The Netsuke
Anna Austen Leigh
Published by Anna Austen Leigh at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Anna Austen Leigh
Discover other titles by Anna Austen Leigh at Smashwords.com:
Emma
The Duel
A Grand Tour
Natural Sympathies
The Swing
and with other publishers:
The Diligence de Lyon
Pilgrim for Love
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She loved the shutter-darkened room at the back of the building where Asquith had his desk. His desk with the Thai buddha on it, smiling, exotic and inscrutable, the smile very slightly cruel. Asquith, who always smelt of eau de cologne and talked in a languid drawl. Asquith, who had been to the Orient and returned with his antiquities, malaria, and an elegant saluki dog that the other office staff said had been given him by a maharajah. Asquith, whose aquiline face inhabited her dreams.
At twenty, her world was one of suburban houses each isolated in its neat square of grass, as if they'd been stamped out by a bureaucrat. A world of nice boys her mother approved of, who got B grades, 'but good B's', her mother said, who would get boring jobs ('but good jobs', her mother said), who would marry good wives and have cocktail parties and children and executive cars, in the dreary years between school and the crematorium by the railway line. There must, she thought, be more to life than that; and her hidden passion for Asquith was the 'more' she thought there ought to be.
When she took his post in, in the morning, if he wasn't there, she would rub the shiny topknot on the bronze buddha, or bow her head to the back of his chair and sniff his scent on the green leather. She knew her obsession wasn't rational, but she didn't care; it reminded her of the world she wanted to belong to – the places she wanted to go.
Every week she took her wages to the bank. Eight hundred, already. You could live in India for six months on that, travelling; or in Thailand, or in Cambodia... She might still be studying, her heart not in the business studies her mother had advised her to take ('You don't have to take my advice,' she'd said, but Gemma knew she'd get no peace if she didn't); but the money she made here, working part time, was her escape route to another world.
She knew the layout of Asquith's desk by heart. The post tray, the Buddha, the flint paperweight worn smooth by the sea, the Indian knife he used to open his letters, the mother of pearl fountain pen. The rack with the expensive, deckle edged writing paper he used, heavy and rough and hand made.
But today, there was something new; a tiny ivory sculpture, a little cockle shell, right in the middle of the desk. She looked round the room; Asquith wasn't in yet, the accounts staff were busy with the auditor, and the office manager was making tea. Quietly, she shut the door, went to the desk, and picked up the little shell.
It was surprisingly light, as if it was hollow; when she held it to the light, it seemed transparent. Turning it over, she saw how there was a narrow line between the two halves of the shell, and pushed a fingernail into it, wondering if the shell would open. To her surprise, it sprang apart; and inside, instead of the little painting or photograph she'd expected from this locket, was a tiny carving.
She looked closer. Two little Japanese figures; a lady with a fan, a man with a shaven head and the tied headband of the samurai. Then she saw what they were doing, and flushed; and looked closer, so she could see the huge, veined cock between the lady's hands, far bigger than would have been anatomically accurate, and the rigid folds of the woman's labia, spreading and open, as the man pushed her kimono up and out of the way.
She was fascinated; so much so that she didn't hear the door open. It was Asquith, turning already to hang his coat on the hook, and now striding towards the desk.
"Has the post... oh... you've found the netsuke."
She cursed the blush that rose to her face then, but as coolly as she could put the shell down.
"Netsuke?"
"Small Japanese carvings. They're used for attaching a bag or purse to the belt of a kimono."
"Are they all as explicit as this one?"
"Ah, well, you see, it wouldn't have been explicit if you hadn't opened it."
She blushed again.
"You really shouldn't pick up things on people's desks, you know. Not unless you're quite sure you're not going to get caught. But anyway... Let's just say that the Oriental attitude to such matters is... er... rather different from the English reticence on the subject, you see. They regard it as a … hm... civilised entertainment, nothing to be ashamed of."
"So there are more like this?"
"Well..." He appeared to be weighing up which course of action he should take; and then, decisively, said; "Lock the door. As I said, you shouldn't investigate this sort of thing unless you're sure of not getting caught."
She went over to the door, turned the key in the lock, and went back to stand in front of the desk. He'd taken a book from the shelves behind his desk, and now he laid it on the desk, opening it carefully and leafing through to find the right page.
"When I was in India, and then later in Tibet, I met a number of holy men who had studied the tantra, and I was privileged to be able to study with some of them. They believe that sexual energy is sacred; that it can be used to approach God. So when you see these pictures, you must understand there is more to them than mere titillation. They are sacred."
He turned a final page, and what Gemma saw then made her inhale sharply. On one page, mysterious diagrams; stars, triangles, a design of circles within a square within a circle, in bright blue and red and gold. On the other page, a willowy pair of lovers, enigmatic smiles on their faces, joined in sexual congress.
"I'm sorry I picked it up," she said. "It's just... I've been fascinated by the East since I was a child. And you've travelled so much, and... well, I'm saving up to go out to India next year. But my mother says I'm stupid to do it, when I have a university place waiting."
"Not stupid at all. India will change your life, if you let it. It did mine."
She looked again at the picture.
"It's the smiles," she said.
"Sorry?"
"The smiles. Look at their faces; that deep contentment, that joy. It's not porn, it's... something else, isn't it?"
"Yes," he said, and his voice was suddenly deep and sad.
It was strange, she'd not been turned on by the netsuke, or really by the painting, but when she heard that sadness, she suddenly knew she wanted to reach out and touch him; so she did, rubbing her palm against his cheek and feeling the softness of his shaven skin.
"Do you miss the East?"
He didn't answer, but took her face in his hands, and looked at her levelly for a long moment before he brought his lips to hers. She struggled a moment, then relaxed into his kiss; soft, insistent. Under the eau de cologne he always wore, she could smell the man, the sharp, clean odour of his skin.
"I shouldn't be doing this," he said, after they'd broken that long kiss.
"I thought you said the Orientals had a different attitude?"
"Well, yes; but you're far too young... and besides..."
"I'm not that young," she said; "and I'm not completely innocent, either. Besides... what you said about sex being sacred. That intrigues me. Half the girls I know think it's all about lurve and finding Mr Right and playing hard to get, and the other half think sex is just good clean fun..."
Asquith raised an eyebrow. "Inexact terminology?"
"Well, good dirty fun, then. But no one seems to think it's got anything to do with God - rather the reverse, in fact."
"Sensual gratification is one thing. Sacred sex is another. Christ, that sounded utterly pompous, didn't it? But... it's different. It's about facing the ultimate. It goes further..."
He took her hand then, and raised it to his mouth, tracing his lips with one of her fingertips, sucking her finger delicately, licking her palm. She felt as if her whole body, her sex, everything was concentrated down to that one contact; and at the same time, she felt the strangeness of what he was doing, the unaccustomedness of seeing one's hand as an erogenous zone in itself, not merely an implement for grabbing a prick or rubbing a clit. How we put sex in little boxes, she thought, closing ourselves off to it, pencilling parts of our bodies into sex and cutting other parts out, when all the time, the whole body could be sexual... then she realised, that was what Asquith had wanted her to understand.
She looked at the way his hair curled at the back of his neck - straight and slicked down everywhere else, unruly just there; the rebellious streak in his otherwise so English-gentleman makeup. She twisted a finger in it, almost enough to hurt.
He was trailing his tongue along her forearm now; she was amazed he had judged the pressure just right, not so light as to tickle (and yes, she was ticklish, very ticklish, that had spoiled things for her before when she laughed at some lover's would-be sophisticated caress). He stayed at the hollow of her elbow, kissing the skin gently where the veins were visible, hinted blue under honey skin.
He was the teacher; but she wasn't going to let him have it all his own way. Leaning over, she brushed her breasts against the top of his head, feeling her nipples hard against her clothes.
"Slowly, slowly."
"Is that part of it?"
He let one hand cup the side of her breast, gently keeping her from pushing forward.
"This rush towards fulfilment, it's very western. In the eastern tradition, it's the expansion of consciousness that is the point."
"Not orgasm?"
"Not as such. Some tantric practitioners even avoid orgasm completely... though I must admit it wasn't that particular philosophy which I studied. But you have to give up on the teleology - that is, not be so purposive, so..."
"Single-minded?"
"You could say that. And the closer orgasm comes, the longer you resist, the closer you get to the edge of reality, where you feel time as a real presence, where your senses are wound up like a string about to break."
"That's rather ... poetic."
He smiled. "Pretentious? I know, I'm talking too much. But still... so much to tell..."
He reached for the book lying on the table, and flicked through it till he found the page he wanted; a man standing, brown flesh against blue background, with what looked like UFOs in bright orange, yellow, green, red, floating up and down his spine.
"The chakras," Asquith explained. "Each place in the body is a chakra, a location of energy, with its own colour, its own kind of energy. And from here, from the base of the body, energy rises, up to the top of the head, up to the spiritual regions. Now in western culture, we try to live in the head, cutting off everything that's below it; but in the tantric tradition, for instance, we take the energy that rises here, in the sexual organs, the fire in the belly, the emotions of the heart; all that energy is taken and rises, like a serpent..."
She realised he'd put his hand under her shirt, and was tracing the contours of her spine with one finger.
"Like a serpent, rising to consciousness out of the dark."
"Is that why snakes are sacred in India?"
"Perhaps," he said. "There's certainly a connection."
She felt his finger on her spine, reaching the back of her neck now, and she could feel how the hot energy of her sex rose, through her heart, becoming cooler now, like burning ice on her neck. She blinked; her eyes felt tight, as if she'd been focusing hard on a book. Was that the energy too, or was she imagining it?
"You're wondering if it's real, or if you're just imagining it," he said.
She gasped.
"And now you're wondering if I can read minds... No, no, I can't, but I remember asking myself exactly the same question when I first felt what you're feeling."
"What's the answer then?"
"I still don't know. What's real anyway? But do you feel it?"
"Yes."
For the first time he reached out, now, and pulled her against him. Strange how when she'd dreamed secretly of this, she'd thought it would be romantic, soppy even, the kind of scene that needed violins swooping sentimentally on the soundtrack; but now it felt almost clinical, the way she was examining everything she felt, questioning it, the way he was leading her through the theory, as if she were a scientific experiment.
"Let me see you," he whispered, and for the first time his voice was low, driven by need.
She didn't bother unbuttoning her shirt but slipped it quickly over her head, standing there half naked, her small breasts naked to his gaze. Her skirt dropped to the floor, and she hooked her thumbs into her briefs and pulled them down, stepping daintily out.
"Now what?"
He didn't answer, but spun her round, wrapping her with his arms so that one hand covered her breasts, tweaking and kneading, while the other massaged her buttock. He pushed her against the desk; she felt the cold hardness of his belt buckle against her arse.
If what went before had been strangely divorced from the usual business of sex, what followed was even more disconcertingly, brutally sexual; Asquith unzipped, pulled his prick out, and thrust into her, hard, flexing his hips to get the right angle, pushing her against the hard edge of the desk. He kept thrusting, hard, drilling into her, and she felt herself expanding, deepening and softening to let his whole length in. Strange, she thought, how he had such unusual tastes in foreplay, but was so rough and unsophisticated when it came to the act itself. She was getting close now, the hard bar of wood across her thighs now another stimulus rather than a discomfort; the brutality of the sex was in its own way an excitement - she felt carried away as she'd rarely been. The fact that she could no longer see Asquith freed her mind to imagine what his face would look like now, his gentlemanly cool completely lost. She began to push back against him, feeling the rhythm of their two bodies accelerate, feeling the beginnings of release stirring in her blood...
And then, suddenly, shockingly, Asquith stopped. Just stopped, his cock still buried in her, his body pressed against hers, but not moving, completely still. She turned her head to look behind her; his face seemed, as ever, slightly amused.
"You were nearly there," he said, and she couldn't work out quite whether it was a statement or a question.
"Yes."
"And now you're not."
"No."
"So. Think back to it. What could you feel? How did you know it was so close? How much further could you have gone before it was impossible to pull back?"
"I.."
"No, don't answer me. Just ask yourself the questions."
"That's all?"
He nodded, then moved a little, just enough to change the angle at which he penetrated her; she could feel his cock stiffen a little. Very slowly, he began to rock her against him; so different from the first, brutal thrusting. Where before she had only felt each thrust as a single, sharp movement, now she seemed to be able to feel the head of his cock rubbing the inside of her channel, every stroke in a slightly different place as he flexed his hips, as if he was massaging her. She felt the warmth inside her build, gradually; not like the blind need she'd felt before, but gentler, more relaxed. She'd never really asked herself what she felt, before; she'd just taken what she was given, had a blind orgasm, or not. Even if the tantric spirituality thing was just a chat-up line, even if there was no reality in it, she'd learned something from Asquith; that sex wasn't just sex.
Asquith kept moving, never speeding up, but she thought she could come this way; she felt her clitoris tighten, slipped a hand to one nipple to tweak it, felt the pressure building. It wasn't till she moved one foot back, trying to get more of his cock inside her, that he stopped.
"How close are you?"
Sudden anger flushed her face. "Not so very close."
"You're not used to being asked so frankly?" (Of course she wasn't.) "I'm sorry, then; I thought you were getting close to the edge. You must not come. And nor must I. But I will take you as close as I dare... as close as you dare. I'll trust you. Tell me when I need to stop."
He began again with the gentle stroking movement, no faster even now, holding her back when she tried to force the pace. But he was right; it was tempting to look for a quick orgasm, but that wasn't going to give her anything she couldn't get elsewhere. She had to stay in control; letting her body accelerate along the path to release, and yet keeping her mind cool, ready to stop when the pressure became almost, but not quite, too much. She'd never tried to prevent an orgasm before - usually it was the other way round, she thought sourly; it felt strange, as if she had become two different people, one who was having sex, and another who was watching it, dispassionate and cold.
She realised she was grinding her mound against the edge of the desk, searching for a little pain to add to the excitement.
"Look at the book," Asquith said.
"What?"
"Look at the book. What is the colour of the third chakra?"
"Third which way?" This was weird. He starts talking about chakras when he's having sex?
"Third upwards, from the bottom."
"Yellow."
"And the next?"
"Green."
"And you are further away now. Is that right?"
She understood what he was doing. Don't immerse yourself in the feeling, stay distinct from it. Let your body do what it does; keep your mind above it. Still, it was weird.
"How long do we keep doing this?"
"Until you learn what you wanted to learn."
"I didn't want to learn anything."
"You must have. You wouldn't have opened the clam, otherwise. You wouldn't have mentioned India. You wouldn't have reached out to me."
Oh, that was so corny, "It was meant to be"; but in a way he was right. She'd wanted her mind broadened; she'd wanted to break out of the world of bank managers and accountants and shopping in John Lewis at weekends, and brief unsatisfactory sexual liaisons with boys suitable or unsuitable. She'd wanted to escape, and how much further could she have gone?
And while she thought her way through that tangle of logic and emotion, Asquith kept up his interminable slow rhythm, stroking, stroking.
She came close another three or four times, and each time, she found, or Asquith suggested, a strategy for holding off the final moment. And then, suddenly, she felt a deep calm spreading through her. She no longer cared whether she reached that long delayed goal, no longer had any goal but to stay in that moment, like the moment before sleep, when you can feel yourself drifting away and you know that in a second your eyes will close, and you'll be dreaming...
"I think," she said, "I understand what you're doing, now."
To her surprise, he withdrew then, leaving her feeling cold and empty, the deep calm gone, replaced by a raw disappointment that he'd cared so little. She turned to face him.
"That's it, then?"
He seemed surprised at the anger in her voice. "That's the teaching, yes."
She leant forward to pick up her clothes, but he put a hand on her shoulder, then bent to kiss it.
"But that doesn't mean we're finished."
She looked at him, and for the first time since she'd stepped out of her clothes her eyes met his. He picked her up, setting her gently on the edge of the desk. He unbuckled then, and pushed his trousers down over his thighs, and settled himself against her, his cock rubbing against her cleft, and eased himself in.
"Now," he said, "if you still want to..."
"If I do," she asked, "does that mean I've failed some test?"
"No."
"Then yes."
It was hard and fast from then on; she realised she'd been so close for so long that it was going to take almost nothing to tip her over the edge now, she was raw and open and ready, and just as she realised how close she was she realised, too, that she had gone too far to stop, that she had ridden the wave so far it was about to break over her. Asquith too was going faster, his movements less controlled than before; she looked down and saw his cock, glistening with moisture, disappearing and reappearing between the folds of her sex. Then suddenly it was as if an earthquake had caught her up and thrown her across the room, as if her body was shaking itself apart. She felt herself gasping for breath, the air freezing in her lungs as she sucked it down, her heart racing. She closed her eyes, and saw in the darkness under her eyelids the whole universe spinning and pulsing with light to the rhythm of her climax. She was aware, through all this, of Asquith finally losing all rhythm, his body jerking desperately as he reached his own release. It seemed they were lost in an eternity of overwhelming sensation; and then, suddenly, it was over, two people reaching for clothes and zipping up and even though they'd been talking so freely about the Oriental attitude to sexuality and tantric spirituality, embarrassed in a very English way.
***
When she came in the next day, Asquith wasn't there. The office manager told her stiffly that she wasn't needed any more; they couldn't afford part time staff, times were difficult, she would understand, of course. There was an envelope for her; a week's wages, in lieu of notice. And of course they would be glad to give her a reference, if she needed one.
She felt betrayed. It was all she could do not to cry. But when she opened the envelope, she found a cheque for two thousand, and a note written on the hand made paper Asquith always used;
I wish you well on your journey to the East. I know, I think, what you are looking for; and I do hope that you find it.
A.
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