As his ragged breathing returned to normal, his whole body broke out in a sweat.
“Quickly now, have a bath. You’re soaked through with sweat. Lunch will be ready soon. I invited Kimi to join us, too, but she says she won’t be in time for her boat,” said Yūko.
For some reason, Kōji hesitated and declined to go straightaway to take his bath.
Perceiving this, Kimi quickly said good-bye and began to walk away. Kōji stole a glance at Yūko to see whether she had noticed this sensitive reaction to his considerate action.
But Yūko only looked on with a vacant expression.
“Good-bye,” said Kimi.
Kimi’s eye suddenly flickered, like a berry bursting; then she gave him a conspicuous wink and squeezed his fingertips firmly together. Standing at his side and gazing at him for a while, she swung his hand gently to and fro.
Yūko put her hand to her hair.
Kōji stared only at Yūko, his heart overflowing with magnanimity. This was the first time he had been able to gaze at her with such composure. With the same vacant expression, Yūko inclined her face slightly and then slowly slid her hand across her hair. It was an uncertain movement, as if she were feeling her way through the midst of a dark and complicated memory. Dancing nervously, Yūko’s fingers looked as though they had regained their old delicate and languid nature. Her fingers drew out a hairpin (in that instant, it caught the sunlight and shone a deep violet), and in an extremely perfunctory manner, she pricked the back of Kimi’s hand.
Kimi let out a shriek and jumped back, laughing loudly from a distance. Stooping forward, she licked around the puncture wound, like an animal, and then she ran down the slope. Even after she had disappeared from view beyond the azalea hedge on the corner, her laughter could be heard intermittently, and Kōji fancied that, at the end of the dry path on that gentle slope, Kimi’s lolling tongue was still flickering like a small apricot-colored flame.
Kōji turned toward Yūko with a fawning expression. Even with the intention of appealing to her better nature, he did so in high spirits, in a calm and carefree manner.
Taking care to ensure that he wasn’t seen to be laughing along with Kimi, his smile became increasingly apparent.
Yūko turned her back on him and began to walk toward the house.
“Hurry up and take a bath. I can’t stand the stink of sweat.”
Glancing at her from the side, he realized that her brow was knitted in a deeply chiseled frown. It seemed it was just his perspiration that was on her mind. Perhaps she hated it.
* * *
—
The Kusakado family home was unnecessarily large. Ippei and Yūko slept in the detached ten-mat annex on the ground floor. In the main building, besides the ten-mat living room and the eight-mat sitting room, there were several small rooms that were not occupied, Teijirō’s room at the back of the house, as well as a spacious kitchen and bathroom.
On the second floor was a twelve-mat guest room that was seldom ever used, and next to that a six-mat room where Kōji stayed. At night, they slept separately in their various rooms.
That evening, the air was still and humid. Unable to sleep, Kōji lay naked facedown on his futon inside a mosquito net, flicking through a lowbrow magazine he had borrowed from the village library.
He had been starved of reading material in prison, and one would have thought that Kōji had a strong intellectual craving, yet since coming here he had lost the appetite to read serious literature. He preferred the thick, lavishly colorful magazines—the kind with their pages curling at the edges, like the petals of a sullied artificial flower—that were stuffed full of scandal, comic strips, action dramas, and period plays.
Reading one section after another, he tried his luck with “This Month’s Star Sign”—squinting at the fine No. 7 type print by the dim light of a reading lamp until his eyes were sore—and painstakingly pawing over the readers’ columns.
28-year-old bachelor looking for friendship with a lady. Please write enclosing a photo.
I’m a 20-year-old female shop assistant. Please write if you can go to the movies with me on my monthly two days off. I’ll buy the tickets.
Any ladies out there without family—please write. Let’s console one another.
Looking for carrier pigeons nearby at a reasonable price. Also looking for a male friend. 22-year-old factory worker.
Lonely hearts, from all over Japan, jostling for space crammed into several pages of four-column ads in the magazine; solitude masquerading as cheerfulness was laid bare in just a few words.
What a great amount of loneliness. Such a strong desire to be loved. Pairing the lonely hearts up, as if playing cards, Kōji’s well-trained powers of imagination saw the inevitable consequence of such rash exchanges of correspondence.
The couple finally meet, having exchanged countless letters: they discover in one another’s faces the same kind of loneliness, the same kind of neediness…And yet, out of impatience to complete the mental picture they have already created for themselves, the illusion is superimposed on yet another person in a never-ending cycle—the awkward embrace, the morning after—in the shabby hotel, breakfast in the diner, the carrier pigeons that are kept on the roof, the same magazine, placed by the statue of Hotei, the god of fortune, in the alcove, the same readers’ columns, hopes revived again.
* * *
—
Even though it was the middle of the night, it was unbearably hot. Kōji repeatedly wiped away the sweat that ran down the back of his neck. The smell of the new mosquito net that Yūko had bought especially for him pervaded the inside of the netting.
There wasn’t even a slight breeze, and the stiff, light green creases hung indignant, as if the net had just been put up, and wherever the faint light reached, the fresh vermilion of the corner ties shone vibrantly.
It was as if this vaguely distorted mosquito net intimated the form of the world in which Kōji lived.
He had to get some sleep. He turned the light off and, naked, lay spread-eagled. It felt like the sheet was a shadowy image of his own being—absorbing the sweat that seeped from his body.
As he lay there with his eyes closed, an image came to him of the photograph he had been shown that morning, depicting the girl who looked very like Kimi having sex.
He restlessly moved his body about, feeling his senses sharpening like a knife in the midst of the wearily hot darkness. Although the light had been turned off, a moth clung to the mosquito net and scattered its tiny melancholy scales. He saw its agitated shadow through the darkness. The moth struggled for a while, before flying away through the open window.
The hoot of an owl. The transient cry of the cicada woven in with the night. In the stillness of the night, he could even hear the distant sound of the waves.
Kōji was afraid of this thick, gravy-like rural night. The graphic quality of everything that lay in slumber during the day awakening all at once was so much more physical than nights in the city, and the night itself was like a colossal, intense piece of meat saturated with hot blood.
His keen hearing detected the sound of footsteps coming softly up the stairs. His body tensed as he watched through the darkness. Kōji’s six-mat room had a large north-facing window, while the south side gave out onto a wide veranda with a handrail.
In order to draw a breeze through, the rain shutters had all been left open, and from where he lay he could see the vast southern night sky.
The shadowy silhouette that had climbed the stairs stopped and stood still with its back to the starry sky. It was Yūko, wearing a peach-blossom-pink negligee. His heart throbbed violently. He brushed the mosquito net aside and started to step out.
“No, don’t come out. You mustn’t come out,” said Yūko, in a slightly stern voice.
Kōji hesitated and then crouched on top of his bed. Yūko
sat sideways on top of the loose south-facing edge of the mosquito net. As a result, that side of the net stretched tightly and the securing cords—already mercilessly strained—quivered dangerously in the two corners of the room where they were attached.
“Come over here. Stay inside, though,” she whispered, her dark face pressed against the net.
The scent of her perfume mingled with the night and came to him as he crawled up to her on his knees. The taut netting traced ever so lightly the curves of Yūko’s body.
Kōji touched his shoulder against her rounded form. She didn’t try to pull back.
“You don’t know why I’m here, do you? You look surprised to see me,” she said, in a cheerful tone, without hesitation. “It’s a petty woman thing, you see. I didn’t like the way you looked at Kimi when she was leaving for home. I stuck my hairpin in her hand, right? I couldn’t stand to look at your face after that. Try as I might, I couldn’t sleep thinking about it. That’s why I came. You were so sure I was jealous, weren’t you?”
Kōji nodded, but he managed to resist the urge to smile the way he had done that afternoon when Kimi was leaving.
“But you would be mistaken. I’m not the sort of woman who would do something like that out of jealousy. I was simply admonishing a conceited and discourteous young lady. When I do that, I don’t use words; I use my hairpin.”
Yūko seemed to hesitate before continuing. But, as if she was afraid that hesitating for too long would place an unnecessary burden on her words, she added, very quickly, “Just like the way you used that wrench.”
Recognizing her defiance, Kōji decided against allowing himself to be drawn into an argument. Were he to rise to the bait and fly into a rage, he knew full well, since the picnic at the waterfall, that a different part of him would also become aroused. Instead, he assumed a meek demeanor and said, “So, basically, you’ve come here to speak ill of me once again.”
While they may have been separated by the mosquito net—their heads were close enough for each to catch the other’s hushed words—their breath drifted around like mist. Yūko’s breath was extremely fragrant. It seemed as though she had deliberately sprayed perfume in her mouth before coming in.
When he considered the time she must have spent on this preparation, her life’s loneliness became clear to him. The hollowness of her life became quickly apparent with each perfumed breath. Yūko being this close made him feel all the more calm.
“Anyway, I’m a different person now. I’ve turned over a new leaf, you see.”
“So have I,” replied Yūko, a little proudly.
“There’s no need at all for you to mend your ways. There was no need in the past either. I assumed responsibility for that crime so that you didn’t have to have any regrets.”
As he had suspected, his declaration angered Yūko. Pulling her shoulder away from him, she narrowed her eyes in a look of displeasure, and each time her words broke off, she cursed under her gasping breath.
“Assumed responsibility, you say? What a perfectly respectable way to put it! I didn’t ask you to do anything. But if that’s what you want to believe, then go ahead. What a conceited, fine, and chivalrous notion. And something else—you’re forever playing the hypocrite.”
* * *
—
After this, her rage having abated, she made a surprising confession in a flat, quiet voice. The tone of this confession had a lasting effect on Kōji.
Yūko’s jealousy was directed not at Kimi, who was of no importance. It was directed, she said, at Kōji’s crime.
The anguish she felt at not having a crime to her name like the one he committed had grown in intensity. Ever since the picnic that day at the waterfall, this thought had rooted itself blackly in her mind—she wanted to compete with Kōji’s crime, to somehow be able to own a crime like his in order to at least stand beside him.
Kōji mocked her at hearing this, asking Yūko if she thought committing a crime would make her a suitable woman for him, and telling her that she could try until she was blue in the face but it would be impossible to compete with him on that score. He hoped that his mockery would change her mind, like someone using harsh words to keep a person from losing consciousness.
In the face of these arguments, Yūko was preoccupied only with her own troubles and failed to notice at all that she had overlooked Kōji’s suffering. If anything, Kōji was pleased about this. In Yūko’s eyes, Kōji had, until now, appeared as someone who had committed and then atoned for his crime, as someone who at heart could be relied upon as a man of substance, a much happier individual than she was, and this, notwithstanding that Kōji himself would have said he had stood idly by watching fearfully as his sense of the crime and the associated remorse diminished with the passing days. Not that he could begin to relate to anyone else this nebulous sense of fear and unease. He felt as one would at watching a rainbow fade and disappear or watching that sacred hourglass in the prison bathhouse degenerate as the steam moves away, the backlighting is extinguished, and the cinnabar granules run out.
“It’s hot, isn’t it? I can’t stand this heat,” said Kōji.
“Yes, it’s hot,” said Yūko meekly.
The tops of her soft, swaying, slightly sweaty breasts were visible in the gloom through the light green material of the mosquito net. Only that part of her was immune to the dark and seemed to offer up its pale proof of purity. Yūko’s lips were devoid of her characteristic heavy lipstick.
“Aren’t there mosquitoes?”
“There aren’t any. Maybe I’m not so tasty,” she said, laughing for the first time and exposing her front teeth slightly.
Then, moving her face close to the netting, she stared intently—like she was examining the violently pulsating temple of this naked youth—as he squatted inside his quivering, light green cage.
Leaning over the mosquito net, she buried her nose in his shoulder and said, “You smell strange.”
“It must offend you.”
Without altering her position, she shook her head slightly.
This was the moment that Kōji had long been waiting for, and extending his arms, he tried to embrace her. Yūko’s rancor disappeared, leaving only gentleness.
Kōji ought to have persevered a little more and slid out from the mosquito net or else adroitly guided Yūko inside. Instead, he took hold of her, mosquito net and all. The coarse cotton chafed roughly against his bare chest; one of the securing cords came away, and Kōji’s body, too, was enveloped in a wave of cotton.
At that moment, he felt the smooth flesh inside Yūko’s peach-blossom-pink negligee slip through his hands. Yūko, having already moved away from the broad veranda, was now standing near the handrail, pulling her displaced negligee back over her shoulder. Panting for breath, she stared at the quiet mosquito net, before transferring her attention to the garden below.
The glass roofs of the five greenhouses twinkled in the moonlight. Signs of dark, squat vegetation could be seen at the bottom of the glass panes, which reflected the faint, bright outline of some evening clouds. They looked like deep, stagnant water tanks with large deposits of algae.
A white figure stood in front of the orchid house.
Sometimes, worried about the temperature regulation, Teijirō got up in the middle of the night. But that happened mainly in the winter. The white clothing was toweling pajamas—not the sort of thing that Teijirō wore.
Still looking toward the second floor, the figure began to walk toward them. The man was lame in his right leg.
“My husband’s in the garden. He’s coming this way. And he was sleeping so soundly, too!” screamed Yūko, no longer concerned about her loud voice as she turned to face the quiet of the mosquito net.
Kōji made no reply.
Seeing Ippei’s approaching form gave Yūko strength. Drawing near the mosquito net, she gazed at Kōji a
s he lay sprawled on his back. He had his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes closed. She imagined how her sleeping form next to Kōji would have looked to Ippei’s gaze. She felt that, if he appeared, in front of him she would be able to do anything.
The thought that even the things she hadn’t been able to do without Ippei could be realized at this moment liberated her from a long-continued suffering.
From the moment he heard her scream, Kōji perceived a sudden, violent change in Yūko’s heart—that was how well he had come to know her. And then, the sense of remorse, which had begun to fade, revived itself vividly and filled his heart with the docility of an ex-convict. It was a fondly remembered, tender emotion, and Kōji was attached to it.
“You mustn’t. What you’re thinking is wrong,” he said, firmly pinning down the edge of the mosquito net with his body.
Yūko tried even harder to enter the net from a different angle.
This time, half-struck with fear, Kōji lowered his voice and said, imploringly, “Stop it, will you? I beg you. Stop doing that.”
Her pride wounded, Yūko sat outside the mosquito net, with her back toward the north-facing window. She stared at him with an unmistakable look of hatred.
Kōji’s eyes were dry and bloodshot, and in spite of himself, he stared hatefully at Yūko. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Ippei’s footsteps climbed the stairs. Strange footsteps, once heard, instantly recognizable.
Protecting his right arm and leg, his left hand clung to the handrail as he came ponderously up the stairs. It felt like he would never arrive. It seemed to Kōji like the stairs went on forever, ascending higher and higher.
Yūko stood up, and opened the sliding door to the guest room just a crack. Even during the summer, the door was properly closed in order to partition the two rooms; the partitioning wall was covered with things such as Kōji’s desk and a small chest of drawers. Having not been opened for some time, the sliding door creaked and began to warp slightly in its frame, but she slipped adroitly through the gap and went into the twelve-mat guest room, closing the door behind her.
The Frolic of the Beasts Page 11