“Well, maybe,” said Isao vaguely. Then he added, to be more polite, “I could go to visit my friend, though.”
“Oh, no, not that! The best thing is for you not to see each other for the time being. You might say something that’s better left unsaid.”
“I suppose so.” Isao had not mentioned the name of the person he wanted very much to see.
“Is there anything you’d like to ask me?” Sawa said after a somewhat uncomfortable silence.
“Yes. There’s one thing I still don’t understand in what my father said. Who told my father what we were up to? It must have been just before we were arrested.”
Sawa’s hitherto carefree manner vanished. The sudden, withdrawn silence made Isao uneasy. It was a silence that seemed to poison the atmosphere. Isao found it hard to bear, and he stared intently at the faded brown binding of the tatami where the bright sunshine that poured through the clear glass of the window seemed to dig its claws into the fabric.
“Do you really want to know? If I tell you, you’ll have no regrets?”
“No, I want to know the whole truth.”
“All right. I’ll tell you what I know. I’m saying this because the master himself went as far with you as he did. What happened was that the night before the arrest, on the night of November thirtieth of last year, that is, a call came for the master from Miss Makiko. I answered the phone. The master came to the phone, and what they talked about, I don’t know. But afterwards, the master got ready to go out, and he left without taking anybody with him. And that’s all I know.”
As he continued, Sawa’s kindliness took on the steadfast warmth of a blanket draped over the shoulders of a shivering man.
“I realize that you’re fond of Miss Makiko. And that Miss Makiko is fond of you. Maybe on her side the fervor is a good deal stronger. But it’s because she feels the way she does that we have this terrible result. I sized up her true nature when she stepped into the witness box during the trial. A frightful woman, I thought to myself. That was my honest feeling, I tell you. She was gambling all she had on saving your life, but, at the same time, the truth is that she was happy to see you in a prison cell. Do you follow me?
“What I mean is, that marriage of hers—you’ve got to understand why it ended so tragically in divorce. Her husband loved Makiko, but at the same time he was quite a playboy. The ordinary wife would have put up with it, but this one was proud, and she wouldn’t have it. She loved him, and that made it even harder to bear. So, not caring what people might say, she went home to her family’s house.
“Because she’s that kind of person, then, when she falls in love with another man, it’s no ordinary matter. The more she loves, the more anxious she becomes about the future when she might lose her lover. Because she’s had an unhappy experience, she’ll never believe in a man again. And so naturally, when a man she loves does come along, she wants to make sure that he stays hers and hers alone, even if he is put out of her reach, even if she has to bear the infinite suffering of not being able to be with this man. And as for a place where a man has no chance at all to play around, a place where, as far as a woman’s concerned, there’s the least cause for worry—where would that be, do you think? Jail, where else? She fell in love with you, so you landed in jail. What more could a man want, come to think of it? I wish I were in your shoes.”
Not looking at Isao, Sawa chattered on heedlessly as he rubbed the pale skin of his swollen cheek.
“Keep clear of a dangerous woman like that from now on. I’ll see that you meet lots of lovely women. The master said something to me about this, and he’s given me plenty of spending money. Sure, it must have come from Kurahara, indirectly, but it’s just as the master said: Money is money; fidelity is fidelity. You’ve never been with a woman, I bet.
“Will you come along to a movie tonight? At the Shibazono there’s a foreign film. Or there’s the Hikawa Theater, near the college, where we could see a movie starring Chiezo. Then we could have a drink at Hyakkendana and head for Maruyama. We’ve got to perform the ‘coming of age ceremony,’ just as the master said. If there’s an appeal, the game will be up. So now’s the time to get it over with.”
“Let’s talk about this once the appeal is dropped.”
“But look, if there is one, what then?”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Isao answered stubbornly.
40
ON DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH too the sun was shining. Isao held back. The next day, December twenty-ninth, was the day on which the ceremonies attending the naming of the Crown Prince would take place, and rather than darken the morning papers with an ominous headline on such a festive day, it would be more excusable to act later on the festive day itself, as long as the ceremonies were completed and the celebration at an end. Because of the possibility of an appeal, it was dangerous to wait any longer.
December twenty-ninth was still another clear day.
He asked Sawa to participate with him in a lantern procession to the Imperial Palace, and when the two left the house, Isao was wearing his overcoat over his school uniform, and they both were carrying lanterns decorated with the characters for “celebration.” While they were eating an early dinner in a Ginza restaurant, they watched a streetcar float decorated with chrysanthemums making its way through the crowds in the street outside, the sign “CONGRATULATIONS” glowing in lights, and its motorman standing with his chest thrust out proudly beneath his blue uniform and brass buttons.
The human wave of lantern-bearers surged forward from Sukiyabashi toward the Imperial Palace. The lanterns with the sun emblem that each one held above his head were reflected in the waters of the moat, and lit up the pines standing in the winter twilight. The many lanterns massed in the plaza before the palace put to flight the shadows lingering beneath the trees and filled the whole area with a shifting brightness at variance with the time of day. The shouts of Banzai went on, never abating. The flames in the uplifted lanterns of the marchers highlighted the shadows of their mouths and throats. Now the faces were steeped in shadow; now they were suddenly lit with shimmering brilliance.
Before long, Sawa was torn away from Isao. After searching hopelessly in the vast throng for some four hours, Sawa returned to the Academy to report what happened.
Isao went back to the Ginza, and at a shop there he bought a dagger and a knife, both with plain wooden sheaths. The knife he put into the inside pocket of his jacket, and the dagger he concealed in his overcoat pocket.
In a hurry, he hailed a cab to Shimbashi Station, where he boarded a train for Atami. It was empty. He had a four-passenger compartment all to himself as he pulled a clipping from his pocket and read it once again. It was a page taken from the New Year’s issue of Kodan Club borrowed from Sawa, and on it was a boxed item entitled “How the Big Shots in Politics and Finance Greet the New Year.”
“Busuké Kurahara customarily sees the old year out in very simple fashion,” read the portion that Isao was concerned with. “Having no liking even for golf, at the end of every year, as soon as offices are closed, he slips away to his villa at Inamura in Izusan. His greatest pleasure is looking after the tangerine orchards there in which he takes such pride. The orchards in the neighborhood are usually harvested before the year is out, but Kurahara likes to leave the tangerines hanging in bunches so that he may admire them up until the New Year’s holidays are well underway. Then, except for giving some to his friends, he donates the entire harvest to welfare hospitals and orphanages. This amply bespeaks the unassuming personality and the admirable warmth of this man, who could be called the Pope of the world of finance.”
Isao took a bus from Atami Station and got off at Inamura. It was already past ten o’clock. The night was still, and he could hear the sound of the sea. The village was beside the road, but wooden shutters were closed everywhere, and no light shone through. Isao turned up his overcoat collar against the chill wind from the ocean. Halfway down the slope, which fell away toward the s
ea, stood a large stone gate. A light burned outside it, and Isao could easily make out KURAHARA on the nameplate. On the other side, beyond a huge front garden, was a house wrapped in stillness, which, here and there, showed lights burning. There was a walled embankment topped with a hedge all the way around.
On the other side of the road was a mulberry field. At the edge of it, fastened to a mulberry bush, was a tin sign: TANGERINES FOR SALE. The tin rattled in the wind. Isao hid behind the sign. He had heard footsteps coming up the twisting path from the ocean.
A policeman was climbing the slope. He made his way up slowly, stopped in front of the gate for a moment, and then, the noise of his saber trailing behind him, disappeared along the narrow path that followed the wall.
Isao came out from behind the sign, and, exercising great caution, crossed the road. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the sea, black beneath a moonless sky.
Scaling the wall presented no problem, but the hedge at the top concealed barbed wire which tore at his overcoat.
Besides plum trees, hemp palms, and pines, the garden of the villa held many tangerine trees planted right up to the house itself, presumably so that the master could appreciate them. The darkness was filled with the fragrance of their ripe fruit. The dried leaves of one giant palm, blown by the wind from the ocean, startled Isao with its sound like wooden clappers.
The ground beneath his feet yielded at every step, as if nourished by an abundance of fertilizer. Bit by bit, he drew closer to a corner of the house from which bright light was coming. The tiled roof was of Japanese design, but the window and siding indicated that the room within was Western style. The window was hung with lace curtains. Isao leaned against the wall, raised himself on tiptoe, and was able to see part of the room.
There was a chimney opening on one side of the room, indicating a Western-style fireplace. A woman was standing with her back to the window, revealing the bow of her obi. When she moved away, there appeared the somewhat plump but stern-looking face of an old man of small stature, dressed in kimono and a greenish brown sleeveless jacket. Isao knew that it had to be Kurahara.
There was some exchange with the woman. When she left, Isao saw the flash of a tray. She had brought Kurahara his tea, it seemed. With the woman gone, Kurahara was alone in the room.
Kurahara apparently sat down in a deep armchair facing the fire. All that could be seen from the window now was his bald forehead that seemed to shimmer from the flames burning in the grate. Perhaps he was reading something while he sipped the tea left at his side, or perhaps he was deep in thought.
Isao looked around for an entrance. A stairway of two or three stone steps led up from the garden to a doorway. He saw a faint light coming from the crevices of the door. The door was secured with only a metal latch. Isao took his dagger out from his overcoat and then threw off the coat, letting it fall to the soft ground in the darkness. At the foot of the stone steps he drew the dagger and discarded its sheath. The naked blade, as though giving off light of its own, shone pale.
He climbed the steps stealthily and slid the tip of his dagger between the door and its frame, slipping it underneath the latch. The latch was extremely heavy. When it finally snapped upward, the noise it made echoed like the tick of a grandfather’s clock. There was no way of knowing if anything had changed within the room, but the noise must have attracted Kurahara’s attention. Isao twisted the doorknob and rushed inside.
Kurahara stood up with his back to the fireplace. He did not cry out, however. A thin film of ice seemed to have spread across his features.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” demanded the hoarse, weak voice.
“Take the punishment you deserve for profaning the Grand Shrine of Isé,” said Isao. The clarity and modulation of his voice assured him of his self-possession.
“What?” An expression of altogether unfeigned incomprehension came to Kurahara’s face. For a moment he was obviously groping for a memory, but without success. And at the same time he was looking at Isao with eyes that revealed the terror of being confronted in dreadful isolation with a madman. Avoiding the fire behind him, Kurahara shrank back against the wall beside the fireplace. This decided Isao’s next movement.
As Sawa had once taught him, Isao bent his back like a cat, pressed his right elbow firmly into his side, and, gripping his right wrist with his left hand so that the blade would not go upward, plunged the blade into Kurahara with all his strength.
Rather than the feel of the dagger piercing the other’s body, the main sensation was the shock of the butt of the hilt striking his own stomach with reflexive force. Then, determined to make sure of his man, Isao gripped his shoulder and pressed down, wanting to stab more deeply, but he was taken aback to discover how much lower that shoulder was than he had thought. And then the flesh that he was pressing down had none of the softness that goes with plumpness but was as rigid as a board.
As he looked down at him, the face of his victim seemed relaxed, rather than in pain. The eyes were open, the mouth gaped carelessly. The upper set of false teeth had come loose and was jutting out.
Tugging at the dagger, Isao became furious in his frustration. His victim’s whole weight now lay upon the blade. Kurahara collapsed, growing heavier still, the blade at his center of gravity. Finally, gripping the other’s shoulder with his left hand, Isao raised his right knee, and, pushing against Kurahara’s thigh, he pulled the dagger free. The blood that spurted out splashed Isao’s knee. Kurahara, as though in pursuit of his own blood, toppled forward.
Turning swiftly, Isao was about to run from the room when a door leading to the hallway opened, and he was face to face with the woman whom he had seen a little while before. The woman screamed. Isao darted aside and raced out into the garden through the door that he had entered by. He could still see the afterimage of the terrified woman’s eyes, with their prominent whites.
He ran at full speed down through the garden toward the sea. Behind him the household was in turmoil, as one cry after the other was raised. He felt the sounds and lights were fixing themselves upon him and rushing in pursuit.
As he ran, he reached inside his jacket to make sure that his knife was there. The dagger in his hand, however, gave him greater assurance, and he gripped it tightly while he rushed headlong. His breath was labored, and he had twisted his knee. He was made well aware of how his legs had weakened during his year in prison.
Tangerine orchards by the ocean were usually cultivated in terraced fields. Each of Kurahara’s tangerine trees, as though on a platformed stage, was set upon a level of its own. The innumerable, varied levels, bound by the stone walls, each received its share of sunlight at its subtly varied angle, and, though each level slightly differed from the others, all of them fell away down to the shoreline. The average height of the tangerine trees was eight or nine feet. The roots were heavily mulched with straw, and the branches reached upward in all directions from a point quite near the ground.
Isao ran from one level to another. The fruit-laden branches blocked his way at every turn in the darkness. As though in a maze, he struggled not to lose his way. The sea could not be far off, but he was unable to reach it.
He burst out of the trees at last, however, and his field of vision suddenly widened. Before him were the sky and the sea. A flight of stone steps descended clinging to the sheer face of the cliff, and a gate at the edge of the orchard gave access to it.
Isao tore off a tangerine. It was then that he realized that he no longer held his dagger. He must have dropped it when he was running through the trees, and clutching and dodging branches.
The orchard gate opened easily. At the bottom of the steps, he saw the white spray leaping high as the waves worried the rocks. For the first time he became conscious of the echo of the sea.
Whether the land beyond the orchard was Kurahara’s or not, Isao did not know. It was a cliff covered with an old growth of trees, and a path threaded its way through the grove. Isao was weary from fleeing,
but, once more, he rushed headlong down the path, as the tree branches lashed his face and the undergrowth clutched at his running feet.
Finally he came to a place where the cliff was gouged out to form something like a cavern. A greenish, twisted mass of rock had been partly eroded away, and from its top the branches of a great evergreen tree hung low over this ledge. A slender stream of water, sheltered by ferns, meandered over the rock surface, flowed through the grass, and apparently fell off into the sea below.
Here Isao hid himself. He quieted his throbbing pulse. There was nothing to be heard but the sea and the wind. Since his throat was painfully dry, he tore the skin off his tangerine and roughly thrust the fruit into his mouth all at once. He smelled blood. It had splotched the tangerine skin and half-dried there. But the odor did not much alter the sweetness of the juice that was running down his throat. Beyond the dry weeds, beyond the tall pampas grass, beyond the low-hanging evergreen branches, with their clustered needles and entangled vines, lay the night sea. Though there was no moon, the sea reflected the faint glow of the sky, and the waters gleamed black.
Isao sat upright upon the damp earth, his legs folded beneath him. He removed his uniform jacket. From the inside pocket, he took out the knife. His whole being experienced such relief at finding it safe there that he almost lost his balance. Though he still wore his wool shirt and undershirt, the wind from the sea chilled his body as soon as his jacket was off.
“The sun will not rise for some time,” Isao said to himself, “and I can’t afford to wait. There is no shining disk climbing upward. There is no noble pine to shelter me. Nor is there a sparkling sea.”
He stripped off the remainder of his upper garments, but, as his body tensed, the cold seemed to vanish. He unfastened his trousers, exposing his stomach. As he drew his knife out of its sheath, he heard cries and the sound of running footsteps from the direction of the orchard above.