Revealing a healthy row of teeth that belied his age, Teijirō moved his eyes over the photograph, with a timid, humble smile. But the manner in which he thrust his face forward seemed impudent and overbearing.
“What do you think?” said Teijirō. “It looks a bit like her, doesn’t it? I came by it one time I went to Tokyo.”
Later, when he met briefly with Kimi to say good-bye, Kōji felt very miserable at the thought of the unsolicited story Teijirō had confided in him earlier.
It was a truly headstrong confession. Kōji didn’t know to what end Teijirō had confessed to him. Perhaps there was no purpose. The raw sense of anguish that had been pent up for so long within the old fisherman had, in all probability, degenerated—like rice wine slowly turning into vinegar—and changed into an unpleasant, derisive sneer. The crime had already been dispelled. Kōji was fearful of the obscurely turbid way Teijirō was trying to live the remainder of his life. Discord, malice, an inability to forgive, whatever the circumstances—all these feelings were confused and mixed up in Teijirō’s own indulgent reminiscences, lust, and indolence. Moreover, Teijirō’s life, just like his face, had been steadfast. Anyone exposed to his derisive sneer would have been transformed into mere vinegar. That was true of Kōji, and Yūko, too, and even Ippei.
Kimi came up to the house empty-handed to say her farewells—having left her luggage at the Seitōkan inn. She said there were only forty minutes until her boat departed, and so she was restless from the moment she arrived. Sweating profusely down her light green dress, she hurriedly drank water from the tap near the entrance to the greenhouse.
Yūko had been preparing the midday meal with the young maid. Try as she might, the maid, who lived out of the house, just couldn’t get the hang of cooking with propane gas. Since coming to this region, Yūko suspected that each of the five successive maids had engaged in propagating spiteful go-slow tactics. The hostility was always carried on the southerly wind, blowing up faintly from the direction of the village. And yet, to her face, they would always greet her in a plain and laid-back manner.
Kimi came around to the kitchen entrance, which faced a stone wall overgrown with ferns, and said, abruptly, “Hello there, ma’am. That smells delicious, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, Kimi, it’s you. I heard you are going home today? Won’t you join us for lunch?”
“It’s all right—thanks. I won’t make the boat if I do.”
Guessing that her open-minded husband would prefer it that way, Yūko had arranged it so that she and Ippei took their meals together with Teijirō. However, before long, Teijirō excused himself from this privilege and so from then on husband and wife developed the custom of sitting alone together at the dining table. Since Kōji had arrived recently, Teijirō had become all the more keen to behave in a manner befitting his status, with the result that Kōji ended up taking his meals with Ippei and Yūko. While Kōji received only a modest salary, he was treated as a guest when it came to food. It would have been a sensitive issue had Kimi joined them for lunch, and it was just as well therefore that she had declined the offer.
From the start, Yūko’s cooking wasn’t to the taste of country folk. She used butter and milk in applying herself to the creation of mock French cuisine, and one would think that she took the utmost care in preparing meals, but she could also be very slapdash with her cooking. Ippei never once complained about it, though.
Kimi talked hurriedly while she loitered in the doorway to the kitchen, and Yūko, who was frying snow peas—which produced a noise like a shower of rain—said without turning around, “Why don’t you go and say hello to my husband. He’s in the living room.”
“Yes, I will,” replied Kimi, causing the floorboards to creak as she came bustling up into the kitchen. As she passed behind Yūko, she asked, “Where’s Kōji?”
“Kōji?” said Yūko, this time looking plainly over her shoulder at Kimi. Directing her reply at the large, slightly sweaty, quivering breasts right in front of her eyes, she said, in a low, stuffy voice, “I’ve just sent him to the temple on an errand with some flowers. Didn’t you meet him on the way up? In any case, he should be back in time for lunch.”
Kōji, who had run back up the hill from the temple, bumped into Kimi by the white rose–festooned archway, just as she was being seen off by Yūko. He had no idea why Yūko had come this far to say good-bye to her. She had probably just been passing by chance. Kōji glanced quickly through the gate, but there was no sign of Teijirō anywhere.
Having run all the way back, Kōji was breathing hard. He looked from one woman to the other without saying anything. In contrast to Kimi’s too-radiant face, Yūko’s somewhat fading beauty, which she found difficult to disguise, gave her a refreshingly elegant appearance.
Having heard Teijirō’s unsolicited story just a little while earlier, it seemed to Kōji that the force that overflowed from Kimi’s slight frame must come from the effort of driving back the dark, filthy water that she was immersed in—just like an infant that, hating its bath, splashes water all around.
He understood now the way Kimi had looked at him after they had slept together, as if she was gauging his appetite for pleasure. She was watching to see whether she had infected him with the germ-like secret of her father’s crime. She must have attempted to share her humiliating memory with many men without letting them know the truth. Her inclination was to revel in the web of deceit she wove around her sexual partners. It was this same inclination that compelled her to take advantage of Kōji, and to persuade Matsukichi to love her without giving him the ukulele.
That night when, pale in the flashing light of the lighthouse, with her eyes closed, Kimi had allowed him to caress her body while listening to the boom of distant waves, she must have been quietly picturing—over and over again—the origin of her burning, rejuvenating humiliation and self-loathing.
“Thanks for everything,” said Kimi, greeting him plainly. “I’m working in the factory again from tomorrow.”
“The typhoons will be here soon. It makes sense to return home around now, I guess,” said Kōji.
As his ragged breathing returned to normal, his whole body broke out in a sweat.
“Quickly now, have a bath. You’re soaked through with sweat. Lunch will be ready soon. I invited Kimi to join us, too, but she says she won’t be in time for her boat,” said Yūko.
For some reason, Kōji hesitated and declined to go straightaway to take his bath.
Perceiving this, Kimi quickly said good-bye and began to walk away. Kōji stole a glance at Yūko to see whether she had noticed this sensitive reaction to his considerate action.
But Yūko only looked on with a vacant expression.
“Good-bye,” said Kimi.
Kimi’s eye suddenly flickered, like a berry bursting; then she gave him a conspicuous wink and squeezed his fingertips firmly together. Standing at his side and gazing at him for a while, she swung his hand gently to and fro.
Yūko put her hand to her hair.
Kōji stared only at Yūko, his heart overflowing with magnanimity. This was the first time he had been able to gaze at her with such composure. With the same vacant expression, Yūko inclined her face slightly and then slowly slid her hand across her hair. It was an uncertain movement, as if she were feeling her way through the midst of a dark and complicated memory. Dancing nervously, Yūko’s fingers looked as though they had regained their old delicate and languid nature. Her fingers drew out a hairpin (in that instant, it caught the sunlight and shone a deep violet), and in an extremely perfunctory manner, she pricked the back of Kimi’s hand.