The Snow Kimono

by Mark Henshaw

  He went to see his doctor again. His afflicted knee an endless dull discomfort. He sat once more on the hard-edged examination table. He flexed and unflexed his leg.

  You need more exercise, Inspector. Swimming, treading water, hydrotherapy. His doctor’s hand cold on his hot knee.

  He surrendered his crutches. Got a walking stick. Gargoyle-topped, antique, something with history. From the same place he had abandoned his squat-footed cabinet. His hippopotamane. Who would have imagined that there was a word for things like this?

  He went to the pool on rue de Pontoise to exercise, the famous one, the one with the glass roof and the tiers of pale-blue cubicles coliseumed above the water.

  He called an old friend at Police Headquarters. Asked for a favour, two. He wanted him to locate someone.

  Yes, that’s right. Algiers, he said.

  He was sure his friend would still have the necessary contacts.

  Who?

  Haifa Soukhane.

  I thought that was ancient history, his friend said.

  It is. He did not elaborate.

  And?

  And any information you can find out about a Mathilde Soukhane, he said.

  Mathilde, his friend repeated, writing it down. Jovert could picture him in his office, already configuring, calculating, reconfiguring.

  And who is she?

  Her daughter, he said.

  Her daughter, his friend repeated. The three syllables written.

  Anything else I should know?

  No, he said.

  Three days later, a return phone call.

  Haifa Soukhane…He could hear papers rustling. Haifa Soukhane was killed in a car accident. Last year. No suspicious circumstances.

  No suspicious circumstances?

  That’s what it says.

  Okay, he said.

  She’d become a judge, you know. In Algiers. Much admired. He paused. For what it’s worth, his friend said, I’m sorry.

  Jovert was at a loss to know what to say. Haifa. Killed. The year before. So recent.

  On the other hand, it was a long time ago. Anything could have happened in between. Still, he should have prepared himself.

  The past is the past, he said. And Mathilde?

  Mathilde. Once again he could hear papers being shuffled. Mathilde. What, in particular, did you want to know?

  I’m not sure, he said. An address, date of birth. Anything.

  Let me see. Last known address: 30 rue Amar el-Kama—same as the mother’s. Date of birth: 22 June 1960. Studied jurisprudence in Marseille. Current whereabouts, occupation…unknown.

  Married?

  No. Not that I can see.

  Siblings?

  None listed.

  Thanks, he said, and rang off.

  So, rue Amar el-Kama. Not rue Duhamel.

  He did a quick calculation. 22 June 1960. Yes, it was possible. Just. He had left Algiers on 3 October 1959. June 1960 to July 1989. That would make her twenty-nine.

  He needed time to think. He went back to rue de Pontoise.

  Jovert wondered if the sound bothered his neighbours. Omura’s typing. It was him he could hear whenever he went up, or down, in the lift. The dull, brain-stuck clack-clack, clack-clack-clack. At eleven in the evening. Midnight. Sometimes later. Lying in bed. The sound filtering up through the floorboards. Clack, clack-clack. Awake. Listening for the next key to strike. The noise reminding him that Omura was there, that he was waiting. Until it stopped.

  So he went.

  Inspector? Omura said, when he opened the door.

  Omura. Besuited. Bespectacled. But the bow tie new.

  He had expected Omura’s apartment to be different. What he found was spare, ordered, interim. The floor plan a mirror image of his. The same ageing light-stained curtains. A wooden desk by the window. On it, an old manual typewriter—a Bresson—its body as polished, as flawless as a museum exhibit, its silver-rimmed keys now silent. A single lamp. Beneath it, a ream of paper, radiant in the white light.

  Omura made coffee.

  Jovert had gone there hoping to resolve something. Exactly what, he did not know. He remembered standing. Sitting. Then… the same hypnotic thing. Without knowing how it happened, or when, he found himself once again floating in a conversation that appeared to have no beginning, no antecedent. As if it had always been there.

  You must think me foolish, Omura was saying. An obsessed old man.

  He paused to re-light his cigarette. In any case, after much reflection, he went on, Fumiko and I finally moved to Tokyo. I had been offered a partnership in one of Japan’s most respected legal firms. We rented an apartment on the top floor of one of the new high-rise buildings overlooking the city. I had a space in the basement where I set up a workshop—a small private world of my own where I could make things. I had an intercom installed connecting it to my apartment. Three or four nights a week, after I had put Fumiko to bed, I would go down there. To make things—toys, wooden boxes, that sort of thing. It was a release for me, an escape from my workaday life.

  Occasionally, seeing my workbench, with my tools all gleamingly arrayed above me, I used to think I had missed my vocation—that I would have been better off doing something with my hands than trying to deal with something as elusive, as intangible, as the law. If it hadn’t been for Fumiko, perhaps I would have. Not that Fumiko was the reason I kept practising. On the contrary, with Fumiko in my life, there was no need to look for anything else. Besides, most of what I made in my workshop, I made for her.

  The year Fumiko turned five, I decided to take her to Kamakura. To see the famous kite festival. I knew what to expect. I had been there many times before. But I wanted this to be a special occasion for her, one she would never forget. So I set about making a present for her, something I had once seen in a Kyoto toy store.

  Each night, after work, I went down to my workshop. Of course, Fumiko guessed that I was down there making something new for her. She began questioning me. In the morning, before school. In the evening when I arrived home from work. I remember on the third or fourth evening I heard the intercom buzz.

  I raised my protective goggles, pushed the button. It was Fumiko.

  Father? I heard her say.

  Yes, Fumiko.

  Can I come down? Please?

  I looked at my watch. It was already 10.30.

  You should be in bed, I said.

  I was, but I can’t sleep.

  I took my glasses off, rubbed my eyes. I was tired myself.

  All right, I said. But just for a few minutes.

  I went over to my bench and pulled a clean cloth out from one of the drawers and used it to cover what I had been working on. I had just finished tidying my tools when I heard a tap, tap-tap-tap on my door.

  Fumiko was in her pyjamas, her hands behind her back. She was smiling, looking up at me. As I reached up to pull the cord to extinguish the last remaining light over my workbench, she tried to peek
past me.

  Oh, no you don’t, I said.

  But you said you’d finish it tonight.

  No, I didn’t. I said I’d finish putting it together tonight. I still have quite a bit to do. And besides, what did I tell you—not until Kamakura.

  Ooh, she said.

  Whenever I was down there, I used to tie a piece of white cloth around my head to keep the sawdust off. I remember stepping out into the basement and hoisting Fumiko up onto my hip. She had her arm around my neck. When we reached the lift, she took a deep breath and blew. A cloud of dust billowed up from my head.

  There, she said, and her clear, bell-like laughter filled the emptiness around me.

  You know, Inspector, Omura said. I still have it. What I made her. I brought it with me. Would you like to see it?

  Before Jovert could answer, Omura had risen from his chair and disappeared into one of the bedrooms. A few minutes later, he returned carrying a small rectangular wooden case the size of a shoebox. Its burnished surface had been embellished with a series of thin, shallow brushstroke inlays. It could have been a thousand years old.

  Omura handed him the box. It was heavier than Jovert had anticipated. He turned it over, looked for a clasp. There wasn’t one. It appeared to have been cut from a solid block of wood. He glanced at Omura.

  Press here with your thumb, Omura said. Now, slide the top.

  The wood seemed magically to separate.

  That is beautiful, he said. Ingenious.

  The case was lined with silk. Fitted snugly into this was a long, thin, trapezoid-shaped object. At its centre, there was a folded handle. Jovert lifted it up and pulled the object out. There were eyepieces at one end.

  It’s a viewer, a mirror scope, Omura said.

  Jovert held the instrument up to his eyes. Instantly, the room began to spin.

  Oh, he said, shaking his head.

  I know, Omura said. In here is not the right place. But outside…you should see it outside.

  Jovert took a closer look at the viewer. The end opposite the eyepieces was open. Inside, it was lined with mirrors. Externally, the sides had been lacquered a rich, multilayered red. Beneath the lacquer, in the wood itself, he could see what looked like flecks of gold. Long, sweeping brushstrokes ran the length of each side. Down the centre, there was a single column of beautifully formed Japanese characters.

  Here, Omura said, rising from his chair and taking the viewer from him. He walked over to the lamp, held the viewer under it. Its lacquered surface suddenly came to life, almost as if the wood was translucent, lit from within.

  I remember the moment I finished it, Omura said, when, finally, it existed free of me. He ran his fingertips across its embered surface. Its beauty exceeded even my own expectations.

  The following weekend, we went to Kamakura, to view the kites. We took the train. Then the bus. We disembarked high above the beach. It was spring. The sun was shining. Fumiko was walking or half-skipping along beside me. She carried our straw mat under her arm. I carried our picnic basket.

  We sat on a grassy embankment somewhat away from the rest of the crowd. Fumiko was chattering away to me like a bird. I remember laughing at something she said.

  Most of the crowd had already gathered at the foot of the slope which ran the length of the beach. The mood was festive. Laughter floated on the air. Banners high on poles swam eel-like in the breeze. There were vendors pushing their brightly canopied carts back and forth. We could hear their strange cries coming up to us intermittently on the breeze. A bird seller, his cages hoisted like a giant corn cob over his shoulder, was wandering from group to group.

  Below us, on the beach itself, the kite flyers and their assistants were busy making the final adjustments to their crafts. A few kites, not many, had already taken to the air. Beyond them was the ocean. The repeated rise and fall of a small surf. To the west I could see the velvet-blue mountains, where they rose abruptly out of the narrow coastal plain.

  Couldn’t we go a little closer, Fumiko said.

  Let’s see what it looks like from here first, shall we. Then, if we don’t like it, we can move. But, I said, I think you’ll find that this is the perfect spot.

  I laid the straw mat on the ground, pulled its corners straight. Fumiko slipped her shoes off, then sat in the middle of it.

  We were protected from the wind, and the sun quickly began to warm us. As we sat looking down at the beach, each new instant saw yet another kite—a swallow, a dragon, a butterfly, a frowning face—take to the sky. It was only when you looked down to see the tiny tent-peg figures of the kite flyers struggling beneath them on the beach, their crab-like arms working away in front of them, that you realised just how enormous these kites were. As one of them took to the sky, it lifted the man holding its ropes three or four metres off the ground. I could see his legs running in the air.

  Look, I said to Fumiko, pointing to him. She watched the man bounding along the sand, his assistants running after him, trying to catch the guy ropes dragging along the ground.

  Half an hour later, as I had anticipated, the wind began to change. Within minutes, five gigantic samurai faces were ducking and weaving through the air above us. They would swoop down, one after another, descending so rapidly, their sails roaring in the wind, that it seemed impossible that they would not come crashing down on us. But at the last moment, barely metres above our heads, they veered away across the slope, then climbed serenely up into the sky again. Fumiko was lying on the blanket in front of me, following the zigzagging trajectories of the duelling kites. I remember her eyes, how closely they followed the changing fortunes of the battle, and her mouth—now smiling, now with breath held.

  This is the perfect spot, Father, she said.

  Aren’t you forgetting something? I reached into the basket and held up the case.

  She sat up.

  Of course, she said.

  I handed the case to her, showed her how to open it. She put it in her lap, pushed the lid aside. The viewer lay snug and lustrous in its silk lining. She began to prise it out with her child’s fingers. She held it up, examined first one end, then the other.

  But what is it, Father? she said.

  It’s a viewer, I said. Here, if you hold it like this. I folded her fingers around the opened handle. Now, if you look through these two holes.

  I brought the viewer up to her eyes.

  Now look through here, I said.

  She drew in her breath.

  Oh, Father, she said. It’s wonderful. Just wonderful.

  She stayed like this for some time, looking at the soaring kites. Then she took the viewer away from her face and closed her eyes.

  It’s as though the whole world is just sky, and you’re floating in the middle of it, she said. Just floating. And all these kites are spinning around and around and around you.

  She opened her eyes again. She held the viewer up in front of her. She turned it around, and looked at its open end.

  It’s beautiful, Fumiko said. Beautiful.

  Perhaps I am a foolish old man, Omura said. But seeing Fumiko lying there, seeing her smiling,
I cannot tell you, Inspector, how much I had come to love this child.

  That evening, on the way home, in the train, Fumiko sat by the window. At some point I caught a glimpse of her reflection. Her face seemed to be floating in the darkness outside. Seeing her like this, I was reminded of the first time I saw Sachiko, her mother. And I was reminded yet again of all the terrible events that followed.

  Chapter 6

  AFTER that day at the beach, time seemed to evaporate. Years slipped by like days. My legal practice at Fujimoto, Fujimoto and Co. expanded. I became a senior partner. I began publishing articles in a number of legal journals. My reputation grew. As a consequence, I was offered a professorship at the Imperial University. It was a difficult decision. I enjoyed my work. There was also the question of loyalty. Fujimoto and Co. had been good to me. And Fumiko. So I put a proposition to the university. I would accept their offer on the condition that I was able to continue my private practice. They agreed.

  So, two days a week, I continued walking the kilometre and a half to my office, just as I had been doing for years. And for a long time my life with Fumiko was settled. Of course, there were times when she was curious about her mother. This was only to be expected. I answered her questions by telling her that her mother had died in childbirth, which was true. I showed her a black-and-white photograph of Katsuo and Mariko, his fiancée, and myself that had been taken on the terrace of Katsuo’s house overlooking Osaka Bay. This was at a time when Katsuo and Mariko were still happy.

  In the photo, the bay was at our backs. I remember Katsuo showing Ume, his housekeeper, how to operate the camera. It was late afternoon. Katsuo and I were wearing our dark suits. He was holding his hat in his left hand by his side. Mariko was wearing a long, white, pleated dress, like something from the twenties. A row of dark pearls at her neck. On the stone balustrade beside us were two glasses of saké, each still half-full.