Quicksand (10 page)

I couldn't refuse that either, and he immediately called to Mitsuko through the sliding door.

“She understands everything,” he assured her. “Please come out!”

A little while before, I had heard a rustling sound beyond the door as she seemed to be putting on the kimono, but by now it was deadly silent, as if she was straining to hear what we were saying. A few minutes after he called to her, the door finally began to open. Little by little, an inch or two at a time, the door slid open, and then Mitsuko appeared, her eyes reddened and swollen from crying.

I wanted to see her expression, but the moment our eyes met she dropped her gaze and slipped quietly down to sit nestled-in the young man's shadow. I only saw her bite her lip—saw those swollen eyelids, the long lashes, the elegant line of her nose—as she sat with both hands tucked into her sleeves, leaning in a kind of abandoned pose, her body twisted, the skirt of her kimono gaping in disarray. And as I looked at Mitsuko sitting there, I was reminded that this very kimono was one of our matching pair, and I thought of the time we ordered them and of how we put them on to have our picture taken together. My anger flared up again: Oh, I should never have had that kimono made! I wanted to fly at her and rip it to shreds—really, if we had been alone I might have done just that!

Watanuki seemed to sense this, and before we could say a word he urged us to get ready to leave and went to change clothes himself. Afterward, in spite of the protests of the hotel staff, he insisted on giving them some of the money I'd brought, to settle the bill. And, intent on avoiding the least risk, he had another request for me:

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Kakiuchi . . . I'm sorry to trouble you, but I think it would be best if you made a phone call now to your own house, and to Mitsuko's too.”

I'd been worried about things at home myself, so I telephoned our maid and asked her: “Have you heard anything from Mitsuko's family? I'm just about to take her back, and then I'll come home.”

“Yes,” she replied, “there was a phone call a little while ago, but I didn't know what to tell them. So I didn't say anything about the time, just that you both went in to Osaka.”

“Has my husband gone to bed?”

“No, he's still up.”

“Tell him I'll be home soon,” I said.

Then I called Mitsuko's house. “We went to the movies at the Shochiku tonight,” I told her mother when she came to the phone, “and after that we were so hungry we dropped in at the Tsuruya restaurant. It's getting awfully late; I'll bring Mitsuko back right away.”

Mitsuko's mother only said: “Oh, is that what happened? It's so late that I telephoned your house.” From the way she spoke, it was clear she hadn't heard anything from the police.

Things seemed to be turning out well, and we decided to leave by taxi as soon as possible. The young man had only about half of the thirty yen left, but he began passing out tips to the inn servants to make sure there would be no further trouble, telling them just what to say in case of any investigation by the authorities. Even at such a time he seemed incredibly thorough. Finally we left—I had arrived a little after ten and had spent about an hour there, so it must have been past eleven. Then I remembered I'd had Ume wait for me, and I went out and called to her—she was walking up and down the little street—and had her get in the taxi. Watanuki calmly climbed in too, declaring: “I'll come along part of the way.”

Mitsuko and I were side by side in the back seat, and Ume and Watanuki perched on the little folding seats facing us. All four of us sat there across from each other without a word as the taxi sped along. When we came to the Muko Bridge, Watanuki at last broke the silence.

“What do you want to do?” he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “I wonder if you shouldn't be coming home on the train. . . . How about it, Mitsuko?” he asked. “How far do you want to go by taxi?”

That was because Mitsuko lived only five or six hundred yards from the Ashiyagawa station, in the hills west of the river, near the famous Shiomizakura cherry grove. Still, it was a fearfully dangerous road through a lonely pinewoods where there'd been many rapes and robberies; when Mitsuko came home at night, even along with Ume, she always took a taxi from the station. I suggested changing taxis at Ashiyagawa, but Ume said that would never do, the local drivers knew them, so we ought to get another taxi before that.

All this time Mitsuko kept silent. Occasionally she gave a little sigh and fixed her gaze on Watanuki, across from her, as if telling him something in secret. He looked back at her the same way and said: “Well, maybe we ought to leave this taxi at Narihira Bridge.”

I knew very well why he was proposing that. The path to the Hankyu station from the bridge was dangerous too, along an embankment with a row of huge pines, not the sort of place for three women to walk alone. Watanuki simply wanted to be with Mitsuko as long as possible, so he thought of getting out of the taxi and seeing us to the station to find another one. The fact that he knew the bridge and the way to the train, even though he'd said he lived near the Tokumitsu shop in Semba, must have been because they had walked there together often. It made me want to tell him: We can't let anyone see us with a man! If it's just the three of us, we can make some excuse—you ought to go on home. You said
I
should see her to her house, so if you're not leaving, I'll leave myself.

But Ume chimed in, agreeing with everything he proposed. “That's a good idea! Let's do that!” She seemed to be playing into his hands. “It's a lot of trouble for you, but you wouldn't mind coming with us as far as the Hankyu station?”

I began to think Ume was in on the plot. When we left the taxi at the bridge and headed down the pitch-black path along the embankment, she said: “It'd be scary to walk here in the dark without a man along, wouldn't it, Mrs. Kakiuchi?” And she made a point of buttonholing me and telling me how this or that young girl had recently been attacked along this path; meanwhile she saw to it that we kept well ahead of Watanuki and Mitsuko. They were a dozen yards or so behind us, still talking about something—I could barely hear Mitsuko's replies, but she seemed to be agreeing with him too.

Watanuki left us in front of the station, and we three lapsed into silence again as we went by taxi from there to Mitsuko's house.

“My, my!” her mother exclaimed, coming out to meet us. “Why did you ever let it get so late?” She seemed awfully apologetic toward me and thanked me profusely. “I'm sorry we're always causing you so much trouble.”

Both Mitsuko and I looked uneasy, afraid we might betray ourselves if the talk went on too long, so when her mother offered to call a taxi for me, I told her I'd had ours wait—and almost fled from the house.

I took the Hankyu back to Shukugawa again and went from there to Koroen by taxi, arriving home just at midnight. Kiyo came to greet me at the door.

“Has my husband gone to bed yet?” I asked.

“He was up till a little while ago,” she replied, “but now he's in bed.”

That's good, I thought. Maybe he's gone to sleep without knowing I'm back. I opened the bedroom door as quietly as I could and tiptoed in. There was an open bottle of white wine on the bedside table, and my husband seemed to be sleeping peacefully, with the blanket drawn up over his head. Since he was a poor drinker and hardly ever took a drink at bedtime, I supposed he must have had some wine because he was too worried to sleep.

I crept stealthily into bed beside him, trying not to disturb his quiet breathing, but couldn't go to sleep myself. The more I brooded over what had happened, the more bitter and angry I became, until my heart seemed lacerated by rage. How can I manage to avenge myself? I thought. No matter what, I'll make her suffer for it! By then I was so agitated that I found myself reaching out to the table for a half-full glass of wine, and I drank it down in one gulp. Anyhow, I wasn't used to drinking either, and I was so worn out from that hectic evening that the wine went right to my head. It wasn't a pleasant feeling—suddenly I had a splitting headache, as if all the blood in my body had rushed there, and I felt nauseous in the pit of my stomach. Gasping for breath, I was on the verge of crying out: How
dare
you all try to make such a fool of me! Just wait and see! But even as that thought obsessed me, I realized that my heart was beating wildly, like the throb of sake being poured from a cask; soon I noticed that my husband's heart was throbbing the same way and that his hot breath was coming out in gasps too. Our breathing and our palpitations grew more and more violent, in the same rhythm, till it seemed that both our hearts were about to burst, when all at once I felt my husband's arms tight around me. The next moment his panting breath was even nearer and his burning lips grazed my earlobe: “I'm glad you're home!”

Somehow that made tears well up in my eyes, and I burst out: “I've been so humiliated!” Then, racked with sobbing, I turned and clung to him, repeating “Humiliated! Humiliated!” over and over, and I rocked his body fiercely in my arms.

“What is it?” he asked gently. “Who humiliated you? Please, tell me what's wrong—I can't understand you if you're crying, can I? What happened?”

As he spoke, he stroked my tears away, soothing and calming me, but that only made me even more wretched. I was overwhelmed by remorse. Ah, how good he is! I thought. I deserved my punishment. . . . I'll cling to his love from now on, all the rest of my life, and have nothing more to do with her.

“I'll tell you about tonight,” I said, “but please do forgive me.”

In the end, I told my husband everything.

I FELT I HAD
had a complete change of heart. The next morning I got up two hours earlier than my husband and went out to the kitchen to prepare his breakfast, after which I carefully laid out his clothes. . . All those tasks that I'd been in the habit of leaving to the maid I now bustled about taking care of myself.

“Aren't you going to school today?” he asked, while he was tying his necktie at the mirror before leaving for the office.

“I don't think I'll go there anymore,” I said, as I stood behind him helping him into his coat. Then I sat down and began folding up the kimono he had just taken off.

“Why not? There's no reason to stop entirely, is there?”

“It's no use going to a school like that . . . and I'd hate to come across somebody I don't want to see again either.”

“Hmm. Well, in that case, maybe you ought to stop.” My husband seemed grateful but also a little anxious, as if he felt sorry for me. “That isn't the only school around, you know,” he went on sympathetically. “If you want to study painting, why not look for a real art school? I like going to the city together in the mornings too.”

But I refused. “From now on, I don't want to leave the house. I'm sure I wouldn't get anything out of it, wherever I went.”

Beginning that very day, I stayed home working hard from morning till night, determined to be a model housewife. As for my husband's feelings, he seemed delighted by the change in me. Willful as I had been, now I was like a new person. And yet he clearly wanted to return to our old life of going happily back and forth to Osaka together. I, too, wanted to be with him all the time. Apart, I might be subject to wicked fantasies, I thought, but as long as I could see him there beside me, I'd be able to forget Mitsuko. . . . But no, much as I wanted to go out with him, what if I happened to come across her in the street? If I did, I was sure I wouldn't say a word to her, but still, what
would
I do if we suddenly came face-to-face? I'd go pale, and tremble, and be rooted to the spot. I might faint, even at my own doorstep.