Li Yu - The Carnal Prayer Mat

That day passed as slowly as a year. Vesperus waited impatiently until evening, then sent Fragrance off to bed and returned to his study. First he fastened the door and windows securely and took off his scholar's cap and outer garments. Then, putting out the lamp, he climbed up the ladder and removed the boards that he had loosened before, for all the world as if he were opening up a gateway.

He was still worried. So far so good, he thought. But if there's nothing to climb down on, I can hardly jump off a twenty-foot wall! She sounded so harsh before, I'm sure she'll never come and help me if I call out. I won't be able to say a word.

As it happened, Cloud's heart proved softer than her words. Before going to bed she had left him a loophole, not taken the ultimate step in rejection. When he climbed up and stretched out his hand, Vesperus found that the ladder she had used during the day was still there waiting for him.

Overjoyed, he stepped on to it and climbed silently down, as if crossing a wooden bridge. He had gone up with an even tread and he came down with an equally even tread, untroubled by the least difficulty or danger.

Silently he felt his way to the bed, where she lay motionless. He assumed she was asleep and intended to ease his way into her bedclothes. He would take the opportunity to insert his penis into her vagina and gently awaken her, after which they would talk. That would allow him to dispense with the usual overtures. His mind made up, he stretched out a hand to lift aside the bedclothes.

Little did he realize that Cloud was not asleep, but that she had heard him very clearly as he approached. In the hope of saving herself from his overtures, she had faced the wall, pretending to be unaware of his presence. But when she felt him trying to open the bedclothes, she decided that she could hardly let him "burst unannounced into the general's tent." Unable to escape, she had to turn over and pretend to have been startled from a dream. "Who's there?" she cried out. "Creeping into people's beds in the dark!"

Vesperus whispered in her ear, "I'm the one you spoke to today. I know it was wrong of me to neglect you all this time, and I've come especially to beg your forgiveness." As he spoke, he tried to wriggle inside the bedclothes, but Cloud, furious, hugged them tightly around her and refused to let him in.

"What a heartless wretch you are! Who asked you to come here begging forgiveness? Out, and be quick about it!"

"I've worn myself to a frazzle trying to think how to get over here and be with you! You can't call that heartless!"

"Who do you think your fine words are going to deceive? Oh, such good judges of quality your eyes are! You don't have some dazzling beauty to enjoy yourself with, so you turn to an ugly creature like me. You'd betray your own sweetheart to be here with me."

"The girl I have at home was given to me by a friend and I had no choice but to accept her. How can you be jealous of her?"

"It is perfectly proper to enjoy yourself with your own wife. How could I be jealous of her? But you oughtn't to involve yourself with someone like me and then banish me to the ends of the earth. If you lived a long way off and we had no chance to meet, that would be one thing. But there you were on the other side of the wall, and not a word did you utter, as if we were total strangers! A person as heartless as that I'd just as soon leave to others."

"Mistress, where do you get all of this? Apart from my wife and concubine, I've never been intimate with any other woman. This is my very first attempt at an affair. Why are you slandering me for no reason?"

"Answer me this," said Cloud. "On such-and-such a date, three women went into Zhang the Immortal's Temple to pray. Were you, or were you not, the one who admired their beauty so much that he knelt down outside the gate and kowtowed like a madman?"

"It's true. There were three women in the temple that day burning incense. I was there, too, to pray for a son, and when I saw some women already there, I thought it best not to go in, to avoid mixed company, so I knelt down and kowtowed outside the gate. But it was Zhang the Immortal I was worshipping, not the women!"

Cloud burst into laughter. "What! You've just given yourself away. If you'd denied everything, you might have gotten away with it. But since it was you, you've no case left. Do you mean to tell me that a voyeur who used to hide behind the Immortal's image would be too afraid of scandal to rush in and flirt with any woman he fancied, but would kneel down and kowtow outside the gate? That lie wouldn't deceive a two-year-old, and yet you have the nerve to try it on me!"

Vesperus realized she knew everything and that it was no use trying to cover up. He had no choice but to tell the truth, both to confess his misdeeds and also to coax the other women's whereabouts out of her.

"To tell you the truth, Mistress," he said with a smile, "I was kowtowing partly to the Immortal and partly to those women, to get them to take pity on me. But I wonder how you came to know what was going on at the temple while you were sitting at home? Who told you about it?"

"Oh, I have supernatural powers, I don't need anyone to tell me."

"Mistress, since you know what happened, you must also know where the women live and what their names and their husbands' names are. I beg you to tell me."

"You've been with them six months and you still have to ask me that?"

"Once more, I don't know what you're talking about ! I've never seen them again since that first time. How can you say I've been with them six months? Oh, how can I protest this injustice?"

"You're still trying to bluff your way out of it! If you weren't with them, why didn't you come and see me these last six months? Obviously it was all their idea, to prevent you from having anything to do with me. You think I don't know that?"

"What a monstrous injustice! Not a shred of evidence, and yet you're full of suspicion!"

"If it's really not true, swear a solemn oath."

Vesperus faced the heavens and swore, "If I have ever had anything to do with those three women, may I be… If, far from having had anything to do with them, I so much as know their names or where they live, or have ever gone to look for them, then may I be…"

When Cloud heard him swear such a violent oath, her suspicions were partly assuaged. "You really haven't been with them?" she asked.

"I really haven't!"

"In that case you may be forgiven."

"Now that everything is cleared up," said Vesperus, "and I've done nothing wrong, won't you let me inside the bedclothes?"

"My looks can't compare with those of the three women, so why not go and sleep with someone better-looking instead of bothering me?"

"You're being far too modest again. Whatever gives you the idea you're not as good-looking as they are?"

"There's nothing wrong with your eyes evidently. After all, it was only because you saw how gorgeous they were that you knelt down and kowtowed to them. If they'd been merely attractive, a close look, like the one I got, would have been ample. They'd never have had any kowtows!"

"That was a purely spontaneous reaction, with no conscious intent behind it. Anyway you seem to be blaming me for kowtowing to them and not to you. You think I'm making distinctions, and that's why you're complaining. If so, there's an easy solution. Let me do some more kowtowing and pay off my debt with interest."

He knelt down on the floor beside Cloud's pillow and rattled off several dozen resounding kowtows that shook the bed before Cloud stretched out a hand and helped him inside.

Vesperus wriggled inside the bedclothes so that his lower instrument met hers like a carriage on a familiar road. Understandably, since it was their first encounter and their passion for each other had been delayed by their overtures, they could stand no more ceremony in bed, and it was a case of I want to join her and she wants to join me as the two objects met like old friends in no need of an introduction.