One Morning Like a Bird (38 page)

    ‘How happy he will be to see you,’ says Yuji.

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘And Emile.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Perhaps you will like Singapore.’

    ‘The English are dull,’ she says.

    ‘Dull?’

    ‘I don’t know. I’ve only met a few.’

    ‘Do you think he will learn to speak English there?’

    ‘Papa?’

    ‘Emile.’

    ‘Yes. I suppose he might.’

    There’s a movement at the window. ‘Coats on, girls!’ calls Miss Ogilvy. ‘The cars are here.’

    ‘They’re early,’ says Yuji.

    ‘And Japanese,’ says Alissa, hurriedly. ‘I’ll see to that. And I’ll tell him everything about you. I’ll make him proud.’

    The drivers come in. The smaller of the two turns down the corners of his mouth at the sight of so much luggage.

    ‘I should help,’ says Yuji.

    ‘You stay with your family,’ says Miss Ogilvy. And he stays, dumbly watching the bags being carried out, and now and then turning to meet Alissa’s gaze. The timing is very delicate. He can, he thinks, do this for another minute or two. Five at most, no more. The last bag is collected, lashed precariously to the roof of a car.

    Miss Ogilvy comes in, buttoning her coat. She looks slowly around the room, takes a large bunch of keys from her pocket. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks. They follow her out. Yuji carries Emile. When Alissa has sat herself in the back of the second car, when she has slid her stick beside her right leg, he leans down, and a little awkwardly, passes her the baby.

14

Forty-eight hours after the ship has sailed Yuji opens his eyes in a room he cannot remember having seen before. To the right, the direction he is facing, daylight seeps through a window of torn paper to show a pair of muslin sitting cushions, an old utility chest, a low table scattered with flasks and cups. He is not alone. From behind him comes the moist, arrhythmic rasp of snoring. He twists in the bedding, squints. A man is lying half a mat away. A large head, a pile of lank hair, an overcoat for a blanket. One arm is visible, one wrist. On the wrist is Yuji’s watch. Yuji shuts his eyes, sleeps again. The next time he wakes there is a woman standing above him, prodding him with her foot.

    ‘If you want to stay,’ she says, ‘you’ll have to settle your bill first.’

    He sits up, rubs his face, looks around.

    ‘Your friend left an hour ago. Said you’d pay his share.’

    He nods. He cannot speak yet. He is longing for some water.

    ‘Quite a party you had,’ says the woman, seeming, for the moment, to take pity on him. ‘You must be joining up, eh?’

    He nods again.

    ‘You want some tea? I’ll make you tea, but don’t try to run off without paying. People who do that round here end up in the water.’

    Round here? Round where?

    She leaves, draws the door shut. Yuji, finding he is already fully dressed, shuffles on his knees to the window, forces it wide, and looks out over the smoking, crooked back lanes of China Town. A breeze carries smells of boiling, of frying, of bar latrines. He belches acid, wonders for a moment if he is going to faint.

    ‘You’ve got it bad,’ says the woman, coming in with his tea. ‘Army life won’t be as hard as all that. Just think how proud your mama will be. And the girls, they don’t look twice at a man unless he’s got a uniform on.’

    She puts the bill under his cup. He finds, crumpled in different pockets, the money he needs. She counts it, counts the tip, raises the little plucked crescents of her eyebrows, and bows to him. ‘They’ll probably make you an officer,’ she says. ‘With your nice manners.’

    The house is a bar with rooms, a low-grade assignation house. Downstairs, a girl is wiping a dirty cloth over a dirty table. Yuji mutters his goodbyes, trips over a hen at the door, gets out. He hopes he will not meet his ‘friend’ again, the self-professed artist who, at some hour in some bar the previous day (the New Moon? The Red Sleeve?) attached himself to Yuji, listened to his story, and later, presumably to compensate himself for attending so respectfully to the troubles of a drunken stranger, decided to steal Yuji’s watch and hat.

    He takes the first train for Tokyo, reads, with hallucinatory attention, a woman’s magazine left behind on the seat (‘Why Mother-in-law Is Always Right’), then spends his last few sen on a tram from Tokyo Central to Hongo. In the vestibule, while he is shaking off his boots, Miyo appears.

    ‘How fortunate!’ she says, a delighted smile on her face. ‘He only arrived an hour ago. Or two hours. But anyway, he was here when the man with the big car came. I wouldn’t have known what to say. Have you lost your hat?’

    He goes past her into the Western room. The screens to the Japanese room are open. Father is in there, kneeling by the alcove, carefully wrapping incense burners in sheets of tissue paper.

    ‘Ah,’ he says, catching sight of Yuji. ‘Miyo didn’t seem to know when you would be back.’

    ‘Welcome home,’ says Yuji. ‘Please accept my apologies. I was not expecting you.’

    ‘I telephoned two nights ago.’

    ‘You did?’

    ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re here now.’

    ‘Are you well?’

    ‘Thank you. Yes.’

    ‘And Mother?’

    ‘Surprisingly well. The parcel on the table is a gift from her. Cinnamon biscuits. Easter biscuits. A recipe of old Yakumo’s.’

    ‘Mother has been baking?’

    ‘I should have taken her long ago. If I had realised how it would benefit her  . . .’

    Yuji looks at the parcel, touches it. He feels as though sake is seeping in a gum from his eyes, that he could, at any instant, become hysterical. He also feels quite calm. He picks up the envelope beside the parcel.

    ‘A young man in a theatrical uniform delivered it,’ says Father. ‘If you had been here a little sooner, you would have met him.’

    ‘There was a big car?’

    ‘Apparently. Miyo saw it.’

    ‘I think I have met him already.’

    ‘A highly unpleasant type.’

    ‘Yes. Shall I help you to wrap those?’

    ‘I’ve nearly finished.’

    Inside the envelope is an ivory card, a crest of some sort at the top, and below, in expensively printed calligraphy, an invitation to a private viewing of the Unit’s inaugural film,
Blood and Silence
, to be shown at 3 p.m. the following Friday at the residence of Mr Kaoru Ishihara.

    ‘I shall be going to Setagaya this evening,’ says Father. ‘When I spoke to Sonoko, she was not particularly encouraging.’

    ‘No,’ says Yuji. It is two weeks since he visited Grandfather. Did Sonoko mention that too?

    ‘You’ll be able to come, I hope?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Then,’ says Father, pushing himself to his feet, ‘perhaps you might want to shave before we leave. And a fresh shirt  . . . ?’

It’s dusk when they set out, father and son, their gait almost indistinguishable as they pass the dark or softly lit houses of the street that for so many years has been their home. To the west, small flocks of birds flit across the sky. To the east, the moon is rising out of a chimney in Honjo.

    ‘Have you had much trouble with Saburo?’ asks Father.

    ‘Not really,’ says Yuji. ‘Perhaps our mistake was to take him too seriously.’

    ‘Your efforts at the bathhouse should keep him quiet for a while. I must congratulate you. I have already heard the story from Mrs Itaki and old Kawabata. It seems you saved the keeper’s wife.’

    ‘There were several of us,’ says Yuji. ‘And we could not save Watanabe.’

    ‘A pity.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Even so, you behaved correctly.’

    ‘Dr Kushida says I’m ready for the army now.’

    ‘I shall be seeing him tomorrow, or the next day.’

    ‘I wonder,’ says Yuji, ‘if there is any point delaying the inevitable.’

    ‘It will be hard to avoid it altogether,’ says Father, ‘but there is no need to embrace it before it becomes necessary.’

    ‘I am hardly embracing it.’

    ‘No,’ says father, glancing across at him. ‘Naturally.’

At the house in Setagaya, Sonoko, more nurse now than housekeeper, leads them to the little ‘winter’ room at the side of the house, where Grandfather is sitting beside a
kotatsu
. He looks up at his visitors, looks from one to the other. For a second Yuji is afraid he does not recognise them. Then he nods, croaks a welcome. Sonoko puts down sitting cushions. Would they like tea, or sake, perhaps? They ask for tea.

    ‘Kensuke and Sawa send their regards,’ says Father. ‘Noriko, too, of course.’ He pauses but there is no reply. Nothing.

    ‘And Hiroshi has visited. Also Asako and the child.’

    It’s hard to say what the old man has heard, what he is attending to. Under the ridge of his grey brows, he seems to be staring inwards at some scene of disarray he cannot now ever turn away from.

    ‘Hiroshi has finished his training. He will be posted soon. It could be anywhere. They are not informed until the last moment.’

    Sonoko brings in the tea. Grandfather immediately turns to her, his eyes full of silent entreaty, as though he hoped she would send away these people who come to him with news of a world he has finished with. Father lights a cigarette. Good cigarettes are not easy to find any more. He draws on it thoughtfully, holds the smoke in his lungs for a second before letting it stream slowly through his nose. Grandfather says something to him. It’s like the noise of a radio between stations, a growl of static in which words are hidden. He does not bother to repeat it. Father looks at Sonoko.

    ‘He says you have learnt to sit up straight now.’ There is the hint of a smile on her face.

    Briefly, Father smiles too. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘The mountain has been a good teacher.’

    The supper is invalid food, bland, easily chewed, easily swallowed. Conversation of any kind is so difficult it makes Father sweat. Yuji does not help him. The silence, interrupted only by the tap of the teapot on the lip of a cup, is easier to bear.

    At nine thirty Sonoko informs them that it is time for Grandfather to retire. She stands and reaches down for him, slides an arm under his shoulder. ‘Goodnight, Grandfather,’ says Yuji. The old man flutters a hand at him, then turns, lets himself be led from the room, a lame ox led away by the farmer’s wife. Twenty minutes later Sonoko returns.

    ‘Does he sleep well?’ asks Father.

    ‘He sleeps,’ she says, ‘but when he wakes he is still tired.’

    ‘Please inform us,’ says Father, ‘if you need more assistance.’

    She thanks him.

    In the eight-mat room, the lamp is lit, the bedding pulled from behind the fusuma doors, unrolled.

    ‘You hardly spoke all evening,’ says Father, taking off his jacket. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’

    ‘You too,’ says Yuji, ‘must be tired after your journey.’

    ‘Yes. Travel is tiring.’

    ‘Do you know how long you will be staying?’

    ‘A week should be long enough.’

    ‘Just a week?’

    ‘With spring coming it’s a busy time on the farm. Hiroshi’s away, and the young fellow who used to help now and then has gone too. The more I can do, the more time Kensuke can spend in the dyeing barn. Even in these times there’s quite a demand for his work  . . . I’ll visit again in a month or two. Much depends on what happens here. I hope you will keep us fully informed.’

    Father takes his towel and leaves for the bathroom. Yuji, over-tired or not yet nearly tired enough, parts the doors of the model room and leans his face inside. The light from the lamp behind him gives the model an eerie, moonlit look. The threads of the satin river gleam. The tin tops of trams and taxis, the wire spars of a bridge, hold sparks, pale smears of light, while the rest, the labyrinth of little streets, the toy buildings with their toy-sized shadows, remain in darkness. (He cannot, for example, see the Bank of Japan.) Was there a moon the night before the earthquake? He doesn’t know, though he must, at Uncle Kensuke’s, have seen a moon rise or not. He tries to remember, to think of the mountain, of himself as a boy on the mountain, but his imagination offers him only what it has offered him all day, a white ship on a sea of living jade, a woman at the rail with a child in her arms.