Last Quadrant

by Meira Chand

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ It was all she could say. No other word would come. She knew they watched her as she replaced the telephone. She said nothing and their silence grew furred about her, demanding. In her mind the world was splintering, she did not want the darkness of their apprehension. She stood up and her body trembled, her voice shook. She pushed her chair back. ‘I’m going out. I have to go out.’

  Eva spoke first. ‘Was it her, Akiko? Was it Kyo? Your mother?’ For the first time the name lay open between them.

  But still Akiko could not tell them. She nodded and did not look into Eva’s face. She turned towards the door.

  ‘You cannot go now, Akiko. Not in this weather, Akiko ... they say a typhoon is coming ...’ Eva half started from her chair.

  ‘I’m going, I said. I’m going.’

  Eva could find no words. She sat down in the chair again. Akiko’s eyes were slim like her mother’s, determined.

  ‘It’s not far, I’ll be back soon. There is no need to worry,’ Akiko said more kindly, filled suddenly with power. She turned again to the door.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Daniel stood up decisively.

  ‘No.’ She flared, striking out with the word, their fears suddenly like nets about her. She wanted to be on her own, to touch the untouchable without witness. It was hers. Hers. No one must take it from her, no one must touch it. She had waited all her life.

  ‘Nevertheless, I’ll come. I’ll wait around while you meet your mother. I’ll not bother you.’ He took a step forward. Eva looked at him gratefully. Akiko pursed her lips and turned quickly from the door.

  Eva stared at the back of the girl. Suddenly in the shape of her calf, in the curve of her cheek, Eva saw Kyo and closed her eyes, and forced down the fear that was like a malaise. She sat for some moments in the silent room after Akiko and Daniel had gone. Then forced herself to walk to the door, and the problem of Kenichi in the lavatory.

  The rain had stopped. There was no sun, just a strange dense light in the cooled, stirred air; the wind had dropped. In the sudden lull a moth fluttered low over a wet patch of grass. The playground of the orphanage was strewn with a wet mush of leaves. Akiko shut the gate behind her, not caring if Daniel came or not. But soon she heard it swing again, and his footsteps follow on the road, hurrying to catch up. Taking no notice she made her way quickly down the hill. Over the bay the light was a bar above the horizon; within it a dark bank of cloud dissolving again to mist, sweeping towards the town. Studded with ships the bay was now grey as stone, whipped white with small waves, as if it had turned to quartz. A wind began low in the trees again.

  She hurried on beneath the umbrella, listening to the soughing of the pines, looking up at their sombre patterns scratched upon the cloud-filled sky. Nothing could alter the knowledge that weaved its way towards her now. Nothing could alter the change it would bring about in her. So she paused and, still silent, allowed Daniel to walk beside her.

  16

  Drinking his tea, Arthur Wilcox took up the book of haiku and read:

  A warbler

  In a grove of bamboo shoots

  Growing old, sings.

  Hurriedly he shut the book. Then paced the floor, undecided. Outside the rain had briefly stopped, but a low wind continued, breathing restlessly, stirring foliage. The bay was marble veined with the spume of waves, spotted with ships, the clouds were gunmetal grey. The thought of the long evening, wet and lonely, seemed unbearable. He decided to go to the library at the club, to look for material for the centenary book. He would poke around upon a ladder, among the upper shelves. Who knew what he might find.

  17

  The sky was dark as iron, rain emptied down and the wind came in flurries, beating the wet about them. She walked close to Daniel. Rain drummed the bowl of the umbrella, dripped in streams from its ribs, and was blown again upon them. She tightened on the comfort of Daniel’s arm. There were few people on the streets.

  The road began at the lower gate of the Ikuta Shrine. On one side was a huge red lacquered torii arch, wet like patent leather now, and on the other was the dome of the Shinseiki cabaret and Turkish bath. From there, the narrow road turned upwards. There were some eating places, coffee shops and small boutiques, but mostly bars. Above them the street lights were warming up and mixed with the neon lighted names of dubious bars. They reflected like wounds; crimson, orange and purple in the sleek, sodden surface of the road. A slippery dusk was descending, and already the bars began to stir, a light behind a curtain, a fluorescent sign bursting into life above a door. Beyond their silent exteriors Akiko sensed another world. She swallowed hard and walked on, determined.

  A blade of light slit the shutter of the window. Club Starlight and Bar was looped in silver above the dead black door. A blue plastic garbage bin and two empty beer crates huddled beneath the window, the large condenser of an air conditioner stood beside the door. The place was no more than ten feet wide.

  ‘I will wait for you there, in that doorway,’ Daniel said.

  She nodded, unable to speak. The wind blew hard against her face, cold and wet with rain. She stepped forward and the door opened easily.

  Two men and a woman sat before a bar counter, their expressions colourless as glass as they turned to stare at Akiko. A singer with an upswept hairdo filled the screen of a television, hooked high above the bar. Her voice warbled out, filling the room. The lighting was the low red glow of tulle shaded lamps on a passage of red wall. The door shut behind her and the walls seemed to close in about her. Akiko smelled her own clean smell of rain, like something indigestible in this low-lighted crimson belly. The raincoat dripped wetly on her ankles. The two men and a woman continued to stare at her. The men were rough types from the underworld. They wore the gangland uniform of garish clothes and permed or close-cropped hair. One wore a stomach binder beneath a thin shirt. The other slurped whisky loudly over ice, the amputated finger of gang allegiance hooked about his glass. They sprawled on plush red chairs rubbed thin about the seams. The woman leaned on the bar, in a slit-sided dress of peacock satin, her mouth a violet welt in her face, her body arched at the counter like a hard green reed. Akiko looked at her, wondering, not wishing to believe. The air was thick with the smell of whisky and drains.

  A bartender emerged from a door behind the counter.

  ‘What do you want?’ A black bow tie moved with his Adam’s apple.

  She pushed herself to speak then, looking at the woman. But it was not her.

  ‘Kyo?’ she said. ‘Upstairs.’ And thrust out with her chin in the direction of some stairs. She moved away to a juke box, a coin dropped loudly in the slot.

  It was a dream, and her body was scarcely flesh. She took a step forward to the narrow stairwell in the wall.

  ‘Wait,’ the woman at the juke box called, her eyebrows thin as razor wounds. She disappeared upstairs, her high heels echoing back to them. From the juke box came the sudden lash of music. The men stirred and exchanged incoherent remarks, laughing lewdly, watching Akiko. One held up a glass.

  ‘A drink? Come here.’

  Her stomach grew tight and she fixed her gaze on the television, and its jerking obsessive flow of images. The men continued to call her. On the television a commercial ended, the weather news flickered before her. The men’s voices sounded in her ears, coaxing and salacious. The television droned on.

  ‘Powerful Typhoon 21 cut across Kyushu early today killing seventeen persons and leaving scars from ferocious wind and torrential rain in its wake, disrupting land, sea and air transportation over the Kyushu area. The typhoon, packing winds of 50 metres per second, is gaining speed and has changed course in a north-easterly direction. The typhoon is expected to hit Osaka at nine o’clock this evening if it maintains its present speed of 90 kilometres an hour. Evacuation procedures have already started in the Tenoji area of Osaka where the eye of the typhoon is expected to ...’

  ‘Pour her a drink on me.’ The words were thrown from one end of the room
to the other. The bartender smiled with one side of his mouth. Under his hand she watched the glass turn solid amber, and looked quickly up at the screen again.

  ‘... all flights cancelled, railway services suspended. All residents in the Kansai area are warned to return home. We will continue to ...’

  The woman clattered down the stairs again.

  ‘Go up,’ she said. ‘Left at the top.’

  The stairs were steep and awkward, the smell of drains rose up coarse and rich as she began to climb, and her heart beat fast behind her ribs. The door to the room was open, and already she wanted to retreat. Instead, she pushed herself to step forward and enter the room, and gaze down at the woman sitting on the bed.

  They looked at each other silently. And within Akiko, every thought dissolved to shapelessness.

  ‘So,’ said Kyo, very slowly. ‘Akiko.’

  There were no words, just a numbness in her mind. Already she wished to see no more. From the body of this woman she had been made. From the body of this woman she had been born. The ugliness closed in upon her.

  ‘Sit down.’ Kyo made room on the side of the bed. A thin sheet was pulled loosely across her hips, and her shoulders were bare above a beige satin slip. She was colourless, the tone of yellow marble. Only her hair, coarse and dishevelled, was a bright copper red that darkened at the roots.

  ‘I am ill, as I told you. I would not have called you otherwise. Or maybe I would have. To see how you turned out.’ Kyo scrutinised Akiko.

  A large mirror ringed by raw light bulbs, multiplied the room and Kyo on the bed. Before it a table was littered with cosmetics, and a chair was heaped with clothes. Pushed against a wall was a low metal-legged table and some cushions. Bottles and empty glasses were strewn about the floor, as if there had been a party and nobody had cleared away.

  ‘There is some whisky in the bottle there.’ Kyo had followed her eyes. ‘Give me a drink. I need it. Seeing you. There, take this glass.’ Her voice had a rough, cracked edge. She sat up in bed, her chest flat and bony beneath the satin bodice.

  ‘I didn’t do too badly. You’re a pretty girl. Could be even prettier, if you used more cosmetics.’ She tilted her head to one side, looking at Akiko. ‘A darker lipstick, some eye shadow. And you don’t pluck your eyebrows right. But we’ve plenty of time for that.’ She took a gulp from the glass Akiko gave her.

  ‘That’s better. Good as a man inside you.’ She closed her eyes and leaned back upon the pillow, then flicked them open again.

  ‘You’re shocked, of course. By me, by all this. I can see it on your face. What did you expect? Can’t you speak? Don’t you have a tongue?’ She sat forward and peered closely into Akiko’s face. ‘Joe, his name was Joe. Bastard. You’ve got his nose. Left me when I was seven months gone. Foreign bastard. They murder you laughing, men.’ She held the tumbler of whisky to the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It glittered, bronze. ‘I shouldn’t down this stuff like I do. They told me at the hospital. But what other way is there? Tell me. It’s my best friend. Doesn’t do to see things too clearly. Doesn’t do to think about things. Yes, you can look. You can look. But that’s life. Life.’ She shrugged and turned down the corners of her mouth.

  ‘But let’s get back to you. I am ill. You can see I’m ill. And I am your mother. You know it now. Maybe I should have come back to you before, I thought about it often. But what good would it do, I always said. I did well, leaving you with that Englishwoman. She looked after you, didn’t she? I can see it. She’s a good woman. I knew she would look after you. But it’s not too late. I have come back to live here in Japan. We’ll make a home together now. And you’ll help me, won’t you? You’ll look after me? For I am ill. I don’t know when I shall be able to work again. But I have a plan. Chieko, that’s her downstairs, she’s a friend, she’s given me this room here, I can stay for a while, but not forever, of course. Chieko’s all right, and she’s made money, enough to buy herself this bar. But we’re not all so lucky. Look at me.

  ‘Listen, someone has to help me. And I am your mother, nothing can change that. No adoption, nothing. You were born from my flesh and blood. I am your mother. And you’re a pretty girl. I knew you would be. We’ll live together, as I said. And I already spoke to Chieko. She’ll find you a job, you can earn a lot with a face like yours. Much more than you’ll ever get at that orphanage. I know where the money is. And I can teach you things. I know all kinds of people, I ... Akiko ... Akiko ...’

  She stumbled over the debris on the floor. A bottle tipped and stale beer the colour of urine spilt over her foot and streamed foaming at the edges onto the tatami matting. The narrow walls of the stairwell guided her down.

  ‘Akiko.’

  The stale red cave received her again, and she ran towards the door.

  ‘Akiko.’

  An arm came down before her face, barring her way to the door.

  ‘Your drink,’ he said. ‘You haven’t had your drink. You’re a pretty girl. We must get to know each other.’ The man grinned, his face near her own, his breath corroded by liquor. Through the thin muslin of his shirt she could see the hair of his armpits, and she felt his hand on the back of her neck. He brought the glass near her, pressing it to her lips. The liquid was sharp and quick on her tongue and stung her in the throat. She began to cough. The man laughed, his hand moved to her shoulder and held her so she could not move, his body pressed against her.

  ‘Leave her. Leave her alone.’ Kyo pushed the man away, angry. And stood clenched and ready, naked beneath the satin slip.

  ‘Kyo.’ The man laughed coarsely, and moved towards the woman.

  ‘Don’t be jealous, Kyo.’ He pulled her by the low neck of her slip towards him. Kyo laughed suddenly, half turned and thrust Akiko towards the door.

  She looked back as the door swung shut behind her. But through the closing slit there was only the glimpse of Kyo’s naked leg against the trouser of the man.

  The horror surged up in Akiko then, tears pricked her eyes. Already her flesh was something dirty and diseased.

  1

  The wind was driving down now, flat off the sea. A child had left an inflatable ball in the yard beneath the camellia tree. Eva watched it lift and spin, a wet pink smear across the sky, hurled against the wall. It lifted again and she saw it coming, an invisible hand slamming it at her. It struck the window before her and dropped, a bell rolled bleakly inside it. They heard news of the approaching typhoon just after Akiko and Daniel left. Eva frowned with worry, for she felt the spirit of the storm, a malevolent stirring thing upon whose back they must helplessly ride.

  Akiko and Daniel had not returned and anxiety tightened in Eva. She dared not think or panic rose. A flurry of rain stung the window, then again retreated. It was almost dark and the iron gate of the orphanage had already sunk into the dusk. In the sphere of light about the porch rain fell solid and hard, like a curtain, then blew wild as the wind caught it. And still she did not hear their returning voices. There was only the hum of wind, and lashing rain. Eva turned from the window, it was almost dinner time.

  She let herself out. Immediately the umbrella strained in her hands, alive, pulling her with it; rain whipped about her. She ran, crossing the road to her own small house. Usually she returned home about this time, but tonight she would not leave the orphanage until after the typhoon. She just had to shutter the house. She let herself in and the dry silent shelter of the place closed about her. She leaned against the door, and the house seemed to reflect her melancholy, and hung like a weight about her.

  The rain thrust in, soaking her as she opened the window and pulled out the heavy wooden shutters from their boxes, and slid them into place. Soon it was done, and the house was blind and closed, but panic filled her again. What if Akiko did not return? What if Kyo claimed her? And the girl was glad to go. Akiko. She said the word aloud, and there was numbness now within her. She remembered again how often the child had asked those questions. Who was she? Where is she? My mother? Oh God.
Please God. Eva buried her face in her hands as the evening fell thick around her.

  Returning to the orphanage, the gate was pulled from her hand by the wind and slammed behind her. The umbrella was all but useless; rain stung her neck. Under the windows of the surgery a bed of tall chrysanthemums dipped and swayed, their yellow heads a mad orchestra in play. The red berries of the elder tree were strewn on the path, smashed and black. Through the lighted frames of the orphanage windows she searched for Akiko’s head, but found only Eiko Kubo and Yoshiko Mori dismissing children from the dining room. The rain had eased briefly, but the wind thrashed on in branches and leaves above her, trees tossed against the sky. Soon darkness would come down and seal them in the storm. Eva felt a new fear then, an inexplicable premonition.

  She found the younger children gathered in the recreation room, talking excitedly above the bright squares of comics and games. Eiko, Yoshiko and Sister Elaine stood before the television. They turned to Eva.

  ‘The course is unsteady, they say, it could still change,’ Yoshiko said excitedly. Eva joined them at the television.

  ‘... the typhoon will hit the Honshu mainland. The Kansai area is already within the outer periphery of the typhoon which is expected to hit Osaka at nine thirty tonight. Evacuation procedures continue in the Tenoji area of Osaka, where the eye of the storm is expected to pass. Typhoon 21, a category 5 superstorm, is one of the most ferocious typhoons recorded in recent years by the Meteorological Agency. Residents of Kansai area are again warned to stay indoors and keep tuned to the weather news ...’

  On a satellite photo of the Japanese archipelago the storm track was a bulbous serpentine thing, unmoored and wild above the land. She could see the eye, clear and vacant, in the midst of cloudy hysteria. A man in souwester and galoshes appeared on the screen and stood, microphone in hand, backed by a raging sea. He began to speak with difficulty against the wind. ‘Three people were killed near here when a concrete wall collapsed on ...’ Eva turned away.