The Sound of the Mountain (11 page)

‘Asleep,’ said Kikuko.

‘Satoko?’

‘Satoko and the baby too.’

‘Well, now. All three of them sleeping away?’ Yasuko’s eyes were round and on her face was something of the innocence that comes with old age.

The gate opened. Kikuko went out. Tanizaki Eiko had come to make her New Year’s call.

‘Well, now. And in this rain.’ Shingo was indeed surprised, but that ‘Well, now’ he had borrowed from Yasuko.

‘She says she won’t come in,’ said Kikuko.

‘Oh?’ Shingo went to the door.

Eiko was standing with her coat over her arm. She had on a black velvet dress. Her makeup was heavy despite the fact that she seemed to have shaved away the fuzz. Bowing from the hips, she looked even smaller.

Her greeting was a little stiff.

‘It was good of you to come in this downpour. I hadn’t expected callers, and I hadn’t thought of going out. Come in and warm yourself.’

‘Thank you.’

Eiko had come through the cold of the wind and rain. He had trouble knowing whether she had come to register a protest, or whether she really had something to talk about.

He felt, in any case, that it had been brave of her.

Eiko seemed reluctant to come inside.

‘In that case I’ll pull myself together and go out with you. Why don’t you wait inside while I get ready? I always go at least to see Mr Itakura. The old president of the company.’

Itakura had been on his mind all morning, and Eiko’s arrival had made the decision for him. He hurried to change clothes.

Shuichi had apparently lain back, his feet in the
kotatsu
, when Shingo had gone out. He got up again as Shingo started to change.

‘Tanizaki is here,’ said Shingo.

‘Yes.’ Shuichi spoke as if the matter were no concern of his, and did not seem disposed to greet her.

As Shingo went out, Shuichi looked up and followed with his eyes. ‘Don’t stay out after dark.’

‘I’ll be back early.’

Teru was at the gate.

A black puppy came running out and, imitating its mother, cut across in front of Shingo toward the gate. It staggered and fell, wetting one side of its body.

‘What a shame,’ said Eiko. She seemed about to kneel down beside it.

‘We had five of them. We’ve given four away, and this is the only one left. It’s promised too.’

The train on the Yokosuka Line was empty.

Looking at the rain, driven horizontal by the wind, Shingo felt somehow happy that she had braved it.

‘There are generally swarms of people from the Hachiman Shrine.’

Eiko nodded.

‘Yes, it’s true – you always do come on New Year’s Day.’

‘Yes.’ Eiko looked down for a time. ‘I’d like to keep coming even after I’ve quit work.’

‘You won’t be able to once you’re married. Did you have something on your mind?’

‘No.’

‘You needn’t feel shy. I’m a little dull and absent-minded these days.’

‘Stop pretending.’ It was an odd remark. ‘But I think I’ll have to ask you to let me quit work.’

This announcement had not been wholly unexpected, but Shingo was troubled for an answer.

‘I didn’t come especially on New Year’s Day to tell you.’ Her manner seemed old beyond her years. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

‘Oh?’ Shingo no longer felt as happy.

She had been in his office for three years, and now, suddenly, she seemed a different woman. She was not her usual self.

Not that he had paid a great deal of attention to her. She had only been his secretary.

He felt, of course, that he would like to keep her. Yet she was in no sense his captive.

‘But I think it’s my fault that you want to quit. I had you show me that house, and I made things unpleasant for you; and I imagine it isn’t easy to have to see Shuichi.’

‘It has been hard.’ Her answer was unequivocal. ‘But when I thought about it all afterwards, it seemed the natural thing for a father. And I saw that I had been wrong, too. I was very proud of myself when he took me dancing, and I went to Kinu’s house. It was depraved of me.’

‘That seems a little strong.’

‘But I did get worse.’ Her eyes were half closed, in sorrow. ‘If I quit work, I’ll ask Kinu to give him up. To pay you back for all you’ve done.’

Shingo was startled. It was as if something had brushed against a ticklish spot.

‘That was his wife at the door?’

‘Kikuko?’

‘Yes. It was very hard for me. I decided I really had to speak to Kinu.’

He felt a certain lightness in her, and a lightening of his own spirits.

It was not impossible, the thought came to him, that by even such light devices the problem might be solved, and with unexpected dispatch.

‘I can’t really ask you to do that.’

‘I’m doing it of my own free will, to pay you back for all you’ve done.’ That such a grand statement should have come from Eiko’s small lips made Shingo once again feel aware of the ticklish spot.

And he thought of telling her not to rush into affairs that were no concern of hers.

But Eiko seemed much affected by her own ‘decision’.

‘I can’t understand him, when he has such a good wife. I don’t like watching him with Kinu, but I couldn’t be jealous of his wife, I don’t care how close they might seem to be. Or is it that men are dissatisfied with women who don’t make other women jealous?’

Shingo smiled wryly.

‘He was always saying what a child she is.’

‘To you?’ There was sharpness in the words.

‘Yes, and to Kinu. He said you were fond of her because she was a child.’

‘The fool!’ Shingo looked at her.

‘But he doesn’t anymore,’ said Eiko in some confusion. ‘He doesn’t talk about her anymore.’

Shingo was almost trembling with anger.

He sensed that Shuichi had referred to her body.

Had he wanted to find a prostitute in his bride? There was astonishing ignorance in the fact, and Shingo felt in it too a frightening paralysis of the soul.

Did the immodesty with which he spoke of his wife to Kinu and even to Eiko arise from that same paralysis?

He sensed cruelty in Shuichi. And not only in him: in Kinu and Eiko too he sensed cruelty toward Kikuko.

Did Shuichi not feel the cleanness in her?

The pale, delicate, childlike face of Kikuko, baby of her family, floated before him.

It was a little abnormal, Shingo could see, for him to feel a sensual resentment toward his son because of his son’s wife; but he could not help himself.

There was an undercurrent running through his life, the abnormality that made Shingo, drawn to Yasuko’s sister, marry Yasuko, a year his senior, upon the sister’s death; was it exacerbated by Kikuko?

When Shuichi had found another woman so remarkably early in their marriage, Kikuko had seemed at a loss to control her jealousy; and yet it seemed that, in the presence of Shuichi’s cruelty and moral paralysis, indeed because of them, she had awakened as a woman.

He remembered that Eiko was less well developed physically than Kikuko.

Shingo fell silent, seeking somehow to control his anger through his sadness.

Eiko too was silent. Taking off her gloves, she smoothed her hair.

Shingo was in Atami. In the garden of the inn a cherry tree was in full bloom. It was January.

Winter cherries, he had been told, had been blooming from before the end of the year; but he felt as if he had come upon spring in a wholly different world.

He mistook the red plum blossoms for peaches, and wondered if the white might be apricots.

Attracted to the cherry blossoms as they were reflected by the pond, he went over to stand on the bank. He had not yet been shown to his room.

He crossed the bridge to the opposite bank, there to look at a plum tree shaped like an umbrella and covered with red blossoms.

Several ducks came running out from under the tree. In their yellow bills and the slightly deeper yellow of their feet he again felt spring.

Tomorrow the firm would be entertaining guests, and Shingo had come to make the arrangements. His business was over once he had conferred with the innkeeper.

He sat on the veranda and looked out at the garden.

There were also white azaleas.

Heavy rain clouds were bearing down from Jikkoku Pass, however, and he went inside.

On the desk were a pocket watch and a wristwatch. The wristwatch was two minutes the faster.

It was seldom that the two were exactly together, which fact sometimes bothered him.

‘But if they worry you so, why don’t you just carry one?’ said Yasuko.

She had a point, to be sure. But the habit had formed over the years.

Already before dinner there were heavy rains and strong winds.

The lights failed and he went to bed early.

He awoke to the howling of a dog in the garden, and the sound of wind and rain, like a raging sea.

There were drops of perspiration on his forehead. The room had a heaviness about it, like the beginning of a spring storm beside the sea. The air was tepid, and seemed to press down upon his chest.

Taking a deep breath, he felt a surge of disquiet, as if he were about to spit blood.

‘It’s not in my chest,’ he muttered to himself. He was only having an attack of nausea.

An unpleasant tightness in his ears moved through his temples to gather at his forehead. He rubbed his forehead and throat.

The sound like a raging sea was a mountain downpour and above it the sharp rasp of the wind came nearer.

In the depths of the storm there was a roaring.

A train was passing through the Tanna Tunnel, he thought. Such was no doubt the case. A whistle blew as the train emerged.

Shingo was suddenly afraid; he was now wide awake.

The roaring had gone on and on. The tunnel being some five miles long, the train would have taken perhaps seven or eight minutes to pass through. His impression was that he had heard it entering the far mouth, beyond Kannami. But was it possible that, a half mile from the Atami exit, he could have heard it at such a distance?

He had somehow felt the presence of the train in the tunnel as if it were inside his head. He had felt it all the way to the near mouth, and heaved a sigh of relief as it came out.

But he was perplexed. He would make inquiries of the inn people the next morning, he decided, and he would telephone the station.

For a time he was unable to sleep.

‘Shingo-o-oh! Shingo-o-oh!’ Half asleep and half awake, he heard someone calling him.

The only person who called with that particular lilt was Yasuko’s sister.

For Shingo it was a piercingly sweet awakening.

‘Shingo-o-oh! Shingo-o-oh! Shingo-o-oh!’

The voice had stolen into the back garden and was calling from under the window.

Shingo was awake. The sound of the brook behind the inn had become a roar. There were children’s voices.

He got up and opened the back shutters.

The morning sun was bright. It had the warm brightness of a winter sun that was damp with the rain of spring.

On the path beyond the brook seven or eight children had gathered, on their way to grammar school.

Had he then heard them calling one another?

But Shingo leaned out of the window and searched through the bamboo thickets on the near side of the stream.

Told by his son on New Year’s Day that his hair was getting white, Shingo had replied that at his age a person had more white hairs every day, indeed that he could see hairs growing white before his eyes. He had remembered Kitamoto.

His schoolmates were now in their sixties. Among them were considerable numbers whose luck, from the middle of the war on into the defeat, had not been good. Since they were already then in their late fifties, the fall was cruel and recovery difficult. And they were of an age to lose sons in the war.

Kitamoto had lost three sons. When his company turned to war production, he was a technician whose services were no longer needed.

‘They say it happened while he was sitting in front of a mirror pulling out white hairs,’ said an old friend who, visiting Shingo’s office, told him of Kitamoto. ‘He was at home with nothing to do, and at first his family didn’t take it too seriously. They thought he was just pulling out white hairs to keep himself busy. It was nothing to be all that worried about. But every day he would squat in front of the mirror. Where he thought he had pulled them all out the day before there would be white hairs again. I imagine there were actually too many for him to get them all. Every day he would spend more time in front of the mirror. They would wonder where he was, and there he would be in front of the mirror pulling out hair. He’d be nervous and jumpy if he was away from the mirror for even a minute, and rush back to it again. Finally he was spending all his time there.’

‘It’s a wonder he didn’t lose all his hair.’ Shingo was on the point of laughter.

‘It’s no laughing matter. He did. He pulled out every last hair.’

This time Shingo laughed openly.

‘But it’s no lie,’ said the friend, looking into Shingo’s face. ‘They say that even while he was pulling out white hair his hair would get whiter. He’d pull out one white hair, and two or three hairs next to it would be white. He would look at himself in the mirror with a sort of desperate expression on his face, and he would be getting whiter as he pulled out white hairs. His hair got thinner and thinner.’

Shingo restrained his laughter. ‘And his wife let him go on pulling?’

But the friend went on as if the question needed no answer. ‘Finally he had almost no hair left, and what was left was white.’

‘It must have hurt.’

‘When he was pulling it out? No, it didn’t hurt. He didn’t want to lose any black hair, and he was careful to pull out the white hairs one by one. But when he had finished, the skin was drawn and shriveled. It hurt when you ran your hand over it, the doctor said. It didn’t bleed, but it was raw and red. Finally he was put in a mental hospital. They say it was in the hospital that he pulled out what little was left. But think of the will-power and the concentration. They almost scare you. He didn’t want to be old, he wanted to be young again. No one seems to know whether he started pulling it out because he had lost his mind, or he lost his mind because he pulled out too much.’