Unaiko fell silent, her speech at an end. She had been staring straight at Daio the entire time she was talking, and he had never once averted his gaze. Now, though, he lowered his head. In the sudden stillness, the sounds of the wind and the rain outside grew even louder. After a second or two Daio stretched his arm overhead, releasing the accumulated tension, and I leaned back and did the same.
3
Over the space of the next few minutes, Unaiko began to look utterly exhausted. Her skeleton seemed to have become more visible somehow, almost as if her bones were jutting through the usually robust flesh, and her head drooped toward her chest, which appeared unusually thin and concave. In apparent response to this, Daio announced in a calm, composed tone of voice that the sleeping arrangements he and Asa had discussed earlier were being implemented as we spoke. He went on to say that the hot-spring baths I had enjoyed on my long-ago visit had been expanded, and the therapeutic water was now flowing in the main building as well. On this point, Daio’s memory had deceived him — the only people who had gone into the bathhouse that day were Goro and Peter, the American officer — but I didn’t feel the need to correct him.
On the other side of the facility, he told us, there had been a dining hall and several rooms for occasional guests. However, visitors had been few and far between in recent years, and the communal areas had fallen into disuse. At present the only active part of the complex was Daio’s private quarters, toward the rear of the main building.
Daio explained that the new wing, which was built at the height of the training camp’s prosperity, had once been used as a designated teacher-training facility for the prefecture. The first floor featured a capacious classroom, a separate study hall, a dining room, and accommodations for the instructors. On the second floor were some deluxe rooms for special overnight guests. The room in the eastern corner was particularly well appointed, with its own private bathroom — in hotel terms, a suite. Unaiko would be given the bedroom part of that suite of rooms for the night, but unfortunately there was no choice but to put Mr. Koga’s two minions in the living room of the same suite, where they would sleep on a couple of rollaway beds.
The guest room next door, on the west side, wasn’t nearly as large, but it was equipped with two twin beds. Ricchan and Akari were already ensconced there, and Asa had been with them since we arrived. Daio reported that Asa had asked Akari how it would be if, when it came time to go to sleep, his father replaced Ricchan as his roommate, and apparently Akari had replied, “No, it won’t work, because I need to be here to protect Ricchan.” Daio was going to vacate his own quarters so I could sleep there in comfort, and Asa would lay a futon on the floor of the same room in case I needed looking after.
“As for Mr. Koga,” Daio continued, “there’s a chance he may need to take a call from his wife during the night, so since the cell-phone reception tends to be spotty up here, at best, he’s going to bunk in one of the buildings that used to house the long-term instructors, because it has a landline. At the moment I believe he’s enjoying a little nightcap before he goes to bed.
“The bottom line is, nothing more will be happening tonight. Since the storm has ramped up in the last hour or so, one of the young guys is going to come get us in the minivan and ferry us over to the main building. After I see you two safely settled, I plan to return and indulge in a nightcap or two of my own. (No surprise there, eh, Kogito?) If you should need me for anything at all, just give a shout to the young men who’ll be camped out in the lobby and they will be happy to drive you over in the van. Since Unaiko is supposed to be guarded (or, more precisely, held captive) by Mr. Koga’s bodyguards, there’s nothing we can do.”
By the time we were installed in our various nests for the night it was already two A.M. or thereabouts. Peering through a gap in the curtains of my room, I could see the forest plunged in unremittingly rainy darkness. The wind was so strong that every time a faraway flash of lightning lit up the sky it looked as if an immense wave was rolling through the forest, illuminating the tall trees and seeming to turn their voluptuous leafage inside out. The storm showed no signs of tapering off.
On numerous occasions in our lives — from earliest childhood till now, in our later years — Asa and I had slept in the same room on Japanese-style bedding laid out side by side on the floor, so this was a nostalgic configuration. After turning off the light, we lay there for a while in silence, listening to the sounds of the storm.
Then Asa said abruptly, “Kogii, I was just thinking about your relationship to music. You remembered all the words to the German anthem the young officers were singing in the truck, and while Unaiko was rehearsing Meisuke’s mother’s battle chant you would correct her whenever she veered away from the traditional rhythm. As you know, when Akari’s genius for music was first revealed, Mother and I were very happy. We assumed his gift must have been a legacy from Chikashi’s more artistic side of the family, but it strikes me now that part of his talent might have come from you as well. I remember when we were putting on our own play about the uprising, down at the little playhouse in the village, Mother told me she didn’t have any trouble memorizing the words to Meisuke’s mother’s rallying cry.”
I pretended not to hear Asa’s modulated voice as it mingled with the sounds of the rainstorm and the creaking and groaning of the old wooden building. The ambient noise was so loud that it almost drowned out the constant ringing in my ears — a legacy of the Big Vertigo.
“Kogii,” Asa went on when I didn’t respond, “do you remember some of the other songs from our childhood? Gishi-Gishi, where did you come from? Mr. Rhubarb, where are you from? And where on earth did you leave your arm? Dun-dun. The neighborhood kids used to sing that song when Daio was around, and once when I innocently joined in Mother came over and boxed my ears. I remember being really startled because it was the first time she had ever hit me.”
I tried unsuccessfully to conjure an image of Daio as he might have looked as a child, but then it struck me that the Daio whom Asa and her pals had been teasing with a cruel song would already have been a full-grown adult.
“So, Kogii,” Asa went on, “while you were visiting Akari in the room he and Ricchan are sharing tonight — and by the way, since it looks as if it will take a bit more time for you and Akari to sort things out, isn’t it great that he’s bonded so nicely with her in the meantime? — anyhow, while you were gone Daio popped in to check whether his young helpers had delivered our bedding. When I casually picked up a photograph in an antique frame from the desk over there he said, ‘Here, I’ll take that,’ and he snatched the framed photo out of my hands and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket.
“You’ll never guess what it was, Kogii: a picture of our father, standing on a high bluff overlooking a savannah, dressed like a world traveler or maybe a spy! Next to him was a burro laden with luggage (I didn’t have a chance to look for the red leather trunk, but I’m sure it must have been there), and a very young Daio, who still had both his arms, was shielding the luggage with his body in a protective way. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about how Daio grew up in China or someplace. Maybe Manchuria? I forget the details, but wherever it was, that’s where Father found him. But since he knows the drowning novel isn’t going to happen now, you’d think Gishi-Gishi would be able to let down his guard a little bit, wouldn’t you?”