The Shadow and the Star (66 page)

"Fine! I understand there's one up here."

"Well, yes—I've been wondering how I might genteelly allude to the topic."

Her voice resonated back in a soft murmur and died away.

His hand was motionless on the stair rail.

"You were?" he asked slowly.

"Yes."

A very long silence passed. The light breeze through the hall cooled the warmth of her face and neck.

"Then why the hell are you still down there?" he asked in an agonized voice.

She rubbed her toes together. "Because—I don't wish to be there when you see—how everything is done up. In case you shouldn't like it."

"For God's sake. It's only furniture."

"There are… a few other things as well."

He said nothing. Leda tapped her fingers nervously against the wall. After a few moments, the hand on the polished rail vanished.

She knew that he moved silently. She thought that she should be starting to become accustomed to it. But the way he disappeared, and the lack of any sound for such a long time from the floor above, unnerved her.

Finally she went to the stairs. She mounted them softly. In the upper hall there was no one to be seen, no sound. She padded through the study to the bedroom.

He was standing there, among the ten-times-one-thousand red paper cranes of long life and happiness.

They hung from their suspended bamboo arcs in cascades, in streamers of twenty and thirty and fifty, spinning slowly from the twelve-foot ceiling. Some of them trailed almost to the floor, drifting an inch or two above it in the breeze from the open doors. Most strands were high enough that Leda and Mr. Dojun had walked beneath them easily. She had forgotten how much taller Samuel was; they brushed his face and rested on his hair, dangled over his bare shoulders, moving with his breath, like a canopy of crimson willows.

He raised his arms outward and upward, gathering a rustling quantity toward him. He closed his eyes and let them fall away across his upturned face.

Leda hung in the doorway. She didn't know if he even knew she was there.

"Did you do this?"

He asked without opening his eyes, with his still face turned toward the ceiling.

"It was—my notion. The lady—Mrs. Obasan—she made them all. Mr. Dojun said that the custom is one thousand cranes, but I thought—I thought that perhaps, as she had them already made up and in hand, that ten thousand would be an advantageous investment."

"An advantageous investment," he repeated.

"In good luck and happiness. In the manner of stocks, and bank shares, and so forth. I trust that cranes work upon the same principles. I don't see why they shouldn't. And one has the benefit of a discount when buying in quantity. Have you seen the turtle?"

"No," he said in an odd voice. "I haven't seen the turtle."

"It's in your study. On the writing table, in a very handsome black lacquered bowl, with some white rocks and a little water. It's only a box turtle. Dickie has lent it us, until our own can be imported."

"You're importing a turtle?"

"Mr. Richards is to arrange for it. He thinks it will arrive within the month."

"Why?"

"It's a gift. My wedding gift for you. Mr. Dojun said that you would understand."

He just looked at her.

"And there is something else, too, from me. But I�I'll show you that in a moment. First I must tell you that Mr. Dojun has given us this bed, with the crane on it. And the drawers on the chest sing a little note when one opens them. He did that, too."

Samuel touched one of the two bamboo plants at the foot of the bed.

"And bamboo is a lucky plant," she added. "Constant, devoted, flexible."

He pulled a leaf downward and let it go. " 'Be as the bamboo leaf bent by the dew.' " He shook his head slightly. "Dojun's always saying things like that."

"Is he? I shall have to listen to him more closely."

"Don't listen to him. Don't touch any more 'bride-tables' on his account."

"I am so sorry about the table!"

"Forget the table. It's nothing. One hundred percent nothing. He made up that bride rubbish." He lifted his face. "But this—" He shook his head again, with a dazed smile. "I can't believe you did this. And a turtle, for God's sake. You awe me. I'm—awed."

"You are?"

He lifted his hand and let a streamer of cranes slide across it. He grinned.

"Oh! I'm so glad. Then perhaps you will like the fish."

He gave a laugh. "Jesus—not dried fish? Leda!"

"No, no. I think dried fish would have an odor, don't you? Come here." She caught his hand, drawing him through the door into the bath. It was fitted up in the most modern style, with hot and cold plumbing and a white marble tub two feet deep and six feet in length, the present occupants of which were two ivory-and-golden fish, regal and slow in their circling progress, trailing translucent mists of tail and fins. "
This
is my real present. This is what I've been planning since—" She touched her upper lip with her tongue. "That is, since—the first night—when you came to—when you came… that is, when we…" Her embarrassed voice fell into silence. "Do you remember?"

He took his hand from hers.

"They'll have to stay here until a place can be made in the garden. Mr. Dojun says they must be sunned for an hour every day, to keep their color. I hope you don't mind. I hope—"

He slid his fingers up the side of her throat, forcing her to turn, to lift her face. He kissed her ruthlessly. His tongue searched her mouth. He held her tight up against him.

"I hope you like them!" she said breathlessly, when she had a chance.

"Tomorrow—" He tasted the corners of her lips. "Tomorrow I'll like them. Tonight… Leda…"

He began to unbutton her dress.

She submitted to it graciously. It was a well-known fact that gentlemen must be provided with all due encouragement in such circumstances, so as not to hurt their feelings. As her dress fell away, Leda closed her eyes, lifted her arms around his shoulders and her mouth to his, and set about encouraging in a most correct and cheerful manner.

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