Having agreed on their plans, the two women waited until it was time to put them into effect.
This was a momentary stroke of luck for the ugly neighbor. She has received this splendid assignment, and it is her shoe that the brand-new, freshly restructured last will be the first to shape. If you wish to learn the last's proportions, you must wait a little while until the event takes place.
CRITIQUE
Fragrance's plan for taking a lover is absolutely masterly, a variation on the principle that it's a wise subject who knows how to choose the right lord and master. How different she is from some passive observer with no purpose in mind! What a pity she met the adulterer at this stage, for the meeting will lead her to a career of good works! If Vesperus had acted three months earlier than he did, the neighbor's loss of her chastity would have coincided with Fragrance's preservation of hers. If there are any enlightened officials about who are interested in erecting a commemorative arch or shrine, I have an honorand to propose whose name is as fragrant and glorious as that of the chaste maid of "I Want to Get Married." [54] She opened up a convenient new route within Confucian morality, and for a thousand years to come all those women who, despite their disloyal thoughts, manage to avoid taking another husband will be able to look up to her as a pioneer.
CHAPTER TEN
Poem:
Let us tell how the neighbor went home rejoicing in her enviable assignment. She got some cloths ready for wiping up her secretions, lest they soak her friend's bedding, then waited impatiently until evening, when she locked her door and crossed the lane.
Fragrance decided to play a trick on her. "I'm afraid I've brought you here on false pretenses," she said. "I've just received a note: someone has taken him drinking and he can't get away, but he would like to set another date. You might as well go home again."
The neighbor was so upset her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed. She blamed Fragrance for not sending a message right back insisting that he come, but at the same time she strongly suspected that Fragrance now regretted the whole arrangement and wanted to get rid of her and have him all to herself. Fragrance let the protests continue for some time before explaining, with a laugh, "I was only having you on. He should be here any moment now. You'd better get ready to go to bed with him."
She heated a bowl of water so that she and the neighbor could wash their private parts, then placed an easy chair across from the bed, her intention being to lie back and listen while the other two had sex. She told the neighbor to bolt the door and stand quietly behind it, for when her visitor came, he would knock very lightly. She was to let him in at the first knock, not force him to knock again and again, which might alert the people next door. After letting him in, she was to replace the bolt before taking him to bed, where she should keep her voice down, lest he recognize her.
The woman nodded and sent Fragrance off to lie down, while she stood guard by the door. She had waited a solid two hours without anyone coming, and was just going in to ask Fragrance's advice, when in the darkness someone suddenly clasped her in his arms and kissed her. She leaped to the conclusion that it was Fragrance playing another of her tricks, this time by pretending to be a man, so she felt for the person's crotch. On reaching downward, however, she found a very large object butting at her hand and realized this was the visitor they were expecting.
Affecting a sweet, girlish voice, she asked, "How ever did you get in, dear heart?"
"Through the roof," said Vesperus.
"What a clever sweetheart! Well, now you're here, let's go to bed."
They unclasped-and undressed. Well before Vesperus, the woman had undressed completely and was lying on her back. When Vesperus mounted her and felt for her feet to put them over his shoulders, he couldn't find them; from the moment she had gotten into bed, her feet had been up and her vagina open, waiting for his penis.
I never suspected she was such a wanton, thought Vesperus. But since she is, I won't need my gentler techniques. I shall have to start off with a show of strength.
Raising himself a foot or more above her vagina, he thrust out his penis and attacked.
She began squealing like a slaughtered pig. "Oh, no! Be gentle, please!"
Vesperus parted the labia with his hands and began to work his way slowly inside. But time went by and no more than an inch of the glans had penetrated.
"The gentler I am," he said, "the harder it is to enter. I'll need to be a bit more vigorous, I'm afraid. You'll just have to put up with a little pain before you start enjoying yourself."
He attacked once more, which only set her squealing again. "Don't! Don't! Use some spit at least!"
"Spit is for virgins only; that's an inviolable rule. We'll just have to do it dry." He attacked again.
"Don't! This isn't working! If you won't break your rule, please withdraw and let me put some on."
"That would be better."
After he withdrew, she spat copiously into her palm. She then opened her labia and put half the spittle inside. The rest she rubbed on his penis.
"Now there shouldn't be any problem, but take it easy as you enter."
Vesperus, however, was eager to display his prowess and refused to take things easy. He raised her legs and, with a sudden swish, that long, thick object of his buried itself to the hilt inside her.
She began squealing again. "How is it you intellectuals are so rough? Don't you care whether we live or die? All the way in the first time! I don't have room! Take it out a little."
"You don't have room? You don't think it's still outside surely? I'll have to move it a bit. Don't be left out in the cold!"
Laughing, he began to move again. She could not bear the first few thrusts and let out an aiya! with each one. But then, after fifty or more thrusts, nothing more was heard from her-until, after a hundred, she began crying aiya! once more, but in delight now, rather than pain. (Aiya has a range of meanings.)
After several hundred strokes she began making numerous wanton moves and uttering countless cries of passion, enough to make it impossible for a man to restrain himself. Vesperus had to speed up his onslaught and force her to spend so that he could spend along with her. But she was not without guile, for although she had spent several times already, she replied, "No, not yet," when he asked her.
Why didn't she tell the truth? Because, as a stand-in, she feared she would lose her place the moment Fragrance heard her say she was satisfied. As the saying goes, "If you're going to be robbed by a powerful official, the longer you can put it off the better."
Vesperus took her at her word and did not dare spend. But as he thrust away, he gradually lost control of himself and had to do so, contriving only to hide the fact from his partner. After that he did not dare stop, but kept going like a drunken man on a donkey, nodding his head every step of the way, with none of his former élan.
Noticing that his penis hung back from the fray, she asked, "Sweetheart, have you spent?" Vesperus was afraid she would laugh at him for his lack of stamina and felt compelled to say no. Before her question he had been getting weaker with every thrust, but now he was like a dozing schoolboy struck by the teacher who suddenly works twice as hard as before. He pulled himself together and gave several hundred thrusts in succession without even pausing to catch his breath.