Tormenting Soft Skin

Continued: The Room of Pleasurable Cruelty Tormenting Soft Skin by Kita Reiko There was a strange dissolving power in the intimacy between Taga-chan and me, binding us together in secrecy. It was a curious private chamber connected to the fascination of bondage. I do not know whether something masochistic had already existed within Taga-chan's rose-like female body before I ever touched her. But once the pent-up current of my passion had revealed itself in what happened that night, there were times when Taga-chan herself would quietly slip into my bed at night. I hardly know what else to call it. It was a strange kind of love between women. If I were to excuse myself by saying that the anguish of a widow's lonely bed had found, in this place, an outlet for desires that had nowhere else to go, would people laugh at me? Although I lived surrounded by many men, I was lonely. In contrast to my meager ability to sustain everyday life, the cycle of my pleasure in cruelty relentlessly assailed my desires at night. Sometimes the yearning became so unbearable that I would cry aloud and writhe madly by myself beneath the bedding. While drawing pictures of bound women, I sometimes discovered that, without realizing it, I was caressing my own 'flower.' The feeling resembled the emotion I had known as a girl in the storehouse of the house in Nishirokujo, when I looked at strange illustrated booklets showing naked bodies wrapped in rope and sank into a dreamlike reverie. Had a practice that I had entirely forgotten during the bizarre erotic life I shared with the husband I loved returned to my daily existence after he abandoned me? Certainly, among the members of the Room of Pleasurable Cruelty there were any number of men capable of satisfying such ceaseless, violent desires of mine. There were countless temptations founded upon that desire, and countless opportunities as well. Yet I was afraid to surrender myself to any one of those men. By 'afraid,' I do not mean that I feared the man might injure my body more than necessary, or leave me covered with wounds. What frightened me was the violence of my own bottomless-swamp desire: once the dam burst and it flared toward its object, I might forget reason and everything else, and I had no idea how far it would blaze or what it might burn away. I understood that inevitability very well. Such was my nature that, under caresses of pleasurable cruelty, I would forget both myself and the world and seem to expire amid a seven-colored rainbow. Confronted with a man capable of expressing that sort of caress, I might not hesitate at all. That was precisely why such men frightened me. One might call it a contradiction, but it was what I truly felt. 'Even in front of the person you love most, you say, I hate you.' If someone were to understand that this psychology, in which a woman expresses her intention through such contrary words, had followed me throughout my own life, and that I described as 'frightening' precisely those things that exerted the greatest pull upon me, then I would turn to that person and say: 'I hate you.' The friendship between Taga-chan and me continued secretly, with that same mysterious power to dissolve boundaries between us. The business of the lavatory exhibition had ended there, and having lost that supplementary income, my life grew steadily harder. Yet on the other hand, the pleasure of having Taga-chan gave my desires an outlet, and I could say that I no longer suffered as much as before. I rented a four-and-a-half-mat room upstairs, while she was the daughter of the house. Evading the eyes of her good-natured mother, we continued our curious secret meetings. 'Big sister, Mr. Endo said something strange today.' One evening Taga-chan came upstairs to my room, still dressed in the loose house garment she ordinarily wore, and said this as though she had suddenly remembered it, laughing merrily. 'What did he say?' 'That letter from Mr. Endo the other day. You read it, didn't you? Why haven't you written him back, big sister?' 'But what he wrote was ridiculous. How could I possibly answer something like that?' 'What did the letter say?' 'Well...' 'But Mr. Endo asked me to give it to you. He said he wanted an answer. If you don't reply, won't he think I never delivered it? That's what worries me.' 'Do you think so?' 'Of course. That letter was a kind of love letter, wasn't it? Mr. Endo used to come here all the time, but lately he hasn't shown his face. If he wanted to talk, he could come and speak to you directly. Writing a letter instead is strange. So what was that strange thing he said today?' I laid the book facedown beside my pillow and, raising myself halfway, took Taga-chan's soft wrist in my hand. Mr. Endo had conceived the idea for that lavatory exhibition, and he was also the person who had taken home more of my pictures than anyone else. He was the proprietor of a pawnshop, with a wife whose face reminded me of a crab and three children, the eldest a fifteen-year-old boy. He had proposed supporting me in the depths of my poverty on the condition that I allow him to bind me. I could feel a certain liking for the respectable-looking Mr. Endo socially, whether over drink or cigarettes, but that was entirely different from love. Becoming his mistress was something I could not even contemplate. Perhaps, rather than living alone, sometimes eating and sometimes going hungry while endlessly mixing my cheap pigments, it would have been easier in every respect simply to give myself over to that current of society. But Mr. Endo was not the man for it. Rather than lean upon someone I did not love, I preferred to have days when I could not eat, so long as I could still have a world of my own. And above all, even without love, my body would surely collapse in an instant beneath caresses rooted in rope bondage. That was what frightened me. Three times Mr. Endo's letters had reached me through Taga-chan, and not once had I answered. While struggling against the demon of masochism nesting in my body, perhaps some faint remnant of reason in me recoiled from having my body bound with a rope made of bundles of banknotes. Or perhaps it was merely a show of resistance against male egoism. 'So what did he say?' 'No. You're unfair, big sister. What are you going to do about his reply? You're putting me in an awkward position.' 'That's your problem. I never asked you to go and get a letter for me. Come on, aren't you going to tell me what he said?' 'No, no. I'm not telling.' 'Taga-chan, you have such a sweet face, but you're unexpectedly stubborn. Very well. You don't have to say it. I'll ask your body instead...' 'No. No!' The temptation of pleasurable cruelty surged up and struck me. Perhaps that temptation had been the real purpose behind our repeated exchange all along. I pushed her down onto the bedding and climbed over her. As Taga-chan tried to throw me off, her plump breasts spilled in soft folds from the collar of her pink loose house garment. The blood of pleasurable cruelty welled thrillingly up from within me and seemed to flow all the way into my slender fingertips. Feeling, as I always did, something like an electric current racing ceaselessly through the inside of my body, I twisted Taga-chan's wrists behind her back and held them together with my left hand while undoing my own waist cord with my right. Looking down at the glossy, white brilliance of her exposed upper body, I wound the waist cord tightly around her struggling wrists and bound them. Then I untied the cords of Taga-chan's loose garment, joined them together, and wrapped them two or three times around her breasts, tightening them firmly. 'Come on, get up. I'm going to strip you completely and torment you. You don't have to tell me anything. Go on being as stubborn as you like.' 'No! Big sister, big sister!' Intoxicated by the pleasure of being the tormentor, I pulled Taga-chan upright on the bedding and then placed within reach the brush holder that had been standing in the corner of the room. It was a game of pleasurable cruelty exactly as my husband had taught me. In those days, when one implement of torment after another had been placed before my knees, I had shrunk back as every pore of my body trembled. Was this naked body before me now breaking out in gooseflesh with the very same feeling? Then suddenly I noticed an expression on her face unlike the usual one. These were not the dreamy eyes that ordinarily trembled with the final pleasure. 'What's wrong? What's wrong, Taga-chan?' Half startled, I released the hand covering her mouth and helped her sit up. 'Big sister... I... ah...' 'What's wrong? Did I hurt you?' '...No. That's not it. My stomach hurts.' 'What? Where? Around where? Here? Around here?' Nothing like this had ever happened before. I hurriedly released her bonds, took her into the bedding, and rubbed and stroked the place where she said it hurt. I never dreamed then that it would become serious enough for Taga-chan to be hospitalized. Behind our paradise, a great pit waited with its black mouth open. The pain seemed confined to the area around her navel. I had no way of knowing that this might be a sign of inflammation of the vermiform appendix, involving what was called Kümmell's pressure point. Her body also felt slightly feverish, but I thought it might simply be the result of our stimulating game, or at most an ordinary stomachache. That was my one great mistake. And then... All through the night Taga-chan continued complaining of pain in my bed. Her mother, knowing nothing of what had happened, thanked me for nursing her and spent the whole night praying fervently to God at the bedside of her only daughter. Although I am a woman who does not believe in the existence of God, there are times when I cannot help sensing a certain irony in what people call fate. Early in the morning an elderly doctor was summoned and came reluctantly. He whispered in my ear, 'It's appendicitis.' 'We'll arrange for her admission immediately... This will have to be operated on at once...' The old doctor's words, together with the smell of carbolic acid, remained in my ears and would not leave me. As I carried a basin of hot water downstairs, I felt a responsibility toward Taga-chan and her mother that seemed to pierce straight through me. 'Taga-chan! Forgive me. Please forgive me, ma'am.' If I were to turn those feelings into action, I had to find some way to pay the cost of her hospitalization myself. Suddenly I pictured Mr. Endo's greasy, well-fed face. (To be continued.)