Did you want to shoot me? I must confess it was very interesting for me to try to discern whether, at that moment, setting aside the fact that the gun was not loaded, you possessed the desire to kill me. I pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing, closed my eyes. Were you aiming at my shoulder, at the back of my head, at my nape? I waited with bated breath, expecting to hear at any moment the icy click of the trigger breaking the stillness of the room. But the click never came. If it had, I was ready — as eager as if this were the first chance I had been granted in many years to make my life worth living! — to collapse in a dramatic, staged faint.
Unable to bear it any longer, I slowly opened my eyes. You remained in the same posture as before, your sights set on my back. I sat motionless for a while, until all at once, for whatever reason, I was struck by the absurdity of what we were doing, and I shifted slightly, turned to look at the real you, not the one in the mirror, upon which you swiftly swung the point of your gun away, took aim at the rhododendron in the yard — the one we had transplanted from Amagi, which had bloomed for the first time that year — and then, at last, I heard you pull the trigger. Why didn’t you shoot your faithless wife that day? I would venture to say that I had done enough then to deserve being shot. You wanted to kill me sufficiently badly, and yet in the end you would not pull the trigger! If you had fired, if you had refused to overlook my trespasses, if you had driven into my pulsing heart an unmistakable loathing for your person — then, perhaps, against all odds, I might have fallen meekly into your arms. Naturally, I might also have gone in the opposite direction, letting you have a taste of my own marksmanship. At any rate, you failed, and so, releasing my gaze from the rhododendron that had fallen in my stead, I tripped more shakily than necessary from the room, humming “Under the Roofs of Paris” or some such tune, and withdrew to my private sitting room.
*
Years passed after that without affording us any further opportunity to bring all this to its conclusion. This summer, the blossoms on the crape myrtle were more poisonously red than ever before. I felt a subtle quickening of anticipation, almost a hope, that something unusual might occur…
I visited Saiko for the last time the day before she died. I found myself confronted, then, quite out of the blue, after more than a decade, by what was unmistakably the same greyish-blue haori whose nightmarish image, in the glaring Atami sunlight that morning, had burnt itself onto my retina. The huge purple thistle hovering above the background, its outline sharp, seemed to weigh upon the frail shoulders of the woman, now somewhat emaciated, whom you loved. I commented, as I came into the room and knelt beside her, on how lovely she looked, struggling to calm myself; but then I began to wonder what she could possibly be thinking, wearing this haori in my presence, at this moment, and all at once my blood began to seethe, to course through my body, like boiling water. I felt powerless to restrain myself. Sooner or later, this woman’s transgressions, the fact that she had stolen another woman’s husband, and the humility of that twenty-year-old bride, would have to be dragged out into the courtyard before the magistrate. That moment, it seemed, had arrived. And so I reached down into my heart and brought out the secret I had kept so carefully hidden for more than a decade, and set it softly down before the thistle.
“It brings back memories, doesn’t it?”
She gave a quick, almost inaudible gasp, and turned to face me. I met her eyes with a steady gaze. And I persisted; I did not look away. Because naturally it was she who should avert hers.
“You wore that when you and Misugi went to Atami together, didn’t you? You’ll have to forgive me. I’m afraid I was watching you that day.”
As I had expected, the blood drained visibly from her face, the muscles around her lips twitched in the most ugly manner — I am not just saying this, I truly was struck by her ugliness — as she tried to find something to say, but in the end she could not pronounce a word; she simply lowered her face, and, yes, let her gaze fall, settling on her white hands where they lay crossed on her lap.
The thought bobbed into my consciousness, then, that this was the moment I had been living for all those years, and I relished an exhilaration of the sort one might feel standing in a downpour as the rain washed down across one’s skin. At the same time, in some other region of my heart, I sensed with an indescribable sadness that one of the two possible endings had at last settled into a shape, and was even now moving towards us. I lingered there, wallowing in that emotion, for quite a while. I was fine; I could have sat in that spot until I grew roots. How desperately she must have wanted to disappear, though, that woman! Eventually, for what reason I cannot say, she lifted her waxen face and stared fixedly at me, her eyes very still. I knew then that she would die. Death had sprung, just now, into her body. Otherwise she could never have looked upon me with a gaze so still. The garden clouded over for a moment, then was bright again. Someone had been playing the piano next door, but now, suddenly, the sound broke off.
“Don’t let it worry you, I don’t mind. You can have him!”
I got to my feet, went out to the verandah to retrieve the white roses I had left there when I came, put them in the vase on the bookshelf, adjusted the arrangement; and then, as I gazed down at Saiko where she sat slumped over again, at her wiry neck, it struck me — awful premonition! — that this would most likely be the last time I saw her.
“Please, there’s really no need to fret. I’ve deceived you all these years, too. We’re even.”
Without even meaning to, I chuckled. And all the while, how perfectly she maintained her silence! From start to finish she simply sat there, speaking not a word, so still and quiet it almost seemed she had stopped breathing. The judgement had been handed down. Now she was free to do as she liked, as far as I was concerned.
With that, I strode swiftly out of the room, flicking the hem of my kimono up with movements so crisp and clean even I could feel it.
Midori! For the first time that day, I heard her cry out behind me. But I continued down the hall, around the corner.
“Are you all right, Aunt Midori? You’re terribly pale.”
I realized that the blood had drained from my face only when Shōko, who was coming along the hall with cups of black tea on a tray, drew my attention to the fact.
By now, I am sure, you see why it is impossible for me to remain with you any longer; or rather, why it is impossible for you to remain any longer with me. I have written at great length and said much that is distasteful; now, at last, it seems the final curtain can descend on ten years of painful bargaining. I have said more or less all I wanted to say to you. If possible, I would be grateful if you could reply, giving your consent to our divorce, before your stay in Izu is complete.