***
That night, I stayed long past the time I should be asleep, contemplating my mistress's open-ended directive to think pleasurable things. The moon, a diffuse spotlight through the shoji screen of my small compartment, illuminated the object of my obtuse desire, as if to goad it, by which I understood why it is that wolves howl at the moon -- hunger had something to do with it.
I was lonely, and I had been for years. It had been so long since I had felt human intimacy that I had strongly considered the possibility that I would never feel it again. Perhaps so long now that madame's suggestion to take her stockings to bed with me felt very much like the human intimacy that I had been so sorely craving.
I held the stockings close to me. They still carried my lady's warmth.
It was long after the moon had descended that I finally took action to calm the torment that roiled my insides. As quietly as a dormouse stealing an acorn, I placed her stockings to my face and... I breathed them in. Her perfume, sweet summer roses, entered me deeply. And beneath the perfume, a hint of her bodily odour. My heart palpitated with such excitement that I could barely contain it. The torment inside me did not calm. It roiled stronger, in fact. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, or what I should now do, but one thing was certain -- just as a fish has the instinct to flap around on the shore, I had an instinct to lower my hand down between my legs to my very tense sex that was wet, burning, and begging for relief.
This was not the first time I pleasured myself, but this was the first time I had done so while in possession of another woman's intimate clothing, soiled no less, still entrained with her scent, which made all the difference. It was as if she were right here with me. I could almost feel her holding me intimately. Caressing me. Entwining her legs with mine so that we were one.
As my desire burned, I did my very best to quench it, rubbing my finger tenderly against my hardening bud, while I held her stockings to my face.
My breathing soon turned to stilted gasps, my fingers became moist and slick from touching my blushing bud. I pressed the stockings against my face. I rubbed it against my nose and mouth and, as my breathing became loud and heavy, I gave in to the dark urge that had risen up from the shadows of my mind to stuff her stockings into my mouth. As depraved as it seemed, somehow I had convinced myself that this was the only logical thing she had meant for me to do with them. Now, I could not breathe without breathing her in, and that really did me in. I painted a full picture of her. I pictured her legs and feet, naked, beautiful, flawless. I pictured all the naughty things I'd do to them. I'd use my tongue. I'd lick. I'd use my teeth. I'd gnaw. I'd use my lips. I'd kiss her in all the places one woman should never kiss another. I'd use the whole of my mouth. I'd lick the bottom of her foot. I'd suck on each of her toes. Oh, how the thoughts made me soar! How it made me feel so very free and alive. Before I knew it, I was overcome with the particular feeling that I dare say captures the state of transcendence Christians call rapture.
At the crest of my rapture, birds that had been roosting in the trees just outside made a terrible noise, rustling the branches as they fluttered off, spiking a fear through my heart that if I had made so much noise as to startle the birds, that I might have stirred my mistress awake.
I quickly pulled her stockings from my mouth, held my breath to listen for any signs that my fear had been realised. Only after an eternity of hearing nothing but her gentle sleep-breathing through the paper thin wall, I breathed a sigh of relief. The warm buzzing feeling of rapture crept back in, but soon enough that rapture was overshadowed by a stomach-wrenching disgust, as if a bright spotlight illuminated my dark fantasy to reveal all the ugly marks I could not see before -- my act was not only wrong, it was impure. Sinful. And worst of all, it was exactly what she had expected me to do. Ah. This was her twisted game. Just the sort of twisted game a noble woman would play, preying on the subservient for their entertainment, reasserting their noble place by reminding us how weak and pathetic we are as to imbibe in dirty pleasures. She would revel to know that I was exactly what she considered me -- a servant girl inclined to wallow in her hovel.
Wrought with so much disgust at myself, I was tempted to spring from my bed to take her stockings deep into the woods at this very late hour and fling them into the creek. But I didn't do that. I couldn't bring myself to. Instead, I kept my lady's soiled stockings pressed against my cheeks and I wallowed myself to sleep, my heart aching with the knowledge that tomorrow I would have to face her having committed my transgression.
***
There is never a moment of tranquillity. In the heart that loves the blossoms, the wind is already blowing - Izumi Shikibu
Lady Evelyn was a terrible woman. I was sure of it. It was not that she acted out in terrible ways, nor was it necessarily in the way she treated the servants. It was more that her husband, Lord Sasaki, was a terrible man who did cruel things to his servants and it was her indifference to his display of cruelty - her complicity - that convinced me that she was terrible. Once, Lord Sasaki forced poor Takumi, our head gardener, to strangle a stray kitten that Takumi's son, Hiroto, had taken in as a secret pet. He forced Hiroto to watch, as well as the rest of the household. I will never forget the unsympathetic face Lady Evelyn made as she watched Takumi strangle the kitten in the courtyard that day. No emotion came to her save for a languid boredom as if to watch a maple tree shed its leaves. Yes, she was surely terrible. But she was also beautiful. Her long golden hair shimmered like a halo whenever the sun touched it. When she walked, she walked with a floating grace, like a swan carried by a calm river, and of course her feet, oh her lovely feet, that could have been shaped by the most talented porcelain artisan, were the most beautiful I have ever seen. How strange for God to meld such beauty with terribleness. But perhaps not so strange... Consider the oleander blossom, its delicate beauty, its heavenly fragrance, and its lethality as a poison.
The morning that followed my shameful tryst with her stockings, to my great relief, when I had woken her for her breakfast and dressed her, she said nothing to me. And of course I said nothing to her.
She was not so magnanimous with silence later that morning, when I found myself alone with her in a private part of her garden.
I had been given the task of sweeping the flat stones that made the walking path to the koi pond. She strolled the path. I moved aside and bowed and said, "good morning, madame," to which she responded by returning a small bow. I, feigning not being affected by her presence, continued sweeping the wet leaves on the stepping stones as she went to sit at the bench beside the pond. Sunbeams that broke through the leaves of the gingko and sakura, softened by the morning mist, bounced off the pond to paint her with playful dancing light. She wore a lovely sky-blue dress, the latest in fashion from Paris according to Fumiko, madame's personal couturière, the hem of which came up enough to reveal her feet nestled in French slippers. I did my very best to keep my eyes averted, or if I did look, only to keep my glances quick.
"Niko, can't you see that I'm trying to enjoy a peaceful morning? Stop that horrid scraping," she said.
I stopped abruptly, bowed apologetically, then turned to leave the garden as quickly as I could.
"I did not say leave," she said, and so I stopped, and I turned to her and said, "I'm sorry madame," then, awkwardly, found a corner of the garden to stand in where I could be the least disturbing.
She watched my awkwardness with amusement, then laughed when I finally found my spot to stand. Flustered that I did not know the right way to act, and fearful that she might lose her patience with me and thus let her husband loose on me, my face grew hot, my cheeks surely blushing as bright as the mottles on a kohaku koi.
"Niko, you do well as a garden ornament, but you are my handmaiden. Come here and give me company."
Disoriented, I hesitated, but she extended her hand implying me to take it, so I went to her and took it, then she stood, and weaved her arm with mine.
"Let's stroll," she said, and she took me along for a stroll.
***
The estate of Lord Sasaki, said to have once belonged to the feudal lord Date Matsamune, is situated on a high plateau by the sea. Much of the original castle is still there, appearing like a snowcap on a hill from a distance. On its seaward side, emerging from the ruins of centuries of earthquakes, were scattered a few stone grey cottages constructed in the style of a small English village of the region from where Lady Evelyn hailed. The cottage village was a wedding gift to her by Lord Sasaki. There were as many cottages as in a real village, but all were empty, their windows black like sunken eyes. I could not see how they could possibly make Evelyn happy. Their emptiness could only punctuate the loneliness here. A village, even an English one, I'm sure, should be filled with the laughter of children, the clucking of chickens, the sound of grinding mills, and of village gossip. The only sounds here were the cold winds that came from the sea, which howled as they carved a path through the grey, lifeless stone.
We strolled quickly through the ghost village and took a path flanked by English flowers to the sea cliff, then off the path to stroll along the cliff through the tall grass that waved in long sweeps of breeze that persistently came in from the sea and where when there was no wind in the summer evenings, provided a playground for the fireflies to dance in. She kept me close, clinging to my arm, swaying as she strolled, while I stayed as stiff as a reed.
