The Harunobu Face

I listened to some music, Scarlatti sonatas on the harpsichord, but beautiful and beautifully played though they were, the experience felt ever so faintly disappointing after the magic of Yuki's apartment yesterday. I returned to my essay, and found that in my present state of mind it flowed with astonishing ease. Time seemed to behave strangely... It was suddenly 3pm and I was hungry and thirsty, but the essay seemed to have written itself. And it was good, I thought, re-reading it quickly. Seemed not to need any revision, which was quite the exception for me...

I could have made something quick and simple for myself, but the appeal of fresh air and the pleasant weather was strong, and instead I went out, intending to treat myself to a leisurely late lunch at the little pasta place three blocks away. After that I could take a stroll in the small park which was just a little further. By the time I had done that, evening and Yuki should be close.

I'd had a number of shocks these past days. But the one that I got just a minute after leaving the apartment was the most unpleasant one of all. Approaching me with her expression this time unreadable to me (I had felt so proud that I could read the tiny changes of expression on that perfect face...) is Yuki, together with a man who looks to be about 30, and about 30 centimeters taller than her. A man with intense blue eyes and a big hand firmly and possessively resting on her hip.

The penetrating eyes clearly notice my reaction of shock on seeing Yuki with him (though I try to control myself immediately). They pass over me with a coolly assessing look, which I think lingers a little too boldly on my breasts. As for Yuki, she murmurs a greeting, but with no break of stride, no attempt to pause. I wonder if I detect just a hint of fear in her glance. Or is it a warning look?

I look back to see them entering the building together, the man's hand still boldly, blatantly, on Yuki's bottom...

*****

My feet lead me to the little Italian restaurant; I order my pasta pesto in a daze. As I eat it I gradually become aware of a dull ache in my heart; I wonder briefly if it is possible that I could have a heart-attack at my age. I tell myself not to be childish. I concentrate on the smell and taste of the food, even on the rather mediocre music that they're playing (fortunately not too loudly), and find that the ache gradually subsides and that I am returning to something like that state I was in before the shock encounter, in which everything I perceive seems special. I am avoiding thinking about things though, I notice (as if standing outside of my own mind and observing it...); or rather, specifically, avoiding thinking about what I saw and what it might mean.

Well (I say to myself after I finish eating, determined to conquer this evasion), it seems clear enough: Yuki had been out since the morning; she had come back with a man, and his comportment, if not hers, suggested strongly that they were in a sexual (romantic?) relationship. (Surely she cannot have just picked him up now?! I thought that something in his behaviour precluded that; no, he knew Yuki.) This probably meant that my dream of perfect love with Yuki should be forgotten. Should I feel betrayed? Yuki had not told me about a boyfriend, a relationship; but she had also not told me that she had none. I had shunned the world of relationships, of dating, for so long... Probably by the standard of most of my contemporaries she had done nothing wrong. After all, we hadn't even had sex (a small pang of something), we'd only kissed (a thrill at the memory), danced together, caressed each other a little, so little...

I had the little restaurant's espresso, though it was late in the afternoon for me to drink coffee. I wasn't in a hurry to return to my apartment, with them presumably next door. Or might they have gone out again together? Or perhaps they had finished what they went there for--a flash of an image of Yuki on her knees servicing that man with her hands fastened behind her back, her small mouth struggling with his girth, that big hand of his controlling her head mercilessly; I wouldn't have been able to say if this image was more horrifying or arousing--and the man might have left? Would Yuki come to me and take me to her apartment again; would she let me kiss her with that kiss that melted the two of us together; would she this time take me to bed for us to devour each other's bodies--without saying a word about the man?

The uncertainty was unsettling; I felt anxious, although a curious thing was that in spite of this I continued to have some sense of being in a special and always faintly blissful state. When I closed my eyes and tried, with newly heightened senses turned inwards, to assess how my heart truly felt, I found I could not bring myself to blame Yuki or suspect her of anything; nor could I doubt the reality and significance of what had happened yesterday. There was something that I could not understand, that was all. But when I thought of her and rested in that thought I found only feelings of love and trust, and a sort of awe too.

I decided to follow my original plan, and go for a walk before returning home. In the park I took my time; on a strange impulse, which I wouldn't have acted on if there had been anyone else who could see me (but if Yuki had been there, I thought, I wouldn't mind her seeing), I embraced a tree that I thought particularly beautiful, pressing myself against its rough bark, enjoying the smell of it, the feel of it, almost painful though that was, against my cheek. For some reason tears again came to my eyes for a moment.

I went back with a little more lightness than when I had gone into the park, and at first I had a sense of openness to the uncertainties of what might lie ahead. But as I approached the place where I had encountered the two of them, I remembered again her look and bearing at that moment. And it occurred to me now, for the first time, that there might be a possibility that she had not gone entirely willingly with the man. Had I been right with the fleeting thought that there might have been a touch of fear in her glance, or a warning? Was it possible that Yuki was in danger? She was now presumably alone with that man in her apartment... Or was it danger for me that she had feared, if the man should find out what had happened yesterday?

And at that thought I remembered the note that Yuki had left me and that I had made my little addition to and left again on the tea-table. Where the glance of anyone entering the little apartment was likely to fall immediately...

A sudden constriction tightened my chest. I was never much of a news-reader myself, but I had remembered a couple of classmate-friends talking at lunch two days ago about a woman having been found dead: tortured, raped and killed. I tried to reassure myself: the man with Yuki had seemed a bit brash, cocky perhaps, but not evil. Surely he was not a woman-killer, not in that sense? No, I thought, probably not, but nonetheless I quickened my pace.

I went up the stairs faster than usual, and when I was on our floor I stopped and listened at Yuki's door. There were some sounds, indistinct, but apparently it was conversation. All seemed normal enough. I could hardly justify standing listening longer there, so I went into my own apartment. The glass still taped against the wall in my bedroom was the main thing in my mind at that moment.

I listened intently through it for a while, but what I could hear was still rather indistinct, and did not seem out of the ordinary in any way. Once I heard the man laugh; it seemed a very normal sound, without anything sinister. Evidently they were in the living room, and the door to the bedroom must be closed or nearly so. There wasn't much I could do, it occurred to me. I somehow felt sure now that the man was not a rapist-murderer, that Yuki was not in some imminent terrible danger. And I thought again, and felt, that I trusted Yuki, trusted her at the moment more than anyone in the world, trusted her also to make good decisions, even if I could not understand them at all...

Of course I thought about recording again, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. With Yuki alone it wasn't quite that bad, but to eavesdrop on the couple (were they really a couple?)... What would they think if they found out? And the thought occurred to me that it would be very hard for me to keep anything secret from Yuki. I couldn't conceive of it, really. It was true that yesterday I had not told her the things that I usually don't tell; but that had been before we had kissed. Now... As for the man, I didn't think he could be an evil person (the main reason for my now feeling this was simply my reaffirmed trust in Yuki), but I felt a little fear at the thought of him possibly learning that I had used a device to eavesdrop on and record him when he was with Yuki.

So, no recording now. All I could do was wait, and see if Yuki might really knock on my door. I kept my ears pricked for any sound that I might be able to pick up without my glass and mic; preferably the sound of Yuki's apartment door as the man left, and their goodbyes. But such sounds did not come. The evening grew late; my hope waned. She would come if she were free, she had written... Evidently, she was not free.

My senses still seemed heightened, but if I could find something blissful in them, it was now mingled with distinct mental pain. I was resolutely refusing to give in to the temptation to try to listen at my glass. I even untaped it, somewhat roughly, from the wall. I read, but without concentrating on my book. I wasn't at all hungry. I made myself an herbal tea; no dinner. No point now in still waiting, it was 11:30 pm. I prepared for bed, though almost every step of doing so seemed to involve a struggle. I wondered what it would be like, entering the realm of sleep tonight. But when I lay down I was suddenly overwhelmed by physical and emotional exhaustion, and in spite of the turmoil of thoughts that had been occupying me just a minute ago, I fell almost immediately into a deep sleep. It was interrupted after an hour and a half by a scream.

*****

It was not a long scream. But it was loud; it had to be to shatter my sleep through the wall. I was almost instantly awake, alert, though without moving. I listened intently. Four seconds passed, five.... I sat up, thinking to try listening at that special place, without the amplification of the glass; but before I could get into position to listen I already heard a faint, unidentifiable sound (it must have actually been rather loud to be heard at all), and then a moment later a second scream. It was Yuki (who else could it be?), and this second occurrence gave me instant goosebumps. I went for my glass, heart accelerating, starting to hyperventilate, fumbling as I taped it to the spot. I was nonetheless very conscious that I should try to make as little sound as possible myself. Better that they, that he, should not realize that I was awake and listening.

I have never strained so hard to hear everything I could. All of my senses, all of my being, seemed to enter into my ear.

It may have been for this, for me to learn to become all ear, that Yuki screamed. I believe that it was.

*****

There are things which I cannot put down here. Some of the events of those final days should not be read by everyone (everyone who can read, and who happens upon my account). I will set down all that I dare. That is more, I am almost sure, than I should. (But I am not afraid: all my faults, I know, are forgiven, or rather they melt away like snow before the sun.) What I can tell will already be more than almost anyone will believe.

*****

Much of what I heard sitting there on the floor by my bed, ear glued to my glass, and my entire being seemingly concentrated within that ear, I did not then understand. Some of it I still do not understand, but I know perfectly well that I do not need to. No need to pore and puzzle over the memories of those sounds (though they remain curiously sharp).

It's hard to say what I expected to hear or to learn from what I heard. I was certainly ready to call 999 in a flash and to run screaming for help from my apartment if I heard anything that suggested that Yuki was in danger, that the man was raping her or worse. Ready for that, but I did not expect it. As far as I can put together something coherent out of my wild sea of thoughts, fears, and hopes, what I feared and half-expected was rather something quite different: that Yuki was giving herself, body and heart together, in both momentary carnal lust and eternal love, to that man; that in spite of Friday evening and night, there would be nothing, or only a tiny scrap, like scraps for a dog, left for me. (Though I would have learned to be satisfied with that, with a tiny crumb of her love... )

What I saw--for in some of the moments when I could hear very clearly, it was as if through that one sense I received an image complete with all the spheres of all the senses, and as if I could see sometimes the past as well as what was happening now--was this: Yuki was bent over, braced against the wall shared with my apartment. There had already been several cane-strokes with nearly his full strength, which she had taken with no more than a deep gasp, a groan, before the one lower down which drew the scream that awoke me. Now, after she had screamed the second time, he had put something (I thought it might be a flogger which he had used earlier, before switching to the more brutal cane) between her teeth, and she was biting down hard to control the noises she made. No screams, but with her face almost against the wall close to the other side of that special spot, my super-sensitized ear could drink in through the glass even the little whimpers and other small sounds she made; and I could hear each of the irregularly spaced strokes.

We were indeed very close to each other--only about 20 cm separating us, and she facing me. I could imagine the wall melting, imagine myself moving forward a few steps to take her lower lip between my teeth and feel as well as hear the sounds that she made with each stroke. I was suddenly almost as aroused as I had been during that fantasy in which she had kissed me while that other man had caned her even harder than this...

I thought that after he had finished the caning he would surely take her, use her. A thought painfully repellent, an idea that seemed contrary to the order of the universe, and at the same time arousing... But that was not what happened. When he had given the last three extra-hard strokes, when her breathing had slowed down, and he had taken the flogger (if it was that) out of her mouth, they lay down together (I felt sure) on the futon. Probably they lay in each others arms. But instead of copulating (if I had heard clear sounds of that I would have cum I think, mind overloading with opposing feelings, but cumming hard; such was my state that I felt sure I was capable of orgasm through sound alone, without a single touch), they began to talk, converse, in low tones. This too was a kind of intimacy, their voices not much louder than a whisper, as if they knew that they were being eavesdropped on. I could not catch more than half of their words, less in the case of Yuki's soft voice.

Yuki was telling him about things that she needed, things that he should bring. The longer I listened the clearer it seemed to be that she was giving him instructions. He occasionally asked a question, and from his tone too it seemed that it was Yuki who led. It seemed a flagrant contradiction; surely he was the master and she the slave, perhaps even a reluctant one? Yet it was quite clear now: low and soft though her voice was, my ear detected the power in it, reminding me of my dream before dawn, the command that I could not understand, the command that could make mountains move.

As they talked, I gradually came down from the urgent arousal of those moments (just minutes ago) when I felt Yuki to be only centimeters away, and heard the sounds of the cane and the more indescribable ones of her reaction to it. There was much in their soft exchange of words now that I couldn't catch or if I caught couldn't understand. But when the edge of excitement had gone and I was wondering if I should try to sleep--after all it was absolutely clear that Yuki did not need me to rescue her, and what she and that man, or any other adult, might choose to do when they were alone was no business of mine (some sadness that I had to admit it, because it implied that the idea of her and I being a couple was only a fantasy)--I heard Yuki say, and it seemed to me that her voice was no longer quite as low: "It has to be then--otherwise I will miss the time for her, and Jan I don't want to miss it--she was so beautiful on Friday... And she would be in danger." They were both silent for a little, then Yuki again: "We mustn't lose her... She can be ready for it. I will need the shamisen."

He made a kind of wordless sound of assent, and then they both were silent. Perhaps they were drifting asleep. Or they might be kissing now... in some time perhaps they would after all begin to make love... would I be able to bear hearing that if they did? My mind whirled. I wanted to lie down, and did so, leaving my eavesdropping position. I was certain that in those last words I heard she had been talking about me. But it made no sense...

No alarm-bells went off--I remember thinking that that was actually weird. Surely hearing something like this ought to make me seriously worried, that a trap was being set, that I could be in real danger? If not quite that, still, did I want to be manipulated into becoming part of a kinky threesome?! Even if I had fallen in love with one of the other two involved? I understood all of this, but I did not feel it. I even understood that the reason I did not feel it, did not fear it, could be that Yuki had cast a spell on me: metaphorically, or literally. But still the feeling that predominated as I slipped back into exhausted sleep was simple happiness-she had said that I had been beautiful on Friday...

Sleep was fitful; I woke long before dawn and was awake for a while, tired though I was. I lay for several minutes, trying to let my mind float without fixing on anything, trying to let go of thoughts as they arose. But at some point I was overcome by a powerful wish to know what was happening in Yuki's apartment. Probably the two were asleep together, perhaps intertwined. But who knows, perhaps there was something that I would be able to hear from my glass.

There was. Yuki's voice, neither very soft nor loud. It was the sound that I had heard once before, recorded; it was the recitation. Sanskrit, transformed into Chinese, pronounced in a Japanese style... completely ununderstandable to me but beautiful, hypnotic, calming. I listened in quiet bliss for several minutes, then realized that I was close to falling asleep again, and lay down once more, though with a sense of loss at not being able to hear her voice any more. Still I felt deeply happy as I fell asleep for the third time that night.

*****

It was later that I realized that Yuki did not sleep on the night of Friday to Saturday, the night of my first transformation, nor on that turbulent night of Saturday to Sunday, the night in which I learned to become all ear. And of course she did not sleep on the final night, of Sunday to Monday. At the moment when I saw her for the last time she had been awake without sleeping for at least seventy-two hours or so. It may well have been longer: when I had that dream before waking on Friday morning, I somehow think that Yuki may not have been asleep.

*****

I awoke again after 9 am. Not with that airy blissfulness of my waking in Yuki's futon on the previous morning. Still, I seemed to be better rested than one would expect, after so disturbed a night, and felt well, curiously so, apart from a feeling which I realized I was becoming used to. It was the quiet ache of feeling separated from Yuki. I listened briefly at my glass. Yuki and Jan (I now had a label for the man) were awake; I heard some sounds of movement in the living room, and once or twice a voice.