The Snow Kimono (3 page)

Because of the snow, Fumiko’s shoes were soon wet. As we entered the path through
the woods to the cemetery, I hoisted her up onto my shoulders. I was holding her
ankles with my gloved hands. I could feel her fingertips on my head. Far off, we
could hear the dull thud of a woodsman’s axe. All about us stood the wet-dark trunks
of trees, stark against the surrounding whiteness.

As we walked, I was thinking of Fumiko’s weight on my shoulders, what a new experience
this was for me, how alive her legs felt. I had already begun to plan what I would
do, that I would take the opportunity I had been offered to move to Tokyo after all.
I know that for some minutes I must have become completely absorbed in my thoughts.

Then, all at once, Fumiko said: It’s snowing! And I felt her change position. I looked
up to see her outstretched hand trying to catch the large scattered snowflakes that
had begun floating down towards us. I thought briefly of turning back. I knew, however,
that it would be some time before it began to snow in earnest.

Are you all right, Fumiko? I asked.

Yes, she said.

Shall we turn back?

No, she said emphatically.

It was only when a loud crack rang out close by that I
realised that the sound of
the chopping we had heard as we entered the path had ceased. Now it had resumed.
We stood and listened for a moment. I could tell that it must be coming from near
the stone bridge ahead of us, the one that crossed the stream at the foot of the
stairs that led up to the cemetery.

We walked on. The sound came louder now. Every two or three seconds, a loud crack
followed by an echo up the mountainside. And now that we were close, I could tell
it was not the clean, sharp sound of an axe on wood. There was something different,
something muffled about it. A different after-tone. With each step, this sound—regular,
thick, solid—filled the air around us. I thought I could feel it through the earth.
After one particularly loud crack, I felt Fumiko’s body stiffen.

What is it, Father? she asked.

Father.
You know, it caught me almost completely unawares. I had been concentrating
so much on the sound echoing around us that I nearly missed it. But she had said
it at last. The word I had been waiting for.

What is it, Father? I repeated to myself. You cannot imagine how I felt.

I don’t know, I said. But I’m sure it’s nothing we have to worry about. Shall we
go and have a look?

Maybe I’m wrong, he said. Maybe I didn’t say that. I was so surprised by Fumiko saying
Father that I’m not sure that I said anything at all.

Omura got up out of his chair and went to stand by the
window. The room had fallen
into semi-darkness. Jovert sat looking across at him. He could no longer see Omura’s
features, just his silhouette against the cool blue evening light. A lamp came on
in the window of one of the apartments opposite. Jovert saw the figure of a woman
appear briefly, raise her arms, then pull the curtains closed.

The evening light was beginning to fade. Jovert felt them both drawing into themselves
as the light ebbed from the sky.

When Omura began speaking again, Jovert looked up to find that he had shifted away
from the window, so that he could no longer see him. Now, Omura’s voice came to him
from out of the darkness. Disconnected, invisible, incorporeal. He was speaking slowly
now, as if he were back there, back in a place Jovert had never been. And yet, at
the same time, he felt Omura’s voice drawing him closer to a place within himself
that he had never left.

Jovert tried to place him in the shadows, but could not. Maybe it was a trick of
light, the square of fading sky beside which Omura must have been standing, and his
oddly melancholy voice, hanging suspended in the darkness, slow, still, concentrated.

I do not know if you can imagine what it was like, Omura was saying. It must be difficult
for you. You have never been there. So how could I expect you to understand?

He sounded disappointed.

It’s strange, he continued. When I recall this moment, I do not remember it as if
it was actually me. Of course, I can still
feel Fumiko’s weight on my shoulders.
I can feel the collar of my coat against my neck. I must have taken my gloves off
because, even now, I can feel the texture of Fumiko’s stockinged legs, and her shoes.
They were new, and black, with silver clasps.

I must have put Fumiko down because I can see myself kneeling beside her, adjusting
her jacket, looking into her face. She has the darkest, darkest eyes. There is some
snow caught on my cap. Fumiko wants to dislodge it. She tells me to bend my head
down. I feel her brushing it away. I look up to see her assessing how good a job
she has done. For some reason she laughs, her head to one side. As I stand, I can
see, as my hand reaches down, her hand reaches up. I watch as the two of us, me,
a tiny—I can’t believe how small I am—concentrated little man, already in middle
age, and this little girl…as the two of us set off again up the snow-covered path.

You see, Inspector, this is what is so extraordinary. I remember this moment as
though I was a spectator, looking on. I see these two figures, a man and his tiny
daughter. I see the snow drifting down through the bare, wooded canopy. I can see
it settling on my back. I can see our breaths. And even now, inexplicably, I can
feel the tension building. Then, without warning, a mighty crash fractures the stillness
around us. It is a frightening, terrifying sound.

And yet we press on.

We can hear their voices long before we see them. The sound reverberating off the
mountains has led us astray. Gradually, however, muffled voices betray them. Dwarfed
by the trees,
a group of huddle-dark figures is gathered at the edge of the frozen
pond. One figure, larger than the rest, someone whom I can tell is powerfully built,
stands on the frozen surface. He is a little apart from the others, almost facing
them.

He has an axe in his hands. Its blade rests on the ice. He seems to be catching his
breath. He leans the handle of the axe against his thigh. He says something to the
others, shakes his head. He raises his hands to his face, blows on them. I can see
his fogged breath. He rubs his palms against his trouser legs and picks up the axe
again. He is wearing heavy, studded boots.

I remember watching as he scored the surface of the ice. He steadied himself. For
a moment the axe is high above his head, its giant, polished curve hovering. And
then the cracking blade is in the ice. Then again. Four or five crashing blows in
quick succession. The sound echoes away from us up through the hills.

With each powerful blow, the axeman grunted as he brought the blade down. And each
time, a small spray of ice leapt up from the surface of the pond.

It was difficult to tell what he was doing. He appeared to be making a line in the
ice. I remember him stopping again for a moment.

We were quite close to them by this stage. But no one seemed to have noticed us,
or to care that we were there.

We halted a few metres short of this semicircle of dark figures. For some irrational
reason, I felt a surge of panic pass
through me, as though I should just turn around
and go, that what was happening here did not concern me.

One of the figures, a man of about my own age, at the edge of the semicircle and
half-facing me, glanced up and caught my eye. One or two of the others turned to
look at me. There was a moment of absolute silence.

I cannot describe the look on their faces, not hostile, barely curious, immobile.
You see, it was as if, all along, they had been waiting there for me.

Omura broke off again, and as he did so, Jovert felt a similar wave of panic pass
through his own body, as though what Omura was saying presaged a moment of catastrophic
revelation not only for Omura, but for him as well.

It was as if, now that I had arrived, they could finish what they had begun. I was
aware of Fumiko tugging at my hand, trying to pull me away. And yet I could not leave.
My eyes kept passing from one face to another.

In that strange, hallucinatory state, I bent down to pick Fumiko up. When I looked
around again, I saw that they had all turned away from me. I was about to turn away
myself—the axeman had picked up his axe once again and was repositioning himself
on the ice—when I heard a single cry, a cry so desperate, so lost, that it reached
into me and closed around my heart.

I saw the axe blade rise once more, watched it come crashing down. Now, however,
between each blow, inescapably, I could hear the low, primitive sound of a woman
crying. The group
of figures too had come to life. I stood transfixed by the falling
of the axe blade.

As the last blow fell, a sudden movement convulsed the group. From their midst one
of them, the woman I assumed had been crying, broke free and fell upon the ice. With
wild, almost demented sweeps of her arms, she began frantically trying to clear the
shards of broken ice from the frozen surface of the pond. I could not see her face,
and it took me a moment to realise that for some reason her hands were bound. As
a consequence, each new sweep seemed to obscure what she had just uncovered. This
in turn increased her desperation. After two or three sweeps she would pause and
lower her head to the ice, as if she was trying to see into its molecular depths.
All of a sudden, defeated by what she was doing, she collapsed onto the icy surface.

Inevitably, her actions had drawn me closer, so that now I too stood on the periphery
of this semicircle of dark figures looking down on her. No one seemed able to move.
I have no idea how long she lay there, half a minute, a minute. I don’t know. Then,
one of the group, the man who had earlier met my eye, stepped forward. He leaned
down and grasped her under the arm. As he raised her to her feet I caught a glimpse
of her face. She wasn’t a woman at all. She was just a girl.

I was so taken aback that I hardly had time to register her features. Moreover, immediately
my gaze fell upon her face, one of the onlookers, an old woman, uttered a loud cry
and began clutching at her mouth. It was a moment before I realised that
she was
staring at something at her feet. Almost simultaneously, each of us turned to look
at the spot where the young girl had lain. I did not, at first, see what the old
woman had seen. It was the surface of the ice that struck me first. Where the girl
had fallen the thin frosted layer of snow that covered the pond had melted, revealing
the hard molten transparency beneath.

I no longer remember, the effect was so overwhelming, the exact instant when the
bleached and twisted tree root that I could see trapped just centimetres below this
solid surface resolved itself into what it actually was: the foot and leg of a tiny,
newborn child.

In a moment of powerful revulsion, I felt myself turning away, and it is now only
as an after-image that I can see beyond the perfection of this tiny foot, with its
odd node-like arrangement of toes, perfectly ordered, so close to the surface, to
see that the rest of the child’s body is also more or less visible. It was as though
the child had been frozen at the instant it had hit the water. One arm was oddly
turned back, as if to break its fall. I can still see part of the crown of a tiny
head, with its constellations of fine, dark hair.

What is more extraordinary, however, is that I can see its eyes. They are open. It’s
as if the child had fallen in such a manner that it appeared to be looking back over
its shoulder at the mother who had just flung it from her arms.

By the time I realised this, I had already begun to move away from the group. I could
hear the agonised wailing of the girl who by now must have seen what we all had seen.

Fumiko was saying, What is it, Father? What is it?

But I was too shaken to reply, and we set off back down the track in the direction
from which we had come.

Omura’s voice trailed off. The room was completely dark now. Outside, in the distance,
Jovert could see the faint silhouette of the towers of Notre-Dame lit up momentarily
by the floodlights of a passing
bateau-mouche
. Then they were gone.

Chapter 2

AT exactly 2.56 the next morning, as though some hinged reflex had been triggered
in his sleep, Jovert found himself abruptly sitting up in his bed, staring into the
darkness, the pale-green bloom from the clock on his bedside table the only thing
that lit the room. He had been dreaming, although what it was he had been dreaming
about now eluded him.

Then he was up out of his bed, pulling on his coat, reaching for his crutches. Five
minutes later, he was standing in the vitreous stillness of the street outside. A
solitary figure moving through the sleeping sepia city.

Even as he approached, he knew the bin would be empty. He peered in, trying to pry
the inner gloom apart. Nothing. He looked around, at the deserted streets, at the
silent stone façade of St Paul’s, the abandoned newsstand. The green neon sign of
the pharmacy opposite was blinking fitfully on and off. He watched it come instantly
to life. Then, like someone exhaling in
their sleep, it began to flicker. Went off.
Came on. Somewhere, a car alarm began to sound.

He leaned down, touched the top of the bin with his hand. His shadow made to go.
Then he saw it, hidden in the darkness at the base of the bin: a piece of crumpled
paper, lying like a half-unfolded flower. He reached in, retrieved it. It was her
photograph. The letter was gone. But he had her photograph. It was something.