The Snow Kimono (11 page)

Is this real mother of pearl? he said to the stallholder.

It is, Master Ikeda.

He turned his hand this way, then that, in the light.

So, did you hear me, Tadashi? he said, looking at the earrings. I’ve finished it.
My manuscript.

So you said.

In fact, he had talked about nothing else since he had come down into the foyer looking
like the Katsuo of old. Handsomely dressed in a new white suit—despite what he had
said earlier. His dark hair slicked back. His cheeks freshly shaved. A gorgeous deep-blue
butterfly at his throat.

What do you think? he had said, tugging at his lapels and giving a knowing, new-garment
kind of shrug.

Impressive, Katsuo. As always, I said.

He removed a piece of lint from his sleeve.

Todo? I said.

Todo is a fool, Katsuo replied. I’ve told you that before.

I think he’s…was a kind old man. There’s a rumour going around that he committed
suicide.

I’ll take these, Katsuo said to the stallholder. He held up the earrings.

Are they for Miss Yumiko, Master Ikeda? the stallholder asked. He was smiling, but
almost instantly his smile faded. I glanced at Katsuo. I saw the same murderous look
pass across his face as had passed across it when I mentioned his room number. It
lingered for a moment in his eyes. And then he too was smiling.

Todo is no great loss, Tadashi.

How can you be so callous? I said.

He shrugged.

I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. Weren’t we going somewhere for
a drink?

You mean to tell me you’re
not
in trouble?

No.

Of any kind?

No, not at all. Why would I be in trouble?

Why, then, the appeal for me to come to Shirahama? Why so urgent?

Because, as I said to you before, Tadashi, I’ve finished it. My manuscript.

I’m not sure I follow, I said.

I need you to read it. I wrote to you as soon as I had finished.

You mean to say that you summoned me here, to Shirahama, on the train, for the sole
purpose of getting me to read your manuscript?

You make it sound as though it’s nothing, Tadashi. It’s not. You, of all people,
should know that.

I took this to be a barbed reference to my own long-dead ambition to become a writer,
an ambition my parents had not encouraged, and one that, eventually, I had relinquished
myself.

So, that evening, I read Katsuo’s manuscript while he paced up and down in my room,
smoking cigarette after cigarette. In the end, the air became so thick with smoke
that I had difficulty breathing, and I had to ask Katsuo to go out onto the balcony.

Occasionally I’d look up and see the glow of his cigarette. Or I’d catch the embered
arc of a burning butt cartwheeling into the darkness, flicked by a preoccupied Katsuo
into the lily pond below.

It was two in the morning when I stopped reading. I sat there thinking about what
I had just read. Five minutes passed before Katsuo turned and saw that I had finished.

So, what do you think? he said. Do you like the title?

Spring Promise
?

Yes.

Spring Promise
, I said. It’s perfect. The irony heartbreaking. So exquisite, so complete.

It is, isn’t it, Tadashi? he said. It
is
the perfect title. I know it sounds conceited,
but I needed to hear it. From you. You know
how much I trust your judgement. I knew
you would see how perfect it was.

He poured himself another drink, lit another cigarette.

Oh, I’m sorry, he said.

He headed for the balcony.

It’s okay, Katsuo, I said. I’ve finished. The air has almost cleared in here, in
any case.

He inhaled on his cigarette, looked at its burning end, then threw it over the balcony
anyway.

So, he said. Now that you’ve had some time to think about it, what do you think,
overall?

You mean in the five minutes since I put it down?

He shrugged.

I told him again how impressed I was.

And you found it credible?

Very, I said.

He threw his head back. He was exultant.

So, Katsuo, congratulations, I said. Now you’ve heard it from me.

I knew it, he said. I knew it. I kept saying to myself, if Tadashi approves, I will
have achieved what I set out to do.

He sat down, smiling. I think this was the only time I ever saw uncalculated pleasure
on his face. Of course, I did not know then what I know now—that the future changes
everything.

Chapter 10

TODO, I said.

It was our third evening in Shirahama. We had gone to a small restaurant away from
the town centre. When we arrived most of its tables were taken. Not by tourists,
but by locals.

You know, Inspector, Omura said, interrupting himself. Isn’t that strange. I’ve forgotten
to tell you something, just as I had forgotten it that evening.

You see, when Katsuo came down into the foyer that evening, I was already there waiting
for him. I remember him stepping off the stairs and coming over to me. He was adjusting
his tie, his cuffs.

What’s the matter? he said.

I brought some papers with me, I told him. From Osaka. One of them is missing. I
think someone has been through my things.

One of your papers? Why would anyone want to take one of your papers? Are you sure
you didn’t leave it behind?

It’s possible, I suppose, I said. But I could have sworn I brought it with me. It
was part of a sequence of documents I’ve been working on.

Did you tell Yamada?

I did. He asked me what they looked like. They were papers.

What kind of papers?

They were deeds to a property.

Katsuo shrugged.

Are we going? he said. Or would you prefer to stay?

Half an hour later we were pushing on the door of the small restaurant in Shirahama’s
back streets.

The owner came over to Katsuo when we entered.

Ah, Mr Ikeda. Back so soon?

Katsuo grasped his hand, smiled.

Once we had ordered and the waiter had departed, I returned to the subject I had
raised the day I arrived, determined to have an answer once and for all.

Professor Todo? I said.

Like I said, Tadashi, Todo was a fool.

And if it’s true, this rumour going around that he committed suicide?

Wouldn’t you?

Wouldn’t I what?

Commit suicide. If you were T-T-To-d-do, he said, imitating Professor Todo’s tortured
stutter.

Don’t you care?

About what?

T-T-To-d-do, I said pointedly.

No, Tadashi. I don’t. And don’t look at me like that.

Like what?

Like you’re judging me.

He waited.

I see nothing’s changed, has it, Tadashi, he said. You think you are such a man of
principle. Good, honourable Tadashi, who can do no wrong.

He uttered the words with such bitterness, such venom, that I felt as though I had
been slapped.

What happened to us being brothers? he said.

I don’t know, Katsuo, I said. Perhaps you could tell me.

How memory waylays us. His comment about being brothers, and what I had been thinking
about in that rundown back-street restaurant, resurrected for me, from the undifferentiated
mass of otherwise similar memories, the precise moment the scandal had begun to unfold.

Katsuo and I were sitting on one of the stone benches in the old courtyard of the
university. Katsuo had returned from Osaka only that morning.

You know, Tadashi, he was saying, Etsuko is probably the most intelligent person
I have ever met.

Etsuko was his girlfriend at the time, although I was yet to meet her.

What, more intelligent than you? I said.

Well, at least as intelligent.

And I’m sure she’s beautiful too.

Katsuo seemed to consider what I said for a moment. It was unlike him to have missed
my irony.

I’ve never really thought about it, he said. But yes, I suppose you could say she
is beautiful. In her own way.

And what way is that? I said.

In
her
way, Tadashi. Not that you would know anything about that.

Again, his comment, and the coldness with which he delivered it, stung me. I had
thought that my reserve with women was something known only to me.

Will you look at old T-T-T-Todo, the st-star-star-stuttering old fool, he said. I
don’t think I’ve met anyone so blind to everything that goes on in the world.

Professor Todo was one of Katsuo’s teachers. He had just emerged from the archway
at the far end of the courtyard. I knew him. He occasionally came over to talk to
us. Or, more accurately, to talk to Katsuo. He
was
old. He should have been pensioned
off years before. But he was harmless. Whenever he came over, he always seemed nervous.
He would refer to Katsuo as Master Katsuo. How are you today, Master Katsuo? And
you, Mr Omura? he would say with a nervous smile.

He likes you, Katsuo. He treats you like a son, you said so yourself.

Todo is a fool.

I thought you said it was Todo who encouraged you.

Oh yes, I remember. You ma-ma-must r-read, K-K-Katsuo. You m-must analyse, always
analyse. Above all, you ma-ma-must work. You have t-t-t-talent, Katsuo. But t-talent
is nothing. For every writer who creates s-s-something lasting, there are a thou-thousand
young m-men of t-talent who do nothing, whose only accomplishment is d-d-daydreaming.

You know, he came to me a week ago, Katsuo said. But how can you respect a man who
can’t even pronounce his own n-n-name? To discuss Shiga’s poetry.

Katsuo laughed. We were still watching Todo crossing the courtyard. He seemed as
preoccupied as ever, gesturing to himself as he walked.

Shiga! Another fraud, he said.

Shiga was a previously unknown nineteenth-century poet whose works had been unearthed
by a Tokyo academic the year before. The literary journals were full of him. Already
the canon of seventeenth-century poetry was being reassessed in the light of his
work. Katsuo had been scathing.

You know what I think of Shiga, he said. Anyway, Todo came to me. To me, can you
believe it? To discuss his own ‘observations’ about Shiga’s work. The old fool wants
to write an article himself. He thinks he can see some connections between Shiga’s
poetry and the great Utamaro.

It’s possible, I said. I have noticed echoes there myself.

You’ve read Shiga?

Yes. Like everybody else, I read the poems when they came out.

And, don’t tell me,
you
think there are connections between Shiga and Utamaro.

Yes. I do, in fact.

Don’t be ridiculous, Tadashi. It’s not possible.

Why? I said.

Katsuo just looked at me.

I shrugged. Sometimes, most times, there was no point in arguing with Katsuo.

So, what did you do? I said.

What do you think I did? I encouraged him.

What for, Katsuo? Todo is an old man.

He’s a fool, Tadashi. He kept on saying he wanted to write one last significant piece
before he died. As if he’s written anything significant before in his life. He’s
an ignorant buffoon. He needs to be taught a lesson.

And you’re going to teach him?

Yes, I am. T-Todo is in for a big fall, he said bitterly.

Todo had disappeared by now. I, too, went to get up and leave, but Katsuo held me
back.

I offered to help him, you know, to write his article, Katsuo said. I quoted Shiga’s
poetry at length. I made the occasional mistake, of course. Deliberately. Which,
amazingly, the old fool corrected. I pointed out some flaws in his argument. Suggested
some alternatives. I was able to convince Todo that what I said was superior, and
that it was he who had led me to these insights. Insights that even Shiga, fine poet
that he was, had failed to grasp. And yes, indeed, there
were
parallels after all
between Shiga’s
poetry and the works of Utamaro. So many, in fact, that I felt ashamed
that I had not seen them myself.

Ah, Tadashi, you have no idea how conceited old Todo is. When he left, he could scarcely
get the words of fawning gratitude out, so indebted to me was he for my help.