Yūko seemed to hesitate before continuing. But, as if she was afraid that hesitating for too long would place an unnecessary burden on her words, she added, very quickly, “Just like the way you used that wrench.”
Recognizing her defiance, Kōji decided against allowing himself to be drawn into an argument. Were he to rise to the bait and fly into a rage, he knew full well, since the picnic at the waterfall, that a different part of him would also become aroused. Instead, he assumed a meek demeanor and said, “So, basically, you’ve come here to speak ill of me once again.”
While they may have been separated by the mosquito net—their heads were close enough for each to catch the other’s hushed words—their breath drifted around like mist. Yūko’s breath was extremely fragrant. It seemed as though she had deliberately sprayed perfume in her mouth before coming in.
When he considered the time she must have spent on this preparation, her life’s loneliness became clear to him. The hollowness of her life became quickly apparent with each perfumed breath. Yūko being this close made him feel all the more calm.
“Anyway, I’m a different person now. I’ve turned over a new leaf, you see.”
“So have I,” replied Yūko, a little proudly.
“There’s no need at all for you to mend your ways. There was no need in the past either. I assumed responsibility for that crime so that you didn’t have to have any regrets.”
As he had suspected, his declaration angered Yūko. Pulling her shoulder away from him, she narrowed her eyes in a look of displeasure, and each time her words broke off, she cursed under her gasping breath.
“Assumed responsibility, you say? What a perfectly respectable way to put it! I didn’t ask you to do anything. But if that’s what you want to believe, then go ahead. What a conceited, fine, and chivalrous notion. And something else—you’re forever playing the hypocrite.”
After this, her rage having abated, she made a surprising confession in a flat, quiet voice. The tone of this confession had a lasting effect on Kōji.
Yūko’s jealousy was directed not at Kimi, who was of no importance. It was directed, she said, at Kōji’s crime.
The anguish she felt at not having a crime to her name like the one he committed had grown in intensity. Ever since the picnic that day at the waterfall, this thought had rooted itself blackly in her mind—she wanted to compete with Kōji’s crime, to somehow be able to own a crime like his in order to at least stand beside him.
Kōji mocked her at hearing this, asking Yūko if she thought committing a crime would make her a suitable woman for him, and telling her that she could try until she was blue in the face but it would be impossible to compete with him on that score. He hoped that his mockery would change her mind, like someone using harsh words to keep a person from losing consciousness.
In the face of these arguments, Yūko was preoccupied only with her own troubles and failed to notice at all that she had overlooked Kōji’s suffering. If anything, Kōji was pleased about this. In Yūko’s eyes, Kōji had, until now, appeared as someone who had committed and then atoned for his crime, as someone who at heart could be relied upon as a man of substance, a much happier individual than she was, and this, notwithstanding that Kōji himself would have said he had stood idly by watching fearfully as his sense of the crime and the associated remorse diminished with the passing days. Not that he could begin to relate to anyone else this nebulous sense of fear and unease. He felt as one would at watching a rainbow fade and disappear or watching that sacred hourglass in the prison bathhouse degenerate as the steam moves away, the backlighting is extinguished, and the cinnabar granules run out.
“It’s hot, isn’t it? I can’t stand this heat,” said Kōji.
“Yes, it’s hot,” said Yūko meekly.
The tops of her soft, swaying, slightly sweaty breasts were visible in the gloom through the light green material of the mosquito net. Only that part of her was immune to the dark and seemed to offer up its pale proof of purity. Yūko’s lips were devoid of her characteristic heavy lipstick.
“Aren’t there mosquitoes?”
“There aren’t any. Maybe I’m not so tasty,” she said, laughing for the first time and exposing her front teeth slightly.
Then, moving her face close to the netting, she stared intently—like she was examining the violently pulsating temple of this naked youth—as he squatted inside his quivering, light green cage.
Leaning over the mosquito net, she buried her nose in his shoulder and said, “You smell strange.”
“It must offend you.”
Without altering her position, she shook her head slightly.
This was the moment that Kōji had long been waiting for, and extending his arms, he tried to embrace her. Yūko’s rancor disappeared, leaving only gentleness.
Kōji ought to have persevered a little more and slid out from the mosquito net or else adroitly guided Yūko inside. Instead, he took hold of her, mosquito net and all. The coarse cotton chafed roughly against his bare chest; one of the securing cords came away, and Kōji’s body, too, was enveloped in a wave of cotton.
At that moment, he felt the smooth flesh inside Yūko’s peach-blossom-pink negligee slip through his hands. Yūko, having already moved away from the broad veranda, was now standing near the handrail, pulling her displaced negligee back over her shoulder. Panting for breath, she stared at the quiet mosquito net, before transferring her attention to the garden below.
The glass roofs of the five greenhouses twinkled in the moonlight. Signs of dark, squat vegetation could be seen at the bottom of the glass panes, which reflected the faint, bright outline of some evening clouds. They looked like deep, stagnant water tanks with large deposits of algae.
A white figure stood in front of the orchid house.
Sometimes, worried about the temperature regulation, Teijirō got up in the middle of the night. But that happened mainly in the winter. The white clothing was toweling pajamas—not the sort of thing that Teijirō wore.
Still looking toward the second floor, the figure began to walk toward them. The man was lame in his right leg.
“My husband’s in the garden. He’s coming this way. And he was sleeping so soundly, too!” screamed Yūko, no longer concerned about her loud voice as she turned to face the quiet of the mosquito net.
Kōji made no reply.
Seeing Ippei’s approaching form gave Yūko strength. Drawing near the mosquito net, she gazed at Kōji as he lay sprawled on his back. He had his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes closed. She imagined how her sleeping form next to Kōji would have looked to Ippei’s gaze. She felt that, if he appeared, in front of him she would be able to do anything.
The thought that even the things she hadn’t been able to do without Ippei could be realized at this moment liberated her from a long-continued suffering.
From the moment he heard her scream, Kōji perceived a sudden, violent change in Yūko’s heart—that was how well he had come to know her. And then, the sense of remorse, which had begun to fade, revived itself vividly and filled his heart with the docility of an ex-convict. It was a fondly remembered, tender emotion, and Kōji was attached to it.
“You mustn’t. What you’re thinking is wrong,” he said, firmly pinning down the edge of the mosquito net with his body.
Yūko tried even harder to enter the net from a different angle.
This time, half-struck with fear, Kōji lowered his voice and said, imploringly, “Stop it, will you? I beg you. Stop doing that.”
Her pride wounded, Yūko sat outside the mosquito net, with her back toward the north-facing window. She stared at him with an unmistakable look of hatred.