"Do you think so?" Her manner was calm. She didn't not look up from the tea. "The ghost should be coming out one of these nights."
"I'd like to have a good talk with it."
"And what about?"
"About sad old man."
"I was joking."
He took a sip of tea.
"Yes of course. You were joking. But I have a ghost here inside me. You have one too." He pointed at the woman with his right hand. "How did you know he was dead?"
"I heard a strange groaning and came upstairs. His breathing and his pulse had stopped."
"And the girl didn't know." he said again.
"We arrange things so nothing as minor as that will wake her."
"As minor as that? And she didn't know when you carried the body out?"
"No."
"So the girl is the awful one."
"Awful? What is awful about her? Stop this talk and go on into the other room. Have any of the other girls seemed awful?"
"Maybe youth us awful for an old man."
"And what does that mean?" Smiling faintly, she got up, went to the cedar door, opened it a crack, and looked in. "Fast asleep. Here. Here." She took the key from her obi. "I meant to tell you. There are two of them."
"Two?" Eguchi was startled. Perhaps the girls knew if the death of old Fukura.
"You may go in whenever you're ready." The woman left.
The curiosity and the shyness of his first visit had left him. Yet he pulled back as he opened the door.
Was this also an apprentice? But she seemed wild and rough, quite unlike the 'small girl' of the other night. The wildness made him almost forget about the death of Fukura. It was the girl who had been put to sleep nearer the door. Perhaps because she was not used to such devises for the aged as electric blankets, or perhaps because her warmth kept the winter cold at a distance, she had pushed the bedding down to the pit of her stomach. She seemed to be lying with her legs spread wide. She lay face up, her arms flung out. The nipples were large and dark, and had a purplish cast. It was not a beautiful color in the light from the crimson velvet curtains. Nor could the skin of the neck and breasts have been called beautiful. Still it had a dark glow. There seemed to be a faint odor at the armpits.
"Life itself." muttered Eguchi. A girl like this breathed life into a sixty seven years old man. Eguchi had doubts as to whether the girl was Japanese. She could not yet be twenty, for the nipples were flat despite the width of the breasts. The body was firm.
He took her hand. The fingers and the nails were long. She would be tall, in the modern fashion. What sort of voice would she have, what would be her way of speaking? There where numbers of women on radio and television whose voices he liked. He would close his eyes and listen to them. He wanted to hear this girl's voice. There was of course no way of really talking to a girl who was asleep. How could he made her speak? A voice was different when it came from a sleeping person. Most women have several voices, but this girl would probably have only one. Even from the sleeping form he could see that she was untutored and without affectation.
He sat toying with the long fingernails. Were fingernails so hard? Were these healthy young fingernails? The color of blood was vivid beneath them. He noticed for the first time that she had on a golden necklace thin as a thread. He wanted to smile. Although she had pushed the bedding down below her breasts on so cold a night, there seemed to be a touch of perspiration at her forehead. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it away. The scent was strong on the handkerchief. He also wiped her armpits. Since he would not be able to take the handkerchief home, he wadded it and threw it into a corner of the room.
"She has on lipstick." It was most natural that she should, but with this girl the lipstick too made him want to smile. He gazed at it for a time. "Has she had an operation for a harelip?"
He retrieved his handkerchief and wiped at her lipstick. There was no trace of surgery. The center of the upper lip was raised, to cut a clean pointed line. It was strangely appealing.
He remembered a kiss from more than forty years before. With his hands very lightly on the shoulders of the girl before him, he had brought his lips to her. She shook her head left and right.
"No, no. I don't."
"You have."
"No, no. I don't."
Eguchi wiped his lips, and showed her the handkerchief stained with pink.
"But you have. Look at this."
The girl took the handkerchief and stared at it, and then stuffed it into her handbag.
"I don't.' she said, hanging her head silently, choked with tears.
They had not met again. And what might she have done with the handkerchief? But more than the handkerchief, what of the girl herself? Was she still living, now more than forty years later?
How many years had he forgotten her, until she was brought back by the peaked upper lip of the girl who had been put to sleep? There was lipstick on the handkerchief, and the girl's had been wiped away. And would she think, if he left it by her pillow, that he had stolen a kiss? The guests here were of course free to kiss. Kissing was not among the forbidden acts. A man could kiss, however senile he was. The sleeping lips might be cold and wet. Do not the dead lips of a woman one has loved give the greater thrill of emotion? The urge was not strong with Eguchi, as he thought of the bleak senility of the old men who frequented the house.
Yet the unusual shape of these lips did arouse him. So there are such lips, he thought, lightly touching the center of the upper lip with his little finger. It was dry. And the skin seemed thick. The girl began licking her lip, and did not stop until it was well moistened. He took his finger away.
"Does she kiss even when she's asleep?"
He stopped, however, at briefly stroking the hair at her ear. It was coarse and stiff. He got up and undressed.
"You'll catch a cold. I don't care how healthy you are." He put her arms under the bedding and covered her breasts, He lay down beside her. She turned over. Then, with a groan, she thrust her arms abruptly out. The old man was pushed cleanly away. He laughed on and on. A most valiant sort of apprentice, he said to himself.
Because she had been put into a sleep from which she would not awaken, and because her body was probably numbed, he could do as he wished. But the vigour to take such a girl by force was no longer in Eguchi… or he had forgotten it. He approached her with a soft passion, a gentle affirmation, a feeling of nearness to woman. The adventure, the fight that set one to breathing harder, had gone.
"I'm old." he muttered, thinking such thoughts even while smiling at his rejection by the sleeping girl.
He was not really qualified to come to this house as the other old men came. But it was probably the girl with the darkly glowing skin who made him feel more keenly than usual that he too had left before him not a great deal of life as a man.
It seemed to him that to force himself upon the girl would be the tonic to bring stirrings of youth. He was growing a little tired of the 'house of the sleeping beauties'. And even as he wearied of it the number of his visits increased. He felt a sudden urging of the blood: he wanted to use force on her, break the rule of the house, destroy the ugly nostrum, and so take his leave. But force would not be necessary. There would be no resistance from the body of the girl put to sleep. He could probably even strangle her with no difficulty. The impulse let him, and an emptiness, dark in its depths, spread over him. The high waves were near and seemed a great distance away, partly because here on the land there was no wind. He saw the dark floor of the night if the dark sea. Raising himself on an elbow, he brought his face to the girl's. She was breathing heavily. He decided not to kiss her, and fell back again.