Marthe could not look away. She saw couples with their sashes undone, their bodies entwined, their rapture caught by the woodblock artist’s delicate hand.
“These prints are a window into the secret world of lovers.”
Marthe grew warm as Ichiro put forth a series of prints. Each one displayed elaborate positions for lovemaking, intimate scenes of arousal and gestures of pleasure that unfolded like a dance. The prints were so different from the daguerreotypes in Europe of showgirls in corsets, with their breasts exposed and their legs slightly apart. Those images were produced only for the delight of men, but these prints appealed to her secret feminine side as well.
“Are these for purchase?” Marthe asked as her finger touched the corner of the paper. It felt like a secret, breathing scroll.
“But of course,” Ichiro replied.
“I’d like these four,” she said, selecting the ones that she found particularly alluring.
“Whatever you wish, Madame de Florian.”
She had been so enraptured by the prints that she had forgotten to even inquire about the price.
“And how much?” she asked.
Ichiro scribbled a number on a piece of paper and turned it toward Marthe’s direction.
“But that’s exorbitant,” she cried.
“The price for such secrets is always high,” he replied.
But she wanted them desperately, and knew she would have paid any price he asked.
***
She carried her package home, each print carefully wrapped in several layers of rice paper and slipped into a stiff portfolio tied with a purple silk cord.
That afternoon, when she was in the privacy of her bedroom, she withdrew them and gazed at the images for clues of giving Charles pleasure that she might not otherwise have known.
She looked at the women with their broad faces, their black hair plaited with tortoiseshell combs, their robes open and their bodies welcoming their lovers’ touch. As if studying a dance, she scrutinized the way their bodies entwined, their fingers grasped, discerning what they revealed and what they kept hidden.
She also noticed the sparseness of the rooms depicted in the prints. Paper screens and sliding doors. There was no evidence of a bed, just a floor with the sculpture of interlaced limbs. But it was the unabashed rapture in the lovers’ expressions that fascinated her. Another world had opened for Marthe, and she was curious for more.
***
Every week thereafter, she would pay Ichiro a visit, never once asking to be taken to the back room.
She would instead merely admire the ceramics he displayed up front, her gloved finger caressing the pieces on the shelves. Ichiro, however, would remain firmly in place, his hands clasped in front,his eyes firmly weighted on her. He could sense her anticipation, her yearning to be invited behind the curtain. But still he waited, holding her off in order to increase her anticipation, before he finally relinquished and motioned for her to follow him inside.
Her eyes would come alive in the darkness of his storeroom as he withdrew a few more of the prints she had come to secretly enjoy.
“I have a rare print fromThe Poem of the Pillowseries,” he told her. The name itself was so evocative, Marthe felt a tingle run through her spine.
When Ichiro revealed the images, she was immediately struck by the calligraphic lines, the soft rendering of color added to the folds of the lover’s robe, pulled up to reveal the soft contour of her thigh. The intimacy of the scene thrilled her. The woman’s exposed neck, her slender fingers threading those of her lover’s, the pressure of her hands revealing her delight.
“And I have something else to show you,” he whispered. He removed the print he had just shown her and placed it back in a portfolio, returning it to a drawer in his desk.
He then reached for a small wooden and paper scroll on the shelf beside him and placed it on the desktop between them.
“This is from the seventeenth century. It belonged to a Samurai family for many generations...” Ichiro’s hands grasped the ends of small wooden handles and began to carefully unroll the scroll.
The images were hand painted on the rice paper, the artist’s sweeping black lines enhanced with dabs of brightly colored paint. The figures had their eyelids closed, their mouths joined in a kiss.
“Lovers in a bamboo grove,” Ichiro told her. His finger pointed to the man and woman embracing in a garden of stiff bamboo and lush green leaves.
The scenes continued to unfurl in front of her. The rapture and joy discovered in the lovers’ various poses made her flush.
