The Izu Dancer and Other Stories: The Counterfeiter, Obasute, The Full Moon (3 page)

We came to the summit. Laying her drum on a bench among the dead autumn weeds, she wiped her face with a handkerchief. After that she turned her attention to her feet, then changed her mind and bend down instead to dust off the skirt of my kimono. I drew back surprised, and she fell to one knee. When she had brushed me off front and back, bent low before me, she stood up to lower her skirts—they were still tucked up for walking. I was breathing heavily. She invited me to sit down.

A flock of small birds flew up beside the bench. The dead leaves rustled as they landed, so quiet was the air. I tapped the drum a couple of times with my finger, and the birds started up in alarm.

"I'm thirsty."

"Shall I see if I can find you some water?" But a few minutes later she came back empty-handed through the yellowing trees.

"What do you do with yourself on Oshima?"

She mentioned two or three girls' names that meant nothing to me, and rambled on with a string of reminiscences. She was talking not of Oshima but of Kofu, apparently, of a grammar school she had been in for the first and second grades. She talked artlessly on as the memories of her friends came back to her.

The two younger women and Eikichi came up about ten minutes later, and the older woman ten minutes later still. On the way down I purposely stayed behind talking to Eikichi, but after two hundred yards or so the little dancer came running back up. "There's a spring below. They're waiting for you to drink first."

I ran down with her. The water bubbled clear and clean from shady rocks. The women were standing around it. "Have a drink. We waited for you. We didn't think you would want to drink after we had stirred it up."

I drank from my cupped hands. The women were slow to leave. They wet their handkerchiefs and washed the perspiration from their faces.

At the foot of the slope we came out on the Shimoda highway. Down the highway, sending up columns of smoke here and there, were the fires of the charcoal-makers. We stopped to rest on a pile of wood. The dancing girl began to curry the puppy's shaggy coat with a pinkish comb.

"You'll break the teeth," the older woman warned.

" That's all right. I'm getting a new one in Shimoda."

It was the comb she wore in her hair, and even back in Yugano I had planned to ask for it when we got to Shimoda. I was a little upset to find her combing the dog with it.

"But all he would have to do would be to get a gold tooth. Then you'd never notice," the dancer's voice came to me suddenly. I looked back.

They were obviously talking about my crooked teeth. Chiyoko must have brought the matter up, and the little dancer suggested a gold tooth for me. I felt no resentment at being talked about and no particular need to hear more. The conversation was subdued for a time.

"He's nice, isn't he," the girl's voice came again.

"He seems to be very nice."

"He really is nice. I like having someone so nice."

She had an open way of speaking, a youthful, honest way of saying exactly what came to her, that made it possible for me to think of myself as, frankly, "nice." I looked up anew at the mountains, so bright that they made my eyes ache a little. I had come at nineteen to think of myself as a misanthrope, a lonely misfit, and it was my depression at the thought that had driven me to this Izu trip. And now I was able to look upon myself as "a nice person" in the everyday sense of the expression. I find no way to describe what this meant to me. The mountains grew brighter—we were getting near Shimoda and the sea.

Now and then, on the outskirts of a village, we would see a sign: "Vagrant performers keep out."

The Koshuya was a cheap inn at the northern edge of Shimoda. I went up behind the rest to an attic-like room on the second floor. There was no ceiling, and the roof sloped down so sharply that at the window overlooking the street one could not sit comfortably upright.

"Your shoulder isn't stiff?" The older woman was fussing over the girl. "Your hands aren't sore?"

The girl went through the graceful motions of beating a drum. "They're not sore. I won't have any trouble. They're not sore at all."

"Good. I was worried."

I lifted the drum. "Heavy!"

"It's heavier than you'd think," she laughed. "It's heavier than that pack of yours."

They exchanged greetings with the other guests. The hotel was full of peddlers and wandering performers— Shimoda seemed to be a migrants' nest. The dancer handed out pennies to the inn children, who darted in and out. When I started to leave she ran to arrange my sandals for me in the doorway.

"You will take me to a movie, won't you?" she whispered, almost to herself.

Eikichi and I, guided part way by a rather disreputable-looking man from the Koshuya, went on to an inn said to belong to an ex-mayor. We had a bath together and lunch, fish new from the sea.

I handed him a little money as he left. "Buy some flowers for the services tomorrow," I said. I had explained that I would have to go back to Tokyo on the morning boat. I was, as a matter of fact, out of money, but told them I had to be back in school.

"Well, we'll see you this winter in any case," the older women said. "We'll all come down to the boat to meet you. You must let us know when you're coming. You're to stay with us—we couldn't think of letting you go to a hotel. We're expecting you, remember, and we'll all be down at the boat."

When the others had left the room I asked Chiyoko and Yuriko to go to a movie with me. Chiyoko, pale and tired, lay with her hands pressed to her abdomen. "I couldn't, thank you. I'm simply not up to so much walking."

Yuriko stared stiffly at the floor.

The little dancer was downstairs playing with the inn children. When she saw me come down she ran off and began wheedling the older woman for permission to go to the movies. She came back looking distant and crestfallen.

"I don't see anything wrong. Why can't she go with him by herself?" Eikichi argued. I found it hard to understand myself, but the woman was unbending. The dancer sat out in the hall petting a dog when I left the inn. I could not bring myself to speak to her, so chilling was this new formality, and she seemed not to have the strength to look up.

I went to the movies alone. A woman read the dialogue by a small flashlight. I left almost immediately and went back to my inn. For a long time I sat looking out, my elbows on the window sill. The town was dark. I thought I could hear a drum in the distance. For no very good reason I found myself weeping.

VI

EIKICHI called up from the street while I was eating breakfast at seven the next morning. He had on a formal kimono, in my honor it seemed. The women were not with him. I was suddenly lonesome.

"They all wanted to see you off," he explained when he came up to my room, "but we were out so late last night that they couldn't get themselves out of bed. They said to apologize and tell you they'd be waiting for you this winter."

An autumn wind blew cold through the town. On the way to the ship he bought me fruit and tobacco and a bottle of a cologne called "Kaoru." "Because her name's Kaoru," he smiled. "Oranges are bad on a ship, but persimmons you can eat. They help seasickness."

"Why don't I give you this?" I put my hunting cap on his head, pulled my school cap out of my pack, and tried to smooth away a few of the wrinkles. We both laughed.

As we came to the pier I saw with a quick jump of the heart that the little dancer was sitting at the water's edge. She did not move as we came up, only nodded a silent greeting. On her face were the traces of make-up I found so engaging, and the rather angry red at the corners of her eyes seemed to give her a fresh young dignity.

"Are the others coming?" Eikichi asked.

She shook her head.

"They're still in bed?"

She nodded.

Eikichi went to buy ship and lighter tickets. I tried to make conversation, but she only stared silently at the point where the canal ran into the harbor. Now and then she would nod a quick little nod, always before I had finished speaking.

The lighter pitched violently. The dancer stared fixedly ahead, her lips pressed tight together. As I started up the rope ladder to the ship I looked back. I wanted to say good-by, but I only nodded again. The lighter pulled off. Eikichi waved the hunting cap, and as the town retreated into the distance the girl began to wave something white.

I leaned against the railing and gazed out at Oshima until the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula was out of sight. It seemed a long while before that I had said good-by to the little dancer. I went inside and on to my stateroom. The sea was so rough that it was hard even to sit up. A crewman came around to pass out metal basins for the seasick. I lay down with my book sack for a pillow, my mind clear and empty. I was no longer conscious of the passage of time. I wept silently, and when my cheek began to feel chilly I turned my book sack over. A young boy lay beside me. He was the son of an Izu factory owner, he explained, and he was going to Tokyo to get ready for highschool entrance examinations. My school cap had attracted him.

"Is something wrong?" he asked after a time.

"No, I've just said good-by to someone." I saw no need to disguise the truth, and I was quite unashamed of my tears. I thought of nothing. It was as though I were slumbering in a sort of quiet fulfillment. I did not know when evening came, but there were lights on when we passed Atami. I was hungry and a little chilly. The boy opened his lunch and I ate as though it were mine. Afterwards I covered myself with part of his cape. I floated in a beautiful emptiness, and it seemed natural that I should take advantage of his kindness. Everything sank into an enfolding harmony.

The lights went out, the smell of the sea and of the fish in the hold grew stronger. In the darkness, warmed by the boy beside me, I gave myself up to my tears. It was as though my head had turned to clear water, it was falling pleasantly away drop by drop; soon nothing would remain.

THE COUNTERFEITER, OBASUTE,
AND THE FULL MOON

by Yasushi Inoue
translated by Leon Picon