The Snow Kimono (14 page)

Kenji was tending the garden at The Nine-Tailed Fox. He was holding up a small tree
in a pot.

It comes from the famous gingko by the temple gates, he said. The one that is a thousand
years old. This is one of its children. He held the tree up to the light, the leaves,
like miniature fans, suddenly translucent. Perhaps this one will be here too, in
this garden, a thousand years from now, he said.

Katsuo was only half-listening to the old man. He was thinking about Shigeo, the
temple caretaker. About his right hand. How shocked he had been when he first saw
it. The middle three fingers missing. Shigeo had been sitting on his haunches, spreading
humus under the shrubs. His hideously maimed hand, as if lured out from his shirt
sleeve, looked like a pale crab scuttling about in the leaf litter, as though it
was trying to catch some elusive prey that was hiding there. Katsuo had been transfixed
by how grotesque it had looked.

There, that should do it, Kenji said, tamping the soil down. He picked up his watering
can and began applying a fine incantatory spray to the young gingko tree as though
it were a blessing.

There, he said again.

Are the markets open today, Kenji?

Yes, yes. Today, and tomorrow, and the next day.

Katsuo did not see Natsumi the next day. Or the next. He went to talk to Soseki.
No, he had not seen her either. A week went by. He walked back to the summer house.
The shutters were closed. The place looked deserted. He asked a passerby, an old
man, if this was the house of Katsuo Ikeda.

No, the old man said. Mr Ikeda lives two streets back.

He started giving Katsuo directions.

Are you sure? he said. Mr Katsuo Ikeda?

Yes, yes. I’m quite sure, the old man said. I have known him all my life.

Then who lives here? Katsuo asked.

I have no idea, young man, no idea. Someone from the city, I suspect. People come
and go. I thought you were looking for Mr Ikeda’s house, he said.

I am.

Then why do you want to know who lives here?

Without waiting for him to answer, the old man turned and walked off, shaking his
head.

Katsuo came back later that night. To see if the lights were on. But the house lay
in darkness.

No matter, he said to himself, as he turned to walk back into town. Maybe he shouldn’t
have given up on sparrows after all. Sparrows came in flocks, not ones or twos. Move
on. There will be others.

Chapter 12

SEEN from above, the central marketplace of Shirahama is like a giant spider. A maze
of ancient bent-legged streets radiate out from its small body. Some lead up the
mountain, some stretch far out along the coast; others, the shorter, gathering legs,
extend only as far as the waterfront.

It was the day after Katsuo had waited outside Natsumi’s darkened house. He had been
in the marketplace barely ten minutes when he heard a female voice calling: Tadashi…
Tadashi-san.

He turned to see who was calling the name of his friend so brazenly. There was a
young woman standing on the other side of the stall. She was waving to someone. He
looked behind him to see who this Tadashi might be.

Tadashi-san, he heard her call again.

But there was no one there.

He turned back to her. She had stopped waving and now was
looking directly at him.
She seemed vaguely familiar. Had he met her the week before? Or perhaps it was the
week before that? Or was it, now that he thought about it, last year? Whatever the
case, he knew he knew her. But what was her name? And here she was, coming around
the market stall towards him. Smiling. Her name, her name? But the blank would not
fill.

Tadashi Omura, she said.

Tadashi Omura. He was surprised how natural it sounded. He had done this once or
twice before, used Tadashi’s name, when he didn’t want to be troubled by some young
woman who might not leave him alone, afterwards. And what harm was there in doing
this? Tadashi would never find out. To do so, he would have to speak to a woman first.
And there was never any danger of that.

He remembered now, writing his name down for her on a piece of paper.

Tadashi Omura, she had repeated, as if she too liked the way it rolled off her tongue.

He remembered how timid she’d been. On the other hand, he knew immediately that she
was the type of girl who would do anything he asked. Anything. Which always disappointed
him. He preferred to be surprised.

Yes, now he remembered. Not her name. But the incident. A month ago, six weeks. A
not unrewarding experience. Not at all. She
was
very pretty. It had been a frivolous
afternoon’s interlude.

How are you? she said. I was hoping to see you.

And so much prettier now that she was close.

As I was you, he said. I’ve been wondering where you’ve been.

But I told you. I had to go back to Kobe. To see my friend off.

He looked at her.

And now I’m back, she said.

He recalled her small breasts.

You don’t like them, she had said.

I love them, he told her. Which was true. He did. He loved small breasts.

They were still standing by the stall. Other customers had to move around them.

I thought we could meet again, she said shyly.

He thought again of her, her breasts. How they had lain flat against her ribcage,
her two nipples like two small Mount Fujis rising out of a new and different plain.
How he had enjoyed kissing them! How compliant she’d been. With her pretty, slim
body.

I was thinking the same thing, he said. Are you free this evening?

Not this evening, she said. My father is here. But he returns to Osaka tomorrow.
What about tomorrow evening? Are you still at The Seven Sisters?

He wasn’t, but he soon would be.

I am, he said.

Having boldly agreed to the arrangement, she now seemed unsure of herself. She stood
in front of him, her body twisting shyly in the breeze.

He looked at his watch.

I’m so sorry, he said. Is that the time? He extended his hand. He knew how young
women never expected this. Shaking hands. It always took them by surprise. But he
also knew how much they liked it. Afterwards. The lingering touch. Their skin remembering,
remembering again. One hand tracing the outline of the other, a kind of foreshadowing
of what might follow.

After the briefest hesitation, she too put her hand out.

Oh yes, she said, only now remembering.

So, till tomorrow evening, he said. At ten.

He was still holding her hand.

Yes, she said. Tomorrow, at ten.

He bowed, released her.

She bowed twice in return. And then he was gone.

The following day, he went to see Soseki. On his way, he bought himself a newspaper
from one of the street vendors, a boy who had been shouting out the headlines to
passersby. But he had been shocked to see—when the young vendor had turned in response
to his
Yes, I’ll have one
—that the boy was missing an eye. His walnut-skinned empty
socket had unsettled him. It had seemed like a bad omen.

At Soseki’s, when he could still hear the boy crying his wares a few streets away, he found himself looking up
from his paper and saying,
Damn that boy. He said it loud enough for several patrons nearby to look up from
their plates and stare at him. He threw the newspaper into the centre of the table.

A few moments later, Soseki came out and Katsuo ordered an apéritif. It was only
when Soseki reached down to retrieve his cup that Katsuo noticed the small photograph
on the upturned page of his paper. He reached out and picked it up. The photograph
was blurred, almost unrecognisable. Laughable really. He would have been one of very
few able to recognise that it was a photograph of Tadashi. The accompanying article
revealed how he had been appointed to one of Osaka’s pre-eminent law firms. ‘This
unassuming but brilliant young man, already with a string of notable achievements
to his name…’

Plodding, unimaginative Tadashi. What notable achievements? Tadashi was a fine human
being. He was trustworthy, reliable. But notable achievements?

Have you seen Mrs Kanzai? he asked Soseki when he went to pay his bill.

No, Soseki said.

Do you know if she’s still here?

Soseki thought for a moment.

I don’t know, he said. She may have gone already. But it seems a little early for
her.

I think she’s gone, Katsuo said dispiritedly. I think she’s gone.

He went back to the summer house each morning and each evening, just to check. But
nothing had changed. No lights were on. The shutters were still closed. He castigated
himself. Why had he not asked how long she was staying?

He had spent a more than agreeable night with Keiko, that was the girl’s name, the
girl from the market. He had arranged to meet her again the following night, but
then Natsumi began to play on his mind. So he had not gone.

The following week, he went to sit on the beach in the shade of one of the pines.
He watched the holidaymakers playing in the backwash of the surf. In three days,
his own time in Shirahama would be over. He would be returning not to Tokyo, but
to Osaka, returning to he knew not what. Now that his new manuscript was almost complete,
the future stretched out amorphously in front of him.

He sat watching a girl who had been concealed by the rise of the slope emerge from
beneath her beach umbrella. She was wearing a light multicoloured summer dress which
showed off her legs, a straw hat, and sunglasses. She walked indolently down to a
group of children playing at the water’s edge. She stood there talking to them.

The children were pointing at a blue-and-yellow beach ball bobbing in the waves not
far from the shore. A little girl of about three was running back and forth, crouching,
crying, stamping her foot, calling for the others to get her ball. The other two,
a boy and a girl, older than her—perhaps five or six—stood silently watching. The
ball seemed indifferent to the children’s
plight, neither floating further out, nor
returning to them on the incoming waves.

He watched as the girl from beneath the beach umbrella kicked off her shoes. She
turned slightly sideways as a wave broke just in front of her. Then she was wading
out—one hand held up to her hat, her dress hitched up almost to her waist with the
other—to retrieve the ball that was now, it seemed, waiting for her. Soon she was
half-running, half-wading, back through the water in advance of the waves that followed
her. She punched the ball over the children’s heads onto the sand.

She crouched down to pick up her shoes. As she rose, she lifted the hem of her dress,
inspected the wet arc that hung from her hand. Then she let her dress drop. She turned
to look briefly back at the children playing happily again as she retraced her steps
up the beach, then sat unseen once again beneath the umbrella, whose canopy blazed
in the sun.

Ah, Katsuo thought. How pretty
she
is. Maybe here is the opportunity I’ve been waiting
for.