Yūko cheered him on.
“Off we go!”
Kōji tidied the picnic away, confident that he would soon be able to catch up to them no matter how far ahead they got, and gazed after their retreating forms as they appeared to dissolve into the hazy sunlight that sifted down through the trees onto the pebble path.
It was an absurd sight—Yūko doggedly echoing Ippei, “Off we go!”
Kōji was beguiled by that hollow voice, lost in the torrent of the stream. He felt as though the predicament in which he had been placed was as heavy, cold, and immovable as stone. He lengthened the strap of the tea flask and slung it across his shoulder together with the camera and set off with a careless swing of the empty picnic basket.
Having crossed a moldering wooden bridge and climbed a roundabout set of stone steps, Yūko now stood in front of the small shrine, listening to the roar of the waterfall through the dense clump of cedar trees; there was a clear look of contempt in her eyes.
“It’s a pretty dull, small shrine, isn’t it? It’s ridiculous to think we’ve carried the lily all this way to make an offering at a place like this. And what is this cheap muslin curtain with the rosette pattern supposed to mean?”
Inside the shrine, the flame of a candle that was about to expire flickered precariously, and several strings of paper cranes that had all but lost their color swayed ever so slightly in the updraft.
Kōji was afraid of Yūko’s sacrilege.
It was a sacrilege without reason or motive—nothing other than a moody fixation with an illusion she had herself waywardly created.
“But the object of worship at this shrine is the waterfall itself, isn’t it? Who cares about the cheap curtain?”
Yūko was annoyed about something. Her anger-filled eyes flashed as they caught the piercing rays of light coming over the cedar tops.
“All right, then we can throw the lily into the pool, can’t we?”
Then they rested on an expansive sheet of rock at the side of the plunge pool. After hearing the roar of the waterfall, something had changed inside Yūko. She laughed wildly, and then just as suddenly fell silent. Her emotions were self-indulgent—her hot, moist eyes held the waterfall in their gaze, and her dark crimson lips, unsmiling, twisted every now and then.
The view of the waterfall was magnificent.
From a height of some two hundred feet the black rock summit shone in the brilliant light that was penetrating the disordered clouds above, and out from between the light-filled gaps in a sparse coppice water came skipping and jumping in short bursts before cascading downward. All they could see of the upper third was white spray, and while the rock surface wasn’t visible, lower down the water divided itself in two and surged outward as if suddenly attacking the onlookers below. Finally, the flow formed a multitude of columns and then descended abruptly with a shake of its foaming white mane.
The only things growing on the rocks that agitated the water were a small number of weeds that were soaked right through to their stems.
The direction of the wind was constantly changing and one couldn’t be certain from where the spray was next going to come. The sunlight leaking through the tall vegetation on the bank to the right was a picture of tranquility as it threw streaks of even, parallel light across the falling water. The air was filled with the sound of the waterfall and the chirring of cicadas. The two quarreled with each other and at times seemed like one and the same, and yet, at other times their sounds were quite distinct.
They lay down on the rock surface, each adopting a position according to their own fancy. Ippei had taken the lily from where it lay at Yūko’s side and placed it over his face as he reclined on his back. It was difficult to interpret if Ippei’s actions were deliberately exaggerated or if they had been abandoned in midflow. This time, it wasn’t obvious whether he had been trying to appreciate the lily’s fragrance or, perhaps, pretending to devour the flower.
At any rate, his distinguished nose and mouth had been buried in the lily for quite some time. The other two, their ears deafened by the thunder of the waterfall, were pretending not to have noticed.
Then suddenly Ippei began to choke violently and flung the flower away, leaving a startled face speckled around the tip of the nose and cheeks with brick-colored pollen. Or had he been trying to commit suicide with the flower?
Yūko propped herself up. She retrieved the slightly battered lily, took hold of the aluminum-wrapped stem base, and pensively waved it around casually several times in her red-nailed manicured fingers. This was the first time Kōji had seen such a lack of respect in her eyes as she regarded Ippei.
“Say, do you understand ‘sacrifice’?”
She stared into Ippei’s face as he lay once again on his back and posed the question in a contemptuous voice.
Ippei was surprised at the tone of his wife’s question, which was clearly different than usual.
“Sacr… fish?”
“No, that’s not right. Don’t you understand the word ‘sacrifice’?”
“I don’t understand.”
Kōji thought Yūko was being unduly hard on Ippei and so he interrupted. “It’s too difficult for him, you know, such an abstract word.”
“Be quiet. I’m testing him.”
Turning her face to Kōji, she smiled in a relaxed, rather vague manner instead of the harsh look that he had expected to see.
Kōji stared at several stray hairs blown across Yūko’s forehead by the wind from the waterfall and suddenly remembered that single strand of hair floating in the dark bathtub.
“You must have some idea? You’re an idiot, aren’t you? This is what I’m talking about.”
Without warning, Yūko threw the lily she had been holding into the plunge pool. The discarded flower formed a shining white circle in front of them.
Dark confusion spread across Ippei’s face. This was something else Kōji had not seen before—a look of pure anxiety born of being cut off from all understanding.
Yūko was enjoying herself to the point where she couldn’t control herself any longer. She bent backward, choking back tears of laughter, and then quickly asked, “How about the word ‘kiss,’ then? Do you understand that?”
“Ki…”
“Try to say ‘kiss.’ ”
“Ki…”
“You’re stupid, aren’t you? You don’t understand, do you? Well, I’ll show you. It’s like this.”
She turned about and suddenly wrapped herself around Kōji’s neck as he was leaning forward. The rocks were slippery, and Kōji was caught off guard by this surprise attack. Yūko’s lips pressed blindly against his, and their teeth bumped together. After this collision came a meeting of the flesh. She advanced and inserted her tongue into Kōji’s mouth, and Kōji, drawn into that warm, tender morass, swallowed her saliva. His senses benumbed by the unceasing boom of the waterfall, he couldn’t tell how much time had passed. When their lips parted, he was angry. He sensed that the kiss had, surely, been for Ippei’s sake.
“Lay off, will you? Stop tormenting him like this for your own amusement.”
“He isn’t suffering.”
“What would you know about that? In any case, I object to being used like this.”
Yūko looked up at him mockingly. “What are you saying, after all this time? When you’ve been used from the very beginning. You like it, don’t you?”
In spite of himself, Kōji struck Yūko across the cheek. He left his hand there and, without looking at her, turned to face Ippei.
In that instant, Ippei had an unmistakable smile on his face.