With My Little Eye (11 page)

Walking through the falling dusk I was lost in a fantasy. I had wandered out for a stroll along the canal. She was leaning over one of the little, arched wooden bridges. I came up behind her so stealthily that she did not hear me. ‘Betty.’ She swivelled round. She cried out with pleasure. ‘You!’ Now we were seated side by side on a bank, its grass yellow-brown because of the unseasonable drought of the last few days, staring at the
glimmering
water in silence. I placed a hand on the back of her neck. I moved it round and down. I inserted it into her
broderie anglaise
blouse and cupped one of the small, uptilted breasts that I had all but glimpsed below its deep vee. I circled a nipple with a forefinger. She gave a little sigh and upturned her head…

The barking of a dog snapped the delicately spun thread of this reverie. A tiny man in kimono and wooden clogs was straining to restrain a huge German shepherd that, I suddenly realised in a moment of panic, was making, upreared on the end of his chain and baring its fangs, for
me
. The man peered through thick granny glasses while still struggling with the dog. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ Suddenly the dog became placid, even friendly. It wagged its tail, and then snuffled at something squashed and black – a bird? a rat? a turd? – lying in the middle of the path beside me. ‘Sorry,’ the man repeated.

After the intensity of the heat outside even at dusk, the
air-conditioned
bedroom seemed glacial. Although it was only a
few minutes past nine, Laura was asleep. Mark was also asleep in his cot, both fists tightly clenched as though to steel himself for some ordeal. On a table there rested the tray on which Joy had presumably set out a cold supper for Laura before leaving for home on her old-fashioned bicycle, with its high, wing-like handlebars, that made her sit so imposingly erect.

I began to take off my sweat-saturated clothes, dropping them at random to the floor instead of placing them carefully over the back of a chair. As I did so, I felt the mounting
insistence
of an erection. I approached the bed, then halted. I sniffed under one armpit, then the other. I turned away and made for the huge, high-ceilinged bathroom with its once white but now cracked and murky tiles covering every wall. I took the bottle of Caron down from the shelf above the washbasin and splashed some on to myself. I now associated its scent with making love to Laura. As that scent entered my nostrils and then coiled, snake-like, through my whole being, my desire for her
intensified
to such a degree that I all but ran back to the bedroom. For a moment I stared down at her. Then I jerked back the sheet that covered her naked body.

She stirred briefly as I lay for a few seconds against her, spoon-fashion, right hand to one of her breasts. As I lifted my left arm and moved my left hand up between her legs from behind, she jerked away from me, and rolled over to the far end of the double bed that she was always saying we must have replaced since it sagged so much. Then she sat up.

‘Stop!
Stop
! What the hell are you doing?’ Her hair was tousled, her eyes squinted with extraordinary malevolence.

‘Oh, come on. Come on.’

‘
No
!’

‘But look – it’s an age –’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ She glared at me. ‘And you
stink
!’

I thought that she was complaining of sweat. But then she went on, ‘Why do you have to splash that awful stuff all over you? I loathe it.’

She holds out the sweater for my inspection.

‘I’ve never finished anything so quickly. When you were in hospital, I worked incessantly on it – except when I visited you.’

There is a harsh, metallic blue thread glinting from it. With sinking heart I know already that I do not like it and that I will wear it only to make her happy.

‘When you were away, I didn’t seem to want to do any of the usual things – read, go the cinema, see friends. I didn’t even want to go to the shops and you know how I usually love to do that. I missed you, you know.’ She stares at me over the top of the sweater with suddenly woebegone eyes. ‘If you were to go first, I really think I’d make an end of it all.’

‘What are you talking about? Don’t be stupid.’

She nods emphatically.

‘Anyway Dr Szymanovski told me that there was no reason why I shouldn’t go on living for years and years. There are all these new drugs that I’m on – six different ones.’

‘Yes, I’ve bought you a special dispenser for them. So we can be certain you take them regularly. I’m going to sort that out in a moment.’

‘You think of everything.’ Once again this thinking of everything both wearies me and fills me with gratitude.

‘Try it on! Come on!’

She shakes the sweater at me and I take it from her. I know already that, even apart from that metallic blue, there is going to be something else wrong with it. I slip one arm into it and then struggle to slip in the other.

‘Shall I help you?’

‘No, no, I’m perfectly capable of…’ I go over to the pier glass and survey myself. My cheeks have sunken in and have a shiny, grey look. My eyes seem unnaturally large. My hair, sticking up in thin wisps, needs cutting. The sweater is far too long. It reaches almost to my knees.

I turn to her. ‘Wonderful!’

‘You don’t think it’s too long?’

‘No, no. Of course not. I don’t like sweaters short. They make me look even more pear-shaped than I am.’

‘Sure?’

‘Absolutely sure!’

I go over to her and kiss her gently, fleetingly on the mouth. ‘You spoil me, you know. You always have done.’

Like an over-exacting, over-strict parent, I have never spoiled her.

Miss Morita, in a white linen suit that I had not seen before and the straw hat with the jauntily uptilted brim that I had seen all too often, had called for me. Joy left her standing in the open doorway as she came to tell me, ‘That Japanese lady is here.’ She said it in a grimly disapproving voice. She knew Miss Morita’s name perfectly well, having met her over at Mrs Kawasaki’s even before our arrival in the house and having seen her so often since, but when she spoke of her it was always ‘that Japanese lady’. I had begun to wonder whether the frequency with which I was seeing Miss Morita had convinced her that we must be having an affair.

I went out into the hall. ‘Oh, there you are! You’re early, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry.’ She hung her head, contrite.

‘Nothing to be sorry for. I was just struggling with an article that’s already begun to bore me and will probably bore any editor to whom I submit it.’

‘I don’t think anything that you write can be boring.’ There was a note of reprimand in her voice. ‘I am early because Mrs Kawasaki has not returned from hospital. When I visited her last night, she said that she would be home this morning. But now they must have decided to keep her. I rang and rang but no one came.’

‘Oh, I hope that doesn’t mean something serious. I really must go and see her.’

I had been saying that repeatedly. Nowadays I have,
inevitably
, become habituated to visiting sick and even dying friends as ancient as I am, but in those days even the disinfectant smell of a hospital filled me with dread and I shirked that duty. Laura, tougher and more conscientious, had already visited two or three times, as Mrs Kawasaki had been shuttled between
hospital
and home. But perhaps, if the car had not been air-
conditioned
, she too would have stayed away when the heat was so oppressive and she was constantly so lethargic and depressed.

‘I am sure a visit will make her happy.’

‘One moment.’ I walked down the long, narrow corridor to the kitchen, from which I could now hear Laura and Joy talking together. When talking to Joy, Laura’s voice sounded vigorous, interested and cheerful. It now rarely sounded like that when talking to me.

‘Would you like to come with us?’

‘Oh, no, not in the least.’

Swiftly I put a finger to my lips to shush her – as she so often did to shush me when Joy was in possible earshot. The rejection was so decisive that I feared that, if heard by Miss Morita, it might upset her.

‘It’s said to be the most extraordinary collection. Probably the finest in Japan. He’s built it up over many, many years.’

‘You know what I think of
ukiyo-e
. It’s just poster art.’

I wanted to retort that that was a thoroughly stupid and ignorant thing to say. But, largely because Joy was present, turning her head from Laura to me and then back again, as though watching an aggressively contested game of table tennis, I managed to restrain myself.

‘Oh, very well. But you’re missing something. It’s rare for him to show the collection to a stranger of no importance like me.’

‘Well, I’ll bear with that.’

As we drove down into the town, the icy blast of the air conditioner made Miss Morita hug herself in protection.

‘I wish I knew how to adjust this wretched air conditioner. One either boils or one freezes.’

‘It’s fine. Please don’t worry.’

She had the Japanese stoicism. ‘Giggle and bear it’ must be inscribed on every Japanese heart.

She began to tell me about the man whom we were about to visit. Mr Yamamoto was a businessman, with interests not merely in Japan but all over the world. His house was one of the oldest in the city. He also had an apartment in New York and a house in Paris. He talked little. Some people complained that he was rude. It was through a professor at Kyoto University, a friend both of his and of one of her cousins, that she had managed to get in touch with him to ask if he would show me his collection.

From its narrow frontage on a lane threading an area that looked like a slum, the thatched, outwardly dilapidated house looked far from impressive. A woman servant in kimono slid open the door to us, bowed and gestured to a row of slippers set out on the highly polished floor. As, clumsily, I tried to take off my laced shoes, I almost toppled over. The servant raised her hand to her mouth, stifling a titter. Then I sat down on the single step in front of me and removed them there.

For a long time, seated on cushions on the floor of a small, four-mat room, we waited. Then an elderly man, his
short-sleeved
, tie-less check shirt buttoned up to the neck and his too short grey linen trousers revealing bare, bony ankles, appeared soundlessly in the doorway. Miss Morita rose with practised elegance to her feet. I scrambled to mine. He was as
unimposing
as the frontage of his house.

After Miss Morita had introduced me, pointing to me with a hand held palm up, the fingers extended, as though she were proffering an invisible dish, Mr Yamamoto led us down a series of corridors so highly polished that at one moment my slippers skidded perilously. I soon realised, with amazement, how large the house was. From time to time, on left or right, one looked out on an exquisite little garden and heard from it the sounds of dripping water. The room at which we eventually arrived, at the end of the house farthest from the road, had an air
conditioner
in it. But, unlike the one that I had purchased, as noisy as our ancient refrigerator, this one was eerily silent.

He gestured to us to sit on either side of a low table. Then, with a tiny groan and an even tinier grimace, he lowered himself on to the cushion at its head.

Miss Morita began to translate – from time to time asking him, with head tilted in apology, to repeat something that she had failed at first to grasp. This, he began to explain, was the room in which he kept the best of his prints. There were a hundred – later Miss Morita told me that he had given the absolutely exact number – in this room. There were at least a thousand stored in other places.

What had first drawn him to the collecting of
ukiyo-e
? When Miss Morita translated my question, having until then been so remote, even chilly, he threw back his head and laughed, his mouth so wide open that I could see his uvula and the two
gold crowns on adjoining back molars. Fishing, he replied.
Fishing
? He nodded his head, enjoying my amazement. Yes, fishing. From an early age it had been his greatest pleasure. It still was. Once he had visited an English business associate merely to salmon-fish on his Scottish estate. Fish, particularly carp, often appeared in
ukiyo-e
. Did I know that? They were symbols of vigour and long life. He was clearly now enjoying telling me all this. That was why they so often appeared in pornographic prints. He had many such, he added with a sly smile. His interest in fish had extended to an interest in the erotic scenes of which they were a small part.

He unlocked cupboard after cupboard and delicately set down print after print, each in its transparent wrapper, on the highly polished mahogany of the table before me. It made me uneasy that he watched me so closely, eager to see my reaction, each time that a print replaced its predecessor. Miss Morita peered over my shoulder – sometimes muttering something in Japanese, sometimes emitting a gasp or sigh of admiration. I’d nod my head. ‘Beautiful.’ He understood that word, and
nodded
each time when I brought it out.

A tall, dignified woman in a dark brown kimono appeared almost without a sound. She was carrying a tray, with three tumblers of iced tea on it. She bowed each time as she set them down before us. She bowed again in turn from the doorway before she left. Miss Morita was later to tell me that this woman was Yamamoto’s wife. Her cousin had once pointed the couple out to her when they saw them in the distance in the Kabuki Theatre. ‘Strange he didn’t introduce his wife to us,’ I remarked, to receive the answer, ‘No, in Japan it is not strange.’

After Yamamoto had carefully replaced the last print set down on the table, we sipped our tea. He questioned me about my research and asked me whether I knew this or that foreign expert on Japanese art. In later years I was to encounter many of the people that he mentioned. Then I could merely shake my head in embarrassment or desperately say something like, ‘Well, I did once meet him for a moment at a lecture he was giving.’

He jumped to his feet. Now he had a surprise for me, Miss Morita translated. Would I be interested in seeing some of the erotic prints? He was in no way embarrassed or hesitant in making this proposal. Nor, surprisingly, was Miss Morita. I
shrugged. ‘Why not? Yes.’ Print succeeded print, with couples grimacing with effort as they neared a climax or lay back
beatifically
relaxed after they had attained it. Gravely he pointed out that the Japanese were the inventors of the close-up. See here – he pointed. Circled was a blow-up of a vagina. In another print the circle was around a cock magnified to the size of its owner’s head. Looking over my shoulder, Miss Morita was decorously composed. There was none of the jocularity that an English equivalent of Mr Yamamoto would have displayed in a similar situation. At one point he indicated an area of a print in which, a woman, her body unnaturally twisted, was clenching both teeth and buttocks at the moment of orgasm. ‘Beautiful.’ He said the word, in English, in a way that made it clear that he was not sharing my sexual excitement at the image but was merely drawing attention to the perfection of the line and the subtlety of the colour.

When we were once more in the car, Miss Morita gazed down at the card that he had handed to her on our departure. ‘He wishes you to have this. He likes you.’

‘Oh, I was probably only a tiresome interruption in a long day.’

‘No, no, he likes you. I am sure. That is why he gave me card for you. When he gave it, he said he wished see you again.’ She held out the card and I took it. It was printed on one side in Japanese and on the other in English. ‘When an important Japanese give you his card, he says, “Let us be friends.’”

I laughed. ‘It won’t be easy to be friends with someone who speaks not a word of English.’

‘I will translate!’ She gave her usual laugh, always too shrill to be wholly attractive, her hand over her mouth. ‘And you are learning Japanese.’

‘Very slowly.’

‘You must be patient. Japanese is difficult language. Very difficult.’

It was not the first time that she had told me that. Like most Japanese she derived pleasure from the belief that for a
foreigner
to learn to speak Japanese was an almost impossible task. Now that I have learned to speak it, I know the error of that view. To learn to write
kanji
is another matter.