have something special for Aksakov as he was the leader of the uprising. Proceed with the whippings,” he commanded the guards.
'All this happened many years ago and yet there are times when I awaken in the middle of the night to the terrible sound of lashing whips and piercing shrieks of men hanging from a tree.
'When all the men had received their ten lashes, they were all assembled in the centre of the courtyard. My father was then stripped completely naked and placed with his back up against the massive trunk of the tree. We all stood waiting in hushed silence for the Count, who, during the latter whippings, had retired to the house for refreshments. After a few minutes he appeared, dressed in the full uniform of the Imperial Guard. He drew his sword with its razor-sharp curved blade, strolled over to my father and slashed him across the lower part of the belly with the point of his sabre. The bloody gash across his skin opened into a wide, obscene mouth and a pinkish grey tongue of gut slithered out and hung between his thighs.'
As Vladimir took a swig of ale I glanced at Dara. Her eyes were screwed up tight with horror and her hands were clasped over her ears. Nevertheless, Vladimir went on talking as if he was in a trance.
'The Chief Guard, a bull-necked brute in a grey tunic, stepped out, grabbed the gut and nailed it to the tree trunk. Picking up his whip, he lashed my father across his shoulders. Up till that moment I don't think he felt any pain, but the cut of the whip made him cry out loud and spin round and he stumbled and fell on his back. There was now about seven feet of the intestine stretched out between his belly and the tree. They raised him to his feet and whipped him again, making him move further from the nailed end of the gut. There was stark fear in his eyes as he looked at the fifteen feet of intestine extending out from him and he groaned when he tried, with spread out fingers, to close his split belly. The cutting whip lashed out again, flicking his legs to make him stumble further from the tree to release what was left of his innards. Over twenty feet of his entrails lay glistening before him like a straightened snake. His knees buckled under him and his degutted body collapsed backwards onto the cobbles of the courtyard. There was no more life left in him; his spirit had fled from his tortured body and he lay with his mouth gaping open like his disembowelled abdomen, his unseeing eyes reflecting the green-hued light from the leafy branches above him.
I stood there stunned, an unfeeling detachment freezing my reason and emotions and one part of my mind recording all that the eyes could see and storing it in my memory. I must have blacked out after that, for I have only a blurred recollection of how I got home. When I came to, the contents of my stomach were vomiting out of my mouth as I lay on the floor near my bed. I have no memory of doing so, but I must have climbed onto the bed fully clothed and fallen into a deep sleep. Awakening at noon the next day, I had only one thought in my mind-my father's death must be avenged. Although during the following weeks I appeared normal on the surface, my thoughts were occupied with scheming and planning on how I was going to kill not only the Count but also his Chief Guard, the one who had whipped my father. It needed careful planning for I intended to survive their deaths so that for many years after I would have the satisfaction of having struck back at the absolute ruthless authority above me-unscathed. It would be no victory for me if I was caught after their deaths and then tortured until I, too, had died. The plan to kill them and escape from Russia gradually formed after three months of careful observation of the daily movements of my enemies.
Awakening one morning at dawn with the conviction that this was the day for the killing, I sharpened my knife on a smooth, wet stone and taking great care that I wasn't seen by anyone I crept into a wood where, for the previous two days, the Count with his Chief Guard walking behind him, had spent the mornings shooting birds that flew up before him. I had to wait four long hours before I heard them entering the wood.
'Penetrating further into the copse, I quickly climbed a tree whose branches covered the now familiar track they had taken on previous shootings. The Count passed and then pressed his way through some brushwood. Twenty paces behind him trudged the Chief Guard, carrying provisions and two extra guns. When he came alongside the tree I dropped onto his shoulders and had a hand over his mouth and my knife in his throat before his head hit the ground. Sweeping the sharp edge of my knife two or three times across his throat, I made sure that he was dead before crawling on my belly through the brushwood. Making as little noise as possible, I crept up to the Count, just as he was raising his gun to take aim at a bird. The gun went off with a bang as I slid the knife from ear to ear across his upward-stretched throat. I don't know what got into me but, with a maniacal grin on my face, I savagely sawed into his neck until his head was connected to his body only by the spinal bones and the skin at the back.
'It took me but an hour to drag both bodies to a swamp, push them under the thick mud and cover the bloodied tracks where they had been with fallen leaves. At home I stripped off my bloodstained clothes, tied them into a bundle, washed myself thoroughly and donned my best smock and coat. Holding my horse by its bridle, I walked through the village, stopping occasionally to gossip and inform those who were interested that I would be away for a few days as I had business to attend to in the south.
'Once the village was behind me and out of sight, I whipped my horse into a gallop and arrived at the house of my father's friend in the early afternoon. Collecting the small cask of jewellery, I explained that there was no time for me to dine with him as I had to be at the port of Vernoleninsk that day to ship the jewellery abroad. He very kindly offered to exchange one of his fastest horses for mine, an offer I could do no other than accept as my own horse was in no state to ride the rest of the journey. At a river crossing further along the road I stuffed the jewellery into copious pockets inside my coat, dropped the empty cask and bloodstained clothing into deep water and rode on.
'Arriving at Vernoleninsk late in the evening, I took a room at an inn and stabled the horse. Wolfing down a quick meal of meat and vegetables, I then sought the harbour taverns for sailors whose ships were about to leave the port. I was lucky, for the second man I approached told me that his ship, with a mixed cargo, was bound for France and was due to sail on the tide at dawn. In answer to my question as to the possibility of his captain taking a passenger with no questions asked, he winked and put his finger to his nose. He then put out his hand, palm upwards. I took the hint and for ten roubles learned that the captain did take aboard, frequently, unknown passengers and charged them two hundred roubles whatever the length of the journey. The sailor gave me to understand that the information was in confidence as the captain arranged these transactions with great secrecy but was unaware that certain members of the crew knew what he was up to. Secrecy was very necessary as there were police spies everywhere. Other enquiries led me to a jeweller who was just about to retire to his bed when I called on him. We bargained a little before I got two hundred roubles in exchange for some jewellery. Going back to the inn, I wrote a letter to my father's friend telling him where he could collect his horse, paid the innkeeper what I owed him for board and stabling, and informed him that the horse would be collected within the week.
'With police spies everywhere you couldn't trust anyone so I waited on the quayside all night and, at dawn, just as the ship was about to cast off, I boarded it and handed over the two hundred roubles to the captain who placed me in a bunk in the cabin of the first mate with whom, no doubt, he had an arrangement to share the two hundred roubles. From Marseilles I was able to board a boat to London where I stayed for over a year before sailing for America. I didn't waste my time in London, for I lodged with a former professor of Moscow University who taught me English as the English speak it and who also introduced me to the best of English literature.'
Vladimir stood up and looked around as if surprised to find himself in the tavern, then looked back at me. 'Russia lies heavy on my heart tonight. That terrible barbarous country will haunt me all my life,' he said and, without another word, left us sitting there.
Shortly after his departure we retired to our room for the night. Neither of us spoke as we undressed and when we got to bed we lay side by side in silence. I guessed that Dara, like me, had been profoundly shaken by the account of the barbarous cruelty that went on in Russia.
After tossing and turning for an hour or two, I got out of bed, stirred up the fire and put more logs on it. I was sitting in one of the armchairs gazing into the fire, meditating on man's inhumanity to man, when Dara slid out from under the bedclothes and came and sat on my lap.
Neither of us had any clothes on as we always slept in the nude. Although the room was warm from the fire, we cuddled up close to each other and soon the pressure of her luscious soft bottom began to stiffen my cock. Dara, feeling it getting hard underneath her, got astride me. Sitting on my knees she played with it until it swelled so large I thought it would burst. Raising herself she moved onto it, guiding it skilfully into the hole between her thighs and then see-sawed her hips backwards and forwards until the cloudy lust-fluid gushed from me. I lay there thinking what a lovely relaxed way this was of being screwed by a girl.
Her wriggling hips aroused me for a second time and I lifted her up in my arms, grabbed a cushion and lurched over to the bed. Placing the cushion under her belly I mounted her raised buttocks doggy fashion and,
