For a while, Kagebayashi and Teruko looked daggers at each other, but Teruko quickly regained her composure. She did not believe that Kagebayashi could possibly know of her surreptitious rendezvous with Toyama which had been carried out with such careful precautions. At worse, somebody may have seen me getting on that plane.
"I heard there was a good diamond there, and I went to see it. What's the matter? Why are you looking like that? If you think that's strange and if you don't believe it, then you just think about this for a while. All month long I stay at home alone like somebody on a shelf. What if I did go to buy a diamond?"
Then Teruko lavishly displayed her knowledge of diamonds. For the moment, the greater problem directly involving Kagebayashi was the high price of diamonds that he was hearing bandied about. . . although that did not mean that his doubts about Teruko had been dispelled. But, without further ado, they stopped this fencing and broke off their conversation.
IV
IT WAS in the fall of 1957 that for reasons of a slump in business Kagebayashi was forced to resign from the President's chair at a Big Stockholders' General Meeting. Clearly, people inside and outside the company had gotten together and hatched a plot, but there were no measures he could take to avert this. Finally, the dust went flying. This was inevitable for Kagebayashi who was surrounded by a pack of fawning flatterers among whom was also Toyama. And so it came about that Kagebayashi had to follow the same path as Otaka had before him. Kagebayashi must have had many supporters besides people like the President of the Bank, the President of the Securities Company, and the President of the Insurance Company, who had signatory powers with regard to the company's personnel, but those who would have lent their support to Kagebayashi for some reason did not appear. Seeing that this was the case, there was nothing for him to do but to admit that he had behaved with complete incompetence. Kagebayashi thought that while the basic cause of all this lay half with himself, the other half lay with Toyama's stratagems. They had not decided who would become the new shacho, but they did set a time for his selection, and it looked as though the name of Toyama was appearing on the horizon. There just could not be anyone but Toyama!
It was a week after the Stockholders' General Meeting that Kagebayashi, looking like a samurai with his sword broken and his arrows spent, at a Directors' Meeting announced his resolution to resign. When he left the Directors' meeting room and returned to the President's office, he realized the terrible fatigue that was coursing through his body and mind, lowered himself into a chair, and sat there immobile. It appeared that rumors of the shacho's resignation were already spreading through all the departments of the company, and there was a different feeling toward Kagebayashi all the way down to the office boys and the girl secretaries.
At seven o'clock, when Kagebayashi ordered the Secretariat to send his car around to take him home, Jiro Kaibara's hulk appeared at the President's office. "Tomorrow is Harvest Moon, so what do we do this year? No notices have gone out," said the stupid baseball commentator. This was also the first time that Kagebayashi had thought about it. The days had flown by without anyone's choosing a place for the moon-viewing party that fall. The business situation was that serious.
The two men left the President's office and got into the automobile in front of the company lobby. Night was falling. The member of the Secretariat who had come down to see him off handled the old shacho even more courteously than he usually did and bowed politely. For some unknown reason he seemed to have a strong feeling of respect for the President who would soon be leaving the company.
"Drive to Kamakura," Kagebayashi instructed the driver. He was in no mood to go home. He seemed beguiled by a feeling that only by being beside Teruko could he ease his miserable depression.
The car ran along the Tokyo-Yokohama National Highway. One after another, cars from behind caught up with and passed the car Kagebayashi was in. Because Kagebayashi always disliked going fast, the driver went slowly and hung cautiously onto the steering wheel. When they were crossing Rokugo Bridge, a small bang under the chassis shook the old man's body. The driver stopped the car.
"I'm sorry, but we've got a flat. Please give me about five minutes and wait till I fix it. I really apologize," he said with embarrassment. Kagebayashi knew that his driver had not yet lost his feeling of awe and respect toward him, and for that reason he found it possible to pardon the driver's ineptitude.
The automobile crossed the bridge with the tire flat, and after going on a little further, turned off the highway onto a rice-paddy field. Kagebayashi and Jiro Kaibara both remained silently sitting in the parked car. Kaibara thought that by the time they arrived at Kagebayashi's second home in Kamakura he should be able to consolidate his arguments for setting up an employees' baseball team at the company. This was something that he had been proposing for the past year, at least whenever he met Kagebayashi, but he was never able to get a definite reply. The baseball commentator figured that by having them set up an employees' baseball team at S——Industries, he could solidify his own very insecure standing at the company, where he was just receiving a retaining allowance.
However, Kaibara was born superstitious, and an ill-omened flat tire was not the occasion for broaching this subject, so the better part of wisdom was to forget this talk for today. But if I keep all this to myself what's the purpose in my riding in the President's car when he's going to his second home in Kamakura? When it turned out that he was unable to answer his own question, Kaibara's actions became strikingly peculiar. I have to talk to him about something! But nothing intelligent or relevant came into Kaibara's head, as always.
Kagebayashi was also exasperated by the flat. My car, which did not have a flat even once during my presidency, has to have a flat now that I've stopped being president! Just as he was thinking this, he for some reason or other became filled by an uneasiness about going to Teruko's house in Kamakura. Whenever he was going down to Teruko's, he always put in a telephone call a few days in advance, but this time his visit was without notice. Mightn't she not be there? Didn't she go to Fukuoka to buy a diamond? (Kagebayashi had by now convinced himself that this had been true.) And once this uneasiness reared its head, he began quickly to accept it as established irrefutable truth that Teruko would not be home.
"Shacho, your fast-ball was sure hard to get—you know, I don't know anyone with such a fast-ball."
Little by little, the words he had been holding back were coming forward in Kaibara and he was saying them. Kaibara had never said things like this when he was alone with Kagebayashi. This was the first time. This did not mean that what he was now blurting out was just lip service on this occasion. But just because he had so often repeated this same thing over and over again, it had become a reality in his mind now. Kagebayashi was startled by his words. And as if he had discovered something priceless inside a desk drawer, the fast-ball of his student days was now being recalled to him as the only glory that was left to him. That arm of his had pitched fast-balls that were hard for even Kaibara to get—Kaibara, with his big name in baseball.
Kagebayashi opened the door and called out to the driver, "Not yet?"
"It'll be another five minutes." The driver had finished removing the flat tire and was standing holding it. Pushing his hair out of his eyes and back on top of his head while standing holding the tire, he had the appearance of something out of the comics. The driver's shadow was as dark as spilled ink, and the ground was an exceedingly clear, pale blue-white in the moonlight.
Kagebayashi got out of the car and stood on the ground. Then suddenly, in order to whisk away the cold emptiness of the moonbeams which were closing in on him, he swung his right arm forward and up in a large arc. After several decades, Kagebayashi was now again posing in his pitcher's motion. Of course, as a reserve player, he had never had any experience stepping up to the pitcher's mound. But in his current frame of mind, Kagebayashi had forgotten details like that. He arched his body forward, and as though he were actually pitching a b
all, he mightily brought down the right arm that he had just swung upward. Because once again he was throwing a fast-ball that even Kaibara would miss.
Inside the car, Jiro Kaibara raised his eyes toward the window and saw something in the shape of a funny old man flinging his emaciated arm around in circles. He sucked in his breath. This figure was ghastly like a phantom devil dancing and bathing in the white rays of the moon which tomorrow would be called the Full Moon.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TUTTLE PUBLISHING
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THE TALE OF GENJI
by Murasaki Shikibu
translated by Kencho Suematsu
ISBN 0-8048-3256-0
This biographical novel centers around the amorous exploits of Prince Hikaru Genji, whose elegance and talent epitomized the values of Heian Japan, an era in which indigenous Japanese culture still held prominence over the Chinese culture that would come to dominate Japan.
LITTLE SONGS OF THE GEISHA
Traditional Japanese Ko-Uta
by Liza Dalby
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A fascinating look into the world of the Geisha through the 400-year-old art of Ko-Uta, the traditional song form sung to three-stringed shamisen music. A vivid evocation of the romanticism of feudal Japan.
THE JOURNEY
a Novel about Japan in the
Aftermath of the American Occupation
by Jiro Osaragi, translated by Ivan Morris
ISBN 0-8048-3255-2
This touching allegorical novel about a man who is almost destroyed by his lust for money and the accumulation of wealth is a masterful depiction of the new moral reality facing post-war Japan.
THE BUDDHATREE
by Fumio Niwa, translated by Kenneth Strong
ISBN 0-8048-3254-4
The author's remarkable insight into human weaknesses, his sensitive sketches of the Japanese countryside, and his revelation of the materialism of the modern Buddhist church in Japan, make this a book of unusual distinction.
KAPPA
A Satire By The Author Of Rashomon
by Ryunosuke Akutagawa,
translated by Geoffrey Bownas
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A Swiftian satire of Japanese society thinly disguised as the fictitious Kappaland. Peopled with creatures from Japanese folklore, Kappaland serves as a vehicle for the humorous examination of the moral foibles of Japanese society in the early 20th century.
THE COUNTERFEITER
AND OTHER STORIES
by Yasushi Inoue, translated by Leon Picon
ISBN 0-8048-3252-8
These three short stories, "The Counterfeiter," "Obasute," and "The Full Moon," explore the roles of loneliness, compassion, beauty, and forgiveness in day-to-day life in Japan, all within the context of the Buddhist-influenced notion of inescapable predestination.
ROM AJI DIARY AND SAD TOYS
by Takuboku Ishikawa
translated by Sanford Goldstein
and Seishi Shinoda
ISBN 0-8048-3253-6
The novella Romaji Diary represents the first instance of a Japanese writer using romaji (roman script) to tell stories in a way that could not be told in kana or kanji. Sad Toys is a collection of 194 tanka, the traditional 31 -syllable poems that are evocative of Japan's misty past and its tentative steps into the wider world.
FIRES ON THE PLAIN
by Shohei Ooka, translated by Ivan Morris
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Based on the author's experience as a prisoner captured by American forces during WWII, Fires on the Plain tells the story of the disintegration of Private Tamura, a Japanese soldier during the dark end days of the war. One by one, each of his ties to society is destroyed, until Tamura, a sensitive and intelligent man, becomes an outcast.
THE IZU DANCER
& OTHER STORIES
by Yasunari Kawabata and Yasushi Inoue
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Four stories from two of Japan's most beloved and acclaimed fiction writers. "The Izu Dancer" was the story that first introduced Kawabata's prodigious talent to the West. Stories by Inoue include, "The Counterfeiter," "Obasute," and "The Full Moon."
Counterfeiter and Other Stories Page 11