The Snow Kimono (40 page)

For what? I said.

For you, Tadashi. For the inevitable. You have my fate in your hands.

You make fate sound so puny, Katsuo. It’s not just you who is waiting, I said. There’s
also Mrs Yamaguchi.

Ah yes, dear Mrs Yamaguchi. Sachiko’s mother.

And her husband.

Again he waited.

The man you killed.

As I said to you, Tadashi, I merely released him from his torment.

I’m surprised, Katsuo, I said, how little you interrogate things that concern you.
What was it you used to say to me? About writing? It’s simple, I remember you saying.
All you have to do is ask, What if? And then, How come?

Katsuo was sitting watching me closely now.

You know, I said. Mrs Yamaguchi? I saw her a second time. At the inn.

Still he waited.

What if I told you that Sachiko was not her child? That she had a sister?

I took out my own pack of cigarettes and threw it onto the table in front of him.

You know, Inspector, even as he was looking at me, I could see him trying to isolate
what it was he had missed. He seemed somehow smaller now.

And still it had not dawned on him.

What if, what if, what if.

The atmosphere in the room began to change. You could feel it. It was as if every
particle, every molecule, everything around us were now waiting, and Katsuo and I
were somehow connected to the world, and to each other, in a way that we had never
been connected before.

A sister. From a mountain village.

I saw the moment of truth arrive. Katsuo began rocking back and forth in his chair,
a look of growing anguish on his face. He was clenching and unclenching his fists,
his face was drained of blood.

And I knew he knew. He’d been looking in the wrong direction. The retrospective piece
had fallen into place.

No, he said.

The sound of a baby crying came to us again.

He put his head in his hands. So that I could not see his eyes. So that
he
would
not see the blow coming. He was leaning forward in his chair now, like a prisoner
waiting to be executed.

Mariko, he said to himself. And then, under his breath, Sachiko.

Yes, I said. Sachiko was Mariko’s child. The child you never wanted.

You can’t prove anything.

And what about the child I hear crying? I said.

Fumiko.

Yes, what about her?

Katsuo looked up at me.

If Fumiko were to find out one day that Sachiko was your daughter, what do you think
that would do to her?

You know, Tadashi, he said, you’ve
always
judged me too
quickly, too uncharitably.
If only I had done half the things I told you I had done, what a life I would have
had.

Don’t you think you’ve done enough? Mariko, Sachiko, Fumiko…

He reached for my pack of cigarettes. Took one from it. Struck a match.

Yes, he said. Mariko. Sachiko. Fumiko. What am I going to do about Fumiko?

The match was still burning. He shook it distractedly. Inhaled.

Fumiko, he said slowly. You’re going to tell, aren’t you, Tadashi?

Tell who?

The authorities. About Hideo.

No, I said. I knew he knew what was coming next. You are.

But then it will all come out, he said. Fumiko will know that I killed—

Who? Her grandfather? Her mother’s uncle? A weak old man who had sold his own stepdaughter
to you. And then wanted her back?

But what about Sachiko?
You
know I was Sachiko’s father.

Yes, I do. But I can live with that. And so can you. Fumiko shouldn’t have to.

PART IX

VALEDICTION

Chapter 45

HE was fucking his own daughter, for Christ’s sake, Martine said.

They were sitting at Le Bar l’Anise. They were both rugged up because of the cold.
Soon it would be winter. Martine was smoking, tapping her cigarette lighter impatiently
on the table, waving the smoke away with her hand, just as Jovert imagined Katsuo
had done.

Yes, you’re right, he said. But did he know? I don’t think he did.

Of course he fucking knew, she said. Or if he didn’t, he should have.

Perhaps.

Well, didn’t you ask what’s-his-name? Takashi? Tadeshi?

Tadashi. Omura. Professor Omura.

Whatever, she said.

You see, that’s what’s so strange, he said. That evening, the evening Omura told
me all of this, when I looked up,
he was sitting there looking at me. Just as he
must have done with Katsuo.

Jovert reached for his coffee. Swirled the remnants around in the bottom of his cup.
Some of the depleted grounds stuck to the sides. He drained what was left. The coffee
was lukewarm. It tasted bitter now.

We were just two old men sitting in a room opposite each other, talking, he said.
Something so simple. And yet, so strange. So…unfinished. As if we were two parts
of an uncompleted whole. Do you know what I mean?

She didn’t answer. She sat looking at him. As though she was still angry.

And what about the girl? she said after a little while.

What girl?

The girl on the ice. You remember, when Professor Omura took Fumiko to see her mother’s
grave. The girl whose baby was trapped under the ice. What about her?

I don’t know, Jovert said.

Didn’t you ask? I thought that’s what you did!

No, I didn’t. I remember Omura saying to me—it was when we were out walking, so it
must have been that first night—I thought you might have asked.

About what? I’d said.

About the girl on the ice.

But we must have got sidetracked, because I never found out. And after that, we never
came back to it.

He looked at his watch. It was already after four.

I must remember to ask him next time I see him.

He put his hand up, signalled to Daudet, raised an invisible glass to his lips. He
looked at Martine.

You? he said.

She too glanced at her watch.

Why not? I’m still cold from walking here, she said.

He held two fingers up.

Deux
, he mouthed.

It’s strange, he said to Martine. When we were sitting in Omura’s room, after he
had told me about Mariko, about who Sachiko really was, what Katsuo had done, it
was as though Katsuo were in the room with us. Waiting for us, waiting for
me
to
answer some as yet unasked question. And suddenly I realised.

Oh, I said. I’m sorry, Professor Omura. Of course. You want to know—what would I
have done?

Yes, Inspector, he said. What would you have done? Would you have told the police?

Had he slipped that far? In such a short time? A matter of five months? Had he really
relinquished the habits of a lifetime so quickly? He would never have accepted at
face value some of what Omura had told him if, back then, it had been Omura who had
been brought in for him to interrogate. Never.

He saw Omura leaning forward to peer into his room that first night, the night he
had picked up the keys. He recalled how
Omura had seemed reluctant to leave. What
had he said? ‘Yes.’ ‘Yes.’ That was all! And then he saw Omura standing there, waiting
to be invited in.

He felt disgusted with himself. How
could
he have fallen so quickly?

He called the real-estate agent at nine the next morning. Yes, he could go through
their records if Jovert wanted him to. Yes, twenty-five years, longer, they were
all in the basement. He knew Jovert’s apartment. The list would not be long. There
had been few owners, fewer tenants.

Then it was evening. Night. The typing stopped. He looked at his watch. Twelve forty-five.
The rest of the building already asleep. Five minutes later, he was standing outside
Omura’s door, knocking. He heard Omura’s footsteps. The door opened. Omura stood
there, a cigarette in his hand.

Insp—?

He was on the bus, Jovert almost shouted.

Who? Omura took a half-step back.

Katsuo. That day, when Sachiko came down the mountain with her stepfather for the
first time. Katsuo was on the bus.

What do you mean, Inspector? On the bus?

Can I come in? Jovert said. Are you busy?

You know I’m not, Inspector. I was going to go out onto the balcony, but it’s freezing
out there.

It’s mid-November, Jovert said. What did you expect?

I was just about to make some tea, Omura said. Would you like some? Or something
to drink?

No, I’m fine, Jovert said. I’ve been going over some of what you’ve told me these
past few months. And now I find myself saying, no, that can’t be right. How would
Katsuo know that? Sachiko can’t have told him.

Cigarette? Omura asked. A small pyre of bent-elbowed butts already occupied the ashtray
on the coffee table. Omura saw Jovert looking.

It’s last night’s as well, Omura said.

I’m sorry?

Nothing, he said. It doesn’t matter. You were saying.

You remember you told me, Jovert said, when Hideo brought Sachiko down to Osaka,
they stopped at an inn because of the rain. Then they went on. Down the mountainside.
In the storm. And the bus broke down, it got stuck in this water-filled hole on the
side of the road. And the bus driver’s son…

Hiroshi?

Yes, Hiroshi. You told me how he had drowned when the bus fell back on him. Well,
he was there. Katsuo. Katsuo was there.

How do you know?

Who told you the story? Jovert said.

Katsuo.

And where did he get it from?

From Sachiko. As I’ve told you, he would ask her the same things over and over again.
Building up his account of things. Adding to what he’d missed. When I went to see
him that fateful night, he told me how Sachiko had died in the snow. How he had tried
to keep her awake by getting her to talk. How she had
told him again of coming down
the mountain with her father. Almost from the moment they left her village, things
started to go wrong. It was as if these things were warnings, omens, which they did
not heed.

And do you recall what he said about Hiroshi? What you told me?

Hiroshi?

When the bus lurched backwards. When Hiroshi was struck down. When he was stuck under
it. They couldn’t get him out. And you said something about his arm, how it rose
up out of the water. You described his hand. You said it was like a…like a bloody
mouth trying to suck air down into his body.

Yes, Omura said. I did say something like that.

But you said, Sachiko said, that she and the old people, the women, the old men,
and the children were standing at the side of the road some distance away. With the
rain still beating down on them. Didn’t you? Even I can see them there, huddled under
their umbrellas, looking on while this nightmare unfolds. Isn’t that what you said?
And when the bus begins to loom over them, the men jump out of the way to escape
it. And down it comes, trapping Hiroshi. And the men are all there, in a semicircle,
watching, except for the two who are trying to pull him out.

Omura did not reply. He was listening intently to what Jovert was saying.