Death in Midsummer & Other Stories (6 page)

They were very cautious when making a large purchase.

They collected catalogues and looked at various possibilities and asked the advice of people who had already made the purchase, and, when the time for buying finally came, went off to a wholesaler in Okachimachi.

A child was still more serious. First there had to be a secure livelihood and enough money, more than enough money, to see that the child had surroundings of which a parent need not be ashamed, if not, perhaps, enough to see it all the way to adulthood. Kenzo had already made thorough inquiries with friends who had children, and knew what expenditures for powdered milk could be considered reasonable.

With their own plans so nicely formed, the two had nothing but contempt for the thoughtless, floundering ways of the poor.

Children were to be produced according to plan in surroundings ideal for rearing them, and the best days were waiting after a child had arrived. Yet they were sensible enough not to pursue their dreams too far. They kept their eyes on the light immediately before them.

There was nothing that enraged Kenzo more than the view of the young that life in contemporary Japan was without hope.

He was not a person given to deep thinking, but he had an almost religious faith that if a man respected nature and was obedient to it, and if he but made an effort for himself, the way would somehow open. The first thing was reverence for nature, 41

founded on connubial affection. The greatest antidote for despair was the faith of a man and woman in each other.

Fortunately, he was in love with Kiyoko. To face the future hopefully, therefore, he had only to follow the conditions laid down by nature. Now and then some other woman made a motion in his direction, but he sensed something unnatural in pleasure for the sake of pleasure. It was better to listen to Kiyoko complaining about the dreadful price these days of veg-etables and fish.

The two had made a round of the market and were back at the toy department.

Kenzo's eyes were riveted to the toy before him, a station for flying saucers. On the sheet-metal base the complicated mechanism was painted as if viewed through a window, and a revolving light flashed on and off inside the control tower. The flying saucer, of deep blue plastic, worked on the old principle of the flying top. The station was apparently suspended in space, for the background of the metal base was covered with stars and clouds, among the former the familiar rings of Saturn.

The bright stars of the summer night were splendid. The painted metal surface was indescribably cool, and it was as if all the discomfort of the muggy night would go if a person but gave himself up to that sky.

Before Kiyoko could stop him, Kenzo had resolutely snapped a spring at one corner of the station.

The saucer went spinning towards the ceiling.

The salesgirl reached out and gave a little cry.

The saucer described a gentle arc towards the pastry counter across the aisle and settled square on the million-yen biscuits.

'We're in!' Kenzo ran over to it.

'What do you mean, we're in?' Embarrassed, Kiyoko turned quickly away from the salesgirl and started after him.

'Look. Look where it landed. This means good luck. Not
a
doubt about it.'

The oblong biscuits were in the shape of decidedly large banknotes, and the baked-in design, again like a banknote, carried the words 'One Million Yen'. On the printed label of the 42

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.'

43

'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

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 music 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.

47

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.