The Sound of the Mountain (12 page)

‘But I suppose he’s better?’

‘Yes. And there was a miracle. A fine crop of black hair came out on his naked head.’

‘You can’t mean it!’ Shingo was laughing again.

‘But it’s true,’ said the friend, unsmiling. ‘Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.’ He looked at Shingo’s hair. ‘There’s still hope for you. For me it’s too late.’

The friend had lost most of his hair.

‘Shall I pull out one of my own?’ muttered Shingo.

‘Have a try at it. But I doubt if you have the will-power to pull them all out.’

‘I doubt it too. And white hair doesn’t worry me. I have no mad desire for black hair.’

‘You’ve had security. You calmly swam through while everyone else was going under.’

‘You make it seem so easy. You might as well have said to Kitamoto that he would save himself trouble by dyeing his hair.’

‘Dyeing is cheating. If we’re going to let ourselves think of cheating, then I doubt if we can hope for miracles like Kitamoto’s.’

‘But isn’t Kitamoto dead? Even though there was a miracle.’

‘Did you go to the funeral?’

‘I didn’t know of it at the time. I didn’t hear of it till the war was over and things had settled down a little. I doubt if I would have gone into Tokyo anyway. It was during the air raids.’

‘You can’t hold on to miracles for very long. Kitamoto may have pulled out his white hair and fought against the years, but life goes its own way. You don’t live longer just because your hair goes dark again. It might even be the opposite. It might be that he used up all his energy growing that crop of dark hair, and his life was actually shortened. But don’t think the struggle means nothing to you and me.’ He nodded to emphasize this conclusion. Hair was combed across his bald crown like the strips of a blind.

‘Everyone I meet these days has white hair,’ said Shingo. ‘It wasn’t so bad with me during the war, but I’ve gotten whiter and whiter since.’

Shingo did not believe all the details of the story. He suspected embroidering.

That Kitamoto had died was a fact, however. He had learned of it from someone else.

As Shingo turned the story over in his mind, his thoughts took a strange turn. If it was true that Kitamoto was dead, then it must also be true that his white hair had grown out black. If it was true that he had lost his mind, then it must also be true that he had pulled out all his hair. If it was true that he had pulled out his hair, then it must also be true that it had grown white as he sat before the mirror. Was not the whole of the story true? Shingo was surprised at his own conclusion.

‘I forgot to ask whether Kitamoto’s hair was white or black when he died,’ he said, laughing. But neither the words nor the laughter were audible. They were for him alone.

Even if the story he had heard was true and without embroidery, there had probably been an element of parody in the manner of its telling. One old man had told of the death of another old man with derision and not without cruelty. The taste left by the encounter was not pleasant.

Among the friends of his student days, Kitamoto and Mizuta had been the ones to die strange deaths. Mizuta had died suddenly at a hot-spring resort. He had gone there with a young girl. Shingo had been importuned late the year before to buy his No masks. It had been because of Kitamoto that he had hired Tanizaki Eiko.

Mizuta having died since the war, Shingo had been able to go to the funeral. He did not hear until later of Kitamoto’s death, which occurred during the air raids; and when Tanizaki Eiko came with her introduction, Kitamoto’s wife and children were still in Gifu Prefecture, where they had taken refuge from the raids.

Eiko was a schoolfriend of Kitamoto’s daughter. But it seemed altogether too unceremonious that he should be asked this favor by the daughter. He had not met her, and Eiko said that she had not seen her since the war. It seemed too precipitous on the part of both girls. If Kitamoto’s widow, at the daughter’s prompting, had remembered Shingo, then she should have written herself.

Shingo felt no obligation toward the daughter and her letter of introduction.

As for Eiko, who brought it, she seemed slight in body and frivolous in mind.

Yet he hired her, and took her into his own office. She had been working there for three years.

The three years had gone by swiftly, but it seemed odd, now, that she had lasted so long. It was perhaps not surprising that she had, in the course of the three years, gone dancing with Shuichi, but she had even been in the house of Shuichi’s woman. And Shingo himself, under her guidance, had gone to see it.

Eiko seemed to feel intimidated by these events. She had come to dislike her work.

Shingo had not spoken to Eiko of Kitamoto. Probably she did not know that he had lost his mind. She and the daughter were probably not such close friends as to frequent each other’s houses.

He had thought her frivolous, but now that she had quit work he sensed certain traces of conscience and benevolence in her. And with them a purity, for she was not yet married.

‘You’re up early, Father.’ Pouring out the water with which she was about to wash her face, Kikuko drew water for him.

Drops of blood fell into it, and spread and thinned.

Remembering how he himself had coughed up a small amount of blood, and thinking how much cleaner was Kikuko’s, he was afraid that she too might be spitting up blood; but it was a nosebleed.

She held a cloth to her nose. The blood traced a line from her wrist down to her elbow.

‘Look up, look up.’ He put his arm over her shoulders. She fell slightly forward, as if avoiding him. He pulled her back by the shoulders, and, taking her forehead, made her look up.

‘I’m all right, Father. I’m sorry.’

‘Keep quiet and kneel down. Lie down.’

Supported by Shingo, Kikuko leaned against the wall.

‘Lie down,’ he said again.

But she remained in the same position, her eyes closed. On her face, white as if she had fainted, there was an innocent quality, as of a child who has quit resisting. He saw the small scar on her forehead.

‘Has it stopped? If it has, go in and lie down.’

‘Yes. I’m all right.’ She wiped her nose with the cloth. ‘The basin is dirty. I’ll wash it for you.’

‘Please don’t bother.’

Shingo poured out the water in some haste. Faintly, melting away, there were traces of blood at the bottom of the basin.

Shingo did not use it. He washed his face directly from the faucet.

He thought of rousing Yasuko and sending her to help.

But then he decided not to. Kikuko might not want to reveal her discomfort to her mother-in-law.

The blood had fallen as from a bursting pod. To him it had been as if pain itself were bursting forth.

Kikuko passed while he was combing his hair.

‘Kikuko.’

‘Yes?’ She looked over her shoulder at him, but went on to the kitchen. She came back with charcoal in a firepan. He saw it send off sparks. She had lighted charcoal for the
kotatsu
over the kitchen gas.

Shingo was startled at himself. He had quite forgotten that his own daughter, Fusako, had come home. The breakfast room was dark because Fusako and her two children were asleep in the next room. The shutters had not yet been opened.

Rather than his old wife, he could have roused Fusako to help Kikuko. It was odd that Fusako had not come into his mind when he had thought to call Yasuko.

At the
kotatsu
, Kikuko poured tea for him.

‘Are you dizzy?’

‘Just a little.’

‘It’s still early. Why don’t you rest this morning?’

‘It’s time I was up and around.’ Kikuko spoke as of a triviality. ‘The cold wind was good for me when I went to get the paper. And I’ve always been told that a woman’s nosebleed is nothing to worry about. Why are you up so early yourself? It’s cold again this morning.’

‘I wonder. I was awake before the temple bell rang. It rings at six, summer and winter, the whole year round.’

Shingo was up earlier than Shuichi, but later in starting for the office. Such was their way in the winter.

He took Shuichi to lunch at a nearby Occidental restaurant.

‘You know about the scar on Kikuko’s forehead?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘The mark of the forceps, I imagine. It was a difficult birth. You couldn’t exactly call it the remains of suffering at birth, I suppose, but it stands out when she’s in pain.’

‘You mean this morning?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was probably because of the nosebleed. It stands out when her color is bad.’

Shingo felt somehow forestalled. When had Kikuko told Shuichi?

‘But she didn’t sleep last night.’

Shuichi frowned. After a moment of silence he said: ‘You needn’t behave so properly with an outsider.’

‘An outsider? Isn’t she your own wife?’

‘That’s what I’m saying. You needn’t behave yourself so properly with your son’s wife.’

‘What do you mean?’

Shuichi did not answer.

When Shingo returned to his office, Eiko was seated in the reception room. Another woman was standing beside her.

Eiko too stood up. She offered the usual sort of greetings about the weather and her remissness.

‘It’s been a long time. Two months.’

Eiko seemed to have put on a little weight, and her face was more heavily made up. He remembered how, when he had gone dancing with her, her breasts had seemed just enough to fill his hands.

‘This is Mrs Ikeda. You will remember that I spoke of her.’ Eiko’s eyes were most appealing, as if she might be on the point of tears. So it was with her on solemn occasions.

‘How do you do.’ Shingo could not bring himself to thank the Ikeda woman, as ceremony required, for her ministrations to Shuichi.

‘I dragged Mrs Ikeda here. She said she didn’t want to come. She said there was no point in coming.’

‘Oh? Shall we talk here, or would you rather go out?’

Eiko looked inquiringly at the other woman.

‘This will do nicely, as far as I am concerned,’ she said curtly.

Shingo was confused. Eiko had said, he seemed to remember, that she would introduce him to the woman who was living with Shuichi’s woman. He had not pursued the matter.

It seemed to him very odd indeed that two months after she had quit work Eiko should acquit herself of the undertaking.

Had Shuichi and his woman at length agreed on a separation? Shingo waited for Eiko or the Ikeda woman to speak.

‘Eiko pestered me into coming. But it won’t do any good.’ Her manner was hostile. ‘I’ve been telling Kinu that she ought to leave Shuichi. I thought if I came I might get your help.’

‘I see.’

‘Eiko is in your debt, and she sympathizes with his wife.’

‘A very nice lady,’ put in Eiko.

‘Eiko has said that to Kinu too. But there aren’t many women these days who will withdraw just because a man has a nice wife. Kinu says if she is to give another man back, then let her have her own husband back. He was killed in the war. Just bring him back to me alive she says, and I’ll let him do exactly what he wants. He can have as many affairs with other women and as many mistresses as he wants. She asks if I don’t agree. Anyone who lost her husband in the war has to agree. Didn’t we send them off to war? And what are we to do now that they’re dead? He’s in no danger of getting killed when he comes to see me, she says. I send him back undamaged.’

Shingo smiled wryly.

‘I don’t care how good a wife she is, she isn’t a war widow.’

‘That’s a blunt way to put it.’

‘Yes. That’s what she says when she’s in her cups. She and Shuichi are ugly drinkers. She says to tell his wife she’s never had to wait for someone to come home from a war. She waits for someone who’s sure to come back. All right, he shouts back. He
will
tell her. I’m a war widow, too. Doesn’t it always go bad when a war widow falls in love?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Shuichi too – he’s an ugly drinker. He’s been very rough with her. He told her to sing for him. She doesn’t like to sing, and there was nothing for me to do but sing in her place. I sang in a very small voice. If I hadn’t done something to quiet him down we’d have been the scandal of the neighborhood. I felt so insulted myself that I could hardly go on. But I wonder if it’s really because of drink. Mightn’t it be because of the war? Don’t you suppose he had women that way somewhere? When I saw him out of control, I thought I was seeing my own husband during the war. I went dizzy and I could hardly breathe, and it seemed to me that I was the woman he was having. I cried and I sang some songs that weren’t very proper. I said to Kinu that I wanted to think of my husband as the only exception; but I suppose it was that way with him too. Afterwards, when Shuichi made me sing, Kinu would be crying with me.’

Shingo’s face clouded over. It was a morbid story.

‘The best thing would be to put an end to it as soon as possible.’

‘I agree. After he’s gone, she’s always saying that this sort of thing means complete ruin. If that’s how she feels, then of course she ought to leave him. But I suspect she’s afraid that what would come afterwards would really be ruin. A woman …’

‘She needn’t worry,’ put in Eiko.

‘You’re right I suppose. She has her work. You’ve seen how it is.’

‘Yes.’

‘She did this for me.’ The Ikeda woman gestured toward her own suit. ‘I suppose she’s about the most important after the chief cutter. They think very highly of her. They took in Eiko on the spot because of her.’

‘You’re working in the same shop?’ Shingo looked at Eiko in surprise.

‘Yes.’ Eiko nodded, and flushed slightly.

He found it hard to understand her. First she had Shuichi’s mistress get her a job in the same shop, and now she brought the Ikeda woman to see him.

‘And so I doubt if she costs Shuichi much money,’ said the latter.

‘It’s not a matter of money.’ Shingo was irritated, but he controlled himself.

‘There’s something I often say to her after he’s been bad to her.’ She sat with bowed head. Her hands were folded on her knees. ‘He goes home wounded, too, I say. He goes home a wounded soldier.’ She looked up. ‘Can’t he and his wife live away from you? I often think that if he and his wife were alone together, he would leave Kinu. I’ve thought about it a great deal.’