Quicksand (9 page)

“I'm just too stupid. All this time I've been treated badly, simply walked all over, and I never knew it till this very day. What cruel behavior?”

“Yes, I'm afraid my young mistress doesn't have much of a conscience. . . . Whenever I see you, I feel guilty. I'm so sorry for you. . . .”

Ume seemed genuinely sympathetic, and much as I disliked confiding in her, I had become so bitter, so distraught, that I wanted to tell her everything that was on my mind.

“Listen, Ume, you must have known how I felt. I never dreamed of anything like this. Lately I've been quarreling terribly with my husband over Mitsu. If I hadn't been so wrapped up in her I'd surely have caught on, no matter how dull-witted I seem. Well, never mind, but how on earth could she telephone me like that tonight? She must take me for a fool!”

“Really, how
could
she! But maybe she was at her wits' end.”

“I don't care what trouble she was in—how could she dare to tell me she went to a restaurant with her boyfriend and they had a bath there! You can draw your own conclusions!”

“Yes, of course, but still, once she had her clothes stolen she couldn't go home naked. . . .”'

“I'd have done it. Rather than make such a shameless phone call, I'd have gone home stark naked!”

“And to get robbed at a time like that—it doesn't pay to keep bad company.”

“Anyway, it serves them right—not just to lose their money but to lose all their clothes, right down to their underwear. . . .”

“Yes, yes indeed. It serves them right!”

“When we got our matching kimonos, it wasn't for a thing like this. . . . How far will she go to take advantage of me?”

“It was awfully lucky my mistress wore that kimono today! What could she have done if you hadn't worried about her, Mrs. Kakiuchi? What if you told her you wouldn't come: she'd have to get out of it the best way she knew how.”

“I thought about doing just that. But at first I couldn't imagine
what
was going on, I was so startled by that tearful voice over the phone. And hateful as she was, I couldn't bring myself to hate her, so when I suddenly pictured her there, naked and trembling, I felt a rush of pity. . . . That may seem ridiculous to you, Ume, looking at it from outside, but that's exactly how it was.”

“Oh yes, I can see what you must have felt. . . .”

“And then asking me to bring the man's things too, not just things for herself, and whispering together right at the telephone, as if they wanted me to hear—how could she! She used to call me Sister in front of everyone, and said she's never let anyone but me see her in the nude—I wonder how they looked, naked there together!”

By then I was talking so wildly I hardly knew where we were. Apparently we had turned west off Sakai Avenue at Shimizucho; I remember seeing the lights of the Daimaru department store on Shinsaibashi beyond us, but before we got to it we headed south along the Tazaemon Bridge avenue, and the taxi driver said: “This is Kasayamachi—where do you want to get off?”

“I'm looking for a restaurant called the Izutsu,” I said.

We drove around for a while but couldn't find it, and when we asked someone in the neighborhood, we were told it wasn't a restaurant at all, it was really an inn.

“And where is that?” I inquired.

“Down the little side street just ahead.”

Even though it wasn't far from Soemoncho and Shinsaibashi Avenue, the whole area was dark and rather lonely. There were a number of geisha houses and little restaurants and inns, but they were all narrow, modest buildings, as quiet as private houses. From the entrance to the side street that had been pointed out to us, we could see hanging from one of the eaves a lamp with the words “Hotel Izutsu” in small characters.

“Wait here for me, Ume,” I said, and went on alone.

Although it called itself a hotel, the Izutsu was a dubious-looking establishment at the end of the street. I hesitated a moment after opening its lattice door, but someone seemed to be busy on the telephone in the kitchen, and I called out over and over, with no response. Finally I shouted a loud “Hello!” and a maid came out. As soon as she saw me she seemed to know who I was. Before I could say another word, she asked me to come in and led me up a stairway to the second floor.

“Here's the lady you were expecting,” she announced, opening a sliding door. I went into a little three-mat antechamber and found a fair-skinned young man in his twenties sitting there on the floor in a formal posture.

“Excuse me, but are you the lady who is a friend of Mitsuko's?” he asked.

When I said I was, he stiffened and then made a deep bow, all the way down to the floor.

“I don't know how to apologize for what happened tonight,” he said. “Mitsuko will have to give you her own explanation shortly. She says she can't bear to face you, especially the way she looks now, so please wait until she has had time to put on the kimono you were good enough to bring her.”

The young man had the sort of regular features and feminine good looks that were likely to appeal to Mitsuko; his slender eyebrows and narrow eyes gave an impression of slyness, but the moment I saw him I thought: What a handsome boy! He was supposed to have lost his clothes too, but he was wearing a neat unlined kimono of ordinary striped silk—later I heard he had borrowed it from one of the hotel employees.

“Here's the change of clothing I brought you,” I said, handing him the package.

He accepted it politely. “Thank you very much,” he said, and he opened a sliding door in the corner, thrust the package into the inner room, and quickly shut the door again, so that I had only a glimpse of a low bed screen. . . .

It would take an awfully long time to tell you everything that happened that night. Anyway, I had delivered the clothing I brought for them, and since he was there, I decided it was useless to see Mitsuko. So I wrapped the thirty yen in paper and told him: “I'll leave now—please give this to Mitsuko.”

He wouldn't hear of my going.

“No, no, please stay—she'll be right out,” he said, and settled himself down before me once again. “Actually, this is something Mitsuko herself will have to explain, but I think I owe you an explanation of my own. I hope you'll be willing to listen to what I have to say.”

Obviously Mitsuko found it hard to talk to me, and they had arranged to have him speak for her while she was changing clothes. And then this suave fellow—oh, at that point he said: “My wallet was taken, so I don't have a calling card, but my name is Watanuki Eijiro. I live near Mr. Tokumitsu's shop in Semba.” What this Watanuki told me was that while Mitsuko was still living in Semba, around the end of last year, he and Mitsuko had fallen in love and had even intended to be married. However, this spring the talk of marriage with M had come up, and they were afraid their own plans were doomed. Fortunately the rumor of a lesbian affair had the effect of breaking off M's proposal.

. . . Well, that was more or less how he began. They never tried to use me, he insisted, even if it might have seemed that way at first. But gradually Mitsuko had been stirred by my own passion and had fervently returned my love, more than she ever loved him. He felt unbearably jealous; if anyone was used, it was he himself. And although he had never met me before, he had heard all about me from Mitsuko. She told him that love between women was entirely different from their kind of love, and if he wouldn't let her see me she wouldn't go on seeing him either. Lately he had yielded to her wish.

“My sister has a husband too,” Mitsuko would say, “and I'm willing to marry you. But married love is one thing and love for another woman is something else, so please realize that I won't give up Sister as long as I live. If you can't accept that, I won't marry you.”

Mitsuko's feeling for me was absolutely sincere, Watanuki said. Again I felt I was being made a fool of, but he was really a smooth-talking fellow and didn't leave any room for me to argue with him. It was wrong to go on hiding his relations with Mitsuko from me, he thought, and he had told her to ask me to agree to the situation, since he had already agreed. Mitsuko understood that it was clearly for the best, but whenever we were face-to-face she found it hard to come out with. She kept thinking there might be a better opportunity, until finally things had turned out as they did tonight.

Also, Mitsuko had said over the phone that they were robbed, but in fact it wasn't an ordinary robbery—the people who had taken their clothes weren't robbers; they were gamblers. The more he told me, the truer it seemed that a bad deed never goes unpunished. That night some people were gambling in another room at the inn, he said, and it seems there was a police raid. When Mitsuko and he heard all the commotion, they were so alarmed they fled blindly from their room, she in her underslip and he himself in his nightclothes, escaping by the roof over to the next-door house, where they hid under the floor of a laundry drying platform. The gamblers took off in all directions: Most of them got away, but one laggard couple came wandering in confusion down the corridor past the open door to their room, just after the two of them had left, and went in to hide. Then this man and woman decided to pretend they were there on a rendezvous—it seems they understood that the detectives in charge of rounding up gamblers were different from the ones who were after illicit lovers. But the detectives were too clever for them and arrested them on suspicion, to take them off to the police station. That's when they put on the kimonos that Mitsuko and Watanuki had left in the clothes box by their bedside. You see, this couple had changed into inn robes to gamble, and during the raid their own clothes were in a different room. So to keep up the pretense that they weren't gamblers, they had to put on the clothes they found there by the bed. Then when Mitsuko and he at last felt safe enough to come back after their narrow escape, their clothes were gone—they hadn't even been left a wallet or handbag, and the innkeeper had been arrested too, so there was no one to help them. They couldn't even go home.

Another worry, according to Watanuki, was that they might be identified by Mitsuko's Hankyu train pass, which was in her bag, and by the calling cards in his own wallet. It would be disastrous for them if the police carried the investigation to their families; that's why they were at such a loss when she telephoned me. But since I had been kind enough to come all the way here, and seemed to care so much for Mitsuko, perhaps I would also take the trouble to go back with her to Ashiya and say that we had spent the evening together at the movies. And just in case the police had called, he said, he counted on me to find some plausible way to explain it.

“
PLEASE
,
MRS
.
KAKIUCHI
, I'm sure you must be angry about tonight, but it's something I have to beg of you.” Again he bowed deeply, till his forehead touched the floor. “I don't care what happens to me, but please, please take Mitsuko safely home. I'll be forever grateful.” By the end he was clasping his hands prayerfully.

For my part, even though I felt I had been terribly mistreated, I'm so easily moved that I couldn't bring myself to refuse. Still, out of sheer bitterness, I simply glared at him in silence for a time as he groveled there before me. At last I gave in and said merely: “All right.”

Watanuki bowed again.

“Aah!” he sighed theatrically, in a voice full of emotion. “So you
will
do it. I'm truly thankful to you; that takes a burden off my mind.” Then, peering into my eyes as if to see how I might react, he added: “In that case, I'll ask Mitsuko to come in here, but before I do I have one more request to make. She's so upset by all that's gone on tonight that I hope you won't say anything about it. Is that agreeable? Will you promise not to mention it?”