Free Netsuke by Rikki Ducornet

the statue and examines it closely, as though it were an artifact from another world.
    “Yes,” she says, rising, and, sensing his difficulty, approaches him quietly. With real gentleness—where does this fund of tenderness come from?—she puts her arm around him. “Remember, we saw her together a while back in town and you said how much you liked her, so I went back and bought her and put her here. I wondered if you’d ever noticed! It amuses me,” she smiles into his chest, rubbing her face against him, “how long it takes for you to notice these things. These changes I make in the house. Why is that?”
    “I don’t know,” he says, full of wonder, somewhat stunned by this revelation. “I don’t know if that is really true. Is it true?” he asks her now, almost as though he were a child, she thinks, needing her guidance. “I don’t know why I once liked her so much!” he says, pulling away. “She’s on the rampage.” Akiko is bewildered. Hurt.
    They stand together in the early darkness. They discover that they do not recognize one another. Frightened, she takes his hand and says:
    “Come sit down. I’ve made something delicious for dinner.” But she thinks: So it has come to this. We have been reduced to this. But why?
    They eat in silence. She does what she can to keep back her tears. She has lost him, but she no longer knows whom she has lost. She believes she loves him, yet he is not the man she fell in love with. All the shadows in the room have now conspired to take him from her. She forgets to serve the salad. He neglects to pour the wine. As Kali dances in the corner, they sit alone together in a boneyard. Again she wonders why?

3
    AFTER DINNER, Akiko puts on a heavy sweater and takes a walk. For some reason she remembers the first time they took a trip together. Oaxaca. Now that she thinks of it, his behavior had been incongruous, somehow immodest. They had only just arrived and there was so much to see, the city in the grip of life. And yet he must find a pen shop. Feverishly he began approaching strangers. Streets were named, directions given, and off they ran. He hurried on ahead of her, oblivious to the many things that caught her eye. In new sandals she trailed behind, the streets fraught and fractured, rubble at each step, as he sped on like a large cat, his own sandals as snug on his feet as those sturdy pads lions wear. Yet everything caught her attention, the town was a living hive! Why wouldn’t he slow down and let her see it?
    When they reached the shop, the display of pens was clearly unsatisfactory. He hovered above the sweaty glass case and asked to see them all. He fingered them, returning to an old one, stubby and thick, of indecipherable color. She and the shopkeeper looked on as her husband stroked it. A unique item, its pump unusually conceived. Its fat body held a lot of ink.
    A glass bottle was now set out upon the counter, its label faded and flaking, its facets dulled with dust. She was losing patience; already so many precious instants had passed! Outside the hour was white, someone was singing in the air above them, and then: the sudden ringing of a vendor’s bicycle bell. When she caught a whiff of coffee she remembered she was hungry; they had left the hotel without eating breakfast. Yet there her husband stood, unreasonably transfixed. She decided to complain, to insist that they move on for godsakes—an impulse thwarted by the uncanny intensity with which he continued to examine the pen. And although it was absurd, impossible in fact, what she saw in his eyes was sexual ardor.
    Her husband was trying the pen’s pump mechanism. Dizzy with bewilderment, she watched as the ink fountained down into the bottle and then as it was sucked up again. When he dabbed the pen’s tip with a small square of blotting paper, she saw that the gesture was exactly the one he used after taking a piss, holding his cock in one hand and soaking up the last drop of urine with a