Last Quadrant

by Meira Chand

  ‘What’s mechanical mean?’

  ‘To do with a machine.’ Arthur looked about him in trepidation. The small bodies of the children surrounded him. A few more came to join the group and stared at him in silence. Their limbs were tiny with the boniness of birds, their heads like dark nodding flowers on frail stems. Rows of eyes observed.

  Emiko stepped forward boldly and leaned against his knees, staring up into his face. He marvelled at the perfection of the miniature in her. Hesitantly, she touched his moustache with a finger and drew back quickly.

  ‘Ugh. It’s all bristly. What’s it for?’

  ‘Err ... err ... decoration,’ Arthur replied desperately, knowing the novelty of a moustache in Japan.

  ‘Decoration?’ Emiko was incredulous.

  ‘Decoration?’ The others echoed and crowded nearer to look.

  ‘Ugh. You have hairs inside your nose,’ Emiko announced, completing her scrutiny. Arthur drew back in his chair, but there was not far he could go. The children laughed and ran away, and Arthur was left with Hiroshi.

  ‘What’s a carburettor?’ Hiroshi continued.

  ‘Go away,’ growled Arthur.

  At the other end of the room the beds were neatly down. The smaller children, already in pyjamas, clambered in. There was great excitement. Akiko appeared with a tray of hot drinks. Arthur watched her handing round the mugs, bending to each child, settling it in bed.

  He had watched the girl grow up. Occasionally even met her with a group of children, coming out or going into the orphanage, when he passed on his evening walk. Sometimes, when she was small she accompanied Eva Kraig on her spasmodic visits to him. She had sat quietly at Eva’s side, and gave no sign she recognised the house, although he watched her intently. Perhaps indeed, she did not recognise it. He did not pretend to understand the limit or function of children’s memories. Later, as she grew, she appeared sometimes by herself with the dutiful newspapers and bag of fruit or cake Eva sent him. She spoke brightly, but did not stay long. But even then, never once did she give him a sign she remembered him or the house. He saw no flicker in her eyes from the dark, closed box of time. When he thought about it he was relieved, for it had always been a secret. Nobody knew he knew Kyo. His wish to share a memory with the girl was only a wish to return to those moments with the woman. In this secret way he had enjoyed seeing the child grow, enjoyed nobody knowing. He noted those features about the girl that were like her mother, and held them in his mind, like small treasures in a box. With the esoteric pleasure of these thoughts he leaned his head back in the canvas chair, and soon fell asleep.

  A knocking sound woke him from a dreamless doze. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The end of the room where the small children lay was already in darkness. The older children still read in bed under lights in the nearer part of the room. He could not have dozed long: one small child still sat in the dark, finishing its cocoa. He heard the knocking again and the sound of the front door opening. About him the blast of wind and rain lacerated the windows. He was glad he was safe, inside. Sometimes the wind seemed to run at the building, ramming it head first. Then walls shook and windows trembled with the beating. Outside was the sharp sound of a tin rolling across the concrete yard, rolling and rolling. Arthur was relieved to see, beneath the grey curtains of the dining room, the windows crossed firmly with brown sticky tape. He thought anxiously of his own home, but there was nothing he could do. From the hall Eva Kraig’s voice called urgently for Akiko and Daniel. Someone else, it appeared, had come.

  He watched the group return to the room with detached interest. The man, Daniel, led the way, carrying the inert body of a woman. Eva Kraig fussed at his side; Akiko trailed some distance behind. Not far from Arthur, Daniel stopped and put the woman down, supporting her as she clung to him. Her wet red hair dripped with rain and was plastered to her head. Eva removed the woman’s sodden coat and a pair of spiky red shoes. She pulled a reclining chair forward and they laid the woman on it. She was dressed in a green cocktail dress, as wet as the coat Eva Kraig had removed. There was a cut on her leg, the blood crusted and dark; her stockings were torn and splashed. A slow, wet stain spread beneath her upon the canvas seat of the chair.

  In the capacity of interested observer, Arthur got up and walked over. In the chair the woman lay half-conscious; once or twice she groaned. The green of her dress and the deep red of her wet stringy hair were a garish match against her sallow skin. She looked ill, thought Eva, as she poured some precious brandy into a tumbler and pressed it to the woman’s lips, supporting her head with an arm. Akiko stood sullenly some distance away, apart from the fussing group. Arthur looked at her curiously, and then back again to the woman, who was now beginning to stir. She opened her eyes, murmured something and struggled forward in the chair.

  Arthur started backwards then, half tripping over a mattress. It was as if something had dropped through him, heavy and cold, tearing open the centre of his body. He stared again and recognised the woman, Kyo.

  4

  Eva closed the door and sat down heavily in the privacy of the surgery. She turned on the reading lamp over her desk. The small travelling flask she had poured Kyo a drink from stood before her, open still. It was kept for emergencies rather than habit, and the present situation was an emergency. Eva poured herself a drink in its cup-like silver cap. She took an ample stinging mouthful and let it course down inside her. Its comfort settled in her belly. There had been no other choice. No choice. The wind nearly blew the woman upon her as she had opened the door. Kyo had staggered and fallen against her, wet, smelling of drink and stale perfume. At first Eva could not believe it.

  ‘How could you have got here in this weather?’ It was all she could say in that moment.

  ‘Someone from the bar was driving home, said he lives near here. I took a lift and walked up from the main road. Don’t know how we made it, not another car about. Your hill is like a river.’ Kyo lurched again against Eva, then leaned back against the wall. ‘I kept falling and slipping, I’ve cut myself all over.’ She slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Eva thought her drunk, the smell of liquor was strong about her. She wore a light cotton raincoat, all wet and muddied, and beneath it a green lace cocktail dress. Her feet stuck out beneath her awkwardly, in spiky-heeled red shoes, her ankles were sinewy as a bird’s. She was dishevelled and disreputable. Anger buzzed suddenly in Eva’s head, sharpening her tone as she spoke.

  ‘What do you want? Why have you come? Is it not enough, all that you have done?’ She wanted to open the door and bundle the wretched woman outside. Yet even as she thought it, a force of wind struck the door behind her, vibrating through the walls, reminding her of reality. All she could do was stare disbelievingly.

  ‘Don’t send me away.’ Kyo opened her eyes and looked at Eva. The wet on her cheeks were tears.

  ‘You win,’ Kyo said, her voice cracked.

  ‘There was never a battle,’ Eva replied with asperity. She could not believe the woman sat here before her on the floor.

  ‘Why don’t you get up?’ she asked, more gently. She could never trust Kyo, she turned from one mood to another, one stance to another like a chameleon, according to the role of the moment. How much of this was an act Eva could not tell.

  ‘Kyo.’

  ‘I turned Akiko off. How could I have expected anything else? Me.’

  ‘Kyo,’ Eva said resignedly, for it seemed the woman did not pretend. For a moment Eva saw in the stroke of an eye and the line of the brow the essences of Akiko. So that she was reminded she dealt not with abstractions but human facts. She sighed, and the hard shape of Kyo dissolved. Sitting there she reflected nothing but the sad remnants of her own charade. Shabby, beaten, tawdry remnants. For the moment all her venom and scheming were gone, anger was futile, Eva saw now. For in the haggard face was only the child she had found in a gutter all those years ago; the same shapes of misery and pain, the same dust of every dream. What chance had there ever been? This fact seemed to connect
every expectation. For Kyo illusion would always be reality, and reality illusion. The alternative was unbearable, for life bequeathed Kyo only betrayal after she left Eva.

  ‘I don’t know why I came. What shall I do?’ Kyo asked, her eyes closed and wet. Mascara was smudged about one eye. She sat motionless against the wall; her head made a wet patch on the plaster. Eva spoke slowly, thinking with each word.

  ‘For the moment what can you do but stay. There is a typhoon all but upon us. That you have arrived is incredible, you certainly cannot return. Afterwards we shall think again.’

  ‘You were always good to me. The only one, ever.’ Tears flowed down Kyo’s cheeks.

  It was all an act; even if there was emotion, the woman was unbalanced. But it distressed Eva all the same as she bent to help Kyo up. ‘Come, let’s get you warm and dry. Clearly you are most unwell.’ Of that at least she was sure now. Kyo nodded, but as she rose she groaned and crumbled to the floor again. It was then Eva called to Daniel and Akiko.

  Now she sipped the brandy. Everything is expected, nothing is strange, she thought, and sighed above the cup. The door opened, Akiko came in and took the chair the other side of the desk. Eva sipped her drink and did not speak.

  ‘You’d better have some too,’ she said at last. ‘We both need it.’ She poured a little into a tumbler for the girl. ‘Drink it up. That’s right. Fortification.’

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Akiko said. They had persuaded Kyo to relinquish her wet dress in favour of Eiko Kubo’s dressing gown. They had lain her down on a spare mattress and covered her with a sheet.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me more about her?’ Akiko said bitterly.

  ‘It would have done you no good to know. You can see that now, can’t you?’ Eva spoke quietly.

  ‘What will happen?’ asked Akiko, almost under her breath. She tipped the tumbler up and drained the brandy.

  ‘Steady on,’ said Eva. ‘Well for tonight she’s here. There’s no other way.’

  ‘What does she want?’ Akiko questioned.

  ‘I have no idea. Your meeting was bad, she was upset maybe, I don’t know. I think she moves as the spirit takes her. Clearly, she is ill, and very unbalanced.’

  ‘She’s awful. Awful. I can’t believe she’s my mother. After all these years of wondering ...’

  ‘I know. I know. But do not hate her. She needs your pity and compassion. Life never gave her a chance. There are many things I shall have to tell you now. But not tonight.’

  Akiko said nothing but stared vacantly into the empty glass in her hands. Eva stood up. ‘Come. We are needed in the other room.’ She reached over and ruffled Akiko’s head. ‘There is no way, my love, she can claim or harm you. You must not worry.’

  Akiko nodded silently and stood up to follow Eva.

  It was nine thirty. The children lay on two long lines of mattresses, peaceful, asleep. The dining room was in semi darkness. The adults sat at one end, grouped around a low table, drinking coffee. A light above their chairs was shaded with a towel. Kyo slept on a nearby mattress.

  Outside the wind reverberated in a deep sustained boom, like the roll of a distant drum. It seemed to charge suddenly then retreat, only to charge again. A sudden light crash of glass made them start. Daniel got up and went to investigate.

  ‘It’s the porch light, something must have blown at it,’ he said, coming back into the room. ‘I heard tiles rip off the roof too.’ He saw while he had been out Eva had placed a hurricane lamp and two torches on the table, in readiness for emergencies.

  ‘I’ll go and listen again to the weather news.’ Eiko stood up and Yoshiko followed.

  ‘The typhoon was supposed to hit Osaka at nine thirty,’ Yoshiko said.

  Arthur Wilcox sat up suddenly. ‘If that is so, then we must now be, if my geography and storm strategy are rightly remembered, we must now be in the left front quadrant of the storm, or possibly even the left rear quadrant.’ Arthur Wilcox frowned with the effort of remembering. ‘Yes, it’s all coming back.’ He turned to Daniel.

  ‘Typhoons, my lad, are spawned at latitudes 10 and 20 either side of the equator, speed at birth six to eight knots, can increase to fifty knots with winds of up to two or three hundred kilometres an hour.’ Arthur nodded dourly, pulling down the corners of his mouth. ‘Dastardly little things.’

  ‘Where did you learn all that?’ laughed Daniel, leaning forward.

  ‘Merchant Navy, young man. Tried it before coming out to Japan. Invalided out, back trouble. Still got it.’

  ‘Did you ever sail in a typhoon, Mr Wilcox?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case now appears, Dr Kraig, no. But I learnt my theory. Yes indeed, up here still, fresh as ever.’ He pointed to his skull.

  ‘Well, I’m thankful we’re here, safe and warm on land. I should not like to be on one of those ships tonight, anchored out in the bay,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Not much choice in the matter, young man. Safer than in port, where they might be smashed against a wharf or worse, lifted up and impaled upon pilings.’ Arthur dug in his pockets and produced a pen and a scrap of paper. He drew a small circle, then a much larger one about it and divided the whole into four. He pointed to the small circle.

  ‘Here is the eye. These are the four quadrants. Right front quadrant up here most dangerous. Wind in that quadrant blows a vessel to the storm centre. Standard accepted rules, based on Henry Piddington’s law of storms devised last century, advise that a sailing vessel in the front quadrant should sail close hauled, or heave to on the starboard tack, so as to proceed away from storm centre.’ Arthur announced with a self-conscious cough, and pulled at the corner of his moustache. Not much wrong with the old memory box, he thought. Can’t say age is catching up yet. He saw he was observed by all in some wonderment.

  ‘Yes, can’t go wrong with old Piddington. Never been bettered yet. Got a copy still on my shelf. Could have done with it down here tonight.’

  ‘Well. I am glad you are with us, Mr Wilcox. We most certainly won’t be lost in a storm with you,’ Eva laughed. ‘More coffee anyone?’

  She walked into the kitchen to refill the jug.

  5

  Akiko watched Arthur Wilcox heating up about his storms. A long bony face and small eyes and between them a great moustache. A muscular, elderly walrus. She looked away in distaste, and stared silently into her coffee. The mug was warm between her palms, its heat an anchor, holding her in the present, not letting her escape. So that she must face the people around her, must accept the reality of what was happening, although it felt like a dream. Her mind bulged painfully with a complexity of detail, yet the simplicity of what had happened hollowed her out. She looked again at the mattress.

  Beneath the sheet was a thin huddled shape, a shape that was her mother. Tears pricked in Akiko’s eyes. She felt no more than a crumbling of stone, a scattering of ash. It seemed right that outside the wind should scream and lightning split the sky, for she had died. Died for this middle-aged, sallow-skinned woman who was her mother. Who deserved pity and some tears, but not much more.

  Akiko, sometimes I like to hope you think of me.

  Mother.

  Now the words no longer flowered in her head. The images did not bloom but hung like tattered, dirty rags. She had held them silently, expecting beauty, and they had only defiled.

  On the mattress Kyo heaved and turned. Her cheek was distorted against a hard bean pillow, her mouth puckered and was pushed slightly open. Eiko Kubo’s white candlewick dressing gown gaped to the waist and revealed a narrow sequence of slip and the thin crease of her small flat breasts. The thought ran again in Akiko’s head: From the body of this woman I have been made. And then again, from a long while back came the words of Mrs Okuno’s senile mother, grilling rice cakes on a brazier. ‘I knew her, I did. She would lay with them in the open if they paid her enough.’ She saw now it might indeed be so. She had forgotten the words, yet they had remained in her head to parade before her now. In spit
e of herself she looked again at the body beneath the sheet, thought of the times it had given itself, the numerous hands that had run its length and touched its secret places. She felt nausea in her then, and turned away. Heat from the coffee mug in her hands claimed her again as she looked down into its blue well. It showed the reflection of her own cheek and the ripple of a tear as it mixed with the coffee.

  Daniel’s hand ran lightly over her back, a caress of silent support. He watched her, she knew. He was there with her, beneath the web of social gesture. In a small, bleak way it helped, like a spot of light at the end of a tunnel. She realised with a start he was speaking to her, something about the typhoon, and Arthur Wilcox too was looking straight at her.

  ‘The vertex, young lady, as opposed to the vortex, which is the eye, is the most Westerly point reached by the centre before the typhoon recurves to the East. The vertex can also be called the cod.’ She nodded, it was all beyond her. She looked down again at the mug of coffee, but felt the man’s eyes linger upon her.

  She did not like him, Arthur Wilcox, who had lived for as long as she could remember further up on their pine-covered slope. He resided in the solitary splendour of a ramshackle house perched on a crag of hill. Two topiary bushes stood either side of the gate which he proudly and personally trimmed. He kept to himself, they would hardly have known he was there, but for Eva’s charitable endeavours. She saved her English subscriptions to newspapers for him, and put aside odd pieces of orphanage fruit, a cake or jar of jam. Once in a while she took them up herself, and sometimes sent Akiko or an older child. For twenty years she had sent Arthur newspapers and fruit. He responded at Christmas with home-made liqueur, and in spring with runner beans from his garden. But no further informalities developed from this stiff gavotte of intercourse.

  Akiko remembered when small, sitting with Eva on a patchy green sofa, lowered at one end by a broken frame. She remembered a smell of coldness and a smell of mould, a womanless house of small cheerless rooms, shelves of discoloured books and a golf cup tarnished by the briney air. There was the head of a deer in the hallway upon whose antlers Arthur rested his hat. The eyes of this deer were liquid and bright, a world of the living in the dead, moth-eaten fur of its head. She had clung to Eva’s skirt and passed the deer from the further side of Eva’s hip. But there was always a strange feeling of residue after she had been to the Wilcox house.