The Sound of the Mountain (27 page)

And the only one struck by the strangeness of it all was an outsider.

He wondered whether, accidental witness to it all, he too had partaken of the miracle.

What had it meant, creating a man and woman who looked like father and daughter, and putting them side by side for a half hour in their whole lives, and showing them to Shingo?

There she had sat, knee to knee with a man who could only be her father; and only because the person she had been waiting for had not come.

Was such the way, Shingo could only mutter to himself, with human life?

The man got up in some confusion as the train pulled into Totsuka. Taking his hat from the luggage rack, he dropped it at Shingo’s feet. Shingo picked it up for him.

‘Thank you.’

Without bothering to dust it, he put it on.

‘Very odd.’ Shingo at length felt free to speak. ‘They were strangers.’

‘They looked alike, but they weren’t gotten up alike.’

‘Gotten up?’

‘The woman paid attention to herself, and the man was a shambles.’

‘But that’s the way it is – girls done up in the best, fathers in rags.’

‘Their clothes were on two completely different levels.’

Shingo had to nod his assent. ‘The girl got off in Yokohama. And the minute she left it seemed to me too that the man went to pieces.’

‘He was in pieces from the beginning.’

‘But it happened in such a hurry. It struck home, somehow. He was a good deal younger than I am.’

‘Well, there’s no doubt about it.’ Shuichi threw the matter off with a joke. ‘An old man looks better when he’s out with a young girl. How is it with you, Father?’

‘You youngsters are envious.’

‘Nothing of the sort. There’s something uncomfortable about a handsome man out with a pretty girl, and you feel sorry for an ugly man when the girl is beautiful. Let’s leave the beauties to old people.’

But the strangeness of the pair was still with Shingo.

‘Maybe they really are father and daughter. Maybe she’s a girl he fathered away from home somewhere and left behind. They’ve never introduced themselves to each other, and don’t know they
are
father and child.’

Shuichi looked away.

Shingo was a bit startled at his own remark.

Having made what seemed like an innuendo, however, he had to go ahead: ‘Twenty years from now the same thing may happen to you.’

‘That was what you were trying to say, was it? Well, I’m not that sort of sentimental fatalist myself. The bullets used to go whistling by my ears, and not one of them touched me. I may have left behind a child or two in the islands or in China. It’s nothing at all, meeting your own bastard and not recognizing it, when you’ve had bullets whistling by your ear. No threat to your life. And then there’s no guarantee that Kinu will have a girl, and if she says it isn’t mine that’s enough for me.’

‘Wartime and peacetime are not the same thing.’

‘But maybe another war is on its way. And maybe the other one is still haunting people like me. Still somewhere inside us.’ Shuichi spoke with asperity. ‘There was something a little strange about her, and you were attracted to her, and so you go on with these imaginings of yours. Men always get caught when a woman is just a little different.’

‘And that’s all right, is it? Because a woman is a little different, you get her pregnant and leave her to bring up the child?’

‘I don’t want it. It’s the woman herself.’

Shingo fell silent.

‘The woman that got off in Yokohama – she’s a free agent. Perfectly free.’

‘Free?’

‘She’s not married, and she’d come if you called. She may put on airs, but she doesn’t have a decent living, and she’s tired of the insecurity.’

The words upset Shingo deeply. ‘So that’s how far you’ve fallen,’ he said.

‘Kikuko’s free too.’ There was challenge in Shuichi’s tone. ‘She’s not a soldier and she’s not a prisoner.’

‘What do you mean saying that about your own wife? Have you said so to her?’

‘Suppose you say it to her yourself.’

‘You’re telling me I should send her away?’ Shingo fought to control his voice.

‘Not at all.’ Shuichi too was carefully controlling his voice. ‘We were saying that the girl who got off in Yokohama was free. Don’t you suppose you thought they were father and daughter because she was about Kikuko’s age?’

Shingo was taken by surprise. ‘It was just that if they weren’t father and daughter they looked enough alike to make it a miracle.’

‘It wasn’t anything to be all that impressed with.’

‘It was to me.’ But now, having had it pointed out that Kikuko had been on his mind, he felt a tightening in the throat.

The men with the maple branches got off in Ofuna.

‘Why don’t we go to Shinshu to see the maples?’ said Shingo, watching the branches move off down the platform. ‘With Yasuko and Kikuko too.’

‘I don’t have much interest in maple leaves myself.’

‘I’d like to see the old mountains again. Yasuko says she has dreams that her house is going to pieces.’

‘It is in bad shape.’

‘We ought to repair it while there’s time.’

‘The frame is strong, and it’s not going to pieces exactly. But if you were to start repairing it – what would be the point?’

‘We may want a place to retire. And then you may have to get out of the city again some day yourself.’

‘I’ll stay behind this time and watch the house. Kikuko can go have a look at the old place. She’s never seen it.’

‘How is Kikuko these days?’

‘Well, she seems a little bored, now that my affair is over.’

Shingo smiled wryly.

Once again it was Sunday, and Shuichi seemed to have gone once more to the fish pond.

Lining up a row of cushions that had been airing in the hall, Shingo lay down in the warm autumn sun, his head on his arm.

Teru was sunning herself on the stone step below him.

In the breakfast room Yasuko was reading through the pile of newspapers on her knee, perhaps ten days’ worth of them.

When she came on something interesting she would tell Shingo. It happened so often that Shingo’s answers tended to be perfunctory.

‘I wish you’d stop this business of reading all the newspapers on Sundays,’ he said, turning over sluggishly.

At the alcove in the parlor, Kikuko was putting together an arrangement of red crow-gourds.

‘You found them on the mountain?’

‘Yes. They seemed very pretty.’

‘Are there still some left?’

‘Just a few. Five or six.’

Three gourds hung from the vine in her hand.

Every morning from the washstand Shingo could see red gourds on the mountain, above the pampas grass. Here inside the parlor they were an even more dazzling red.

Kikuko also came into his range of vision.

There was an indescribable freshness about the line from her jaw to her throat. It was not the product of a single generation, thought Shingo, somehow saddened.

Perhaps because the style of her hair set off the neck and throat, her face seemed a little thin.

Shingo had of course been aware all along of the beauty of that line, and the long, slender throat. Was it that, given the considerable distance and the angle from which he was watching her, it stood out in more beauty than usual?

Perhaps the autumn radiance added something.

That line from jaw to throat spoke first of maidenly freshness. It was beginning to swell a little, however, and that maidenliness would soon disappear.

‘Just one more,’ Yasuko called. ‘Here’s a very interesting one.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s about America. A place called Buffalo, New York. Buffalo. A man had his left ear cut off in an automobile accident, and went to a doctor. The doctor ran off to where the accident happened and found the ear, all dripping blood, and stuck it back on. And it’s worked perfectly since.’

‘They say you can put a finger back on if you do it soon enough.’

‘Oh?’ She read on for a time, and seemed to remember something. ‘I suppose that’s true of husband and wife too. If you put them back together soon enough they’ll stick. But it’s been too long.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Shingo, not really asking a question.

‘Don’t you suppose it’s that way with Fusako?’

‘Aihara’s disappeared,’ answered Shingo lightly, ‘and we don’t know whether he’s dead or alive.’

‘Oh, we could find that out if we tried. But what’s to happen?’

‘So Granny still has her regrets. Give them up. We sent in the divorce notice long ago.’

‘I’ve been good at giving things up since I was a girl. It’s just that I have her and the two children right here in front of me, and wonder what’s to become of them.’

Shingo did not answer.

‘Fusako’s not the prettiest girl in the world. And suppose she
were
to remarry – it would be really too much for Kikuko to have the two children left on her hands.’

‘Kikuko and Shuichi would have to live somewhere else. And it would be up to Granny to raise the children.’

‘I don’t think anyone could call me lazy, but how old do you think I am?’

‘Do your best and leave what’s undone to the gods. Where’s Fusako?’

‘They’ve gone to see the Buddha. Children are very strange. Satoko almost got run over once on her way back, and she still loves the place. She’s always crying to go there.’

‘I doubt if it’s the Buddha itself that she likes.’

‘It does seem to be.’

‘Come, now.’

‘Don’t you suppose Fusako could go back to the country? They might make her their heir.’

‘They don’t need an heir,’ said Shingo curtly.

Yasuko read her newspapers in silence.

‘Mother’s ear story reminds me.’ This time it was Kikuko who spoke. ‘Do you remember how you once said you’d like to leave your head in a hospital and have it cleaned and restored?’

‘We were looking at the sunflowers down the street. I think the need is more pressing now that I find myself forgetting how to tie my tie. Before long I’ll be reading the newspaper upside down and not noticing.’

‘I often think about it, how it would be after you left your head in a hospital.’

Shingo looked at her. ‘Well, it’s as if you were leaving your head at a hospital every night for a sleep cure, I suppose. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I’m always having dreams. “When I am in pain, I have dreams that continue reality.” I seem to remember reading that line in a poem somewhere. Not that my own dreams go on with reality.’

Kikuko was surveying her completed arrangement.

Shingo too gazed at the gourds. ‘Kikuko. Why don’t you and Shuichi go live somewhere else?’

Kikuko looked up in surprise, and came over to him. ‘I’d be afraid.’ It was a voice too low for Yasuko to overhear. ‘I’m afraid of him.’

‘Do you intend to leave him?’

‘If I were to, I’d be able to look after you as I pleased,’ she said solemnly.

‘Your misfortune.’

‘It’s no misfortune when you’re doing something you want to do.’

Shingo was startled. The remark was like a first expression of ardor. He sensed in it a certain danger.

‘You’re very diligent in looking after me, but don’t you have me confused with Shuichi? I should think it would only drive him farther away.’

‘There are things about him I don’t understand.’ The white face seemed to be pleading with him. ‘Sometimes all of a sudden I’m so frightened I don’t know what to do.’

‘I know. He changed after he went to war. Sometimes he seems to behave on purpose so that I myself can’t tell what’s on his mind. But then if you just stick to him like that ear, all dripping blood, maybe things will come out all right.’

Kikuko was gazing at him.

‘Has he told you that you are a free agent?’

‘No.’ She looked at him in curiosity. ‘A free agent?’

‘I asked him myself what he meant by saying that about his own wife. I suspect he may have meant partly that you should be freer. I should arrange to let you go free.’

‘You mean from you yourself?’

‘Yes. He said I should tell you you’re free.’

That moment a sound came from the heavens. To Shingo it was really as if he had heard a sound from the heavens.

Five or six pigeons cut a low diagonal across the garden.

Kikuko also heard them. She went to the edge of the veranda.

‘Am I free, then?’ she said, tears in her voice, as she watched the pigeons fly off.

The dog Teru left the step to run off across the garden in pursuit of the wings.

All seven members of the family were present at dinner.

Fusako and her two children were now members of the family too, no doubt.

‘There were only three trout left at the store,’ said Kikuko. ‘One of them is for Satoko.’ She set the three before Shingo, Shuichi, and Satoko.

‘Trout are not for children.’ Fusako put out her hand. ‘Give it to Grandmother.’

‘No.’ Satoko clutched at the dish.

‘What big trout,’ observed Yasuko calmly. ‘The last of the year, I imagine. I’ll just pick away at Grandfather’s here, and I don’t need any of yours. Kikuko can have some of Shuichi’s.’

They formed three separate factions. Perhaps they should be in three separate houses.

Satoko’s attention was concentrated on the trout.

‘Is it good?’ asked Fusako, frowning. ‘But what a messy way to eat.’ She scooped out the roe and gave it to Kuniko, the younger child. Satoko did not object.

‘Roe,’ muttered Fusako, tearing off one end of the roe in Shingo’s trout.

‘Back in the old days in the country, Yasuko’s sister got me interested in writing
haiku.
There are all sorts of expressions about trout – “autumn trout”, and “descending trout”, and “rusty trout”. That sort of thing.’ Shingo glanced at Yasuko and went on. ‘“Descending trout” and “rusty trout” are trout that have laid their eggs. Worn out, completely exhausted, they are going down to sea.’

‘Just like me.’ Fusako’s response was immediate. ‘Not that I was much to look at as a healthy trout.’

Shingo pretended not to hear. ‘“A trout in the autumn, abandoning itself to the water.” “Trout swimming down the shallows, not knowing they must die.” That sort of old poem. I imagine they would apply to me.’