With My Little Eye (18 page)

‘Oh, I see.’

‘He is kind gentleman.’

‘And last night he gave you a lift home?’

‘How you know?’

‘I had to take Bruin out. You didn’t see me.’

‘You saw us?’

‘Yes. Soon after twelve.’

‘I go to sake bar to meet friend. Kawasaki sensei is there. When he leave, he offer me lift. Very kind.’

Saying nothing more, I raised some toast to my mouth.

‘He is famous doctor, I think?’

‘So I’m told.’

‘You wish something else, master?’

‘No, nothing, thank you, Hiro.’

I had hoped that, with the passing of time, Hiro would get used to Bruin. But his distaste for the puppy seemed only to
intensify
. Could it be that he was jealous of my love for him. The idea was absurd, and yet … On one occasion, as he was carrying the cumbrous Hoover into the sitting room, Bruin, eager to enter, got under his feet. Violently, muttering something Japanese under his breath, he kicked out at the dog, which then retreated squealing. Clearly he had not heard me descending the stairs in my house slippers.

‘Hiro!’ I shouted his name. ‘What are you doing? Don’t ever, ever do that again.’

Hand on the Hoover, he turned. ‘Always he get in way when I work. I cannot work when he come with me. Impossible.’

‘That’s no reason to kick him. You can always shut him up in another room or put him out in the garden.’

‘He does not do what I tell. If I try to pick up, he run away.’ He pulled a face and sighed. ‘You do not understand, master.’

‘Well, there’s something I want you to understand. I will not have you kicking that dog.’

For a moment he looked sulky and rebellious. Then he smiled as he turned his head up towards me. ‘OK, master. Hiro do what you order. Fine. No problem.’ I could detect no irony. But I am always disturbed when people refer to themselves in the third person.

A few days later I returned tired and depressed to the house after a day in Nara. The two temples that I had wanted to visit had turned out to be closed for repair and an elderly professor appeared to have forgotten that he had an appointment with me. I rushed into the sitting room. I wanted a drink, a large one. I slithered and all but fell. I had walked into some loose, yellow-brown faeces by the drinks cabinet. In rage I rushed to the door, spreading the mess over the carpet, and shouted, ‘Hiro! Hiro!’ But, no doubt having heard me enter, he was already in the hall, rubbing one of his eyes with a knuckle. His usually immaculate hair was tousled. He had clearly been asleep.

‘Look at these slippers! And look at that mess in there! I told you that you must take him out every three or four hours. I’ve
trained him not to do that sort of thing. The poor creature must have been desperate.’

The more that I raged, the more contrite and submissive he became. ‘Sorry, master, sorry, sorry! You tell me that if he disturb my work, I put him in sitting room and shut door. My mistake. I forget, I leave him there too long.’ He rushed into the kitchen and returned with a cloth. ‘Please. I will give you other slipper.’ Suddenly he was kneeling at my feet. As I looked down at his bowed head while his hands eased off a slipper, I had an irresistible urge to kick out at him. The slipper off, he put it on the cloth, so that it should not soil the floor, and then to my amazement held my foot in both his hands. He bowed over it. ‘Forgive me, master. Forgive me.’

‘Oh, take the other slipper off and then get up.’ The tone of my voice, harsh and implacable, surprised me. During the course of my life I have usually been the one who has been bullied, not the one who does the bullying.

He took off the other slipper. Then he rose off the floor. ‘Wait, master, wait. I get you clean slippers.’ He again knelt and eased first one of the clean slippers and then the other on to my feet. He looked up, still kneeling. ‘You forgive Hiro, master?’

‘Yes, of course. It’s not all that important.’

Bruin, sitting on his haunches in a far corner of the hall, tongue lolling out, had watched the whole scene.

After a visit to a remote temple, I had brought Miss Morita back to lunch. Lunch over, she was to help me with some work. Throughout the day she had been carefree and talkative. I had by now decided that, of all the Japanese that I had so far met, it was she, so intelligent, helpful and accommodating, whose
company
I most enjoyed. Surprisingly and fortunately she seemed totally to have erased from her mind that hideously awkward scene after Rex’s party.

‘What can I give you to drink?’

‘Only water, please.’

‘Water? For heavens sake…’

‘Well, maybe juice.’

I shouted for Hiro, who rushed in with a bowl of nuts to go with our drinks. I began to pour out some gin for myself, as he hurried off to fetch the juice. He had totally ignored Miss
Morita’s presence, as he now always did unless she addressed him. He set down a glass of orange juice on ice without looking at her and marched out of the room.

She came over to where I was pouring out some gin for myself.

Head on one side, she said, ‘Please. No.’

I looked at her. Then I shook my head and continued to pour.

‘You drink too much. It’s not good.’ By now I had heard her say that all too often.

‘Well, that’s how it is.’

With a resigned shrug she returned to her chair. ‘Where is Puppy-chan? Usually he comes to say hello.’

‘Oh, don’t say that Hiro has shut him up somewhere.’ I opened the sitting room door and began to shout, ‘Bruin, Bruin!’ When he did not appear, I began to shout for Hiro.

Where was the dog? Had he seen him? He shook his head, with an affronted, pouting expression. He had been very busy, ironing and polishing. Once he had let the dog out into the garden. No, he couldn’t remember if he had called him back in. He had been very busy, he repeated. The French windows from the sitting room to the garden were now closed. Following the custom of many Japanese, I kept them like that during the heat of the day, opening them only when the temperature descended in the evening.

I went out in the garden, shouting the dog’s name. Soon behind me I heard Miss Morita’s piping ‘Puppy-chan!
Puppy-chan
!’ For some reason the sound infuriated me. I wanted to shout to her to shut up. Hiro, no doubt busy putting the last touches to one of his perfectly prepared and perfectly presented lunches, did not join us.

I looked through the kitchen door. ‘Did you by any chance leave the front door open?’

He shook his head vigorously, continued for a few moments with shredding some lettuce leaves, and then looked up and said crossly, ‘Maybe.’

‘What do you mean,
maybe
?’

‘Today I decide to sweep street.’ At that time in Japan, instead of a street-sweeper, each household was responsible for
the regular sweeping of the pavement and street area fronting the house. ‘Maybe he run out. I do not know.’

‘Oh, idiot!’

Miss Morita and I went out into the street. Again there was that shrill ‘Puppy-chan! Puppy-chan!’, now often followed by a ‘Puppy-chan, where are you?’ From time to time she even called, ‘Where are you?’ in Japanese.

Eventually we gave up.

‘You must write notice. I will write notice in Japanese. Big, big. You must put outside house and other places.’

Gloomily I said, ‘Perhaps someone saw him in the street and stole him. Or perhaps a car or lorry ran him over.’

‘If he is run over, then surely we see the body.’

‘Perhaps.’

We ate almost in silence. I ate hardly anything, but her
appetite
was, as always, sturdy. ‘It’s ghastly,’ I said. I knew that it was ridiculous to be so much affected by the loss. But at that moment it was for me a catastrophe almost as great as Laura’s departure with Mark.

Later, I realised that the adored dog had become my
surrogate
for the adored child.

A few days later I was alone in the dining room, while outside I could hear the melancholy sound of the rain remorselessly
falling
, as it had been doing for almost a week. All day I had felt so profoundly depressed that I had not gone out and had done little. For most of the time I had sat slumped in an armchair looking out through the French windows at the downpour. There was a murky, greyish-green iridescence to it.

Hiro stooped with a dish of bean sprouts for me to serve myself. I had guessed, from his elegance in his grey suit and silk shirt, that he was planning to go out once he had done with me. Suddenly I said in a voice of quiet fury, ‘You’ve been using my Caron.’ I put down the salad servers.

Still stooped over me, he turned his head to look at me: ‘Sorry?’

‘That scent – that Pour Un Homme – I keep it on the
bathroom
shelf. I can smell it.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Of course you understand. Don’t be so stupid! I keep it on
the bathroom shelf. Above the washbasin. Never use anything of mine again without asking my permission.’

He straightened. Suddenly I saw that his eyes were filling with tears. They remained on his lower lids like small beads of glass. ‘Sorry, master, forgive me! I am not thinking. I smell perfume. Then – then I try. Only a little. Little.’ He raised
forefinger
and thumb close together. ‘Tonight I meet friend. I think that … Sorry, sorry. Hiro is very sorry. Never do again.’

I felt a terrible remorse. I had spoken to him so brutally over what was, after all, the most trivial of misdemeanours. I tried to explain: ‘That scent – it’s special for me. It means something for me. Do you understand?’ I could see the look of puzzlement on his face. Of course he could not understand. And I could not tell him that I associated that particular scent, so insidiously potent, with Laura’s and my lovemaking and so now, in her absence, with my memories of her.

When Hiro returned to remove my plate before bringing in the crème brûlée that he made to such perfection, I had a thousand-yen note ready for him on the table. ‘This is for you. Enjoy your evening.’ I patted the note. Wide-eyed, he stared down at it. I picked it up and held it out. ‘Please.’

He hesitated and then took it, hurriedly stuffing it into the breast pocket of his jacket. He might have been concealing the evidence of a theft. Then he grabbed one of my hands, raised it to his lips and kissed it. ‘Master is very kind.’