The Snow Kimono

by Mark Henshaw

  Thank you, Ichiro, I say, for saving me.

  Before turning to run back along the path through the bamboo, before disappearing, he reaches up to touch my face. Even now, I can still feel the tips of three small fingers on my cheek, and see the look of disbelief, of wonderment, in his young boy’s eyes.

  Standing in the marketplace, I realise that this memory is not about me. Or Hiroshi. Or the pool. It is about Ichiro. About the night, a few months later, when Ichiro’s father comes banging on our door.

  It is well after dark. Perhaps ten or eleven o’clock. The tourist crowds have all gone home. We are asleep. And, all at once, someone is pounding on our door. I hear my father get up. He says something to my mother. Goes to the door. I hear voices. Men’s voices. Then I hear my mother. I sneak down the hallway to listen. It is Ichiro’s father.

  Ichiro hasn’t come home, he is saying. He hasn’t come home.

  My father says something, but Ichiro’s father is still talking.

  I left him on the mountain, he says. I wanted to teach him a lesson…and now he hasn’t returned.

  I peek around the door jamb.

  My father and mother have their backs to me. Ichiro’s father is between them, by the still-open door. His head is bowed. My father has one hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him. But he is swaying back and forth. Shaking. Wringing his hands. He keeps repeating the same words.

  I left him on the mountain. I left him on the mountain.

  Ichiro, his beloved son.

  My grandmother and I are on the verandah peering through the darkness at the lights gathering in the marketplace far below. Lanterns, torches, poles wrapped with burning oil-soaked cloth. We can see clotted groups of men forming and re-forming. Their fragmentary voices waft up to us on the warm night air.

  The lights divide, separate into groups. Each to search a different part of the surrounding forest.

  Later that night, lying in my bed, I can hear their distant voices calling: I-chi-ro, I-chi-ro…I-chi-ro.

  Of course, it is Ichiro’s father who finds him. The men have all returned home after midnight without him.

  His half-unhinged father gets up before dawn. I’m not supposed to know. But the next evening I hear my mother and father in the kitchen, and I creep down again to stand outside the door.

  Ichiro’s father has gone back to the cliff face high above the village, to walk its length. He thinks perhaps Ichiro has stumbled in the dark. Perhaps he has fallen onto the rocks below. A father’s intuition drives him.

  An hour after sunrise, in the cruel early morning light, he sees the crow. He is climbing up through the small rocky ravine when he comes upon it. This big, solitary, black bird. He sees it half-obscured between the rocks, ready to take flight.

  He stops. The bird’s hard, bright-yellow eye does not move. It is watching him. Calculating. Measuring. He sees the crow cock its head. It takes one last look at what lies beneath its feet. There is time enough. The gluttonous black beak plunges, plunges again. The tremulous swallowing quick. Pitiless.

  Even as he is running, Ichiro’s father knows. And even though he is now a madman, shouting, waving his arms, his booted feet pounding across the furrowed ground, the crow remains for a moment where it has been, on the boy’s forehead, the perfect place from which to pierce the eyeless lidded skin.

  Ichiro isn’t dead. He isn’t badly injured. Just unconscious. Concussed. In a couple of hours, he will wake, and try to open eyes he no longer has.

  I have often wondered what it must have been like for him, Ichiro’s father, to have knelt down, scarcely able to breathe from running, to cradle his newly dark-worlded son, with the sound of the crow’s scooping wings still echoing in his ears as it rises into the air and peels away across the yellow morning slope.

  I turn away from Hiroshi. I see Ichiro sitting outside under the eaves of his father’s store. His head is moving back and forth. I have seen where his eyes once were. Two pitted knots of sunken flesh. His father refuses to conceal what has happened to him. To remind himself of how he failed his son.

  All expression has been erased from Ichiro’s face. I go over to him.

  Ichiro, I say.

  Sachiko.

  I came to say goodbye.

  Where are you going? he says.

  To Osaka, with my father.

  To Osaka. He nods. He must be thinking about what that could mean.

  Forever? he asks.

  Perhaps. For a long time, in any case.

  He is silent. His head is still. He could be looking out across the marketplace.

  I remember, he says softly, almost to himself.

  He raises his hand, searching for my face. I kneel and he touches my cheek. His hand drops. His head starts to move back and forth again, and I know he’s no longer there.

  Chapter 19

  IT is my first time down the mountain. Down the narrow, treacherous roads. The bus is packed with people from our village, spring tourists returning to Osaka, merchants, a few businessmen, children with their governesses. There are chests in the aisles. Bags have been squashed into the overhead racks. Things hang from the roof. I have no idea what they are.

  The road is potholed. The sun is flung about the horizon. We are descending into valleys full of mist. I am irrationally afraid. My father is slumped in the seat beside me, asleep. I have no way of telling him of my fear. He has hardly spoken to me since we left. Even when Kimiko came, he barely said hello. Kimiko, whom we have known all our lives.

  Mist, dense, impenetrable, rises to meet us. Engulfs us. The sun is snatched away. It is almost impossible to see the road ahead. The bus could be wrapped in cloth. We begin to feel our way down the mountainside. The only way I know we are moving is the constant jolting. Otherwise we could be stopped.

  I begin to feel as though I am suffocating. My heart is pounding. I look around. Most of the passengers are asleep. The rest are unconcerned. I lean back into my seat, close my eyes, concentrate on the rise and fall of the engine. When I open them, Hiroshi is staring at me. He is in the seat opposite his father, Mr Nakagawa, the driver. I realise that he has been staring at me since we left.

  In the afternoon, it begins to rain. At first, on the dirty windscreen, a few splattering drops ringed with red. Soon it is streaming down. It is raining so hard that when I look outside it is as though we are underwater. The noise is so loud I’m afraid the roof is going to cave in. We are forced to pull over on the side of the road. Some of the passengers, including my father, are beginning to wake.

  What’s happening, he says.

  There’s a storm, I say.

  My father gets up. Squeezes past me. He goes and squats down next to Mr Nakagawa. I can see them talking. They take turns, leaning into each other’s ears. The windscreen looks as though it is molten.

  My father comes back.

  We can’t stay here, he says. It’s too dangerous. There’s an inn not far ahead. We’re going to stop there until the rain passes.

  The engine comes to life. We pull back onto the road, creep slowly forward. Half an hour later we reach the inn. The rain continues unabated into the
evening. We are forced to stay the night.

  In the morning, it is still raining. I can hear it drumming on the roof when I wake. A dull, hard noise. Thunder rolls away down the valley.

  I dress, have breakfast. Afterwards, I go out onto the verandah to sit under the eaves. The area in front of the inn looks like a shallow pockmarked lake. The bus stands morosely tethered on the other side.

  Mr Nakagawa comes out onto the verandah with Hiroshi, who steps forward, stretches his hand out, slaps at the rain. Mr Nakagawa goes back inside. Hiroshi sees me, stops. I hear his father’s voice calling him. Then again, louder this time: Hiroshi!

  Twenty minutes later, my father comes out onto the verandah. He looks anxious, annoyed.

  Where have you been, Sachiko? he says. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.

  I haven’t been anywhere, Father, I say. I’ve just been sitting out here, looking at the rain.

  And then he says something strange, something that doesn’t make sense to me.

  But you must tell me, Sachiko, he says. You must tell me where you are. You have to be careful. You don’t know what these places are like. People disappear.

  But Father, I say again. I’m here.

  But you must tell me, Sachiko. You must understand.

  He looks across to the bus.

  Why today? he says. Why rain today?

  I go to sit in the inner gloom with the other passengers, some impatient, some resigned. Late in the afternoon, the rain begins to ease. Two men in suits, who have been sitting by the window, get up and go to Mr Nakagawa.

  We can’t wait, I hear them say. We have to go on.

  The three of them walk out onto the verandah. Mr Nakagawa is listening to them. One is shaking his head. They come back. Mr Nakagawa beckons to my father.

  They are right, Mr Nakagawa says. We have to go on. The rain has eased. If we don’t leave now, we won’t get there before dark.

  He turns to the rest of the passengers, tells them to get their things. We are pressing on, he says.

  The bus is waiting for us by the verandah when we return. Steam is rising from its exhaust. Mr Nakagawa and my father hold umbrellas above our heads as we begin to file on board.

  Barely have we pulled away from the inn when it begins to rain again. Hard. Mercilessly. Wave after wave of rain beats down on the bus as though to punish us.

  We are halfway down the mountain. The road is slippery, unsealed, with treacherous curves which double back on each other. Piles of fallen rock lean against the escarpment. We are forced to manoeuvre around them. We slow to a walking pace. There is no turning back.

  Every few feet it seems there is another turn. Mr Nakagawa is half out of the driver’s seat, almost standing, grappling with the wheel, turning this way, then that, hauling the bus back across the road. Away from the edge. Away from the valley that lies obscured below. I can see his feet working. He could be trying to kill something. Which won’t die. Which keeps rising up, again and again, to strike at him.

  Darkness begins to fall. The beams of light from the headlights swing alarmingly from embankment to embankment. They bounce wildly into the trees, over boulders. They disappear into the black void ahead of us. At times it seems it is only they that prevent us from plunging into the abyss. The bus moves strangely beneath us, as though it has become disconnected from the earth. Above the beating of the rain, I can hear the engine. Every now and then it snatches another breath, changes pitch. Then it falls back to the same monotonous throb. Until next time.

  And so we go on.

  Later, my father takes the seat behind Mr Nakagawa. He leans on the rail in front of him, talks to him. Mr Nakagawa shakes his head. He glances at Hiroshi, who is asleep in the seat opposite, then back at the road, at the rain, and the growing darkness ahead of us.

  I must have fallen asleep because, all at once, I am jolted awake. It feels like someone has kicked my seat violently from behind. I am shunted forward, then back. My head hits something metal. The bus seems to be leaning at a crazy angle. Dazed, I pull myself forward. My father is not there. Bags have fallen out of the overhead racks. Somewhere at the back of the bus a child is crying. The man in front of me turns around. His forehead is bleeding. I watch blood trickle down into his eye. He blinks. Wipes his forehead with his hand, frowns.

  The engine is roaring, but we aren’t moving. Although the headlights are on, all I can see is the pitted darkness in front of us. There is no road. A prolonged burst of lightning flickers on and off. I sit up. Outside my window, inches from my face, a rocky embankment tilts fitfully away into the night. Above it, I can see the arched trunks of trees. I begin to think that we have had an accident, that we have plunged into the ravine. And yet we are still upright.

  What’s happening? someone at the back of the bus calls.

  The engine dies away. People have begun to stand. I hear Mr Nakagawa’s voice.

  We have to get out.

  In this rain?

  I’m sorry, he says. Get your coats, and your umbrellas. We’re stuck.

  What did he say?

  The message is relayed to those at the rear. I can hear people complaining.

  And then my father is pushing his way through to me. He has his coat on. His hair is layered to his scalp in long, thin tentacles. His face is drenched. I hear Mr Nakagawa apologising to the passengers ahead of us.

  Take your coat, my father says to me. Make sure you are warm.

  What’s happening?

  We’re stuck. We’re going to have to pull the bus free. It’s too heavy with us on board.

  We begin filing out. Mr Nakagawa is standing at the foot of the steps, helping. Water is cascading down the hood of his jacket.

  I’m sorry, he says to the woman in front of me.

  He takes my hand as I step down into the mud. Most of the women and children, some of the old men, are sheltering in an uneven line on the far side of the road. One or two have lanterns. I can see their faces in the broken light. The rain bounces off their translucent umbrellas in tiny splinters. The mud pulls at my shoes as I wade across to join them.

  Two men with gas lamps attached to long poles are already standing behind the bus. It is clear what has happened. Part of the road, the part nearest the embankment, has subsided. A large pool has formed. The water is the colour of straw. Only the tops of the rear wheels are visible. I watch as one of the men wades into the water. It comes up to his knees. He reaches up through the rain to grasp the rung of the ladder at the rear of the bus. Goes to pull himself up. But the water won’t release him. Not at first. He pulls again, drags his legs free, then climbs up the ladder onto the roof of the bus. One of the men standing in the water hands the lantern pole up to him, then climbs up himself. The world seems to list, then right itself again, in the swinging lantern light.

  The man on top of the bus kneels down beside two battered chests. He begins to undo their clasps. Crouched there in the light, in the rain, he looks like a ghostly spider trapped beneath a silvery net, trying to get free. He begins retrieving coils of rope. He throws the looped bundles down to the men waiting at the side of the bus. Amongst them is Hiroshi. He is sta
ggering back and forth, watching what the man is doing. He moves to the rear. He half-stumbles into the widening pool, falls to his knees. He looks around, his wet, lunatic face ecstatic. His father is bending down, reaching into the muddy water, trying to attach a rope to something beneath the bus. Hiroshi wades in, begins to climb the ladder. His father sees what he is doing. Hiroshi! he yells. He reaches up, grabs the back of Hiroshi’s jacket, pulls him brutally down. He slaps him across the head with his open hand, points to the side of the road. Hiroshi stands behind him. In the middle of the pool. In the rain and the pitching white light.

  We are all looking at him.

  He wades around to the side of the bus. He bends down to examine one of the trapped wheels. His hair is dangling in the water. He touches one of the tyres. Then he stands up, tries to kick it with his foot. He almost falls backwards into the water.

  Mr Nakagawa comes to the side of the bus. Shouts at him again. Raises his fist.

  The men have divided into two groups. One at the front of the bus where most of the ropes have been attached. One at the rear. One to push, one to pull. Everything is ready. We are all waiting. Mr Nakagawa moves to the door of the bus, goes to get in. Stops. Points to Hiroshi again and then to the side of the road where the rest of us are gathered. For a moment father and son stare at each other.

  All this time, the sky is lit up by lightning. The embankment, the stranded bus, the tree canopies in the valley below, flicker in the darkness. The thunder echoes against the mountain. The pool has grown. Mr Nakagawa is in the driver’s seat, his dimly lit silhouette just visible. The engine begins to turn. With a sudden churning beneath the water it comes to life. Steam rises from the far side of the bus. The headlights come on. Now we can see the men in front of the bus. They are stretched out in the rain, four or five to a rope. The ropes rise from this muddy plane, begin to go taut. A dozen men have gathered in the water behind the bus. In the reddish brake lights they appear to float there, like spectral half-men just risen from the mud.