The Frolic of the Beasts

Chapter 3

Meeting Ippei for the first time in two years, Kōji found himself gazing at the head he had once struck with the wrench. The area had since been covered over with a thick growth of hair and was hidden from sight. Despite being exposed to the relentless glare of the sun, Ippei’s hair did not shine.

As he was gazing intently, many impulsive recollections and ambivalent thoughts crowded Kōji’s mind and blocked his vision, almost as if in the midst of the sunlight a drifting column of mosquitoes had suddenly and importunately obstructed his view.

At the time, I could no longer endure that putrid world; a world bereft of logic. It was necessary that I impart some logic into that world of pigs’ entrails. And so you see, I imparted the cold, hard, black logic of iron. Namely, the logic of the wrench.

And again, Yūko said herself in the bar that night, “Seeing his impassive face, well, it would simply be the end.” Thanks to that attack, I’ve saved them both from that end.

Then, aghast at such thoughts, I have repented, I…

The mosquito-like cloud of thoughts disappeared from before his eyes in an instant.

Kōji had already been informed during the course of the investigation:

The wrench blows, delivered to the left side of the head, had caused a collapsed fracture of the cranium and cerebral contusion. Even after Ippei had regained consciousness, the right side of his body was paralyzed, and aphasia was diagnosed.

Ah! And not forgetting the wrench. What a lot of troublesome, repetitive inquiry.

Machiko testified that it hadn’t been in the room. The wrench bore the stamp of an electrical company, and its owner was traced. He had been to T Hospital by car, and while the wrench definitely belonged to his company, he claimed he had no recollection of dropping it. Furthermore, his car had not broken down once in the preceding month. In any case, whether it was stolen from some other place, or had been picked up from the ground, the wrench proved indelibly the premeditated nature of Kōji’s crime. He was sentenced to seventeen months’ imprisonment for bodily injury.

Ippei smiled from the shadow of the climbing roses as he laboriously guided them through the gate; the large white all-season blooming flowers around the trellised archway basked fully in the summer sun.

Kōji found it difficult to accept that anybody could change so much in such a short time. There no longer existed the dandy clothed in a finely tailored new suit, Italian silk shirt and tie, and sporting amethyst cuff links that sparkled somberly at his sleeves, who, the more he busily conducted himself in his daily affairs, created a more languorous atmosphere around himself. Kōji was horrified to think that all these changes had been brought about by a single attack.

In looking at Ippei and the result of the crime he had committed, Kōji felt as he imagined one would at seeing an illegitimate child several years after he had brought it into the world by way of a casual relationship. Of seeing the shadow of his own self seeping from the child. Ippei, as he was, was dead and gone, and in his place stood a deep shadow of Kōji’s existence (of course, Ippei’s face bore no resemblance whatsoever to Kōji’s). It was a human form that, rather than being a likeness of Kōji, resembled the form of the crime he had committed. If Kōji could sketch a self-portrait of his inner self, then Ippei would surely be the exact form it would take. Even the troubled look that cloaked Ippei’s helplessly smiling countenance was, in truth, something that belonged to Kōji.

A recollection came suddenly to mind: Kōji remembered how he had once seen Ippei at the shop change into his dinner jacket, insert a white rose in the buttonhole of his collar, and leave for a gamblers’ party. It had been an elegant white rose that hung from his lapel. The same rose as those flowers that now threw shadows across Ippei’s cheek. To make matters worse, the Ippei before him was slovenly dressed; the hemline of his gown did not meet, with the back of the garment askew and the dappled sash having slipped down loosely about the hips. The roses looked like ridiculous large white ornamental hairpins as Ippei wound his way in and out of a festival procession.

“It’s Kōji, you remember, don’t you? Kōji.”

Yūko slowly and clearly pronounced his name, and Ippei, still smiling that twisted smile, said, “Kooo… ri.”

“Not Kooo… ri, Kōji.”

Ippei continued. “Kooo… ri,” and then, quite clearly, “how do you do?”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? The way he can say ‘how do you do’ without a hitch. It’s not Kooo… ri. It’s Kōji…”

Kōji became irritable and cut in. “It’s all right. ‘Kooo… ri’ is okay. In fact, it suits me better. It’s fine.”

With greetings thus exchanged, their “first” meeting came to an end.

Kōji’s irritation was complex; there was some impediment, and he was nettled by his inability to feel any regret. His whole being ought to have been a receptacle filled with remorse. Even before he saw Ippei’s completely changed form, he ought to have dropped to his knees in tears and apologized. Instead, something had intervened, clogging the machinery and stopping this course of events. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was; perhaps it was that unsettling smile that hung about Ippei’s mouth like a spiderweb.

From a nearby branch, a summer bush warbler sang out, the sound blending with the chirring of cicadas. They went on through the rose gate, crossed the uneven flagstones, and passed alongside the greenhouses. Seeing Ippei’s limping form, Kōji proffered a helping hand, but his action was cut short by Yūko’s large, dark, expressionless eyes. Kōji didn’t know why she had checked him. Perhaps she was trying to encourage Ippei to be more independent. In any case, he felt his deliberate gesture had been perceived, and he was hurt by her intervention.

“I’ll show you around the greenhouses first. I’ve done it all myself. The research, the planning. I’ve built the place up and I run it. It’s developed into quite a business. For old acquaintance’s sake, Tokyo Horticulture provides good trade with me. You wouldn’t have imagined me capable of this in the past, would you? A woman, you see, has after all a considerable number of hidden talents. I’m quite impressed with it, if I do say so myself.”

It wasn’t clear how much of this rapid conversation Ippei was able to follow, although there was certainly a sense that part of what Yūko was saying to Kōji was for Ippei’s benefit. That had been the case particularly since they passed through the rose-festooned archway. In fact, it had been that way even when Ippei was not close by—for example, even while they were on their way up from the harbor earlier—and, thinking about it, that was even the way it had been two years ago, before the incident.

A water pipe stood at the entrance to the greenhouse. Kōji abruptly turned on the tap and cocked his head obliquely to one side, drinking deeply of the gushing liquid. The force of the water as it spurted onto his cheek was pleasant. His face was exposed for a moment to this glistening collision and his pallid Adam’s apple, which hadn’t seen the sun for some time, moved feverishly as he drank.

“He certainly looks like he’s enjoying that water.”

“Wa… ter,” said Ippei, echoing Yūko. Pleased that he had been able to say it so well, he repeated it. “Wa… ter.”

Kōji looked up. In the entrance to the greenhouse stood a muscular old man wearing shorts and a running shirt. It was Teijirō, the gardener. He used to be a fisherman, and as Yūko had explained, he had a daughter who worked at the Imperial Instruments factory in Hamamatsu. Kōji was momentarily uneasy—maybe Teijirō knew where he had come from. But his anxiety was dispelled by Teijirō’s firm, sun-weathered features—which resembled an ancient suit of armor—that looked out at him from under a closely cropped head of salt-white hair.

His face is not at any rate that of a person who tries to delve into others’ affairs. Rather, it’s like a closed window that he sometimes opens, just wide enough to allow the sunlight to filter through. He had known an old and sincere inmate with a similar face.

The four of them entered the first of five greenhouses. It contained mainly gloxinia and lady palm and so the three-quarter-span glass roof, which was built on a slope, was liberally screened with reed blinds. The violet, crimson, and white gloxinia compensated for the dull interior.

Kōji had learned to think about the beauty of flowers while in prison. But it had never transcended a mere sentimental appreciation from being continually near to them, so wasn’t the sort of knowledge that would stand him in good stead in the future. Kōji was surprised by Yūko’s loquacious explanation. This was clearly knowledge she had acquired in order to earn a living and, as such, far surpassed the fantasies of the likes of Kōji and his former fellow inmates.

Just then, they noticed a large black shadow fall suddenly across the sunlight that shone down on the flowers and leaves from the reed blinds above. Yūko had been boasting about the large blooms of her white gloxinia, and since the flower heads had darkened, everyone peered up toward the roof. With youthful agility, Teijirō ran along the narrow passageway between the flowers and foliage (Kōji quietly acknowledging Teijirō’s ability to delicately pick his way through the undergrowth without so much as brushing the hard leaf tips of the lady palm that spread out all around), and rushed out in the direction of the entrance. They heard Teijirō yelling from outside, and then, like something that had suddenly exploded having been suppressed in the quiet sunlight, the shrieks and laughter of a group of mischievous youngsters erupted all at once and then subsided.

“This happens a lot. I wonder what they threw this time?”

Yūko looked up at the shadow, visible between the gaps in the reed blind; Kōji and Ippei followed her gaze. Strands of glittering sunlight were finely woven in the fabric of the blind, and Kōji vividly felt its origin all the more—the sun’s penetrating rays. The shadow appeared large and ominous, but in fact the object that had been thrown was not so big at all. On the end of something that seemed to be covered in wet black hair was a long and thin hanging tail. It had to be a rat. The children must have found its remains and hurled them onto the roof. For some reason Kōji looked at Ippei’s face. The face of the man whom Yūko had described on their way over here as a person who was unable to communicate freely his desires but whose spirit was immutable. That simple smiling face—a burial marker indicating the place where Ippei’s spirit lived on, albeit incarcerated in a grave.

The shadow of the reed blind fell on his face and on Yūko’s lips, and like a dark birthmark the shape of the dead rat appeared imprinted on Ippei’s forehead. Then, suddenly, Teijirō’s bamboo pole extended over the blinds, the rat was caught by the tip of the pole, and its shadow jumped skyward. It was hoisted higher and higher, ever closer to the sun, until in an instant it had become parched in its rays.

Soon the rainy season came. On the whole, it was unusually dry. In between the wet days, there were several of brilliant sunshine. On one such day, Yūko, Ippei, and Kōji went on a picnic to the great waterfall on the far side of the mountain.

Since Kōji’s arrival some three weeks earlier, it appeared as if everything was going smoothly and their lives were settling into a new pattern. He had been provided with an airy six-tatami-mat room on the second floor, and, his daily schedule having been decided quickly, he became friendly with Teijirō. Kōji was given the important tasks of irrigation and the twice-daily spraying of plants—in the morning and evening. He worked hard, was well behaved, and exhibited a keen desire to learn, and before long he became popular with the local villagers who came to and fro.

Kōji laughed at the thought of how high-strung he had been when he had first arrived. He had repented, he was a different person from his former self, and he no longer had any concerns. He slept well at night, his appetite had improved, he was tanned, and before long, he was able to boast a healthy physique that compared favorably with the young men of the village. His daily independence was a pure delight, and he enjoyed the boundless freedom of strolling alone after work. Even on rainy days, he would set out on a walk, umbrella in hand, and soon he felt well acquainted with every corner of Iro Village. Yūko introduced Kōji to the chief priest of Taisenji temple, from whom he learned the topography and history of the surrounding area. At the close of the sixteenth century, the village formed part of the territory belonging to the local magistrate of Mishima but had, by the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, come under the authority of the fiefdom of Mondo Manabe. Then, during the Meiji Restoration, it fell under the jurisdiction of Nirayama Prefecture together with many other scenic villages along the Izu Peninsula.

Yūko had taken up residence here via the good graces of the head of Tokyo Horticulture, and having bought a house from one of the well-to-do villagers, she refurbished it and then erected five greenhouses on the grounds.

Yūko’s ability, evidenced both in the administration of her disabled husband’s estate and in her swift lifestyle transformation, was a source of wonder to those who had known her in the past.

And while Kōji wasn’t so surprised to hear about her success, he was nevertheless increasingly astonished by Ippei’s eccentric behavior. Ippei continued his habit of reading the morning newspaper, despite not understanding anything of what he read. He simply sat in silence, with the paper fully open so that the morning sun filtered through its pages. He would just move his head lightly up and down while maintaining this posture for quite some time.

On other occasions he would have Yūko bring him copies of his own literary works. Stefan George’s collection of translated poems was tastefully bound in marbled German paper, while his critical biography of Li He was covered in an opaque yellow with a marbled ink drawing of a small bird on the inside cover. Sitting in front of his desk, he would fan himself with his left hand while repeatedly turning the pages with his lame right. Sometimes his fingers would get caught and the pages wouldn’t turn over properly. Ippei, however, was undeterred.

Kōji had quietly watched Ippei from the side window of the greenhouse on the other side of the small garden. What a strangely detestable endeavor it was! If it was true that Ippei’s spirit had not been laid to waste, then his inner spirit ought to have been in complete accord with his external literary works. Undoubtedly, George and Li He still lived on within Ippei’s inner self. In spite of this, however, his view was obstructed by an invisible and impregnable wall, and he could neither read nor comprehend his own writings. Kōji knew how he felt. While in prison he had experienced the same longing for the outside world—his frequent calls having fallen on deaf ears. He felt that he understood Ippei better now than at any time before.

He wondered what had become of Ippei’s spirit. At first it had probably been surprised at its own inability to understand anything or express itself in words, and then, having eventually grown tired of exhibiting such surprise, had transformed itself into another intelligent self that could do nothing other than watch intently from the sidelines. His hands and feet were bound and his intellect gagged; his literary works were adrift, even now glittering in the distance, moving beyond his reach and summons in the current of some dark and obscure river. In a sense, it was as if the connection between spirit and action had been severed and the one jewel that had been both the source of his self-confidence and the measure of his public respect had split and become two complementary jewels, which had then been placed on opposite banks of that large dark river. And while the jewel on the far bank, namely his literary works, was to the public at large the real treasure, to Ippei, it was nothing more than a pile of rubble. Conversely, while in the eyes of the general public the jewel on the near bank, namely his spirit, had already turned to rubble, it was to Ippei alone the only genuine jewel in his crown.

Furthermore, Ippei—that is, Ippei as he was before the incident—had never attempted to conceal the cultivated man’s cold contempt for the generality of intellectual activities (including in relation to his own literary works). In fact, wasn’t it his own psychological ruin that Ippei longed to achieve through Kōji, rather than the bringing about of some sense of mental cohesion? And that, too, was an artificial, affected, and delicately engineered ruin. Little wonder then that Ippei’s interminably meek smile provided a fresh source of astonishment for Kōji. The chief priest of Taisenji temple maintained that this was the manifestation of Ippei’s spiritual enlightenment. Yūko, on the other hand, preferred to remain silent on the matter.

Oftentimes, the doctor asked Yūko, “Does your husband sometimes become really irritated? Does he ever give you a difficult time, or annoy you with his own selfishness?”

The doctor had always greeted Yūko’s negative replies with a genuine look of suspicion. Those kinds of patients were extremely few and far between. Ippei had become quiet and tolerant, he accepted reality as it was, and he answered everything with the same warm, helpless smile.

Occasionally Kōji would feel unsettled by his smile—constantly and openly conveying as it did Ippei’s sudden loss of hope. Ippei, who in the past had stood head and shoulders above Kōji in terms of his fun-loving ability, now appeared to have outstripped Kōji once more by his uncanny ability to accept his abandonment with such fortitude.

And what of Yūko?

Yūko once asked Kōji to bring some talcum powder to the bathroom. She had opened the badly creaking glass door of the dimly lit bathroom a fraction and called Kōji in from where he was in the sitting room. “Kōji! Kōji! I’ve run out of talcum powder—there’s a new can on the top shelf of the closet. Be a darling and bring it in, would you?”

Possibly owing to the tastes of the house’s former owner, the family bathroom was unusually spacious. The bathing area alone was some eight tatami mats in size, and added to this was a three-mat changing room.

Kōji had been reluctant to open the glass door, but Yūko had spoken from inside. “It’s all right—you can come in. I don’t mind.”

As Kōji suspected, Yūko, having bathed, had already changed into a neatly fitting large-patterned cotton yukata, held at the waist by a dark green Hakata-style sash. The upswept hairs on the nape of her neck were moist from the bath steam, and in the dusky light, beads of perspiration glistened alluringly on the surface of her rich skin like evening dew. Kōji recalled the sound of the driving, sultry rain as it pelted the roofs of the greenhouses in the early evening. He saw something strange at Yūko’s feet as she sat there. In the gloomy light, the emaciated body of a naked man lay corpse-like on its side, with closed eyes facing toward the ceiling and its lower half covered in white powder.

Kōji handed the new can of talcum powder to Yūko, and just as he started to leave, she called him back. “Oh! You are having a bath, aren’t you? It’s a waste of fuel not to use the water. Come on, the water’s lovely and warm.”

Kōji hovered in the open doorway.

“Come on in and close the door quickly; he’ll catch his death in this draft. Relax—get undressed and get in.”

A heap of powder that had already been sprinkled from the new container decorated the palm of Yūko’s hand as she spoke. In the dull light it emitted a somber whiteness, like a poisonous drug. Kōji quickly undressed in a corner of the changing room. The door to the bathroom had been left ajar, probably in order to draw in the warmth produced by the steam, and so he left it open. While he bathed, his attention was drawn in the direction of the changing room. He felt the need for strangely oppressive, solitary, silent bathing, more so even than when he was in prison. There are certainly a great many bizarre rituals in the human world (all of which have been born of necessity)! Yūko sprinkled the remainder of the white powder all over Ippei’s bathed and naked outstretched body, painstakingly and affectionately massaging it in.

From time to time, her white fingers became visible here and there amid the dark billowing steam; vying with one another at sharp, almost reproachful angles, then continuing their movement in a more languid, hesitant manner.

Kōji, who had been watching all this from diagonally across the bathtub, suddenly felt a pang of excitement. He had imagined that his body was being caressed all over by those fingers. In reality, however, the flesh that Yūko’s fingers massaged was enveloped in a frigidly indifferent and peacefully warm veil of death. There was no doubt about that. Even from this oblique angle, Kōji was certain of it. Having diligently washed in between Ippei’s toes, Yūko next sprinkled on the white powder and enthusiastically rubbed it in. Now and again her beautiful profile revealed itself clearly through the steam. Her face was aglow, showing a kind of relaxed, self-indulgent pleasure, notwithstanding her fervor, and it appeared that Yūko’s mind had found spiritual repose in this simple chore that produced both subservience and a sense of superiority. Kōji felt as though he was watching the sleeping form of her unchaste soul. He closed his eyes tightly in the bathtub.

Whether or not she had noticed Kōji’s behavior, for the first time Yūko began talking to him in a cheerful, matter-of-fact tone. “I forgot to ask, but you sent your notice of withdrawal to the university, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I sent it from prison,” he replied, splashing water noisily.

“That’s a little rash, don’t you think? Do you intend to bury your whole life in the Kusakado greenhouse?”

Kōji remained silent in the unpleasantly hot, dark bathwater. He gazed at a strand of Yūko’s long, shedded hair as it formed a ring on the surface of the water. He pushed himself out toward it, scooping it up with his wet chest.

And then came the picnic at the great waterfall. It had been the cause of indecision for the past three weeks. Kōji had no idea why it had been an issue. It certainly didn’t seem as if Ippei had anything to do with it. Kōji knew that Yūko wished for the three of them to go together, and so he made a point of not going to the waterfall during his leisure-time strolls. Then on one particular clear and cool morning, it was suddenly decided that they should set off on a picnic. There were no suitable flowers in the greenhouse to offer to the waterfall shrine. So Yūko had Kōji pick an especially large, single-flowered mountain lily from the cliff behind, and then she wrapped aluminum foil around the base of its stem.

Yūko was wearing a Java calico blouse and yellow slacks and, because of the rocky mountain paths ahead, had on a pair of flat-heeled Moroccan leather walking shoes. Ippei was in a state of disarray. He was attired in a white open-collared shirt and knickerbockers, checkered socks and slip-ons and a large straw hat. At his side he carried a stout stick. Naturally Kōji, who wore jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, carried the camera and the basket containing their lunch boxes and tea flasks. At normal walking speed, it ought to have taken them about thirty minutes to the waterfall, but going at Ippei’s pace, Kōji estimated it would take at least an hour. In the end, it took some two hours.

Yūko accompanied Ippei out of the gate and down the hill. From here, there was a good view of the port. There was only one boat lying at anchor. The green hills on the far side of the bay were reflected on the surface of the tranquil body of water, projecting a shape like a draftsman’s curve dissolving into the sea. There were a number of pearl divers’ rafts; toward the back of one small inlet, the blue hull of a scrapped vessel lay half-submerged—listing as it had done when Yūko had first come to these parts. And silver oil tanks. A chorus of cicadas sang out; a small village crouched below them, and in the distance, a cloud of dust kicked up by a bus as it traveled along the prefectural highway quickly enveloped a whole block of shops—the barber’s, the general store, the haberdashery, the drugstore, the confectioner’s, and the geta store. The lighthouse at the bay entrance, the ice-crushing tower, and the village lookout tower, being the three tallest buildings, lorded it over the even rows of houses. To the east all they could see were the gently sloping mountains that they would soon climb. The trees and the grass had begun to dry out from the morning dew and the previous day’s rain. The rising water vapor and sunlight appeared to completely cover the surface of the mountains and forests in trembling silver leaf. It was extremely quiet, so much so that it seemed as if the mountains and forests were lightly enveloped in some sort of glittering shroud of death.

From far in the distance they could hear the sound of a quarry compressor.

“That’s the route we’re taking. You can see it, can’t you? The path follows the river winding its way up through the mountains.”

Yūko indicated the way with the single-flowered lily she was carrying. The lily extended its glossy white petals as if they were coated in oil and gave out a melancholy fragrance under the strong summer sun. It was messily dyed with brick-colored pollen right up to the edges of its white petals. The inside—all the way deep down—was buff-colored with brilliant dark red spots. The stem that supported this heavy flower was strong and gave it a neat and dignified appearance.

As if by magic, the landscape took on the elegant shape of the lily. The mountains and the clear sky and the glistening clouds above them now came under the control of this single flower. Each and every color appeared to be diffused, having been condensed into the color of the lily. It was as if the green of the forest was the color of the lily’s stem and leaves; the earth, the color of its pollen; the trunks of the ancient trees, the color of its dark red spots; the glistening clouds, the color of its white petals…

Kōji’s heart was inexplicably filled with joy. This was the happy recompense of repentance, the kind of happiness that comes after a period of abandonment. After two years of anguish, each of them had, perhaps, finally found happiness—Yūko had Ippei exactly as she wanted him, Kōji had his freedom, and, as for Ippei, he had something very peculiar.

Suddenly a kite cried out high above them.

“Teijirō told me he can tell how the weather will change by listening to the birds,” said Kōji. “He can read the weather signs—like from a red sky in the morning or from a halo around the moon or the sun. I know that’s pretty common, but he can also tell the weather from the birds singing and even from the light of the stars.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that before,” said Yūko. “Where is Teijirō, anyway?”

“He was in the greenhouse earlier,” replied Kōji.

“I see. Hmm… is that right?” said Ippei.

But it was too much trouble to turn back simply to inquire about the weather, and instead they began to descend the slope. As they walked along, Kōji was again overcome with thoughts of happiness. They came upon him from behind and persistently hung about him, the way a child clings to its parent’s neck. How could we possibly have had such a happy and peaceful moment as this before the incident? he continually thought. Certainly when Yūko came to meet me at the harbor, and even during our conversation at the grassy knoll at the rear of the bay, she had seemed no different at all than before. But that was probably the result of her hiding her feelings of happiness out of consideration for me after my release from prison. Maybe it was this that she really wanted to show me. Perhaps that was the real reason why she went out of her way to invite me to Iro in the first place. If that is the case, thought Kōji in sudden realization, then this happiness has undoubtedly been brought about by that single attack with the wrench.

At length the slope leveled out, and below them they could see the back garden of Taisenji temple and part of the priest’s living quarters. In the temple garden, a large number of droning honeybees hovered around a pomegranate tree that was festooned with scarlet flowers and a camellia with shiny leaves. One of the bees, having separated from the swarm, flew loftily toward them and landed on Ippei’s straw hat. Kōji borrowed Ippei’s walking stick and deftly knocked the bee to the ground. This was the second time he had raised his hand to Ippei’s head. The three of them smiled at this little triumph, and that, more than anything, provided comforting proof that no one associated Kōji’s actions with past events.

The smitten bee lay dust-covered on the road, buzzing quietly.

“The priest will be angry with you,” said Yūko.

The priest, Kakujin, kept the wild honeybees. He had set up a hive beneath the floor and, from time to time, collected the honey to spread on his toast at breakfast. As if he had heard their conversation, the priest, who had been sitting at the back of his quarters, slipped on his geta and came down and stood in the back garden. Kakujin was shaven-headed with a healthy complexion and round face; he was in every detail exactly as one would imagine a chief priest. His face was a moderate mix of the secular and the transcendent with no trace of coldness whatsoever. He was, so to speak, a small, living portrait of the archetypal chief priest of a parish temple in a fishing village.

Yūko had already discussed the matter with Kōji, and it had been apparent from their first meeting that the priest considered them to be different from the run-of-the-mill sort of people he usually came into contact with. And because of this, the priest, too, had behaved in a way that made him stand out from that small portrait. This was painful for Yūko and Kōji. They had both been terribly fond of the priest’s small portrait and had even wanted to be included in a corner of it. The priest had lived in this peaceful village for a long time, and it was evident that he thirsted after people’s suffering. Of course, Iro had seen a lot of unhappiness: death, old age, sickness, poverty, domestic trouble, the sadness of parents with disabled children born of incestuous marriage, shipwrecked fishermen, the grief of the bereaved family left behind. However, in this countryside region, there was no “Great Doubt” of the sort encountered by Master Bankei when he was twelve or thirteen years old. In this village, there was none of that particular type of spiritual awakening—that craving for “seeing one’s true nature”—so characteristic of the Rinzai school of Zen.

It seemed the priest had been casting his net out for a considerable time—trying for a good catch. But for many years now the spiritual yield had been poor. When Yūko first came to the village and introduced herself, the priest must have sniffed out in this seemingly lively and cheerful, handsome-faced city girl the prey he had long been searching for. It was the smell of anguish, a smell that one with a nose for it could detect well in advance—a smell that Yūko herself had possibly not been aware of.

And what was more, this time, an unusually well-behaved, diffident, and hardworking young man had also come along—again, with that same smell. That delicious smell. There was no doubt that only the priest had detected it. He had been very kind to both Ippei and his wife and to Kōji, showing them warm friendship. It was a kindness born out of consideration for the delicious prey he had been craving for so long. All this was, of course, pure conjecture on the part of Yūko and Kōji. The priest had not once asked any probing questions; neither had Yūko nor Kōji volunteered information about their personal circumstances without being asked.

“Where are you all off to?” asked the priest in a loud voice from where he stood in the middle of the garden.

“For a picnic at the waterfall,” replied Yūko.

“That will be hard work in this heat. Your husband will be all right, won’t he?”

“He needs an outing to exercise his legs.”

“Oh, that’s extremely commendable. And, Kōji, I see you are the picnic bearer, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Kōji, laughing, swinging the large picnic hamper up for him to see. In that instant his heart, which had until then been filled with happiness, clouded over at the sight of the priest’s smiling face. Kōji recalled the reception he had received when, several days earlier, he had gone down to the village barber’s and tobacconist.

When he entered the barber’s shop, he had sensed that the conversation between the barber and his customers had abruptly come to an end, and while he was having his hair cut, the shop was enveloped in an eerie silence, so that all he could hear was the noise of scissors and clippers. And on the way home, when he stopped off at the tobacconist, the shop assistant’s familiar face suddenly tightened when she laid eyes on him. He had bought some cigarettes and then left. Behind him, he heard the girl’s feet kick off the tatami mats as she turned and hurried toward the back of the shop.

Kōji sensed he had seen in the priest’s carefree smile just now the two different faces of the village’s reaction to his presence.

“I’m tired. I’m tired,” began Ippei as they approached the eastern fringes of the village, turned left in front of the local shrine, and began at last to climb the mountain path.

With nothing else to do, they sat down on a rock in the shade of a tree. Yūko had Kōji take a picture of her with Ippei, and then she took one of Kōji and Ippei together. She was uneasy about giving the camera to Ippei, and so there was no picture of just her and Kōji.

When they were stuck for conversation, Kōji talked about prison. Yūko would frown at this but Ippei, seemingly pleased with the subject, leaned forward on his knees in an effort to understand as much as possible. Kōji, solely for Ippei’s benefit, slowly and concisely enunciated each and every word as he spoke. During the conversation, Yūko carefully brushed off an ant that had been crawling up Ippei’s unmoving right leg.

Kōji took out a small comb from the back pocket of his jeans, and with the light sifting down through the trees onto its candy-colored mock tortoiseshell, he showed it to Ippei and asked him what it was.

“Co… mb,” replied Ippei, after a few seconds, extremely pleased with himself at seeing Kōji’s acknowledgment.

Like a conjurer, Kōji turned the comb over and stroked its spine. “Can you see? It’s not worn down at all, is it?”

Yūko, also interested, moved her face closer and gave off a whiff of the perfume she had applied to the base of her ears.

“The inmates’ combs are all worn away here. In the worst cases, they are worn pretty much all the way down to the base of the teeth. And can you guess why? Well, I’ll tell you—it’s called ‘gori.’ What you do is you make a celluloid powder by rubbing the back of the comb on the windowpane in the toilets. Then you tightly wrap the powder in cotton, about the thickness of a cigarette, add a little tooth powder, and then rub it hard on a board until it ignites. You use it to light any cigarettes you manage to filch. If this gori is discovered, it’s two weeks in solitary. There was a guy who used to sing ‘Even without a match, a butt is lighted; distant yet so close, passions are ignited.’ ”

He lit his own cigarette, drew deeply on it, and narrowed his eyes.

“Does it taste good?” asked Yūko.

“Yeah, it’s good,” he replied, in a slightly ill-humored manner. It bothered him that cigarettes were no longer as good as they had been just before his release from prison.

Anyone looking at the garbage-filled river mouth by the wharf would find it hard to believe that this river had its origin in the great waterfall deep in the Taiya Mountains, hard to believe that it was the same as that limpid mountain stream water that seethed over the riverbed, sending spray over the moss-covered rocks.

They followed the mountain path—which could hardly be described as being very steep—upstream, and as they came to the top of the wide trail, the sunlight came through the trees and carried with it on the wind the chirring of cicadas, as if the dappled sunlight itself was in full chorus. And then they were in the pleasantly cool deep shade of a clump of cedar trees.

“I’m tired,” repeated Ippei.

By the time they reached the waterfall, they had taken four long impromptu breaks, and although they had planned to eat lunch at the plunge pool below the waterfall, they had polished off their lunch boxes at the third stop, on account of Kōji constantly complaining that he was hungry. That was already after noon. And, because each time they stopped to rest, Kōji always descended the valley to dip Yūko’s mountain lily into the stream, so that it retained its beautiful fragrance and vigor.

The waterfall couldn’t be much farther now.

Ippei clambered to his feet—signaling, in theatrical fashion, that they should start. Clearly he was aware that he was clowning around. He thrust forward his walking stick and knickerbocker-clad left leg—“Off we go!”—and then swung the whole of his body around from the right, lifting his right leg up like a heavy crane.

Yūko cheered him on.

“Off we go!”

Kōji tidied the picnic away, confident that he would soon be able to catch up to them no matter how far ahead they got, and gazed after their retreating forms as they appeared to dissolve into the hazy sunlight that sifted down through the trees onto the pebble path.

It was an absurd sight—Yūko doggedly echoing Ippei, “Off we go!”

Kōji was beguiled by that hollow voice, lost in the torrent of the stream. He felt as though the predicament in which he had been placed was as heavy, cold, and immovable as stone. He lengthened the strap of the tea flask and slung it across his shoulder together with the camera and set off with a careless swing of the empty picnic basket.

Having crossed a moldering wooden bridge and climbed a roundabout set of stone steps, Yūko now stood in front of the small shrine, listening to the roar of the waterfall through the dense clump of cedar trees; there was a clear look of contempt in her eyes.

“It’s a pretty dull, small shrine, isn’t it? It’s ridiculous to think we’ve carried the lily all this way to make an offering at a place like this. And what is this cheap muslin curtain with the rosette pattern supposed to mean?”

Inside the shrine, the flame of a candle that was about to expire flickered precariously, and several strings of paper cranes that had all but lost their color swayed ever so slightly in the updraft.

Kōji was afraid of Yūko’s sacrilege.

It was a sacrilege without reason or motive—nothing other than a moody fixation with an illusion she had herself waywardly created.

“But the object of worship at this shrine is the waterfall itself, isn’t it? Who cares about the cheap curtain?”

Yūko was annoyed about something. Her anger-filled eyes flashed as they caught the piercing rays of light coming over the cedar tops.

“All right, then we can throw the lily into the pool, can’t we?”

Then they rested on an expansive sheet of rock at the side of the plunge pool. After hearing the roar of the waterfall, something had changed inside Yūko. She laughed wildly, and then just as suddenly fell silent. Her emotions were self-indulgent—her hot, moist eyes held the waterfall in their gaze, and her dark crimson lips, unsmiling, twisted every now and then.

The view of the waterfall was magnificent.

From a height of some two hundred feet the black rock summit shone in the brilliant light that was penetrating the disordered clouds above, and out from between the light-filled gaps in a sparse coppice water came skipping and jumping in short bursts before cascading downward. All they could see of the upper third was white spray, and while the rock surface wasn’t visible, lower down the water divided itself in two and surged outward as if suddenly attacking the onlookers below. Finally, the flow formed a multitude of columns and then descended abruptly with a shake of its foaming white mane.

The only things growing on the rocks that agitated the water were a small number of weeds that were soaked right through to their stems.

The direction of the wind was constantly changing and one couldn’t be certain from where the spray was next going to come. The sunlight leaking through the tall vegetation on the bank to the right was a picture of tranquility as it threw streaks of even, parallel light across the falling water. The air was filled with the sound of the waterfall and the chirring of cicadas. The two quarreled with each other and at times seemed like one and the same, and yet, at other times their sounds were quite distinct.

They lay down on the rock surface, each adopting a position according to their own fancy. Ippei had taken the lily from where it lay at Yūko’s side and placed it over his face as he reclined on his back. It was difficult to interpret if Ippei’s actions were deliberately exaggerated or if they had been abandoned in midflow. This time, it wasn’t obvious whether he had been trying to appreciate the lily’s fragrance or, perhaps, pretending to devour the flower.

At any rate, his distinguished nose and mouth had been buried in the lily for quite some time. The other two, their ears deafened by the thunder of the waterfall, were pretending not to have noticed.

Then suddenly Ippei began to choke violently and flung the flower away, leaving a startled face speckled around the tip of the nose and cheeks with brick-colored pollen. Or had he been trying to commit suicide with the flower?

Yūko propped herself up. She retrieved the slightly battered lily, took hold of the aluminum-wrapped stem base, and pensively waved it around casually several times in her red-nailed manicured fingers. This was the first time Kōji had seen such a lack of respect in her eyes as she regarded Ippei.

“Say, do you understand ‘sacrifice’?”

She stared into Ippei’s face as he lay once again on his back and posed the question in a contemptuous voice.

Ippei was surprised at the tone of his wife’s question, which was clearly different than usual.

“Sacr… fish?”

“No, that’s not right. Don’t you understand the word ‘sacrifice’?”

“I don’t understand.”

Kōji thought Yūko was being unduly hard on Ippei and so he interrupted. “It’s too difficult for him, you know, such an abstract word.”

“Be quiet. I’m testing him.”

Turning her face to Kōji, she smiled in a relaxed, rather vague manner instead of the harsh look that he had expected to see.

Kōji stared at several stray hairs blown across Yūko’s forehead by the wind from the waterfall and suddenly remembered that single strand of hair floating in the dark bathtub.

“You must have some idea? You’re an idiot, aren’t you? This is what I’m talking about.”

Without warning, Yūko threw the lily she had been holding into the plunge pool. The discarded flower formed a shining white circle in front of them.

Dark confusion spread across Ippei’s face. This was something else Kōji had not seen before—a look of pure anxiety born of being cut off from all understanding.

Yūko was enjoying herself to the point where she couldn’t control herself any longer. She bent backward, choking back tears of laughter, and then quickly asked, “How about the word ‘kiss,’ then? Do you understand that?”

“Ki…”

“Try to say ‘kiss.’ ”

“Ki…”

“You’re stupid, aren’t you? You don’t understand, do you? Well, I’ll show you. It’s like this.”

She turned about and suddenly wrapped herself around Kōji’s neck as he was leaning forward. The rocks were slippery, and Kōji was caught off guard by this surprise attack. Yūko’s lips pressed blindly against his, and their teeth bumped together. After this collision came a meeting of the flesh. She advanced and inserted her tongue into Kōji’s mouth, and Kōji, drawn into that warm, tender morass, swallowed her saliva. His senses benumbed by the unceasing boom of the waterfall, he couldn’t tell how much time had passed. When their lips parted, he was angry. He sensed that the kiss had, surely, been for Ippei’s sake.

“Lay off, will you? Stop tormenting him like this for your own amusement.”

“He isn’t suffering.”

“What would you know about that? In any case, I object to being used like this.”

Yūko looked up at him mockingly. “What are you saying, after all this time? When you’ve been used from the very beginning. You like it, don’t you?”

In spite of himself, Kōji struck Yūko across the cheek. He left his hand there and, without looking at her, turned to face Ippei.

In that instant, Ippei had an unmistakable smile on his face.

It was exactly the same smile—the embodiment of Ippei’s new character—that Kōji had first seen following his release from prison, and for the first time he felt he understood what it meant. He had been rejected, forced out by that smile.

There was something about Ippei’s smile that reminded him of that serene hourglass that had come and gone amid the billowing steam of the dirty prison bathhouse. Struck with fear, Kōji embraced Yūko. He gazed at her cold, meek face and her closed eyes as she lay in his arms. He kissed those lips, working in vain to rid his mind at once of the image of Ippei’s smile. But this time the kiss had lost completely its exquisite taste.

When he came to, the sky had clouded over. Being unprepared for bad weather, they tidied their things away in silence, helped one another to their feet, and thought about the long and arduous trek home through the rain. Yūko carried the empty picnic hamper on the return journey.