by Francis King
I shook my head. ‘ We saw her last time we were here. So I was partly prepared.’
‘I’ll tell her mother to l-lock her up.’
‘Oh, don’t do that. She doesn’t really worry me.’
‘She doesn’t worry us. One thinks of her as a d-dog or a cat, not as a human being. In fact, we’ve grown quite fond of her.’
‘Can nothing be done for her?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose not.’ He did not seem ever to have considered the problem until that moment; he was not prepared to waste time on it now. ‘Shall I d-draw your curtains again for you?’
‘It’s all right, I’ll do them.’
Suddenly we were both at the curtains, his semi-naked body near to mine.
‘All right. You go ahead.’ He gave a little shiver. ‘It’s cold in here.’
‘Wonderful’
‘Well, I’d better go and change before l-lunch. See you.’
As he slipped out of the door, he gave me a brief, embarrassed smile.
I took off my kimono, reached for my dress, and only then became aware of the sharp grains of sand under my bare feet. Sasha must have brought them in from the beach.
2
The following evening I was seated out in the garden when a taxi, ochre with dust, swirled round the curve of the drive and screeched to a stop in the courtyard. Yuki got out, an Air France bag over one shoulder and a camera slung across him. He squinted into the light, his face sleepy and vaguely peevish. Then he saw me, lying out on a rattan chair, and he raised a hand. ‘Ciaou!’
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Has Tom arrived?’
‘I don’t think so.’
He stamped one foot in the dust. ‘He is just crazy,’ he said. He turned to speak to the taxi driver, took a purse out of his trouser-pocket, peered into it and then appealed to me: ‘ Excuse me, please, but maybe you lend me five hundred yen? Tom has my money.’
Reluctantly I fished a note out of my bag.
Having paid the driver and pocketed my change, Yuki strolled over. The Air France bag seemed to be his only luggage. ‘I did not expect you here.’
‘I didn’t expect you. I knew Tom was corning.’
‘He is very crazy. First he does not wish me to come. Then he says ‘‘All right, Yuki, you come.’’ Then at Matsue we have a quarrel because I tell him not to smoke while I am eating and he disappears. I wait and wait but he disappears. Crazy man!’
Bibi had come out of the house, a Martini in either hand.
‘Hello, Yuki,’ she greeted him coldly. ‘What brings you here?’
‘You are not expecting Tom?’
‘Yes, we’re expecting Tom.’ She handed one of the Martinis to me and then lowered herself into a deck-chair with the other.
Yuki looked for some place to sit and, finding none, perched uncomfortably on the steps of a vast stone-lantern, his pointed chin in one hand. Fumbling in the breast-pocket of his Italian silk suit, he drew out a huge pair of dark glasses which he placed low on the bridge of his small nose. ‘Hot, isn’t it?’ he said in Japanese. He seemed totally unembarrassed by the hostility of the reception Bibi had given him. ‘ Tom is very crazy,’ he began again. ‘Just listen to this, Bibi. First he says come.…’
In the middle of the account of the quarrel with Tom, Bibi cut Yuki off by turning to ask what I had thought of a novel she had lent me. From that point she continued to talk to me alone, as though the Japanese were not present.
At last Yuki stood up, peeled off his jacket, smiled down at us and then wandered off into the house, saying: ‘I will fix myself a drink. O. K., Bibi?’
‘No, it’s not O.K.’
He smiled amiably, nodded and went off to fix the drink.
3
‘I thought you were coming on your own this time, Tom,’ Bibi said.
Yuki, having announced that he was going to have a bath before dinner, had just left the room.
‘That was the idea. But then he seemed so eager to come. And there was all this jealousy about that Nishimura—that friend of yours,’ he added in an aside to me. ‘And I was just as certain as could be that he’d got it into his silly little head that Nishimura would be here with me.’
‘Better Nishimura than Yuki,’ Bibi interposed.
‘Now you’re not mad at me for bringing him, are you?’ Bibi did not answer. ‘Are you? She’s not mad at me, is she, Sasha?’
‘Yuki’s dangerous,’ Bibi said. ‘I’ve told you that before. He’s a fearful little gossip. That time those two boys from Mi-fuku came here for the weekend—everyone in Kobe seemed to know about it when we got back. And—and other things,’ she added. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’ve spoken to him about that,’ Tom said. He crossed his long legs, his Bermuda shorts almost covering his blue, knobbly knees, and then sank deeper and deeper into his chair as though to escape the chill wind of her disapproval. ‘Honest, Bibi, he’s not going to do that kind of thing again. He’s learned his lesson.’
‘Yuki doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who learns lessons.’
‘Anyway you don’t mind his staying?’
Bibi considered. ‘Well, let’s think about that tomorrow.’
4
Yuki and I were out on the porch of the beach house while the others swam. I was reclining in a chair, while Yuki lay out on a vast pillar-box red towel, heavily tasseiled in white, which Tom had brought down with him. He had first rubbed himself with oil and then placed a white satin shade over his eyes.
‘Don’t you swim?’ I asked.
Yuki stretched out his arms; wriggling both fingers and toes, and then shook his head from side to side. He raised a forefinger to the tip of his nose and gave a little sniff. All his movements, so dainty and so self-conscious, delighted me, as did the narcissistic cleanliness and neatness of his appearance, but I could understand why he exasperated Bibi. ‘I think that I am getting cold,’ he said. This air-conditioning is not good. It gives me cold whenever I come here.’
‘Do you come here often?’
‘Tom likes to come here.’ Only the mouth moved in the oval face uptilted to the sun. ‘I do not like to come here. But I must do what Tom does.… For you, this is first time?’
‘I came here once last year.’
‘With your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your husband is handsome boy.’
‘Thanks.’
He sat up, the shield still over his eyes, and crossed his legs. Then he eased the shield upwards on to his forehead. ‘Yes, I remember,’ he said. ‘You came when Thelma died.’
‘That’s right.’
He shook his head from side to side. ‘I was also here.’ He leant forward: ‘ How do you think she die?’ he hissed.
‘She was drowned.’ The question took me aback. ‘There was no mystery about it.’
‘Maybe.’ A delicate hand played with the toes of one of his feet, the nails pink and beautifully tended. ‘Very strange,’ he said.
I did not answer.
He relied over on to his stomach. ‘You like Bibi?’
‘Yes.’
He pulled a face, the shield still up on his forehead. I tell you something,’ he said. ‘I have friend on Mainichi Shimbun, Mainichi newspaper. He tells me that at Maimch office they have many, many papers about Akulov family. But they don’t print nothing,’ He laughed as though at some private joke. ‘Akulov family is very rich, very strong in Japan.’
I got up, slipped on my sandals, and wandered down into the garden. Simultaneously I wanted to listen to his revelations and to get away from them; curiosity and the sense that I was being treacherous to Bibi and Sasha struggled with each other.
‘Where you going?’ Yuki asked.
‘Nowhere particular,’ I said.
I paused at the bottom of the steps, overcome, now that I was in the hot sunshine, by the weariness from which I had been suffering ever since I had come to Abekawa. Even to read a book seemed an effo
rt, and the letter I had begun to Bill the evening before had still not been completed.
‘You like Bibi?’ Yuki pursued.
‘Of course.’
‘Bibi likes you. Bibi likes beautiful lady like you. Maybe Sasha likes you too. But Bibi likes you more.’
I did not answer, my eyelids fluttering against the dazzle of the beach as I tried to see where the others had got to. Yuki sat up again: ‘You should wear dark-glasses,’ he said. ‘This sun is bad for eyes.’
I still hesitated, wondering whether to walk down to the beach; then the effort of trudging through the burning sand seemed too great and I returned to the porch, Yuki had pulled the mask down over his eyes again; but as the flimsy wooden platform trembled under my feet, he turned his head in my direction.
‘You have beautiful skin,’ he said. ‘Very beautiful. You must be careful of sun. Beautiful skin, beautiful hair.’ These comments were totally devoid of any masculine flattery; I knew that he would never have made them if he had not meant them. Yet, instead of feeling pleased, I was exasperated.
‘Do you like my skin?’ he asked.
‘Hm,’ was the only answer I allowed myself, though in fact his skin was wonderfully satiny in texture and glowed as Nishimura’s used to glow.
‘Tom often says to me, ‘‘Yuki, your skin is like polished wood.’’…Polished wood.’ He savoured the phrase, repeating it to himself with a small smile on his full, pouting lips.
Bibi was the first to return from the sea. She flicked her towel viciously at Yuki’s legs, stirring him out of his sleep. ‘Yuki. you do nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. You’re a complete parasite.’
Yuki sat up. ‘ Excuse me, I work very hard,’ he said pettishly. ‘You must ask Tom. Developing, printing, I help Tom.’
Bibi laughed scornfully. ‘ Nonsense.’
‘This is not nonsense. I work harder than you.’
Tom arrived in time to stop what seemed likely to become a scene, with Sasha following him.
‘Come along. Yuki! Come and have a game of ball with us.’ He held out the beach-ball at the end of long, hairy arms on which the salt was caked. ‘Come!’
‘Tired,’ Yuki said, rolling over on to his stomach and resting his glossy head on his crossed arms.
‘Come, come!’ Tom leapt on to the porch and began to kick him gently in the ribs with one of his bare feet.
‘No!’ Yuki shouted. ‘ No, no!’ Then suddenly he turned and grabbed Tom’s foot, tugging him over on top of himself. The two of them began to wrestle, with squeaks and giggles from Yuki and grunts from Tom, until, rolling over and over, they were balanced precariously on the edge of the porch, both peering down into the dust below them. Sasha was watching, arms crossed negligently over his chest, as he leaned against one of the pillars; but Bibi, having given me a look of resigned exasperation, had disappeared into the bungalow.
Yuki was the first to get up. All at once he seemed to be in the best of humours. He examined one of his elbows, pulling it forward arid peering down, his eyes squinting at it even more than usual. ‘Now see!’ He held out has arm to Tom. ‘ See what you have done!’ But the accusing tones and the pout were still part of the game. He jumped down into the garden. ‘O. K., let’s go,’ he said.’
‘Sasha?’
Sasha hesitated. Then he shrugged: ‘Good for the figure,’ and followed them down to the beach, as they scampered ahead of him, from time to time pushing each other or hurling the ball at each other’s legs.
‘God, that Yuki is a bore!’ Bibi said, as she emerged from the interior of the bungalow. She had changed into a sunbathing suit even more exiguous than her two-piece bathing-costume and had put on a pair of sun-glasses. She lowered herself on to Yuki’s towel and then at once jumped up again. ‘This stinks!’ she exclaimed: ‘He always uses the most nauseating scents.’ She scrambled up into a deck-chair, stretching out her marvellously straight, sunburned legs on the wicker rest in front of her. ‘ It looks as if we are going to have him here for the rest of the week. If he goes, then Tom goes—that’s how it is at present. Our only hope is that they may quarrel. Perhaps you could ask that Nishimura friend of yours to come down? That would precipitate something.’
‘Yuki’s not so bad,’ I said.
That’s what Sasha’s always telling me. I wish that I could see it, because I like Tom and with him it’s a case of love me, love my dog.’ She grunted, as she settled herself deeper in the chair. Tom has always had these hangers-on, for as long as we’ve known him. His great love has always been Sasha, of course,’ she added casually. ‘But he’s never got anywhere there. He picked up Sasha in Lausanne—Sasha was still a schoolboy, about sixteen at the time. The funny thing was that we both thought Tom was trying to pick up me.’ She shielded her eyes as she gazed out to the beach, where the three men were now playing ball, Yuki in the middle. ‘Tom pretended for a while that it was me. He was travelling with his Boston mother and we were with ours. But we soon saw through him.’ She frowned. ‘I wonder if it’s really good for Sasha to rush about like that in this heat. He had rheumatic, fever as a child, it affected his heart. He’s supposed to be all right now. But I sometimes wonder.’ She lowered her raised hand and turned to me. ‘Why didn’t you come with us to swim? It wasn’t because of Thelma, was it?’
‘I—I don’t think so. No. Not consciously at any rate. No. It’s just that I feel so fearfully tired. All the time. I’m not very good company, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re always good company, tired or not. It’s natural. After that spell in hospital, the physical and psychological strain. Naito said it would be like this, didn’t he? That’s why he was so eager for you to take a holiday. But that obstinate husband of yours couldn’t see that.’ She jumped up. ‘Wait a moment.’ As she passed behind my chair to go into the bungalow her hand moved briefly over my hair.
‘Try one of these.’ She had a bottle of pills in one hand. ‘They’re marvellous when one’s feeling tired.’ She unscrewed the cap and shook two of the pills into her palm. ‘Here. I’ll fetch you a glass of water to help them down.’
‘What are they?’ I asked. ‘ Vitamins?’
‘Kind of. Not really.… Amphetamine’
‘Amphetamine? What’s that?’
‘It’s what Japanese athletes take to pep themselves up. Quite harmless, not habit-forming. When I feel slack I find them the perfect answer. Here.’
‘I’m not really a pill-taker,’ I said.
‘But these can’t harm you. Honestly. You can buy them at any drug-store In Kobe. Look.’ She held out the bottle ‘ They’re not on prescription.’
‘Even so.…’
‘Sasha often takes them. He’s so energetic today that he probably took a couple this morning. Go on!’ She held out her hand again, the two pills cupped in them. ‘Take them and I’ll fetch you a glass of water.’
I shook my head, feeling increasingly embarrassed by what had now become a contest of wills. ‘ No, thank you, Bibi—really, no thank you. I’m old-fashioned about drugs. Not as old-fashioned as Bill who won’t even take an aspirin if he can help it, but old-fashioned nonetheless.’ I forced myself to smile up at her, hoping that the smile, would not appear unnatural and strained. ‘Thanks all the same.’
Bibi stared at me for a few seconds. Then she shook the pills back into the bottle. ‘You are a funny girl,’ she said as she replaced the screw-top and began to turn it between her strong, competent fingers.
5
That evening Tom, Bibi, Sasha and I played bridge, with Yuki as an occasional and restless spectator. I had not wanted to play, since I neither enjoy the game nor am good at it, but the others had persuaded me: without me, they pointed out, they would not have a four. Bibi played as badly as myself and seemed to be even less interested, flinging down cards almost without thought, chatting and getting up from time to time to help herself to a cigarette or a chocolate. Since it was she who had not only suggested the game but been insistent that I should play, I wondered
if she had done so merely in order to give Yuki a feeling of exclusion. In this she had succeeded.
‘How can you play such a boring game?’ he asked more than once.
‘It’s boring to you because you don’t know how to play it, Tom retorted on the second of these occasions.
‘Then teach me.’
‘You’re not clever enough.’
‘If you are clever enough to play, then I am also.’
Tom played slowly and with an intense concentration; he hated to lose and I was glad when I was no longer his partner. Sasha, the best of us, was far less exacting. ‘You played that very well,’ he complimented me when I had just gone down two on a certain little slam. ‘You were unlucky in the way that the cards fell.’ His gestures as he played a card or took up a trick were neatly economical, almost languid.
‘I should play better if you hadn’t given me so much to drink at dinner,’ I said.
‘Good for you,’ Bibi said. ‘You’re altogether too abstemious. You must let yourself go from time to time. Don’t you agree, Tom?’
‘What?’ Tom looked up from his cards, at which he had been scowling for a considerable time, now drawing out one and now another in indecision which to play. ‘ Oh, yes, definitely.’
‘You’re far too well brought up. You mustn’t be so staid.’
As though to stress this advice she reached for the brandy bottle and tipped some more into my glass.
‘No, no! Please!’ I protested.
‘Can’t do you any harm.’
‘May I have some more brandy, please?’ Yuki asked, taking the bottle off the table before Bibi had said yes.
Bibi merely nodded.
‘Play something,’Yuki told Tom
‘Oh, shut up.’
Yuki smiled maliciously. ‘ Everyone must wait for you. I think that you have drunk too much. You are drunk, ne?’
Tom suddenly gave him a kick on the shins. It was a hard kick, but instead of its causing Yuki to lose his temper, it merely resulted in a peal of mocking laughter, followed by a slap across the back of Tom’s head.