Master’s Schiavo by Laura Lascarso
22
Even though my birthday isn’t until months away, there is something that I want, and like always, Master indulges me. It’s an oil painting of the three of us that I have commissioned by an artist in Naples who stays with us at the villa for a week in order to complete it.
In the painting, Master sits in a stately armchair, wearing a tailored three-piece suit with sharp leather shoes and a smart vest. Silvio stands just behind him in his more casual nautical dress. I am kneeling on my pillow, nude, with my arms draped over Master’s lap and my legs bent artfully to hide my golden cage, but enough of it peeks out so that the discerning viewer might know.
Master is speechless when he first sees the finished painting and must sit down in the same armchair to process his feelings. I lay my head in his lap so that he can stroke my hair while he admires it. He thanks the artist profusely and gives him a large bonus before sending him on his way. He dismisses Sir shortly thereafter, wishing to hoard both the artwork and me to himself. He fucks me that evening in the direction of the painting so he can look at it while he breeds me, and the next morning, he demands that I service him in a similar fashion.
He asks Anthony to move it, along with the easel, from the bedroom to his study every morning and back to his bedroom in the evenings so he can look at it whenever he wants. Master tells me that other than my Boy with a Basket of Fruit, this is the best present he’s ever been given. I don’t tell him that it is actually a present for me.
Master promisedme one more good year, but he was being optimistic. His health begins to decline dramatically that summer. As I’m administering an experimental medication intravenously, one he must have every day for half the month in order to prolong his life by at most a few weeks, Master says in a throaty rasp, “Look who’s playing doctor now.”
“Yes, but I’m a much better patient,” I tease.
Master smiles and pats my arm. I kiss his forehead and promise him a blowjob when this nasty bit is through. Master is seldom able to orgasm these days, but he likes the attention paid to his manhood and I like it too.
It’s a hard day when I must convince him that walking is no longer safe. Even with his walker, he stumbles a lot and I’m afraid I’ll turn my head for one second and lose him. I witness my Master crying in sorrow for the first time, and I cry with him, kneeling at his side with my head on his lap while his shaking hand attempts to stroke my head.
Sir comes by in the mornings to help me lift Master into his chair and we wheel him outside to the loggia for breakfast, which for Master is mostly pureed foods that I feed to him by hand since his hand tremors are so bad now. After breakfast I take a swim while the men converse, mostly Sir updating Master on the business and whatever improvements or repairs he’s made to his boat. I use this time to meditate and if necessary, cry in the water without Master watching.
I’m returning to them after the pool one morning with my towel thrown over my shoulder and shaking out my hair, when Master says to me brightly, “Mattie, look at you. All grown up. How’s your grandfather?”
I’m taken aback, not only by the name but because of the reference to my grandfather. The doctor warned us that Master may have problems with memory and get easily confused as the disease advances, but this is the first time he’s ever exhibited such behavior.
“Grandfather’s well,” I say to him as I sit on a pillow at his feet and rest one arm across his lap. Master gets anxious when I’m away for too long. It’s a strange role-reversal that I welcome because I too want to be as close to him as possible. “He wanted me to tell you hello.”
Master nods, a childlike delight on his face, “A good man, your grandfather. And you, Mattie, how are you doing in your schooling?”
“Straight A’s,” I tell him, and he seems happy to hear it. He reaches behind him as if to pull out his wallet and pay me $50 like he used to do whenever I told him of my academic progress.
“Where’s my wallet?” Master asks.
“It’s inside, but that’s okay. You can give it to me later. How’s work going?”
“Bah,” Master says and waves one hand dismissively, which amuses me because it’s what he used to say then too, always trying to protect me from the less savory aspects of his career. Master reaches out to touch my hair, which has grown longer now, the way he prefers it. “My golden boy,” he murmurs. “All grown up.”
I take his free hand and squeeze. “I love you, Master.”
He nods, still with a pleasant smile. “Tell your grandfather I said hello.”
There aregood days and there are bad ones. Master’s speech gets progressively worse until he gives up on speaking altogether. He doesn’t want to use the tablet either because his hand shakes too much. I sit next to him in his adjustable bed and show him pictures of the two of us, some taken after our scenes and others from our parties in New York. There are some of us on vacation too, or here around the villa. Most of them are of me, which was never my intention, but Master was generally the one behind the camera. When I show him the one of me dressed in gold, he starts nodding excitedly and points at the photograph as if to convey something important.
“You always liked to see me in gold,” I tell him. “Gold bangles, gold cage, gold collar…” I have an idea then. I ask Sir to watch over Master for an hour or so, and I send Anthony to a beauty supply store for gold powder. I spend the next hour dressing up so that I look just as I did in the picture. When I strut into the bedroom in my golden accessories, Master’s eyes light up and his lips start to move excitedly. He can’t say much now, but I know what he’s thinking. I come close to the bed and lean down to guide his hands to my collar. I help him position it around my neck and Sir fastens it in the back. Then I place his hands on my shoulders, my chest, my cage, and my ass until his fingertips are also shimmering in gold. Wherever he can reach, I let him explore. He whispers something and I lean in close to his mouth so that he can repeat it in my ear.
“Mio bel ragazzo.”
My beautiful boy.
When things don’t makesense to me, I often seek out the teachings of great thinkers and philosophers to try and find meaning to the terrible and triumphant things that happen to a person. This is probably why my psyche got so twisted after my kidnapping, because my mother convinced me that I deserved it, that I was asking for it, and it made sense to me in a cosmic sense, because if I didn’t deserve it, then why would it happen?
Master has always been a strong man in every sense of the word, so it is a particular kind of torment to watch him slowly lose mastery over his body and his mind. To see his strength of spirit slowly fade, to see him become a prisoner to this wretched disease. Even though the nurses assure me he’s not in pain, I know that he is suffering. For a man who thrives on power and control to have to rely on someone else for his most basic functions, this is the ultimate indecency. I try to search for meaning in this cruel twist of fate, but like so many things in life, it is truly meaningless.
Master is never alone. I bathe him, feed him, and dress him. I exercise his muscles and joints, and I take him for walks in his wheelchair around the villa and down to the shore. I read to him in the afternoons in his study and I play for him in the conservatory. Over meals, I recount to him some of our favorite memories. Sometimes his eyes flicker and his lips try to move to share in my excitement or to argue with me, and I carry on the conversation as if he and I are going back and forth. This is as much for me as it is for him. I know my Master is in there, trying to communicate with me, wanting to be seen and be respected, and I will not abandon him now. I will never abandon him.
Sir comes by frequently and tries to help where he is able, but service is not Sir’s strength, and I cannot be distracted right now from my duties. When Master becomes bed-ridden and a slave to the machinery necessary to keep him alive, I refuse to leave his bed except to go to the bathroom. Sir finds me on day three—Anthony snitched again—and sits me down for a talk.
“You must take time for yourself, princess,” he says gently. “To swim or take a walk. I won’t let you burn yourself out taking care of your Master.”
“But Sir,” I begin weakly.
“This is not a request, Giovanni,” he says sternly, even though he’s holding my hand to his lips and his eyes are unbearably sad. “This is your Sir’s rule.”
“Yes, Sir.”
He also insists that his mother Evelina come live with me in the manor to help with food preparation and watching over Master so that I may take two hours to myself every day. I spend most of that time down by the ocean crying, but the sea is forgiving as she has always been and accepts my tears as her own.
IfI ever doubted Sir’s patience with me, I do not doubt him now. He knows that with Master’s intense care, I must devote myself to him exclusively, but Sir is always available for a hug or a cuddle or a bit of levity. When I start to feel anxious about our future and what might happen to me after Master is gone—something I don’t like to contemplate at all—Sir assures me that he has a plan already and that he will care for me and provide for me in all the ways I am accustomed to with Master. I suspect he believes I’m worried about money or maintaining my indulgent lifestyle, but those are not my concerns. When I express my anxieties about not being able to properly serve him at present, Sir says, “I will wait for you, Giovanni, until the time is right, but I want you to be mine eventually, if you’ll have me.”
“I have always been yours,” I remind him. “You are my magnificent Sir.”
I love Sir, and I belong to Sir, but I will never be his schiavo. I will only ever be a slave to one man, my beloved Master.
In the endwhen Master can no longer be moved from his bed and must rely on the oxygen tank to expand his lungs and a feeding tube to give him sustenance and even the strength it takes for him to open his eyes and gaze at me is nearly too much, I lie in bed with him and simply brush the hair from his forehead or hold his hand, pouring all of myself into those gentle touches and reassurances that he’s not alone, never alone.
I cry to Rebekah on the phone more often than I speak to her, and one day she says, “You need to give him permission, Giovanni.”
“Permission to do what?” I ask, befuddled because Master is so weak and helpless that he cannot do anything at all.
“You need to give him permission to go. He’s hanging on for you. You have to release him, so that he can be free. He has to know you’ll be okay without him.”
I wrestle with Rebekah’s advice as I often do. The idea that my care is what’s keeping Master here is novel to me. That I might be holding on so tightly that he cannot let go. I don’t want him to go, my inner child wails, but this is the moment when I must be selfless and put my Master first. I know the torture of feeling trapped, even if it’s by one’s own failing body. Master doesn’t want to leave his schiavo, but he must.
“You can go now, Master,” I tell him with my cheek pressed against his concave chest and my arms wrapped around his frail body to hold him as much as I’m able. My words say one thing, but the way I cling to him says another. It’s the most I can manage right now. “You can go. Grandfather is waiting for you and your mother and your father. You can leave me now because I know you’ll always come back to me. That’s what you promised me, and I trust you, Master. You’ve always known what’s best for this slave.”
In between our other daily rituals, I remind him of this.
And then one morning, just after dawn when I used to rouse him from his slumber with worship, and Master would greet me with a warm smile and ask me how I slept the night before, he finally lets me go. I turn off his machines and remove the oxygen mask and all the other needles and tubes that have been keeping his body alive. I lock the door and crawl into bed with him, under the covers. I hold him to me as he used to hold me, and I cry like a baby.
I’ll endure this pain too because Master taught me how.