The Snow Kimono (12 page)

I protested. I told him that what I had said was merely in response to what he had
already been thinking, that really I had said nothing at all. His Shiga article,
he told me, would be the one thing that guaranteed his rightful place amongst his
intellectual peers. Katsuo snorted. His rightful place amongst his intellectual peers!
At least he was right about that.

A month or two went by. I didn’t hear any more from Katsuo after this conversation.
But then he came to see me in my room.

Read this, he said.

He handed me a magazine. A literary magazine. It was open at Professor Todo’s article.

The article was long, and quite dense. There were many footnotes. It took me some
time to read as Katsuo paced up and down. Todo’s arguments seemed, I have to confess,
very lucid. And his style was surprisingly elegant, not what I had expected at all.

This is quite good, I said. I’m impressed.

Katsuo raised his eyebrows, laughed. He took the journal from me and flipped through
a couple of pages.

Now read this.

It was the last article in the magazine. It was a lengthy and
devastating analysis
which proved that the whole Shiga discovery was a hoax. The poems were made up of
a range of misquotations and distortions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century so-called
rustic school poets.

The crux of the article, however, was what followed. Further investigations by its
author, over a period of some months, involving a forensic process of backtracking
and hole-plugging, had revealed that Etsuko Kaida, the leading Tokyo academic who
had made the initial discovery, did not, in fact, exist.

What—and this was the article’s closing argument, delivered with a chilling nonchalance—had
convinced the author that the Shiga poems were fake was the certain knowledge that
they had been written by the author of the present article himself. He had constructed
the poems. And he was, in addition, the mystery Tokyo academic who claimed to have
discovered the poems in the first place. Etsuko Kaida was, in fact, Katsuo Ikeda.

I just rearranged the letters of my name, Katsuo said.

I was staring at him.

Oh, come on, Tadashi. Etsuko! Who is, let me remind you, just as smart as I am.

I can see that, Katsuo, I said. The name. I’m not stupid, you know. What I can’t
see is why you could possibly want to do that to Professor Todo. What has he ever
done to you?

Who really cares? he said. It wasn’t about him. I did it to amuse myself.

But he’s an old man, I said. He’s harmless.

Katsuo didn’t answer. I handed the magazine back to him.
He rolled it up and began
tapping it on the top of my desk.

I’m going for a walk, I said. When you’ve finished, please have the courtesy to pull
my door closed when you leave.

Within hours, news of the scandal was circulating in every corridor of the university.
How a student had duped one of the university’s most senior professors. Todo was
publicly humiliated. He had been made a complete laughing stock. The university felt
it had been disgraced. While the governors decided what to do about him, Katsuo took
matters into his own hands. He disappeared.

This would not have meant much to me if it had not been for Todo. He came to see
me the night before the disciplinary tribunal was to meet to decide Katsuo’s fate.

When I went to answer my door, Professor Todo was standing outside.

Mr Omura, he said.

Professor Todo.

May I come in?

He sat for a long time holding his hat, looking at the floor.

You know, Mr Omura, he said at last, I was not surprised. Katsuo is the most talented
student I ever had, he said. But it is a talent that is poisoned. He does not yet
know how to harness it. I tried to help him. Do you understand what I am saying?

I nodded.

But I might as well not have been there. Todo was still looking at the floor. It
was as though I was invisible, and he was talking to himself.

He thinks I am stupid, blind.

Todo seemed to have shrunk even further into himself. I could see his left hand shaking.

Katsuo’s like a spider, he said. He paralyses people. Then he sucks them dry. It’s
almost as if he can’t help himself. I think I recognised this the moment I first
saw him.

He nodded to himself, as though confirming something he had just thought.

I treated him like a son, he said.

He got up, took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, replaced his hat.

I have spoken to the tribunal, he said. I’ve told them I take full responsibility
for what happened. I’ve recommended that they take no action against Katsuo.

He went to the door.

Would you do something for me, Mr Omura? When you next see him, tell Katsuo that
I understand.

He bowed and left.

It was only later that I recalled something—the entire time he was in my room, he
had not stuttered once!

A few days after this, I heard that Todo had resigned. Then he too disappeared. Rumours
started to circulate that he had gone back to his village, that he had committed
suicide there.

A week later, there was another knock on my door. This time it was Katsuo.

Where have you been? I said.

Away, he said. He waved his hand in some indeterminate direction. Tell me, he said,
is it true? I’ve just heard they want to expel me. Their best student! Can you believe
that? Can’t they see it was just a joke?

A joke, I said. What about Professor Todo?

Well, yes. Todo, he said. But Todo’s life was over. He’s old. Old, Tadashi. What
more did he have to contribute?

He brushed his hand through his hair.

He came to see me, you know.

Who?

Professor Todo.

What for?

I think he wanted to know why.

And what did you tell him?

I didn’t tell him anything. He warned me to stay away from you. He said you sucked
people dry, suffocated them. He said that he had treated you like a son. He said,
Tell Katsuo I understand.

Katsuo was staring into space.

Todo was a fool. A stupid, ignorant fool, he said.

Katsuo was about to say something else, but instead, he turned and left. It was not
until I went to Shirahama that I saw him again.

Part III

NATSUMI

Chapter 11

AT the beginning of summer, Natsumi took her two children to Shirahama once again
to escape the oppressiveness of the capital. Her husband, a successful businessman,
was happy to indulge his still-young wife, to pack her off with his best businessman’s
smile to the seaside for a month or two, so that she could escape her boredom, or
her disillusionment, or whatever else it was she called the emptiness of their marriage.

When, eventually, I read these lines, and more or less most of what followed, I recognised
them instantly from the letters Katsuo began sending me from Shirahama around this
time. It was what had happened to him.

Forgive me, Madame Kanzai. We are very busy. Would you permit someone, a gentleman,
to share your table?

Natsumi looked up from her book. She was sitting at her favourite inn, one of the
few that overlooked the beach. The sun was shining. Soseki, the innkeeper, bowed
to her as was his custom. She nodded politely in return. She held a hand up to shield
her eyes, trying to ascertain if there was anyone, a gentleman, someone she did not
yet know, standing beside him. But, of course, there was not.

As Madame well knows, Soseki said, we have many customers who come only here. He
smiled down at her. On the other hand, if you would prefer to remain alone…

He smiled again. His request had seemed so natural, so considerate. So courteous.
And he was right. She knew Soseki’s restaurant well. She had been here many, many
times before. Soseki was always so welcoming. He looked after her. They shared, she
thought, a special understanding. He knew her children’s names. How old they were.
He spoke to them. She regarded him by now almost as an uncle, someone she could trust.

Her table was a setting for four. And yet here she was, sitting by herself.

She thought again of Soseki talking to her children, how he always brought them sweets
after their meal.

Please, she said.

It would not be intruding?

No, she said. And…this gentleman?

From Tokyo. A writer, he said.

I will try not to hold that against him, she said. She smiled her loveliest smile
up at him.

It is not always a mark of disrepute, coming from Tokyo, he said. He knew, in part,
of Natsumi’s troubles there. She laughed at the subtlety of his misunderstanding.

She looked around now, trying to intuit where her imminent companion might be. Wondering
if, perhaps, he might be standing in the doorway of the restaurant.

So, are we agreed, Madame?

We are indeed, Soseki.

Thank you, Mrs Kanzai, he said. You are most understanding.

It was like a game, this repartee. This back and forth. She enjoyed playing at it.
It made her feel young again.

She watched Soseki disappear inside. She leaned forward to pour herself another cup
of tea. Folded her book in her lap. It will be nice, she thought, to have some company.
After her year of being alone.