The Sound of the Mountain (22 page)

Shuichi looked away in displeasure.

The rain stopped during the day and began again in the evening. Tokyo was wrapped in a heavy fog.

When he left the restaurant after a business dinner, he found himself in the predicament of having to see the geisha home in the last automobile.

Two elderly geisha and Shingo were side by side, and three young ones sat on their knees.

‘Please.’ Shingo put his hand to the front of the girl’s obi.

‘If you’ll excuse me, then.’ Reassured, she settled in his lap. She was four or five years younger than Kikuko.

He meant to write her name down in his memorandum book once he was on the train. It was only a passing thought, however, which he seemed likely to forget.

Kikuko was the first to read the newspaper that morning.

Rain had apparently blown into the mailbox. She dried the paper over the gas as she was cooking breakfast.

Sometimes, when he was awake early, Shingo went for the newspaper and took it back to bed with him; but now going for it seemed to have become Kikuko’s work.

Usually he saw the newspaper only after Shuichi had left for the office.

‘Father, Father,’ Kikuko called softly through the door.

‘What is it?’

‘If you’re awake, would you come out for a minute?’

‘Is something wrong?’

Alarmed by the tone of her voice, he got up immediately.

She was standing on the veranda with the newspaper in her hand.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Mr Aihara is in the paper.’

‘Has Aihara been taken in by the police?’

‘No.’ Retreating a step, she handed him the paper.

‘It’s still wet.’

He reached for it, reluctantly. It sagged limply from his hand. Kikuko held it up for him.

‘I can’t see. What happened to Aihara?’

‘It was suicide with a woman.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘He will probably be saved, it says.’

‘Wait a minute.’ He started off, leaving the newspaper with Kikuko. ‘I suppose Fusako is here?’

‘Yes.’

It was scarcely likely that Fusako, who had gone to bed here with her two children late the night before, had committed suicide with Aihara, or that she would be in the paper.

Looking at the wind-driven rain outside the toilet window, Shingo sought to calm himself. The drops fell in rapid succession from the long leaves of pampas grass at the foot of the mountain.

‘It’s a real downpour. Not the usual thing for June.’

In the breakfast room, he took up the newspaper, but before he could begin reading his glasses slipped down over his nose. Snorting in annoyance, he took them off and rubbed impatiently at the bridge of his nose. It was damply unpleasant.

His glasses slipped down again as he was reading the short article.

The incident had occurred at Rendaiji Spa on the Izu Peninsula. The woman was dead. She was twenty-five or -six and had the look of a maid or waitress, but had not been identified. The man seemed to be a drug addict. The probability was that he would be saved. Because of his addiction and because there was no suicide note, there was a suspicion that he had himself been playing a game and had lured the woman on.

Shingo clutched at his glasses, which had slipped to the tip of his nose, as if to give them a cuffing. He did not know whether he was angry that Aihara had tried suicide or angry that his glasses slipped.

Rubbing at his face, he went off to the washstand.

The newspaper said that Aihara had given the inn a Yokohama address. Fusako was not mentioned.

The article was thus unrelated to Shingo’s family.

Perhaps the registration was false, and Aihara was in fact a vagrant. And perhaps Fusako was no longer his wife.

He washed his face before he brushed his teeth.

Was it only sentimentality that left him troubled and confused at the thought that Fusako might still be Aihara’s wife?

‘Is this what they call letting time take care of things?’ he muttered to himself.

Had time finally brought the solution he had so put off seeking?

But might it not be that Shingo had had no recourse other than to hope for desperate action on Aihara’s part?

He did not know whether Fusako had pushed Aihara to destruction, or whether Aihara had led her into misery. There were no doubt those whose nature it was to push their partners into misery and destruction, and those whose it was to be led into misery and destruction.

‘Kikuko,’ he said, going back into the breakfast room and sipping at hot tea. ‘You knew, didn’t you, that Aihara mailed us a divorce notice five or six days ago?’

‘Yes. You were furious.’

‘That I was. And Fusako said there was a limit to the insults a person could take. But maybe he was getting ready for suicide. He wasn’t pretending, he meant to kill himself. I imagine he just took the woman along for company.’

Kikuko wrinkled her beautiful eyebrows and did not answer. She had on a striped silk kimono.

‘Would you get Shuichi up, please?’

The retreating figure seemed taller than usual, perhaps because of the broad vertical stripes.

‘So Aihara did it?’ Shuichi took up the newspaper. ‘Has Fusako sent in the notice?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Not yet?’ Shuichi looked up. ‘Why not? Send it in this morning. We won’t want to be sending in a divorce notice from a corpse.’

‘But what about the children? Aihara said nothing about them, and they’re too young to decide for themselves which family they want to be in.’

The divorce notice, with Fusako’s seal on it, had been going to and from the office in Shingo’s briefcase.

He had occasionally sent money to Aihara’s mother. He had thought to have the same messenger take the divorce notice to the ward office, but he had delayed from day to day.

‘They’re here, and you can’t do a damned thing about it. I imagine the police will be coming.’

‘What for?’

‘Looking for someone to hand Aihara over to.’

‘I don’t think so. I think that must have been exactly why he sent the notice.’

Banging the door open, Fusako came in, still in her night kimono.

She ripped the newspaper to pieces and flung it away after only glancing at it. Though she had put more than enough strength into the ripping, it did not rebound when she threw it. Falling to the floor on her knees, she pushed violently at the fragments.

‘Close the door, please, Fusako,’ said Shingo.

He could see the sleeping children through the open door.

Her hands trembling, Fusako tore the newspaper into smaller pieces.

Shuichi and Kikuko were silent.

‘Fusako. Do you feel like going for Aihara?’

‘No!’ Raising herself on an elbow, she turned and glared at Shingo, her eyes rolled upwards. ‘How do you feel about your daughter, Father? You coward. Seeing your own daughter into this, and not upset, not the least little bit. Swallow your pride and go for him yourself. You be the one to do it. Who was it that married me to a man like that?’

Kikuko went off to the kitchen.

Shingo had only said what floated into his mind; but he continued to think that if Fusako went for Aihara in this extremity, the two might come together again, they might make a new start. Human beings were capable of such things.

There was nothing more in the newspaper to tell them whether Aihara was dead or alive.

Since the ward office had accepted the divorce notice, it would seem that he was not registered as dead.

Or if he was dead, had his identity not been established? It hardly seemed likely. There was his lame mother. Even if she had not seen the newspaper, someone among their acquaintances and relatives would surely have noticed. Shingo concluded that Aihara had been saved.

But, having taken in Aihara’s two children, was it enough for him just to conclude? For Shuichi the answer was clear, but Shingo himself still had doubts.

The two children were now Shingo’s responsibility. Shuichi apparently did not consider the fact that they might one day be his.

Quite aside from the worry of rearing and educating the children, it would seem that what chance Fusako and the children had had for happiness had been cut in half; and was that fact too a part of Shingo’s responsibility?

As he sent off the divorce notice, Shingo thought of the woman with Aihara.

A woman had died, that much was certain. What were the life and death of a woman?

‘Come back and haunt us,’ he muttered to himself. Startled, he added: ‘And what a stupid life you had.’

If Aihara and Fusako had gone on living together as an ordinary husband and wife, the woman need not have died; and so it was not impossible to call Shingo himself a murderer by remote control. Should there not then come into his mind pious thoughts about the dead woman?

But there was no way of conjuring up her image. Suddenly he saw Kikuko’s baby. He could not of course see the face of a baby disposed of so early in pregnancy. Still he pictured the varieties of beauty in children.

The baby had not been born; and was he not then twice a distant murderer?

Unpleasantly wet days went on, when even his glasses seemed damp and clammy. He felt a heaviness in his right chest.

The sun blazed forth during lulls in the June rains.

‘The house that had sunflowers last summer,’ said Shingo as he stepped into his trousers. ‘This year it has some white flower, I don’t know the name of it. Something like a Western chrysanthemum. Four or five houses in a row have the same flower. They must have arranged it. Last year they all had sunflowers.’

Kikuko stood in front of him, holding his coat.

‘I imagine it’s because the sunflowers were blown over in the storm.’

‘Probably so. Haven’t you grown a little, Kikuko?’

‘I’ve been getting taller since I came here, but lately I’ve begun to shoot up. Shuichi was very surprised.’

‘When?’

Flushing scarlet, Kikuko stepped behind him to help him into his coat.

‘I thought you were taller, and it wasn’t just the kimono. It’s a good idea to keep growing for years after you’re married.’

‘I’ve been too small. A late bloomer.’

‘Not at all. I think it’s splendid.’ Shingo did feel something splendidly fresh in this new blossoming. Had Kikuko so grown that Shuichi noticed the difference when he held her in his arms?

It also seemed to Shingo, as he left the house, that the lost life of the child was growing in Kikuko herself.

Squatting at the edge of the street, Satoko was watching some little girls of the neighborhood play house.

Shingo too stopped to watch. He looked admiringly at the neatly clipped mounds of grass on the abalone shells and
yatsude
leaves they were using as dishes.

Dahlia and marguerite petals, also cut into fine bits, had been added for color.

They had spread a straw mat, over which marguerites cast a heavy shadow.

‘Marguerites. That’s what they are,’ said Shingo, remembering.

Marguerites had been planted before the several houses that had last year had sunflowers.

It seemed that Satoko was too young to be admitted to the company.

‘Grandfather.’ She followed after him.

He led her by the hand to the corner of the main street. There was summer in the figure running back toward home.

Natsuko, her white arms bare, was polishing the office windows.

‘Did you see the newspaper this morning?’ he asked lightly.

‘Yes.’ The word was, as usual, dull and heavy.

‘The newspaper. Which paper was it, I wonder?’

‘Which newspaper?’

‘I don’t remember which newspaper it was, but some sociologists at Harvard University and Boston University sent out a questionnaire to a thousand secretaries, asking what it was that gave them the greatest pleasure. Every last one of them said that it was being praised when there was someone around to hear it. Every last one of them. Are girls the same in the East and in the West? How is it with you?’

‘But wouldn’t it be embarrassing?’

‘Embarrassing things and pleasant things often go together. Isn’t it that way when a man makes a pass at you?’

Natsuko looked down and did not answer. Not the sort of girl one often comes upon these days, thought Shingo.

‘I imagine that’s how it was with Tanizaki. I should have praised her more often when there were people around.’

‘Miss Tanizaki was here,’ said Natsuko awkwardly. ‘At about eight-thirty.’

‘And?’

‘She said she’d come again at noon.’

Shingo sensed the approach of unhappiness.

He did not go out for lunch.

Eiko stood in the door. She was breathing heavily and seemed on the edge of tears.

‘No flowers today?’ Shingo hid his uneasiness.

She approached him solemnly, as if reprimanding him for his own want of solemnity.

‘You want me to get rid of her again?’ But Natsuko had gone to lunch and he was alone.

He was offered the startling news that Shuichi’s woman was pregnant.

‘I told her she must
not
have the baby.’ Eiko’s thin lips were trembling. ‘I got hold of her yesterday on the way home from work, and told her so.’

‘I see.’

‘But isn’t that right? It’s too awful.’

Shingo had no answer. He was frowning.

Eiko was thinking of Kikuko.

Kikuko, Shuichi’s wife, and Kinu, his mistress, had become pregnant the one after the other. The sequence was of course not impossible, but it had not occurred to Shingo that his own son could be the agent. And Kikuko had had an abortion.

‘Would you see whether Shuichi is here, please. If he is, ask him to come in for a minute.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Eiko took out a small mirror. ‘I’d be ashamed to have him see me this way,’ she added, somewhat hesitantly. ‘And then Kinu will find out that I’ve been bringing stories.’

‘I see.’

‘Not that I’d mind having to leave the shop.’

‘Don’t do that.’