She felt that if Chiba were her partner she could be docile, that her eyes
would brim with tears of joy, though the sin would be the same.
Whenever it seemed that she was about to cry out, Hirata put a finger
into Takako’s mouth, making her bite it.
It wasn’t exactly true that in forcing Takako to restrain herself Hirata
satisfied her less than Fujiki. Indeed, when she was with Hirata, Takako
sank into a sweet and natural sleep—a sleep that never came with Fujiki.
Neither was it quite true that Takako desired in Fujiki a spontaneity that
Hirata lacked. She always felt weary when she and Fujiki were through,
and mixed in with her weariness were loneliness and regret. It wasn’t
simply that Fujiki was a person whose existence she had hidden from her
husband; perhaps her body had been trained somehow, somehow made
accustomed to Hirata’s.
Ultimately, the difference between the person Takako was with Hirata
and the person she was with Fujiki was so great that she found herself
unable to believe that the two women were the same. She was astonished to
discover those two different women existing within herself—their reality
must mean that she had become immoral, or that she had passed beyond
morality.
The discovery that two women existed within her—occurring as it did
after she had committed an immoral act—was strange, and of course it
caused Takako pain. Yet at the same time, she found it giving life to another
secret desire, the desire for a third man.
Takako had made up her mind not to pursue Chiba—she had decided that
this was one thing she simply could not do. But since she had become
involved with Fujiki, she had come to think that it was not so impossible to
get involved with him after all.
Actually, Takako did not consider Chiba “a third man” He was “the first
man”
