Translation
My Method of Tormenting
(The Heiress Hamae Episode)
On a New Year’s afternoon, Hamae came to call in formal dress. She was the daughter of a stern, upright university professor, and her stated purpose was the conventional one: New Year’s greetings in return for our usual friendship, together with a gift.
“Come in, come in. Everyone is off today and there’s nobody here. Since it’s New Year’s, I’ve been sitting here alone, half-asleep, keeping company with the kotatsu. Come on, it’s terribly cold. Don’t be so stiff. Nobody is here, and I can’t offer you much in the way of hospitality, but this is just right. Tell your father I gave you a lesson in how to be an attentive wife. Ha, ha. Come quickly.”
My chatter gave her no room to answer. She began the stiff old formula, “Thank you for all your kindness during the past year,” in some Ogasawara-school manner of etiquette.
“But…”
“No buts. You’re acting strangely today. Were you supposed to meet someone?”
“I wasn’t…”
“Put your knees under here. It’s warm.”
“Well then, excuse me.”
She came toward the kotatsu with graceful handling of her kimono hem, white tabi sliding forward. She removed her patterned coat, folded it with elegant, pale hands, set it in a corner, aligned her sandals, straightened her collar, and edged closer.
“It really is cold.”
When she looked up, her eyes were beautiful. Their upturned corners flashed and shot a smile straight into me.
“Put your hands in.”
I lifted the quilt over the wooden kotatsu frame.
“Thank you.”
She obediently placed both hands beneath it.
“That hairstyle is lovely. Is it wa-shimada? Yuiwata?”
“They told me it was some kind of shimada…”
“What kind? Ha, ha.”
“You’re embarrassing me.”
“Women are difficult creatures. I can’t compare your appearance with professional dance or the arts, but for an amateur girl you are extraordinarily beautiful. Even modern fashion, which one would not expect in formal New Year’s dress, suits you. Red suits you, elegance suits you, beauty suits you. It seems I have been defeated by my own flattering line.”
“Someone might come, so may I lock the entrance?”
“Yes, but I should not stay and inconvenience you…”
“It is rare for me to be alone like this. Don’t say that. Stay.”
I rose and secured the sliding doors, veranda, corridor, entryway, partitions, and lattice door. When I came back she kept her face lowered. She was already traveling down the road of desire.
“Ah, it’s cold.”
As she put her hands farther beneath the quilt, I seized the opportunity. Leaning across the kotatsu, I slid my hands along her fingers and suddenly clasped the backs of both her hands. Before she could cry out, I said, “How warm they are. What soft hands.”
I began caressing the backs of her hands, her wrists, and the lower parts of her arms. She said nothing.
“If you ate me, I would consider it an honor.”
“Your legs must be going numb. Relax your knees.”
“I’m embarrassed…”
She did not attempt to pull away. Instead she twisted her waist restlessly.
“Make yourself comfortable.”
Her formal New Year’s clothing suited her perfectly. She appeared pleased, yet also aware of the intention beneath my words. When she adjusted her sash and clothing, I moved behind her and took her wrists.
“You’re holding too hard.”
Her body reacted faster than her protest. She arched her chest upward and let herself sink across the kotatsu quilt. I used the position of her clothing and sash to explore her body. She never clearly refused. Her only replies were small movements and breath.
I caught each word she spoke and used it to press the attack.
“Really…”
One white-tabi-covered foot lay before me, spotless proof that she had come directly from her home to mine. The fact that only a portion of her ankle was visible made it more provocative. The wrist I held was so soft that it seemed to merge with my hand.
“What are you going to do?”
“You’re so beautiful that I’m wondering what to do while staring at you.”
She gave no response and offered no resistance. I sat squarely in front of her.
“Shall I feast on this white fish?”
The phrase escaped me. I pressed my face to the back of her hand, moved across all ten fingers, and rubbed them with my lips.
“Oh…”
She shook her upper body in a merely formal resistance. Ignoring it, I began working with my tongue. Although I released her wrist, I grasped her upper arms and elbows one after the other, twisting them firmly and preventing her from breaking the behind-the-back position. Handling wrists in that position was one of my practiced techniques.
“Oh, that tickles. Please have mercy.”
Her shoulders trembled as she spoke. I secured one wrist again and used my free hand to reach beneath her hem and undo the fasteners of the pure white tabi.
“Then perhaps I’ll feast on this other white fish.”
I pressed her down across the kotatsu frame and pinned her above and below.
“Please forgive me.”
Her body, writhing from shame, gradually slipped sideways like a vehicle beginning to move. She slid from the edge of the kotatsu and fell onto the tatami with the quilt. I transferred both wrists behind her back and removed the other tabi, leaving both feet bare.
“Please…”
I held her face-down and waited for her to take a breath. The moment she did, my handkerchief wound around her wrists. I tied it so lightly that she did not realize what had happened until my hands released her. Then I took one ankle, lifted the foot slightly into the air, and kissed the base of her little toe.
“Aah!”
It was a charming scream. Only then did she seem to notice that her hands had been tied, and she began struggling.
“Let me go! I-san, let me go…”
Of course I did not release those innocent shell-like bare feet. My lips and tongue continued from the top of her foot to the arch, and from there across all five toes. It was less a kiss than a tasting.
“Ah! Please!”
She gave one breathy cry. Her struggles disordered her clothes and exposed her knees. I put more strength into holding her half face-down, rubbing her cheek against the tatami.
“Your face will get dirty.”
“Even so, please let me go!”
As I took her toes into my mouth and licked them, she twisted silently. Something like tears appeared. I could not tell whether they came from discomfort, shame, or emotional excitement.
“Are you crying?”
She did not answer. She kept her eyes closed and breathed more heavily.
Her bare feet were as clean as snow. It was obvious that she had bathed before coming. I moved in a deliberate sequence over the soles, the pearl-like undersides of her toes, the roots of the toes, and the arches, then drew back to examine the whole figure of this young heiress.
Perhaps because it tickled, she spread her toes like a butterfly opening its wings. She seemed almost to accept the treatment without resistance. I began using my tongue on the tops of her feet.
“Ah! It tickles. Please stop.”
She could no longer laugh. The free leg kicked in a manner hardly befitting a sheltered young lady. Her hem became completely disordered, fluttering like cloth in an autumn wind. She drew a deep breath.
“Does it hurt?”
She shook her head slightly. As though hiding her embarrassment, she buried her face against my chest, with several strands of hair coming loose.
Hamae’s kiss was pure and sweet. If one had to compare the taste, it was not wasanbon sugar, nor rock sugar. Perhaps ordinary granulated sugar. Better still, freshly pounded rice cake dusted with granulated sugar.
“Was it good?”
She still would not open her eyes.
“Was that your first kiss?”
A small nod.
“And the first time you were tied?”
Another small nod.
“Why do you suppose you let yourself be tied?”
“For complete conquest, perhaps.”
“Yes… I like that.”
After another long kiss, I looked down. Her knees were fully exposed. I turned her onto her back on the tatami. While continuing to kiss her, I further disordered her kimono and exposed her body from the waist toward the thighs. Nothing remained between us but the scent of her body. As a virgin raised as a proper young lady, she could no longer preserve her composure. Her thighs and the hidden center beyond them seemed flushed red with shame. Her first experience was written plainly in her body.
From this point, any further description would only repeat the same kind of strokes. It would become merely an Utamaro-style picture. What can be trusted is the sight of her afterward: her kimono as disordered as it could possibly be, and her hands and feet tied while she lay displayed before me.
I drank one cup of New Year’s toso and lit a Peace cigarette. How had she tasted? Surprisingly ordinary, perhaps. Yet her maidenly docility had been ample. There was nothing literary about it. Still, she had the unrivaled beauty of a peony beaten by rain.
I removed her obijime, loosened the handkerchief around her wrists, and used the openings of her kimono sleeves and the sash cord to arrange her arms more formally behind her. A full takate-kote was impossible with an otaiko obi, but I used her flexibility to lay both hands in a horizontal line across her lower back, lifting them behind her until her chest arched.
Then I looked at the pale swell of her exposed buttocks, moved my gaze down to her ankles and the tightened waist cord, and felt compelled to turn her face-up. Of course I did so.
She had kept her eyes closed. Her face had gone pale, yet the redness around her lips had spread down toward her chin and chest, telling of my roughness. Her chest rose with rapid breathing. Her legs were slightly raised, the ankles narrow, the toenails shining pink, her clothing scattered like colored papers from the Tanabata festival.
I sat formally before this sight.
“Miss Hamae…”
At the solemn address she started and opened her narrow eyes.
“Yes?”
She looked at the ceiling, then turned slightly as though searching for me. When her eyes met mine, she remained half downcast, yet opened her small pink lips.
“I have lost… What are you going to do with me?”
“I want you to agree to several things.”
“What sort of promises?”
“Naturally, promises about the future.”
“All right. Help me. I have lost. Don’t abandon me like this. Please.”
“That depends on you.”
“If you will love me…”
“This is how I love.”
“I want your heart.”
Tears filled her eyes as she stared upward. She continued as though delirious.
“If it would let me hold your heart, I would do anything. Things other women could not do. Any way of being tormented…”
“What things?”
“I don’t know. Nothing like this has ever been done to me.”
“Then imagine something.”
She seemed hypnotized.
“I don’t know, but… something like what you are doing now.”
Her tearful voice began to break.
“Something much worse.”
“Worse?”
“Think about it.”
“I would not care even if I were killed…”
“Don’t say such things.”
“But I have been stripped naked…”
“Is that only talk? If you cannot say it, are you lying?”
“No. I will do it.”
“And then…?”
A damaged portion of the printed page obscures several lines. The sense is that she promises submission even to harsher treatment, then breaks into full crying from shame and fear.
“Please, no more…”
She began to cry outright.
“Stop crying, and I will forgive you.”
She bit her lip and tried to hold back the tears. After a time I loosened and removed the bindings.
When I looked at her tied feet, they were still those pure, snow-white feet. Yet she made no immediate effort to close her kimono. Instead she placed both hands against my chest and pressed her head and cheek close to me, taking refuge in a sweet, innocent embrace while calming herself.
Her coiffure was badly disordered. I kissed her now with affection. For me it was an ordinary kiss, but still better than no kiss. Even while kissing her, my eyes traveled from the exposed curve of her buttocks to her slim ankles, knees, and toes digging into the tatami.
“Shall I untie your feet too?”
“Oh, I had forgotten they were tied. My…”
She raised her face, saw the exposure of her lower body, hurriedly pulled her hem over her knees with one hand, and cried, “Please forgive me.”
I easily untied the knot and helped her sit up.
“Thank you.”
She remained completely innocent and charming. Looking at my face and mouth, she suddenly laughed.
“Oh…”
She quickly drew a handkerchief from her sleeve.
“Please forgive my rudeness.”
Leaning against me, she wiped around my lips.
“Thank you.”
With her chest pressed close as she wiped me, I no longer had the heart to proceed immediately to another cruelty.
“You really are an heiress.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then Hamae-chan.”
She shot me a sidelong glance, pulled her hem together, sat upright, took a compact from her sleeve, and looked into it.
“My… You really are a terrible man.”
Half looking into the compact and half looking at me, the narrow sidelong glance was enough to defeat me.
Then she glanced down and saw my wrinkled handkerchief near my knee. Her face flushed again. She snatched it and hid it against her lap, then, only now, pressed her knees together.
“What am I going to do? Please forgive me.”
She suddenly behaved like an older, composed woman.
“Just a moment.”
She began applying powder rapidly.
“Payment for making me wait. If you move, I’ll tie you again.”
I took the initiative and imposed the command.
“Stop it, you dirty old man.”
Yet she calmly continued her makeup with her knees and thighs still exposed.
“I’m not doing anything. You said you would tie me again.”
“Do you dislike being tied?”
“Well… It is a strange taste.”
“Then I won’t tie you anymore.”
“Why not?”
She stopped applying makeup and stared at me.
“I don’t mind. I like someone who does exactly what he wants. I’m mischievous too. It is all right that there is someone who ties me and disciplines me. Even so…”
She had become familiar enough to poke my knee. I teased her exposed body.
“Thank you. Hamae-chan has finally defeated me.”
“That’s a lie. I am the one who lost.”
She adjusted the mirror and continued repairing her makeup.
“My head is hopeless. I never thought I would end up like this.”
It sounded full of implication.
“I wonder whether it will hold until I get home. How embarrassing. Wait a moment. Can I fix it?”
She began readjusting her kimono in every direction.
At last she restored a presentable appearance.
“Forgive the poor result.”
Her language had changed completely into intimate familiarity. Without needing to say anything, she nestled beside me and slid her knees and hands under the kotatsu. I intertwined my hand with hers beneath the quilt and gently rubbed it.
While I went to unlock the entrance, she slipped away toward the dressing room. Such is the trouble with women. Those white fish-like hands and feet made one want another taste.
She finally placed all ten fingers neatly together and gave a reluctant farewell that again displayed her upbringing. She plainly did not want to leave, but I sent her home lest I become the proverbial wolf escorting a woman. The importance of ending an encounter cleanly has already been proved by our predecessors.
Among maidens, town girls, and schoolgirls, Hamae was the only genuine heiress I had treated in this manner. I wished to preserve at least one day’s picture and episode as an example of torment possessing refinement and dignity.
Eventually this heiress Hamae came to linger around me like the incarnation of a masochist. It was the same kind of transformation as in Matsumoto’s case: a thoroughly serious woman changing under experience. I intend to report that later development on another occasion. For now, I will only say that the success of the “costume torment” I advocate is best proved by a graceful heiress such as Hamae. She is entirely different from a sullen woman who asks, “What are you going to do? Whatever it is, you’ll do it anyway.”
(To be continued.)