16
Downstairs for the first time in three weeks, he sits in the calm of the Japanese room, sipping tea and waiting for the bath to fill. In the alcove, the scroll has been changed. The snow, the bowed pine trees, the men ascending, have been replaced with a painting of bush warblers on a branch of plum blossom.
The bath is so hot his body becomes numb. He lies there, fingering the soft fringe of ragged hair at his chin, his sick-man’s beard. The light of a spring day is slanting through the vent in the wall above him, a clear gold light that falls on the little bran sack Mother uses in place of soap. The season has moved on while he lay upstairs, the year has turned. He should be pleased, but the thought of going back, of starting again the struggle involved even in an existence like his . . is he ready for that? It is almost a relief when, standing up from the bath, he is swept by a sensation of profound weakness, so that for several seconds, as the light flickers and the water drips from his skin, he can do nothing but stand there, wavering between the elements.
17
The last of the night sweats give way to nights of honest sleep. His face, smooth-shaven again, loses its shadows. In weak sunshine he takes strolls in the garden, little restorative circuits in which he breathes, as deeply as he can, the ripening air. He is out there one afternoon, reading on the stump of the old pine tree they cut down in Showa 10, when the phone rings and Miyo calls him from the verandah. When he takes the receiver and offers his tentative ‘Moshi-moshi’ he cannot quite identify the woman’s voice.
‘But it’s me,’ she says, switching into French. ‘Don’t you know my voice yet?’
‘You’ve never called me before,’ he says.
‘Do I sound so different on the telephone?’
‘A little, perhaps.’
She speaks to him in Japanese again, the usual mix of Tokyo polite-style and something more direct, more blunt, more definitely Alissa Feneon. She tells him how Junzo came to the house with a book he had promised her (‘one of those impossible volumes of philosophy he always has his nose in’), and how it seemed no one had seen Yuji or heard from him in weeks. Had his winter illness come?
‘Yes,’ says Yuji, ‘it came.’
‘But you have recovered now?’
‘There has been an improvement.’
‘You don’t sound ill.’
‘Would you like to hear me cough?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t want that, of course.’
There’s a pause. He waits. He cannot begin to imagine why she has called him. He is not even sure where she found his telephone number. Could she have asked Junzo for it?
‘I was going to mention something,’ she says.
‘Yes?’
‘If you would like to go to the kabuki.’
‘To the kabuki?’
‘To see Kasane. Do you know it?’
‘It’s a ghost story,’ he says. ‘Everyone knows Kasane.’
She explains to him that Mrs Yamaguchi, her dance teacher, has been assisting a company of young actors who, though amateurs, are, in Mrs Yamaguchi’s view, both talented and dedicated. Their speciality is the staging of performances in the old style, such as might have been seen in the days of the first Nakamura. They do not, for example, use any electric lighting.
‘I see,’ says Yuji, half fearful this is some sort of game. ‘So it’s kabuki in the old style.’
‘Mrs Yamaguchi will be going. And she has given some tickets to her students. I have two.’
‘Two?’
‘Yes.’
‘To Kasane?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Why do you keep repeating everything?’
‘I’m sorry . .’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘You’ve been ill. You probably haven’t been speaking to people.’
‘No.’
‘So you’ll come?’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow!’
‘We could meet at the house at five, then take a taxi. The theatre’s in Tsukiji.’
‘Ah, Tsukiji . .’
‘I thought you might find it amusing, especially as you’ve been unable to leave the house for so long. Aren’t you bored to death?’
What, he wonders, what form of words, would make her understand that he would rather spend the evening grinding chalk between his teeth than go to a student performance of kabuki? Why has she chosen him? What does she want? It is highly irritating that she refuses to translate his hesitation into what it so obviously signifies.
‘At five o’clock?’
‘You could wear a kimono,’ she says, ‘if you think you remember how to.’ And she laughs, a sound like someone throwing petals in his face. He hangs up. Miyo is eavesdropping in the Western room. Haruyo, he supposes, will have heard everything from Mother’s room — Mother too, perhaps. He goes upstairs, lies on his mattress. Is she, perhaps, a little crazy? He has known her since she was sixteen, but other than Garbo, Dietrich, Bette Davis, Vivian Leigh, Danielle Darrieux and a few others, he has no one to compare her with. He has seen other foreign women, of course, has surreptitiously studied them, their height, their high colour, their colourful eyes, their interesting hair, but it is only Alissa he has had any dealings with, just as her father is the only foreign man he has ever spoken to. What is her interest in kabuki? What is her interest in classical dance — a form not even Japanese people take much notice of? Can she not be satisfied with Molíère and waltzes?
Lying there, he is starting to feel pleasantly fatigued again. There is, he assures himself, plenty of time before tomorrow to think of some excuse, some unavoidable commitment he forgot somehow to mention to her. My sincere apologies . . Most awkward . . Most unfortunate . . Another occasion, perhaps? She, who seems to so admire all things Japanese, and who doubtless subscribes to the curious Western theory of Oriental inscrutability, might enjoy a little demonstration of it. He will hide from her in language. He will conceal himself in a smoke of impeccable manners. It would, after all, require nothing more difficult than a passable imitation of Father.
18
He leaves for the house in Kanda a few minutes after four o’clock. He rides his usual route, but being ill has stripped him of a layer of skin so that the sudden flights of sparrows, the singing of tram cables, sunlight in a gutter, the whiff of, what? — spring mushrooms? — startles and amuses him, diluting a little the exasperated mood he has been in all day, the sense of having been burdened by a ridiculous commitment he has been too dull, too timorous to escape from. His hope now is simply to persuade her to give up the kabuki and come to the cinema instead. There’s a Marcel Carné film at the Montparnasse in Asakusa. He could buy her a coffee, perhaps an ice cream, get her home by nine. If she becomes tedious, argumentative, starts to lecture him on the traditional arts of Japan, he can cough into his sleeve and let go a few deep sickbed sighs. Even Alissa must understand that.
He props his bicycle by the drainpipe, folds his raincoat over his arm, rings the bell. Hanako answers. ‘The master isn’t here,’ she says.
‘Ah . .? But Miss Feneon?’ He would like to add, ‘She called me.’ He would like even Hanako to know he has not simply taken it upon himself to ring the bell without a proper invitation, but before he can speak she has stood aside to let him enter.