The Snow Kimono

by Mark Henshaw

  Tadashi hears what his secretary has said.

  She says it’s important.

  Did she tell you what it’s about?

  No, she wouldn’t say.

  Did she give you her name?

  She said her name was Yamaguchi.

  Yamaguchi?

  Yes, Mrs Yamaguchi.

  He frowns.

  The name Yamaguchi doesn’t mean anything to me, he says. Do we have anything on file?

  No, Mrs Akimoto says. I looked.

  He turns back to the document on his desk.

  Thank you, Mrs Akimoto. Ask Mrs Yamaguchi to give me ten minutes. I will see her then. Please bring some tea with you when you come.

  Mrs Yamaguchi is perhaps fifty. Perhaps older. Her face resolute. Her mouth a mere uneven crease in her face. But her eyes are steady. He can hear her saying: I will wait here until he comes out.

  She sits in the chair opposite him.

  I need your help, she says.

  She has an accent. Now he knows she is not from Osaka. Or Tokyo. She comes from one of the northern provinces. He has heard this accent before. The rural mud has stuck. And yet her clothing is beautifully made. The cloth expensive.

  The bridge of his nose hurts. He takes his glasses off. Retrieves a soft cloth from his drawer. He polishes the thick round lenses.

  Help in what way? he says, holding his glasses up to the light.

  A little over a year ago, she says, my husband died. One evening, the police came knocking on my door. They told me my husband’s body had been found at the base of the walking bridge at Akiyama. Amongst the rocks. His skull had been fractured. His neck was broken. They told me he had committed suicide. They told me…They told me Hideo had jumped.

  I’m sorry, Mrs Yamaguchi, he says. He is about to go on.

  That was a year ago, she says. I now know that my husband did not jump. He was killed.

  Killed?

  Yes, killed. Murdered.

  The moment has arrived. Does he feel the fluttering of wings about his head?

  Mr Ishiguro said to come and see you, she says.

  Here it is.

  Mr Ishiguro said to come and see you. The wings are beating now. Mr Ishiguro said…

  He said it wasn’t anything to do with him.

  Mr Ishiguro? he says.

  Yes?

  Which Mr Ishiguro?

  But he already knows.

  Mr Ishiguro, the cloth maker. She touches the sleeve of her kimono. His factory is on the outskirts of the city.

  And what else did Mr Ishiguro say?

  She looks perplexed.

  That you would know what to do, she says.

  He sees the determination in her eyes. She is not going to go away.

  And why do you think your husband was murdered? he asks.

  Because I found his diary, she says. I have it here.

  Chapter 40

  I WILL pay you what you paid me, Hideo says.

  Three months after he had surrendered Sachiko, Hideo returned. To get his daughter back.

  How?

  They were sitting in the long room. Hideo did not answer.

  It’s too late, Hideo, Katsuo said.

  Why?

  I cannot explain.

  It did not take long for Hideo to produce his ultimatum.

  If you do not return Sachiko to me, he said, I will tell her that I sold her to you. I will tell her that, from the age of twelve, every time I came down to Osaka, you paid me for her.

  Sold her? Katsuo said. We entered into an agreement, Hideo. Sachiko would come to work for me, in exchange for which I would take care of her future. In the meantime, as you say, I paid you. Handsomely. We had an agreement.

  Hideo said nothing.

  And tell me Hideo, which is worse? That you sold her? Or that I bought her?

  That you bought her.

  Why?

  Because of what you bought her for.

  You took my money. You knew then what our contract meant. Or did you lie to yourself about that?

  He waited for Hideo to reply.

  Perhaps, he said.

  Perhaps which?

  Hideo hesitated.

  Yes, I knew, he said.

  You knew. And I waited. Sachiko is sixteen. You know I could have taken her much earlier. In the eyes of the law, I have done nothing wrong.

  Both men remained silent, each watching the other.

  I made a mistake, Katsuo-san, Hideo said. I cannot live with what I have done. That I sold her to you haunts me. I feel her loss every day. I have always felt it.

  Katsuo knew of what Hideo spoke. The pain of losing someone. Had he not spent years mourning Mariko’s loss after she had left? Years. And had he not known how much he loved Mariko until she was gone? What had Hideo just said: I feel her loss every day.

  In those first desperate weeks, after Mariko disappeared, Katsuo had searched and searched for her. Later, in his years of self-imposed exile, his longing had grown more unbearable every day. How could he have made such a mistake? Not to have recognised that he could not live without her. To have let her slip through his fingers.

  Then, years later, not long after his return, he had been leafing through an old magazine, passing time while he waited to be shaved, and there, when he turned a page, was a photograph of her. It had been a shock to see her eyes again, eyes that he had not seen for so long, looking up at him. There had been a clutching at his heart, a momentary glimpse of hope reborn. And then the caption: Consort of wealthy industrialist found dead. He had read and re-read it.

  She had changed her name. Why had he never thought of that? It had been so cruel to have discovered her death this way. So unexpected. So without warning. Mariko, the woman whose laughter he could still hear, whose face he could still see, who had walked his balcony by his side, had died alone, in a cheap room in a cheap hotel, of an overdose, the former consort of a man convicted of fraud. A man who refused to speak to him.

  He had gone there, to that room, to that empty space, to be with her.

  But it had been beyond him to envisage her sitting alone on the still-made bed, pausing that brief moment before she took the irrevocable step. His brain refused to imagine her lovely hands reaching for the bottle of pills, refused to see her pale eyes dulled with tears. And she still wondering—how had life come to this?

  The room had been empty. No unearned forgiveness was waiting for him there. No shrine. She was gone.

  He had kept the photo. Looked at it from time to time. So the wound would not heal. Life could have been so different.

  Had she come looking for him?

  In the years that followed, he isolated himself, became a prisoner to his own grief. He gave up hope of ever finding someone else. He no longer cared.

  Then his friend Ishiguro st
arted talking about a girl he had seen, the daughter of one of his clients, who lived in a mountain village hundreds of kilometres away.

  She reminds me of Mariko, he said. Or what Mariko must have been like when she was young.

  But Katsuo had dismissed him.

  A year later, Ishiguro called.

  I saw her again, he said.

  Who?

  The girl. The one that reminds me of Mariko. I tell you, Katsuo, she is beautiful. Her name is Sachiko. When you finish what you’re working on, you should come with me. To see her.

  Eventually, when The Woman on the Beach was done, he agreed to go. He was still not sure, however, that he wanted to be reminded of Mariko.

  But Ishiguro had been right. The girl was beautiful. And there was something Mariko-like about her. It was as if she were Mariko’s echo.

  Afterwards, back in Osaka, the thought of her lingered. He kept seeing Sachiko emerging onto her parent’s lit verandah wearing kimonos made from Ishiguro’s exquisite cloths. She was tall. Slender. Pale-skinned. He was struck by her poise, her reserve. Her extraordinary face. By the end of the evening, after he had continued waiting unrewarded for her to reappear, she had begun to inhabit him.

  Sachiko.

  It had been easy for Ishiguro to ask after her on her father’s next visit; what his plans for his daughter were, her education, her future. Easy for him to mention a wealthy benefactor who was looking for a young girl to tend to his house, to become his secretary, his assistant—his current housekeeper being old—in exchange for furthering her education. A benefactor who was prepared to enter into a contract with him, but who was also prepared to wait.

  Hideo had been flattered when Ishiguro introduced him to Sachiko’s prospective employer. Ishiguro had not told him who this might be, and he would never have guessed. Katsuo Ikeda? The writer? Who was already famous. And Ume, who was indeed already old, who would oversee Sachiko’s training, nodding to him, as if he were important.

  Hideo could see Sachiko in this beautiful house. With its vast terrace, its view over the city. He could see her exploring its beautiful garden, which stretched endlessly up the mountain. He could see her reading the books in Mr Ikeda’s beautiful library. Being driven down to her lessons in Mr Ikeda’s gleaming new car, with her own personal driver, her future assured.

  As for Katsuo, Sachiko, the girl he had almost not bothered going to see, had indeed turned into a beautiful young woman. Who, from the moment her father left her with him, reminded him of Mariko almost more than he could bear. Apart from her face, her translucent pale eyes, she also had the same clear, bell-like laugh, so light it seemed to float on air. When he first heard it coming from the garden again, his heart had skipped a beat. He thought Mariko had returned to him.

  And then there was Sachiko’s scar. Something he could never have foreseen. Or hoped for. On her shoulder blade.

  Mariko’s scar, that tiny island-like map embossed on her skin, had, in the end, come to obsess him. It was the thing he looked for first. The thing he reached for. It was the first thing his eyes fell to whenever she turned away from him. It had been what he had missed most when he was with someone else. What he longed for. That nobody else had. This tiny flaw. Until Sachiko came to him.

  No, much had changed in three months. He had already begun to love this girl whom fate had delivered him. His heart had begun to heal. It was as if he had been given a second chance. And he was not about to let her go. Not this time. He had made that mistake once before.

  Hideo, Hideo, he said, his tone conciliatory, I understand how you must feel. He stopped, as if to consider what he was about to say. I know what it means not to be able to live without someone. He paused for his words to take effect. Give me some time to think about what you have said. Perhaps there is a solution that neither of us has considered. One that would satisfy us both. When do you return home?

  Tomorrow, he said.

  As soon as that?

  Katsuo raised the arched fingers of both hands to his chin.

  I’m not sure that that gives me enough time, he said, to think about what would be best for both of us.

  How much time do you need?

  Katsuo waited.

  A week, Hideo. If I let you know then, one way or another, what my decision is, would you be agreeable to that?

  For the first time since Hideo had arrived at Katsuo’s, a faint shadow of hope registered on his face.

  And you give me your word that you will not disappear, as you have done in the past? You will not take Sachiko with you?

  You have my word, Hideo. As a man of honour, I will not disappear. Sachiko and I will be here.

  All right then, he said. I will wait.

  Thank you, Hideo.

  The two men stood.

  Can I get my driver to take you back to town? Katsuo said.

  Yes, thank you, Katsuo-san. I would be grateful.

  Katsuo went to the phone. Picked it up. Spoke into it. Then he led Hideo out into the foyer. Ume was already waiting there for him. She bowed to him.

  Mr Yamaguchi, she said.

  So, Hideo, Katsuo said. It’s all arranged. Ume will attend to you.

  He opened the door, inclined his head. Reached out to shake Hideo’s hand.

  Until we meet again, Hideo, he said.

  Until we meet again, Katsuo-san.

  Ume held out her hand for Hideo to precede her. Katsuo watched Hideo step into the darkness outside. Then he reached for the door and closed it softly behind him.

  After Hideo left him, Katsuo sat for some time in the semidarkness of the long room. Then he went out onto the terrace and stood at the balustrade. Forty-five minutes later, when he saw the car headlights returning through the trees, when he saw the car turn into the driveway and stop at the gates, he went back into the long room, got his coat, and went downstairs.

  He was waiting for the car as it emerged onto the forecourt. He was seating himself comfortably in the soft upholstery even before the car had rolled to a stop.

  Ishiguro’s, he said. And he pulled the door closed after him.

  Chapter 41

  DARKNESS slips into the valleys. Hideo is returning from his evening walk. The air is cold; there is no one else on the path.

  On the other side of the river, the lights of the inn beckon. The ghost of the parked bus is just visible through the trees.

  Hideo is thinking about what Katsuo said to him the night before. Perhaps there is another way. Perhaps all is not yet lost.

  A solitary figure stands huddled in the middle of the bridge. Leaning on the rail. Smoking. The tip of his cigarette glows brighter. Then the butt is flicked spinning into the abyss—a tiny catherine wheel arcing into the darkness. A bat zigzags down after it. The lingering smell of burning tobacco faintly familiar.

  It happens quickly. When he reaches the centre of the bridge, the figure steps purposefully away from the railing and stands in front of him, blocking his way.

  Hideo.

  Did he wait long enough? Did Hideo see his face? Was ‘Katsuo’ the last wor
d on the tip of his tongue?

  Death is swift. Two brutal blows to the skull. An ancient samurai club in Katsuo’s hand. The first, a slanting blow from above, so violent it severs the top of Hideo’s earlobe. The other, a side blow, hits him even as he is crumbling, unconscious, to the ground.

  The old man’s body is lighter than Katsuo imagined. He holds him briefly over the rail. Lets go. There is no splash. Just one dull thud.

  Has he done enough? He leans over the side of the bridge. Grasps the rail. He can hear the river. But he cannot see it. The world below is only darkness. Presumed. He stands still, listening. The lights of the inn glinting through the trees alarmingly close. No human voice comes to him. No cry.

  The swirling waters will not remove Hideo Yamaguchi. His pale old-man’s body will not be trapped forever beneath a submerged tree root as he had hoped. Katsuo has miscalculated. Hideo’s body bounces once, skids to the water’s edge, stops. Life is already abandoning him. A thin red stain weeps into the river bank. His disordered brain is no longer able to piece together the fractured truth. There will be no final accounting. No protest. No time to ask why? Just the darkness growing.

  Katsuo is already making his way back to the inn. He does not look back. If he had, he would have seen the owl swoop down out of the shadows. Swift, intent, it glides silently just centimetres above the wooden treads. It lands, its black clawed feet outstretched, its great wings beating soundlessly. It sits motionless in the centre of the bridge. Its eyes serious in its white, dahlia-perfect face. A perfect, perfect thing.

  The owl watches Katsuo’s retreating form. The intermittent pinpoint glow of another cigarette. Katsuo has almost reached the inn. He is oblivious. Soon he will be back in the safety of his room.

  The owl turns back to what it has come for. It hops stiff-legged towards something lying in the shadows. Something pale, curved. Something as thick as a child’s finger. A caterpillar, perhaps. Except that this caterpillar does not move. Does not try to escape. The great bird looks down. Pauses. Then snatches up the piece of severed ear in its beak. It beats it against the wooden cross beam, hard, making sure it is properly dead. Then it stops.