The Sound of the Mountain (26 page)

Shuichi did not answer. His large eyes, almost too good-looking for a man, were blinking.

On Shingo’s desk was a black-bordered postcard. The cancer patient had died somewhat more swiftly than the natural course of the illness would have led one to expect.

Had someone brought him poison? Perhaps Shingo had not been the only one of whom the request had been made. Or perhaps the man had found another way to commit suicide.

There was also a letter from Tanizaki Eiko. She had moved to another shop. Kinu had left the earlier shop shortly afterwards, the letter continued, and was in seclusion in Numazu. She meant to open a small business of her own, she had told Eiko. Tokyo would present too many complications.

Although Eiko had not touched upon the matter, it seemed likely that Kinu had retired to Numazu to have the baby.

Was it as Shuichi had said, that she went her own way quite without regard for others, for Shuichi or for Shingo himself?

He sat for a time looking absently into the clear sunlight.

What would the Ikeda woman, now left alone, be doing?

Shingo thought he would like to see either her or Eiko and make inquiries about Kinu.

In the afternoon he went to pay his condolences to the cancer victim’s family. He learned for the first time that the wife had died seven years before. The man had apparently lived with his oldest son, and there were five children in the house. It did not seem to Shingo that either the son or the grandchildren resembled the dead man.

Shingo suspected suicide, but could not of course make inquiries. Giant chrysanthemums were conspicuous among the flowers by the coffin.

Going over the mail with his secretary, he had an unexpected telephone call from Kikuko. He feared that something untoward had happened.

‘Where are you? In Tokyo?’

‘Yes. Visiting my family.’ There was bright laughter in her voice. ‘Mother said she had something to talk over with me, and here I am, and it turns out to be nothing at all. She was just lonely and wanted to see my face.’

‘Oh?’ Softness flooded into his chest, and the pleasingly girlish voice over the telephone was not the whole explanation.

‘Will you be going home soon?’ asked Kikuko.

‘Yes. And is everyone well there?’

‘Very well. I thought I’d like to go back with you.’

‘Take your time, now that you’re here. I’ll tell Shuichi.’

‘I’m ready to go.’

‘Suppose you come to the office, then.’

‘That will be all right? I thought I might wait at the station.’

‘No, come here. Shall I connect you with Shuichi? The three of us might have dinner together.’

‘The operator tells me he isn’t at his desk.’

‘Oh?’

‘I can start out right away.’

Shingo felt warm to the eyelids, and the city beyond the window seemed lighter and clearer.

It was an October morning. Shingo, tying his necktie, felt his hands go wrong.

‘Wait a minute.’ He paused, and a troubled expression came over his face. ‘How does it go?’

He untied it and tried again, but was no more successful the second time.

Pulling the two ends up to his face, he gazed at them inquiringly.

‘What seems to be the trouble?’

Behind him and a little to one side, Kikuko was holding his coat. She came around in front of him.

‘I can’t tie my tie. Very strange.’

Slowly and awkwardly, he wound an end around a finger and tried to pull it through the loop, but the result was a strange lump. The word ‘strange’ was most appropriate for describing the performance, but fear and despair were written on Shingo’s face.

It was an expression that seemed to startle Kikuko. ‘Father!’ she cried.

‘What shall I do?’

Shingo stood as if without strength for trying to remember.

Unable to watch in silence, Kikuko came up to him, the coat over her arm.

‘How do you do it?’

In some consternation, she took up the tie. Her hands were dim to Shingo’s old eyes.

‘That’s what I’ve forgotten.’

‘But you tie it yourself every day.’

‘So I do.’

Why should he suddenly this morning have forgotten a process he had repeated every morning through the forty years of his office career? His hands should have moved automatically. He should have been able to tie his tie without even thinking.

It seemed to Shingo that he faced a collapse, a loss of self.

‘I’ve been watching you every morning,’ said Kikuko solemnly as she twisted the tie and then straightened it out to begin again.

Quite giving himself up to her, he was like a small, spoiled child that is feeling somehow neglected.

The scent of her hair came to him.

‘I can’t do it.’ Kikuko flushed.

‘Haven’t you ever tied Shuichi’s?’

‘No.’

‘Just untied it when he’s come home drunk?’

She drew back a little and, her shoulders taut, gazed at the tie.

‘Mother might know,’ she said, at length releasing her breath. ‘Mother,’ she called, ‘would you come here, please? Father says he can’t tie his tie.’

‘And why in the world should that be?’ Yasuko’s face suggested that she had never before been witness to such nonsense. ‘Why can’t he tie it for himself?’

‘He says he’s forgotten how.’

‘Something went wrong, and I forgot everything. Very strange.’

‘Very strange indeed.’

Kikuko moved aside and Yasuko took her place.

‘I don’t seem to remember it all that well myself.’ She gave his chin a gentle shove upward as she took the tie in her hands. Shingo closed his eyes.

Yasuko did somehow seem to be producing a knot.

Perhaps because of the pressure at the base of his skull, he felt a little giddy, and a golden mist of snow flowed past his closed eyelids. A mist of snow from an avalanche, gold in the evening light. He thought he could hear the roar.

Startled, he opened his eyes. Might he be having a hemorrhage?

Kikuko was holding her breath, and her eyes were on Yasuko’s hands.

It was an avalanche he had seen in the mountain home of his boyhood.

‘Will this do?’

Yasuko was putting the last touches on the knot.

‘Yes.’

His fingers brushed against hers as he reached to feel it.

He remembered that when he had left college and first discarded his choke-collared student’s uniform for an ordinary business suit, it had been Yasuko’s beautiful sister who had tied his tie for him.

Shingo turned to the mirror on the wardrobe, avoiding the eyes of Kikuko and Yasuko.

‘This should do nicely. Well, old age has finally caught up with me. It’s not a very comfortable feeling when you find all of a sudden that you can’t tie your own tie.’

To judge from the facility with which she had tied it for him, Yasuko would appear to have performed the function in the early days of their marriage, but he could not remember when it might have been.

Or perhaps, when she had gone to help after the death of her sister, she had tied her handsome brother-in-law’s tie.

Slipping into sandals, a worried Kikuko saw him to the gate.

‘What are your plans for this evening?’

‘Nothing scheduled. I’ll be home early.’

‘Make it very early.’

Gazing at Mount Fuji in the autumn blue as the train passed Ofuna, Shingo again felt his tie. He found that left and right were reversed. Facing him, Yasuko had made the left end the longer.

He untied it and retied it with no effort.

That he should earlier have forgotten the process seemed scarcely credible.

It was not uncommon now for Shingo and Shuichi to take the same train home.

Normally there were trains on the Yokosuka Line every half-hour, but during rush hours the number was increased to one every fifteen minutes. Sometimes rush-hour trains were emptier than normal ones.

At Tokyo Station a young girl occupied one of the seats opposite them.

‘Would you save this for me, please?’ she said to Shuichi, putting a red suede handbag on the seat.

‘Both seats?’

She murmured an answer that was not entirely clear. As she turned and went out, however, there was no suggestion of embarrassment on her somewhat heavily powdered face. The narrow shoulders of her coat had a most winsome upthrust, and the coat flowed down over a gently elegant figure.

Shingo was puzzled. How had Shuichi guessed that the girl wanted both seats saved? He seemed to have an instinct for such things; but how had he known that the girl would be waiting for someone?

Now that his son had taken the lead, however, Shingo too thought it most evident that the girl had gone to look for her companion.

And why, since she had been sitting by the window, opposite Shingo, was it Shuichi to whom she had spoken? Probably because, as she had stood up, she had found herself facing him; and then again, perhaps Shuichi was for a woman the more approachable of the two.

Shingo looked at his son’s profile.

Shuichi was reading the evening paper.

The girl got back onto the train. Clutching the frame of the open door, she looked up and down the platform. Apparently the person with whom she had an appointment had not come. Her light-colored coat, as she returned to her seat, flowed rhythmically from shoulder to hem. It was held together by a large button at the throat. The pockets were well down and forward. She swayed from side to side, one hand in a pocket, as she came down the aisle to her seat. The cut, though somewhat strange, was most becoming.

Sitting down opposite Shuichi this time, she looked repeatedly at the door. It would appear that she had chosen the aisle seat because it offered the better view.

Her handbag still lay on the seat opposite Shingo. It was a sort of flattened cylinder, and had a large clasp.

The diamond earrings were no doubt imitation, but they had a good luster. The wide nose stood out on the firm, regular face, and the mouth was small and well shaped. The thick eyebrows, with a tendency to sweep upwards, had been clipped short. The line of the wide eyes was equally graceful, but disappeared before it reached the corners. The jaw was firm and strong. These various features added up to a face that was in its way beautiful.

There was a certain weariness in the eyes, and Shingo had trouble guessing her age.

The doorway was suddenly crowded. Shingo’s eyes and the girl’s were on it. Five or six men, apparently on their way home from an excursion, came aboard with large maple branches in their arms.

The dark red of the leaves suggested cold mountain country.

Presently he learned, from the boisterous talk, that the men had been deep in the mountains of Echigo.

‘The maples in Shinshu will be their best,’ he said to Shuichi.

He was thinking less, however, of the wild maples in the mountains of his old home than of the large potted maple, its leaves crimson, among the memorial tablets when Yasuko’s sister had died.

Shuichi, of course, had not been born.

He gazed at the red leaves, speaking so vividly of the season.

He came to himself. The father of the girl was seated before him.

So she had been waiting for her father! The thought somehow brought relief to Shingo.

The father had the same wide nose, so similar indeed that the effect was almost comical. The hairlines were identical. The father wore dark-rimmed glasses.

Like strangers, father and daughter neither spoke to nor looked at each other. The father was asleep before they had left the outskirts of Tokyo. The daughter also closed her eyes; and even the eyelashes seemed identical.

Shuichi did not resemble Shingo as closely.

Although waiting for the two to exchange even a remark, Shingo felt somehow envious of this complete indifference.

Theirs was no doubt a peaceful family.

He was therefore startled when, in Yokohama, the girl got off by herself. They had in fact not been father and daughter but complete strangers!

He felt that he had been deceived.

The man opened his eyes slightly as they stopped in Yokohama, and went untidily back to sleep.

Now that the girl had gone the middle-aged man before him seemed untidy to Shingo.

Shingo nudged Shuichi with his elbow. ‘So they weren’t father and daughter.’

Shuichi did not give as much evidence of interest as Shingo had hoped for.

‘You saw them, didn’t you?’

Shuichi nodded perfunctorily.

‘Very strange.’

Shuichi did not seem to think the matter strange at all.

‘They did look alike.’

‘Yes, I suppose they did.’

The man was asleep, and the train would have drowned out Shingo’s voice; but still it did not seem right to be loudly assessing the man right before one’s eyes.

Shingo looked away, feeling guilty even at staring; and as he did so a sadness came over him.

It was at first sadness for the man, and then it came to be directed at Shingo himself.

The train was on the long run between Hodogaya and Totsuka. The autumn sky was darkening.

The man was younger than Shingo, but in his late fifties even so. And the girl – would she perhaps be the age of Kikuko? There had been in her nothing corresponding to the cleanness of Kikuko’s eyes.

But how could it be, Shingo wondered, that she was not the man’s child?

The more he thought about the problem the more his wonder grew.

There were in the world people so resembling each other that one could only take them for parent and child. There could hardly, however, be large numbers of such people. Probably in all the world there was only the one man to go with the girl, only the one girl to go with the man. Only the one for either of them; and indeed perhaps in all the world there was only one such couple. They lived as strangers, with no suggestion of a bond between them. Perhaps they were even ignorant of each other’s existence.

And quite by chance they were aboard the same train. They had come together for the first time, and probably would never meet again. Thirty minutes, in the length of a human life. They had parted without exchanging words. Sitting side by side, they had not looked at each other, and neither could have noticed the resemblance. And they had separated, participants in a miracle of which they had been unaware.