Catching Kayako on her way back from the toilet, Kōko asked: ‘What did you have on your feet that time? Do you remember?’
‘What?’ Kayako asked back, and stiffened. Her eyes were on the beer bottles on the table.
‘The time we were just talking about, that trip.’
‘To Karuizawa?’
‘Mm. Did you have boots?’
Before replying Kayako lowered herself into a chair and unrolled the sleeves of her sweater.
‘How am I supposed to remember?’
‘You’ve forgotten?’
Kayako nodded.
‘… I guess you would – after all, it was six years ago. When you think of it, it’s surprising you can remember going there at all … Do you want something to drink, Kayako? What will you have?’
‘Tea. It’s all right, I’ll get it myself. I’ve just learned how to make it properly. It takes a bit of trouble, but it’s worth it. What about a cup, Mom? You’ve drunk two bottles of beer already.’
‘All right then, how very kind of you. Did Auntie teach you?’
‘No, Cousin Miho.’
Kayako was up at once to fill the kettle. Kōko recalled what the girl’s grandmother had often said: she had no special ambitions for Kayako, all she asked was that she turn out to be the kind of girl who could put her heart into the cooking and the washing. –It was a sad mistake putting your schoolwork and piano first and letting you off the housework completely. It meant you simply turned up your nose at housekeeping. You can’t entirely blame your husband.–
Kayako was expertly measuring tea leaves into the pot. Watching her, Kōko felt ashamed of the tea, which was a cheap brand she’d bought who knows how long ago; it seemed unworthy of those fingers. They looked pink and soft right down to the nails. They were not the ones that Kōko remembered best – the grubby fingers of a six- or seven-year-old.
‘See, you’re not supposed to use the water as soon as it boils. You let it cool down a bit, then pour it in slowly so that it spreads the leaves. But not too much.’
‘I’m sure it’s much more efficient just to toss in a tea bag.’
‘It’s not the same at all – the smell and the taste are all wrong.’
‘But to save all that work somebody, somewhere, went to the trouble of inventing tea bags, right? So the least we can do is use them.’
‘Oh, cut it out. You just don’t understand.’ Kayako’s tone was irritable. Kōko shifted her eyes from Kayako’s hands: the kid still couldn’t take a joke. There was a moment on that trip when, as twilight overtook them in the snow, she had teasingly turned on Kayako, disguising her voice: –I’m really the Abominable Snow-woman. I’ve only been pretending to be your mother all along.– Kayako’s body had gone rigid and she had howled loud enough to trigger an avalanche on the distant mountainside. Her little bit of fun succeeded only in amusing Doi, who was watching them both nearby, leaving Kōko quite crestfallen. –Of course it’s not true, sweetheart– she said, –there’s no such thing as the Abominable Snow-woman.– But privately she was grumbling: what a dull child. She’s got to toughen up.
‘Here you are.’ Kayako passed the tea. Kōko took a quick sip and complimented its flavor. Kayako smiled delightedly and raised her own teacup to her lips.
‘I think it’d be nice to go again,’ Kōko said.
‘Where to?’
‘Karuizawa.’
‘Oh, you’re still on about that,’ Kayako muttered, without interest, and lowered her eyes.
‘It probably hasn’t changed much. I liked that forest of red pines. I never knew till then how pretty red pines can be in the snow. We had a contest to see who could throw a snowball the highest, remember? But we were put off every time because the branches kept dumping a load of snow. I was hopeless – you weren’t even in the running – and he …’ Pausing, Kōko sipped her tea casually before asking: ‘Do you remember?’
Kayako gave Kōko a long look from under her brows, puffing out her cheeks. It was the way she looked when she stopped herself from talking back and submitted quietly to a scolding. Knowing her answer already, Kōko was suddenly disconcerted. She stood up and flicked the switch of the TV set on top of the refrigerator. It was an old black-and-white set, and the picture would take some time to appear.
Kōko had continued having Doi to stay until Kayako was eight. Kayako could hardly be expected to have forgotten him – no, in fact she wanted her to remember. She had a feeling that if Kayako would only remember those three years when life had revolved around Doi, they might no longer seem such a wasted, pointless time. Kayako was the one person who’d always been borne on the same current as Kōko. But the recognition that she did remember Doi made Kōko afraid of the coloring that her memory might have. How much had that small child taken in? It was an eerie thought. Why does she still remember, when I’m sometimes on the verge of forgetting, myself? She wanted to stick her hands inside Kayako’s head and rearrange its contents for her. The picture finally appeared on the TV screen: a fiftyish woman, weeping. The announcer was reporting a major fire in an office block.
‘What’s happened? A fire?’ It was Kayako’s excited voice. Kōko adjusted the set, made the picture a little clearer, then sat back in her chair. Kayako spoke again: ‘Wow! I wish it was in color!’
Twining flames and smoke leaped from the windows of a square building. A tiny human form appeared in their midst. It seemed to be capering about in the heat, waving both arms high.
‘Where is that?’ Kōko asked Kayako.
‘Don’t know. Wow, six people dead.’
The scene gave way to the next news item.
‘Which are you most afraid of, Mom: fires, floods, or earthquakes?’ Kayako’s voice was still excited.
‘Well, I’ve only been in earthquakes … But it’s floods that really give me the creeps. I’ve got a thing about water. You know the sort of place where water squelches out under your feet? And it’s dark, and covered in moss? I can’t bear places like that for a start.’
Kayako rounded her narrow, upturned eyes, and Kōko laughed. She was terribly thirsty; perhaps the amount of beer she’d drunk had only served to whet her thirst. She stroked her belly. Would another baby – if there were one – look at her with those same eyes? She was gradually noticing her own desire to reminisce with Kayako, oblivious of time. She wanted to indulge herself this way, if only for the moment.
‘I’m not sure how I came to feel like that … I still remember the first time I went into a forest in the mountains. It was before I started school, so I must have been four or five. I’ve forgotten what was going on, but I can clearly remember how it felt. It was a big forest, and even though it was summer it was dank and dark, and wet underfoot. The forest floor was bare – not a blade of grass. The trees were so tall I couldn’t take them in, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the earth.’
‘Mom?’ Kayako was half out of her chair. ‘Mom, aren’t you going to heat the bath today?’
‘We’ll leave it off the agenda for today. And, anyway …’
‘Oh, Mom! You’re so dirty! When I told them that you only heat the bath once in three days and only change the water once a week, everyone was horrified.’
‘Oh? Yes, but that’s the way we did it when I was a child.’
‘But Auntie was there too!’
‘Auntie … was there, but she’s different from your Granny and me because she’s married. You don’t take so many baths when you’re alone.’
‘You’re weird.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, if you really must have a bath you can heat it up yourself, can’t you?’
Kayako opened her mouth, stared at her mother a moment, then scraped her chair back and headed for the bathroom. Kōko remembered glancing in there that morning: the water in the tub had been a murky white. Sure enough, violent scrubbing noises and the gurgle of the drain soon resounded through the glass door.
After finishing off her tea, Kōko started fresh on a whiskey and wate
r. The TV news was still on. Kōko looked closely at her abdomen. Was it her imagination, or had it swollen a little more? If there is a living thing in here, she thought, it won’t yet have grown as big as a little finger. She heard Kayako’s muffled voice, but when she called back it stopped. The sound of gushing water flowed out of the bathroom as if to lap at her feet. She again remembered the feel of wet earth.
She’d been taken to the forest by her mother. Somewhere in its midst was the home where her older brother had been placed. Her sister wasn’t with them: she would have been eleven or twelve at the time, and since it was midsummer she may have gone on a school trip to the mountains or the sea. In fact she hardly ever figured in Kōko’s memories of her brother. The seven-year difference in the girls’ ages had kept her beyond Kōko’s range during childhood, whereas even in the limited time Kōko spent with her brother, who was two years older than herself, she knew him to be growing inside the same tight shell. They were in fact pretty much the same height and weight. Their mother treated them like twins. But her brother was congenitally disabled. He died at the age of twelve, still unable to count past ten. That was twenty-six years ago: calculating the years since her brother’s death – even more than seeing Kayako about to enter junior high this spring – made Kōko feel her own age.
Kōko and her mother had headed first for a building deep in the forest. There was a tall youth with an elongated, bluish, shaven head standing outside. From the way her mother spoke to him Kōko thought he must be the ‘Doctor Dummy’ whom her brother idolized. Yes, he had eyes like her brother’s. He was an ex-pupil of the school who lived there and did odd jobs. His nose was even longer than her brother’s. When he looked at Kōko his ill-tempered expression did not change. Kōko felt afraid: he wouldn’t like her, she couldn’t enter this world. Mixed with the fear was envy for her brother, whose days were spent happily settled at the school.
They left Doctor Dummy and turned back into the forest. The trees were all big. The earth was black. Kōko didn’t know where they were going, nor why they’d doubled back. A little further on they heard children’s voices. Her mother kept walking, gripping Kōko’s hand.
–When you meet the teacher, say hello nicely. Tell him your name.–
She suddenly looked up to find a grown-up beaming down at her.
Kōko was pushed aside then and left alone. The unfamiliar words ‘treasure hunt’ were shoved at her back. She looked around: there were children stretching to reach the branches, children scrabbling with both hands around the roots. It occurred to her that she should search for something, too, but she didn’t know how – it wasn’t like being indoors – nor even what it was they were after. So she gave up the idea of joining in and crouched down in the shadow of the nearest tree. I haven’t seen my brother yet, she thought.
No one paid Kōko any attention. She couldn’t tell what sort of treasure the children were seeking as she watched from fifty yards away, but the intensity of their search was frightening – the thought that they might spy her there seemed especially terrifying. And among all those eyes should be her brother’s. He had only recently entered the home; their mother had been to see him several times, but it was Kōko’s first visit. She’d been happily imagining the scene: her brother waiting in a field of flowers, and the pupils and teachers gathering around them in a ring to dance and sing as soon as she arrived.
Kōko stared at the ground. It was damp and dappled with gray moss. She surveyed the forest, her eyes level with the ground. The earth stretched away endlessly. Her head felt heavy, and so did her arms and legs. Her body felt crushed by the weight of the waterlogged earth. In desperation she tried to think of some escape.
And now she couldn’t stand wet earth; but she couldn’t be sure whether that was what had caused it. Listening to Kayako moving about in the bathroom, she thought of other boggy places she’d encountered as a child. Yes, the graveyard earth was wet, too. Whenever she visited her father’s grave her feet would very nearly slip. Puddles lay on the pathways through the temple grounds. Her father had died suddenly, shortly before her brother was sent away. Though she had no memory of that period, she knew that her father had gone to live elsewhere before she was born. One day they were contacted by the police and his body was brought back to her mother’s house. She had heard the story from her sister. Their father had been at the beach, and just as he breasted the first wave he had suffered a heart attack. Evidently the young woman who was with him at the time had not immediately noticed his death. Visiting his grave always gave Kōko a queer sensation. Her mother never spoke of their father’s memory, nor showed the children his photograph, yet when Kōko was reluctant to go with her to the cemetery she would flare up as if personally affronted. Her brother had gone into the same grave. And then her mother. When the urn containing her mother’s ashes was placed in the opened vault, Kōko could see her father’s and her brother’s urns. It’s getting to be quite a little gathering in there, she’d thought, and her feelings had mellowed toward the three urns standing in a row.
The graveyard earth. And the earth in the backyard of the house where she was raised. The earth of the nearby vacant lot. Children weren’t supposed to go there because of an old spring-fed pond; once, they were told, a child had slipped in and drowned. The pond was small, but Kōko heard people say that it branched out underground, and she pictured the earth afloat on the water. That was why they couldn’t go digging holes or poking bamboo stakes into the ground: water would come spurting out.
Kayako emerged from the bathroom. The running water continued to rumble. Watching Kayako dry her hands and feet on a towel, Kōko pursued her own thoughts: she had often dreamed about wet earth, too. There would be a garden, grassless and treeless, enclosed by a high wall. She and her brother would be playing there. When they opened the gate and went out, they found a river flowing right at their feet. No wonder the garden was so sodden, hemmed in like that by the river. Nothing particularly unusual ever happened in the dream. She and her brother were playing childish games, then they opened the gate and looked at the river. That was all, yet it left a very unpleasant aftertaste. Nothing but the gloom would remain when she awoke. She had had the same dream several times; how old would she have been? The garden where Kōko had played in real life was filled with sunlight and the season’s flowers.
‘You’d only make yourself dirtier in that bath. The bottom was all slimy.’
‘Much obliged, I’m sure.’ Kōko ducked her head.
‘You’ve got me worried. Make sure you’re looking nice on the day of the interview. Go to the hairdresser.’
‘The hairdresser?’
Kayako stepped into her room to fetch her pajamas. While there she began to check the bookshelves and inspect the drawers.
‘Mm. You can look really pretty when you try, Mom.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘It’s true. You usually look just like a man.’
‘That’s right, ever since you were little you’ve never liked me wearing pants, have you? Once you brought me a drawing you’d made of a princess and told me to dress like that.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you did. I was touched, anyway, that you’d drawn it so well.’ They both laughed.
‘But what about you, Kayako? What are you going to wear?’ Kōko got up and went into Kayako’s room. Her body had begun to glow with the drink.
‘A dress.’
‘What dress?’
Half-crouched in front of the bookcase, Kayako was looking sharply in her direction. For a moment Kōko thought over the tone she’d just used: had she perhaps sounded reproachful?
‘I’m borrowing one of Miho’s. Auntie says if I’m accepted she’ll buy me a new one as a reward.’
Kōko nodded in silence. She glanced away from Kayako and across to the TV in the kitchen. The news was over and a drama had begun. Kayako launched into a thorough tidying of her desk drawers. Kōko had visions of tying her to the desk legs with a good stou
t rope. Why couldn’t she be satisfied with a public junior high? Why does she fall for lace frills? Accepted? If she really is accepted, then what happens? It’s one thing to buy her a dress, but quite another to keep up the school fees.
–Come on, now, let me adopt her. I’m only thinking of what’s best.– She heard again her sister’s voice on the telephone. –If you absolutely won’t come and live here, then at least let Kaya come and you can get married again to whoever you like, or go on living it up, or whatever it is you’re doing. You shouldn’t entangle Kaya in your own stubborn pride.–
Her sister had said this, half-jokingly, after their mother’s funeral … which would make it two years ago.
She could still hear the bath running. It suddenly occurred to her that perhaps she should talk it over with Hatanaka. But Hatanaka had two other children of his own, he was no longer father to just Kayako. Lately, she could at last meet him without any particular emotion. (In fact, though, they were meeting even less frequently than before; Hatanaka had remarried and his wife didn’t like him seeing Kōko.) Kayako, too, no longer seemed to miss him as she once had.
But when it came to the point, could parent and child get by without one entangling the other? If she gave the child her freedom, before she knew it she would be dragged along herself. Kayako’s life would have to remain caught up in her mother’s. Kōko couldn’t let her go while so much was left dangling.
The splashing sounded louder. Kayako and Kōko looked at each other. Kayako was the first to open her mouth.
‘Oh no, the bath! I completely forgot.’
‘It’s all right, I’ll get it.’
Kōko laid a hand on Kayako’s shoulder as she started to get up, then dashed into the bathroom to find the water overflowing. The light blue tub was sheathed in a smooth, transparent film. Kōko hurriedly reached out to shut it off. Twisting awkwardly from the waist to avoid wetting her feet, she put her hand on the faucet. The water was cold on her fingertips. She felt sick, but told herself it was because she’d been drinking. She thought of the aquarium where they had gone with Doi.
Child of Fortune Page 3