The Sound of the Mountain (25 page)

‘Kikuko and Shuichi still have one.’

‘Suppose you go sleep with them, then,’ said Shingo, gazing up at the ceiling now liberated from the net.

‘I couldn’t very well do that. But I do think I’ll move in with Fusako tomorrow night.’

‘Do. Sleep with one of your grandchildren in your arms.’

‘Why do you suppose, with the baby there, Satoko has to go on clinging to her mother? Don’t you think there’s something abnormal about her? She gets the strangest look in her eyes.’

Shingo did not answer.

‘I wonder if not having a father does that to a child.’

‘It might help if you were to make yourself more approachable.’

‘And you might do the same thing. I prefer the baby myself.’

‘Not a word from Aihara to let us know whether he’s dead or alive.’

‘You sent in the divorce notice. And so it makes no difference.’

‘And that is that?’

‘I know what you mean. But even if he were alive we would have no way of knowing where he might be. We’ll have to resign ourselves to it – the marriage failed. But is that the way it should be? You produce two children and then separate? It doesn’t give you a great deal of confidence in marriage.’

‘If a marriage has to break up, the echoes might be a little pleasanter. Fusako hasn’t been all that good herself. He was a failure in life, and I don’t imagine she gave him much sympathy. He must have suffered.’

‘There are things a woman can’t do when a man is desperate. He won’t let her come near. If Fusako and the children had just let themselves be thrown away, then I suppose there would have been nothing left for them but suicide. A man can always find another woman to commit suicide with him. And Shuichi,’ Yasuko went on after a pause. ‘He’s all right now, but who can tell when he’ll be up to something again. It wasn’t good for Kikuko.’

‘You mean the baby?’

Shingo’s word referred to two different matters: the fact that Kikuko had refused to have her child, and the fact that Kinu was determined to have hers. Yasuko did not know of the latter.

Kinu had said that the child was not Shuichi’s and that she would take no interference from him. Shingo could not be sure of the truth, but he felt all the same that the woman was lying.

‘Maybe I should go sleep with Shuichi and Kikuko after all. You can’t tell what sort of discussions they might be having.’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

Yasuko, who had been lying on her back, turned toward him. She seemed about to take his hand, but he did not extend it to her.

She touched the edge of his pillow gently. Then, as if whispering a secret: ‘It’s just possible that she’s pregnant again.’

‘What!’

‘I think it’s a little too early, but Fusako has suspicions.’

Nothing remained in Yasuko’s manner from the days when she had announced her own pregnancy.

‘Fusako said so?’

‘It’s a little early,’ said Yasuko again. ‘But they say another often follows along after that sort of thing.’

‘Did Kikuko or Shuichi speak to Fusako?’

‘No. Fusako’s own investigations.’

‘Investigations’ was a strange word. It seemed that Fusako, who had left her own husband, was particularly inquisitive in matters having to do with her brother’s wife.

‘You should say something to her yourself,’ Yasuko went on. ‘Persuade her to have it this time.’

Shingo felt a tightening at the throat. The news that Kikuko might be pregnant again made the fact of Kinu’s pregnancy weigh on him the more oppressively.

It was not so very unusual, perhaps, that two women should simultaneously be pregnant by the same man. But if the man was one’s son, then it brought with it a strange fear. It had a hellish aspect, as of retribution, or a curse.

One might look upon these various events as evidence of the healthiest physiological processes; but such magnanimity was at the moment rather beyond Shingo.

This would be Kikuko’s second pregnancy. Kinu had been pregnant at the time of the abortion. Before the latter had had her child, the former was pregnant again. Kikuko did not know of Kinu’s condition. Kinu would already be attracting attention, and feeling the motions of the child within her.

‘If she knows we know, then she won’t be able to do quite as she pleases this time.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Shingo weakly. ‘You ought to have a talk with her.’

Shingo could not sleep.

He found sinister thoughts coming to him. He asked himself irritably if violence of some description might not prevent Kinu from having her child.

She had said that the child was not Shuichi’s; if he were to investigate her activities might he not come upon something to ease his mind?

There was a loud humming of insects in the garden outside. It was past two. The humming was not the clear and distinct sound of bell crickets or pine crickets. It was blurry and ill-defined, rather. It made Shingo think of sleep in dark, dank earth.

He had been much given to dreams lately, and toward dawn he had another long dream.

He did not know by what road he had come. When he awakened he could still see the two white eggs in the dream. He was on a sandy moor, there was sand as far as he could see. Two eggs lay side by side, one of them large, an ostrich’s egg, and the other small, a snake’s. The shell of the latter was cracked and an engaging little snake was waving its head back and forth. To Shingo it did seem engaging.

There could be no doubt that he had been thinking about Kikuko and Kinu. He did not know which child was the ostrich’s, which the snake’s.

It occurred to him to wonder whether snakes were oviparous or viviparous.

The next day was Sunday. Feeling quite drained of energy, Shingo stayed in bed until nine.

Now, in the morning, both the ostrich egg and the little snake’s head seemed vaguely sinister.

He brushed his teeth gloomily and went into the breakfast room.

Kikuko was tying up the accumulated newspapers, no doubt preparing to sell them to a junk dealer.

It was among her duties, for Yasuko’s convenience, to arrange the morning and evening newspapers in order.

She went to get tea for him.

‘Did you see the news about the lotuses?’ She put two newspapers on the table before him. ‘Two articles. I kept them out for you.’

‘It does seem to me that I read something of the sort.’

He took the papers up all the same.

Lotus seeds some two thousand years old had been dug from a Yayoi tumulus. The ‘lotus doctor’, a botanist who specialized in lotuses, had succeeded in making them sprout. News that they had bloomed had been in the papers earlier, and Shingo had taken it to Kikuko’s room. She had been resting, having recently had her abortion.

Items about lotuses had appeared twice since. One described how the lotus doctor had divided the roots and transferred a part of them to Sanshiro’s Lake, on the grounds of Tokyo University, from which he had graduated. The other had to do with America. A scientist at Tohoku University had found lotus seeds, apparently fossilized, in a marl stratum in Manchuria and sent them to America. The rock-like outer shell had been removed at the National Botanical Gardens, and the seeds wrapped in permeated cotton wadding and put under glass. They had sent out delicate shoots the year before.

This year, set out in a lake, they had produced two buds, which had opened into pink flowers. The national park service announced that the seeds were from a thousand to fifty thousand years old.

‘I thought so when I read it the first time,’ laughed Shingo. ‘A thousand to fifty thousand years old – a broadish sort of calculation.’ He came upon a Japanese scholar’s opinion: that, to judge from the nature of the marl stratum, the seeds would be some tens of thousand of years old. Carbon radiation tests run on the shells in America, however, had shown them to be a thousand years old.

The two articles were reports from Washington correspondents.

‘Are you finished?’ asked Kikuko, picking up the newspapers. No doubt she meant to ask whether she had permission to sell them when next the junk dealer came by.

Shingo nodded. ‘A thousand years or fifty thousand, a lotus seed lives a long time. Almost an eternity, when you compare it with a human life.’ He looked at Kikuko. ‘It would be good to lie in the ground a thousand years or two without dying.’

‘Lie in the ground!’ Kikuko half muttered the words.

‘Not in a grave. And not dying. Just resting. If it were possible just to rest in the ground – you would wake up after fifty thousand years and find all your own problems settled and the problems of the world, and you would be in paradise.’

‘Kikuko, will you see to Father’s breakfast, please?’ called Fusako from the kitchen, where she seemed to be feeding the children.

Kikuko came back with the breakfast.

‘You’re all by yourself. The rest of us have eaten.’

‘Oh? What about Shuichi?’

‘He’s gone out to the fishing pond.’

‘And Yasuko?’

‘Out in the garden.’

‘I think I’ll do without eggs this morning,’ he said, handing back the saucer that contained eggs. He disliked the memory it brought of the snake’s egg.

Fusako came in with a dried and roasted flounder. She put it down in silence and went back to the children.

Looking Kikuko in the eye as he took the bowl of rice she handed him, Shingo said in a low voice: ‘Are you going to have a baby?’

‘No.’ She answered readily, and seemed only afterwards to be taken by surprise. ‘No. Nothing of the sort.’ She shook her head.

‘So it wasn’t true.’

‘No.’

She looked at him curiously, and flushed.

‘I hope you’ll treat it better next time. I argued with Shuichi over the last one. I asked if he could guarantee that you would have another, and he said he could. As if it were all very simple. I told him he ought to be a little more God-fearing. I asked him whether anyone could guarantee that he would be alive the next day. The baby would be yours and Shuichi’s, of course, but it would be our grandchild too. A child you would have would be too good to lose.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kikuko, looking down.

He was sure that she was telling the truth.

And why then had Fusako thought her pregnant? Fusako’s investigations had evidently outdone themselves. She could scarcely be aware of a situation of which Kikuko herself was ignorant.

Shingo looked around, afraid that Fusako might have overheard the conversation. She seemed to be out in front with her children, however.

‘Has Shuichi been to the pond before?’

‘No. I think he must have heard about it from a friend.’

To Shingo the unusual event seemed evidence that Shuichi had in fact left Kinu. He had on occasion used his Sundays to visit her.

‘Would you like to go have a look at it yourself?’

‘Yes.’

Shingo stepped into the garden. Yasuko was looking up at the cherry tree.

‘What’s the trouble?’

‘Nothing. But it’s lost most of its leaves. I wonder if something might be eating it. The summer crickets are still singing, and here it has lost most of its leaves.’

Even as they talked, yellowish leaves came down, one after another. In the still air, they fell straight to the ground.

‘I hear Shuichi’s gone fishing. I’m going to take Kikuko for a look.’

‘Fishing?’ Yasuko looked around.

‘I asked her about it, and she said it wasn’t true. Fusako’s investigations have misled her.’

‘You asked her about it?’ There was something a little slow-witted about Yasuko. ‘What a shame.’

‘Why does Fusako have to be so energetic with those investigations of hers?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m the one who’s asking.’

Back in the house, Kikuko had put on a white sweater and was waiting for him. She had touched her cheeks with rouge, and seemed unusually bright and lively.

One day, without warning, there were red flowers outside the train window, equinox lilies all along the railway filling, so near that they seemed to quiver as the train passed.

Shingo gazed too at the lilies on the cherry-lined Totsuka embankment. Just coming into bloom, they were a fresh, clear red.

It was the sort of morning when flowers made one feel the quiet of the autumn meadows.

The pampas grass was beginning to send out plumes.

Taking off his shoe, Shingo raised his right foot to his knee and rubbed at the instep.

‘Is there something the matter with it?’ asked Shuichi.

‘It seems so heavy. Sometimes climbing the stairs in the station my feet seem so heavy. This hasn’t been a good year. The life is going out of me.’

‘Kikuko has been worried. She says you seem tired.’

‘I’d like to rest in the ground for fifty thousand years – that’s the sort of thing I’ve said to her.’

Shuichi looked at him curiously.

‘There was something in the paper about old lotuses. Remember? Some ancient lotus seeds that sent out shoots and finally bloomed.’

‘Oh?’ Shuichi lit a cigarette. ‘You asked her whether she was going to have a baby. She was very upset.’

‘Well, is she?’

‘It’s too soon, I think.’

‘And what about Kinu’s? That’s more important.’

Though cornered, Shuichi took the offensive. ‘I understand you went to see her. To give her consolation money. There was no need for that.’

‘When did you hear about it?’

‘Oh, I heard indirectly. We’ve separated, you know.’

‘Is the child yours?’

‘Kinu says it isn’t.’

‘The matter has to do with your own conscience.’ Shingo’s voice was trembling. ‘What about that?’

‘I don’t think it’s the sort of thing your conscience tells you much about.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Suppose I
am
suffering. Will that do anything to shake her? There is something demented about the woman and that determination of hers to have the baby.’

‘She’s suffering more than you are. So is Kikuko.’

‘Now that we’ve separated, I can see that she’s been going her own way all along.’

‘And that’s enough for you? You really don’t want to know whether or not it’s your child? Or does your conscience tell you?’