The Sound of the Mountain (23 page)

Shingo inquired by telephone. He did not, at this moment, want to have to face Shuichi in front of other employees. Shuichi was out.

Inviting Eiko to a foreign restaurant nearby, Shingo left the office.

Eiko, who was small, walked close to him and looked up into his face. ‘Do you remember?’ she asked nonchalantly. ‘You took me dancing just once when I was in your office.’

‘Yes. You had a white ribbon in your hair.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I had the white ribbon the day after the typhoon. I remember because I was very upset. It was the day you first asked about Kinu.’

‘Was that it?’

It had been that day, he remembered. Eiko had told him that Kinu’s husky voice was erotic.

‘Last September. I really asked too much of you.’ Shingo had come without a hat. The sun was hot on his bare head.

‘I was no help at all.’

‘Because we didn’t give you anything to work with. A family to be ashamed of.’

‘I admire you. Even more since I left the office.’ Her voice was strained and unnatural. After a moment she went on: ‘When I told her she must not have the child, she hit back at me as if I were a child myself that needed a spanking. I knew nothing about it, she said, and I couldn’t understand. I’d do better to mind my own business. And finally she said she had it there inside her.’

‘Oh?’

‘Who had asked me to give her stupid advice? If it had to do with being separated from Shuichi, there was nothing she could do but be separated when he left her. But the child was hers and no one else’s. No one could do anything about it. If I could I should ask a baby inside my own self whether it was wrong to have it. I’m young and she was making fun of me. She said I wasn’t to make fun of
her.
She may intend to go on and have it. I remembered afterwards that she and her husband had no children. He was killed in the war.’

Walking beside her, Shingo nodded.

‘Maybe she just said it because I irritated her. Maybe she doesn’t mean to have it.’

‘How far along is it?’

‘Four months. I didn’t notice, but some of the others in the shop did. They say the owner heard and told her not to have it. She’s very talented, and I imagine it would be a loss to the shop.’ She raised a hand to her face. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I told you you might speak to Shuichi.’

‘Yes.’

‘I think you should see her as soon as possible.’

Shingo had been thinking the same thing. ‘The lady who came to the office with you that day – are they still living together?’

‘Mrs Ikeda.’

‘Yes. Which is older?’

‘I believe Kinu is two or three years younger.’

Eiko saw him back as far as his building. Her smile seemed on the edge of tears.

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank
you.
Are you going back to the shop?’

‘Yes. Kinu generally leaves early these days. The shop is open till six-thirty.’

‘You don’t mean I’m to go there!’

It had been as if Eiko were urging him to see Kinu even today; but the thought was more than he could tolerate. And it would not be easy to face Kikuko when he got back to Kamakura.

Evidently, from her squeamishness, her irritation at being pregnant while Shuichi had another woman, Kikuko had refused to bear her child. Doubtless she had not even dreamed that the other woman was pregnant.

Kikuko had come back from a few days with her family after Shingo had heard of the abortion, and had since seemed closer to Shuichi. Home early every day, he was considerate as he had not been before. What did it all mean?

The more favorable interpretation was that Shuichi, deeply troubled by Kinu and her resolution to have the baby, was pulling away from her, apologizing to Kikuko.

But a scent of ugly decay and want of principle filled Shingo’s nostrils.

Wherever it came from, the embryonic life itself seemed evil.

‘And if it’s born it will be my grandchild,’ Shingo muttered.

Shingo walked up the main Hongo street on the side that skirted the Tokyo University campus.

He had left the cab on the side lined by shops, and would of course turn from that side into Kinu’s lane. He had purposely crossed the car tracks to the other side.

He was most reluctant to visit the house of his son’s mistress. He would be meeting her for the first time, and she was already pregnant. Would he be able to ask her not to have the child?

‘So there is to be another murder,’ he said to himself. ‘Can’t it be accomplished without adding to the crimes of an old man? But all solutions are cruel, I suppose.’

The solution in this case should have been up to the son. It was not the father’s place to interfere. Shingo was going off to see Kinu without telling Shuichi; and he was thus no doubt providing evidence that he had lost faith in his son.

When, he asked himself, startled, had this gap come between them? Might it be that this visit to Kinu was less out of a wish to find a solution for Shuichi than out of pity and anger at what had been done to Kikuko?

The strong evening sunlight touched only the tips of the branches. The sidewalk was in shade. On the university lawns, men students in shirt sleeves were talking to girl students. It was a scene that told of a break in the early summer rains.

Shingo touched a hand to his cheek. The effects of the sake had left him.

Knowing when Kinu would be finishing work, he had invited a friend from another company to a Western restaurant. He had not seen the friend in rather a long time and had forgotten what a drinker he was. They had had a short drink downstairs before going up to dinner, and after dinner they had again sat for a time in the bar.

‘You’re not going already?’ the friend had asked in surprise. Thinking that, at this first meeting in such a long time, they would want to have a talk, said the friend, he had called for reservations in the Tsukiji geisha district.

Shingo had replied he would come after paying an unavoidable visit of perhaps an hour or so. The friend had written the Tsukiji address and telephone number on a calling card. Shingo had had no intention of going.

He walked along the wall of the University, looking across the street for the mouth of the lane. He was relying on vague memories, but they did not prove wrong.

Inside the dark doorway, which faced north, there was a shabby chest for footwear. On it was a potted Occidental plant of some description from which hung a woman’s umbrella.

A woman in an apron came from the kitchen.

Her face went tense as she started to take off the apron. She had on a navy-blue skirt, and her feet were bare.

‘Mrs Ikeda, I believe. You once honored us at the office with a visit.’

‘Yes. It was rude of me, but Eiko dragged me along.’

Her apron wadded in one hand, she looked at him inquiringly. There were freckles even around her eyes, all the more conspicuous because she did not seem to be wearing powder. She had a delicate, well-shaped nose, and one saw a certain elegance in the narrow eyes and the fair skin.

No doubt the new blouse had been made by Kinu.

‘I was hoping to see Miss Kinu.’

He spoke as if requesting a favor.

‘She should be home soon. Would you like to wait?’

A smell of grilling fish came from the kitchen.

Shingo thought it might be better to come later, when Kinu had had her dinner. On the urging of the Ikeda woman, however, he went inside.

Fashion magazines were piled in the alcove of the medium-sized parlor, among them considerable numbers of what seemed to be foreign magazines. Beside them were two French dolls, their frills quite out of harmony with the shabby old walls. From the sewing machine hung a length of silk. The bright, flowery pattern made the dirty floor matting look all the dirtier.

To the left of the machine was a little desk on which were numerous primary-school textbooks and a photograph of a small boy.

Between the machine and the desk was a dressing table, and in front of the closet to the rear a full-length mirror, the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room. Perhaps Kinu used it to try on clothes she had made, perhaps she gave fittings to customers for whom she did extra work. There was a large ironing board beside it.

The Ikeda woman brought orange juice from the kitchen.

‘It’s my son,’ she said immediately. Shingo was looking at the picture.

‘Is he in school?’

‘I don’t have him here. I left him with my husband’s family. The books – I don’t have regular work like Kinu, and so I do tutoring. There are six or seven houses I go to.’

‘I see. I thought there were too many for one child.’

‘They’re all ages and grades. The schools these days are a great deal different from before the war, and I’m afraid I don’t really do very well. But when I’m teaching I feel as if he were with me.’

Shingo nodded. There was nothing he could say to the war widow.

The other, Kinu, was working.

‘How did you find the place? Did Shuichi tell you?’

‘No. I came once before, but I couldn’t make myself come inside. It must have been last autumn.’

‘Really?’ She looked up at him, and looked down again. ‘Shuichi hasn’t been coming around lately,’ she said abruptly, after a time.

Shingo thought it might be better to tell her why he had come. ‘I understand that Kinu is going to have a child,’ he said.

The woman shrugged her shoulders very slightly and turned to the photograph of her son.

‘Does she mean to go ahead and have it?’

She continued to look at the photograph. ‘I think you’d better ask her.’

‘I agree. But won’t it be a great misfortune for both mother and child?’

‘I think you can call Kinu unfortunate whether she has the child or not.’

‘But I’d imagine that you yourself might have been advising her to break with Shuichi.’

‘That’s what I think she should do. But Kinu is much stronger than I, and it hasn’t amounted to advice. We’re two very different people, but somehow we get along well. She’s been a great help to me since we started living together. We met at the war widows’ club, you know. Both of us have left our husbands’ families and not gone back to our own – we’re free agents, you might say. We want our minds to be free too, and so we’ve put our husbands’ pictures away. I do have the boy’s out, of course. Kinu reads all sorts of American magazines, and then she can get the gist of French too with a dictionary, she says. After all, it’s about sewing and there aren’t many words. She wants to have a shop of her own some day. We both say that when the chance comes we’ll remarry. And so I don’t understand why she had to be all tangled up with Shuichi.’

The front door opened. She got up somewhat hastily and went out to the hall.

‘Mr Ogata’s father is here,’ Shingo heard her say.

‘Do I have to see him?’ replied a husky voice.

Kinu went to the kitchen and seemed to be having a glass of water.

‘You come in too,’ she said, looking back toward Mrs Ikeda as she came into the room.

She had on a very bright suit. Perhaps because she was so large, it was not apparent to Shingo that she was pregnant. He found it hard to believe that the hoarse voice could have come from the small, puckered mouth.

The mirrors were in the parlor, and it seemed that she had retouched her face from a compact.

Shingo’s first impression was not unfavorable. The face, round yet hollow, did not suggest the strength of will which the Ikeda woman had described. There was a gentle roundness about the hands too.

‘My name is Ogata.’

Kinu did not answer.

‘You’ve kept us waiting,’ said Mrs Ikeda, seating herself before the mirror stand. Still Kinu said nothing.

Perhaps because surprise and hostility did not show themselves well on the essentially cheerful face, she seemed about to weep. Shingo remembered that in this house Shuichi had gotten drunk and had made her weep by insisting that the Ikeda woman sing for him.

Kinu had hurried home through muggy streets. Her face was flushed, and her rich breasts rose and fell.

‘It must seem strange that I should be calling on you,’ said Shingo, unable to approach his subject with complete directness, ‘but I imagine that you will have guessed what brings me.’

Kinu still did not answer.

‘Shuichi, of course.’

‘If it’s about Shuichi, then I have nothing to say.’ Suddenly she pounced. ‘Are you asking that I apologize?’

‘No. I think the apologies should come from me.’

‘We’ve separated, and I will be no more trouble to you.’ She looked at Mrs Ikeda. ‘Shouldn’t that take care of things?’

Shingo had difficulty replying, but at length he found words: ‘There is still the question of the child, you know.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Kinu blanched, but all her strength seemed to go into the words. As her voice fell it was even huskier.

‘You must forgive me for asking, but I believe you are to have a child?’

‘Do I have to answer that sort of question? If a woman wants to have a child, are outsiders to step in and prevent it? Do you think a man would understand that sort of thing?’ She spoke rapidly and there were tears in her voice.

‘Outsiders, you say – but I
am
Shuichi’s father. I imagine your child will have a father too?’

‘It will not. A war widow has decided to have a bastard, that’s all. I have nothing to ask of you except that you leave me alone to have it. Just ignore it, as an act of charity, if you will. The child is inside me, and it is mine.’

‘That is true. And when you get married you will have other children. I see no need at this point in having unnatural children.’

‘And what is unnatural about it?’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘There is no guarantee that I will marry again, or that I will have children. Are you willing to play God and give us an oracle? I had no children last time.’

‘Relations between the child and its father are the main point. The child will suffer and so will you.’