Quicksand (13 page)

We walked down to the hollow at the foot of the next hill. Few people had been there even in the spring, and now, in summer, it was utterly deserted, overgrown with rank grasses among the trees, the sort of place you would feel afraid to come to alone. But we were happy that no one else was there, and we found a hiding place among the tall, luxuriant grasses, with only the clouds in the sky to look down on us.

“Mitsu . . .”

“Sister . . .”

“Let's never part again.”

“I could die here with you, Sister.”

That was all we said to each other, and in the silence afterward I had no idea how long we were there. I forgot time, other people, everything. In my world there was only an eternally beloved Mitsuko. . . .

Meanwhile the whole sky darkened, and I felt chilly raindrops on my face.

“It's started raining!”

“How hateful!”

“We mustn't get soaked. Let's go down before it begins to pour.”

By the time we had hurried to the bottom, though, only a few scattered drops had fallen and the rain was over.

“If that's all there was to it, we should have stayed longer.”

“What a sneaky rain!”

By then we both felt hungry.

“It's just teatime. Shall we stop in somewhere for a sandwich?” I suggested.

“I know a good place,” Mitsuko said, and took me to a new hot-spring inn not far from the station. I had never been there before, but it had all the facilities, private bathing rooms and the like, of the inn at Takarazuka. Mitsuko seemed familiar with it—she called the maids by name and knew the layout very well.

So we spent the rest of the day there and got back to Osaka around eight o'clock. Yet I couldn't bear to part and wanted to follow her no matter where. I went along with her on the Hankyu train all the way to Ashiya, and told her: “I'd love to go back to Nara again! Can you come tomorrow, Mitsu?”

“Shall we make it somewhere closer? How about Takarazuka, since it's been such a long time?”

“That's fine,” I said, as I left her. It was almost ten when I got home.

“You're so late I called the hospital a little while ago,” my husband remarked.

I was startled but quickly thought of an excuse. “You couldn't find out anything over the telephone, could you?”

“No. They said they didn't have a patient named Nakagawa. It makes me wonder if they weren't trying to hide something. . . .”

“You know, when I tried to go see her, it really wasn't about Mrs. Nakagawa—it was all Mitsuko's doing. Now that I think of it, she looked a little funny when she came here yesterday, but she says she used Mrs. Nakagawa's name because she was afraid I wouldn't have anything to do with her if she asked me herself.”

“So Mitsuko was the one in the hospital?”

“She wasn't in the hospital either. I didn't understand any of this and went to ask her to come along to see Mrs. Nakagawa. ‘Just stop in for a minute,' she said, so I did, but time went by and she didn't make a move to leave. I urged her to hurry up, and at last she spoke out. ‘Actually, I have to ask your help,' she said. ‘I meant to tell you when I went to see you yesterday . . . but I haven't been feeling myself lately. I think I'm pregnant. Won't you give me some advice before it's gone too far? I tried reading that book, but it's in English; I can't make head or tail of it, and I'm afraid I'll botch the whole thing.' That's exactly what she told me.”

“What an appalling girl! So that's why she had the nerve to make up all those lies to you yesterday!”

“I thought so myself—here she was deceiving me, giving me all that worry—but she said: ‘I only lied to you because I couldn't think of any other way out—please don't hold it against me.' Ume came in to apologize too.”

“Even so, there are lies and lies. She's altogether too smooth.”

“Well, yes, that's true. But there was a man's voice on the telephone yesterday, you know. I'm sure it was that Watanuki. He must have been secretly telling her what to do. Anyway, if it had just been Mitsuko, she wouldn't have made up such a complicated story. I was so furious with her that I said: ‘I'm leaving—I won't listen to anything of the kind!' But when I started to go, she clutched me by the sleeve and begged me not to refuse her—if it ever got to her parents, she'd have to give up Watanuki, and then she simply couldn't go on living. She even began to cry. Ume pleaded with me too, said I had to take pity on her mistress and save her life! After all that, I didn't know
what
to do. Finally I gave in.”

“Then what?”

“Still, I couldn't afford to be careless about it, so I said: ‘I'm not at all sure of those methods. Really, it was wrong of me to lend you that book—how can you think of trying anything so dangerous! You'd better find a doctor you trust. . . .' But before I finished speaking, Mitsuko felt another wave of pain, and we were all upset. . . .”

That's how I poured my story out to him, making up one thing after another and weaving in what happened the day before wherever it would fit. Last night it seems Mitsuko did try one of the medicines she read about in my book, I said, and it was aggravating her condition. I went into some pretty gruesome details, as vividly as if I'd seen it all myself, and told my husband that by this point I felt too responsible to just walk away from the situation. And so I had stayed with her all day, I said, neatly extricating myself from my predicament.

“
I'LL BE GOING
to visit Mitsuko again today,” I told him the next morning. “It worries me to leave her alone—anyway, now that I'm mixed up in this, I have to see it through.”

For almost a week after that we met every day, somewhere or other, but I yearned for a regular place to spend a few hours alone together, where no one could find us.

“If that's what you want, it's best to be right in the heart of Osaka,” Mitsuko said. “You're less likely to be noticed in the midst of a noisy, bustling city. . . . What about the inn you brought the kimono to, Sister?” she added. “I know the people there, and we'd have nothing to fear. . . . Shall we try it?”

For me, that Kasayamachi inn held an unforgettably bitter memory—the very mention of it was a calculated attack on my feelings—but in spite of that I said: “Yes, why not? It's a little embarrassing for me, but let's try it.” She was well aware of how weak I felt toward her, and I tamely followed her lead; I couldn't even get angry with her.

And yet my embarrassment wore off after the first day. The inn maids soon learned to telephone home for me when I was late in leaving, to give me an alibi. As time went on, we would go to the inn separately and call each other from there. Ume would call us too, if anything seemed urgent. . . . Not only that, but Mitsuko's mother and their other maids all seemed to know the phone number and would sometimes call us. She must have really had them fooled at home, I thought. Once when I went to Kasayamachi early and was waiting for Mitsuko, I happened to overhear one of the inn maids talking on the telephone.

“Yes, that's right,” she was saying. “No, we've been expecting her, but she hasn't come yet. . . . Yes. Yes, I'll give her the message. . . . Not at all. . . . We're grateful for your generosity in having our mistress over so often. . . .”

That sounded funny to me, so I inquired: “Was that phone call from the Tokumitsus?”

“Yes, it was,” she said, with a giggle.

“And didn't you say ‘having our mistress over so often'? Who was
that
supposed to be?”

Again she giggled. “Don't you know, madam?” she asked pertly. “I was talking about
you
, as your personal maid.”

When I went on questioning her, I was told she had been instructed to say she was at my husband's office in Osaka.

I repeated all this to Mitsuko and asked if it was true.

“Yes, of course,” she replied casually. “I told my family he has two offices, one in Imabashi and one over here, and I gave them this number. Why don't you tell your husband something like that too, Sister? You could say it's a branch of our Semba shop if you want to, or just make up anything you like.”

So I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand, and although I said to myself I had to escape, by this time I was helpless. I knew I was being used by Mitsuko and that all the while she was calling me her dear sister she was actually making a fool of me.

. . . Yes, now that I think of it, Mitsuko once told me: “I'd much rather be worshiped by someone of my own sex. It's natural for a man to look at a woman and think she's beautiful, but when I realize I can have another woman infatuated with me, I ask myself if I'm really
that
beautiful! It makes me blissfully happy!”

No doubt that was the kind of vanity that made her want to steal away my love for my husband, and yet I was sure Mitsuko's own heart was drawn to Watanuki. Still, I felt I couldn't stand being parted from her again, and so, jealous as I was, I kept pretending to be confident of her love, never breathing a syllable of Watanuki's name. I'm sure she saw through my pretense. Even though she always called me her older sister, I had become the one to defer to her, as if I were the younger one.

One day when we were together at the inn as usual, she said: “Sister, would you be unwilling to see Watanuki? . . . I don't know what you think of him, but he hasn't been able to get over feeling sorry for what happened, and he says he's anxious to meet you again, so that we can all be friends. Eijiro's not a bad person; I believe you'd like him if you got to know him.”

“Yes, we ought to get acquainted. It's strange not to have anything to do with each other, and if that's what he says, I'd like to meet him too. If he's somebody
you're
fond of, Mitsu, I'm sure I'll be fond of him myself.”

“Yes, I'm sure you will. Then you'll see him today?”

“Anytime at all. But where is he now?”

“He came here to the inn a while ago.”

That was what I had been expecting, and I said: “Have him come in, then.”

Watanuki promptly joined us.

“Ah, Sister, it's you!” Now he was calling me Sister, though I had been Mrs. Kakiuchi to him the time before. But the moment he saw me he knelt down into a formal posture, as if he felt intimidated. “I can't apologize enough for the other night. . . .”

Anyway, that first meeting had been late at night, when he was in someone else's kimono; this time it was bright daylight, and he was wearing a dark-blue jacket and white serge trousers. I had a different impression—he seemed about twenty-six or -seven, but with an even fairer complexion than I remembered. How extraordinarily handsome! I thought. And yet in fact I found him rather expressionless, pretty as a picture but somehow out of another era.

“He reminds you of that matinee idol Okada Tokihiko, doesn't he?” Mitsuko remarked. Actually, he looked much more feminine than Tokihiko—his eyes were narrow, with rather plump eyelids, and there was something shifty about him, a sort of nervous twitch to his eyebrows.

“Eijiro, you needn't be so ceremonious. Sister doesn't have anything against you.”

Mitsuko was doing her best to intercede, but for my part I couldn't warm up to him. I couldn't overcome my dislike for the fellow. Maybe Watanuki sensed that, for he kept to his formal pose, solemn and unsmiling.

Only Mitsuko seemed to enjoy the situation.

“What's wrong, Eijiro?” she said, laughing. “You seem out of sorts. With a face like that, you're not being very polite to Sister, are you?” He was still looking serious as she gave him a meaningful glance and poked his cheek with her fingertip. “Listen, Sister. The truth is, he's jealous.”