The Snow Kimono (15 page)

He got to his feet. Went to stand on the slope behind her. He could see the girl
now. She had her back to him and was half-sitting, half-kneeling on her heels. She
was wearing sunglasses, but still she had her hand raised to shield her eyes. Something
in this gesture tugged at his memory, reminded him of something. Or someone. And
then he knew. This-
girl
-was-Natsumi. His heart leapt. Without thinking, he had already
taken two or three steps in her direction. Could it be? This girl, in the summer
dress and hat? He saw her wading out again
through the swell, saw her girlish legs,
her hand up to her head, her skirt hitched, saw her striding out towards the ball.
But that girl had seemed so young.

And yet, it
was
Natsumi.

Instantly, he began to reconfigure his future. Three days. It was still possible.
Just.

Natsumi was so preoccupied watching the children on the beach that when she turned
to reach for the book that lay at her side and saw the shadow on the sand advancing
on her, she started, and looked up.

Oh, she said. It’s you! You gave me such a fright.

She raised her hand once again to shield her eyes. He moved so that his shadow fell
across her face and she took her glasses off. He saw her frown.

Yes, it’s me, he said.

Oh, she said again.

I thought you’d gone.

Gone?

Yes. I went back to the house. But it was deserted. There was no one there.

No. I had to go back to Osaka for a few days, she said.

If only she would not frown. It was this, he thought later, her frown that undid
him.

I thought you might have changed your mind, he said.

Changed my mind?

Yes, about meeting me. He fidgeted on his feet for a moment.

Yes, she said.

She turned to look down at the children.

Yes?

Yes. I will meet you.

He hesitated. She had got to her feet, and was now standing there, looking into his
eyes.

When? she said, leaning down to pick up her shoes.

Tomorr…this evening, he said. What about this evening?

She did not answer. She looked up at him again.

At ten, he said.

Yes, ten. Ten would be perfect, she said. Just perfect.

Here, he said, I’ll write down the address of the inn I am staying at. He got out
his notebook. His pen. It’s The Nine-Tailed Fox, he said as he wrote. It’s small,
just beneath the mountain—

I know where it is, she said. It’s run by an old man whose name is Kenji, if I remember
correctly. I’ve been there once before.

He searched her face. Did she already know that he was staying there? She bent down
to pick up her mat. She folded it, placed it in her basket.

Well, Mr Ikeda. She smiled. Until this evening, then. She put out her hand.

Yes, this evening, he said, taking her hand in his.

She turned to go, then stopped. She must have seen him glance down to where the children
were still playing.

Oh, I see, she said. No, goodness no.

She stood looking at the children for what seemed a long time, as if she were imagining
some other, alternative life. The boy was chasing the girl. He had a bright red bucket
in his hands. A transparent arm of water suddenly leapt out from it to seize her
small arched back.

Oh no. Dear no, she said again. They’re not mine. That’s why I returned to Osaka,
she said. I had to take the children back. Their father had called to say he wanted
to take them on a holiday. To New York, can you imagine! How could I compete with
that? Once they’d gone, there was nothing more for me to do in Osaka, so I came back
here.

And then she was walking away from him, up the slope. He watched her disappearing
against the sky. First her back, her shoulders, then her pale straw hat. It was almost
as if she were sinking into the earth beneath the vacant blue sky. Then he too turned,
and began walking away from the beach, away from the children still playing there.

Once back at The Nine-Tailed Fox, he took out a sheet of his favourite paper:
My
dear Tadashi
, he wrote.
She’s back. Natsumi. We have arranged to meet. If only you
could see her!

Chapter 13

AFTERWARDS, he could barely remember her knocking on his door, she was so beautiful.
This older woman. Natsumi.

Then they were out on the balcony, a cup of the finest saké in their hands. The moon
was full. The light it shed glanced off the rooves of the houses below, out onto
the sea. Frogs were calling. Fireflies in ones and twos dipped into the shadowed
garden beneath them.

With Natsumi standing on the balcony in the lantern light, her back to the moon,
Katsuo thought she could easily have been a woman from another age, someone he’d
seen in a work by Utamaro, or Hokusai, or Kiyonaga. It made her seem all the more
unreal, inaccessible.

What a beautiful view, she said.

It had always troubled him, this tricky terrain, this uncharted territory in which
he often found himself, between the instant, as he was now, when he could be standing
on a balcony with
someone new, someone he wanted, and that later moment when the
two of them would both be lying naked on a bed. This prelude to desire realised,
this interregnum, he was no good at it. It
always
sent him to the brink.

And Natsumi, so calm, unhurried, so self-contained. Now leaning as she was against
the balustrade, listening to the idle chatter of the couple on the balcony beneath
them. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Perhaps Natsumi was here merely to pass a pleasant
hour or two, chatting, sipping his saké, thinking about who knew what.

Newlyweds, she said.

She turned back to look at him.

We could always bring the futon out here, she said. Pull the mosquito net around
the balcony.

He could not recall carrying the bedding out to the dimly lit, transparent tented
space. Natsumi standing, smiling. Then undressing. Themselves. Each other. The longed-for
moment—seeing her naked for the first time. Her body more complex, more beautiful,
than any he’d seen before. The echo of the girl she once was now made more ravishing
by the history written on her skin.

He knew immediately he had crossed a threshold. That he’d never go back to being
the Katsuo he’d been before he saw her.

Then he and Natsumi were lying on the bed. Her flesh against his flesh. Her lips
on his lips. Moving as though they were one. He could see the bright scattered stars
above her head. The pale, attentive moon. She was the centre of his universe, the
one making love to
him
. He had found what he had not known he was looking for.

At some point, Natsumi pushed away from him, her hands on his shoulders. Her movements
like small curling waves endlessly coming into shore. Below, he could hear the young
couple chatting, laughing. Softly. Oblivious. But when Natsumi first cried out, they
stopped. He and Natsumi stopped too. They floated there on the thin layer of words
that still lingered in the night air around them. Natsumi smiled down at him. He
heard a chair, or chairs, being moved. He imagined the young couple getting up and
walking to the edge of their balcony. He pictured them looking up, wondering if anyone
was really there, if they’d heard what they thought they’d heard. The first few tentative
words of a conversation interrupted drifted back up to them.

Natsumi began to move once more. The brazenness of what she was doing seemed to arouse
her. She began to whimper softly. All conversation below them instantly stopped.
Then, all at once, Natsumi was like a force unleashed. Katsuo heard the couple’s
hurried footsteps, the screen doors close. Then, all he could hear were Natsumi’s
urgent murmurings mingling with the night sounds now returned.

You know, she said later, I am twenty-eight years old, and my husband and I have
not shared the same bed for almost three years.

In the lamplight, with her kimono only half-covering her, Katsuo saw for the second
time what he had seen earlier, that her body had that strange beauty only experience
brings, in which every cell knows what still good thing the next moment might bring.

This is a beautiful kimono, Natsumi said, picking up one of its deep-blue seams.
She gathered up a flock of cranes in her hand. Just beautiful, she said.

You can keep it, he said. I bought it for you.

He sends me here, you know, my husband. To Shirahama. I’m sure he knows what I do.
I’m sure that’s why he does it.

She lay back on the bed. The kimono fell open. As she talked, she ran the tip of
a finger around one of her nipples distractedly, as if he wasn’t there.

I thought you were a governess, he said.

I am. At least, that’s how I feel. Now. You know, she said, the first time I came
here, I think my husband paid someone to seduce me. A young man, someone from his
firm.

She reached for her cup of saké. Took a sip. A drop escaped her lips, curved down
her chin and fell onto her breast.

Oh dear, she said.

She sat up a little. She dipped her finger into the tiny
tear-dropped pool on her
skin.

It never occurred to me to have an affair with him. I was still too troubled by my
husband’s withdrawal. Trying to understand what had brought it about. I
had
had
two children. But had my body not returned to its former youthfulness? I used to
stand in front of the mirror, trying to discover what had changed. I wished I had
kept a photograph of myself as I was when my husband first married me, so that I
could see the difference. Had I changed that much? Hadn’t I become more beautiful,
not less?

Not that my husband was not good to me. He was. He had become successful. He provided
for me. And our children. All my friends envy me. But they do not know how much I
still long for him to see me. To speak to me. To fracture the silence with a single
word.

I know it’s not going to happen. Not now, she said. The time for that has passed.
So now, each summer, I come here. And each summer I find someone who still finds
me attractive. And we spend a few nights, sometimes a few weeks, together. And I
will keep coming here until no one wants me. Until no one sees me. Until all I am
is myself.