Katie Kitamura - Gone to the Forest

She was not even the most beautiful woman on the veranda. But she wove through the crowd and she had been emboldened by the previous night and there are things besides beauty. For example, the drunken lust of men. Which filled the veranda. Having been so good, the girl was now restless. The presence of the other women had spurred her instinct for competition. Therefore she moved across the veranda and she made the other women disappear. Nothing doing with their lace and ribbon and powder.

Abruptly, the old man stood up. He announced he was retiring for the night. He had no intimation of what was to come, such a thing being impossible for his arrogance to fathom. The other men nodded and watched him disappear across the veranda. The sour stench rising from their armpits. They had done no more than stand in the washroom and sponge their faces and necks. Their clothes still smelled of alcohol and animal must. They were forgetting where they were and making themselves at home.

Always a bad sign. The gramophone cranked. The girl danced down the length of the veranda. The men watched with drunken intent and the women watched, too. The girl did not notice about the men but did about the women. She laughed. Never having had a husband, she had therefore never worried about losing one. She was a little drunk. One of the women abruptly rose to her feet and crossed the veranda.

The other women followed. They were not going to sit and watch their husbands with the girl. The husbands’ thoughts being legible to the wives. The wives knowing what the husbands were capable of, having had a lifetime to learn. The women were outraged but the outrage was a cover — there were things happening that they had no interest in seeing. As they left they were aware of having stayed too long as was.

The men were left alone with the girl and she gave a special shimmy to celebrate her victory. Laughter rang out across the veranda. The girl turned up the volume on the gramophone and said something about cigars. One of the men found the box and lighter. The girl passed the box around and the men lit their cigars. Which smoldered and smoked as they watched her. She had stopped dancing and stood smiling as she rubbed her wrists against the jut of her hip.

The record on the gramophone clicked off. The men smoked their cigars in silence and looked at the girl. When they had met her the day before she had stood between the old man and his son and blushed for the duration of the introduction. They hadn’t known what to think. The girl seemed simple enough but what was happening between the two men was nothing simple. Not a rivalry as such. For a time they could not understand it.

But now that confusion lifted and they saw the girl for what she was: a spreader of unrest and confusion. The girl was a woman. She was a body — just a body, and evidently a gifted one. All the parts being in working order. The shoulder and neck, the legs and waist and back. (The girl also enjoyed her body. She had faith in it. It was hard as a rock and impenetrable, and thus far it had served her well.)

The girl stood before the men. One stood and came to her and she smiled as he approached. He laid a hand on her shoulder. Gently, he pushed one strap down and then the other. In a manner that was almost inconsequential. He chucked her under the chin and looked into her face. The girl was still smiling as he stepped back and looked at his handiwork and then the girl stopped.

Doubt crossed her face, if anyone had been there to notice. But there was no one — the room was empty in that respect. So the doubt stayed on her face. Doubt as to what was presently unfolding. It was on her face when she kicked off one shoe and then the other shoe (they were pinching, they were hurting so, she did not think she could stay in them one second longer). It was on her face as the shoes skittered across the floor and came to a stop.

The men stared at the shoes. They were tiny. Tiny things of leather and satin. There was a logic to the shoes. Quality and all that. Standards. Propriety. Everything that was currently escaping them — the very idea of being civilized itself — as they sat in their armchairs and watched the girl. They stared at the shoes and then they raised their eyes and looked at the girl.

WHO WAS NOT having an easy time of it and therefore kept her head high and her back rigid. She was conscious of the cool tile beneath her bare feet. The gust of wind through her armpits. The dress was now hanging off her nipples, her nipples were now all that stood between decency and nakedness and lucky for her they were spectacularly erect. Her nipples were a matter of note. Always had been.

She laughed. It sounded hysterical in the silence and she stopped, mouth dry. Truth be told her sense of humor had deserted her. There was plenty to laugh about but she wasn’t laughing. She could see the humor, she could see the jokes and punch lines. A woman standing in front of a man, that was already good for some laughs. But she was not in the mood for laughter. She shivered, even though it was hot.

One month ago she arrived in the country and she saw there was nothing here she could not handle, nothing beyond the arid air. She had been warned that it was wild country going wilder, but she had already survived the drawing rooms at home. Home being a ruthless territory, cruelty on display with the silk and china. She had almost been relieved by the barren expanse of country. She had not thought — did not think — that men could be changed by means of landscape.

But now here she was and for the first time she sensed that this was something different, of which she did not have the measure. Something she did not currently understand. Later she would look back on this moment and she would see that there were a hundred things she might have done, at this moment as with any moment, at this moment which was just like any other moment. But then her mind was blank. Small and hard and blank. Like a pebble. Her mind was a pebble. Nothing adhered to its surface.

So she did what she always did. When her mind was blank, when the sickness set in, when her skin began to itch and burn. What she always did, a woman’s only purchase on power. She took her clothes off. She reached up her hands and undid the hook and eye closure. She pulled down the zipper of her dress, this cunningly designed dress, more expensive than anything she had ever owned.

It was going to happen anyway so she might as well be the one to do it. Not that she was a fatalist but the zipper slid down without protest and now the dress was hanging off her back. Taking off your clothes was easy. Putting them back on was the hard part. Now look. She was down to her skivvies and they were not clean. It didn’t matter. She could sing a song and nobody would notice. Children should be seen and not heard. The saying referred strictly to the girls, the girls who would grow up to be ladies.

Not that she was a lady. She was, however, a product of her society. It was getting hard to think, hard to figure it out, because now there was wetness growing. A slick between her legs and the thrall of physical longing. Well, a woman felt the weight of a man looking, a woman liked to be wanted, and here were several men, here a group of men. Who could see the wetness for all she knew.

She exhaled and tried to keep her head straight. Lust and the mistakes that were made in its wake. A trail of them, each bigger than the last. Desire was what plagued women, it was what tripped them up. She thought: a woman should seek out dry land. Be rid of lust at last. Which made nothing good or clear. Which only gathered around a woman, inutile and collecting dust. Men did not like the women who wanted it. Men would rather force themselves on the women who didn’t. The logic being dismal but clear.

At the same time, a man would take what he could get and always did. One of the men stood up. She raised her head to look at him. He was plain, he was nothing as a man. He moved slowly, with both hands spread before him. Like he thought she was a rabbit or a rabid animal. She watched and saw the gleam flicker into his eyes. Her body relaxed a notch. After all they were men. After all they were the same. She smiled and then she watched his face harden in front of her and the smile died on her lips.