The Casanova Dogs vs. the Communists

...You!…

Through the veil only the black outlines of a male body are visible…

...You!…

She feels the touch of his lips, but these lips are strange…

...You!…

Sabrina wakes.

Springing from the bed, she looks with a sudden, panicked stillness of the heart at the wall clock in her bedroom—it is only four in the afternoon. The girl exhales in relief. She remembers: it is only Saturday. Of late she often falls asleep after noon, worn out by the diligent labour of keeping house, and the habit vexes her. A week earlier she turned eighteen, and Sabrina frets that her own degree of composure and responsibility has not yet risen to the level of her mother’s.

She straightens her blue gingham shirtwaist dress and turns to the full-length mirror nearby. Looking back at her is a pretty girl with long blonde hair bound in two braids, blue eyes, a childish rounded face, very pale skin, a slender yet shapely figure, and a low stature. Even now that she has reached her majority she still resembles a schoolgirl; nevertheless, since she was sixteen every local boy regards her in a manner that is somehow strange. Sabrina never attaches the least importance to this, nor does she now, although the mailbox has long been stuffed with quantities of letters of a loving nature addressed to her. The girl is interested in the career of a housewife and in a fortunate marriage, not in fleeting intrigues.

Descending from the second floor, she glances about her—today she has cleaned with particular thoroughness. She lives alone, while her parents live close by in the neighbouring house. This comic situation arose because her father—then a man of forty-two, Randy Smut—presented her, a year earlier on her seventeenth birthday, with a separate house which he purchased from neighbours who had lately moved away. Randy, a veteran of the Second World War, simply adores his daughter; nevertheless, even Sabrina never succeeds in discovering the true motives of so generous and so strange an action.

Leaving the house, she takes a few steps to the mailbox and finds it literally bursting with letters.

“My God…” Sabrina sighs. “They are mocking me!”

She scoops out some sixty envelopes and begins to search among all these love poems and confessions in prose for a letter from Pussydale College. At that moment a fellow riding a bicycle along the road stares at Sabrina and, as is only to be expected, meets the nearest pole, losing control. It is a fairly common occurrence in Sabrina’s vicinity: men of every age, openly or by stealth, fix their eyes upon her and fall clean out of the world around them.

Finding no letter from the college, the girl at once directs her steps toward the neighbouring house. All serious correspondence addressed to her still arrives at the family address, a circumstance that continually irritates her.

The mailbox, however, proves empty—evidently her parents have already taken the letters out.

*

At this time Mr. Smut sits in the sitting-room on the ground floor of the family house, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper of that day’s date—the second of May, 1953. Randy and his wife Fanny already know that their daughter has been accepted at the college; the wife is just finishing the cake prepared for the occasion. He sighs. Though he has no wish that his beloved Sabrina should live apart from them, even at a distance of only a couple of minutes’ walk, the sudden hard-on that begins in Randy’s pants whenever he looks at his daughter after she turned sixteen fills him with horror. It is precisely this sudden coexistence of two kinds of love for his daughter in Randy’s heart that served as the chief impulse for the purchase of a separate house for Sabrina—a truth he will carry with him to the grave.

The doorbell rings.

As he opens the door, Randy finds himself face to face with Sabrina, who thrusts the enormous packet of letters toward him and announces triumphantly, “Again! Only this time I didn’t even bother to read them!”

“Oh, my dear…” Randy’s heart quickens. He focuses on the sweet girl’s face and feels a fresh wave of something unbearably painful and delightful overwhelm him.

Sabrina reaches up and kisses her father’s cheek, accepting the envelope he has prepared for her with a letter from the college.

As Randy looks down at his daughter, another pulse of needy intensity passes through him. Her blue eyes sparkle with joy, her youthful face is radiant, her blonde braids are perfectly arranged, and her body—oh, that petite body with its deliciously rounded curves!—fills out the blue gingham so temptingly. Randy forces himself to take only a small step back, clearing space between them.

“Mother has prepared a cake. And yes, we could not restrain ourselves and read it,” Randy says, with warmth in his voice and a slight sense of guilt. “Forgive us. As you have already guessed, you have been accepted. The cake is for that occasion, yes…”

Randy with difficulty tears his gaze from the tempting shapes of his daughter, cursing himself for his thoughts. “I’m definitely going to burn in hell…” thinks Sabrina’s father to himself, while she, carefully opening the envelope that has already been unsealed, reads the letter from the college with delight.

“Sabrinomania” in their little town of Pussydale in the state of Illinois began at the same time as the onset of Sabrina’s puberty, and in the past week, since the moment she reached her eighteenth year, it has attained its peak. Wherever Sabrina appears, men of every age deliberately or “by chance” direct dozens of fixed glances upon her. Their friendly Midwestern community shudders not on account of ordinary crime, nor even from fears of the communists that are fed by the constant news from the newspapers and the radio, but on account of this sweet blue-eyed blonde girl with features that are altogether too childish for her age, with plump little lips and a height of four feet eleven inches when she wears shoes.

Worst of all is the fact that the young boys suffer most severely from such a state of affairs; they frequently become the objects of a peculiar treatment in the struggle against masturbation. The strongest drama unfolds in the case of Richard Cummings, a contemporary of Sabrina’s who has been closely friendly with her from an early age. Richard belongs to a Baptist family and at the age of sixteen was placed in the Clinic of St. Piety situated in the neighbouring state of Indiana. Richard never confesses the true reasons for his masturbation, yet it is clear to everyone that the cause is Sabrina. Sabrina and Richard correspond regularly—yet all the letters undergo obligatory censorship, depriving their intercourse of privacy. Sabrina is even forbidden to call Richard in her letters by the shortened form Dick, by which everyone has always called him in childhood—in order to avoid relapses. Sabrina frets greatly over her best friend and hopes that he will soon recover.

Sabrina finishes reading the letter and leaps for joy.

Randy watches his daughter’s joyful leap with pride and a growing ache in his chest. Her blue gingham dress rides up slightly, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of snow-white thigh as she bounces on her toes. He quickly averts his eyes, his pulse quickening despite himself. “Oh, daddy, I’m so happy!” Sabrina exclaims, throwing her arms around Randy’s neck. Her soft, pliant body presses against him, the warm curves of her soft, small breasts and hips molding to his frame. A jolt of unwelcome desire courses through him, and he feels himself hardening against her. Fanny, hearing the commotion, emerges from the kitchen with a tray of steaming cups and a plate piled high with cake. “Congratulations, sweetie!” she calls out, her own curves accentuated by the tight fit of her dress.

Randy looks at his wife.

“Damn it…” flashes through his thoughts.

Fanny is dressed in almost the same shirtwaist dress as Sabrina’s, which differs only in its other—pink—gingham check. Fanny looks very young for her forty years. So much so that many people, on first meeting her, take her for Sabrina’s elder sister, and accordingly for Randy’s daughter. This circumstance undermines the poor Mr. Smut’s mental state still more strongly, in addition to his obsessive feelings toward Sabrina.

“By the way… Today is a fine Saturday, after all,” Randy says in a cheerful tone, driving off the uncomfortable thoughts. “Sabrina, perhaps you might telephone and invite one of your girlfriends to celebrate this event?” He straightens his white shirt and thrusts his hands into the pockets of his black trousers. “I believe young Miss Butts is at home, as always.”

One of Sabrina’s close friends, named Lovely, is indeed distinguished by her stay-at-home ways. This plump-faced, dark-haired girl with two large ponytails and black-framed glasses is marked by a certain reserve, preferring to spend the greater part of her free time buried in a heap of fiction.

Sabrina sighs sadly. “Dick… Lately I keep thinking of him all the time. I should so much like him to be here now. When will they release him already?” She looks at her father with hope, and his heart contracts.

Sabrina has fretted strongly over this whole situation from the very beginning. She does not share her thoughts directly with anyone, yet she considers such a fate for her close friend unjust. “Is this what Jesus taught?! He clearly would not have approved of it. Besides, he himself was a man—perhaps he masturbated too?“—Sabrina has tormented herself with thoughts of this kind for many months already.

Randy sighs, answering Sabrina concerning Dick.

“The doctors at St. Piety know best, honey,” Randy says, his voice strained with a forced gentleness. “It’s a difficult road to recovery, but faith and discipline will see him through.” His words feel like ash in his mouth. Every time Sabrina mentions Richard, Randy feels a fresh spike of guilt. He knows exactly what he would do if he were in Dick’s position—the boy isn’t being punished for a sin, but for a natural, agonizing attraction to a girl who doesn’t even realize she’s a walking provocation.

“I suppose you’re right,” Sabrina murmurs, a small pout forming on those full lips. “But it’s just so sad. I’ll make sure to write him tonight.”

Fanny sets the tray down on the coffee table, the aroma of fresh vanilla cake filling the room. “Now, no more sad faces! Let’s eat.”

*

Neither Sabrina, nor Randy, nor Dick, nor any of the people living in 1953 has the slightest suspicion of what is occurring at this moment in space.