cellophane wrapper, the figure of a bald shopkeeper took the place of Prince Shotoku, who decorates most banknotes. There were three large biscuits in each package.
Over the objections of Kiyoko, who thought fifty yen for these biscuits ridiculous, Kenzo bought a package to make doubly sure of the good luck. He immediately broke the wrapping, gave a biscuit to Kiyoko, and took one himself. The third went into her handbag.
As his strong teeth bit into the biscuit, a sweet, slightly bitter taste flowed into his mouth. Kiyoko took a little mouselike bite from her own biscuit, almost too large for her grasp.
Kenzo brought the flying saucer back to the toy counter.: The salesgirl, out of sorts, looked away as she reached to take it.
Kiyoko had high, arched breasts, and, though she was small, her figure was good. When she walked with Kenzo she seemed to be hiding in his shadow. At street crossings he would take her arm firmly, look to the right and the left, and help her across, pleased at the feel of the rich flesh.
Kenzo liked the pliant strength in a woman who, although she could perfectly well do things for herself, always deferred to her husband. Kiyoko had never read a newspaper, but she had an astonishingly accurate knowledge of her surroundings.
When she took a comb in her hand or turned over the leaf of a calendar or folded a summer kimono, it was not as if she were engaged in housework, but rather as if, fresh and alert, she were keeping company with the 'things' known as comb and calendar and kimono. She soaked in her world of things as she might soak in a bath
'There's an indoor amusement park on the fourth floor. We can kill time there,' said Kenzo. Kiyoko followed silently into a waiting lift, but when they reached the fourth floor she tugged at his belt.
'It's a waste of money. Everything seems so cheap, but it's all arranged so that you spend more money than you intend to.'
'That's no way to talk. This is our good night, and if you tell yourself it's like a first-run movie it doesn't seem so expensive.'
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'What's the sense in a first-run movie? If you wait a little while you can see it for half as much.'
Her earnestness was most engaging. A brown smudge from the biscuit clung to her puckered lips.
'Wipe your mouth,' said Kenzo. 'You're making a mess of yourself.'
Kiyoko looked into a mirror on a near-by pillar and removed the smear with the nail of her little finger. She still had two-thirds of a biscuit in her hand.
They were at the entrance to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'. Jagged rocks reached to the ceiling, and the porthole of a submarine on the sea floor served as the ticket window: forty yen for adults, twenty yen for children.
'But forty yen is too high,' said Kiyoko, turning away from the mirror. 'You aren't any less hungry after you look at all those cardboard fish, and for forty yen you can get a hundred grams of the best kind of real fish.'
'Yesterday they wanted forty for a cut of black snapper. Oh, well. When you're chewing on a million yen you don't talk like a beggar.'
The brief debate finished, Kenzo bought the tickets.
'You've let that biscuit go to your head.'
'But it isn't bad at all. Just right when you're hungry.'
'You just ate.'
At a landing like a railway platform five or six little boxcars, each large enough for two people, stood at intervals along a track. Three or four other couples were waiting, but the two climbed unabashedly into a car. It was in fact a little tight for two, and Kenzo had to put his arm around his wife's shoulders.
The operator was whistling somewhat disdainfully. Kenzo's powerful arm, on which the sweat had dried, was solid against Kiyoko's naked shoulders and back. Naked skin clung to naked skin like the layers of some intricately folded insect's wing. The car began to shake.
'I'm afraid,' said Kiyoko, with the expression of one not in the least afraid.
The cars, each some distance from the rest, plunged into a
44
dark tunnel of rock. Immediately inside there was a sharp curve, and the reverberations were deafening.
A huge shark with shining green scales passed, almost brush-ing their heads, and Kiyoko ducked away. As she clung to her young husband he gave her a kiss. After the shark had passed, the car ground round a curve in pitch darkness again, but his lips landed unerringly on hers, little fish speared in the dark.
The little fish jumped and were still.
The darkness made Kiyoko strangely shy. Only the violent shaking and grinding sustained her. As she slipped deep into the tunnel, her husband's arms around her, she felt naked and flushed crimson. The darkness, dense and impenetrable, had a strength that seemed to render clothes useless. She thought of a dark shed she had secretly played in as a child.
Like a flower springing from the darkness, a red beam of light flashed at them, and Kiyoko cried out once more. It was the wide, gaping mouth of a big angler fish on the ocean floor.
Around it, coral fought with the poisonous dark green of seaweed.
Kenzd put his cheek to his wife's - she was still clinging to him - and with the fingers of the arm around her shoulders played with her hair. Compared to the motion of the car the motion of the fingers was slow and deliberate. She knew that he was enjoying the show and enjoying her fright at it as well.
'Will it be over soon? I'm afraid.' But her voice was drowned out in the roar.
Once again they were in darkness. Though frightened, Kiyoko had her store of courage. Kenzo's arms were around her, and there was no fright and no shame she could not bear.
Because hope had never left them, the state of happiness was for the two of them just such a state of tension.
A big, muddy octopus appeared before them. Once again Kiyoko cried out. Kenzo promptly kissed the nape of her neck. The great tentacles of the octopus filled the cave, and a fierce lightning darted from its eyes.
At the next curve a drowned corpse was standing discon-solately in a seaweed forest.
Finally the light at the far end began to show, the car slowed 45
down, and they were liberated from the unpleasant noise: At the bright platform the uniformed attendant waited to catch the forward handle of the car.
'Is that all?'asked Kenzo.
The man said that it was.
Arching her back, Kiyoko climbed to the platform and whispered in Kenzo's ear: 'It makes you feel like a fool, paying forty yen for that.'
At the door they compared their biscuits. Kiyoko had two-thirds left, and Kenzo more than half.
'Just as big as when we came in,' said Kenzo. 'It was so full of thrills that we didn't have time to eat.'
'If you think about it that way, it doesn't seem so bad after all.' Kenzo's eyes were already on the gaudy sign by another door. Electric decorations danced around the word 'Magicland', and green and red lights flashed on and off in the startled eyes of a cluster of dwarfs, their domino costumes shining in gold and silver dust. A bit shy about suggesting immediately that they go in, Kenzo leaned against the wall and munched away at his biscuit.
'Remember how we crossed the parking lot? The light brought out our shadows on the ground, maybe two feet apart, and a funny idea came to me. I thought to myself how it would be if a little boy's shadow bobbed up and we took it by the hand.
And just then a shadow really did break away from ours and come between them.'
'No!'
'Then I looked round, and it was someone behind us. A couple of drivers were playing catch, and one of them had dropped the ball and run after it.'
'One of these days we really will be out walking, three of us.' 'And we'll bring it here.' Kenzo motioned towards the sign.
'And so we ought to go in and have a look at it first.'
Kiyoko said nothing this time as he started for the ticket window.
Possibly because it was a bad time of the day, Magicland was 46
not popular. On both sides of the path as they entered there were flashing banks of artificial flowers. A musi
c box was playing. 'When we build our house this is the way we'll have the path.'
'But it's in very bad taste,' objected Kiyoko.
How would it feel to go into a house of your own? A building fund had not yet appeared in the plans of the two, but in due course it would. Things they scarcely dreamed of would one day appear in the most natural way imaginable. Usually so prudent, they let their dreams run on this evening, perhaps, as Kiyoko said, because the million-yen biscuits had gone to their heads.
Great artificial butterflies were taking honey from the artificial flowers. Some were as big as brief-cases, and there were yellow and black spots on their translucent red wings.
Tiny bulbs flashed on and off in their protuberant eyes. In the light from below, a soft aura as of sunset in a mist bathed the plastic flowers and grasses. It may have been dust rising from the floor.
The first room they came to, following the arrow, was the leaning room. The floor and all the furnishings leaned so that when one entered upright there was a grating, discordant note to the room.
'Not the sort of house I'd want to live in,' said Kenzo, bracing himself against a table on which there were yellow wooden tulips. The words were like a command. He was not himself aware of it, but his decisiveness was that of the privileged one whose hope and well-being refuse to admit outsiders. It was not strange that in the hope there was a scorn for the hopes of others and that no one was allowed to lay a finger on the well-being.
Braced against the leaning table, the determined figure in the undershirt made Kiyoko smile. It was a very domestic scene.
Kenzo was like an outraged young man who, having built an extra room on his Sundays, had made a mistake somewhere and ended up with the windows and floors all askew.
'You could live in a place like this, though,' said Kiyoko.
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Spreading her arms like a mechanical doll, she leaned forward as the room leaned, and her face approached Kenzo's broad left shoulder at the same angle as the wooden tulips.
His brow wrinkled in a serious young frown, Kenzo smiled.
He kissed the cheek that leaned towards him and bit roughly into his million-yen biscuit.
By the time they had emerged from the wobbly staircases, the shaking passageways, the log bridges from the railings of which monster heads protruded, and numerous other curious places as well, the heat was too much for them. Kenzd finished his own biscuit, took what was left of his wife's between his teeth, and set out in search of a cool evening breeze. Beyond a row of rocking-horses, a door led out to a balcony.
'What time is it?' asked Kiyoko.
'A quarter to nine. Let's go out and cool off till nine.'
'I'm thirsty. The biscuit was so dry.' She fanned at her perspiring white throat with Kenzo's sports shirt.
'In a minute you can have something to drink.'
The night breeze was cool on the wide balcony. Kenzo yawned a wide yawn and leaned against the railing beside his wife. Bare young arms caressed the black railing, wet with the night dew.
'It's much cooler than when we came in.'
'Don't be silly,' said Kenzo. 'It's just higher.'
Far below, the black machines of the outdoor amusement park seemed to slumber. The bare seats of the merry-go-round, slightly inclined, were exposed to the dew. Between the iron bars of the aerial observation car, suspended chairs swayed gently in the breeze.
The liveliness of the restaurant to the left was in complete contrast. They had a bird's-eye view into all the corners of the wide expanse inside its walls. Everything was there to look at, as if on a stage: the roofs of the separate cottages, the passages joining them, the ponds and brooks in the garden, the stone lanterns, the interiors of the Japanese rooms, some with serving maids whose kimono sleeves were held up by red cords, others with dancing geisha. The strings of lanterns at the eaves were beautiful, and their white lettering was beautiful too.
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The wind carried away the noises of the place, and there was something almost mystically beautiful about it, congealed in delicate detail there at the bottom of the murky summer night.
'I'll bet it's expensive.' Kiyoko was once more at her favour-ite romantic topic.
'Naturally. Only a fool would go there.'
'I'll bet they say that cucumbers are a great delicacy, and they charge some fantastic price. How much?'
Two hundred, maybe.' Kenzo took his sports shirt and started to put it on.
Buttoning it for him, Kiyoko continued: 'They must think their customers are fools. Why, that's ten times what cucumbers are worth. You can get three of the very best for twenty yen.'
'Oh? They're getting cheap.'
The price started going down a week or so ago.'
It was five to nine. They went out to look for a stairway to the coffee shop on the third floor. Two of the biscuits had disappeared. The other was too large for Kiyoko's very large handbag, and protruded from the unfastened clasp.
The old lady, an impatient person, had arrived early and was waiting. The seats from which the loud jazz orchestra could best be seen were all taken, but there were vacant places where the bandstand was out of sight, beside the potted palm probably rented from some gardener. Sitting alone in a summer kimono, the old lady seemed wholly out of place.
She was a small woman not far past middle age, and she had the clean, well-tended face of the plebeian lowlands. She spoke briskly with many delicate gestures. She was proud of the fact that she got on so nicely with young people.
'You'll be treating me, of course, so I ordered something expensive while I was waiting.' Even as she spoke the tall glass arrived, pieces of fruit atop a parfait.
'Now that was generous of you. All we needed was soda water.'
Her outstretched little finger taut, the old lady plunged in with her spoon and skilfully brought out the cream beneath.
Meanwhile she was talking along at her usual brisk pace. 49
'It's nice that this pkice is so noisy and no one can hear us.
Tonight we go to Nakano - I think I mentioned it over the phone. An ordinary private house and - can you imagine it? -
the customers are housewives having a class reunion. There's not much that the rich ladies don't know about these days. And I imagine they walk around pretending the idea never entered their heads. Anyway, I told them about you, and they said they had to have you and no one else. They don't want someone who's all beaten up by the years, you know. And I must say that I can't blame them. So I asked a good stiff price and she said it was low and if they were pleased they'd give you a good tip.
They haven't any idea what the market rate is, of course. But I want you to do your best, now. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, but if they're pleased we'll get all sorts of rich customers. There aren't many that go as well together as you two do, of course, and I'm not worried, but don't do anything to make me
' ashamed of you. Well, anyhow, the woman of the house is the wife of some important person or other, and she'll be waiting for us at the coffee shop in front of Nakano station. You know what will happen next. She'll send the taxi through all sorts of back alleys to get us mixed up. I don't imagine shell blindfold us, but she'll pull us through the back door so we don't have a chance to read the sign on the gate. I won't like it any better than you will, but she has herself to consider, after all. Don't let it bother you. Me? Oh, I'll be doing the usual thing, keeping watch in the hall. I can bluff my way through, I don't care who comes in. Well, maybe we ought to get started. And let me say it again, I want a good performance from you.'
It was late in the night, and Kiyoko and Kenz5 had left the old lady and were back in Asakusa. They were even more exhausted than usual. Kenzo's wooden clogs dragged along the street. The billboards in the park were a poisonous black under the cloudy sky.
Simultaneously, they looked up at the New World. The neon pagoda was dark.
'What a rotten bunch. I don't thing I've ever seen such a rotten, stuck-up bunch,' said Kenzo.
Her eyes on the ground, Kiyoko did not answer.
'Well? Did you ever see a worse bunch of affected old women?'
'No. But what can you do? The pay was good.'
'Playing around with money they pry from their husbands.
Don't get to be that way when you have money.'
'Silly.' Kiyoko's smiling face was sharply white in the darkness.
'A really nasty bunch.' Kenzo spat in a strong white arc.
'How much?'
'This.' Kiyoko reached artlessly into her handbag and pulled out some notes.
'Five thousand? We've never made that much before. And the old woman took three thousand. Damn! I'd like to tear it up, that's what I'd like to do. That would really feel good.'
Kiyoko took the money back in some consternation. Her finger touched the last of the million-yen biscuits.
'Tear this up in its place,' she said softly.
Kenzd took the biscuit, wadded the cellophane wrapper, and threw it to the ground. It crackled sharply on the silent, deserted street. Too large for one hand, he took the biscuit in both hands and tried to break it. It was damp and soggy, and the sweet surface stuck to his hands. The more it bent the more it resisted.
He was in the end unable to break it.
Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker Thermos Flasks
Kawase, who had been in Los Angeles for six months on company business, could have gone directly back to Japan, but was staying in San Francisco for a few days. Looking over the San Francisco Chronicle in his hotel, he suddenly wanted to read something in Japanese and took out a letter that had come to Los Angeles from his wife.
'Shigeru seems to remember his father from time to time. For no reason at all, he will get a worried expression and say:
"Where's papa?" The thermos flask still works very well when he is bad. Your sister from Setagaya was here the other day and said that she had never heard of a child who was afraid of thermos flasks. Maybe because it's old, the thermos flask leaks air round the cork, even when you put it down very gently, and makes noises like some old man complaining to himself. Shigeru always decides to behave when he hears it. I'm sure he is more afraid of the thermos flask than of his indulgent father.'
Death in Midsummer and Other Stories Page 5