“There are no mirrors in prison,” he began. “Of course, there’s no need for things like that. But as it nears the time for you to get out you suddenly become worried about your face. How will it look to people on the outside? In short, a convict who’s coming up for release doesn’t simply want his discharge number, he wants his face back. But like I said, there are no mirrors. What you do is you stand a dustpan against the outside of the windowpane so that your face is reflected in the glass. And so, whenever you see a cell with a dustpan against the window, you know that the guy inside is due for release soon.”
Yūko couldn’t stand listening to the story, and midway through in a feigned attempt to fix her face she opened the compact she had taken out from her sash. She had glanced at her own face and then thrust the mirror in front of Kōji. “Take a look! You haven’t changed one little bit. There are no shadows anywhere.”
For Kōji, Yūko’s choice of words was more of a neurotic response than pushing the mirror under his nose. “You haven’t changed one little bit.” They were frightening words.
The surface of the mirror was dusted over with powder. He pursed his lips and blew. Before he had time to see the tip of his unexpectedly magnified nose, his nostrils were stifled with the scent of the floating powder. He closed his eyes, intoxicated by the stinging sensation it produced.
The world he had been trying so hard to reach for so long opened up expansively before him. A world of powder. The reality that corresponded to his long-held fantasy sent forth a fragrance of the genuine article. The privilege of dreaming inside one’s prison cell, which he thought had since passed, took on meaning again for the first time since his release. A world of powder, wrapped in silk, the dusky comings and goings of its scent always carrying with them that languid afternoon flavor. And if there were times when it drifted far away in the distance, there were also times when it suddenly appeared before one’s very eyes. While that world flies away in a moment, it leaves its trace on the finger like the minute dusty scales of a butterfly’s wing…
“Well? You haven’t changed one little bit, have you?” Yūko’s bare white arm snaked out through the patchy sunlight filtering through the trees and snatched the compact away from Kōji’s hand.
The drone of the machine saws had stopped, apparently for the lunch break. The surrounding area had become extremely quiet, save for the insistent wing beat of a greenbottle flying low around the convolvulus flower. Likely as not it had hatched from a discarded rotten fish on the beach, and having eaten its fill and become fat, it was now flying about in something of a faithless manner. It was a splendid combination of silver and dirt, and of cold metallic brilliance and warm putrefaction. Kōji imagined that before long he would probably become fond of entomology, although there was once a time as a young man when he never so much as looked at an insect.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to visit even once. I often explained the reason why in my postcards, but it’s the truth, believe me. I can’t even leave the house for a night. It’s his condition, you see. When you see him, I’m sure you will understand, too. He’d be in a real fix if I wasn’t there all the time.”
“You must be content,” answered Kōji, offhandedly.
Yūko’s reaction, however, was remarkable. Her richly proportioned face reddened, and from between her impatiently twitching thin lips came forth a torrent of confused words, like the discordant hammering of piano keys.
“Is that what you wanted to say? The first thing you wanted to say when you came out was that? Oh, it’s awful. That’s an awful way of putting it. If you say it like that, then it ruins everything. It gets to the point where I can’t trust anything in this world. Promise you won’t say it like that again—promise?”
Kōji inclined himself obliquely on the grass and regarded this beautiful woman’s anger. It came from within and pushed her body around, and her large eyes no longer had the courage to look in his direction. He watched quietly. And as he did so, the serious implication of his words began to penetrate his extremities, like water gradually seeping into sandy ground. The truth was that they were not yet accustomed to one another. It was a dangerous situation, for although one would expect more of a false intimacy when man and beast conversed, the two of them were testing each other, sniffing one another—like two animals on their first encounter. They played as if fighting and fought as if playing. All the same, it was Kōji who was seized with fear, and despite her anger, Yūko remained undaunted. As if to prove as much, she smoothly changed the topic of conversation and began to tell him how she had closed down the Tokyo shop a year or so ago, moved to Iro Village, and started running the Kusakado greenhouse.
“Anyway, we need a man’s helping hand around here. It means a lot of study and a lot of work for you. We’ve gained a pretty good reputation from our first batch of flowers produced this spring. Oh, and we’ve also started foliage plants from this May. The temperature regulation is a bit of a nuisance, but I think you will come to like this job. I think you… Yes, you’ve definitely got a peace-loving face now.”
Having finished their lunch, they returned to the port, skirting around the bay. Once there they carried on through the center of the village, cut across the prefectural highway, and followed the road up to the Kusakado house. A number of villagers greeted Yūko, and passersby looked on with interest. Doubtless rumors would spread through the whole village by sundown. And naturally, while Yūko was prepared to cover for him and say that Kōji was a relative, the villagers would be sure to discover the truth of the matter quicker than an ant tracking down sugar.
“Try not to walk with your head hanging down like that,” said Yūko, cautioning him in an emphatically candid manner.
“I can’t help it,” answered Kōji, still with downcast eyes, and he watched the slightly distorted shadow of Yūko’s parasol as it passed lightly over bus and truck tire marks impressed on the highway in the noon heat.
Moving directly east from the highway, if one turns left after passing the post office, the road gently winds its way in front of the gate of Taisenji temple and up the slope to the few scattered houses at the back of the hillside.
The Kusakado house was a single isolated building that showed off its unconstrained tiled roof from the highest point of the mountain. Its capacious gardens were buried in greenhouses.
At the top of the slope in front of the gate to the house stood a figure dressed in white clothes that were billowing in the wind. Yūko had recently erected a white painted wooden fence, twined with roses, where no gate had stood before, on the front of which she secured a large nameplate bearing the inscription “Kusakado Greenhouse.” The white bundle of clothing belonging to the figure was undoubtedly a yukata, though due to the wind and also the slovenly way in which it had been thrown on, the hem flared out like a skirt, and the ramrod-straight figure appeared as unnatural as if it had been encased in a plaster cast.
Owing to the weight of the case he held at his side and the ascent of the gentle slope, Kōji’s brows were moist with sweat. Yūko’s fingertips lightly touched his side and held him back. Looking up for the first time, he was seized with fear—as though the prison chaplain himself was waiting there to receive him again.
It was Ippei; the first time Kōji had seen him since that day. The high-noon sun cast dark shadows over a corner of Ippei’s face, making it appear as though he was welcoming his guest with a harsh, defiant grin.
Chapter 2
Yūko knew full well just how much of a fun-loving, hotheaded youth Kōji had been two years earlier. Ippei had a Western ceramics shop in Ginza and during the busy seasons such as the summer holidays and year-end he hired students from his alma mater to work on a temporary basis. Kōji had measured up to Ippei’s requirements, and he was able to continue the side job out of season, as well as being welcome at Ippei’s residence in Shibashirogane.