12 hours.
7:05 to 11:00 pm reflect on lack of happiness. Happiness to you should be found
in your submission and servitude. Your happiness is not to be dependent on
anyone or anything- not even if those are me or mine. Happiness is to be found
in your low state and the acting according to the demands that are made of you
because of your self-chosen slavery. You chose this life, you chose me. Be happy
and aspire to be happy in your self-sought misery. Ultimately, you are the only
one affected by your feelings. I don't care if you suffer happily or sadly. I
want you suffering. You will be suffering. You want to be suffering. Be content
for it's all you are going to get.
7:10 to 8:00 pm - iron the duvet covers and blankets of the spare bedroom". She
hurried upstairs, trembling, smiling and crying at the same time. She set up the
iron board and started her next task.
