by Mark Henshaw
SEEN from above, the central marketplace of Shirahama is like a giant spider. A maze of ancient bent-legged streets radiate out from its small body. Some lead up the mountain, some stretch far out along the coast; others, the shorter, gathering legs, extend only as far as the waterfront.
It was the day after Katsuo had waited outside Natsumi’s darkened house. He had been in the marketplace barely ten minutes when he heard a female voice calling: Tadashi… Tadashi-san.
He turned to see who was calling the name of his friend so brazenly. There was a young woman standing on the other side of the stall. She was waving to someone. He looked behind him to see who this Tadashi might be.
Tadashi-san, he heard her call again.
But there was no one there.
He turned back to her. She had stopped waving and now was looking directly at him. She seemed vaguely familiar. Had he met her the week before? Or perhaps it was the week before that? Or was it, now that he thought about it, last year? Whatever the case, he knew he knew her. But what was her name? And here she was, coming around the market stall towards him. Smiling. Her name, her name? But the blank would not fill.
Tadashi Omura, she said.
Tadashi Omura. He was surprised how natural it sounded. He had done this once or twice before, used Tadashi’s name, when he didn’t want to be troubled by some young woman who might not leave him alone, afterwards. And what harm was there in doing this? Tadashi would never find out. To do so, he would have to speak to a woman first. And there was never any danger of that.
He remembered now, writing his name down for her on a piece of paper.
Tadashi Omura, she had repeated, as if she too liked the way it rolled off her tongue.
He remembered how timid she’d been. On the other hand, he knew immediately that she was the type of girl who would do anything he asked. Anything. Which always disappointed him. He preferred to be surprised.
Yes, now he remembered. Not her name. But the incident. A month ago, six weeks. A not unrewarding experience. Not at all. She was very pretty. It had been a frivolous afternoon’s interlude.
How are you? she said. I was hoping to see you.
And so much prettier now that she was close.
As I was you, he said. I’ve been wondering where you’ve been.
But I told you. I had to go back to Kobe. To see my friend off.
He looked at her.
And now I’m back, she said.
He recalled her small breasts.
You don’t like them, she had said.
I love them, he told her. Which was true. He did. He loved small breasts.
They were still standing by the stall. Other customers had to move around them.
I thought we could meet again, she said shyly.
He thought again of her, her breasts. How they had lain flat against her ribcage, her two nipples like two small Mount Fujis rising out of a new and different plain. How he had enjoyed kissing them! How compliant she’d been. With her pretty, slim body.
I was thinking the same thing, he said. Are you free this evening?
Not this evening, she said. My father is here. But he returns to Osaka tomorrow. What about tomorrow evening? Are you still at The Seven Sisters?
He wasn’t, but he soon would be.
I am, he said.
Having boldly agreed to the arrangement, she now seemed unsure of herself. She stood in front of him, her body twisting shyly in the breeze.
He looked at his watch.
I’m so sorry, he said. Is that the time? He extended his hand. He knew how young women never expected this. Shaking hands. It always took them by surprise. But he also knew how much they liked it. Afterwards. The lingering touch. Their skin remembering, remembering again. One hand tracing the outline of the other, a kind of foreshadowing of what might follow.
After the briefest hesitation, she too put her hand out.
Oh yes, she said, only now remembering.
So, till tomorrow evening, he said. At ten.
He was still holding her hand.
Yes, she said. Tomorrow, at ten.
He bowed, released her.
She bowed twice in return. And then he was gone.
The following day, he went to see Soseki. On his way, he bought himself a newspaper from one of the street vendors, a boy who had been shouting out the headlines to passersby. But he had been shocked to see—when the young vendor had turned in response to his Yes, I’ll have one—that the boy was missing an eye. His walnut-skinned empty socket had unsettled him. It had seemed like a bad omen.
At Soseki’s, when he could still hear the boy crying his wares a few streets away, he found himself looking up from his paper and saying, Damn that boy. He said it loud enough for several patrons nearby to look up from their plates and stare at him. He threw the newspaper into the centre of the table.
A few moments later, Soseki came out and Katsuo ordered an apéritif. It was only when Soseki reached down to retrieve his cup that Katsuo noticed the small photograph on the upturned page of his paper. He reached out and picked it up. The photograph was blurred, almost unrecognisable. Laughable really. He would have been one of very few able to recognise that it was a photograph of Tadashi. The accompanying article revealed how he had been appointed to one of Osaka’s pre-eminent law firms. ‘This unassuming but brilliant young man, already with a string of notable achievements to his name…’
Plodding, unimaginative Tadashi. What notable achievements? Tadashi was a fine human being. He was trustworthy, reliable. But notable achievements?
Have you seen Mrs Kanzai? he asked Soseki when he went to pay his bill.
No, Soseki said.
Do you know if she’s still here?
Soseki thought for a moment.
I don’t know, he said. She may have gone already. But it seems a little early for her.
I think she’s gone, Katsuo said dispiritedly. I think she’s gone.
He went back to the summer house each morning and each evening, just to check. But nothing had changed. No lights were on. The shutters were still closed. He castigated himself. Why had he not asked how long she was staying?
He had spent a more than agreeable night with Keiko, that was the girl’s name, the girl from the market. He had arranged to meet her again the following night, but then Natsumi began to play on his mind. So he had not gone.
The following week, he went to sit on the beach in the shade of one of the pines. He watched the holidaymakers playing in the backwash of the surf. In three days, his own time in Shirahama would be over. He would be returning not to Tokyo, but to Osaka, returning to he knew not what. Now that his new manuscript was almost complete, the future stretched out amorphously in front of him.
He sat watching a girl who had been concealed by the rise of the slope emerge from beneath her beach umbrella. She was wearing a light multicoloured summer dress which showed off her legs, a straw hat, and sunglasses. She walked indolently down to a group of children playing at the water’s edge. She stood there talking to them.
> The children were pointing at a blue-and-yellow beach ball bobbing in the waves not far from the shore. A little girl of about three was running back and forth, crouching, crying, stamping her foot, calling for the others to get her ball. The other two, a boy and a girl, older than her—perhaps five or six—stood silently watching. The ball seemed indifferent to the children’s plight, neither floating further out, nor returning to them on the incoming waves.
He watched as the girl from beneath the beach umbrella kicked off her shoes. She turned slightly sideways as a wave broke just in front of her. Then she was wading out—one hand held up to her hat, her dress hitched up almost to her waist with the other—to retrieve the ball that was now, it seemed, waiting for her. Soon she was half-running, half-wading, back through the water in advance of the waves that followed her. She punched the ball over the children’s heads onto the sand.
She crouched down to pick up her shoes. As she rose, she lifted the hem of her dress, inspected the wet arc that hung from her hand. Then she let her dress drop. She turned to look briefly back at the children playing happily again as she retraced her steps up the beach, then sat unseen once again beneath the umbrella, whose canopy blazed in the sun.
Ah, Katsuo thought. How pretty she is. Maybe here is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.
He got to his feet. Went to stand on the slope behind her. He could see the girl now. She had her back to him and was half-sitting, half-kneeling on her heels. She was wearing sunglasses, but still she had her hand raised to shield her eyes. Something in this gesture tugged at his memory, reminded him of something. Or someone. And then he knew. This-girl-was-Natsumi. His heart leapt. Without thinking, he had already taken two or three steps in her direction. Could it be? This girl, in the summer dress and hat? He saw her wading out again through the swell, saw her girlish legs, her hand up to her head, her skirt hitched, saw her striding out towards the ball. But that girl had seemed so young.
And yet, it was Natsumi.
Instantly, he began to reconfigure his future. Three days. It was still possible. Just.
Natsumi was so preoccupied watching the children on the beach that when she turned to reach for the book that lay at her side and saw the shadow on the sand advancing on her, she started, and looked up.
Oh, she said. It’s you! You gave me such a fright.
She raised her hand once again to shield her eyes. He moved so that his shadow fell across her face and she took her glasses off. He saw her frown.
Yes, it’s me, he said.
Oh, she said again.
I thought you’d gone.
Gone?
Yes. I went back to the house. But it was deserted. There was no one there.
No. I had to go back to Osaka for a few days, she said.
If only she would not frown. It was this, he thought later, her frown that undid him.
I thought you might have changed your mind, he said.
Changed my mind?
Yes, about meeting me. He fidgeted on his feet for a moment.
Yes, she said.
She turned to look down at the children.
Yes?
Yes. I will meet you.
He hesitated. She had got to her feet, and was now standing there, looking into his eyes.
When? she said, leaning down to pick up her shoes.
Tomorr…this evening, he said. What about this evening?
She did not answer. She looked up at him again.
At ten, he said.
Yes, ten. Ten would be perfect, she said. Just perfect.
Here, he said, I’ll write down the address of the inn I am staying at. He got out his notebook. His pen. It’s The Nine-Tailed Fox, he said as he wrote. It’s small, just beneath the mountain—
I know where it is, she said. It’s run by an old man whose name is Kenji, if I remember correctly. I’ve been there once before.
He searched her face. Did she already know that he was staying there? She bent down to pick up her mat. She folded it, placed it in her basket.
Well, Mr Ikeda. She smiled. Until this evening, then. She put out her hand.
Yes, this evening, he said, taking her hand in his.
She turned to go, then stopped. She must have seen him glance down to where the children were still playing.
Oh, I see, she said. No, goodness no.
She stood looking at the children for what seemed a long time, as if she were imagining some other, alternative life. The boy was chasing the girl. He had a bright red bucket in his hands. A transparent arm of water suddenly leapt out from it to seize her small arched back.
Oh no. Dear no, she said again. They’re not mine. That’s why I returned to Osaka, she said. I had to take the children back. Their father had called to say he wanted to take them on a holiday. To New York, can you imagine! How could I compete with that? Once they’d gone, there was nothing more for me to do in Osaka, so I came back here.
And then she was walking away from him, up the slope. He watched her disappearing against the sky. First her back, her shoulders, then her pale straw hat. It was almost as if she were sinking into the earth beneath the vacant blue sky. Then he too turned, and began walking away from the beach, away from the children still playing there.
Once back at The Nine-Tailed Fox, he took out a sheet of his favourite paper: My dear Tadashi, he wrote. She’s back. Natsumi. We have arranged to meet. If only you could see her!
Chapter 13
AFTERWARDS, he could barely remember her knocking on his door, she was so beautiful. This older woman. Natsumi.
Then they were out on the balcony, a cup of the finest saké in their hands. The moon was full. The light it shed glanced off the rooves of the houses below, out onto the sea. Frogs were calling. Fireflies in ones and twos dipped into the shadowed garden beneath them.
With Natsumi standing on the balcony in the lantern light, her back to the moon, Katsuo thought she could easily have been a woman from another age, someone he’d seen in a work by Utamaro, or Hokusai, or Kiyonaga. It made her seem all the more unreal, inaccessible.
What a beautiful view, she said.
It had always troubled him, this tricky terrain, this uncharted territory in which he often found himself, between the instant, as he was now, when he could be standing on a balcony with someone new, someone he wanted, and that later moment when the two of them would both be lying naked on a bed. This prelude to desire realised, this interregnum, he was no good at it. It always sent him to the brink.
And Natsumi, so calm, unhurried, so self-contained. Now leaning as she was against the balustrade, listening to the idle chatter of the couple on the balcony beneath them. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Perhaps Natsumi was here merely to pass a pleasant hour or two, chatting, sipping his saké, thinking about who knew what.
Newlyweds, she said.
She turned back to look at him.
We could always bring the futon out here, she said. Pull the mosquito net around the balcony.
He could not recall carrying the beddi
ng out to the dimly lit, transparent tented space. Natsumi standing, smiling. Then undressing. Themselves. Each other. The longed-for moment—seeing her naked for the first time. Her body more complex, more beautiful, than any he’d seen before. The echo of the girl she once was now made more ravishing by the history written on her skin.
He knew immediately he had crossed a threshold. That he’d never go back to being the Katsuo he’d been before he saw her.
Then he and Natsumi were lying on the bed. Her flesh against his flesh. Her lips on his lips. Moving as though they were one. He could see the bright scattered stars above her head. The pale, attentive moon. She was the centre of his universe, the one making love to him. He had found what he had not known he was looking for.
At some point, Natsumi pushed away from him, her hands on his shoulders. Her movements like small curling waves endlessly coming into shore. Below, he could hear the young couple chatting, laughing. Softly. Oblivious. But when Natsumi first cried out, they stopped. He and Natsumi stopped too. They floated there on the thin layer of words that still lingered in the night air around them. Natsumi smiled down at him. He heard a chair, or chairs, being moved. He imagined the young couple getting up and walking to the edge of their balcony. He pictured them looking up, wondering if anyone was really there, if they’d heard what they thought they’d heard. The first few tentative words of a conversation interrupted drifted back up to them.
Natsumi began to move once more. The brazenness of what she was doing seemed to arouse her. She began to whimper softly. All conversation below them instantly stopped. Then, all at once, Natsumi was like a force unleashed. Katsuo heard the couple’s hurried footsteps, the screen doors close. Then, all he could hear were Natsumi’s urgent murmurings mingling with the night sounds now returned.
You know, she said later, I am twenty-eight years old, and my husband and I have not shared the same bed for almost three years.