Beauty and Sadness (15 page)

Oki hurried home and asked for Taichiro.

“He’s gone to Tokyo,” his wife said.

“Already? But he’s taking an evening plane. Do you think he’ll come home again first?”

“No. That would be out of his way.… He said he wanted to stop in at school to pick up some research materials.”

“I wonder.”

“Is anything wrong? You’re not looking well.”

Avoiding her eyes, Oki went into his study. He had missed Taichiro and had not sent a telegram to Otoko or Keiko.

Taichiro flew to Kyoto by the six o’clock plane. Keiko was waiting at the airport.

He fumbled for a greeting. “You shouldn’t have—I had no idea you’d come out to meet me.”

“Aren’t you grateful?”

“I am. But you shouldn’t have bothered.” She saw that his eyes were alight, and lowered her gaze demurely.

“Did you come from Kyoto?” he asked, still rather ill at ease.

“Yes, from Kyoto,” Keiko replied politely. “I live there, after all. Where else would I be coming from?”

He started to laugh apologetically and looked down, his eyes resting on her obi. “You’re so dazzling, it’s hard to believe you’re here to meet someone like me.”

“My kimono?”

“Yes, your kimono, and your obi, and …” Your hair and your face too, he wanted to say.

“In the summer I feel cooler if I wear a proper kimono, with the obi snug. I don’t like loose-fitting clothing when it’s hot.”

Still, her kimono and obi seemed brand-new. “I prefer quiet colors for summer, like this obi,” she said. “I painted the design myself.” She was following close behind him as he made his way toward the baggage area.

Taichiro turned to look.

“What do you think it is?” she asked.

“Let’s see—water? A stream?”

“It’s a rainbow! A colorless rainbow … just curved lines in light and dark ink. Nobody would recognize it, but I’m supposed to be wrapped in a summer rainbow—in the mountains at dusk.” Turning, Keiko displayed the back of her silk organdy obi. On its puffed-out bow there were green mountain ranges, and the delicate rose-colored shading of a sunset sky.

“The two sides don’t match,” she went on, keeping her back toward him. “An odd girl painted it, so it’s an odd obi.” He was captivated by the combination of the faint flush of rose with the creamy skin at the nape of her slender neck under her upswept black hair.

Passengers for Kyoto were provided with taxi service to the airline office. The first taxi quickly filled, but while Taichiro was wondering what to do another came up, and he was able to ride alone with Keiko. As they were leaving the airport, he remarked: “You must not have had dinner yet, coming all the way out to meet me at this hour.”

“And you’re still treating me like a stranger!… I
didn’t even want lunch—I’ll have something later, with you.” Then she said softly: “You know, I was watching you from the time you left the door of the plane. You were the seventh one out.”

“Was I?”

“The seventh,” Keiko repeated distinctly. “You didn’t even look around for me as you came down the steps. If you expect someone to meet you, isn’t it natural to see who is at the gate? But you just kept walking along looking down. It made me so ashamed I wanted to hide.”

“I didn’t expect you.”

“Then why did you write special delivery to tell me when you’d arrive?”

“I suppose I wanted you to know I was really coming.”

“It was like a telegram—nothing but the time of your plane! I wondered if you were testing me, to see if I’d come. Weren’t you testing me? Anyway, I came.”

“But I’d have looked to see if you were there, wouldn’t I?”

“You didn’t say where you’d be staying either. If I hadn’t come to the airport, how would I have known?”

“Well …” Taichiro hesitated. “I just wanted to tell you I was coming to Kyoto.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t know what you were trying to do!”

“I thought I might phone you.”

“And if you didn’t, would you go on home to Kamakura? Did you only want me to know you were here? Were you trying to humiliate me, being in Kyoto and not seeing me?”

“No, I wrote so that I’d have the courage to see you.”

“The courage to see me?” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Can I be happy? Or must I be sad? Never mind, don’t answer—I’m glad I came! But I’m not a girl you have to have courage to see. Sometimes I want to die. Go ahead and trample on me!”

“Why are you bursting out like that, all of a sudden?”

“It’s
not
sudden. That’s the kind of girl I am. I need somebody to destroy my pride.”

“I’m afraid I’m not the sort to hurt anyone’s pride.”

“So it seems, but that won’t do. You can walk all over me!”

“Why do you say such things?”

“I don’t know.” Keiko pressed her hand lightly against her hair, in the rush of wind through the car window. “Maybe I’m unhappy.… Just now when you were coming to the gate you looked downcast and gloomy. Why were you so sad? I was waiting to meet you, but I didn’t exist for you, did I?”

The fact was that he had been thinking of her, but he could not admit it.

“Even that made me unhappy. Because I’m selfish.… How can I get you to think I exist?”

“I’m always thinking of you,” he declared. “At this moment, too.”

“Are you?” Keiko murmured. “It’s strange to be here beside you. I just want to sit and listen to you talk.”

Their taxi passed the new factories at Ibaraki and Takatsuki. In the hills near Yamazaki the illuminated Suntory Distillery loomed up before them.

“Wasn’t your flight bumpy?” she asked. “I worried about you—there was a heavy afternoon shower in Kyoto.”

“It was smooth enough, but once I thought we were going to crash. We were flying straight into some dark mountains that blocked our way.”

Keiko’s hand came stealing over.

“They turned out to be black clouds,” he said. His hand lay still under her palm. She kept her hand on his for a time.

The taxi entered Kyoto and headed east on Fifth Street. No breeze stirred the trailing branches of the willows along the broad street, but the shower seemed to have cooled the air. Far at the end of the green rows of willows were the Eastern Hills. The line of hills was blurred by low-hanging clouds in the evening sky. Here at the western edge of the city he could already feel the atmosphere of Kyoto.

They went up Horikawa, and then along Oike Street to the JAL office.

Taichiro had reserved a room at the Kyoto Hotel and said he wanted to leave his suitcase there. “Let’s walk over. It’s just down the block.”

“No, no! I don’t want to!” Keiko shook her head. She got back into the waiting taxi and beckoned to him. “Kiyamachi above Third Street,” she told the driver.

“Stop at the Kyoto Hotel on the way,” Taichiro added. But Keiko objected.

“Never mind,” she said. “Please go straight to Kiyamachi.”

They arrived at a tea house with a narrow alleyway entrance that he found intriguing, and were shown into a little room overlooking the river. He was delighted by the view and asked how she happened to know a place like this.

“My teacher often comes here.”

“You mean Miss Ueno?” He turned toward her.

“Yes, Miss Ueno.” Then she left the room. Is she going to order dinner? he wondered. About five minutes later Keiko came back and said: “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to stay here. I just called to cancel your other reservation.”

Taichiro stared at her in amazement. She was looking down meekly. “I’m sorry. I wanted you somewhere I knew.”

He was at a loss for words.

“Please, stay here. You’ll only be in Kyoto two or three days, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

Keiko glanced up at him. Her unpainted, beautifully even eyebrows seemed a shade lighter than her lashes, and gave a look of innocence to her jet-black eyes. She had used only a touch of pale lipstick but her lips were exquisitely shaped. She did not appear to be wearing any rouge or powder.

“Stop it!” she said, blinking. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You have such thick lashes.”

“They’re real! Pull them and see.”

“I do feel like giving them a tug.”

“Go ahead, I don’t mind.” She shut her eyes and held her face closer. “Maybe they seem so long because they’re curled.”

Keiko waited, but Taichiro did not touch her eyelashes. “Open your eyes,” he said. “Look up a little, and open your eyes wide.” She did as he asked.

“Do you want me to look straight at you?”

Just then a waitress brought in drinks and appetizers.

“Would you like sake or beer?” said Keiko, settling back. “I don’t drink, myself.”

The paper screens to the balcony were almost closed, and a lively party, with geisha, seemed to be going on out there. A hush fell over the party as the wail of a Chinese fiddle and the songs of strolling musicians drifted up from the promenade by the river.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” Keiko asked.

“First I want to visit a tomb on the hill behind the Nisonin Temple. It’s a nice one, an old court-family tomb.”

“I can go along with you, can’t I?” She was looking toward the electric fan. “I’d like you to take me for a motorboat ride on Lake Biwa. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow.”

Taichiro was hesitant. “I don’t know how to handle a motorboat.”

“I do.”

“Can you swim?”

“In case it turns over?” she said, looking at him. “You can rescue me! You will, won’t you? I’ll hang on to you.”

“I couldn’t rescue you if you did.”

“What
should
I do?”

“I’d have to hold you up, with my arms around you from behind.” Suddenly he felt embarrassed, imagining himself trying to keep this beautiful girl afloat.… Unless he held her tight both of their lives would be in danger.

“I don’t care if it turns over,” said Keiko.

“I’m not sure I could rescue you.”

“What if you couldn’t?”

“Don’t talk like that! Let’s give up the motorboat ride.”

“But I’ve been looking forward to it. There’s nothing to worry about.” She poured some more beer into his glass. “Aren’t you going to change into a kimono?”

“No, I’m all right.”

Two night kimonos—a man’s and a woman’s—were lying neatly folded in a corner. Taichiro tried not to look at them. Had Keiko reserved a room for two?

There was no adjoining room. He could not bring himself to change in front of her.

The waitress brought in their dinner without a word. Keiko was silent too.

They began to hear the twang of a samisen coming from a balcony down the river. The party on their own balcony was getting noisy; loud Osaka voices were plainly audible. The sentimental songs and the sound of the Chinese fiddle were fading into the distance.

The river could not be seen from where they were sitting, at the low table in the middle of the room.

“Does he know you’ve come to Kyoto?” Keiko asked.

“My father? Yes, of course. But he’d never guess you met me at the airport, and I’m here with you.”

“That makes me happy! Having you slip away from your father to be with me.”

“I’m not trying to hide anything from him.… Is that how it seems to you?”

“But that’s how it
is
!”

“And your Miss Ueno?”

“I haven’t breathed a word to her. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if both of them had an inkling of it. That would
really
make me happy.”

“It’s not very likely. Miss Ueno hasn’t heard about us, has she? Did you say anything to her?”

“I told her you showed me around Kamakura. When I said I liked you she turned pale!” Keiko’s black eyes gleamed, and her cheeks flushed slightly. “Do you think she could be indifferent to the child of a man who caused her so much suffering? She told me how she felt when your sister was born.”

Taichiro was silent.

“Miss Ueno is working on a picture she calls
Ascension of an Infant.
It’s a baby sitting on a five-colored cloud—though it seems her own baby died before she was able to sit up.” Keiko paused. “If that child had lived she’d be older than your sister.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“I wanted to get revenge for Miss Ueno.”

“Revenge on my father?”

“And on you too!”

Taichiro was prying clumsily at the broiled sweetfish
before him. Keiko drew his dish over and expertly boned the fish. “Has your father said anything about me?” she asked.

“No. I don’t talk to him about you.”

“Why not?”

His face clouded. He felt as if a cold hand had touched him.

“I’ve never talked to my father about women,” he blurted out.

“About
women
?” An enchanting smile came to her lips.

“How did you intend to get revenge on me?” he asked in a dry voice.

“I can’t say, really.… Perhaps it was by falling in love with you.” Her eyes had a faraway look, as if she were gazing across the river. “Don’t you think that’s funny?”

“So falling in love is your revenge?”

Keiko nodded meekly, as if relieved. “It’s feminine jealousy,” she murmured.

“Jealousy over what?”

“I’m jealous because Miss Ueno still loves your father … because she doesn’t bear the least grudge toward him.”

“Do you love her that much?”

“Enough to die for her.”

“I can’t help what happened in the distant past. But does our being here together have anything to do with that old tie between Miss Ueno and my father?”

“Of course. If I weren’t living with her you wouldn’t exist for me. I’d never even have met you.”

“You shouldn’t think such thoughts. A young girl who thinks like that is haunted by the ghosts of the past. Maybe that’s why your neck is so slender and wraithlike. Beautifully slender, of course.”

“A slender neck means you’ve never loved a man—that’s what Miss Ueno says. But I’d hate for it to be thick.”

He suppressed the temptation to grasp that beautiful neck. “That’s the whispering of a ghost. You’re caught in a spell, Keiko.”

“No—in love!”

“Miss Ueno doesn’t really know anything about me, does she?”

“When I came back from Kamakura I told her you must be the image of your father when he was your age.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Taichiro said hotly. “I don’t look at all like my father.”