The Snow Kimono

by Mark Henshaw

  Imitating my slightly clipped way of speaking, he said: Perhaps there’s another way of looking at it, Father. Perhaps it means something like this—that it doesn’t matter where you start, if you keep going, you will always find…you will always… Now, what was it? Oh dear. You-will-always-find…

  Completion, I said.

  That’s it. Completion.

  He repeated the word slowly. Completion.

  He started to laugh.

  Ah Tadashi, he said. You are such a comedian.

  Mariko had one arm around her waist. The other crooked into her side, holding her cigarette up to her face. She was turning slightly from side to side, her body rippling with suppressed laughter. Katsuo had turned away from me, his arms outstretched on the balustrade. But I could see that he too was laughing uncontrollably. It was as if they were sharing some private, oft-repeated joke I knew nothing about.

  Mariko inhaled deeply on her cigarette, blew the broken smoke up into the night.

  Come on, Katsuo, Mariko said. Leave poor, sad Tadashi alone.

  She looked around. At the people dancing on the far side of the terrace. At the lights. The orchestra. The cars that littered the enormous forecourt below. At the city twinkling in the distance. Mariko had clearly grown tired of this game. She must have heard this kind of thing a hundred times before, after they had left some gathering or other, after she had watched Katsuo play the magnanimous host, the habitual centre of attention.

  I’m so, so, so bored, Mariko said to Katsuo. Let’s go and find Kimiko. Almost immediately, she changed her mind. No, she said, her eyes wide. I have a better idea. Let’s go down to the waterfront. Have some real fun.

  She swirled the last of her drink in her glass, finished it with a flourish, set the glass down on the balustrade, flicked its rim with her fingernail.

  Look around, Katsuo, no one’s going to miss us.

  As the two of them drifted through the glittering lights and jaunty music, the ragtime crowd parted and closed in their wake. I knew if I looked down a few minutes later that I would see the sleek, phantom shape of Katsuo’s great car edging its way past the line of lesser marques crowding the driveway, down towards the wrought-iron gates that were already opening. I would see it pull out onto the road that led to town. The sumptuous roar of its multi-valved engine accelerating down the hill would drift up to me. I would see its receding headlights twisting effortlessly through the trees. In my mind I could see the two of them sitting together in the back of the car, already doing who knew what to each other as they sped breathlessly on towards the sordid pleasures that lay waiting for them in the shadowy recesses of the city below.

  Katsuo was right. Once I had nurtured ambitions to be a writer. But that space was already taken. By Katsuo. In some mysterious way, he seemed to suck the light out of things. There was nothing left for anyone else. All of us came, in one way or another, to experience this. Ironically, however, in Katsuo’s company, we also felt privileged. Things happened. You never knew what, or where things would go. But afterwards, when we returned home, we all felt like lesser beings. We knew that we’d been used, made fools of. But it didn’t matter. We still waited, until next time. When Katsuo would crank the world up for us again.

  Part V

  SACHIKO

  Chapter 18

  TALK to me, he says.

  I’m so cold, Katsuo, so cold…

  Talk, Sachiko. Just talk. It will help.

  And so she starts to tell him once again what he already knows. Later, he will write it all down, so as not to forget.

  In the spring, just after my sixteenth birthday, my father takes me down to Osaka for the first time.

  It is still dark when my grandmother comes to wake me. She doesn’t know that I have been lying in my bed for hours waiting for her. Waiting, and listening. Until, at last, I hear her door slide open, hear the scuff of her slippered feet on the floor, like a dog panting, and I know that my great adventure is about to begin.

  I hear her strike the match and, suddenly, there on the wall above me is her shadow, liquid in the toppling light. It leaps against the descending glass. Then steadies.

  There is a small blue water bowl beside my lamp. I hear the match tip’s extinguished hiss.

  Then—silence.

  I know my grandmother is standing there, looking down at me. Moments later she puts her hand on my shoulder. Her untried voice is husked with tenderness.

  Sachiko, Sachiko, she is saying.

  Later, on the verandah, my grandmother brings me breakfast for the journey, a small feast she says will sustain me—chicken broth, rice cakes, fish, vegetables, things I don’t even know the names of, things I have never tasted before—steaming in the cool morning air.

  Behind me, the mountain peaks blaze like white teeth in the first rays of the sun. Darkness seeps back into the earth. The grey-tiled rooftops of the village, clustered together like sleeping cattle, begin to surface. Here and there, pale columns of smoke rise from chimneys. On the outskirts of the village, a solitary lantern, like a tiny stranded star, appears and disappears in the creviced streets.

  Beyond the village, the valleys, still and undisclosed, lie waiting.

  I hear my mother’s shrill voice coming from inside the house. She is arguing with my father. Only fragments of what they say reach me.

  But it’s nothing, Hideo. You can barely see it. You must convince him.

  I think they are talking about the kimono my mother and grandmother make, which, each spring, my father takes down to Osaka to sell. But they are not. They are talking about me.

  Then we are waiting outside our house. My friend Kimiko, who had gone the previous year to work in one of the Takaragawa houses, is there. She gives me a beautiful pearl hairpin. To remember her by. She puts it into my hair. She smiles. Write to me, she says. We hug each other. I feel her warm tears on my cheek.

  The kimono have been folded, packed. Sealed into chests. Two men are loading them onto a hand cart. We are ready. My grandmother stands there silent. Her hands struggle to free themselves from each other. She comes to embrace me.

  My mother does not. Instead, she says: Be careful, Sachiko. But she says it coldly, as if admonishing me for some wrong I have already committed. Kimiko and I embrace one last time. I say goodbye.

  These trips are always fraught. Will my father sell all that my mother and grandmother have made? If he doesn’t, we will not survive until the next year, my mother, my father, my grandmother and me.

  Each year now, when my father returns, he returns exhausted. It was not always like this. He used to be proud to take what my grandmother and mother had made to Osaka to sell. But now, when he comes home, it is someone else who arrives on our doorstep. Someone I don’t know. Someone who is withdrawn, defeated, unreachable. He will not speak to me. Or my mother. I never know why. For two or three days afterwards, he will go down to the village. To drink. To not come home. Eventually, one of his friends will bring him back to us, drunk, half-dead, muttering to himself: Forgive me, forgive me. But we never find out what it is that we have to forgive him for.

  And then the storm abates. The memory of Osaka fades. My father begins to return
to himself again. Until next year.

  My father and I are walking down the steep, winding path to the village, silently following the two men balancing on the cart in front of us.

  The ancient bus is already waiting in the marketplace. It belongs to Mr Nakagawa, one of my father’s friends. The engine covers are missing. The wheel arches are full of dirt. There are men scrambling around on top of it, as busy as ants. They are securing pieces of luggage, crates, lengths of timber, to the roof. I watch as our chests full of kimono are hauled up to them. My father paces up and down beside the bus, giving them instructions. Which the men ignore.

  Hiroshi, the bus driver’s son, is sitting in one of the front seats. Rocking. He is tethered there. Our eyes meet. He grins his idiot grin. I turn away. Hiroshi is a giant. He brims with slow-witted malevolence. No one trusts him. He is big, unpredictable.

  The year before, I had had my own reason to fear him. The path behind our house leads to one of the springs above our village. It is famous for its huge red boulders poking out of the earth along its length. Each stone is like an enormous skull, round, perfectly smooth. When I was little, my grandmother told me how bald-headed giants had come down the mountain one day to take revenge on the village. When the villagers heard them coming, they prayed to the gods to save them. And the earth swallowed the giants up, leaving only the tops of their heads exposed.

  At certain points along the path, it is possible to jump from one head to another. I used to run along them as quickly as I could, remaining on each for only an instant, fearing that if I lingered too long a giant pair of hands would reach up out of the earth and seize me. Even now, I have a vague sense of terror just thinking about them.

  On either side of the path, there are bamboo thickets. In places they are twenty metres tall. The surface of the bamboo is hard, polished, as green as insects’ legs. When there is a breeze, the bamboo sways back and forth in long, slow arcs. High up, two shafts sometimes rub against each other, producing an unearthly, melancholy sound, like a child crying. I sometimes lie in bed at night listening to this sound, wondering if in some way it is connected with these giants drowned in the earth.

  The incident I remember with Hiroshi has nothing to do with the path. Or the crying bamboo. It has to do with children laughing. At least at first.

  I have been running. I am out of breath. Perhaps I have been jumping from skull to skull, trying to see how many I can jump in a row. Each year I can add another one, or two, or three.

  I am almost at the pool when I stop. It is summer. The sun filters through the trees. I hear a child’s shout, then a splash. Then another. There is more laughter. High-pitched, piercing, intoxicated. I crouch down, slip out of my sandals. The stones beneath my feet are cool. I reach out to steady myself against a shaft of bamboo.

  Even when most of the pool, and the smooth rock face at its far end, is visible, I can’t see them. Then, high up, on one of the boulders, something moves. It is a child. A boy of about five or six. He is crouching, his hands on his knees. He looks into the water. I recognise him. His name is Ichiro. His father owns a trinket shop in the village. He is naked. He stands and runs back and forth on top of the boulder. Gestures. Yells. I can see his tiny sex bouncing as he runs. His wet hair lies flat against his forehead. A thin spray of water falls sparkling through the sunlight. Then he is gesturing again, to someone, an invisible companion, somewhere in the water below him.

  I watch as he plucks the drops of water suspended from his nose with the tips of his fingers. He spreads his arms in a low arc, bends his knees, draws his child’s belly up into his chest. Then, with an inelegant leap, he launches himself off the rock. His little boy’s outstretched arms rotate quickly in the air as he plummets. I hear a splash as he hits the water. Laughter.

  Now, between the pillars of bamboo, I see his friend—another boy his age, whose name I do not know. He emerges from the shadowed edge of the pool, glides out into the sunlight. Only his head pokes out above the cool dark plane of water. Their clothes lie in disarray on the stones of the bank opposite.

  Above the sighing wind, I think I hear a sound from somewhere behind me. I turn, half-expecting to see another child on the path down which I have just come. But it is empty. I think to myself how inviting the water looks. Then I, too, am standing half-naked on the bank, my clothes folded on the flat stones at my feet. I step into the sunlight at the edge of the pool.

  It is Ichiro who sees me first. He must think I am an apparition. He has just surfaced from a shallow dive. Water is still flowing from his eyes. He shakes his head. One hand reaches up to his mouth. He looks across to his companion who is swimming back to shore.

  He has probably never seen a half-naked girl before. A shiver passes through his body. He remains motionless in the water. I smile at him. He smiles shyly back, uncertain. He brushes the remaining water from his eyes.

  Sachiko, he says.

  I slip into the water. Its coolness sweeps up my legs and along my body. I glide out into the centre of the pool. Ichiro has swum to the shore. He is standing with his companion on one of the topmost boulders. They are both looking at me. I float, looking up at them. The sound of insects fills the air above me.

  I see Ichiro grasp his friend by the shoulder. He points at the bank behind me. He calls out something to me, waves, points. At first, I can’t see what he is pointing at. But then I see Hiroshi emerge from the shadows of the path. In his half-stooped giant way, he staggers over to where my clothes are lying in the sun. He leans down, picks up my trousers. He has them by one leg. The other dangles in the water. He brings them up to his face. Smells them. Turns them over. Smells them again. Then he gathers both legs up in his hands, looks for the waist. He goes to put them on.

  Hiroshi, I shout. No, Hiroshi, no!

  He stops, locates me in the water. He holds the garment out to me.

  No, I yell again.

  Then he drops them into the water. He turns to look behind him, then turns back to me. Across the water, I see his face change, grow ugly. A chill runs through my body. His mouth has dropped open, and he has begun to bob up and down. I know what he is thinking. That I am alone. That there is no one here to see him. That no one will know. He looks around again, mouth gaping. Listening. Looking into the bamboo forest. Then his gaze sweeps back to me.

  I have swum into the shadows at the far side of the pool, to where little Ichiro and his friend were jumping. The water is deep here. I keep my legs, my arms, moving. Hiroshi steps into the water fully clothed. He strides out towards me. Immediately a plume of water, like a ghostly white arm, shoots up out of the water in front of him. Then another. He stops, confused, unable to make out what is happening. He looks at the water around him, as though this is where the attack is coming from. He doesn’t see the black stone curving down. It strikes him on the shoulder. He looks up. Another is on its way. It appears to have launched itself up over the boulders above the pool of its own accord. Hiroshi’s hand goes up to catch it. But he misjudges, and the stone strikes him again. He bellows like an ox.

  More stones begin to rain down. I can hear the two boys’ demented laughter. Abruptly the stones stop. Hiroshi is waist-deep in the water staring open-mouthed into the silence above him. He looks at me. I have circled around to where I can feel the rocks on the bottom of the pool. I watc
h his eyes fall from my face to my breasts. I cover myself with my hands. His mouth closes. Still he does not move.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see two small heads poke out over the top of a boulder behind him. Then their straining small-boy bodies appear. Their legs are bent. Between them they are carrying a rock the size of a man’s head. Ichiro and his friend struggle to hoist the stone up to their chests. They are intoxicated by what they are doing. Their effort is heroic. But they must know it’s futile. They could never reach Hiroshi from where they are. I can hear their suppressed, grunting giggles. They steady themselves.

  Just as the stone leaves their uncoiled arms, Hiroshi looks up. It hits the water with a loud smack. The rock seems to crack open the very surface of the pool. A thick column of water shoots into the air. Hiroshi is caught in the spray. Ichiro and his friend are running about triumphantly in the sunlight on top of the boulder. Hiroshi has seen them now. He lunges angrily after them. It is as if he believes he can step up directly out of the water and up into the air to get them. He stumbles. His head and body disappear beneath the surface. He comes up coughing, thrashing about. He turns, wades unsteadily back to shore, wipes his eyes. Then he lurches up the slope towards the boulder upon which the boys have been standing. But they have gone. The moment he disappears, Ichiro materialises from behind the bamboo thicket beside which my clothes are lying. He picks them up, gestures rapidly to me.

  When I am before him, still soaked, half-naked, he reaches up with his small hand and gives my clothes to me. I can feel the water trickling off my body, the sun on my shoulders. His arm remains outstretched as I take my clothes from him.

  I kneel and kiss him on his forehead, touching the small kernel of his shoulder.