Li Yu - The Carnal Prayer Mat

(To the tune "Love Eternal")

Once Vesperus and Fragrance had become husband and wife, they enjoyed themselves to the full, day and night, hot weather and cold. After joining his household, she had just one period and then became pregnant. Vesperus was delighted at the news, believing that the adept had been proven wrong and that he could still father a child. His instrument of pleasure had been successfully restructured.

After four or five months her body began to swell up, making sex a little awkward. Normally Vesperus would stop thrusting only when there were no more cries to be heard from her, and now, on hearing a cry of alarm, he was not startled enough to detach himself, draw in his stomach, and proceed less passionately. As a result she told him that rather than exhaust himself, he should put off sex for the time being and husband his strength for a grand celebration after the baby's birth. From that time on they slept in separate rooms.

Vesperus spent his nights in the study where, amid peace and quiet, he inevitably longed for action, hoping for another affair. Before his marriage to Fragrance, he had felt that if only he could have her, he would be able to get through life without ever taking another mistress. But once he had married her, he began to think how much nicer it would be if he had another one like her, to form a pair. Although the idea occurred to him soon after the wedding, he was still able to enjoy himself, so he shelved it. In his present state of frustration, however, he began to treat this shelved idea as a matter of the highest priority.

"Of all the women I've seen," he thought, "only those two whose names I don't know are truly outstanding, fit to put beside the one I've just married. Unfortunately I don't know where they live or even where to start looking for them. I'll have to content myself with the second best and turn to someone from the magna class in my notebook for relief in this present crisis. There'll be time enough later on, when I'm free, to go looking for the others."

Without letting Fragrance know what he was doing, he shut the study door, took out his notebook, and leafed methodically through it until he came to the name Cloud of Scent. Although his comments on her amounted to no more than a few sentences, they were a little more positive than the rest; they were straightforward praise without irony, whereas the other comments were either praise with a dash of criticism or criticism with a dash of praise. She clearly stood at the head of the magna class and only a notch below Pale Rose Maid and Lotus Pink Beauty.

Comment:

There are many special features to her beauty. She has grace to spare. She trips so lightly as to leave no sign, and could be lifted on the palm of the hand. Her charm is unaffected, and her looks are as in a painting. The breeze wafts a rare fragrance from her, as if she were steeped in the scent of flowers. At her side one hears exquisite tones, like the warbling of innumerable orioles: She is without doubt an outstanding beauty, the most charming of women. I place her in the magna class, above the other beauties.

Rereading his comments, Vesperus recalled her face and remembered her as being in her twenties, a young woman who gave an impression of great charm. As she passed by, he had sensed a fragrance imbued with freshness and sweetness that was quite unlike the perfumes women use on their clothes or skin. After she departed, he had found a fan with a poem on it lying beside the incense altar and realized that she had left it for him. She was on his mind for days, and he fully intended to seek her out. But after meeting with the two summa women, he had begun to treat her as "a fish thrown back into the river." When he came upon this comment in his notebook, however, he felt the cold ashes of his desire rekindling and examined the tiny handwriting that followed the comment to see her address. It turned out that she was living in the same lane as he was!

He was overjoyed. There cannot be more than a few dozen families in this lane, he said to himself, so she must live quite close by. It shouldn't be too difficult to get hold of her. He went out at once to ask where her house was.

Little did he realize that he had been aided in his evil plans by the neatest of coincidences. It was as if the gods of Heaven and Earth were aiding the evildoer-for she proved to be his next-door neighbor, with only a wall in between! His study even backed onto her bedroom! Her husband, whose sobriquet was Master Felix, was a licentiate in his fifties, a man as long on talent as he was short on virtue, with a reputation as high as his character was low. Cloud was his second wife, his first wife having died. He ran a school and lived away from home, returning each month for only one or two nights.

This must mean we are destined for each other, thought Vesperus. Supernatural powers have brought me here so that I can enjoy myself with her. Such a convenient arrangement-how can I fail to take advantage of it?

Back and forth he paced, trying to think of a plan of action while surveying the terrain. The wall outside the study was not high, but it was part of the house and he could not get over it. The wall inside was not very substantial, but he could not drive a hole through it, because it was built of whitewashed brick and any attempt would have left obvious traces on both sides.

So he abandoned the classic methods found in literature and went neither through the wall nor over it, but decided instead to rehearse his own text and drop down through the roof. However, on looking up, he noticed a section three feet high and five feet wide along the top of the wall where the bricks had not reached and the wall had been finished off in wood.

Now that I've found this gap, he said to himself, I won't need to get up on the roof. Why not adapt the expression "drive a hole, climb a wall"? All I need do is pry a few boards off the wooden section and I shouldn't have any trouble getting over the wall. He fetched a ladder and leaned it against the wall, then brought from the study a set of tools that he had purchased but never used, a carton containing a knife, ax, saw, and chisel. Because he had never had occasion to use it, Vesperus had thought it useless and kept it in his study only as a curiosity. Little did he realize that there is nothing in the world without its function; for the tool kit, he had found a function in adultery.

Carrying his set of tools, he climbed up the ladder and took a close look at the wooden section. Fortunately, strong as it was, there were cracks in it. When it was being built, the boards had been tapped into place one by one, not mortised together, which would have made them impossible to budge. He set to work with a small file to grind away a fraction of an inch from the top of one of the boards so that there would be no resistance when he pried it off. Next he inserted a small chisel into the crack and jimmied the board toward himself. Before he realized it, one board was off, and when he went to jimmy the second board, he found he needed no tools at all; one pull and, with nothing to hold it in place, the board came away with ease.

After taking off two or three boards, he craned his neck through to survey the scene. What met his eyes was a woman relieving herself on a commode. Before tying her trousers up again, she went to replace the cover, but it slipped from her hand and, in stretching down to pick it up, she bent her slim waist and raised a fine pair of slender buttocks in the air. The back part of her vulva was directly in front of him. Observing her from behind, he was still not certain that she was the woman he was seeking. But when she pulled up her trousers and turned around, he saw her face and knew that she was indeed the one he had admired, now more fetching than ever.