Death in Midsummer & Other Stories (7 page)

'What time is it?' asked Kiyoko.

'A quarter to nine. Let's go out and cool off till nine.'

'I'm thirsty. The biscuit was so dry.' She fanned at her perspiring white throat with Kenzo's sports shirt.

'In a minute you can have something to drink.'

The night breeze was cool on the wide balcony. Kenzo yawned a wide yawn and leaned against the railing beside his wife. Bare young arms caressed the black railing, wet with the night dew.

'It's much cooler than when we came in.'

'Don't be silly,' said Kenzo. 'It's just higher.'

Far below, the black machines of the outdoor amusement park seemed to slumber. The bare seats of the merry-go-round, slightly inclined, were exposed to the dew. Between the iron bars of the aerial observation car, suspended chairs swayed gently in the breeze.

The liveliness of the restaurant to the left was in complete contrast. They had a bird's-eye view into all the corners of the wide expanse inside its walls. Everything was there to look at, as if on a stage: the roofs of the separate cottages, the passages joining them, the ponds and brooks in the garden, the stone lanterns, the interiors of the Japanese rooms, some with serving maids whose kimono sleeves were held up by red cords, others with dancing geisha. The strings of lanterns at the eaves were beautiful, and their white lettering was beautiful too.

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The wind carried away the noises of the place, and there was something almost mystically beautiful about it, congealed in delicate detail there at the bottom of the murky summer night.

'I'll bet it's expensive.' Kiyoko was once more at her favour-ite romantic topic.

'Naturally. Only a fool would go there.'

'I'll bet they say that cucumbers are a great delicacy, and they charge some fantastic price. How much?'

Two hundred, maybe.' Kenzo took his sports shirt and started to put it on.

Buttoning it for him, Kiyoko continued: 'They must think their customers are fools. Why, that's ten times what cucumbers are worth. You can get three of the very best for twenty yen.'

'Oh? They're getting cheap.'

The price started going down a week or so ago.'

It was five to nine. They went out to look for a stairway to the coffee shop on the third floor. Two of the biscuits had disappeared. The other was too large for Kiyoko's very large handbag, and protruded from the unfastened clasp.

The old lady, an impatient person, had arrived early and was waiting. The seats from which the loud jazz orchestra could best be seen were all taken, but there were vacant places where the bandstand was out of sight, beside the potted palm probably rented from some gardener. Sitting alone in a summer kimono, the old lady seemed wholly out of place.

She was a small woman not far past middle age, and she had the clean, well-tended face of the plebeian lowlands. She spoke briskly with many delicate gestures. She was proud of the fact that she got on so nicely with young people.

'You'll be treating me, of course, so I ordered something expensive while I was waiting.' Even as she spoke the tall glass arrived, pieces of fruit atop a parfait.

'Now that was generous of you. All we needed was soda water.'

Her outstretched little finger taut, the old lady plunged in with her spoon and skilfully brought out the cream beneath.

Meanwhile she was talking along at her usual brisk pace. 49

'It's nice that this pkice is so noisy and no one can hear us.

Tonight we go to Nakano - I think I mentioned it over the phone. An ordinary private house and - can you imagine it? -

the customers are housewives having a class reunion. There's not much that the rich ladies don't know about these days. And I imagine they walk around pretending the idea never entered their heads. Anyway, I told them about you, and they said they had to have you and no one else. They don't want someone who's all beaten up by the years, you know. And I must say that I can't blame them. So I asked a good stiff price and she said it was low and if they were pleased they'd give you a good tip.

They haven't any idea what the market rate is, of course. But I want you to do your best, now. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, but if they're pleased we'll get all sorts of rich customers. There aren't many that go as well together as you two do, of course, and I'm not worried, but don't do anything to make me

' ashamed of you. Well, anyhow, the woman of the house is the wife of some important person or other, and she'll be waiting for us at the coffee shop in front of Nakano station. You know what will happen next. She'll send the taxi through all sorts of back alleys to get us mixed up. I don't imagine shell blindfold us, but she'll pull us through the back door so we don't have a chance to read the sign on the gate. I won't like it any better than you will, but she has herself to consider, after all. Don't let it bother you. Me? Oh, I'll be doing the usual thing, keeping watch in the hall. I can bluff my way through, I don't care who comes in. Well, maybe we ought to get started. And let me say it again, I want a good performance from you.'

It was late in the night, and Kiyoko and Kenz5 had left the old lady and were back in Asakusa. They were even more exhausted than usual. Kenzo's wooden clogs dragged along the street. The billboards in the park were a poisonous black under the cloudy sky.

Simultaneously, they looked up at the New World. The neon pagoda was dark.

'What a rotten bunch. I don't thing I've ever seen such a rotten, stuck-up bunch,' said Kenzo.

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Her eyes on the ground, Kiyoko did not answer.

'Well? Did you ever see a worse bunch of affected old women?'

'No. But what can you do? The pay was good.'

'Playing around with money they pry from their husbands.

Don't get to be that way when you have money.'

'Silly.' Kiyoko's smiling face was sharply white in the darkness.

'A really nasty bunch.' Kenzo spat in a strong white arc.

'How much?'

'This.' Kiyoko reached artlessly into her handbag and pulled out some notes.

'Five thousand? We've never made that much before. And the old woman took three thousand. Damn! I'd like to tear it up, that's what I'd like to do. That would really feel good.'

Kiyoko took the money back in some consternation. Her finger touched the last of the million-yen biscuits.

'Tear this up in its place,' she said softly.

Kenzd took the biscuit, wadded the cellophane wrapper, and threw it to the ground. It crackled sharply on the silent, deserted street. Too large for one hand, he took the biscuit in both hands and tried to break it. It was damp and soggy, and the sweet surface stuck to his hands. The more it bent the more it resisted.

He was in the end unable to break it.

Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
Thermos Flasks

Kawase, who had been in Los Angeles for six months on company business, could have gone directly back to Japan, but was staying in San Francisco for a few days. Looking over the San Francisco
Chronicle
in his hotel, he suddenly wanted to read something in Japanese and took out a letter that had come to Los Angeles from his wife.

'Shigeru seems to remember his father from time to time. For no reason at all, he will get a worried expression and say:

"Where's papa?" The thermos flask still works very well when he is bad. Your sister from Setagaya was here the other day and said that she had never heard of a child who was afraid of thermos flasks. Maybe because it's old, the thermos flask leaks air round the cork, even when you put it down very gently, and makes noises like some old man complaining to himself. Shigeru always decides to behave when he hears it. I'm sure he is more afraid of the thermos flask than of his indulgent father.'

When he had finished rereading the letter, by now almost memorized, Kawase had nothing else to do. It was a bright October day, but all the lights were on in the lobby, which was most depressing. Old people, dressed in their best despite the earliness of the hour, made limp motions like waving seaweed.

The monocle of one old man caught the light as he read his newspaper in a deep armchair.

Weaving through the many-colourecl luggage of what appeared to be a party of tourists, Kawase left his key at the desk

- it was busy as always - and pushed open the heavy glass door.

He crossed Geary Street in the blinding autumn sunlight and turned down Powell Street, with its coffee shops and gift shops and cheap night clubs, and a sea-food restaurant that had the 52

prow of
a
clipper at the door. From far away he picked out
a
figure coming towards him.

Despite the distance, he knew immediately that it was
a
Japanese woman, not second or third generation, but native Japanese. It was not that she wore Japanese dress. Carefully imitating the conservative dress of the city, she had on a hat,
a
pearl necklace, and a good silver-mink coat. Yet her powdered face was a trifle too white, and though there were no obvious flaws in her dress, her determined walk had something unnatural about it. As a result the child whose hand she held was half-dangling in the air. _

'Well!' The exclamation was so loud that people turned to look, and the pointed toes of the high-heeled shoes darted at him in tiny steps. 'I recognized you right away. You can always tell a Japanese, even from the distance. You walk as if you ought to have a pair of swords in your belt.'

'And what do you think you look like?' Kawase too forgot the greetings one exchanges with an acquaintance not seen for
a
very long time. It was as if the distance between past and present, usually so precise, had shrunk a few inches.

He blamed the shrinkage on the foreign country. The Japanese system of measuring had gone askew. There were times when a sudden encounter abroad produced effusions that were cause for later regret, for the distance could not be forced back to normal afterwards. The difficulty was not limited to relations between men and women. Kawase had had the experience with other men, and men who were not particularly close friends.

It was more than evident that the woman had undergone rigorous training this last year or two in how to wear Western clothes and Western cosmetics. The results were considerable, but the uneasiness of the new arrival showed in the way she applied face powder. Western women think nothing of opening their compacts in public and scattering powder about, and yet there is a certain casualness in the results, with bare spots left showing beside the nose. There was nothing casual about this woman's make-up.

As they stood talking, they first explained what had brought them here.

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The exporter who was her patron came frequently to the United States, and he had sent her on an inspection trip >pre-paratory to opening a new sort of Japanese restaurant in" San Francisco. She would probably become the manager, but it was not as if her patron were exiling an unwanted mistress. Rather she felt as she might if he were to open an inn for her in Atami or some other resort near Tokyo. He was an entrepreneur on the heroic scale.

The child was growing impatient.

'Let's have a cup of tea.' The woman spoke quite as if they were walking down the Ginza together. Kawase agreed, since he had nothing else to do, but he did not know what to call her.

Asaka or Faint Perfume, her professional name as a geisha some five years before, would scarcely do.

2
The coffee shop was not of the elaborate sort they might have found on the Ginza. A noisy dining-room for short orders, a long counter winding around the centre, a noisy shop selling tobacco and gifts, and nothing more. Kawase lifted the little girl to a stool at the counter. It was the natural arrangement to put her between them and talk over her head. She was a silent child, and her weight and warmth left a sort of faint, pleasant recollection in the muscles of Kawase's arms.

There were no other Orientals in the place. The stainless steel round the service window clouded with steam and quickly cleared again, reflecting the white aprons of the waitresses.

They were all middle-aged women heavily made up. Though they exchanged brief greetings with regular customers they were not quick to smile.

'Clark Gable's wife is in San Francisco,' said the blonde woman on Kawase's left. 'I met her at a party.'

'Oh? She must be getting along in years.'

Turning half an ear on the conversation, Asaka took off her coat and bundled it around her hips. Only at the nape of the neck, which she no longer needed to worry about as she had as a geisha, did she show the easy negligence of the professional 54

woman turned amateur again. She wore her hair up, and Kawase was startled at how dark the skin was.

'They aren't very friendly but they do work hard,' said Asaka in a loud voice, motioning to the waitresses with her eyes.

KaWase was pleased to see in the roving eyes how enthusiasm for her new work took in everything around her. She had always been beautiful, he thought, when he had been able to look at her as if he were watching a distant fire.

Delighted at being able to speak Japanese, Asaka chattered on about the preparations for her trip to the United States. First she had learned English from her patron. She had quite given up Japanese music, both old and popular, and devoted all of her spare time to linguaphone records. She had adopted Western clothes, which she had earlier worn only in the worst of the summer heat, and she had made daily trips to an expensive seamstress. She had asked her patron for advice and instruction on all the colours and designs. It appeared that the patron was not a man to make a clear distinction between lechery and education, and he could not have had better material than Asaka for building a woman to his taste. She may have danced the mambo in kimono in night clubs, but never before, it would seem, had a man so assiduously instructed her in 'the West'.

And never before had a man found a woman who responded more favourably.

Their orders came as she was finishing the long story. With a stiff, perfunctory smile, the waitress slammed a vanilla milk shake before the wide-eyed little girl. The glass must have held all of a pint.