Last Quadrant

by Meira Chand

  3

  In a room above where Eva Kraig sat, her nephew Daniel lay down again, fully dressed upon the bed, and closed his eyes. His head ached. Soon he would have to begin the day, soon he would have to go down. He could not put it off; he must show a visitor’s politeness. In the room it was hot. When he first arrived, they had excused him, allowed him to shut himself away up here, to get over the journey from New York; it had not been so bad, he had slept on the plane. But he used the excuse to disappear, hide. He had no wish to see them. He had no wish to be here. But his mother had insisted.

  ‘It will be good for you, Daniel, just what you need to get over that terrible accident.’ So he had arranged a holiday from the law firm in which he was a junior partner. And come here to Japan. But he doubted he would ever get over the accident. He had been here now two weeks.

  Above him the ceiling was unpolished wooden boards, he followed the graining with his eyes, playing with the patterns. He came back to the single image of a hand poised above him, and turned on his side to escape it. He had not slept well, waking several times to the smell of night flowers in Eva’s garden. Looking from the window, he had seen in the porch light the small cerise trumpets open and bright. While everything slept their scent filled the dark garden like something living, sensual and thick. And mixed, as he feared, with his dreams when he slept, becoming the smell of damp grass when he came to after the accident. Since it he had been dreaming a lot, bad dreams. He had not told anyone, he did not want more fuss.

  The room was small and fragile; it shook as he walked around, so that he felt it might collapse upon him like a house of cards. He had to bend his head to enter the door. He felt unbearably confined, in a box, heat stifled in the smallness of it all. He sat down and twiddled the knobs of a radio on a shelf, listening absently to the crackle of stations and the bright piping of unintelligible language. He heard the sudden comfort of a Southern drawl and turned the needle back, to the Far East Forces network, and listened to the news, half-heartedly.

  They had been waiting for him at the airport. He had not seen Eva since he was ten. But she seemed as he remembered. The same firm expression and clear blue eyes above her half moon glasses. The flesh of her face was white and still, like the flesh of meditative nuns. Her hair was plaited as he remembered, but grey now, wound tightly round her head, archaic and absurd as her glasses. Yet she possessed a strange elegance, and she held herself very upright. Beside her was the girl, Akiko, whom he had seen only in photographs. Her father had been an American serviceman, he could see the occidental in her. Something struggled from the small cast of oriental bones, something that followed the form but lifted free. And she was nearly as tall as Eva, long-legged, not a Japanese body. She twitched nervously at the strap of her bag. She was not what he expected; she was beautiful.

  He lay down again upon the bed.

  ‘In Los Angeles last night a man attempted to hijack an airliner with a toy pistol. The airliner was ...’ The radio droned on.

  In the room the sultry air weighed upon him, the sweep of a standing fan did not break the humidity. He closed his eyes. These days he was always tired, he awoke as if he had not slept. Through the window the sun pressed orange whorls upon his lids, dilating and spinning. He put a hand protec-tively across his eyes and turned his head away. And the world was suddenly dark and green. Like when he had come to in the car with Casey at the time of the accident, deep beneath the water. It was like a dream now, a dark sealed vault at the back of his mind that kept opening. He remembered again the car’s fall from the low wooden bridge, like a film that went very slowly. It seemed to fall forever. Then the impact as it hit the river, and the blackness. He came to in a murky aqueous world, and remembered bubbles released from his mouth, perfect and round. Casey’s head was slumped in Daniel’s lap. From it hair flowed up on end, like delicate weeds, waving gently in the motion of the water. He had thought in terror, he is dead, and frantically pulled at Casey’s body. But he was heavy and slack and would not move. He tried to open the car door to drag Casey out, but the weight of the water held it closed. His head began to spin, his lungs burst in pain, and he had manoeuvred himself out and up through the open window, desperate for air, leaving Casey.

  I’ll dive down again, I’ll bring him out, he thought, swimming upwards.

  Light blazed as he hit the surface. Then he remembered nothing until he came to again in the warm grass of the river bank, the sun hot on his sodden clothes. He watched an ant walk the length of a stalk, and heard voices on the bridge. And immediately it came back to him then. He knew the bridge well, he and Casey often came here at weekends, to fish. He should have known better, should have gone more carefully over the bridge. But they were laughing stupidly, so that he had not seen the child at first, wobbling precariously towards them on a bicycle much too big for her. She could not have been more than nine. He pulled the car to the left too late, and that too was slow in his mind, the graceful loop her body turned in the air. Then the thud as she hit the windshield, and was flung into the water.

  There were people on the bridge. Sitting in the grass he had watched them absently, unable to associate himself with the scene. He saw them pull the child’s body from the water, then the bike. Sun glinted on the wet spokes of wheels, he heard their vacant spinning. It was all very distant, nothing to do with him.

  But he remembered Casey suddenly then, and thought, I did nothing. I did not go back, I lost consciousness. I did not save him. I thought only of myself. He saw they had noticed him then from the bridge. They came towards him, holding out their hands, faces filled with relief and concern. I could not save him, he thought again. Nothing else filled his mind.

  Now he shook his head on the pillow, trying physically to rid himself of the memories. He sat up and tried to listen to the radio. The voice came to him, a comforting twang, and pulled him back into the present.

  Standing, his mind and body felt heavy. In the window the mosquito netting was clogged with dust. Behind it he saw in the distance the brimming, passive sea, the oily surface of its skin reflecting clouds. Switching off the radio he stretched his arms above his head and prepared to face the day. He would have to go down now. He must not disappoint them, they were doing so much for him. He thought of the girl Akiko again, and walked towards the door.

  4

  Up the hill from Eva Kraig’s, in a one-storeyed house with a patch of lawn and two topiary bushes of holly and privet, the Englishman, Arthur John Wilcox, worked at his map. Kobe in 1870. Red ink for the native town, blue for the foreign bits. My Work, he said. My Work. And planned to withdraw from flippant society. He even looked askance at Eva Kraig, met on an evening walk, who asked after his recent retirement.

  ‘Retirement, Doctor, is a living death. It is not for me, oh no, to sit around the bar at the club, waiting for the company of any Tom, Dick or Harry with whom to sip a drink, to pass away the day. We must make use of each phase of life. I have within me still, I am thankful to say, a mine of untapped resources. I have taken up History, Doctor. Taken up History.’ He walked off, back straight as a ramrod, stroking his moustache in a preoccupied way. For the idea was growing within him since the day before, since the visit of Geraldine Cooper. Plump and smart and tightly corseted, she had sat before him in his home and changed his ebbing life, an answer to his prayer. For after six months of premature retirement the future gaped, contemptuous. And still filled him with fury. For what right had they had to pension him off so much earlier than they needed to.

  ‘Young men, young blood. Only way to survive,’ said the new forty-two year old chairman of Murdoch and Hack. ‘And corporations. No room for the small firm today.’ Within a year there had been the merger with an American conglomerate.

  ‘Our new policy demands ...’ began the young man, and the committee behind him nodded. Within ten minutes they disposed of Arthur and the service of forty years. They gave him a watch on a bed of red satin in a small black plastic box. He went home in a daze.r />
  ‘But I am young.’ He roared the words at a freckle-faced mirror, and punched his muscular chest. ‘Not many half my age as fit as I. Still in the club tennis team, winner of the annual golf cup eight times. Not a twinge of arthritis, not a day’s indigestion. Young whippersnappers, set themselves up as God nowadays. They’ll learn, soon come crawling for advice.’ He straightened his tie in the mirror, smoothed back a head of thick grey hair and remarked at the healthy glow of his skin, stretched firmly on his bones. No droop or drag there, ten minutes of facial exercises a day accomplished that for him. For comfort he stroked the corpulence of a rather flamboyant moustache. Loath to give in entirely to age, it still contained a few ginger hairs. And he remembered with satisfaction that his recent ex-employer was bald at forty-two. ‘Bah.’ He spat out at the empty room.

  The day, in spite of a plentiful curriculum of sports and activity, could not contain the void of work. It allowed him time to think, which was always a bad thing. All evils occurred from too much thought. An involved and active mind, exhausted in constructive work, had no energy at the end of the day to roam the more dubious byways. Such was the experience of Arthur Wilcox. But retirement presented a breach of this contract with his mind. Widening cracks appeared in the dikes, through which trepidations leaked. He was terrified by thoughts of his old friend, Spencer, who had died the week before. Since then the morbid fear of death hung over him all the time, an ache that subsided only to start again. Spencer. He pushed the thought from him. Geraldine Cooper would change all that. She offered purpose to his life.

  ‘I am hesitant, Mr Wilcox, to disturb your tranquil retirement, but the committee was unanimous. We have chosen you, yes, we have decided. Nobody else has all the requirements, the knowledge and experience. It is for the centenary of the club, and as you know a history of the club will be nearly a history of the foreign community in Kobe. It should be a substantial pamphlet, Mr Wilcox. The committee has gathered a collection of old photographs which we also wish to include. It will be most exciting. Now do say you will do it?’

  Geraldine Cooper smiled from her chair, a confident, authoritative smile. She touched her hair and smoothed her skirt across her knees. Filling the space between them Arthur was aware of a flowery perfume, and could not remember when a woman was last in the room. Once in a while Eva Kraig visited, with a bag of fruit and a magazine, and some part of each day the old woman, Onishi-san, came in to clean. But he did not think them feminine forms comparable with Geraldine Cooper. There was no frivolity about Eva Kraig, with her half-moon glasses. Onishi-san was gold toothed and sixty-nine. But he had to admit Geraldine Cooper was no longer the fresh-cheeked girl he had met, not long after he came to Kobe.

  The English were a large community then, and stuck together. Arthur played billiards with Horace Bingham, Geraldine’s father, each Wednesday in the club, and often attended the musical evenings Horace and his wife, Maud, arranged at their home. Horace played the violin, Maud the piano, Arthur accompanied on the flute. Geraldine, in bows and lace-edged pinafore ran, maid in tow, about the room. But Horace died early, Maud was now senile and Geraldine had rashly married an American who arrived in Kobe and insinuated his way into Horace’s business. Once, after a gin, Maud had privately confided her doubts to Arthur about Anglo-American marriages. ‘It is an adolescent country, Arthur, no history, no culture, what will they have in common?’ She placed a hand on his arm, tears in her eyes. After the marriage and Horace’s death, Nate Cooper made money hand over fist. There was now nobody richer in Kobe. But for Arthur the friendship ended with Horace’s death; he had little in common with young Nate Cooper.

  In spite of its pleasantness Geraldine’s perfume set up an allergy in his nose and his eyes began to prick. Each time she moved a faint rustle sounded. Against all contrary effort, his mind wandered as to what underclothing might cause that gentle rub, and was ashamed, for it was unlike him; he was not that sort of man. But these were the wilful ways of his mind, idle in retirement. Geraldine’s perfume had its way. Arthur sneezed ungraciously, spraying spittle upon his moustache.

  ‘A cup of tea? Well then, a cold drink?’ he suggested, to prolong the encounter, to put off the emptiness that stretched beyond.

  Mixing a cordial in the kitchen, the strange feminine presence of Geraldine Cooper seeped through the walls. In the glass on the tray, ice bobbed up and down in a raspberry sea, and clunked on the tall thin sides. A mosquito whined near his ear, its previous attack itched on his wrist. He swished a dish cloth discouragingly about, impatient. For he was suddenly filled with suppressed excitement, a restlessness such as he felt after a couple of whiskeys.

  Handing Geraldine the cordial he watched her fingertips leave warm patches on the frosty glass. As she took a sip ice bumped her mouth. She looked up and smiled approvingly. Standing before her, staring down, he noted the solid packing of her flesh, noted she must be fifty now, and that brown pencil made the hard line of her brows. But at the drape of her neckline the flesh swam briefly, free and white, soft as clotted cream, before being coffined in its corset. He could not draw his eyes away and prayed for Geraldine Cooper both to go and to stay from the safety of his chair.

  But after she left he was no longer alone. The idea was wedged in him firmly. He would write the pamphlet about the club, and then a history of the foreign community in Kobe. The idea grew in his mind, devouring the bareness before him. He began at once to search out old books. In the morning, he started the map.

  He had the little ink bottles in a row before him now, the blue, the red, black for lettering, green for hills and rural land. There was a lot of green then, in the old days, when the first foreigners settled in Kobe. He shaded in the hump of two hills, and the thought of old Spencer was with him again, constricting his throat and mind. On the desk the bottles of ink caught the sun and showed secret jewelled interiors, blue as summer dusk, red as blood. Red as blood. Like the bottles that had hung over Spencer in the hospital, just a week and a day ago. But the blood had not helped Spencer. Spencer had died. Spencer was dead.

  Arthur John Wilcox mixed green ink with a drop of black in a saucer to his right, to hatch in match-stick pines, to darken the Kobe hills. And tried not to think of Spencer who had died alone in a bland white room, beneath tubes and bottles of blood. Not even a nurse in sight.

  ‘Won’t come.’ Spencer had croaked, his lips scaly, his skin the colour of sour porridge. ‘Not like the old days. Not a good morning or how are you today. A chewed up lot. Now you press this here bell and they speak to you through that contraption in the ceiling.’ The words rattled hoarsely in Spencer’s throat, his eyes gestured blearily before they closed, and he lay too exhausted to speak.

  During the week since Spencer’s death the world had closed in about Arthur’s soul. He had taken it badly, he knew. The greater thoughts to life, frightful in their bareness, baited him with reality now. He muttered the words under his breath. All must die. All must go. All are born to that end. And felt even worse.

  Kobe Foreign Settlement or Concession, Arthur printed neatly across an area of blue squares. Native town, he wrote across a similar area in red. Ikuta Shrine. Ono Foreign Cemetery. Then, on a separate piece of paper he tried a few simplified drawings of sailing ships and junks that might afterwards be settled in the bay and harbour.

  He did not want to die like Spencer, alone. It was as much the aloneness as the death that took him by the throat now. For, one by one, he had seen them go, all the old timers, as the foreign community now called those such as Arthur. Their deaths he had accepted, never equating the state with himself. Old age seemed always a distance away; he had not been ready to enter the phase. But here he was, six months retired and already that cast-off feeling a heavy pit in his stomach, depression slowing him down.

  In the garden, beyond the windows, the stiff bulbous shadow of a topiaried bush was spread upon the lawn, in the distance the bay opened out under great banks of cloud. Arthur looked at the bush and then at the cloud a
nd found a topiary likeness. Beneath the sky the sea was the colour of bile. ‘Bad weather near,’ muttered Arthur, and bent his head to his desk. Carefully he began copying from a book. ‘An old diagrammatic map of Hiogo Port, later known as Kobe Port, during the opening years of the Foreign Settlement or Concession around 1870, before the Ikuta river was diverted to the Shin Ikuta River in 18 71 and before the railway from Osaka was opened in 1874.’

  At the funeral there had been only himself and Father Richards from the Catholic Church. A representative from the International Committee of Kobe had failed to arrive and phoned later to apologise, with an excuse. It was a young man’s voice, American. He confessed at Arthur’s inquiry that he had not known Spencer, only visited him once, in the hospital. But, he explained, the committee was a charitable organisation of the international community, exactly for purposes of aid to destitute old foreigners like Spencer.

  ‘He was not destitute, not destitute at all, sir, I’ll have you know,’ Arthur roared down the phone. ‘Only old and lonely, which I suppose to a youngster like you appears a sin of charitable proportions.’ There was a lump in his throat on behalf of Spencer.

  ‘I mean destitute in the spiritual sense.’ The young man quickly said. ‘You know, shipwrecked upon his own island. No sense of belonging, no home to go home to, living in limbo. Just lived here too long, I suppose.’

  The tone of voice was light. Arthur detected a note of derision. Arthur had put down the phone, and his fingers shook. For Spencer had been destitute. Although he refused to admit it, living alone with his dog in the evil-smelling wooden house he had been reduced to. Once a week Arthur had climbed the rickety outside staircase to Spencer’s rooms on the second floor, and ducked beneath the dripping underwear, an eternal hazard there. The dog was stout and stiff like Spencer, with more, Arthur suspected, than a touch of the mange. The place smelled of animal, stale blankets and hard, old-fashioned shaving soap. Spencer wore shoes without any laces, his shirt was stained with food. It was shocking the way he had let himself go. And Arthur felt responsible, could not bear to see the dreadful fall in circumstance; for Spencer had once been his boss, when Arthur first arrived in Japan to join the old British trading firm of Murdoch and Hack. Then Spencer had been a dapper man of quick neat movements and small plump hands, dimpled like a woman’s. Arthur respected his low voice of command, his way with the ladies, his presidency of the club, that unparalleled authority in the foreign community. But times changed, war came, Spencer grew older, married at fifty a Japanese woman, separated, retired, grew sick, was divested one way or another of all he had, and never returned to England. Old friends died one by one, younger people filled the foreign community, and did not know of Spencer. Arthur had stayed with Murdoch and Hack after Spencer left in search of better things, but for Spencer it had only been downhill. Arthur brooded over the change in things, behind his paper in the club, which now allowed women and even tolerated children and open-necked shirts in the bar. They were all young people here now with international companies, who came to Japan on short contracts. In the old days if you chose to venture this far you stayed, usually a lifetime.