AUTHOR: Briony (Hippediva@aol.com)
TITLE: The Book of Pain
ARCHIVE: Anyone who wants it, just ask
DISCLAIMERS: Jerome, Nagiko & the Publisher (whom I named Yamataki, tho' no name is given in the credits) belong to
Peter Greenaway. Sogi & Himahachi are mine.
CATEGORY: angst, slash, BDSM
RATING: NC-17
WARNINGS: S&M here
SPOILERS: Definitely for Pillow Book-be warned
FEEDBACK: Is dreamy and alway helps the bunnies bite
S p o i l e r SUMMARY: Jerome ties up a loose end before heading to Nagiko's flat, already intent on his romantic Romeo-style suicide.

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The Book of Pain no, not a book...more of a scribble. In English. Whether coherent or drifting into madness is yours decide. I’m quite beyond any judgment of myself or anyone else. But I wanted you to see how I fared--how I never learned, just as you predicted. You knew it all, five years ago. And I? Well, I never did learn, or maybe I simply needed to create chaos, suffering, pain in the wake of love for myself and my lovers. It’s a rare talent, one not often granted to a man, especially an Englishman. I have come to believe that it’s one of my only talents. I used to think I could, should, needed to write. But the novels never got written. You see, I lived them instead, so I never really needed to discipline myself into writing them down. Once the plot had become a memory, it was better left so. Or maybe it was just laziness. That’s what my mother used to say; her, Yamataki, Sogi, nearly everyone. Brilliant but lazy. Only interested in doing what came easily to me. It’s very likely t rue. Language is easy, just as discerning beauty is easy, and accepting love in all its forms is easy. At least to me, these things were simple; too simple to understand them as talents. Easiest of all is suffering. Yes, I have a truly rare talent for it. You will recall Himahachi-San, when Sogi and I were lovers. I cannot imagine you’ve forgotten that. You never did believe that I got my just desserts after that, but you were wrong. You were so wrong, and neither of us could ever have foreseen the twisted road karma would take to make my payment sufficient. But you also have never heard the entire story, as I know Sogi never told you. It began in our last year at University.

We were always friends, as well as rivals. How many exams became nothing more than spirited competitions between us, I can never remember. Then, one evening, word games somehow became flesh games. A fleeting brush of the hand became more lingering, a look more lengthy and questioning. All the time, we were laughing, translating Dante, I believe, from one language to another. I could not, in honesty, tell you which of us moved first. No matter. We were entwined around each other and that, as they say in America, was that. I do realize that it was some small solace for you to know that he had been the aggressor, the dominant. You and I had that long, long talk and I held nothing back from you. I owed Sogi that much, not to be ashamed of our love, or of my place in it. What I didn’t tell you were all the risk-games we began to play. In a perverse way, you would have been proud of him: he was so inventive, so fearless. It began with mild bondage--very juvenile, rather sweet and tentative as I recall it now. But university dorm rooms afford little opportunity or equipment to play in a manner that either of us found acceptable. We began to look for other places. More often than not, we resorted to a local brothel, where we rented space by the hour. I can see your face in my mind as you read this and I do know what you are thinking: how appropriate a place for me. True. I would never entertain the thought of arguing with you, Himahachi-San. There, we had the space and time to explore worlds within worlds together. I know you are ready to burn this letter out of hand, but I also know that you won’t because beyond your outrage is avid curiosity.

Sogi especially liked the fact that the bed was already rigged, so it was easy to tie me up however he liked. No more resorting to scarves and old school ties. What had begun as soft, giggling play got rougher, the ropes tied tighter, Sogi’s hands bruising against my flesh. It wasn’t enough. Not for him and not for me. He took me up a ladder of sensations: blindfolds, gags, finally chains. Those were his particular favourite. It was best of all when I could barely walk out of the room I was so stiff from whatever wondrous position he’d held me in for hours. Then he decided we needed to move ahead once more. Now pain, in all it’s many forms, became a bedside toy. You know all about pain. He was a demon with a whip, and he had quite a collection. I know you found them in his room: I recognized the riding crop, you see, during our talk. That I didn’t tell you. To bring the matter up, at the time, seemed redundant. Not to mention indelicate. I may be many things, Himahachi-San, but I do have a sense of delicacy and some kind of propriety, however twisted. Sogi enjoyed that crop. And he used it. Oh, how he used it. He left wonderful black welts across my skin like a tiger’s stripes. Never anything permanent, never a scar or even more than a few drops of blood. And he liked mirrors, so I could watch those blood drops bead my body like dew. It seemed to fuel his passion, and that, of course, was my greatest desire.

You see, Himahachi-San, I did love him. I quite worshipped him and would have done anything he required of me to please him. You will, later, understand exactly what I mean by that. >From mirrors, he moved forward again, ever the adventurer, ever questing for greater sensation for us both. He hired prostitutes from the brothel to join in our play--men, women, boys--mostly men. Now I do have your interest, I know. Unfortunately, hired lovers are not particularly good lovers and that soon ended. They were, to a man, insipid, boring and only excited by the money and that was not high on either Sogi’s or my own list of erotic enticements. So Sogi hit on a master plan. He did not wish to degrade our love with easy and dangerous pickups. We’d done that a few times and most were nearly as bad as the prostitutes. One was so shocked by Sogi’s proposal that he tore out of the room in his shorts. We laughed about it for weeks. He began to ask the prostitutes about their clients and, with a little judicious spying and gossip-mongering, put together a list of about fifteen potential participants who would enjoy our play without shock and with discretion. After all, there were still exams to study for, classes to take, our honours placement to consider. Our games were our own private world, one to whom he would only invite those he deemed worthy. And exciting. I cannot begin to describe to you the sensation of being given over by my lover to a complete stranger for the first time. It was terrifying and exhilarating, and although I disappointed him that night, he understood my fears and quickly made me understand how much it pleased him to see me give myself in that fashion. What fashion, you are asking yourself? Why, any fashion Sogi and my new and nameless lover wished. My desire was theirs, my will bent to theirs, by my own choice. There were no limits and no rules, save that I was never, never to be permanently hurt or worse, permanently marked. That was something Sogi would never have allowed. I felt perfectly safe within the confines of his dominance, and I was content.

Soon, I was able to take on as many as he wished, knowing how much it excited and delighted him to watch me. And afterwards, his kiss was all I ever needed to believe that I was doing what he desired. Of course there were tears; tears, and screams, and sometimes abject hysteria. But it all melted away in his pleasure. Now, I see your grimace, and the question in your eyes. All in good time, Himahachi-San. No good story ends too abruptly or is told too swiftly. You must be patient to understand all I’m saying. As you can imagine, a mere fifteen men did not remain new for long. There were three or four who were welcome to our room regularly. And Sogi wanted more. That’s when he began to take me in public. You’re nodding, beginning to understand how dangerous it was becoming, and how it all ended as it did.. He was really quite an actor, able to keep his face completely blank while he was inside me in any number of places. Oh yes, much more than the cliched alley! Sogi was far more courageous than that: there were buses, daytime restaurants, parks, trains, midnight cafes. I could, even now, pick out at least two or three dozen places within the area of the university where he had me. This was the appetizer to whatever entree he’d planned for that night. He was so skilled at matching them to whomever he had elected to join us for the evening. If it was to be only us two, he would pick the most crowded place possible. If it was more, well...I think you understand me.

Then, he began to branch out to other areas. He chose business districts, especially those more inclined to the arts and the intellect. It seemed appropriate. Our luck was, in retrospect, quite remarkable. We were caught, twice, but it only required a little convincing to wriggle off the hook, and afforded us both two nights of great amusement and greater passion. Those two incidents happened within the University confines. In another district, we were not so lucky. Our joss ran out at Yamataki’s bookstore. Again, I know you are nodding. But it didn’t happen quite the way Yamataki-San told it to you. And he caught us weeks before he finally went to you. We were, I remember, in the history section. A little too drunk, a little too anxious and we’d been discovered. Instantly, we knew that the little game we’d been playing at had become truly dangerous. He watched us, of course. I caught his eyes at the last moment, hovering through the bookcase behind Sogi. I couldn’t stop, and neither could Sogi--not if we’d been shot on site could we have stopped at that moment. I turned to Sogi, after he had finished; whispered, but I had barely utterly three words when Yamataki-San was beckoning us, from the end of the stack. There was nothing to do but follow him. This time, we couldn’t get off that hook. In the privacy of his office, he was infinitely polite, as you well know, and quietly made it clear that we had only to deal with him, explain to him. And he never accepted a small story. Sogi was so brave, so proud. I’d never been more in love with him than I was at that moment.

It was a kind of relief when Yamataki asked me to undress. He was enchanted and enchanting as he asked Sogi to explain each welt, each bruise in detail. It seemed we had stumbled on a kindred spirit by accident and that lulled us both into a fatal ease. Yamataki-San took us back to his home that night. And for the next several weeks, we spent little time at our brothel room. All seemed to be well, we stopped worrying. Even if this sharing began to irritate Sogi almost as much as the loss of control , it was better than police and jail, disgrace. It didn’t last, of course. The last night was a nightmare for us both. That night, I was the watcher, as Yamataki-San took Sogi as he’d been taking me for so long. Worse were the cameras, flashing like explosions. Unlike Sogi, Yamataki-San has a taste for the indelicate. Never bloody, but humiliating for my beloved, who was a master, an oak. Not a willow or reed like me, capable of bending to the moment. I was unable to move, bound as I was, and I wept for hours. Sogi never wept. At least, he never did while I could see him. He might have later, when he was alone. After it was all over, Yamataki-San told us he was finished. There was nothing further he wanted of Sogi. Me, on the other hand, he was, in his own words, “delighted with” and intended to keep. He advised Sogi to let me go to him, and me to come willingly. Of course, we both protested. Quite vociferously. We were in love, I was his, he was my lover. He listened to all our pleas very patiently, then ordered Sogi out. Sogi refused to leave without me. In the end, Yamataki-San had him thrown out by his servants.

To his credit, Yamataki-San was very gentle with me, very kind. He is not and never has been a brute. But there was no refusing him, although I certainly tried. There was the university, graduation looming in less that two weeks; other pictures he’d obtained from the brothel owner; and he threatened Sogi with the police. I was determined not to betray my lover and yield our relationship that easily. Then he threatened to go to you, Himahachi-San. Of course, I realized much later he was lying to me: he had already spoken to you on the telephone and sent you a letter. He kept me there for two days. I finally persuaded him that I would return freely, if he would only let me take the exam I had, lest I fail my German course. By the time I returned to the University, it was all over. Sogi was dead and you were waiting for me. I have always wished I had broken away from Yamataki-San earlier. Funny it should come back to haunt me now. Then again, I do not think I would have enjoyed finding Sogi. Seppuku is such a messy death. I never showed you the letter he left me. I cannot now, as I burned it along with the paper books and bridges I burned at the Temple in his memory. But I remember every word of it. He knew you had been told. I think Yamataki-San must have whispered it to him, before he was thrown out. I was too distraught to hear. Sogi could not face you or his own humiliation. He felt that he had failed me, as though I were worth the worry.

He couldn’t bear his own sense of disgrace. I would have rather had him alive at any cost, but that was never Sogi’s way. In that letter, Sogi told me exactly how to handle you, what to do. My last gift to him was seducing you. And I did seduce you, however much you thought you were the one controlling me. I only paused once, when you chose that riding crop to take out your grief and fury on me. But, in my mind, you see, it was his hand, ghosting over yours, wielding the whip, and I gave myself to it gladly. Sogi instructed me very carefully. I do not know how he knew what pleased you so well. It cannot have been easy for him to discover his own father’s secret desires. But he did, and he was most explicit in what I was to do for you. Well, you were pleased, and that, for me, was his pleasure and my only desire. In the end, I did betray Sogi. I remained with Yamataki-San. Willingly. He slowly became a new master, a mentor. Finally, in the truest sense of the word, a lover. Am I faithless? Yes, I admit it freely. I betrayed Sogi, just as I betrayed Yamataki-San, and Nagiko. That last betrayal will be the last. I am, finally, tired of betrayals, tired of being the willow. I have reached the last place of love and will end here. You will, no doubt, hear of how I used my body for Nagiko against Yamataki-San. Romantics may think I did it to revenge myself for Sogi, but that is not the truth. I learned, in these past five years to care for him and my decision was a wild impulse to do anything for her. I fell in love with her. Then I wrecked it, of my own free will.

You see, Himahachi-San, you were so right when you told me that my ultimate danger would be the exercise of my own will. I was given that chance, and it has killed me. Have I paid for Sogi, even just a little? I don’t know. If you think so, then remember me with some kindness. If not, well...it’s far too late to care. You might, however, if you do care at all, tell Yamataki-San of my death. He will want to know why I do not come to him next week. I know he will be distressed. At least someone will mourn me a little. Enough. I am already drowning in enough self-pity. I will end this with affection. I wanted you to know how Sogi has arranged for me to finally join him. And to thank you for that talk. It was a most pleasant memory.

Speaking only on the wind, I flutter to the earth, unseen, a whisper

Jerome