He had taught them all to call Honda “the old master,” and otherwise trained them impeccably. Occasional callers would say that nowhere else these days did they see such beautiful and well-trained maids. Tōru left Honda wanting for nothing even while humiliating him.
Having made himself ready for school, Tōru always looked in at the garden cottage. Carefully made up, wearing a negligee, Kinué always received him from the chaise longue on the veranda. Her newest coquetry was illness.
Tōru would sit on the veranda and face the ugly woman with the warmest, most sincere gentleness.
“Good morning. And how are you feeling this morning?”
“Not too bad, thank you. I doubt if there is anything more beautiful in this world than the moment when a beautiful woman with only the strength to make herself up, all weak on her couch, receives a caller and manages a feeble ‘Not too bad, thank you.’ The beauty of it all waves like a heavy flower, and it is there on her eyelids as she closes her eyes. Isn’t it? I think of it as the one thing I can do for all your kindness. But I’m very grateful. You’re the one kind man in the world who gives me everything and asks nothing in return. And now that I’m here I can see you every day and don’t have to go out. If only your father weren’t here.”
“Don’t worry about him. He’ll give up and die one of these days. The September business has been taken care of and everything is going fine. I think next year maybe I can buy you a diamond ring.”
“How nice! That’s what will keep me alive, the thought of it. But today I’ll have to make do with flowers. The white chrysanthemum in the garden is my flower for today. Will you pick it for me? How nice. No, not that one. The one in the pot. That’s it. The big white one with the petals all drooping like threads.”
Heedlessly, Tōru broke off the white chrysanthemum so carefully tended by Honda. Like an ailing beauty, Kinué turned it languorously in her fingers. Then, with an all-too-fleeting smile on her lips, she put it in her hair.
“Be off with you. You’ll be late for school. Think of me between classes.” And she waved him good-bye.
Tōru went to the garage. He started up the Mustang sports car he had had Honda buy him that spring upon his entry into the university. If the absent, romantic engine of a ship could cut through waves so cleanly, kick up such a wake, then why could not the six delicately alert cylinders of the Mustang scatter the stupid crowds, cut through the masses of flesh, scatter splashes of red as the other scattered splashes of white?
But it was held in quiet control. It was coaxed and wheedled into a gentle pretense of docility. People admired it as they admire a sharp, shining blade. It forced a smile from its beautiful hood, paint all ashine, to assure them that it was not dangerous.
Capable of a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour, it debased itself by keeping to the twenty-five-mile speed limit as it made its way through the Hongō morning crowds.
The September third incident.
It began with a little spat Tōru and Honda had in the morning.
Through the summer Tōru had been happily rid of Honda, who had taken refuge from the heat at Hakoné. Reluctant to rebuild after his Gotemba villa burned down, Honda had left the land as it was and, always sensitive to the heat, spent his summers at a Hakoné inn. Tōru preferred to stay in Tokyo and drive here and there, to the mountains and the sea, with friends. Honda returned to Tokyo on the evening of September second. He saw Tōru for the first time in some weeks. There was clear anger in the eyes that greeted him from the sun-blackened face. Honda was frightened.
Where was the crape myrtle, he asked in surprise as he went out into the garden on the morning of the third. The old crape myrtle by the garden cottage had been cut at the roots.
Kinué, who had been in the main house, had moved to the cottage early in July. It had been from fear of Tōru after the poker incident that Honda had first taken her in.
Tōru came out. He had the poker in his left hand. His room was a remodeled parlor. It had the only fireplace in the house. Even in summer there was a poker on the nail beside it.
Tōru of course knew that the mere sight of it would make Honda cower like a whipped dog.
“What are you doing with that thing? This time I’ll call the police. Last time I kept quiet because I didn’t want publicity, but it won’t be so easy for you this time.” Honda’s shoulders were quivering, and it had taken all his courage to speak.
“You have a stick, don’t you? Defend yourself with that.”
Honda had been looking forward to the crape myrtle in bloom, its blossoms shining against a trunk smooth like the white skin of a leper. But there was none. The garden had been made over, he knew, in the Alaya, the Storehouse, into a different garden. Gardens too must change. But in the instant that he so felt, uncontrollable anger came from another source. He cried out, and even as he cried out he was afraid.
The summer rains had ended and the heat had come after Kinué had moved to the cottage. The crape myrtle was in bloom. She disliked it, she said. It gave her a headache. She started saying that Honda had planted it there to drive her mad; and so Tōru cut it down after Honda’s departure for Hakoné. It was as simple as that.
Kinué herself was out of sight, far back in the dusky recesses of the cottage. Tōru offered Honda no explanation. There would be no advantage in it.
“I suppose you cut it down?” said Honda, more softly.
“That I did.” Tōru’s answer was cheerful.
“Why?”
“It was old and useless.” Tōru smiled a beautiful smile.
At such times Tōru would lower a thick glass door before his eyes. Glass that came down from the sky. Glass made from exactly the same material as the limpid morning sky. Honda knew that no shout, no word would reach Tōru’s ears. Tōru would only see false molars. Honda already had inorganic teeth. He was already beginning to die.
“I see. It makes no difference.”
All through the day Honda sat still in his room. He barely touched the food that the “maid” brought. He knew what she would report to Tōru.
“The old man’s being awful sulky.”
Perhaps the sufferings of the old man did in fact come to nothing more than sulkiness. Honda could see in them foolishness beyond defending. It had all been his own doing and not Tōru’s. There was no need for surprise at the change in Tōru. Honda had seen at the first glance the “evil” in the boy.
But at the moment he wanted to measure the depth of the wound inflicted on his self-respect by what he had asked for.
Honda disliked air-conditioning and was at an age when he feared stairs. He had a large twelve-mat room on the ground floor, looking out over the garden to the cottage. Built in the medieval shoin style, it was the oldest and gloomiest room in the house. Honda ranged four linen cushions in a row. He lay down and then sat up on his heels. With all the sliding doors pulled shut, he let the heat accumulate. Sometimes he would crawl to the table for a drink of water. It was as warm as in full sunlight.
Time went past along the indefinable line between waking and sleeping, like a nap at the ultimate end of anger and sadness. Even the pain in his hips would have been a distraction, but today there was none. He was only exhausted.