by Taeko Kono
What a genuinely sincere person, Fukuko couldn’t help thinking. If they’d been sent to her, she would have treated these letters like a joke, hooting with her friends over them. But here was this man, taking them seriously, bowing his head, and having her read them so she could tell him what to do. Well, her sister was quite safe with somebody like this.
In a state of relief that the letters had nothing to do with her sister, she found herself wanting to play to the hilt her role as Saeki’s counselor. Delivering as tough-minded an opinion as possible, she declared that whatever his course of action, nobody could prevent the girl from having such feelings — and, for that matter, the only sure way of preventing her from doing something drastic would be for him to return her feelings. But then, was it his responsibility, if a girl decided to get obsessed with him, and make trouble for herself?
“Well,” she concluded, self-importantly: “I’d stop teaching her, if I were you. Unless you actually have some interest . . .”
In the end, Saeki did give up being the girl’s tutor, though his decision was probably based on more than just her advice. His student didn’t do anything drastic. It wasn’t until several years later that Fukuko told her younger sister about the incident. She did inform her parents, however. She told Utako, too, creating considerable amusement.
Utako gave Fukuko a quick update on Saeki’s career — after graduating, he had taken a job at an English-language newspaper. Utako had met him at a conference just six months before, and she hadn’t realized at first that he was the Saeki of Fukuko’s story. It was only after dating him for several months that she had made the connection.
When Utako said her engagement was “funny,” Fukuko thought, she meant that it was a funny coincidence, but she might also be referring to Saeki’s age. Saeki was much younger than Utako — he was even considerably younger than Fukuko, who was two years younger than her friend. Utako was quite open about it: she was six years older than Saeki. But Utako looked at least six years younger than she really was, and anyway, Fukuko thought, what mattered was how well a couple got on together.
“Why not bring him next time?” Fukuko said. Once she’d made the invitation, it struck her that Saeki was no longer the student she’d been picturing.
“What’s he like now?” she wanted to know.
“Oh, very nice,” Utako answered, somewhat disappointingly.
Saeki did, in fact, come with Utako to pay one visit during their engagement. When the love-letter episode came up, he said to Fukuko, “I’m so glad I asked for your advice.” It was the kind of thing one is obliged to say, of course, but he seemed to mean it, and Fukuko felt embarrassed and didn’t know how to reply. He had lost none of his sincerity. But he was a man now, and quite the adult.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Fukuko said to Murao afterwards. “They’re well suited, aren’t they?”
Murao grunted. “Uta-chan looks at least six years younger than she is, and Saeki looks about right for his age. When you see them together, though, she still looks a little older than him. Strange, isn’t it, for somebody who’s always referring to herself as the baby of her family to turn and tell her husband so firmly, ‘Well, dear, time to go.’ It suits her, though, doesn’t it! And her manner is so gentle. Their marriage should go well.”
“Too bad for you, hmm?”
“That’s true.” Murao grinned.
Whenever Fukuko came across something particularly fresh or delicious, her first thought was to ask the Saekis over for dinner. Her hospitality toward Utako, of course, was nothing new, but now Murao, too, whenever he particularly liked a place they’d gone to, would often remark, “I wish the other two were here. Let’s ask them next time.” This sociability on his part had started after Utako’s marriage. It was easier, perhaps, to double-date. So, occasionally they’d go out to places as a foursome.
“Utako tells me she prefers coming here to seeing her own family,” Saeki announced one day, while they were visiting.
“Well, I hope so!” Fukuko replied.
Utako’s mother had died a few years before, and a sister had married and moved away. The only ones left at home were her father, the professor, now retired, her other sister, and a middle-aged housekeeper.
“And what about you?” Fukuko asked Saeki.
“I feel exactly the same way!” he said, laughing.
Fukuko laughed too, imagining her friends’ faces at tense family visits. Murao and Utako joined in, and then, as they all laughed, it dawned on Fukuko that they weren’t really laughing about Utako’s family at all, but rather about a certain complicity — an understanding that they had come to about relations between the four of them.
The Saekis lived four or five blocks away from the tram stop. Fukuko and Murao walked off the main road up a small street, and as they turned at the second intersection, they saw an empty plot of land with a notice board painted in white letters: “For sale: twenty-five tsubo.” The Saekis often parked their car here, although illegally, and sure enough, Fukuko and Murao saw among the four or five cars their small buff-colored vehicle, parked at a slight angle, with its dark windshield toward them.
“They’re home all right,” Murao remarked.
“What on earth can they be doing?” Fukuko exclaimed, and her voice was excited too.
Turning a corner a couple of streets farther on, they came face to face with a two-story building, opposite an art gallery, consisting of twenty apartments, all with identical doors and windows. The Saekis’ apartment was on the second floor, the second one along. The kitchen window, however, was dark.
“They’ll be in the front room,” Fukuko said, going up the iron stairs. The Saekis had been renting this small one-bedroom apartment for three years now, and Fukuko and Murao knew which rooms the couple were likely to use at different times of day. But Fukuko only mentioned the front room to try to dispel her disappointment at not immediately seeing that they would be met with lights and good cheer. The Saekis weren’t home, she realized. The darkness behind the frosted window pierced her to the bone.
“Anybody home? It’s us.” Murao rattled the door knob. But the door didn’t budge. “Hey, Saeki!” he called out loudly, knocking.
“Looks like nobody’s home,” he said to her. “The car is there. But if they were anywhere around . . .”
If they were anywhere around, true, they would have left the lights on as they always did when they walked Murao and Fukuko to the bus stop at the end of a visit.
“Well, they must be out,” Fukuko said. She tried tugging the sliding glass window, but it wouldn’t budge, either. She yearned to hear the light snap on inside, and to hear Utako call “Coming!” in that direct, clear way she had. . . .
The door of the next apartment opened, and a young woman with wet hair stepped out.
“They’re not home,” she said. “Mrs. Saeki set off in a car with a foreigner around five o’clock.”
The woman didn’t know if Mr. Saeki was going to meet her somewhere, or if he was off on his own. But either way, they probably wouldn’t return till late. “Can I take a message?” she asked.
“No, that’s all right,” Murao replied. “We were just out for a walk, and dropped by on the off chance.”
They thanked the woman, and went down the stairs.
“Would you like to walk a little?” Murao suggested, when they reached the road.
“What time is it?”
Murao paused, holding out his wrist so the light from the street lamp fell on his watch.
“Not even 10:30.”
They turned, and kept walking, still heading away from the main road. At the end of the street, a small grove of trees which they always saw from a distance when they walked from the tram stop to the Saekis’ loomed into view. Fukuko had been convinced it housed a shrine to the fox god Inari, but they saw when they drew near that there we
re only several tall trees.
Now they had to choose to turn right or left. To the right lay a narrow street of scraggy houses with here and there a public bath or eating place mixed in. The road to the left looked more promising for a walk. They could see some residences, not too large, but still impressive enough with their traditional wooden gates.
“I’m amazed these weren’t burnt in the air raids,” Fukuko remarked. Even in the dim light, she could see that some of the gates and fences predated the war.
“You’re right,” said Murao. The silent road was free of pedestrians, and no cars sped along; it was probably just as deserted during the day.
“It’s so quiet,” Fukuko remarked, when suddenly, there in front of them, a tiny point of white light made an arc in the air, and vanished. Then, farther on down the road, one more arc was traced in the darkness.
“Oh! A firefly!”
Fukuko felt she’d come across something that for so long she’d forgotten even existed. She saw the light glimmer again, two or three feet away, at the foot of the fence, like a tiny beacon.
“I’m going to catch it,” Fukuko announced and crossed the road.
“Leave it,” Murao said.
She ignored him, bending down by the fence.
“I said leave it, damn it!” Murao ordered.
“You’re in a sour mood,” she replied, but let her hands fall, and crossed back to him. Murao didn’t reply. As they started walking again, he took her right hand, caressed it for a while, and then, holding out her index finger, he put it in his mouth and bit down, hard.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Fukuko spoke lightly, but flinched with pain. The firefly flew up over her head, and vanished.
Nearly two months before, Utako had visited Fukuko early in the afternoon. Fukuko had suggested that Utako telephone Saeki and get him to come over too, after work, and she would call Murao. This was the way the two women often arranged their get-togethers.
Utako had danced for them that evening, too. They could only tell she was tipsy from the fact that she performed — her speech remained clear even when she was quite drunk. If she got at all unsteady on her feet, she was far gone. That evening, they all watched as she stood up and danced for them three times, her movements becoming more and more languid and tottering.
“Hey,” Saeki pretended to instruct her. “Now you’re doing an Indonesian dance. Get a grip.”
“No, those hand gestures . . . they’re exquisite,” Murao said, though he was laughing, too. “We ought to catch this on film. Don’t you think she’s better than she was?”
“Sssh. Don’t speak,” Utako said, twirling about. She started humming imaginatively, and danced on, lost in her own pleasure.
An hour or so later, Fukuko had brought out tumblers of ice water for everybody, and Saeki had made his suggestion.
“I wonder whether I should leave from here tomorrow?” he remarked, staring at his empty glass as he turned it around in his hands.
“Yes, why don’t you?” Murao said.
“Neither of you should drive,” Fukuko agreed.
“Oh, we’re not that bad,” Utako said, “but it might be a nice change.”
The Saekis had stayed the night once before. A few months after their marriage, they’d had a fight, and Utako had run away to Fukuko and Murao. Saeki had soon followed in the car. That night, Utako, normally so placid, seemed genuinely offended about something. She refused to say a word to her husband all evening. Only when it was so late that Fukuko invited them to stay over did she deign to acknowledge him.
“I came here so I wouldn’t have to see your face,” she snapped. “Can’t you do me a favor and leave?”
“Well, maybe I should go,” said Saeki, looking defeated. From the start he had obviously been at a loss, embarrassed by his role as the young husband humoring his older wife.
“There’s no need for that,” Murao interceded. “Your charming wife left the car expressly so you could follow her.”
In the end, they’d both stayed.
Only one other time had they all slept under the same roof — when they’d taken a trip to Nasu the summer before, and stayed in a hotel.
And now, gazing at Saeki, Fukuko registered that he had made the suggestion himself that he wanted to stay over. So casually, so intimately, but also so indirectly, dropping those words into the conversation, he hadn’t addressed anybody in particular, hadn’t even looked anyone in the eye. . . .
“Hey! Hey!” Murao brought her back to her senses: she realized Utako had started to clear away the glasses on the table.
“Let’s not bother to actually wash up,” Utako was saying. “I’ll help tomorrow morning. I don’t have to leave.”
Fukuko hadn’t had nearly as much to drink as Utako, but washing up was now the furthest thing from her mind.
Once the glasses and plates had been taken to the kitchen, the car pulled up into the driveway as far as it would go, and the front door locked, nothing remained but for them to settle down and relax. Murao brought out some more wine, and they were caught up in talk — it was almost two o’clock by the time they realized they should go to bed.
“I’ll set the alarm so we don’t oversleep,” Fukuko said. Saeki was just returning from the bathroom, so she pointed to the clock on the shelf, asking, “Could you get that down? Thank you.” Taking it from him, she sat down and hunched over it in her lap.
Saeki turned back to the shelf to look at an ornamental plate.
“Watch out,” Utako warned: “He’ll break something.”
“What’s this?”
“Oh, that’s too big, and crude,” Fukuko said, her eyes on the little alarm hand she was moving around on the clock. “Someone we know who’s a potter gave it to us a while ago.”
“No, not the plate,” Saeki said: “This.”
She looked up. Saeki had lifted the plate from its stand, and was peering into the space behind it.
Fukuko blushed: “Oh don’t.”
“Oh, I see,” he continued, “it’s a candlestick, isn’t it? Where did you find it?”
“It was in the antiques section of T —— department store,” Murao answered, who had found it and brought it home.
“Let me have a better look,” Saeki said, putting the plate back on its stand, and moving them to the side. He brought the candlestick, together with a candle he found beside it, over to the table, and sat down.
The candlestick was a small bronze one, fashioned in the shape of an aboriginal man, who stood with his chest thrown out, offering up the decapitated head of a woman.
“The candle goes here, I suppose,” Saeki said, fitting it into a hole in the woman’s head. “Do you ever light it?”
“Ask Fukuko,” Murao said. “She’ll tell you.”
Fukuko liked physical pain during sex, and Murao willingly complied, but occasionally, when they were doing certain things, they couldn’t reach full satisfaction without a special light in the room. The archaic candlestick and the mysterious effect produced by the deep, dark candlelight would bring their excitement to fever pitch. Her eye on the trembling flame and the flickering dark shapes it brought to life on the walls, Fukuko would feel lifted out of the present, as if she were participating in an orgy of pain and pleasure — all the pain and pleasure experienced by women, both high- and lowborn, since ancient times. But the next morning she’d quickly tidy away the now everyday household objects devoid of magic. She used to store them in the closet, but since acquiring the plate, she’d started hiding them behind that.
Saeki, following Murao’s lead, said, “Tell me, Fukuko, do you ever light the candle? You light it and watch it, don’t you? Let me try.”
He struck a match, and a flame rose from the candle in the woman’s head: “Look at that.” Saeki held the woman’s head in his fingers. “She’s got her e
yes closed, poor thing,” he said, stroking the woman’s eyelids with his thumb. “You do go in for some strange things, Fukuko.”
“Stop it.” She blew out the flame, embarrassed, but also highly aroused. “Please put it away.”
“As you wish.” Saeki obeyed.
“What a nice man!” Fukuko said. How nice that he was so obedient, was what she meant; she found herself thinking of when he had been in her employ as the tutor. But she also meant how nice that he seemed to be able to enjoy his wife so much more when in their company.
“What a nice man!” she repeated and then, all at once, the significance of the words seemed to grow greater and greater. She began to feel as if something had gone to her head: “Yes, you’re nice. I like you, Mr. Saeki,” she gushed. “I really do.”
“Careful now,” Murao said. “This one didn’t even drink, but she’s losing all self-control.”
“That’s right!” Fukuko replied. “But you’re always saying you like Uta-chan.”
“That’s true. I’m very fond of her.”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?” Utako responded.
“We should do something to express our gratitude to each other,” Saeki said.
Fukuko was feeling even more elated by the time she got into bed. “We’re in a fix, the four of us,” she called through the sliding doors. “What’ll we do?”
“We’re ready,” Saeki called back.
“Just say the word,” Murao replied, poking Fukuko in the shoulder.
“What about you, Uta-chan?” she asked.
“I will if you will.”
Fukuko nudged Murao and he pushed her back. They prodded each other, and Fukuko knew very well that all she had to do was step into the other room and say, “Well, here I am. Go on, Uta-chan, he’s waiting.” But her body wouldn’t obey her, and a few moments later, the opportunity had passed. The men were calling each other cowards. “Pretty funny!” Fukuko called out to Utako, who agreed, “Yes, wasn’t it!”