The Snow Kimono (34 page)

He had not slept with Madeleine for so long he could not
remember how beautiful a
woman could be. Theirs had not been a union consummated in lust. They had sought
each other out in sorrow. This one time. There would, they knew, be no tomorrow.

I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to be there.

It drove her mad. The Madeleine that was lost to him.

They put her in the military hospital.

Where’s my son? I want my son.

Colonel Lemoine came to see him. In Algiers. In the empty house.

She needs to go home, Auguste. She’s not well. You understand. We’ll provide a nurse.
Someone to go with her. To look after her, and your child. To make sure she’s safe.

He saw her to the ferry. But she did not see him. She stood there with the child
in her arms, twisting in the wind. She seemed so thin. So alone. Then she was leaving,
with no farewell. She had brushed his arm away.

He went back, to the emptier house. To where time stopped.

You should go too, Auguste. Your work is done. It’s over now. Just pack your things.
You know what I mean. Make sure you leave no trace.

He had read accounts of people who had nearly drowned. How many said that they had
seen a strange white light, that they had not been afraid, that they had felt a state
of transcendent serenity, of acceptance, before they lost consciousness.

Perhaps this was true. Perhaps they did.

But all he could think of, when the third knock came, when Colonel Lemoine stood
unexpectedly in front of him again, and gave him the brutal news, was of his son
being ripped from his mother’s arms by the impact of the water as they hit. During
the night, unseen, the nurse asleep, Madeleine had fallen—or jumped, he would never
know—from the ferry that had come to take her home.

He sees his son beneath the water, sees his startled eyes looking uncomprehendingly
at his mother’s sorrowing face as she sinks unstruggling away. He sees the child’s
first impulse is to swim after her, but she is already lost to him. And his thin-ribbed
chest is already bursting, ballooning him up towards the surface, to the one slender
hope he has of hanging on to everything that this life has to give. But the surface
is no solace. It is all darkness. The boat is gone. No bright, twinkling lights.
He is alone. He bobs in the sea for a moment before the primal urge to kick kicks
in. Swim, it says. But swim to where? His child’s brain already knows it’s too late.
There is no one there. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing to save him. Not his mother.
Nor his father. Who was never there.

Part VII

MARTINE

Chapter 36

WHEN Jovert had finished telling Omura about his dead young son, Omura was sitting
by the window, with the first hint of dawn just registering on the curtains behind
him. He imagined Omura doing what he had sometimes done, closing his eyes as he listened,
so that his voice was the only thing that came to him.

He could see Omura’s profile. How the outer edge of his glasses caught the dawn’s
first glow.

Omura looked old now, insubstantial, as though he too were already just a memory.
No longer there.

Omura turned away from him. He reached up for his glasses. Took them off. He rubbed
his eyes. In the now pale light, against the window, Jovert saw what he was not meant
to see—a single teardrop momentarily meniscussed on the downward curve of Omura’s
glasses. He saw it holding on unsteadily in the early morning light, as though all
of Omura’s grief were
concentrated there. Then the drop let go. It fell slowly through
the air, slowly, slowly, until it disappeared back into him. Still Omura did not
speak.

This is her—Mathilde, he said.

How long had he waited before he handed Omura the crumpled photograph, after he had
told him not everything—there was never any point in confessing everything—but enough
to balance the ledger?

Omura pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, held the photograph up to the light.
Squinted. His hand was shaking, as if the photograph, this almost insubstantial thing,
was made of some newly discovered element of indescribable atomic weight, something
so heavy it could barely be held aloft.

This is her? Omura said. This is your daughter?

He looked at Jovert.

Yes, he said. That’s her.

And you will find her?

I’m not sure, he began to answer.

Of what?

Well, of many things. But I’m not sure that I want to go digging up the—

But she is your daughter, Omura interrupted. How could you not? How could you leave
this question unanswered?

Which question?

This one, he said.

Omura gestured around the room. Then he understood. Omura’s shaking hand meant
all
of this: in here, out there, out on the balcony, the streets. He meant every time
Jovert opened his door. He meant rue St Antoine, the newsstand, the Metro, Le Bar
l’Anise, the cold, mailbox-filled foyer, the lift. Everything that wasn’t him.

And he saw that Omura was right. This question had encircled him from the moment
he had opened the envelope. Like her photograph, he’d carried it with him wherever
he went. And it would be with him now, when he got up out of his chair. It would
follow him to Omura’s door. It would come with him up the stairs. It would be there
as he walked down the corridor to his apartment. And it would be waiting for him,
just inside his door.

She is your
daughter
, Omura said. Your daughter.

Chapter 37

YEARS later, Omura told him, long after my father had died, I went to visit his village.

They were sitting at Le Cormoran in Place des Vosges, catching the last of autumn’s
late-afternoon sun. Earlier they had gone to look at the plaque outside Victor Hugo’s
door.

We had moved to Osaka when I was a boy, and I had only been back two or three times
since.

My father’s village was famous for its forests, which spread up the sides of the
mountains that encircled it. In October and November it was possible to do a daylong
walk, a kind of pilgrimage, circling from west to east along the mountain rim, to
see the maple leaves, how they changed colour at different times of the day. Halfway
up the highest mountain was a shrine dedicated to the people from the village who
were killed in Hiroshima on the day the bomb was dropped.

I went in December, he said. Not having been to the shrine
since I was a child, I
decided to visit it again. I went late in the afternoon, the best time to see the
last leaves falling. To me, it was these falling leaves that were the most beautiful,
more beautiful than those that remained on the trees.

There were few people making the climb at that hour, and only a trickle making their
way back. The path was steep and I kept my eyes focused on the ground in front of
me, so that I did not lose my footing. I was about a third of the way up when I heard
a voice call my name.

Master Omura?

I looked up to see old Professor Todo standing on the stone landing just ahead of
me. He was leaning on a walking stick, taking a moment to catch his breath. He had
hardly changed. It was almost as if he himself had been preserved in stone.

I can see from the expression on your face, he said, that you have heard the news.

What news?

That I am dead. That I committed suicide years ago. I myself am not so sure that
that is the case. He was smiling at me.

I would have expected Professor Todo to be a bent and broken old man. Instead, he
seemed happy, happy in a way I had never seen him before.

He spoke of Katsuo.

I hear he has made a name for himself, he said. That he is now a famous writer. Ah,
Katsuo. Such an interesting boy. Always watching. Always observing. He nodded to
himself. Yes, Katsuo. Still the most brilliant student I ever had. I am pleased
that
he has done well. He shook his head.
Such
a brilliant boy. It is not always the case.

But Professor Todo, I said, taking the opportunity to ask the question I had always
wanted to ask. With respect, Katsuo betrayed you. After all you did for him, he still
betrayed you!

Yes, yes, he said, as if what I was saying was of no consequence whatsoever. But
Katsuo was like a son to me, the son I never had. I knew his father well, you know.
Very well. I’ve just been up there, chatting to him. He pointed with his stick up
the mountainside. When we were young, we were like brothers. And, well, Katsuo. It
was the least I could do. The money meant nothing to me.

The money?

But as soon as I said it, I knew. How stupid could I have been? The anonymous benefactor,
the person who had provided for Katsuo’s education, who had supported him from the
time he was a boy. The money had come from Professor Todo.

Did he know?

Did he know what?

Where the money came from?

Oh, I don’t think so. I had sworn his uncle to secrecy. No, I doubt that he knew.

And forgive me once again, Professor Todo, but you say you were just up there, chatting
to his father? At the shrine?

Yes, he said. Didn’t you know? His father was in Hiroshima on the day they dropped
the bomb. With his wife, Ayumi. Except that she had stayed on the outskirts of the
city, with relatives.
Only Haruki had gone into the city centre. They never found
his body. Ayumi died almost a year later, of radiation sickness. You know, Master
Omura, I once asked Ayumi to marry me, but she refused. She was already secretly
betrothed to Katsuo’s father. If only I had known. If only I had asked first. Life
could have been so different…So, on the first Monday of each month, I go up there
to say hello to him, and to Ayumi.

I could hear Katsuo’s voice: My father was killed in a bomb explosion. A bomb explosion!
I thought.

And you, Tadashi? What about you? I hear you have a legal practice in Osaka.

And I thought: How would he know that? I was only ever on the periphery of things.
Perhaps I frowned, looked away. When I turned back to him, his old grey eyes were
still fixed on mine. Something passed between us then, a moment of understanding.
I am not a fool, Tadashi, his eyes said. And I have never been a fool.