She said: Are you disappointed?
No, goddess—
Just as in a blast of sunlight cherry blossoms may grow so distinct as to resemble paper representations of themselves, so this divinity became ever truer or more false with each unmasking of herself, but in any case no more known; therefore, I supposed that some further aspect of her, no matter whether I ever saw it, might lie beneath the skull, which anyhow grinned at me as easily as did every significant entity in my life — and, after all, who can hope to rob the grave of its mask?
Come to Mirror Mountain now, she said. I felt free because my heart did not follow after her. Her bent spine was as erotic as the back of a maiko’s neck. So I entered her house, where the summer gardens and winter gardens of richness walled themselves around us both — but only for a moment, to remind me of the paper world I forsook. Our paper ghosts danced for us one more time, although they had all become skeletons. They sang a song about returning to the capital. Yoritomo raised his ribbed paper lance, which was more narrow and three times longer than a chopstick, and then the Pale Lady chanted: Now I sink beneath this mound of grass; now I will fly for awhile. — Then the magic went out of them. I had no complaints; the old woman and I were fond of each other. We earned hundred-yen coins and entertained our friends by acting out the old Kyogen skit about the man who sings best while drunk and in his wife’s lap.
VII
WIDOW’S WEEDS
Mrs. Wenuke Lei McLeod was an elegant widow of about forty-five. I met her through her younger sister Rileene, a former lover of mine who happened to be one of my wife’s best friends. While we were intimate, Rileene had led me to believe that she and Wenuke must be estranged, so it was half a surprise when she invited me to meet her at Wenuke’s place; but only half, because when love ends, many impossible things become possible.
Rileene had been a dark brown slender girl with curly black hair; I especially used to prize the sparkle of ocean spray on her bare brown breasts. She had wanted to marry me; I never trusted the stability of her inclinations. Indeed, less than two weeks after my wife’s death Rileene was unfaithful to me with a Cuban woman named Carmen, who knew how to cook so well that Rileene now went around in maternity dresses. Once her waist had begun to spread, I took equal delight in watching how her fat buttocks swung apart whenever she squatted down. As for the perilous transmutation of love into mere friendship, that Rileene and I had accomplished with small graceful sadnesses and scarcely any resentments. Over time we grew proud of one another. Strange to say, Carmen disliked me. I certainly bore her no grudge.
Apparently Carmen did not care for Wenuke, either. I was led to believe that Rileene found herself easily bored in her sister’s company; so, since her best companion could not be bothered to join her, Rileene picked up her little mobile phone, which was studded with miniature cowrie shells, and dialled me up.
The McLeod property had been in the Captain’s family since the very end of the nineteenth century; and at one time it must have resembled the residence of a Yankee sea-trader right down to the widow’s walk on the roof, but since the death of Wenuke’s husband, if not before, the jungle had nourished itself on the place. Creepers grew up the shuttered windows, and the front porch was rotten enough that Rileene, who knew it so well that she must bring guests here frequently, had to show me where not to walk. The roof was sagging with greenery. Orchids grew down from the knocker of the front door.
As for Wenuke, she wore green and seemed exceedingly quiet. Her youthfulness surprised me. The instant I saw her, I had to have her.
Watching me, she smiled, her slit skirts half revealing her thighs, in the fashion of banana leaves in the wind. Rileene soon departed. Wenuke awarded her a fluttery little wave.
As I sat with her beneath a grand old banana tree, whose broken dark leaf-sails shook in the wind, spewing lovely drops of rainwater into our faces, we rocked in a rickety lovers’ swing. Other men might have wondered how many had sat there with her, and whatever became of them. As for me, I was content with adoring the crescent-shaped shadows beneath her eyes. The Captain drowned in a tidal wave, Rileene had said. Fortunately, I have never been attracted to lucky women. Whenever a raindrop fell on her cheek, Wenuke licked it up with her surprisingly long tongue. My heart pounded. Presently she took my hand and led me inside the mildewed old house. I glimpsed vines growing up from the kitchen sink, a bathroom which was now a black hole in the rotten floor, bookcases screened by descending stalks of greenery. Wenuke took me up the black, rotten stairs, pointing to the places that were unsafe. Her bedroom was gloriously overgrown with ferns whose sweet scent masked the putrescence in the walls. The Captain’s photograph still hung from a rusty nail which I could have pulled out with two fingers. He wore a worried look, and mold freckled his bearded face. I cannot believe he would have liked me. But Wenuke, seeing me study the portrait, insinuated herself and turned it against the wall. When the nail slipped out, the picture shattered on the floor, releasing a fat old beetle, perhaps the Captain’s incarnation, that twiddled its feelers indecisively for a moment, then marched into a hole in the wall. Wenuke shrugged. I have never been attracted to sentimental women.
The bed was a stout mahogany four-poster whose canopy had rotted into something like a spiderweb; impatiently, Wenuke pulled it away by the handful, and once I saw what she was doing I helped her. We ripped away the sodden sheets. The mattress had long since reverted to moss of an almost shockingly emerald brightness. Wenuke was already unbuttoning her dress, which fastened from the back; I undid the last button for her.
I had guessed what she was, but that only increased my relish; for I knew myself to be a man of experience. Before I was entirely naked, she was already swarming all over me. Even her hair seemed to be twining itself around my throat. Her breath and body were deliciously humid, so that when I lay in her arms I felt all at once refreshed, intoxicated and suffocated. In any event, I could not get enough of her. The coffee-like odor of her armpits, her breasts like a cluster of green papayas around a white trunk, the perfect softness of her legs, her cool ginger-ginseng scent, these were like various desserts set before me on a porcelain plate at a fancy restaurant.
When she climaxed, she gave off a sudden medicinal smell.
On closer inspection I learned that the hair in her armpits was actually delicate green vines with leaves like miniature pearls. Her pubic hair was coarse and reddish-brown, like coconut fibers. Her saliva tasted like rainwater. There was a faintly sour-salty smell about her crotch after she had urinated, which she did only rarely and then in transparent brownish-green gushes.
She had a way of wrapping herself around me and drinking my sweat with her entire body; I could feel the trillion little mouths of her skin.
Just as influenza sometimes announces herself with a sweetly feverish lassitude — one wants nothing more than to remain on one’s back, enjoying the ceiling through drooping eyelids; and it’s only upon attempting to sit up that the discomforts of sickness become apparent — so what Wenuke was doing to me seemed but part of the sexual act itself, when she let down her long hair-vines and wrapped us both in cool green leaves. Sometimes I would dig my face into the crook of her arm, just to catch my breath, and afterward I would never be sure whether I had slept. In those years I often experienced dizzy spells, as do many men my age; and this sweet greenskinned woman of mine made me a trifle dizzier, but only when I sat up. But there came the time when I finally rose to dress, and she pulled me back down on top of her. Letting her win that contest, I entered her in a frenzy while she twined her legs around me, pulsating, biting me and sucking me. We slept. Then I truly needed to go; I had an appointment. I tried to sit up, but she would not disengage her arms. When I said her name, she opened her evil eyes with the sudden threatening boom of a wave against a lava-cliff.