One Morning Like a Bird (40 page)

    The child, catching at her mother’s hair, begins to whimper. The woman ignores it.

    ‘When did it happen?’ asks Yuji.

    ‘The beginning of October? People say his heart was getting worse. That he was afraid of what would happen to his son if he couldn’t care for him any more. His wife  . . .’ He sucks in his cheeks.

    ‘Yes,’ says Yuji.

    ‘I’m sorry to be the one who brings bad news.’

    ‘You weren’t to know.’

    ‘He’s in the cemetery at Koishikawa if you want to pay your respects.’

    ‘At Koishikawa?‘

    ‘They had a family plot.’

    ‘Yes. I see. Thank you.’

    ‘And if your bicycle needs fixing in, say, six months from now, maybe I’ll be back in business.’

    ‘I’ll remember,’ says Yuji. They nod to each other, continue on their way, the child’s crying sounding in Yuji’s head long after he could possibly still be hearing it.

17

On the front door of the house in Kanda someone has nailed a large sheet of paper. On it is written (in calligraphy a child would be ashamed of) ABOLISH DESIRE UNTIL THE FINAL VICTORY!

    For a few moments Yuji stands there with his bicycle, unsure what to do. Pass by? Pull it off? He cannot use the entrance through the garden. The kitchen door is bolted. And anyway, how would it help him now? It is too late for hiding. He leans his bicycle against the wall of the house. The sense of being observed from the buildings across the street is very strong. He takes the key from his pocket. As he opens the front door the paper flaps, shows, on its other side, an advertisement for tinned whale meat.

    He stands in the blackness of the hallway, holds his breath, listens, then hurries through to the salon, opens the window and unlatches the shutters. Brilliant morning light cuts across the room.

    He looks in the study, then all the rooms at the back of the house. All of it is secure, undisturbed, exactly as he and Alissa left it nine days ago (nine days!). Whoever nailed up the poster has not yet dared go any further than the door. Some neighbourhood patriot. Someone who imagines he has seen the enemy in his own street. Or was the poster discussed at a meeting of the local association? A warning, a punishment. Do they know his name? Where is Hanako now? Who does she talk to?

    He goes upstairs, examines each room in turn until he comes to Alissa’s. The curtains are part open (that, too, just as they left it). He sits on the stripped bed, then steps to the wardrobe and opens both its doors. Though she took all she could fit in the suitcases, pressed in, irritably, more and more, took most of her favourites, there are still eight or ten dresses hanging there, and in the rack of shelves beside the rail, blouses, shirts, rolled socks, camisoles. He touches the dresses, lets his fingers drift from one to the next. Most he cannot remember ever having seen her wear. Most smell only of the little embroidered pillows of lavender at the bottom of the wardrobe (
La vraie lavande de Provence
). A scarf – chiffon? – is steeped in some perfume of hers but this is not what he is looking for. He shuts the wardrobe, turns the little brass key. In the corner, in the space between the wardrobe and the wall, is a basket of plaited bamboo. He takes off the lid. It is a laundry basket, and crumpled at the bottom, overlooked or ignored, is one of her linen nightgowns. He lifts it out. It smells of her. It smells shockingly of the child. On the front are two small stains, creamy-yellow against the white, where her milk seeped from her, before or after a feed. He holds it up, examines it thoroughly, then takes off his clothes and pulls the gown over his head. It is tight across his upper back and shoulders but otherwise fits him quite comfortably. He curls on the bed, the rough ticking of the mattress. The room, the shadow light, hold him patiently. After an hour he gets up again, takes off the gown, puts on his clothes, goes downstairs, closes the shutter, re-crosses the salon, the dark hall, and leaves the house.

From Kanda he rides towards home, but when he reaches the main road above Yushima he turns left towards the cemetery. The guardian, an old man carrying a broom of bound twigs, guides Yuji to the Horikawa family plot. There are flowers there, white chrysanthemums, but they are not recent, their petals edged with brown, like rust. Behind the grave are wooden
sotoba
boards with Horikawa’s Buddhist name and that of his son, who, in death, is named Righteous Serene Sincerity Boy. At the front, to the right of the grave, is a small box for business cards, the corner of a last card protruding a little from the slot.

    Yuji has brought no flowers or incense with him. The guardian would probably have sold him some but the guardian has wandered away to where his presence is just the faint scratching of twigs on the path.

    ‘I would have valued your advice,’ says Yuji to the stone. ‘You would have made me coffee on your spirit burner. We would have watched the trains and you would have told me what to do.’ He bows, deeply, straightens his back, then leans down for the edge of card, the little white tongue poking from the box. ‘With condolences, Yoichi Masuda, assistant to the vice president, West Japan Shipping Corp., Akita, Niigata, Hiroshima, Shiminoseki.’ The address of Masuda’s office is in Tokyo, the other side of Hibiya Park from Horikawa’s. Yuji returns to the gate. He cannot hear the guardian’s broom anymore, nor does there seem to be anyone else visiting the cemetery today, unless the two men standing under the cedar tree between the gate and the road are intending to go in. They have, however, nothing in their hands, and there is something slightly odd in the way the younger of the two glances at Yuji, then stares at the other man, in silence.

18

On the day of Father’s departure they travel to the station by taxi, arriving there a few minutes after eleven. They have agreed to have coffee somewhere, a last conversation before the midday train renews their separation. ‘There’s a place across here,’ says Yuji. ‘It won’t be as busy as the station.’

    They cross the road, each of them carrying a suitcase. The café has not altered since Yuji was here with Taro. The mural of the temple, the photograph of Hitler and Mussolini, the waitresses in their berets. Even the record they are playing seems to be the same Italian song, in which the only word Yuji recognises is a drawn out ‘
amo-re, amo-re
’.

    They order coffee, are told there is no coffee, not this week, and order tea instead. There are not many other customers. A few couples, a few on their own reading newspapers and smoking.

    ‘It’s really starting to feel like spring,’ says Father. ‘It’s years since I saw spring on the mountain. Perhaps, after all, you’ll have an opportunity to visit?’

    They have already, at home the previous evening, discussed those matters of a practical nature that need to be understood between them. Father and Mother will stay on at the farm for an unspecified period. In the meantime, if Yuji’s red paper arrives (and Father’s visit to Kushida produced no reassurances), then the house in Hongo will be shut down. Miyo will go to Setagaya to help Sonoko. Items of value – the books from the garden study, various old scrolls and lacquerware – can be stored somewhere safe, somewhere fireproof. Somewhere bombproof.

    The waitress brings their tea. The clock on the wall behind Father’s head says quarter past the hour.

    ‘This is the first cold season I can remember,’ says Father, ‘that you have not been ill.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘It seems that the family is generally in better health these days.’

    ‘Auntie Sawa?’

    ‘Certainly no worse.’

    Yuji nods. He feels he is carrying a small pistol in his hand which, beneath the table, he is pointing at Father’s belly. He tells himself for the hundredth time that if he could face Feneon, say what he said to Feneon, then he can face Father. But Feneon – however Yuji sometimes chose to think of him – was not his father, whereas the man across the table, the bearded, still vigorous man tipping the ash from his cigarette into the mount Vesuvius ashtray, held him as a baby, taught him as a child, saw all his childish struggling towards the beginning of adulthood. All his subsequent failings.

    ‘I hope,’ says Father, ‘it’s not a crowded train.’

    ‘No,’ says Yuji.

    ‘A crowded compartment, particularly when people are eating, makes the journey much more tiresome.’

    ‘Perhaps you’ll be fortunate?’

    ‘Yes, perhaps.’

    ‘What Miyo hinted at,’ says Yuji, staring into the green depths of his tea, ‘maybe it’s more serious than I admitted.’

    ‘You’ve admitted nothing,’ says Father. ‘Are you referring to your new friend?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘She is someone you wish the family to meet?’

    ‘There are things that need to be explained,’ says Yuji. ‘There are aspects.’

    ‘Aspects?’

    ‘She is not Japanese.’

    ‘A foreigner?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘I see.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘I wonder, could she be connected to the Feneons?’

    ‘You
knew
?’

    ‘I am guessing. How many foreigners are you acquainted with?’

    ‘She is Monsieur Feneon’s daughter.’

    ‘And she has a name?’

    ‘Alissa.’

    ‘Alissa.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘I assume she lives in her father’s house. Isn’t that by the cathedral?’

    Yuji nods. ‘The house is empty now.’

    ‘Empty?’

    ‘They have left Japan.’

    ‘The whole family?’

    ‘It is only the two of them.’

    ‘But the father and the daughter?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘They no longer felt safe here?’

    ‘How could they?’

    ‘I understand.’

    ‘There is something else  . . .’

    ‘Yes?’

    Yuji draws the photograph from the inside pocket of his jacket. It is one of those Miss Ogilvy made them sit for at Christmas. In the picture, Alissa’s red jacket looks black. Emile is lying with his cheek against her upper arm. Alissa is smiling, shyly. Yuji finds his own expression impossible to read. Part of the fireplace is in view, and the front half of a grey cat. He passes the picture across the table. Father takes out his glasses, glances at his watch, then studies the picture. At last, removing his glasses, folding them, he gives the picture back.

    ‘When was this taken?’

    ‘Before the New Year.’

    ‘Is it  .   .   . this what it seems?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘And you have waited until now to tell me?’

    ‘He was born in Yokohama. December the twenty-first. At night.’

    ‘He?’

    ‘His name is Emile.’

    ‘Emile?’

    ‘Like Zola.’

    ‘You are telling me you have a son.’

    ‘Yes.’

    Father leans back in his chair. For Yuji, there is a moment of incongruous satisfaction in the way his words, his news, have felled the older man’s mind. Then, moving his cup aside, he bows over the table, forehead almost touching the varnish. ‘Please accept my apologies for not informing you sooner.’

    ‘Sit up,’ hisses father. ‘You are drawing attention to us.’

    Yuji sits up.

    ‘It would  .   .   .’ begins Father, after a long pause filled by the idiotic, the half mad sighing of the music, ‘it would have been courteous to  .   .   . have chosen a moment when we could have  . . . discussed this.’ His voice is quiet. There is an edge of irritation, of bewilderment, but no anger. The old fierceness, that severity of character Yuji, as a boy, so dreaded to be the focus of, has not, it seems, returned from the mountain with him.

    ‘I didn’t know she was carrying a child.’