The House of the Sleeping Beauties (4 page)

He groaned as he pulled away, his breathing was convulsive, his pulse rapid, less from the sudden interruption than from the surprise. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. It was easy for him as it would have been for a young man. Stroking her hair, he opened his eyes again. She still lay face downward. A virgin prostitute, and at her age! What was she if not a prostitute? So he told himself. But with the passage if the storm his feelings toward the girl and his feelings toward himself had changed, and would not return to what they had been. He was not sorry. It would have been the merest folly, whatever he might have done to a sleeping and unknowing girl. But what had been the meaning of the surprise?

Led astray by the witchlike face, Eguchi had set out upon the forbidden path. And now he knew that the old men who were guests here came with a happiness more melancholy, a craving far stronger, a sadness far deeper that he had imagined. Though theirs was an easy sort of dalliance for old men, an easy way to juvenescence, it had deep inside it something that would not come back whatever the regrets, that would not be healed however strenuous the efforts. That the 'experienced' witch tonight was still a virgin was less the mark of the old's men respect for their promises than the grim mark of their decline. The purity of the girl was like the ugliness of the old men.

Perhaps the hand beneath her cheek had gone numb. She bought it over her head and slowly flexed the fingers two or three times. It touched Eguchi's hand, still probing through her hair. He took it in his. The fingers where supple and a little cold. He ground them together, as id to crush them. Raising her left shoulder, she turned half over. She brought her left arm up and flung it over Eguchi's shoulder as if to embrace him. It was without strength, however, and did not take his neck in its embrace. Her face, now turned toward him, was too near, a blurry white to his old eyes. But the too thick eyebrows, the eyelashes casting too dark a shadow, the full eyelids and cheeks, the long neck, all confirmed his first impression, that of a witch.

The breasts sagged slightly but were very full, and for a Japanese the nipples were large and swollen. He ran a hand down her spine and over her legs. They were stretched taut from the hips. What seemed like a disharmony between the upper and lower parts of her body may have to do with her being a virgin.

Quietly now, he looked at her face and neck. It was a skin meant to take on a faint reflection from the crimson of the velvet curtains. Her body had so been used by old men that the woman of the house had described by 'experienced', and yet she was a virgin. It was because the men were senile, and because she was in such a deep sleep. Thoughts almost fatherly came to him as he asked himself what vicissitudes this witchlike girl faced through the years ahead. In them was evidence that Eguchi too was old. There could be no doubt that the girl was here for money. Nor was there any doubt that, for the old men who paid out the money, sleeping beside such a girl was a happiness not of this world. Because the girl would not awaken, the aged guests need not feel the shame of their years. They were quite free to indulge in unlimited dreams and memories of woman. Was that not why they felt no hesitation at paying more than for woman awake? And the old men were confident in the knowledge that the girls put to sleep for them knew nothing of them. Nor did the old men know anything of the girls… not even what clothes they wore… to give clues of position and character. The reasons went beyond such simple matters as disquiet about later complications, They were a strange light at the bottom of a deep darkness.

But old Eguchi was not yet used to keeping company with a girl who said nothing, a girl who did not open her eyes, who gave him no recognition. Empty longing had not left him. He wanted to see the eyes of this witchlike girl. He wanted to hear her voice, to talk to her. The urge was not so strong to explore the sleeping girl with his hands. Indeed it had in it a certain bleakness, Having been startled into rejecting all thoughts of violating the secret rule, he would follow the ways of the other old men. The girl tonight, though asleep, was more alive than the girl the other night. Life was there, most definitely, in her scent, in her touch, in the way she moved.

As before, two sleeping pills lay beside his pillow. Bit tonight he thought he would not go to sleep immediately. He would look yet a time longer at the girl. Her movements were strong, even in her sleep. It seemed that she must turn over twenty or thirty times in the course of a night. She turned away from him, and immediately turned back again. She felt for him with her arm. He reached for a knee and brought it toward him.

"Don't." the girl seemed to say, in a voice that was not a voice.

"Are you awake: Wake up."

"Don't, don't." Her face brushed against his shoulder, as if to avoid the shaking. Her forehead touched his neck, her hair was against his nose. It was stiff, even painful. Eguchi turned away from the too strong odor.

"What do you think you're doing?" said the girl. "Stop it."

"I'm not doing a thing."

But she was talking in her sleep. Has she in her sleep misunderstood his motions, or was she dreaming of having been mistreated by some older man on some other night? His heart beat faster at the thought that, even though what she said was in bits and fragments, he could have something like a conversation with her. Perhaps in the morning he could awake her. But had she really heard him? Was it not less his words than his touch that made her talk in her sleep? He thought if striking her a smart blow, or pinching her. But instead he brought her slowly into his arms. She did not resist, nor did she speak. She seemed to find it hard to breathe. Her breath came sweetly against the old man's face. His own breathing was irregular. He was aroused again by this girl who was his to do with as he wished. What sort of sadness would assail her in the morning if he made her a woman of her? How would the direction of her life be changed? She would in any case know nothing until morning.

"Mother." It was like a low groan. "Wait, wait. Do you have to go? I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"What are you dreaming of? It's a dream, a dream." Old Eguchi took her more tightly in his arms, thinking to end the dream. The sadness in her voice stabbed him. Her breasts were pressed flat against him. Her arms moved. Was she trying to embrace him, thinking him her mother? No, even though she had been put to sleep, even though she was a virgin, the girl was unmistakably a witch. It seemed to Eguchi that he had not in all his sixty-seven years felt so fully the skin of a young witch. If somewhere there was a weird legend demanding a heroine, this was the girl for it.

It came to seem that she was not the witch but the bewitched. And she was alive while asleep. Her mind had been put into a deep sleep and her body had awakened as a woman. She had become a woman's body, without mind. And was it so well trained that the woman of the house called it 'experienced'.

He relaxed his embrace and put her bare arms around him as if to make her embrace him. And she did, gently. He lay still, his eyes closed. He was warmly drowsy, in a sort of mindless rapture. He seemed to have awakened to the feeling of wellbeing, of good fortune, that came to the old men who frequented the house. Did the sadness, ugliness, dreariness of old age leave the old men, where they filled with the blessings of young life? There could be for an old man worn to the point of death no time of greater oblivion than when he lay enveloped in the skin of a young girl. But was it without feelings of guilt that the old men paid money for young girls actually add to the pleasure? As if, forgetting himself, he had forgotten that the girl was a sacrifice, he felt for her toes with his foot. It was only her toes that he had not already touched. They were long and supple. As with her fingers, every joint bent and unbent freely, and in that small detail the lure of the strange in the girl came over to Eguchi. He wondered what he should say, where he should touch, to get an answer from her.

"You aren't dreaming any more? Dreaming that your mother went away?" He probed into the hollows along her spine. She shook her shoulders and again turned face down. It seemed to be a position she liked. She turned toward Eguchi again. With her right hand she gently held the edge of the pillow, and her left arm rested in Eguchi's face. But she said nothing. Her soft breath came warmly to him. She moved the arm on his face, evidently seeking a more comfortable position. He took it in both hands and put it over his eyes. Her long fingernails cut gently into the lobe of the ear. Her wrist bent over his right eye, its narrowest part pressing down the eyelid. Wanting to keep it there, he held it in place with his hands. The scent that came through to his eyes was new to him again, and it brought rich new fantasies. Just at this time of ear, two or three winter peonies blooming in the warm sun, under the high stone fence of an old temple in Yamato. White camellias in the garden near the veranda of the Shisendo. In the spring, wistaria and white rhododendrons in Nara. The 'petal dropping' camellia, filling the garden of the Camellia temple in Kyoto.

That was it. The flowers brought memories of his three married daughters. They were flowers he had seen on trips with the three, or with one of them. Now wives and mothers, they probably did did not have such vivid memories themselves. Eguchi remembered well, and sometimes spoke of the flowers to his wife. She apparently did not feel as far from the daughters, now that they were married, as did Eguchi. She was still close to them, and need not dwell so on memories of flowers seen with them. And there were flowers from trips when she had not been along.

Far back in the eyes on which the girl's had rested, he let the images of flowers come up and fade away, fade away and come up. And feelings returned of the days when, his daughters married, he had been drawn to other young girls. It seemed to him that the girl tonight was one of them. He released her arm, but it lay quiet over his eyes. Only his youngest daughter had been on a farewell trip he had taken with her a fortnight before she was married. The image of the camellia was specially strong. The marriage of his youngest daughter had been the most painful, Two youths had been in competition for her, and in the course of the competition she had lost her virginity. The trip had been a change of scenery, to revive her spirits.

Camellias are said to be bad luck because the flowers drop whole from the stem, like severed heads. But the double blossoms on this great tree, which was four hundred years old and bloomed in five different colours, fell petal by petal. Hence it was called the 'petal dropping' camellia.

"When they were thickest… " said the young wife of the priest to Eguchi "… we gather up five or six baskets a day."

The massing of flowers on the great camellia was less beautiful in the full sunlight, he was told, than with the sunlight behind it. Eguchi and his youngest daughter were sitting on the western veranda, and the sun was sinking behind the three. They were looking into the sun. But the thick leaves and the clusters of flowers did not let the sunlight through. It sank into the camellia, as if the evening sun itself were hanging on the edges of the shadow. The Camellia Temple was in a noisy, vulgar part of the city, and there was nothing to see in the garden besides the camellia. Eguchi's eyes were filled with it, and he did not hear the noise of the city.

"It is in fine bloom." he said to his daughter.

"Sometimes when you get up in the morning there are so many petals that you can't see the ground…" said the young wife, leaving Eguchi and his daughter.

Were there five colours on the one tree? He could see red camellias and white, and camellias with crinkled petals. But Eguchi was not particularly interested in verifying the number of colours. He was quite caught up in the tree itself. It was remarkable that a tree four hundred years old could produce such a richness of blossoms. The whole of the evening light was sucked into the camellia, so that the inside of the tree must be warm with it. Although he could feel no wind, a branch at the edge would rustle from time to time.

It did not seem that his youngest daughter was as lost in the famous tree as Eguchi himself. There was no strength in her eyes. Perhaps she was less gazing at the tree than looking into herself. She was his favourite among his daughters, and she had the willfulness of a youngest child, even more so now that her sisters were married. The older girls had asked their mother, with some jealousy if Eguchi did not mean to keep the youngest at home and bring a bridegroom into the family of her. His wife had passed the remark on to him. His youngest daughter had grown up a bright and lively girl. It seemed to him unwise for her to have so many men friends, and them again she was liveliest when she was surrounded by men. But that there were among them all two whom she liked was clear to her parents, and especially to her mother, who saw a good deal of them. One of them had taken her virginity. For a time she was silent and moody even in the security of the house, and she seemed impatient and irritable when, for instance, she was changing clothes. Her mother sensed that something had happened. She asked about it in a casual fashion, and the girl showed little hesitation in making her confession. The young man worked in a department store and had a rented room. The girl seemed to have gone meekly home with him.

"Is he the one you mean to marry?"

"No, Absolutely no." replied the girl, leaving her mother in some confusion.

The mother was sure that the youth had had his way by force. She talked the mother over with Eguchi. For Eguchi it was as though the jewel in his hand had been scarred. He was still more shocked when he learned that the girl had rushed into betrothal with the other suitor.

"What do you think?" asked Eguchi's wife, leaning tensely toward him. "Is it all right?"

"Was she told the man she's engaged too?" Eguchi's voice was sharp "Has she?"

"I wonder. I didn't ask. I was too surprised myself. Shall I ask?"

"Don't bother."

"Most people seem to think it's best not to tell the man you're going to marry. It's safest to be quiet. But we aren't all alike. She may suffer her whole life through if she doesn't tell him."