by Francis King
5
‘It was sweet of you to send me those lovely orchids. You’ve both been so kind to me. I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you.’
‘Now you’re talking like a Japanese,’ Bibi said, echoing what I had said to Bill two days before.
Sasha had stooped to tug some weeds out of a flower-bed containing straggly geraniums. Afraid that, dressed as he was in white linen trousers, white suede shoes and a shirt of knitted white silk, he would dirty his clothes, I exclaimed: ‘ Oh, don’t do that! The garden’s in an awful mess. We always mean to do something to it, but Bill is too busy and in this weather I just don’t have the energy.’
‘It’s not just the weather,’ Bibi said. ‘ You must realise you’ve been pretty seriously ill.’ As she surveyed me from under her wide-brimmed straw-hat, I found myself shifting uneasily, my gaze returning to Sasha, who was still grubbing among the weeds, his beautifully kept hands growing sticky with rain-sodden earth. ‘You’re still awfully pale,’ she said. ‘And you must have lost at least a stone.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Not that it doesn’t suit you. It does. Doesn’t it, Sasha? You’ve begun to look like one of those Rossetti paintings of Elizabeth Siddal. Except that you’re dark. You always looked vaguely pre-Raphaelite, of course, but there was a certain robustness about you which seemed out of place.’ Once again I was astonished by the hoarded cultural capital on which she and Sasha could always draw, even though neither of them now seemed ever to read a book or to attend a concert or an exhibition. ‘Oh, do leave those weeds, Sasha!’ she exclaimed. ‘ He shows no interest in our garden, at all.’
‘I expect you have a lot of gardeners.’
Bibi looked round at the tangle of waist-high grass, with here and there a flowering shrub or a flower-bed half-submerged in the aqueous green. ‘Why don’t you turn this into a Japanese garden?’ she asked. ‘Far simpler. No bother about flowers. And you can have expanses of sand where the weeds can’t survive. You pay a man to come in for a day once each month and have no other bother. But perhaps you like having an English-style garden? Perhaps it makes you feel less homesick?’
‘No. We have it because it was here when we took over the house and it would be so expensive to have it altered.’
‘Oh, you ought to be able to have it done for less than a hundred thousand yen,’ Bibi said. ‘It wouldn’t be as expensive as you think.’
I did not point out that, with Bill lending money to his colleagues, paying the fees, to my certain knowledge, of at least three of the students at the Institute, and entertaining lavishly, we were so far from being in a position to spend one hundred pounds on the garden that we actually had an overdraft. But Sasha seemed to guess this unspoken retort as he looked up to say:
‘I think that a hundred thousand is a l-lot of money.’
‘Nonsense. You spent more than that on that film projector of yours.’ Bibi turned to me: ‘Sasha met this German student who was hard up. And so he went and bought a film projector off him that can’t have cost half that sum when new. And it doesn’t even work.’
‘It only needs a very small adjustment,’ Sasha said sulkily, straightening himself, and then rubbing his soiled hands against each other. ‘ That’s all.’
‘Well, why don’t you have the adjustment made?’ Bibi pursued. ‘He’s had it for more than three months.’
‘Would you like to wash your hands?’
Sasha looked at them. ‘I suppose I’d better.’
When I had conducted him into the house, leaving Bibi seated on a swing which the missionaries who had lived in the house before us had put up for their children, he told me: ‘Bibi has no idea of how other people l-live. It’s a kind of egotism. Fancy imagining that anyone would want to spend a hundred thousand yen on a garden which in any case is only rented. You mustn’t be annoyed with her, that’s what she’s l-like.’
‘Why should I be annoyed with her?’ I laughed. ‘Of course I’m not annoyed.’
‘Good.’
‘You can find your own way back?’
‘Yes, of course.’
I suddenly felt ashamed that the towel in the bathroom should be a used one; but it seemed too late, now that he had disappeared, to fetch him another. Worse, both the bath and the lavatory basin were stained a deep orange in concentric rings; the shelf was an untidy jumble of make-up, half-used packets of detergent and soap flakes and bottles of medicine; and Bill’s drip-dry shirts were strung out along the line which seesawed up to the peeling ceiling when one tugged on a pulley. The trouble of being friends with people like Bibi and Sasha, so much richer than oneself, is that anxieties of this kind perpetually obtrude. Sasha had said that Bibi had no idea how other people lived; he himself would now have a good idea how we lived.
Bibi smiled at me, as she swung herself back and forth, with an occasional lazy kick at the ground.
‘Where’s Sasha?’
‘Oh, I left him to wash his hands.’
‘He doesn’t usually like to get them dirty. As you’ve probably noticed, he’s a very fastidious young man.’
I thought again of the untidy bathroom and the soiled towel.
‘But like many fastidious people he likes from time to time to plunge into dirt up to the neck.’ She laughed; then she asked: ‘Do you like him?’
‘Yes.’
‘He likes you. He doesn’t like many people. But he likes you.’ She get off the swing. ‘ Let me swing you. Come.’
Reluctantly I eased myself on to the seat, and she stood behind me, pushing me gently from the shoulders.
‘He’s handsome, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. Very,’ I replied.
‘And do you think he’s sexually attractive? A lot of women don’t. They find him too—too girlish. Too perfect. Pretty. That’s what Thelma used to call him—pretty. Of course he has an amazing success with men.’ She began to push me more vigorously, standing far back and thrusting at the seat of the swing, so that I sailed higher and higher.
Sasha strolled out of the house, drying his hands, in the Japanese manner, on his handkerchief; gazed up at me as I swooped down before him; and then, positioriing himself at the opposite end of the swing from Bibi, joined her in pushing me higher and higher. I could see the muscles of his shoulders under the soft silk shirt, the muscles swelling on. his sunburnt arms. He might look ‘ girlish’ as Bibi said, but he was in fact far stronger than I had supposed. Now he began to rush at the swing, disappearing under it as he heaved at it with both hands. Overhead I could hear the branch of the tree from which it was suspended creak more and more loudly until, all at once, I felt frightened and vaguely sick.
‘No, no, stop! Please stop! That’s enough! Stop!’
Either they did not hear me or they paid no attention to my cries. My panic growing, I had a crazy impulse to hurl myself from the swing. ‘STOP! Please!’
Fortunately at that moment Bill appeared, scowling when he saw the two Akulovs—I glimpsed this as I swooped dizzily down towards him—before he quickly arranged his features into a brief smile of welcome.
First Sasha and then Bibi let go of the swing; I began to descend in diminishing arcs.
‘You look quite green,’ Bill said, when I jumped off.
‘Do I? I was afraid that branch would break.’
‘The whole tree is rotten. That swing isn’t meant for anyone of your size. It’s only for children.’
He sounded disapproving and disagreeable.
‘You looked wonderful on it,’ Bibi said. ‘Didn’t she, Sasha?’
Sasha was smelling one of the roses on a straggly bush beside the swing.
‘Isn’t it odd how flowers in Japan never have the same smell as in Europe? This rose has hardly any scent at all.’
‘You’ve been smoking too much,’ Bibi said.
‘No, but really.’ He appealed to me. ‘ You’ve noticed that, haven’t you?’
‘Nothing in Japan really measures up to anything in Europe where M
ary is concerned,’ Bill said.
‘Well, I agree with her.’ Bibi sat herself on the swing again. ‘We called round to ask you both when you were coming to stay with us.’
Bill sighed. ‘It’s difficult to get away. We’d love to, but.…’
‘A weekend,’ Bibi said, swaying back and forth, one hand on the rope and one in her lap. ‘Surely you can manage a weekend?’
‘Not this month anyway,’ Bill said.
‘You’ve nothing on the weekend after next,’ I said, as much annoyed with him for not consulting me as for the coldness of his response.
‘Meeting of the Shakespeare Association,’ he said. ‘ Plans for the festivities next year.’
‘Oh, hell,’ I said. ‘That’s not all that important.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Anyway, couldn’t Mary come alone for a few days? You know what Naito said about her needing a change of air and a rest.’
‘Yes. Next month we’re hoping to get away to Kyushu.’
‘Kyushu! In this heat! Have you any idea what it will be like there in August?’
‘Yes. I’ve been there in August before. We have friends in Nagasaki.’
‘You have friends in Nagasaki,’ I amended. I had once met the elderly professor, an authority on Byron, who had invited us to stay. I had no intention of going.
Suddenly Sasha who had been completely silent beside the rose bush, came across to us. He smiled at me with a curious childishness, his head on one side, as he said in a cajoling voice: ‘D-do come.and stay with us. We promise to look after you.’ He turned to Bill: ‘Can’t she really come to stay?’
‘It’s entirely up to her. But I myself certainly can’t get away at the moment.’
‘Yes, of course I’ll come,’ I said. ‘I thought Abekawa one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.’
‘We’ll look after you better than we looked after poor Thelma!’ Bibi smiled at Bill: ‘‘You’ll entrust her to us, won’t you?’
‘I’ve said already—it’s entirely up to Mary.’
6
‘Frankly, I’d rather you didn’t go.’
‘But why? I don’t understand why.’
‘Because I don’t like them. And I don’t trust them either.’ Bill clambered into bed beside me. ‘If you want a holiday I’d much rather give you the money to take yourself off to a hotel in the Japan Alps or Hokkaido.’
‘What money?’ I asked. ‘ We haven’t got any money. You draw a salary of almost three thousand a year, but we never have any money. And I need a holiday. I need one badly.’
‘Well, then, do as you like. Do exactly as you like.’ He began to unbutton his pyjama-jacket. Then he tugged it off and threw it on the ground. ‘God, this heat!
‘It’s not all that hot tonight.’ He had turned away from me. ‘Bill, don’t be cross. Don’t be unreasonable. It’s silly to feel jealous just because:—’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! I’m not jealous! Of whom do you think that I’m jealous. Of that swish little pansy? Don’t be so silly.… No, no’—I was now leaning over him, trying to look down at his averted face, my arms round his neck—‘no, it’s too hot for all that. Mary! Please! I’m tired. I must get some sleep if I’m to get up in time for those examinations tomorrow morning.’
‘Oh, all right. Then sleep!’
I turned away from him. Soon he was breathing heavily.
Half awake and half asleep, I lay on my side on the damp and already crumpled sheet, conscious of a strange and faintly disagreeable tingling in my feet and hands. Images shuffled themselves in my mind; the two dead spiders, knotted together like a piece of string as they dangled from the tokonoma; Bibi standing at the window with her back to me as Dr Naito made his preliminary examination with curious clucking sounds which I had found terrifying; Thelma’s body, with countless bruises and abrasions, under the polythene sheet which the butcher had drawn up in sagging folds; the same folds of my sheets as Dr Naito drew them back, making the same rustle; Bill’s bony freckled shoulders, Nishimura’s shoulders, brown and muscular, and then the shoulders under the swing, the swing reaching higher and higher among the fieshy foliage, while the branch creaked more and more ominously and I cried ‘No, stop, stop, stop!’ But strangely now, in this half dream, half recollection of that soaring on the swing, I felt none of my previous giddiness and panic, but only an intense exhilaration as the two Akulovs thrust me back and forth between them, back and forth, back and forth, and higher and higher.…
Chapter Three
I
‘You don’t mind this room, do you?’
‘No, of course not.’ I looked around it, still not sure if I minded it or not. ‘It looks somehow different.’
‘Yes, it is different. We had to change the curtains and the wallpaper. One of our guests set light to his bed when he was drunk, and by the time that we’d used a fire-extinguisher on it the room was a wreck. Are all people as unlucky as we are in our guests?’ She laughed. ‘I don’t include you.’
I seated myself on the bed. ‘It’s a beautiful room,’ I said uncertainly. ‘And a beautiful view.’ My eyes went to the window which ran the whole length of the outside wall. The sand, metallic in its greyness under a grey sky, sloped down to a milky blur which was all that could be seen of the sea.
‘It’s better when it’s clearer.’ Bibi sat down on the bed beside me. ‘It’s wonderful to have got you here at long last. Sasha had given up all hope, but I never give up—not when I want something really badly. So here you are!’ She jumped up off the bed again and went to the window. Looking out, she asked: ‘Tell me, Mary, what has Bill got against us?’
‘Against you?’
‘He doesn’t really want to be friends, does he?’
‘He’s awfully busy,’ I said. ‘And worried about his work. Getting things started is never easy in Japan, is it?’
Bibi shook her head, as she turned back into the room. ‘He doesn’t really want to be friends. It’s a pity because we both of us like you so much—arid like him too. It makes it—difficult …Perhaps that Thelma business is the reason.’
‘Of course not! Bill’s not at all demonstrative, you know.’ I had begun to open one of my suitcases, wishing that she would leave me or at least cease to question me about Bill.
‘Are you happy with him?’ she asked going over to the huge closet and sliding back the door.
‘Of course I am.’ I amended: ‘There are places in which I should be happier with him, of course. But I’d rather be with Bill in Kyoto than with anyone anywhere else.’
‘Would you? … Let me hang those up for you.’
‘Oh, don’t bother. Please.’
‘No bother.’
One by one she took from me my summer dresses and began to place them on hangers in the closet. Then she pulled open a drawer: ‘ Oh, you forgot something of Thelma’s when you packed her things. I put it in this drawer.’ She held out a fragment of black lace, and suddenly remembering the brassière on the grey, crinkled body, I felt myself go pale. ‘But how can that—that …?’ Then I realised that it was not the brassière but a pair of knickers. ‘What ought I to do with them? Rather a gruesome relic. Perhaps I ought to have sent them to that boy friend in Sydney. Or to Morrish. You knew about her affair with him—with Morrish—didn’t you?’
I nodded, as she stuffed the knickers back into the drawer. ‘We were amazed,’ I said.
Bibi eventually announced that she was going down to the beach for a swim, and asked me to accompany her; but I said that I must write some letters. This was a lie.
As soon as she was gone, I jerked down the hand-woven bedspread and stretched myself out on the bed, in nothing but my underclothes. Icy air flowed into the room through two grilles, one beside the door and the other along the window. It was wonderful to be cool after the heat of the last six weeks; and wonderful to be out of Kyoto. I did not think of Bill, I had not thought about him all that day. There was a wireless beside the bed and I turned
it on, listening to a high-pitched Japanese voice talking about Scarlatti, without bothering to try to understand much of what he said. Then I heard a name which I eventually realised was ‘ Ralph Kirkpatrick’ and the music started.
I don’t know how long the face had been at the window when I became aware of it—possibly for several minutes. If the girl, had not been crouched on her knees, I should probably have seen her sooner. I jumped off the bed and grabbed my kimono, pulling it around me. Then I hurried across.
The girl, seeing my obvious annoyance, rose to her feet; but she did not leave the spot on which she had been crouched. She brought her face closer and closer to the window, until at last it was pressed against it, the nose completely flattened and the palms white as they too glued themselves to the glass like the suckers of an octopus in an aquarium. ‘Go away!’ I shouted in English and then in Japanese. Her mouth opened and the tongue pressed against the glass, leaving a trail as though a slug had moved there. I made an ineffectual gesture with one hand, the other still holding the kimono around me. The girl backed. She raised a skinny arm and pointed at me. Through the thickness of the plate-glass, with the icy air whirring down on to me from the grille, it was obvious that she could no more hear my voice than I could hear whatever inarticulate sounds or crowing laughter were emerging from between her sagging lips. I rushed at the curtains and jerked them across, with such violence that I swept to the ground; the guide book which I had balanced on the window-sill.
A few seconds later there was a knock at the door.
‘Yes? Who is it?’ In an irrational moment of panic I felt sure that it was the girl.
‘Sasha.’
‘Oh, Sasha. Come in.’
He entered in nothing but a bathing-slip, with a towel over his shoulders. A gold medallion dangled on his hairless chest.
‘I saw that imbecile peeping in at your window and came over to d-drive her off. She’s not allowed into the garden at all. But from time to time she strays across. I hope she didn’t frighten you.’
