by Meira Chand
In the beginning he had participated willingly in this Westernisation of the house, enjoying its reflection on his cosmopolitan lifestyle so far removed from orthodox ideals. But looking at it now he suddenly felt the objects in the room were like a hoard of bodies crowding in about him. The rich textures and shiny surfaces supported a vertical world. He alone knew the slender nakedness beneath that was the true character of the room. And he saw then that the room, like him, had been changed by Kate to an uncomfortably strange identity. Only the tokonoma had defeated her ingenuity, repelling all translation. She left it to its own devices with a scroll and a flower arrangement. It looked into the room like a large sad eye, at the disease distending its fragile body. He raised his glass to its apprehensions, feeling at one with its perplexity. The world thawed slightly with the liquor, he reached again for the bottle.
‘You’re drinking too much.’ He tried to push Kate’s voice away. As he stared at the glass in his hand, the door grated in the porch. He waited for Kate to enter the room. She was casual about calling the ritual words of return, he would have a few things to say to her about these matters tonight. He frowned into his glass and shook the ice loudly in annoyance.
It was not Kate but Chieko who stood before him in the doorway. He stared at her in horror. The drink slopped onto his hand as he pulled himself up.
‘I told you never to come here.’ He took a step forward, Chieko slid past him into the room with an artful twist of her body. Her mouth, red and blatant, in her face, stretched into a defiant smile. He took her roughly by the arm, pushing her to the front door.
‘Get out at once. She’ll be back soon. I’ll come tonight, I promise.’ He heard the desperation in his voice. Chieko pulled free of him.
‘I’ve had enough. You can’t treat me like this. It’s time she knew. I don’t care.’ She threw back her head, the breath knotting in her throat, as she looked about the room.
‘Very nice, very pretty. You don’t deny her anything do you? No, you have to do what you’re told with foreign women.’
‘Please.’ Jun looked at the door and then back again at Chieko. It was like a bad dream, he could not believe she stood there before him in his home. She knew what she did by coming here, invading a space where she had no right to be.
Chieko calmly sat down, picked up the glass he had left on the table and raised it to him mockingly. With a smile she tipped back the drink, crossed her legs and wiped her mouth on her hand.
‘What does it matter if she knows? Why should she not also suffer? Why should she be protected at my expense? It’s all clear to me now. I’ve been a fool, I did what you wanted, I kept quiet. But you don’t care, you hardly come, and the money’s not enough. Not enough, do you hear?’ She sat forward in the chair like a small, snarling animal. She had already been drinking before she arrived, harvesting courage.
‘I want to see her. I shall tell her myself.’ She pushed her face up at him. ‘I came here yesterday, I watched this house, I saw her. What a pretty wife. But tell me, is she better than me? I know her type. She’ll never do the things I do. Will she? Can she?’ She pushed herself suddenly against him, her body wheedling. Her breath was sour with drink, and she stirred at that moment nothing in him but a new upsurge of anger.
‘Get out. Get away.’ He pushed her off him roughly. His mind was full of the emotions Kate would feel if she saw Chieko here.
‘I’m not ready to go yet.’ She turned back upon him, twisting about him like a mad thing, he could not shake her free. He stumbled backwards into the soft, unresisting sofa as she came down on top of him, her body filled with crazed energy. Her closeness stirred him now, and fear and disgust at what he was feeling only added to his anger. She had no right to confuse like this the careful structure of his life, here within his own home. He flung her away, but she clung to him still, pulling him with her as she rolled to the floor and broke free at last with a laugh. She lay there limply, her breasts heaving in a convulsion of laughter, her mouth wet and open in her face. Her skirt was rucked up about her hips, her legs spread wide. Along the inside of her bare thigh the flesh was white and soft. He stared at her on the floor beside him, the breath choked within his throat. It sickened him to see her there, he must get her out at all costs.
He looked up then to see Kate standing in the doorway.
12
The light was dying on the hill, thickening in the undergrowth to a dense tapestry of leaves. The waterfall rushed down towards the sea against the current of cars struggling homewards up the hill, headlamps burning in the dusk. Kate walked quickly along the steep, road. Far below the lights of the town glittered, the sky was like spilt ink. It was the flat, yellow kindness of Fumi’s face she needed like a balm now. Fumi knew Jun better than anyone. Fumi must know who that woman was, what connection she had with Jun. Her limbs moved like a sleepwalker, her mind numbed by shock, until the pictures welled up again, searing through her like a burn. She saw again the woman, spreadeagled on the floor, the white stretch of muscle running up her open thighs. And Jun. There was an empty glass on the table, a smear of lipstick on its rim. There were shoes in the porch, pink strappy sandals with heels thin as ice picks, vulgar and high. And Jun. Jun. She screamed his name silently. Horror and helplessness overwhelmed her again. It was a dream. It must be a dream that showed him locked with that woman upon the sofa, his face flushed with drink, his yukata loose about his bare body. It was a dream that showed him turning, falling with the woman.
They turned and fell endlessly in Kate’s mind, taking too long to hit the floor. Taking too long to fall apart. The shame was hot within her.
She let herself in through the back gate. The garden was quiet, full of shadow and the smell of damp soil and moss. The old house was already captured by night, darkness brooded beneath the eaves and the thick, stunted branches of old trees. The kitchen was deserted, ripe and brown and silent as ever. She could not see Fumi. A soup of fish and vegetables, simmering in a pot, coated the air with sinewy smells. Fumi seemed not about, not in the garden, not in her room. The need for Fumi’s kind face grew suddenly tight in Kate, tears of desperation constricted her throat. She went down the hallway, willing Fumi to be in the tatami room, busy as always with her crochet, settled on a cushion in the evening light.
Kate opened the door, but it was Itsuko, not Fumi who sat in the room. Itsuko raised her head from the papers she held, a pair of spectacles on her nose.
‘What is it? Why are you here?’ Itsuko asked.
‘I came ... that is ... I am looking for Aunt Fumi ... I ...’ Kate could not string the words together.
‘Fumi? She went to the doctor. Autumn is here, the evenings are damp, her rheumatism is back.’ Itsuko said, her eyes full of enquiry. Kate was silent.
‘Can I help? What is it?’ Itsuko spoke kindly. ‘You’re white, you look ill.’ She put down her papers, stood up and walked over to Kate.
‘What is it? Are you ill?’ She repeated again, worried now. Taking Kate’s arm she steered her into the room.
‘Sit down. Come.’
Itsuko bent and pulled a cushion forward for Kate, then poured some iced wheat tea into a little cup, thrusting it into Kate’s hands, before settling herself upon a cushion, waiting. Kate sipped the cold, aromatic tea. It slipped down the hard constriction of her throat, its coldness releasing emotion.
‘It’s Jun,’ she whispered. Against all resolve the words dislodged themselves and Itsuko sat forward alarmed.
‘Jun? What’s happened? Is he hurt? Is he ill? Tell me at once,’ she demanded, remembering his belligerence at the mill earlier that day.
‘I came home ... he was there ... with a woman. He was with her ... together ...’ Fleshed into words the images grew viciously before her. Itsuko sat back on her heels, the tension in her face relaxed.
‘A woman? A woman ...?’ she asked, then laughed incredulously with amusement.
‘But he is a man, there will always be women.’ She offered it genuinely,
as comfort, her voice resonant with relief. She had thought there was something really wrong, but it could only be Chieko. Itsuko had known in some way it must happen, sooner or later. For better or worse, it could do no harm to her own plans for Jun, that things were now out in the open. She could understand Kate’s devastation.
She had faced her own crisis many years before when her husband set up the geisha, Komayo, in an establishment of her own. There had been countless others after Komayo. It was only the first time that nearly killed Itsuko; after that she learned not to feel.
Any wise woman’s pride was her home and her children, she looked no further for fulfilment. But of course, thought Itsuko, Kate had not that kind of vision. She wondered yet again what Jun had found so fascinating. Itsuko continued to sip her tea. Kate continued to sit in a state of shock before her mother-in-law. The tick of the clock and the clack of the bamboo mortar in the garden marked her pain like metronomes.
‘The woman is dangerous, I warned him. I knew she would not stay quiet,’ Itsuko offered above her tea.
Her small buffed nails were smooth as petals about a blue flowered cup. The words stung Kate to new numbness. Who was the woman? How did Itsuko know her? She felt she had entered some dark maze of which everyone but she knew the pattern and exit. What was Jun hiding? What life had he had before their marriage? At that moment she knew these were questions held within her since the time they first met. She had been glad not to hear them, glad not to ask. And Jun had offered no information.
‘You take it too seriously. She is just, a woman, of no consequence. But I can understand your shock. He should not have had her in the house. Probably she came, unasked. But even so ... not in the home, not in the house,’ Itsuko admitted.
She could be kind now, seeing in Kate’s shattered face, the means to her own ends. The road ahead already took shape, it did no harm now to offer comfort.
‘In Japan, women are used to these things. We overlook them in a good husband. A woman’s life is hard, no man can bear what we can. We allow him his pleasures in return for security. If a man meets his responsibilities at home, then a wife must overlook his activities away from it. That is the way it is here,’ Itsuko said quietly. Kate looked up in surprise. Itsuko never talked in this tone.
‘I have not always been in this position. I was as any other wife while my husband lived. You must not think I do not understand. My husband was like all other men, as was my father and my grandfather. Those other women are of little consequence in the true circle of a man’s life. They can in no way challenge the position of a wife.’ She spoke kindly, resting her tea bowl on the open palm of her hand before continuing.
‘The men in my family were famous as womanisers; their exploits still live on. We do not regard as wrong indulgences of the flesh. We do not share here your sense of wrong. Perhaps that is the difference. We do not see obscenity where you do. I know you see many things in different ways, and this has made your settling here difficult. If you choose to stay here, there are things you must accept. If you cannot, then it is not too late to go back. Divorce here is easy, especially for a man.’ Itsuko gave a small, sad shrug, but her eyes slid sideways carefully to Kate’s shocked face.
Divorce. The room was nearly dark. A low lamp cast their elongated shadows across the smooth matted floor, like a black substance that flowed out of them. Divorce. The word reverberated in her. How could Itsuko suggest such a thing? Kate drew back with a fear she had not yet felt. The word pulled her together like a slap upon the face. She would never let Itsuko have her way, now she knew her game.
In the silent room, the discharged emotion was solid as granite to Kate. It was not all as Itsuko had said, Kate felt. The ethics she spoke of were remnants of another era, but still alive to her. Jun was so different from his mother, and yet it seemed some residue of the past remained within him too.
Itsuko sipped demurely at her tea, avoiding Kate’s eye. What divided them, Kate felt, were not a history of experience, but a whole alphabet of response. Itsuko sipped on, unforgiving as marble, a small noise in the silent room. Kate could not believe it was as Itsuko said. She knew things about Jun his mother did not. Itsuko saw only what she wished. Jun was not callous, nor was he careless. She was sure of everything built between them. There must be a reason. Kate gave a small bow to Itsuko, and walked quickly from the room.
He was waiting almost where she had left him, sprawled on the sofa. The empty glass was gone from the table, the pink sandals from the porch. He scowled in a way she knew hid stricken guilt. Coming back into the room, the shock beat through her again. She could not sit upon the sofa, nor look at the place where the woman had lain upon the floor. She had been ripped into a thousand bits, and yet Jun refused to cope with the situation; he hid behind his scowl. It was up to her, she thought, and became at once calm and managerial.
‘I shall get us some coffee, and then we shall talk.’ She announced briskly. In the kitchen she found the offensive whiskey glass washed clean of its lipstick mark, draining upside down. She ignored it.
She placed the tray upon a low table on the narrow veranda and drew two cushions to it. The doors were pulled back opening the room to the garden. A few crickets still sang, the night was warm. The moss and old rocks were lit by a garden lamp and took on in the darkness a lunar disguise of cragginess and shadow.
Jun came across reluctantly, flopped down on the cushion and took a sip of the coffee Kate silently served. He did not speak, but looked at her furtively, gauging the route to forgiveness. At last the worst had happened, and in some way he was relieved to share the burden of guilt. Kate appeared calm, as if little had occurred that could not be mended, but this he knew was the British trait of “stiff upper-lip” and could be deceptive. He remembered her face as she had stood in the doorway in that disastrous moment, drained and demolished. He knew to the smallest detail the banality of the scene she had observed. Shame brimmed hotly in him. Their eyes had met briefly before she turned and rushed away. He had slung Chieko out of the house with a force he wished bitterly he had mustered before. For good measure when she struggled, he gave her a blow that cracked her lip as he pushed her through the door. She had stood by the gate, bending to tighten the straps of her shoes, the trickle of blood a dirty weal on her chin.
‘Well,’ she had shouted across the garden, as he stood angrily in the porch, determined to see her out. ‘Well, she knows at last. Let’s see how you get out of that.’ She gave an ugly laugh and left. The click of her heels vanished at last as she disappeared beyond the gate.
He had straightened the cushions on the sofa, washed the glass and tidied himself. He lit a cigarette, waiting blankly for everything that must now be. Kate had probably returned to Paula’s. He wondered if she would ever come back, if his life would ever be the same again. His thoughts seemed detached and unreal, as the event they sprang from. In the dark silent garden nothing stirred. He was drowning slowly in his fate. The dualities of his life had come crashing down upon him like a flimsy house of cards. And he could feel nothing, could not even move, waiting for he knew not what. It was as if he must sit and wait forever, until released by the next event.
It seemed a long time before Kate came back. He was surprised at the change in her. Perhaps she would find a way to make things all right again between them. He did not know what he could do. There would be no way back once she knew the whole truth. Through the open kitchen door he had watched her set the coffee on a tray, frightened by her calm. He was surprised when she took the initiative.
‘I do not know what it means, all I saw in this room earlier. But I feel I know you, and I cannot believe there is not a good reason to put his evening behind us. However difficult it is, you must tell me everything. You owe me that much honesty.’ Her eyes were grave across the small table.
He cursed Chieko for what she had done, and felt as black and wretched as the small speckled beetle that climbed the window beside them. He forced words into his mouth.
&
nbsp; ‘I didn’t ask her here. I didn’t know she would come.’ It sounded sulky, not how he wanted, he tried again.
‘Believe me. I didn’t ask her here. She’s a terrible woman,’ he said fiercely at last.
‘Yes.’ Kate readily agreed. ‘Tell me about her. You must try for both our sakes.’ Her voice was calm and even. He nodded, he was anxious to explain now.
‘I met her years ago, before I came to England, I met her in a bar. She’s a certain kind of woman ... I ... she attracted me.’ He sought out the best words. ‘I became involved with her. For some years we had a relationship. There was never a question of marriage to a woman of her type. I never loved her. It was physical attraction and a relationship of convenience. Her name is Chieko,’ he added, and saw Kate’s expression change. He was getting the words all wrong.
It was not what she had expected to hear. She had thought he would protest his innocence.
‘I tried to cut it off with her, but she threatened she would tell you if I didn’t see her, if I didn’t give her money. I did not want you hurt; I did not want her to destroy us.’ Any moment now he must tell her the rest, tell her the worst. He searched for the right words but they hung beyond his reach.
‘It all began a long time ago, before I met you. Do you think anything like this could have happened after I knew you? Do you think I could look at anybody else in that way? She blackmailed me. And now it has come to this.’
Now he thought, he must tell her the rest. He must tell her of Yukio, now. But she was speaking again.