Death in Midsummer & Other Stories (14 page)

She would only have to cross the final bridge for her prayers to be answered.

A sprinkling of raindrops again struck Masako's face. The road ahead was lined with wholesale warehouses, and construction shacks blocked her view of the river. It was very dark.

Bright street lamps in the distance made the darkness in between seem all the blacker. Masako was not especially afraid to walk through the streets so late at night. She had an adventurous nature and her goal, the accomplishment of her prayer, lent her courage. But the sound of Mina's geta echoing behind her began to hang like a heavy pall on Masako. The sound actually had a cheerful irregularity, but the utter self-possession of Mina's gait, as contrasted with her own mincing steps, seemed to be pursuing Masako with its derision.

Until Kanako dropped from the ranks, Mina's presence had merely aroused a kind of contempt in Masako's heart, but since then it had come somehow to weigh on her, and now that there 98

were only two of them left, Masako could not help being bothered, despite herself, by the riddle of what this girl from the backwoods could possibly be praying for. It was disagreeable to have this stolid woman with her unfathomable prayers treading in her footsteps. No, it was not so much unpleasant as disquieting, and Masako's uneasiness gradually mounted until it was close to terror.

Masako had never realized how upsetting it was not to know what another person wanted. She felt there was something like a lump of blackness following her, not at all like Kanako or Koyumi, whose prayers had been so transparently clear she could see through them. Masako tried desperately to arouse her longings for R to an even more feverish pitch than before. She thought of his face. She thought of his voice. She remembered his youthful breath. But the image shattered at once, and she did not attempt to restore it.

She must get over the seventh bridge as quickly .as possible.

Until then she would not think about anything.

The street lamps she had seen from the distance now began to look like the lights at the end of a bridge. She could tell that she was approaching a main thoroughfare, and there were signs that a bridge could not be far off.

First came a little park, where the street lights she had seen from the distance shone down on the black dots the rain was splashing into a sand pile, then the bridge itself, its name 'Bizen Bridge' inscribed on a concrete pillar at the end. A single bulb at the top of the pillar gave off a feeble light. Masako saw to her right, across the river, the Tsukiji Honganji Temple, its curved green roof rising into the night sky. She recognized the place.

She would have to be careful once she crossed the bridge not to pass over the same route on her way back home.

Masako breathed a sigh of relief. She joined her hands in prayer at the end of the bridge and, to make up for her perfunctory performances before, this time she prayed carefully and devoutly. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Mina, aping her as usual, piously pressing together her thick palms.

The sight so annoyed Masako as to deflect her prayer somehow

from its real object, and the words which kept rising to her lips were, 'I wish I hadn't brought her along. She's really exasperating. I should never have brought her.'

Just then a man's voice called out to Masako. She felt her body go rigid. A patrolman stood by her. His young face was tense and his voice sounded shrill. 'What are you doing here - at this time of night, in a place like this?'

Masako could not answer. One word would ruin everything.

She realized immediately from the policeman's breathless questioning and the tone of his voice that he had mistakenly supposed that the girl praying on a bridge in the middle of the night intended to throw herself into the river. Masako could not speak. She would have to make Mina understand that she must answer instead. She tugged at Mina's dress and tried to awaken her intelligence. No matter how obtuse Mina might be, it was inconceivable that she should fail to understand, but she kept her mouth obstinately shut. Masako saw to her dismay that -

whether in obedience to the original instructions or because she intended to protect her own prayer - Mina was resolved not to speak.

The policeman's tone became rougher. 'Answer me. I want an answer.'

Masako decided that her best bet was to make a break for the other side of the bridge and to explain once she was across. She shook off the policeman's hand and raced out on to the bridge.

Even as Masako started running, she noticed Mina dash out after her.

About half-way across the bridge the policeman caught up with Masako. He grabbed her arm. 'Tried to run away, did.

you?'

'Run away? What a thing to say! You're hurting me, holding my arm like that!' Masako cried out before she knew it. Then, realizing that her prayers had been brought to nothing, she glared at the other end of the bridge, her eyes burning with fury. Mina, safely across, was completing the fourteenth and last prayer.

Masako complained hysterically to her mother when she got 100

home, and the other, not knowing what it was all about, scolded Mina. 'What were you praying for, anyway?' she asked Mina.

Mina only smirked for an answer.

A few days later Masako, her spirits somewhat revived, was teasing Mina. She asked for the hundredth time, 'What were you praying for? Tell me. Surely you can tell me now.'

Mina only gave a faint and evasive smile.

'You're dreadful! Mina, you're really dreadful!'

Masako laughingly poked Mina's shoulder with the sharp points of her manicured nails. The resilient, heavy flesh repelled the nails. A dull sensation lingered in Masako's fingertips, and she felt at a loss what to do with her hand.

Translated by Donald Keene

On the twenty-eighth of February, 1936 (on the third day, that is, of the February 26 Incident), Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama of the Konoe Transport Battalion - profoundly disturbed by the knowledge that his closest colleagues had been with the mutineers from the beginning, and indignant at the imminent prospect of Imperial troops attacking Imperial troops - took his officer's sword and ceremonially disembowelled himself in the eight-mat room of his private residence in the sixth block of Aoba-cho, in Yotsuya Ward. His wife, Reiko, followed him, stabbing herself to death. The lieutenant's farewell note consisted of one sentence: 'Long live the Imperial Forces.' His wife's, after apologies for her unfilial conduct in thus preceding her parents to the grave, concluded: 'The day which, for a soldier's wife, had to come, has come....' The last moments of this heroic and dedicated couple were such as to make the gods themselves weep. The lieutenant's age, it should be noted, was thirty-one, his wife's twenty-three; and it was not half a year since the celebration of their marriage.

Those who saw the bride and bridegroom in the com-memorative photograph - perhaps no less than those actually present at the lieutenant's wedding - had exclaimed in wonder at the bearing of this handsome couple. The lieutenant, majestic in military uniform, stood protectively beside his bride, his right hand resting upon his sword, his officer's cap held at his left side. His expression was severe, and his dark brows and wide-gazing eyes well conveyed the clear integrity of youth. For the beauty of the bride in her white over-robe no comparisons were adequate. In the eyes, round beneath soft brows, in the slender, finely shaped nose, and in the full hps, there was both sen-suousness and refinement. One hand, emerging shyly from a 102

sleeve of the over-robe, held a fan, and the tips of the fingers, clustering delicately, were like the bud of a moonflbwer.

After the suicide, people would take out this photograph and examine it, and sadly reflect that too often there was a curse on these seemingly flawless unions. Perhaps it was no more than imagination, but looking at the picture after the tragedy it almost seemed as if the two young people before the gold-lacquered screen were gazing, each with equal clarity, at the deaths Which lay before them.

Thanks to the good offices of their go-between, Lieutenant General Ozeki, they had been able to set themselves up in a new home at Aoba-cho in Yotsuya. 'New home' is perhaps mis-leading. It was an old three-room rented house backing on to a small garden. As neither the six- nor the four-and-a-half-mat room downstairs was favoured by the sun, they used the up*

stairs eight-mat room as both bedroom and guest room. There was no maid, so Reiko was left alone to guard the house in her husband's absence.

The honeymoon trip was dispensed with on the grounds that these were times of national emergency. The two of them had spent the first night of their marriage at this house. Before going to bed, Shinji, sitting erect on the floor with his sword laid before him, had bestowed upon his wife a soldierly lecture. A woman who had become the wife of a soldier should know and resolutely accept that her husband's death might come at any moment. It could be tomorrow. It could be the day after. But, no matter when it came - he asked - was she steadfast in her resolve to accept it? Reiko rose to her feet, pulled open a drawer of the cabinet, and took out what was the most prized of her new possessions, the dagger her mother had given her. Returning to her place, she laid the dagger without a word on the mat before her, just as her husband had laid his sword. A silent understanding was achieved at once, and the lieutenant never again sought to test his wife's resolve.

In the first few months of her marriage Reiko's beauty grew daily more radiant, shining serene like the moon after rain.

As both were possessed of young, vigorous bodies, their relationship was passionate. Nor was this merely a matter of the 103

night. On more than one occasion, returning home straight from manoeuvres, and begrudging even the time it took to remove his mud-splashed uniform, the lieutenant had pushed his wife to the floor almost as soon as he had entered the house.

Reiko was equally ardent in her response. For a little more or a little less than a month, from the first night of their marriage Reiko knew happiness, and the lieutenant, seeing this, was happy too.

Reiko's body was white and pure, and her swelling breasts conveyed a firm and chaste refusal; but, upon consent, those breasts were lavish with their intimate, welcoming warmth.

Even in bed these two were frighteningly and awesomely serious. In the very midst of wild, intoxicating passions, their hearts were sober and serious.

By day the lieutenant would think of his wife in the brief rest periods between training; and all day long, at home, Reiko would recall the image of her husband. Even when apart, however, they had only to look at the wedding photograph for their happiness to be once more confirmed. Reiko felt not the slightest
surprise
that a man who had been a complete stranger until a few months ago should now have become the sun about which her whole world revolved.

All these things had a moral basis, and were in accordance with the Education Rescript's injunction that 'husband and wife should be harmonious'. Not once did Reiko contradict her husband, nor did the lieutenant ever find reason to scold his wife.

On the god shelf below the stairway, alongside the tablet from the Great Ise Shrine, were set photographs of their Imperial Majesties, and regularly every morning, before leaving for duty, the lieutenant would stand with his wife at this hallowed place and together they would bow their heads low. The offering water was renewed each morning, and the sacred sprig of
sasaki
was always green and fresh. Their lives were lived beneath the solemn protection of the gods and were filled with an intense happiness which set every fibre in their bodies trembling.

104

2 Although Lord Privy Seal Saito's house was in their neighbourhood, neither of them heard any noise of gunfire on the morning of 26 February. It was a bugle, sounding muster in the dim, snowy dawn, when the ten-minute tragedy had already ended, which first disrupted the lieutenant's slumbers. Leaping at once from his bed, and without speaking a word, the lieutenant donned his uniform, buckled on the sword held ready for him by his wife, and hurried swiftly out into the snow-covered streets of the still darkened morning. He did not return until the evening of the twenty-eighth.

Later, from the radio news, Reiko learned the full extent of this sudden eruption of violence. Her life throughout the subsequent two days was lived alone, in complete tranquillity, and behind locked doors.

In the lieutenant's face, as he hurried silently out into the snowy morning, Reiko had read the determination to die. If her husband did not return, her own decision was made: she too would die. Quietly she attended to the disposition of her personal possessions. She chose her sets of visiting kimonos as keepsakes for friends of her schooldays, and she wrote a name and address on the stiff paper wrapping in which each was folded.

Constantly admonished by her husband never to think of the morrow, Reiko had not even kept a diary and was now denied the pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of the happiness of the past few months and consigning each page to the fire as she did so. Ranged across the top of the radio were a small china dog, a rabbit, a squirrel, a bear, and a fox. There were also a small vase and a water pitcher. These comprised Reiko's one and only collection. But it would hardly do, she imagined, to give such things as keepsakes. Nor again would it be quite proper to ask specifically for than to be included in the coffin. It seemed to Reiko, as these thoughts passed through her mind, that the expressions on the small animals' faces grew even more lost and forlorn.

Reiko took the squirrel in her hand and looked at it. And then, her thoughts turning to a realm far beyond these childlike 105

affections, she gazed up into the distance at the great sunlike principle which her husband embodied. She was ready, and happy, to be hurtled along to her destruction in that gleaming sun chariot - but now, for these few moments of solitude, she allowed herself to luxuriate in this innocent attachment to trifles. The time when she had genuinely loved these things, however, was long past. Now she merely loved the memory of having once loved them, and their place in her heart had been filled by more intense passions, by a more frenzied happiness.