He lay as she had thrust him away, his chest exposed. He went to the other girl, She had been facing away, but she rolled over toward him. There was a gentle voluptuousness in this greeting, even as she lay asleep. One hand fell at the old man's hip.
"A good combination." Toying with the girl's fingers, he closed his eyes. The small boned fingers were supple, so supple that it seemed they would bend indefinitely without breaking. He wanted to take them in his mouth. Her breasts were small but round and high. They fitted into the palm of his hand. The roundness at her hips was similar. Woman is infinite, thought the older man, with a touch of sadness. He opened his eyes. She had a long neck. It too was slender and graceful. But the slenderness was different from that of old Japan. There was a double line at the closed eyelids, so shallow that with the eyes open it might become but a single line. Or it might be at times single and then double. Or perhaps a single line at one eye and a double at the other. Because of the light from the velvet curtains he could not be sure of the color of her skin. But it seemed tan at the face, white at the neck, somewhat tan again at the shoulders, and so white at the breasts that it might have been bleached.
He could see that the darkly glowing girl was tall. This one did not seem to be much shorter. He stretched out a leg, His toes first came against the thick skinned sole of the dark girl's foot. It was oily. He drew his foot away hastily, but the withdrawal became an invitation. The thought flashed through his mind that old Fukura's partner when he had his last seizure had been this dark skinned girl. Hence tonight there were two girls.
But that could not be the case. The girl who had been with Fukura was in vacation until the welt over her neck and breast went away. Had the woman of the house not just this moment told him so? He again put his foot against the thick skinned sole of the girl's foot, and explored the dark flesh upwards.
A spasm came over to him, as of to say: 'initiate me into the spell of life'. The girl had pushed off the quilt, or rather the electric blanket beneath it. One foot lay flung outside the quilt. Thinking he would like to roll her out into the midwinter cold, he gazed at her breasts and abdomen. He put his head to a breast and listened to her heart. He had expected it to be strong, but it was engagingly subdued. But was it not a little uneven?
"You'll catch cold." He covered her, and turned off her side of the blanket. The spell that was a woman's life, he thought, was not so great a thing. Suppose he were to throttle her. It would be easy. It would be no trouble at all even for an old man. He took his handkerchief and wiped the cheek that had been against her breast. The girl's oily smell seemed to come from it. The sound of the girl's heart stayed on, deep in his ear. He put a hand to his own heart. Perhaps because it was his own, it seemed the stronger than the two.
He turned to the gentler girl, his back toward the dark one. The well shaped nose seemed the more courtly and elegant to his farsighted old eyes. He could not resist putting his hand under the long, slender neck and pulling her toward him. As her head moved softly toward him there came with it a sweet scent.
It mixed with the wild, sharp scent of the dark girl behind him. He brought the fair girl against him. Her breathing was short and rapid. But he need not fear that she would awaken. He lay still for a time.
"Shall I ask her to forgive me? As the last woman in my life?"
The girl behind him seemed to seek arouse him. He put out his hand and felt. The flesh there was as at her breasts.
"Be quiet. Listen to the winter waves and be quit." He sought to calm himself.
"These girls have been put to sleep; They might as well be paralyzed. They have been given some poison or some strong drug." And why? "Why if not money?" Yet he found himself hesitating. Every woman was different from every other. He knew that. And yet was the one before him so very different that he was ready to inflict upon her a wound that would not heal, a sorrow to last through her life? The sixty seven year old heal, a sorrow to last through her life? The sixty seven year old Eguchi could, if he wished, think that all women's bodies were alike. And in this girl there was neither affirmation nor denial, there was no response whatsoever. All that distinguished her from a corpse was that she breathed and had warm blood. Indeed tomorrow morning when the living girl awoke, would she be much different from an open eyed corpse? There was now in the girl no love or shame or fear. When she awoke there could remain bitterness and regret. He would not know who had taken her. She could but infer that was an old man. She would probably not tell the woman of the house. She would conceal to the end the fact that the rule of this house of old men had been broken, and so no one would know but herself. Her soft skin clung to Eguchi. The dark girl, perhaps after all chilly now that her side of the blanket had been turned off, pressed against Eguchi with her naked back. One of her feet was between the feet of the fair skinned girl. Eguchi felt his strength leave him… and again he wanted to laugh. He reached for the sleeping medicine. He was sandwiched tightly between them and could move only with difficulty. His hand on the fair girl's forehead, he looked at the usual tablets.
"Shall I go without them tonight?" he muttered.
It was clearly a strong drug. He would drop effortlessly into sleep. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder whether all the old men who came to the house obediently took the medicine. But was it not compounding the ugliness of old age if, regretting the hours lost in sleep, they refrained from taking it? He thought that he himself had not yet entered into that companionship of ugliness. Once again he drank down the medicine. He had once said, he remembered, that he wanted the drug the girl had taken. The woman had answered that it was dangerous for old men. He had not insisted.
Did 'dangerous' suggest dying in one's sleep? Eguchi was but an old man of ordinary circumstances. Being human, he fell from time to time into a lonely emptiness, a cold despondency. Would this not be a most desirable place to die? To arouse curiosity, to invite the disdain of the world… would these not be to cap his life with proper death? All of this acquaintances would be surprised. He could not calculate the injury he would do to his family. But to die in his sleep between, for instance, the two young girls tonight… might that not be the ultimate wish of a man in his last years? No, it was not so. Like old Fukura, he would be told that he had committed suicide from an overdose of sleeping medicine. Since there would be no suicide note, it would be said that he had been despondent about the prospects ahead. He could see the faint smile of the woman of the house.
"Foolish ideas. As if I wanted to bring bad luck."
He laughed, but it was not a bright laugh. The drug was taking effect.
"Al right." he murmured. "I'll get her up and make her give me what they had."
But it was not likely that she would agree. And Eguchi was not eager to get up, and did not really want the other drug. He lay face up and put his arms around the two girls, around a soft, docile, fragrant neck, and a hard, oily neck. Something flowed up inside him. He looked at the crimson curtains to the left and the right.
"Ah."
"Ah!" It was the dark girl who seemed to answer. She put an arm on his chest. Was she in pain? He took away his arm and turned his back to her. With the free arm he embraced the hollow at the hips of the fair girl. He closed his eyes.
"The last woman in my life? Why must I think so? Even for a minute." And who had been the first woman in his life?