Gone to the Forest: A Novel by Katie Kitamura

civilized
     itself—as they sat in their armchairs and watched the girl. They stared at the
     shoes and then they raised their eyes and looked at the girl.
    W HO WAS NOT having
     an easy time of it and therefore kept her head high and her back rigid. She was
     conscious of the cool tile beneath her bare feet. The gust of wind through her armpits.
     The dress was now hanging off her nipples, her nipples were now all that stood between
     decency and nakedness and lucky for her they were spectacularly erect. Her nipples were
     a matter of note. Always had been.
    She laughed. It sounded hysterical in the silence and she stopped, mouth
     dry. Truth be told her sense of humor had deserted her. There was plenty to laugh about
     but she wasn’t laughing. She could see the humor, she could see the jokes and
     punch lines. A woman standing in front of a man, that was already good for some laughs.
     But she was not in the mood for laughter. She shivered, even though it was hot.
    One month ago she arrived in the country and she saw there was nothing
     here she could not handle, nothing beyond the arid air. She had been warned that it was
     wild country going wilder, but she had already survived the drawing rooms at home. Home
     being a ruthless territory, cruelty on display with the silk and china. She had almost
     been relieved by the barren expanse of country. She had not thought—did not
     think—that men could be changed by means of landscape.
    But now here she was and for the first time she sensed that this was
     something different, of which she did not have the measure. Something she did not
     currently understand. Later she would look back on this moment and she would see that
     there were a hundred things she might have done, at this moment as with any moment, at
     this moment which was justlike any other moment. But then her mind
     was blank. Small and hard and blank. Like a pebble. Her mind was a pebble. Nothing
     adhered to its surface.
    So she did what she always did. When her mind was blank, when the sickness
     set in, when her skin began to itch and burn. What she always did, a woman’s only
     purchase on power. She took her clothes off. She reached up her hands and undid the hook
     and eye closure. She pulled down the zipper of her dress, this cunningly designed dress,
     more expensive than anything she had ever owned.
    It was going to happen anyway so she might as well be the one to do it.
     Not that she was a fatalist but the zipper slid down without protest and now the dress
     was hanging off her back. Taking off your clothes was easy. Putting them back on was the
     hard part. Now look. She was down to her skivvies and they were not clean. It
     didn’t matter. She could sing a song and nobody would notice. Children should be
     seen and not heard. The saying referred strictly to the girls, the girls who would grow
     up to be ladies.
    Not that she was a lady. She was, however, a product of her society. It
     was getting hard to think, hard to figure it out, because now there was wetness growing.
     A slick between her legs and the thrall of physical longing. Well, a woman felt the
     weight of a man looking, a woman liked to be wanted, and here were several men, here a
     group of men. Who could see the wetness for all she knew.
    She exhaled and tried to keep her head straight. Lust and the mistakes
     that were made in its wake. A trail of them,each bigger than the
     last. Desire was what plagued women, it was what tripped them up. She thought: a woman
     should seek out dry land. Be rid of lust at last. Which made nothing good or clear.
     Which only gathered around a woman, inutile and collecting dust. Men did not like the
     women who wanted it. Men would rather force themselves on the women who didn’t.
     The logic being dismal but clear.
    At the same time, a man would take what he could get and always did. One
     of the men stood up. She raised her head to look at him. He was plain, he was nothing as
     a man. He moved