The Sound of the Mountain Read online

  At a grocery farther on he bought gingko nuts.

  4

  It was unusual for Shingo to buy food on his way home, but neither Yasuko nor Kikuko showed surprise.

  Perhaps they wished to hide their thoughts about the fact that Shuichi, who should have been with him, was not.

  Handing his purchases to Kikuko, he followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Some water please, with a little sugar in it.’ He went to the faucet himself.

  In the sink were prawns and lobsters. He was struck by the coincidence. He had seen both at the fishmonger’s, but had not thought of buying both.

  ‘A good color,’ he said. The prawns had a fresh luster.

  Kikuko cracked a gingko nut with the back of a knife.

  ‘It was a nice thought, but I’m afraid they’re no good.’

  ‘Oh? I did think they were a little out of season.’

  ‘I’ll call the grocery and tell them.’

  ‘Don’t bother. But all these shellfish – my contribution doesn’t add much.’

  ‘We might open a seaside restaurant.’ Kikuko showed the tip of her tongue, in mild derision. ‘Let’s see, now. We can boil these, shell and all. So maybe we should roast the lobsters and fry the prawns. I’ll go buy some mushrooms. While I’m at it would you mind going out to get eggplant from the garden?’

  ‘I’d be delighted.’

  ‘Little ones. And bring in some sage, too. I wonder if the prawns might be enough by themselves.’

  Kikuko brought only two whelks to the table.

  ‘But there should be another,’ said Shingo, a little puzzled.

  ‘Oh, dear. But the two of you have such bad teeth, Grandpa – I thought you might want to share one nicely between you.’

  ‘I don’t see any grandchildren around.’

  Yasuko looked down and snickered.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Kikuko got up lightly and went to the kitchen for the third.

  ‘We should do as Kikuko says,’ said Yasuko. ‘Share one nicely between us.’

  Shingo thought Kikuko’s words beautifully apt. It was as though his own problem, whether to buy three or four, had thus been brushed away. Her tact and skill were not to be underestimated.

  She might have been expected to say that she would leave one for Shuichi, or that she and Yasuko would share one. Perhaps she had considered these possibilities.

  ‘But were there only three in the store?’ asked Yasuko, not alive to such subtleties. ‘You only brought three, and there are four of us.’

  ‘We didn’t need another. Shuichi didn’t come home.’

  Yasuko smiled what should have been a wry smile, but, perhaps because of her age, it ended up as something less than that.

  No trace of a shadow passed over Kikuko’s face, nor did she ask what might have happened to Shuichi.

  She was the youngest of eight children.

  The other seven were also married, and all had numerous progeny. Shingo sometimes thought of the fecundity she had inherited from her parents.

  She would complain that he had not yet learned the names of her brothers and sisters. He was even further from remembering the names of her nieces and nephews. She had been born at a time when her mother no longer wanted children or thought herself capable of having them. Indeed, her mother had felt rather ashamed, at her age, and had considered abortion. It had been a difficult birth. Forceps had been applied to Kikuko’s head.

  Kikuko had told Shingo of having heard these facts from her mother.

  It was difficult for him to understand a mother who would speak of such things to her daughter, or a girl who would reveal them to her father-in-law.

  Kikuko had held back her hair to show a faint scar on her forehead.

  The scar, whenever he chanced to glimpse it afterwards, somehow drew him to her.

  Still, Kikuko had been reared as the pet of the family, it seemed. She was not spoiled, precisely, but she seemed to expect affection. And there was something a little weak about her.

  When she had first come as a bride, Shingo had noted the slight but beautiful way she had of moving her shoulders. In it, for him, there was a bright, fresh coquetry.

  Something about the delicate figure made him think of Yasuko’s sister.

  Shingo had as a boy been strongly attracted to the sister. After her death Yasuko had gone to take care of the children. Yasuko had quite immersed herself in the work, as if wishing to supplant her sister. It was true that she had been fond of the brother-in-law, a handsome man, but she had also been in love with her sister, so beautiful a woman as to make it difficult to believe that the two could have had the same mother. To Yasuko her sister and brother-in-law had been like inhabitants of a dream world.

  She worked hard for her brother-in-law and the children, but the man behaved as if he were quite indifferent to her feelings. He lost himself in pleasure, and for Yasuko self-immolation became a career.

  And so Shingo had married her.

  Now more than thirty years had passed, and Shingo did not think the marriage a mistake. A long marriage was not necessarily governed by its origins.

  Yet the image of the sister remained with both of them. Neither spoke of her, and neither had forgotten her.

  There was nothing especially unhealthy about the fact that, after Kikuko came into the house, Shingo’s memories were pierced by moments of brightness, like flashes of lightning.

  Married to her less than two years, Shuichi had already found another woman, a source of some surprise for Shingo.

  Unlike Shingo himself, reared in the provinces, Shuichi showed no evidence of deprivation in matters of love and desire. Shingo could not have said when his son had had his first woman.

  Shingo was certain that whoever now held Shuichi’s attention was a business woman, perhaps a prostitute of sorts.

  He suspected that affairs with women in the office meant no more than dancing after work, and might be only for purposes of distracting his father’s attention.

  She would not in any case be a sheltered girl like the one before him. Somehow Shingo had sensed as much from Kikuko herself. Since the beginning of the affair there had been a ripening in the relations between Kikuko and Shuichi. There had been a change in Kikuko’s body.

  Waking in the night – it was the night they had had the shellfish – Shingo heard Kikuko’s voice as he had not heard it before.

  He suspected that she knew nothing of Shuichi’s mistress.

  ‘And so Father has made the apologies, with a shellfish,’ he muttered to himself.

  How was it that, although she knew nothing of the other woman, she should feel emanations come drifting toward her?

  Shingo drowsed off, and suddenly it was dawn. He went for the paper. The moon was still high. After glancing over the news he fell asleep once more.

  5

  Shuichi pushed his way aboard the train and surrendered his seat to Shingo when the latter followed after.

  He then handed over the evening paper and took Shingo’s bifocals from his pocket. Shingo had a pair of his own, but he was much given to forgetting them. Shuichi was entrusted with a spare set.

  Shuichi leaned over the paper. ‘Tanizaki said today that a classmate of hers was looking for work. We do need a maid, you know. So I said we’d take her.’

  ‘Don’t you think it might be a little dangerous, having a friend of Tanizaki’s around?’

  ‘Dangerous?’

  ‘She might hear things from Tanizaki and pass them on to Kikuko.’

  ‘What would she have to pass on?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it will be good to have a maid with proper introductions.’ Shingo turned back to the paper.

  ‘Has Tanizaki been talking about me?’ asked Shuichi as they got off in Kamakura.

  ‘She hasn’t said a thing. I would have imagined that you had silenced her.’

  ‘Oh, fine. Suppose something actually were going on between me and your secretary. You’d be the joke of the office.’
/>   ‘Of course. But make sure, if you don’t mind, that Kikuko doesn’t find out.’

  Shuichi did not seem inclined toward secretiveness. ‘So Tanizaki has been talking.’

  ‘She knows you have a girlfriend. And so I imagine she wants to go out with you herself.’

  ‘Maybe. Half of it might be jealousy.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘I’m going to break it off. I’m trying to break it off.’

  ‘I don’t understand you. Well, let me hear all about it some time.’

  ‘After I’ve broken it off.’

  ‘Don’t let Kikuko know.’

  ‘She may already know.’

  Shingo lapsed into disgruntled silence.

  It continued through dinner. He got up abruptly from the table and went to his room.

  Kikuko brought him watermelon.

  ‘You forgot the salt,’ said Yasuko, coming after her. The two sat down on the veranda. ‘Kikuko kept calling and calling. Didn’t you hear her?’

  ‘No. I did know that there was watermelon in the icebox.’

  ‘He didn’t hear you,’ said Yasuko. ‘And you called and called.’

  ‘It’s because he’s annoyed about something.’ Kikuko turned to her mother-in-law.

  Shingo was silent for a moment. ‘There’s been something wrong with my ears these last few days, I think. The other night I opened the shutter to let in a little air, and I heard the mountain rumbling. And you were snoring away.’

  Yasuko and Kikuko both looked toward the mountain.

  ‘Do mountains roar?’ asked Kikuko. ‘But you did say something once, Mother – remember? You said that just before your sister died Father heard the mountain roar.’

  Shingo was startled. He could not forgive himself for not remembering. He had heard the sound of the mountain, and why had the memory not come to him?

  Apparently Kikuko regretted having made the remark. Her beautiful shoulders were motionless.

  The Wings of the Locust

  1

  Fusako, the daughter, came home with her two children.

  ‘Might another be on the way?’ asked Shingo casually, although he knew that with the older girl four and the younger barely past her first birthday the spacing would not call for another quite yet.

  ‘You asked the same question just the other day.’ She laid the younger child on its back and started to unswaddle it. ‘And what about Kikuko?’

  Her question was also a casual one, but Kikuko’s face, as she looked down at the baby, was suddenly tense.

  ‘Leave it as it is for a while,’ said Shingo.

  ‘Her name is Kuniko, not “it”. Didn’t you name her yourself?’

  Only Shingo, it seemed, was aware of the expression on Kikuko’s face. He did not let it worry him, however. He was much taken with the movements of the emancipated little legs.

  ‘Yes, leave her,’ said Yasuko. ‘She looks very happy. It must have been warm.’ She half tickled, half slapped the baby’s stomach and thighs. ‘Why don’t we send your mother and sister off, now, to freshen themselves up a bit?’

  ‘Shall I get towels?’ Kikuko started for the door.

  ‘We’ve brought our own,’ said Fusako. It appeared that she meant to stay for some time.

  Fusako took towels and clothes from a kerchief. The older child, Satoko, stood behind her, clinging sullenly to her. Satoko had not said a word since their arrival. Her thick black hair caught the eye.

  Shingo had seen the kerchief before, but all he remembered was that it had been in the house. He did not know when.

  Fusako had walked from the station with Kuniko on her back, Satoko tugging on one hand, the kerchief in the other. It must have been a pleasing sight, thought Shingo.

  Satoko was not an easy child to lead. She had a way of being particularly difficult when matters were already complicated enough for her mother.

  Did it trouble Yasuko, Shingo wondered, that of the two young women it was Kikuko who kept herself in good trim?

  Yasuko sat rubbing a reddish spot on the inside of the baby’s thigh. Fusako had gone to bathe. ‘I don’t know, she somehow seems more manageable than Satoko.’

  ‘She was born after things started going bad with her father,’ said Shingo. ‘It all happened after Satoko was born, and it had an effect on her.’

  ‘Would a four-year-old child understand?’

  ‘She would indeed. And it would influence her.’

  ‘I think she was born the way she is.’

  After elaborate contortions the baby turned over on its stomach, crawled off, and, catching hold of the door, stood up.

  ‘Let’s go have a walk, just the two of us,’ said Kikuko, taking the child by the hands and walking it to the next room.

  Yasuko promptly went over to the purse beside Fusako’s belongings and opened it.

  ‘And what the devil do you think you’re doing?’ Shingo kept his voice low, but he was almost quivering with annoyance. ‘Stop it. Stop it, I tell you.’

  ‘And why should I?’ Yasuko was calm.

  ‘I told you to stop. What do you think you’re up to?’ His hands were trembling.

  ‘I don’t intend to steal anything.’

  ‘It’s worse than stealing.’

  Yasuko replaced the purse. She was still sitting beside it, however. ‘And what is wrong with being interested in the affairs of your own daughter? Maybe she’s come to us without enough money to buy the children candy. I want to know how things are with her. That’s all.’

  Shingo glared at her.

  Fusako came back from the bath.

  ‘I looked inside your purse, Fusako,’ said Yasuko the moment her daughter stepped into the room, ‘and so I got a scolding from your father. If it was wrong I apologize.’

  ‘If it was wrong!’ snorted Shingo.

  This way of taking Fusako into her confidence only irritated him more.

  He asked himself whether it might be true, as Yasuko’s manner suggested, that such incidents were routine between mother and daughter. He was shaking with anger, and the fatigue of his years came flooding over him.

  Fusako looked at him. It was possible that she was less surprised at her mother’s behavior than at her father’s.

  ‘Please. Go ahead and look! Help yourself!’ she said, half flinging the words out and slapping the purse down at her mother’s knee.

  Her manner did nothing to lessen his irritation.

  Yasuko did not take up the purse.

  ‘Without any money I wouldn’t be able to run away, Aihara thought. I couldn’t run away if I didn’t have any money. So of course there’s nothing in it. Go ahead and look.’

  Kuniko, her hands still in Kikuko’s, suddenly collapsed. Kikuko picked her up.

  Fusako lifted her blouse and presented her breast. She was not a beautiful woman, but she had a good figure. Her carriage was erect and the milk-swollen breast was firm.

  ‘Is Shuichi away somewhere?’ she asked. ‘Even on Sunday?’

  She seemed to feel that she must do something to relieve the tension.

  2

  Almost home, Shingo looked up at the sunflowers blooming beside a neighboring house.

  He was directly beneath the blossoms, which hung down over the gate.

  The daughter of the house paused behind him. She could have pushed past him and gone into the house, but because she knew him, she waited there.

  ‘What big flowers,’ he said, noticing her. ‘Remarkable flowers.’

  She smiled, a little shyly. ‘We pinched them back to one flower for each plant.’

  ‘Oh? That’s why they’re so big, then. Have they been blooming long?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many days now?’

  The girl – she was perhaps twelve or thirteen – did not answer. Apparently lost in silent calculation, she looked at Shingo, and then, with him, at the flowers again. Her face was round and sunburned, but her arms and legs were thin.

  Thinking to make way for
her, Shingo looked down the street. Two or three doors further on there were more sunflowers, three to each plant. The blossoms were only half the size of these.

  As he started off he looked up again.

  Kikuko was calling him. Indeed, she was standing right behind him. Stalks of green soybeans protruded from her market bag.

  ‘You’ve been admiring the sunflowers?’

  Of more concern to her, no doubt, than the fact that he admired the sunflowers, was the fact that he had come home without Shuichi. Almost home, he was viewing sunflowers by himself.

  ‘They’re fine specimens,’ he said. ‘Like heads of famous people.’

  Kikuko nodded, her manner casual.

  Shingo had put no thought into the words. The comparison had simply occurred to him. He had not been searching for one.

  With the remark, however, he felt in all its immediacy the strength of the great, heavy, flowering heads. He felt the regularity and order with which they were put together. The petals were like crowns, and the greater part of the central discs was taken up by stamens, clusters of them, which seemed to thrust their way up by main strength. There was no suggestion that they were fighting one another, however. They were quietly systematic, and strength seemed to flow from them.

  The flowers were larger in circumference than a human head. It was perhaps the formal arrangement of volume that had made Shingo think of a brain.

  The power of nature within them made him think of a giant symbol of masculinity. He did not know whether they were male or not, but somehow he thought them so.

  The summer sun was fading, and the evening air was calm.

  The petals were golden, like women.

  He walked away from the sunflowers, wondering whether it was Kikuko’s coming that had set him to thinking strange thoughts.

  ‘My head hasn’t been very clear these last few days. I suppose that’s why sunflowers made me think of heads. I wish mine could be as clean as they are. I was thinking on the train – if only there were some way to get your head cleaned and refinished. Just chop it off – well, maybe that would be a little violent. Just detach it and hand it over to some university hospital as if you were handing over a bundle of laundry. “Do this up for me, please,” you’d say. And the rest of you would be quietly asleep for three or four days or a week while the hospital was busy cleaning your head and getting rid of the garbage. No tossing and no dreaming.’