“It was kind of unpleasant, wasn’t it?” Kuno said when he saw her.
“I suppose.”
“Maybe it’s only to be expected at a place like this.”
“That’s probably true.”
Ineko’s mother sat down at the plain dresser in the next room. There was no cushion on the floor in front of it. Even though she had just come from the bath, she didn’t do much to her face — a little lipstick, and that was it.
“I’d completely forgotten this, and it only came back to me as I was soaking in the water, but Ineko and I actually had a bath today, before we left the house. We thought it would feel good to get nice and clean beforehand. I washed her back for her. I wonder how long it’s been since I did that. It’s bizarre — I don’t know how it could have slipped my mind. You and I were talking about the bath all that time, and it never once occurred to me. There must be something wrong with me, don’t you think?” The whole time she was saying this, with a smile on her lips, she was sensing the touch of Ineko’s skin. She even began to feel in her hands the smoothness of Ineko’s skin when she was a baby, still breastfeeding.
Hearing that Ineko’s mother had washed Ineko’s body that morning, Kuno, too, started to remember the sensation of her skin on his. Naturally, he and Ineko’s mother had gotten to know Ineko’s skin in different ways. Their expressions gave no sign that they were busy savoring the touch of Ineko’s skin, so neither suspected that this is what the other was thinking of.
“Maybe Ineko won’t bathe at the clinic today, since you took a bath at home,” Kuno said, rather oddly, hiding from the mother the vivid presence of Ineko’s skin.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Ineko’s mother replied absently.
She’d said she could hardly recall when she had last bathed with Ineko and washed her back, but how many years had it been? Truth be told, thinking in terms of years was already an exaggeration — most likely, it had been a matter of months, maybe days. She bathed with her daughter all the time, so she never gave it any thought. Only today she had. That was what had prompted her to use those words. How many years?
The mother had rested her left hand on Ineko’s shoulder, and then with her right she washed her daughter’s back. Doing so made her sad. As she lifted up her daughter’s hair and scrubbed the nape of her neck, some of the shorter hairs at the back picked up a bit of lather. Ineko’s mother felt the desire to wash her daughter’s hair.
“You’ve got a lot of these short hairs,” the mother said, touching them with her hand.
“I do.” Ineko nodded. “You can tell when I tie up my hair in the back.”
“When was the last time you washed your hair?”
“Let’s see . . . four days ago. Didn’t I tell you? When I went to the beauty parlor.”
“That’s right, I remember.”
“Does it smell?”
The mother leaned so close that her nose brushed Ineko’s hair. She felt the urge to wrap her arms around her daughter. “No, it doesn’t.”
“That tickles.” The mother’s hand was nearly under Ineko’s arm. She sat up and poured another bucket of hot water over her daughter’s back.
Ineko’s mother cast her thoughts back to the time when she and her daughter had always bathed together, as if they had reached some tacit agreement that they should. She remembered how worried she had been about Ineko’s right nipple, which when she was a girl had been flat, or even concave. Her mother’s gaze had had a tendency to linger there, on that right nipple that was so different from the left. Then at some point the right nipple had become fuller. It was still slightly smaller than the left, but the difference was so insignificant that you couldn’t see it unless you were looking. What had made that one nipple grow more slowly than the other? Ineko’s mother didn’t really think there was any link between the nipple and Ineko’s bouts of madness, yet it troubled her in a way no other part of her daughter’s body did. Her daughter’s body was beautiful. She loved it that her toes were so short and her fingers so long.
One day, Ineko had seemed hesitant to bathe together. Her mother guessed it was because Ineko had slept with Kuno. Or perhaps her suspicion that they had slept together was what made her think Ineko was hesitant. Maybe Ineko hadn’t been acting any different from usual, and her mother had simply been watching too closely. By then, they were no longer in the habit of bathing together every time they bathed. There had been no clear break, no special day after which they stopped bathing together as much; it had happened as a matter of course as Ineko grew older. But that was the first time Ineko had ever seemed to hesitate.
She assumed her daughter didn’t want to be seen after having been with a man for the first time, that it was as simple as that. That seemed natural enough, not unexpected, and yet at the same time surprising. She tried to recall her own first night. She suspected nothing, of course, of the fear and distress that had seized Ineko when she stopped seeing the man in her arms.*
Once when she was in eleventh grade, Ineko had come to her mother, pale and shaking, and told her about how, during a ping-pong game, in the middle of a volley, she had suddenly lost sight of the ball. Ineko was an alternate on the school ping-pong team. The day before, Ineko had mentioned that she had a class tournament the next day. It was a Saturday, and Ineko’s mother had assumed she would return home somewhat late, but she didn’t, and a friend had walked her all the way home.
Ineko’s mother heard her friend calling, and went to the door.
“Ineko — what’s wrong?” the mother cried.
“She suddenly started feeling ill, so our teacher asked us to take her home.” The friend put her arm around Ineko’s back as she spoke, as if to support her, and peered at her face.
Ineko stepped away, avoiding her friend’s touch. She couldn’t see her friend’s face, or her mother’s. She was about to step up from the entryway into the house when she reached out her right hand and lightly squeezed her friend’s palm. Evidently she meant this as an expression of gratitude. She didn’t smile, though, or look back; she just walked straight down the hall and disappeared into the house. Ineko was so gentle and polite that it was almost inconceivable that she should behave this way. The friend, whose name was Yōko, came over all the time and treated Ineko as an older sister, so maybe it wasn’t necessary for Ineko to thank her for anything — but more than that was going on here. Ineko’s mother could tell from the movement of her daughter’s feet as she walked away that she wasn’t feeling all that unwell, so she almost smiled as she apologized.
“I’m sorry, Yōko. What can have gotten into her?”
Yōko stared blankly after Ineko. “Please go see how she is doing. She seems a bit strange. I won’t stay.”
Then, speaking rapidly, she had explained what had happened. Twice during a game Ineko had returned the ball in a very odd way, snapping her hand at the wrist like an automaton, and then the third time she had missed the ball all together — or rather simply stood dazed for a moment before suddenly putting her hands over her eyes and collapsing right there in front of the table. She had knelt down on the floor, slumped forward.
The girl she had been playing with just stared. She said later that she thought Ineko must have gotten dizzy or had an anemic spell, but in the heat of the game it was all she could do to stop and stand still. Yōko had been the one to run to Ineko’s side.
“I’m fine,” Ineko said. Yōko stroked Ineko’s hair. Then, perhaps realizing that this was a bit odd under the circumstances, she put her right arm around Ineko’s shoulder and touched her forehead with her left hand. Ineko’s forehead wasn’t cool to the touch; if anything, it felt warm. The dampness Yōko felt wasn’t a cold sweat; it was just sweat from exertion.
“You’re okay, then?” Yōko had said. “Thank goodness.”
Ineko stood up, slipping free of Yōko’s arm. “I’m fine.”
Then, as if it were
the most natural thing in the world that she should do so, she stepped away from the ping-pong table. The question of whether or not she ought to go on with the game seemed never even to have crossed her mind. She kept her head down, saying nothing, and though she was still pale, she didn’t look so weak that she would need to be escorted home. When Yōko kept hovering about, having been directed to do so by their teacher, Ineko told her once again, “I’m okay, really. I’ll go home alone. I’d rather go by myself.” Then, “I’d like to be alone as soon as I can. Please, just leave me.”
“I can’t, the teacher asked me to stay.”
“I just want to be left alone,” Ineko mumbled. “I want to cry.”
“To cry? You want to cry, is that what you said? How delightful,” Yōko twittered merrily. “What fun that would be — you crying, me comforting you. What a miracle that would be!”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“You always see me crying. Every once in a while you should take a turn.”
“I cry all the time, just not in public — not since my father died.”
Yōko assumed Ineko was feeling down because she had lost her game. When they arrived at Ineko’s house and Ineko abruptly ran off down the hall, she figured it was because she felt the need to be alone with her tears.
Ineko didn’t turn to look when her mother opened her door. Even as her mother walked over, Ineko’s gaze remained fixed on her left hand where it lay on her desk, a pair of ping-pong balls cradled in her palm. She kept a few balls in her desk drawer, so their presence wasn’t unexpected, but it felt odd to see her staring down at them so intently, as if she didn’t know what they were. Not surprisingly, her mother came to the same conclusion as Yōko — Ineko was just feeling annoyed with herself for having lost the game.
“How are you feeling? Shouldn’t you be in bed, rather than sitting here?” the mother said, placing her hand on the back of Ineko’s chair. “You didn’t see the doctor at school, did you? Did you get any medicine?”
“No.”
“But you saw the doctor?”
“It’s nothing.”
“We don’t need to call him?”
“No.”
“What’s gotten into you, taking out those balls? Put them back. It makes you seem like a sore loser. It wasn’t your fault — don’t dwell on it. Here, put them away.” The mother lifted the balls from Ineko’s hand. “Take it easy in bed until dinner. You look pale. Would you like some coffee, or maybe some tea?”
“I don’t feel like it.” Ineko held out her hand. “Give them back.”
“These?”
Ineko’s mother watched as her daughter placed the balls back on her palm, stared at them for a moment, and then returned them to the drawer.
As she looked up, Ineko’s eyes were drawn to the redness of the blooms on the camellia trees in the garden. The flowers were startlingly numerous. There were four or five trees, all quite old, their branches wide, taller than is typical for their kind. The presence of so many blossoms lent a certain airiness, a brightness, to the otherwise massy appearance of the deep green leaves. The roof’s shadow extended halfway up the trees, marking the arrival of winter.
“They’ve bloomed nicely,” Ineko’s mother said.
“They’re just getting started. Look at all those buds,” Ineko said. “Early in the season Father used to come in constantly to see if they had started opening.”
“He came in all the time, not just in camellia season.”
“But especially then. Camellia season just happens to be extremely long.” For the first time since she had come home, Ineko smiled.
“They bloom right up until spring, until it’s time for the cherries,” Ineko’s mother replied. “Did you hurt yourself during the game, Ineko? You haven’t told me anything. Did the ball hit you?”
“I couldn’t see it.”
“You couldn’t see the ball?”
“No. It disappeared.”
“What do you mean, it disappeared? The other girl hit it too fast? You got dizzy?”
“No, everything was perfectly ordinary. And then suddenly I couldn’t see the ball.”
“Why not?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did you feel ill?”
“Oh, if only I had. But it wasn’t that — I didn’t feel lightheaded. I was standing up straight, and I could see everything else, only the ball was gone.”
“How can that be?” Ineko’s mother asked skeptically. “I don’t see how you could have been paying attention to anything else. When you’re in the midst of a game, don’t you have to focus so completely on the ball that you stop seeing anything else? That sort of blindness is just part of the game.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Ineko replied forcefully. “It was the ball that was gone.”
“You must be mistaken. Your recalling it that way proves you weren’t feeling well.”
Ineko seemed not even to have heard her mother’s words. Still gazing out at the garden — her eyes turned toward the camellias, that is to say, though she wasn’t looking at them — she said in a subdued tone, “Even so, Mother, even without seeing the ball, I managed to return it twice, I think. I guess I could tell where the ball was going from how the other girl’s body moved, her arms, and I’m experienced enough that my hand went to the right place on its own. Realizing that made me twice as scared, maybe even three times. Being unable to see the ball, and hitting it anyway. My whole chest seized up, I was so frightened; I couldn’t even move.”
“Is that true?” Ineko’s mother couldn’t see how all that could be, and yet she couldn’t very well question Ineko’s story. She sensed something of Ineko’s terror, and kept quiet.
After a moment, Ineko spoke again. “Mother, did you know blind people play ping-pong, too?” It was clear from her tone how fiercely she was struggling to remain calm.
“What?” The mother stared blankly at Ineko. “They can do that?”
“Yes, actually.”
“I know the blind have good instincts. But ping-pong?”
“They put little grains of lead in the balls so they rattle when they move. They track the movements by the sound.”
“Really? That’s amazing.”
“The tables are sloped. They’re higher in the middle, and lower on either side. They have a rim around the edge, too, to keep the ball from rolling off. There’s a net, but it’s not like a regular net — it’s open underneath. You hit the ball under the net, in other words. If the ball goes too high, it hits the net.”
“The ball goes under the net?”
“That’s right.”
“So essentially you’re rolling the ball?”
“They do the same thing in blind baseball. Hit the ball so it rolls.”
Ineko had watched blind students play ping-pong and baseball at a school for the blind. She continued talking for a while about that experience.
Her mother focused more on Ineko’s tone and expression than on what she was saying. She wondered, hearing about the kids playing baseball, whether they could still roll the balls, or track the noises the balls made, if they were completely blind, because they had gotten used to playing that way and had honed their instincts, or if this was something only the partially blind or those who simply had poor vision did. She didn’t ask. She had trouble gleaning from Ineko’s explanation how the students would hit the ball or play defense, but she just went on listening, occasionally emitting a noncommittal murmur, a vague expression on her face that suggested neither comprehension nor confusion.
Ineko paused for a moment. “When did you visit the school and see those games?” her mother asked lightly.
“We went on a field trip in middle school.”
“In middle school? I wonder if you told me about it then.”
“I’m sure I must have. I think I d
id.”
“Really?” The mother, who had been examining Ineko’s face, lowered her eyes. “I’m not sure I ever heard about that before. I don’t recall you telling me.”
“I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t.”
“That’s true. You probably would have. Back then you used to run through everything that had happened during the day when you got back from school, in a big rush. You still do, I guess, though you don’t talk so fast now. You used to launch into your stories the moment you got home, speaking ridiculously fast . . . and I loved that. It was like a bell calling my life back to me, after I had spent the whole day at home alone.” Ineko’s mother paused. “How strange. You really think you told me about that trip?”
“I’m sure I did. I told you, and you forgot.”
“But that’s crazy. You’d think I would remember hearing it. It’s an unusual story, after all. And yet I have no recollection.”
“That’s odd.” Ineko, too, looked worried. “Maybe I didn’t tell you? I can’t see why I wouldn’t have, though, if I didn’t. Why would I keep quiet about something like that?”
“You would have to answer that question, not me.”
“You really don’t think you’ve heard about this before?”
“I think this must be the first time.”
“Really?” Ineko seemed somewhat suspicious of herself now, but that doubt seemed to be helping her regain her composure, little by little.
“When you told me about it just now . . .” the mother said. “Didn’t it seem like you were telling me for the first time?”
Ineko was skeptical. “That’s absurd. You can’t judge from how I told you. It’s a very unusual thing, Mother, blind ping-pong, and baseball, and it’s not easy to picture it if you’ve never seen it. You have to make it novel if you’re going to try and explain it.”
“Novel?”
“Or singular. We just learned those words at school. Novel and singular. My friends and I use them a lot these days, to practice. ‘Novel’ came up just the other day.”
“I see. Still, if you think about it, Ineko, when you started just now, with your ‘novel’ way of telling me about that trip, you asked if I knew that blind people play ping-pong. That was the very first thing you said. I don’t think you would have begun with that question if you had already told me once before.”
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