The Sound of the Mountain Page 13

  But he found nothing that seemed appropriate for Satoko.

  The matter weighed even more heavily on his mind.

  He felt a dark foreboding.

  Did even so young a girl covet another’s bright kimono?

  Was it only that Satoko’s envy and greed were somewhat stronger than the usual? Or were they quite extraordinarily powerful? In either case, the outburst had struck Shingo as lunatic.

  What would be happening now if the girl in the dancing clothes had been run over and killed? The pattern of the girl’s kimono came up vividly before him. There was seldom anything so festive in the shop windows.

  But the thought of returning empty-handed made the street seem dark.

  Had Yasuko given Satoko only old cotton kimonos to be made into diapers? Or was Fusako lying? There had been poison in the remark. Had Yasuko not given the girl a swaddling kimono, or a kimono for her first visit to a shrine? Had Fusako perhaps asked for western clothes?

  ‘I forget,’ he muttered to himself.

  He had forgotten whether or not Yasuko had consulted with him in the matter; but if they, he and Yasuko, had paid more attention to Fusako, they might have been given a pretty grandchild even by so ill-favored a daughter. Feelings of inescapable guilt dragged at him.

  ‘Because I know how it was before birth, because I know how it was before birth, I have no parent to love. Because I have no parent, neither have I child to be loved by.’

  A passage from a No play came to Shingo, but that alone scarcely brought the enlightenment of the dark-cloaked sage.

  ‘The former Buddha has gone, the later not yet come. I am born in a dream, what shall I think real? I have chanced to receive this human flesh, so difficult of receiving.’

  Had Satoko, about to pounce upon the dancing girl, inherited her violence and malice from Fusako? Or did she have them from Aihara? If from Fusako, then did Fusako have them from Yasuko or from Shingo?

  If Shingo had married Yasuko’s sister, then probably he would have had neither a daughter like Fusako nor a granddaughter like Satoko.

  This was hardly a proper occasion to stir in him so intense a yearning for a person long dead that he wanted to rush into her arms.

  He was sixty-three, and the girl who had died in her twenties had been older than he.

  When he got home, Fusako was in bed, the baby in her arms. The door between her room and the breakfast room was open.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ said Yasuko. ‘Her heart was pounding and pounding, and Fusako gave her sleeping medicine. She went right off to sleep.’

  Shingo nodded. ‘Suppose you pull the door shut.’

  ‘Yes.’ Kikuko got up.

  Satoko was tight against Fusako’s back. But her eyes seemed to be open. She had a way of staring at a person, silently and rigidly.

  Shingo said nothing about having gone out to buy her a kimono.

  It appeared that Fusako had not told her mother of the crisis that had arisen from Satoko’s desire for a kimono.

  He went into his room. Kikuko brought charcoal.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he said to her.

  ‘In just a second.’ She went out, and came back with a pitcher on a tray. One did not need a tray for a pitcher; but there seemed to be flowers beside it.

  ‘What are they?’ He took a flower in his hand. ‘Kikyo,* maybe?’

  ‘Black lilies, I’m told.’

  ‘Black lilies?’

  ‘Yes. A friend I take tea lessons with gave them to me a little while ago.’ She opened the closet door behind Shingo and took out a little vase.

  ‘Black lilies, are they?’

  ‘She said that on the anniversary of Rikyu’s death this year the head of the Enshu School arranged a tea ceremony in the museum tea cottage. There was an old narrow-necked bronze vase in the alcove with black lilies and white hyacinths in it. A very interesting combination, she said.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Shingo gazed at the black lilies. There were two of them, with two flowers on each stem.

  ‘It must have snowed eleven or thirteen times this spring.’

  ‘We did have a lot of snow.’

  ‘She said that there were four or five inches of snow on the anniversary of Rikyu’s death. It was very early in the spring, and black lilies seemed even more unusual. They’re mountain flowers, you know.’

  ‘The color is a little like a black camellia.’

  ‘Yes.’ Kikuko poured water into the vase. ‘She said that Rikyu’s testament was on display, and the dagger he committed suicide with.’

  ‘Oh? Your friend gives tea lessons?’

  ‘Yes. She’s a war widow. She worked hard, and now the returns are coming in.’

  ‘What school?’

  ‘Kankyuan. The Mushanokoji family.’

  This meant nothing to Shingo, who knew little about tea.

  Kikuko waited, ready to put the flowers in the vase, but Shingo still had one in his hand.

  ‘It seems to droop a little. I don’t suppose it’s wilting?’

  ‘No. I had them in water.’

  ‘Do kikyo droop too?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It seems a little smaller than kikyo.’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘At first it looks black, but it isn’t. It’s like dark purple, but not that either – touched with crimson. I’ll have to have a good look at it tomorrow in daylight.’

  ‘In the sun it’s a transparent purple touched with red.’

  The flowers, fully opened, would be scarcely an inch across. There were six petals. The tips of the pistils parted in three directions, and there were four or five stamens. The leaves spread in the four directions at stages about an inch apart. They were small for lily leaves, not two inches long.

  Finally Shingo sniffed at the flower.

  ‘The smell of a dirty woman.’ It was a badly chosen remark.

  He had not meant to suggest wantonness, but Kikuko looked down and flushed slightly around the eyes.

  ‘The smell is a disappointment,’ he corrected himself. ‘Here. Try it.’

  ‘I think I’ll not investigate as thoroughly as you, Father.’ She started to put the flowers into the vase. ‘Four is too many for a tea ceremony. But shall I leave them as they are?’

  ‘Yes, do.’

  Kikuko set the vase in the alcove.

  ‘The masks are in that closet, the one you took the vase from. Would you mind getting them out?’

  He had thought of the No masks when that passage from a No play had come to him.

  He took up the jido. ‘This one is a sprite. A symbol of eternal youth. Did I tell you about it when I bought it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tanizaki, the girl who was in the office. When I bought it I had her put it on. She was charming. A great surprise.’

  Kikuko put the mask to her face. ‘Do you tie it behind?’

  No doubt, deep behind the eyes of the mask, Kikuko’s eyes were fixed on him.

  ‘It has no expression unless you move it.’

  The day he had brought it home, Shingo had been on the point of kissing the scarlet lips. He had felt a flash like heaven’s own wayward love.

  ‘It may be lost in the undergrowth, but while it still has the flower of the heart …’

  Those too seemed to be words from a No play.

  Shingo could not look at Kikuko as she moved the glowing young mask this way and that.

  She had a small face, and the tip of her chin was almost hidden behind the mask. Tears were flowing from the scarcely visible chin down over her throat. They flowed on, drawing two lines, then three.

  ‘Kikuko,’ said Shingo. ‘Kikuko. You thought if you were to leave Shuichi you might give tea lessons, and that was why you went to see your friend?’

  The jido Kikuko nodded.

  ‘I think I’d like to stay on with you here and give lessons.’ The words were distinct even from behind the mask.

  A piercing wail came from Satoko.
r />   Teru barked noisily in the garden.

  Shingo felt something ominous in it all. Kikuko seemed to be listening for a sign at the gate that Shuichi, who evidently went to visit the woman even on Sunday, had come home.

  The Kite’s House

  1

  In summer and in winter, the bell in the temple rang at six; and in summer and winter, Shingo told himself, when he heard it, that he was awake too soon.

  This did not necessarily mean that he got out of bed.

  Six o’clock was of course not in summer what it was in winter. Because the bell rang at the same time, he could tell himself that it was six; but in summer the sun was already up.

  He had a large pocket watch at his pillow. He had to turn on the light and put on his glasses, however, and so he seldom looked at it. Without his glasses, he had trouble distinguishing the hour hand from the minute hand.

  He had no worries about oversleeping. The trouble was the reverse, that he woke too early.

  Six of a winter morning was very early, but, unable to stay in bed, Shingo would go for the paper.

  Since the maid had left them, Kikuko had been getting up to do the morning work.

  ‘You’re early, Father,’ she would say.

  ‘I’ll sleep a little longer,’ Shingo would reply, embarrassed.

  ‘Yes, do. I don’t even have hot water yet.’

  With Kikuko up, Shingo would feel that he had company.

  At what age had it been that he had begun to feel lonely, waking before the winter sun was up?

  With spring, the waking became warmer.

  Mid-May had passed, and after the bell he heard the cry of a kite.

  ‘So it’s here again,’ he muttered to himself, listening from bed.

  The kite seemed to be strolling grandly over the roof, and then it flew off toward the sea.

  Shingo got up.

  He scanned the sky as he brushed his teeth, but the kite was not to be seen.

  But it was as if a fresh young voice had departed and left the sky over the roof serene.

  ‘Kikuko. You heard our kite, I suppose?’ he called to the kitchen.

  ‘No, I didn’t. Careless of me.’ Kikuko was transferring rice, hot and steaming, from the pot to the serving cask.

  ‘It makes its home with us. Wouldn’t you say so?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘We heard a lot from it last year, too. What month was it, I wonder? About now? My memory isn’t what it ought to be.’

  With Shingo looking at her, Kikuko untied the ribbon around her hair.

  It would seem that she sometimes slept with her hair tied up.

  Leaving the cask uncovered, she hurried to make Shingo’s tea.

  ‘If our kite is here, then our buntings ought to be here too.’

  ‘Yes. And crows.’

  ‘Crows?’ Shingo laughed. If it was ‘our’ kite, then it should also be ‘our’ crows. ‘We think of it as a house for human beings, but all sorts of birds live here too.’

  ‘And the fleas and mosquitoes will be coming out.’

  ‘That’s a nice thought. But fleas and mosquitoes don’t live here. They don’t live over from one year to the next.’

  ‘I imagine the fleas do. We have them in the winter.’

  ‘I’ve no idea how long fleas live, but I doubt if this year’s fleas are last year’s.’

  Kikuko looked at him and laughed. ‘That snake will be coming out one of these days.’

  ‘The aodaisho* that scared you so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s the master of the place.’

  Back from shopping, one day last summer, Kikuko had seen the snake at the kitchen door, and come in trembling with fright.

  Teru ran up at Kikuko’s scream and raised a mad barking. Teru would lower her head as if to bite at the snake, jump back four or five feet, and come in for the attack again. The process was repeated over and over.

  The snake raised its head and put out a red tongue, then turned and slithered off past the kitchen doorsill.

  From Kikuko’s description, it stretched more than twice the width of the door, or more than two yards; and it was thicker than her wrist.

  Kikuko was greatly agitated, but Yasuko was calm. ‘It’s the master of the place,’ she said. ‘It was here I don’t know how many years before you came.’

  ‘What would have happened if Teru had bitten it?’

  ‘Teru would have lost. She would have gotten all tangled up in it. She knew it well enough, and that’s why she only barked.’

  Kikuko was still trembling. For a time she avoided the kitchen door, and went in and out through the front door.

  It bothered her to think that there was such a monster under the floor.

  But it probably lived on the mountain behind and rarely came down.

  The land behind the house did not belong to Shingo. He did not know whose it was.

  The mountain pressed down in a steep slope upon Shingo’s house, and for animals there seemed to be no boundary marking off his garden, into which leaves and flowers from the mountain fell liberally.

  ‘It’s back again,’ he muttered to himself. And then, cheerfully: ‘Kikuko, the kite seems to be back.’

  ‘Yes. This time I hear it.’ Kikuko glanced at the ceiling.

  The crying of the kite went on for a time.

  ‘It flew off to the sea a few minutes ago?’

  ‘So it seemed.’

  ‘It went off for something to eat and then came back.’

  Now that Kikuko had said so, that seemed a most likely possibility. ‘Suppose we put fish out where it will see them.’

  ‘Teru would eat them.’

  ‘Some high place.’

  It had been the same last year and the year before: Shingo felt a surge of affection when, on waking, he heard the call of the kite.

  He was not alone, it would seem. The expression ‘our kite’ was current throughout the house.

  Yet he did not know for certain whether it was one kite or two. It seemed to him that he had, one year or another, seen two kites dancing on the roof.

  And was it the same kite whose voice they heard year after year? Had a new generation taken the place of the old? Had the parent kite perhaps died, and was its young now calling out in its place? The thought came to Shingo this morning for the first time.

  It seemed to him an interesting thought, that the old kite had died last year, and that, without knowing it, half asleep and half awake, they should be listening to a new kite this year, and thinking it their own.

  And it seemed strange that, with all the mountains in Kamakura, the kite should have chosen to live on the mountain behind Shingo’s house.

  ‘I have met with what is difficult of meeting, I have heard what is difficult of hearing.’* Perhaps it was so with the kite.

  If the kite was living with them, it let them have the pleasure of its voice.

  2

  Because Shingo and Kikuko were the early risers, they could say what they had to say to each other early in the morning. Shingo talked alone with Shuichi only when the two of them happened to be on the same train.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ he would say to himself as they crossed the railway bridge into Tokyo and the Ikegami grove came in sight. It was his habit to look out the window of the morning train at the grove.

  But, for all the years he had taken the same train, he had but recently discovered two pine trees in the grove.

  The pine trees stood out above the grove. They leaned toward each other, as if about to embrace. The branches came so near that it was as if they might embrace at any moment.

  Since they so stood out, the only tall trees in the grove, they should have caught his eye immediately. Now that he had noticed them, it was always the two pines he saw first.

  This morning they were blurred by wind and rain.

  ‘Shuichi,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with Kikuko?’

  ‘Nothing in particular.’ Shuichi was readin
g a weekly magazine.

  He had bought two in Kamakura station and had handed one to his father. Shingo’s lay unread.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Shingo repeated quietly.

  ‘She complains of headaches.’

  ‘Oh? The old woman says she was in Tokyo yesterday and went to bed when she got back last night. She’s not her usual self. Something happened in Tokyo, the old woman thinks. She didn’t have dinner last night, and when you got home and went to your room, it must have been about nine, we heard her crying. She tried to smother it, but we could hear.’

  ‘She’ll be all right in a few days. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.’

  ‘Oh? She wouldn’t cry if it were only a headache. And wasn’t she crying again early this morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fusako says that when she went in with breakfast, Kikuko refused to look at her. Fusako was very unhappy about it. I thought I might ask you to tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘All the eyes in the family seem to be on Kikuko.’ Shuichi cocked an eye up at his father. ‘She gets sick occasionally, like everyone else.’

  ‘And what is the ailment?’ he asked irritably.

  ‘An abortion.’ Shuichi flung out the words.

  Shingo was aghast. He looked at the seat ahead of them. It was occupied by two American soldiers. He had started the conversation on the assumption that they would not understand.

  He lowered his voice. ‘She went to a doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yesterday?’ It was a hollow mutter.

  Shuichi had laid down his magazine. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And came back the same day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had her do it.’

  ‘She wanted it done, and wouldn’t listen to anything I said.’

  ‘Kikuko wanted to? You’re lying.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Why? What could make her feel that way?’

  Shuichi was silent.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s your fault?’

  ‘I suppose so. But she said she didn’t want it now and that was that.’

  ‘You could have stopped her if you’d tried.’

  ‘Not this time, I think.’