by Fumiko Enchi
“Oh, no?” said Mikamé, grinning. “You seem to be saying that the mental striptease doesn’t suit your taste. In matters of the flesh my own preference is for total nakedness. There’s a tawdriness to the abuna-e*1—their bare feet poking out beneath silken petticoats—that I just don’t like.”
“Nakedness is hardly Yasuko’s style, though,” said Ibuki mockingly, looking sidelong at Mikamé and blowing a stream of cigarette smoke through pursed lips. “Besides, the very idea of a mental striptease is barbaric. Why do you think the human race spent thousands of years inventing clothes?”
“At the other end of the spectrum, I suppose, is Mieko Toganō—and living with her is bound to influence Yasuko. Ah, but there aren’t many women who are intellectual the way Yasuko is, yet soft and clinging as a pussycat, the way she is, too.” Mikamé sighed.
“I suspect that sensuality of hers comes from Mieko. There’s something awfully suggestive to me about the relationship between those two.”
“They’re lovers, you mean? Lesbians? Hmm, I doubt it.” Mikamé shook his head skeptically.
“Never mind that,” Ibuki said. “There’s something else I wanted to tell you. ‘An Account of the Shrine in the Fields,’ that essay Mieko wrote, claims the Rokujō lady never intended to become a possessive spirit—that try as she would to suppress it, her introverted psyche would turn outward and act on the object of her emotions in spite of her. Well, so far as I can tell, it’s exactly the same with the dog spirit and the snake spirit in Japanese folklore. There doesn’t have to be the slightest intention to do mischief. It simply happens that every time a person of latent psychic power experiences intense feelings of love, or hate, or even desire for someone, that person responds by breaking out in a fever or groaning out loud in his sleep or showing some other sign of suffering. The one who’s responsible never has any idea of what’s going on. It’s a good illustration of the way one person’s mind can cast a spell on another.”
“Do you suppose Mieko Toganō has that sort of power to influence people—to charm them? That would explain her fascination with the Rokujō lady.”
“To be honest, until I read that essay, I had her pegged as just another high society lady, the sort that likes to play at writing poetry; but if that’s her own work, then I will admit I’m impressed. In fact, I can’t understand why it went out of print. I wonder if she only lent her name to something somebody else wrote.”
“I thought of that too. But when I suggested as much to Yasuko, she insisted that it had to be by Mieko.”
“Yasuko? When did you see her? I thought you said she’d stopped coming to class. Don’t tell me there’s something going on between you two.” Clearly, despite his words, Mikamé had no suspicion of the deepening entanglement between Ibuki and Yasuko. Though irked at his friend’s disparaging tone, Ibuki did not feel entitled to divulge the truth on his own. He dodged it with a skillful phrasing of the facts.
“You mentioned at Akio’s memorial service that you’d lent me the essay, didn’t you?” he said. “Mieko told her to find out what I thought of it. She came over the other day to ask me.”
Mikamé’s face grew serious. “If I proposed to Yasuko, do you think she would accept?”
“I don’t know. First you’ve got to ask her. But unless I’m wrong, Mieko’s not going to let go of her. It’s not only selfishness, either, but something else, something deep and powerful holding those two together.” His thoughts returned to that snowy evening in the old parlor of the Toganō house, and it seemed to him that the relationship between Mieko and Yasuko possessed a quality of moistness, of cling-ingness, like that of something animal; he was reminded of a spider’s web. Then, entangled in that web, soft and white as marshmallow, the image of Harumé’s face floated up in his mind.
—
As Ibuki pushed his way through the revolving door of the hotel and stepped outside, the north wind attacked him mercilessly, forcing him to hunch his shoulders and grimace. Over supper in the basement grill, Mikamé had talked incessantly of his plan to propose to Yasuko, but afterward, when they came back up to the lobby, a young woman with dyed red hair, wearing a striped suit and mink stole and standing in an affected pose—a fashion model, perhaps, or a dancer—had caught sight of Mikamé and signaled to him with her eyes.
“You’re early!” Mikamé had said, taking a camera from her hands. To Ibuki he explained, “We drove to Hakone the other day, and I forgot to get it back from her.”
Propelled by the cold wind, Ibuki hurried toward the Japan National Railway station. Once he had said to Yasuko that Mikamé’s taste in women was good, but this one today had been too flashy. And for all her outer flashiness one sensed a dryness inside—a flimsiness, as though her joints cracked.
On that recent evening he had not been able so much as to hold Yasuko’s hand. Under such circumstances it was not a man’s place to protest, he felt with dignity, but it troubled him that there had been no word from Yasuko since then. Inasmuch as he was the first man she had been with since Akio died, it did seem she might show greater attraction to him. Although she treated him with every sign of the warmest affection when they were alone, once they parted she never made the slightest attempt to seek him out. Her attitude was not that of an innocent and moral woman, but, indeed, that of an experienced whore—one who had mastered every skill.
Yasuko had belonged completely to Akio, and now she was learning again, from Mieko, how to go on with her life as a woman.
But why, he wondered, had the unhappy episode in Mieko’s own marriage—and, even more, the loss of her only son—carved no lines of sorrow into her face?
It struck him then that despite his frequent encounters with Mieko, he had oddly no clear mental image of her face. Partly it was because he had never seen her alone, but always with Yasuko nearby to engage his attention; but beyond that, the pale and gently curving silhouette of her face was all that remained in his memory. It was a face like a Nō mask, while the impression it gave was one of even greater obscurity and elusiveness. Mieko, too, was human, she must smile and frown like other people, but he had no memory of ever seeing her expression come alive. To have once been the victim of a ruse by her husband’s mistress—one that had caused her to suffer a miscarriage, no less—and then to stay tamely on with the same man and bear him another child, showed a want of spirit that any modern woman would find scandalous. Might it not be said of her, then, that she abided faithfully by the feudal code of womanly virtue? Try as he would, however, to think of Mieko as someone like Osan or Osono of the puppet plays, a woman whose mainstay in life was a quiet resignation, Ibuki could sense in her none of that pathetic aura of self-sacrifice.
Yet this seeming shallowness of character, or weak-willed stupidity, could not be reconciled with the beauty and richness of the verses she wrote. And what, even more, of the crisp and rigorous prose of “An Account of the Shrine in the Fields”?
The essay had, in fact, made an even profounder impact on Yasuko than on him or Mikamé; but never once, she said, had she seen a copy of it around the house, and, of course, Mieko had never spoken of it to her. In response to a guess he once hazarded that Mieko’s essay might be what had prompted Akio to undertake his own study of spirit possession, Yasuko had pronounced herself certain that he had died unaware of its existence.
Mieko was then, as Yasuko had once said, a woman whose heart was as secretive as a garden of flowers at night: the mingled scent of unseen blossoms trailed from her every gesture. Since hearing Yasuko speak these words, Ibuki had found himself haunted by the phrase “flowers of darkness”—a fragment of a T’ang poem he had once read. Amid the flowers breathing their mysterious perfumes into darkness floated the face not only of Mieko but of Yasuko—yes, and of Harumé as well.
The north wind lashed pitilessly at his cheeks, even though he shielded them in the collar of his overcoat. At the station he looked up from the platform and saw, just above the clock dial that had seemed from the hotel window to
glitter like brass, the moon, shining like a chip of splintered ice.
—
During his New Year’s vacation Ibuki went to Ito, taking with him the incomplete manuscript of a book his publisher had asked him to write. His relationship with Yasuko was becoming a painful drain on his purse, but he had resigned himself to paying whatever it might cost to explore the unknown depths of her heart. Despite her promise, though, she failed to appear at the lodgings he had taken.
Returning home, his inner gloom concealed by an air of nonchalance, Ibuki spotted Mikamé’s Hillman parked outside the house and rang the doorbell with the intense relief of one who has been narrowly saved.
Sounds of animated laughter came from inside the house. Looking over the low fence beside the gate, past a dark and wrinkled red rose at the end of a withered, wirelike tendril, he saw Mikamé seated in profile in a rattan chair on the veranda.
Sadako wore a cheerful smile as she let him in the door. “You’re back! Just in time. Dr. Mikamé is here, waiting to see you.”
“Thanks for stopping by.”
“Thank you for showing up while I was here. Happy New Year!”
“The same to you.”
Never one to display bad humor, Mikamé seemed in especially good spirits today.
“He brought us a present. Something you’ll like, dear.”
“For your garden border,” said Mikamé with a laugh, pointing outside to a row of whiskey bottles buried bottom side up along the garden edge.
“He says it’s a very good brand.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called Old Parr.”
“Well, thanks very much,” said Ibuki, adding dryly, “even if it probably is something one of your patients gave you for Christmas.”
Mikamé looked at Sadako, grinning. “Listen to him—stealing my lines!”
“What are we waiting for?” said Ibuki. “Let’s have a glass. I’d offer you some of ours, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t be up to your standards.”
Sadako brought out a black bottle and set it on the table.
“Where’s Ruriko?”
“She went to Grandma’s. I was just enjoying the quiet around the house when Dr. Mikamé came. Dear, he’s getting married.”
“Married? That’s news.”
“Now hold on, Sadako, it’s not certain yet. All I did was start the negotiations.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?” said Ibuki, forcing a smile into his narrowing eyes.
“Who do you think?”
“It’s Yasuko Toganō,” said Sadako. “You’re so fond of her yourself we were just trying to decide if you’d laugh or cry when you heard the news.”
“Who, Yasuko? Good for you; you’ve been dropping hints long enough. Finally worked up your nerve, did you?” Ibuki mixed his whiskey with water and took a sip before looking at Mikamé.
“That’s right. I made it my first resolution for the new year.”
“When? Did you go over there?”
“No, nothing so ceremonious. I’ve got better sense than that. First, I invited Mieko and Yasuko to go with me on a drive.”
“Ah, of course. Your money and your car—fine bait for trapping a woman.” Ibuki spoke mockingly as always, but today his humor was tinged with acrimony. “Where did you take them?”
“To Atami, to see the plum blossoms.”
“A bit early for that, wasn’t it? My, my—sounds like a page from Demon of Gold.*2 All I had to do was throw a cape around my shoulders and run after you, and presto! you’d have been Toyama the villain.”
Mikamé laughed. “A fine Kan’ichi you make, saddled with wife and child.”
“Yes, well, Omiya is a widow, so she’s seen better days herself.” Sadako spoke with unaccustomed venom.
Beneath his joking, Ibuki was severely shaken to learn that while he had been waiting impatiently for Yasuko in Ito, she had been as close as Atami with Mikamé.
“Did you stay the night there?”
“Even if we did, those two never left each other’s side. You know you’re quite right, Ibuki, they do act as if they were lovers. Yasuko alone is enough, but with both of them hanging on to each other, it gets to be damned suggestive.” Mikamé narrowed his eyes and dragged on his cigarette, remembering.
—
The plum blossoms in the Kinomiya Shrine precincts were only half open. Inlaid with a thin scattering of white blossoms, india ink branches over a small stream were as if painted by a Chinese master, and Mieko, standing beneath them, seemed to blend perfectly into the setting. The white of the blossoms was touched with cream, like the hue of her skin, or of a Nō mask.
“It’s very Japanese,” said Mikamé, “yet there’s something of China in this scenery, too. Think of paintings of plum blossoms with cranes and hermit sages. That sort of thing.” Seeking to get as far as possible from Mieko, he led Yasuko by the hand across stepping-stones in the stream.
Yasuko was wearing a mohair coat of pale lavender, the dimple in her round cheek flitting in and out as always. The sky was lightly overcast. For Atami it was rather chilly.
Yasuko and Mieko expressed a desire to call on a woman poet of Mieko’s acquaintance who lived nearby. On the way down from the shrine toward the waterfront, Mikamé dropped them off on a narrow street and returned alone to the inn.
They had lodgings at a sunny Japanese-style inn facing south on the mountain slope toward Uomisaki. A number of individual cottages were built overlooking the water, the spaces among them filled with lawn and pine trees. Mikamé was shown to his usual rooms, and after settling on the inner one with dressing room attached for his companions, and the tearoom to the rear for his own sleeping quarters, he went to take his bath. Viewed from the bathroom window, overlapping rooftops on a steep and narrow alleyway formed a succession of triangles tumbling down to where the sea (this, too, a triangle, standing on its head) lay softly blue and sparkling.
He finished his bath and waited, but still they did not come. He was fretting and growing impatient, though certain they would appear at any moment, when shortly before five the telephone rang. He answered and heard Yasuko’s voice.
“She’s invited us to stay for dinner.”
“Now wait a minute. I drove you all the way down here today. You can’t make me have dinner by myself; it’s not fair. Tell Mieko I protest.”
“I know. She and I have both been trying to get this woman to understand. All right then, I’ll tell her what you said. I’ll say you’re angry—”
“Angry? No, don’t say that.”
“It’s all right.” She lowered her voice. “This woman has to have it pounded into her. She’s retired and lonely, so she simply won’t let us go….”
Her remarks were quite innocent, but Mikamé’s ears tingled with as much pleasure as if she were telling him secrets.
Around six o’clock they were back, and by the time they had bathed and rested and sat down to eat at last, the hour was rather late.
Unaware that Mieko liked to drink, Mikamé confined himself to a perfunctory glass of beer. Mieko still wore her formal kimono from earlier in the day, removing only the jacket that went with it. Yasuko, clad in a soft padded kimono with a belt at the waist, the black-edged collar drawn snugly against the nape of her neck, had a fresh and boyish charm that Mikamé found irresistible.
“Is it true that Yasuko has renounced marriage?” he began jokingly.
“Certainly not,” said Mieko. “She’s been through so much unhappiness already that I would be delighted if she could find a good husband.”
“Ah, but with the two of you so close, it seems as if a man might only be in the way.”
Yasuko said nothing but smiled ambiguously.
“As long as she kept on working for the magazine, you would be happy then?”
“I could hardly be that selfish, could I? More important to me than the magazine is the work she’s doing on spirit possession. I hope very much to see her bring it to a conclusion.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s got to be done, I agree,” Mikamé said emphatically, and then moved swiftly to the point. “What do you say, Mrs. Toganō—would you let me marry Yasuko? I wouldn’t restrict her freedom in any way. I would want her to keep on just as she is now, not only with the work on spirit possession but also with the editing of the magazine. You see, I lead a funny sort of life, with my time split up between my medical practice and my puttering in folklore, so I really wouldn’t fit into an ordinary marriage. That’s partly why I’m still a bachelor now. But with Yasuko—forgive me if this sounds rude—I think I could have the sort of marriage that would suit me. We know each other so well that I decided it would be more natural to speak to you myself, and not have someone else do the talking for me…but of course, if Yasuko dislikes me, then that settles it….”
“Dislikes you! Of course she doesn’t,” Mieko said sincerely. “But the fact that she is a widow hardly makes her a proper match for a man like you.”
“No, no. That’s totally beside the point.”
Yasuko poured beer into Mikamé’s empty glass with an air of such detachment that she scarcely seemed to be listening to this discussion of herself. Uncertain whether her composure signaled silent consent or determined opposition, Mikamé felt his face flush suddenly from the beer.
“I have no objection,” said Mieko in her serene and gracious way. “If, as you say, you’d allow her to keep on with the research project and with her work for the magazine, of course, I’d be grateful. But Yasuko will have her own ideas on all this. Whether she has any interest in marrying again, I really don’t know. So please, go ahead and talk over the rest of the matter with her. As long as it’s clear to you that I’m not opposed to the idea, I’ll have no more to say.”
“Thank you. For tonight, I’m happy just to know your opinion isn’t negative,” said Mikamé, filling her glass with beer. “Then I do have your permission to spend time alone with Yasuko now and then?”
“Dear me!” Mieko looked at Yasuko, raising the back of one hand to her mouth, and tittered quietly. “Yasuko, Dr. Mikamé insists on speaking to me about his proposal to you. How embarrassing—as if I were the one he had chosen for his bride! You speak up and say something.”