Oyone moved her pillow about nervously. With each change in position the shoulder on which she slept slid out a bit farther across the futon, until she ended up turned over on her stomach. She then propped herself up with her elbows and gazed for awhile at her husband. Finally she stood up and, covering her nightgown with a robe that had been laid out at the foot of the bed, picked up the lamp from the alcove. Coming around to Sōsuke’s side of the bed, she crouched down and called out to him. He was no longer snoring, having resumed the regular breathing of deep sleep. Straightening up, Oyone slid open the partition and, lamp in hand, entered the sitting room. In the midst of the dark room, where the lamplight shone wanly close to hand, she could make out the dull sheen of the chest’s metal rings. Skirting the chest, she peered into the dark, sooty kitchen. There all she could make out were the dim white shoji panels. After standing motionless in the middle of the stone-cold kitchen, she stealthily slid open the door to the maid’s room on her right and shined the lamp inside. Kiyo lay there curled up in a ball, like a mole, amid tangled bedding whose patterns and colors could not be distinguished. Next she looked left, into the six-mat room. In the emptiness that yawned before her, what immediately caught her eye was the mirror on its stand, all the eerier in the darkness.
Having made a complete tour of the house and having reassured herself that all was as it should be, Oyone went back to bed. Eventually she closed her eyes. This time she found that she could contrive not to focus on every little flutter of her eyelids, and after a while drifted off to sleep.
All of a sudden her eyes popped open again. There had been a thud—a heavy thud, she was sure—somewhere close to where she lay sleeping. Raising her head off the pillow and pricking up her ears, she pondered a moment and concluded that it had resembled nothing so much as the sound that would have been made by a very large object tumbling down the embankment behind the house and landing just beyond the veranda that bordered the room where they slept. She further concluded that it had actually happened but a moment ago, just before she opened her eyes, and not in a dream. The realization filled her with dread. She tugged at her husband’s bedclothes as he lay sleeping beside her, this time determined to wake him. Sōsuke, who had been sleeping very soundly up to that moment, abruptly opened his eyes.
“Please get up right now,” Oyone said as she shook him.
“All right, that’s enough,” he responded, still half asleep, and sat up straight on his futon. Oyone half whispered to him what she had heard.
“There was only that single thud?” he asked.
“Yes, but I heard it just now.”
They both fell silent, their attention riveted on whatever might transpire outside. But all was perfectly still. No matter how long and hard they strained to hear, they could detect nothing else tumbling down their way. Complaining of the cold, Sōsuke pulled a jacket on over his unlined sleeping robe and stepped out onto the veranda, where he slid back one of the rain shutters. He peered out into the darkness and saw nothing. A wave of cold air pressed against his skin.
He quickly closed the shutter. After latching it, Sōsuke burrowed once again under the bedding.
“There’s nothing out there,” he said, turning over on his side. “You must have been dreaming.”
Oyone insisted that she had not been dreaming. She was adamant: There most certainly had been a loud noise just overhead.
Sōsuke stuck his head partway out from under the covers and faced Oyone. “You’re not yourself these days. You’ve worked yourself up into quite a state. You really need to calm down or you’ll never have a proper sleep.”
Just then the pendulum clock in the next room struck two. Momentarily deprived of speech by the chimes, they both fell silent, upon which the night grew utterly still. The couple’s eyes were now wide open; neither one of them showed any sign of falling back to sleep.
“That’s easy for you to say.” Oyone resumed their previous conversation. “You’re always so relaxed, you only have to lie down for ten minutes and you’re unconscious.”
“I may fall asleep fast, but it’s from fatigue, not from being relaxed,” Sōsuke replied.
In the midst of their conversation he nodded off again. Oyone continued to toss and turn. In front of the house a wagon passed by with a terrible clatter. Several times recently Oyone had been startled before dawn by the sound of a wagon. Thinking about these various episodes, she had come to the conclusion that since it always happened at about the same time, it must be a delivery wagon traveling the same route every morning: Someone, probably the milkman, was in a hurry to finish his rounds. Once she had settled on this explanation, she began to find the sound reassuring, simultaneous as it was with the coming of dawn and her neighbors’ resumption of activity. Eventually a rooster cried out somewhere. Not long after came the high-pitched scrape of clogs in the street. Then the sound of Kiyo opening her door, going out to the privy, and on her return entering the sitting room, apparently to look at the clock. By this time the oil in the alcove lamp was too low for the short wick to reach, and Oyone was surrounded by darkness. The light from Kiyo’s lamp in the next room flickered through the partition. Oyone called out to her.
Kiyo got up for good soon after this. Half an hour later it was Oyone’s turn. Another half hour after that, Sōsuke, too, at last got up. On work days Oyone would come around at the proper time and say to him, “You’d better get up now.” On Sundays and holidays she would say instead, “Why don’t you get up?” Today, however, with the incident in the night still on his mind, he was already out of bed before Oyone came to wake him. He immediately slid open the shutters and looked out toward the foot of the embankment.
From below, Sōsuke could see the frost-melting sun filtering through the bamboo stalks, which were still in the frozen grip of early morning, and bathing the crest of the embankment in warm light. A couple of feet below the crest, where the embankment sloped most steeply, the withered grass was ripped and gouged, exposing to Sōsuke’s astonished eyes patches of raw, red earth. Then, in a direct line down from this spot, just beyond where he stood at the veranda’s edge, he saw that the ground had been broken up and the frost crystals smashed. Perhaps a large dog had tumbled down from the top, he surmised. But then, he decided, even a very large dog couldn’t have made such a mess.
Sōsuke fetched his clogs from the front of the house and quickly stepped down from the veranda. The privy jutted out, right here, at an angle from the veranda, squeezing the already narrow yard into a very cramped defile for a few paces. Oyone fussed about this corner every time the night-soil gatherer came by. “We really do need more room here,” she said, but her husband always scoffed at her worry.
Beyond this tight spot, a slender path led around to the kitchen. Formerly there had stood here a hedge of half-dead cryptomeria shrubs that served to mark their garden off from their neighbor’s; but some time ago the gardener sent by the landlord to make improvements had removed the rotted-out hedge entirely, replacing this barrier with a slatted wooden fence, full of knots, that ran alongside the path to the kitchen door. In addition to receiving little sunlight, this area was where the rain poured down from the roof spout, all of which helped the begonias to thrive here in the summer. At their peak the foliage was so dense it all but choked off the path, a sight that had alarmed the couple during their first summer in the house. But when Oyone thought of how the begonia roots had survived for years beneath the only recently removed hedge, and how, long after the manor house had been razed, the plants still sent forth their seeds in the proper season, she exclaimed with joy, “They really are lovely!”
Stepping on the frost, Sōsuke reveled in memories conjured up by this out-of-the-way nook, which never saw the sun. Then his gaze was arrested by a spot on the narrow path. He stopped in his tracks. There ahead of him lay a writing box of gilded black lacquer. The contents were spread out over the frost, as if delivered to this place intentionally and then abandoned, but the cover lay a few feet away, ups
ide down and wedged against the base of the fence, as though fastened to it, revealing the lid’s brightly patterned paper lining. Among the various letters, notes, and the like strewn about at random, there was a particularly long scroll of writing; the first two feet had been unfurled, the rest crumpled into a ball like so much rubbish. Sōsuke took a closer look at the underside and smiled wryly. Human feces clung to the wad of paper.
Having gathered into a pile all the papers scattered across the ground and placed them in the lacquer box, he carried it just as it was, covered with mud and ice, as far as the kitchen door. Sliding open the shoji, he called out to Kiyo and handed her the box. Not quite believing what she saw, Kiyo made a face and took the box. Oyone was in the parlor dusting. Sōsuke, his hands folded inside his kimono, then made the rounds of the various points of entry—the front gate, the vestibule, and so on—but failed to find anything out of the ordinary.
At length he came back inside. No sooner did he sit down in his accustomed place by the sitting-room hibachi than he called for Oyone in a loud voice.
“Where have you been?” she asked, emerging from the parlor. “And so soon after getting up!”
“Listen, that noise you heard close to the bed last night—it wasn’t a dream after all. It was a thief. What you heard was the sound of him tumbling down from the Sakais’ place into our garden. When I went out back to look around, I found this writing box, with letters and what not scattered all over the place. To top it off, he left what you might call his personal calling card on the way out.” Sōsuke removed two or three letters from the box and showed them to Oyone. They were all addressed to Sakai.
Oyone, who was still half kneeling beside him, was astonished.
“Do you suppose there were other things stolen from Sakai-san?” she asked.
“Yes, I would imagine there were,” he said, folding his arms against his chest.
Having said all that could be said at this stage, the couple left the writing box where it was and turned to breakfast. But even as they wielded their chopsticks, the burglary was foremost on their minds. Oyone boasted of her keen ear and quick wits. For his part Sōsuke pronounced himself fortunate not to be so keen-eared or quick-witted.
“That’s all very well for you to say,” Oyone retorted, “but what if instead of the Sakais’ it had been our house? With you dead to the world like that, what would’ve happened to us?”
Not about to let her have the last word, Sōsuke replied, “There isn’t the slightest worry of anyone bothering to break into our place.”
Hearing this, Kiyo poked her head in from the kitchen and, in a tone of genuine delight, said, “Just think what a fuss there’d’ve been if they’d gotten their hands on our Mr. Nonaka’s new coat. What a blessing that the Sakais got robbed and not us!”
Sōsuke and Oyone were at a loss for a response.
Even with breakfast finished there was still time to spare before Sōsuke had to leave for work. Conscious that the Sakai household must be in great turmoil, he decided to deliver the writing box himself. Although the box was gilded, the leaf had been applied over the black lacquer in a simple tortoiseshell pattern. It did not appear to be of much monetary value. Oyone wrapped it in a furoshiki[32] of brightly colored striped silk. The cloth proved too small to be bound up in the usual way, so she drew all four corners together and tied the opposite ends in two square knots in the middle. Clutched in Sōsuke’s hand it looked like an ordinary gift of boxed sweets.
In relation to their parlor the Sakai house stood directly above them atop the embankment; yet in order to reach the landlord’s front gate Sōsuke had to walk half a block down the street, climb up a steep slope, and then walk back in the direction from which he came. Approaching by way of stones set in the grass alongside a handsome hedge, he entered the gate. The house seemed submerged in a preternatural silence. Seeing that the frosted glass door to the vestibule was closed, he rang the bell several times. Perhaps it was out of order; no one appeared. He was obliged to go around to the kitchen door, where he was again confronted with a closed double-paneled shoji with frosted glass. From inside came the sound of dishes being handled. Opening the door he found a scullery maid crouched down on the wooden floor next to a gas-powered ceramic grill. Unwrapping the writing box, he addressed her.
“I believe this belongs here. I found it this morning behind my house, where it seems to have fallen, and I’ve come to return it.”
“Oh, I see, well, thank you,” the woman murmured, and carried the box over to the far edge of the kitchen floor, from where she summoned another woman, apparently a housemaid. After a whispered consultation, the box was passed to the housemaid, who cast a glance toward Sōsuke and quickly retreated inside. No sooner had she disappeared than a girl of about twelve with a round face and large eyes came running up, followed by a younger girl, evidently her sister. With matching ribbons in their hair, their faces appeared side by side at the threshold to the kitchen. Staring at Sōsuke, they whispered to each other something about a robber. Now that he had handed over the writing box, he felt he had no further business there—he did not need to speak to the Sakais—and hastened to take his leave.
“I guess the box does belong here,” he said. “That’s that, then.” His remarks, however, only succeeded in flustering the scullery maid, who seemed to know nothing about it. Just then the housemaid reappeared.
“Please follow me,” she said with a deep bow, and it was Sōsuke’s turn to feel somewhat ill at ease. As she kept repeating her invitation with exquisite courtesy his discomfort finally gave way to annoyance. At this juncture the master of the house himself appeared.
The landlord’s ruddy, jowly face presented the prosperous look that Sōsuke had been led to expect but, contrary to Oyone’s description, did not lack for whiskers. Beneath the man’s nose there was a well-trimmed mustache; his cheeks and chin, however, were shaved clean.
“My, what a lot of trouble we’ve caused you!” he said to Sōsuke, the corners of his eyes crinkling with goodwill.
Clad in a splash-patterned robe, he knelt on the wooden floor as he queried his visitor about various details, with a demeanor that did not appear in the least ruffled. Sōsuke gave him a condensed version of everything that had happened between the previous evening and this morning, then ventured to inquire if anything beside the writing box had been stolen. The landlord replied to the effect that a gold-covered pocket watch had been taken from his desk, in a tone as unperturbed as if it were someone else who had been robbed. Indeed, he showed much more interest in the particulars of Sōsuke’s account than in the watch. Had the thief from the start intended to make his escape down the embankment or, in his haste, had he rather fallen down it accidentally? Such questions Sōsuke, of course, could not answer.
At this point the same housemaid returned bearing tea and cigarettes, which still further delayed Sōsuke’s departure. His host then produced a cushion that he insisted Sōsuke sit on, and proceeded to describe the arrival of the detective early that morning. The detective judged that the perpetrator must have sneaked onto the property the previous evening and hid, perhaps in a storage shed. The kitchen door had no doubt been his point of entry into the main house. It appeared that he had then entered the sitting room, after using a match to light a candle that he stuck into a small container found in the kitchen, and that on noticing the mother and children asleep in the next room, he passed along the corridor and into the landlord’s study. While the thief busied himself here the youngest in the family, a newborn infant, woke up crying for his milk, whereupon the thief seemed to have fled out into the garden from the study door.
“If only our dog had been on the scene,” said the landlord regretfully. “But he took sick a few days ago and so he’s been at the veterinarian’s.”
When Sōsuke commiserated, his host launched into a detailed description of the dog’s breed, pedigree, the occasional hunting expeditions in which he’d taken part, and so on.
“You see, h
e likes to hunt, but he’s suffered from a nervous ailment for some time and needed some rest. I suppose it has to do with the snipe hunting I do every autumn and winter, when he has to spend two, three hours at a time up to his hips in the wet fields—that can’t have done him any good, I’m sure.”
The man, with apparently unlimited time at his disposal, went on and on while Sōsuke, having responded only with an Oh, my! here and an Is-that-so? there, finally had no choice but to get up in the middle of the conversation. “I’m afraid it’s off to work as usual for me,” he announced, at which his host, as if such an eventuality had only just dawned on him, apologized for having detained him so long. He then thanked Sōsuke in advance for any further involvement that the detective might require of him in the course of the investigation.
“Please come over again, just for a chat,” he said cordially. “And perhaps I might just drop in on you sometime—these days I seem to have a bit of time on my hands.”
By the time Sōsuke passed back through the landlord’s gate and hurried home, it was already half an hour past the time when he normally left for work.
“Where have you been?” asked Oyone nervously as she met him at the front door.
“I must say, that Sakai fellow is very easygoing,” he said, quickly disrobing and changing into his business suit. “I suppose that kind of leisure comes with money.”
8
“KOROKU-SAN, should we start with the sitting room or the parlor?” Oyone asked.
Now that Koroku had finally moved into his brother’s house, some four or five days earlier, it devolved on him to help out with today’s repapering of the shoji. He’d had some experience with this when still living at his uncle’s, joining Yasunosuke in replacing the paper in the sliding doors to his own room. That project had commenced in more or less proper fashion with their mixing the glue in trays and applying it with trowels; but once the two repapered panels were good and dry and they went to replace them, they could not fit them back into their grooves. He and Yasunosuke’s efforts had come to grief a second time: Tackling another set of shoji at the behest of his aunt, they soaked the frames in order to remove the old paper, with the result that the frames seriously warped in drying and once again they had trouble getting them back in place.
The Gate Page 10
