Death in Midsummer & Other Stories (13 page)

Kanako was accustomed to shutting her eyes, but her experience up to now had been that when she opened them again the man in question had disappeared.

The two girls looked back over their shoulders, as if by common consent. Mina was silently trudging behind them. Her hands pressed to her cheeks, she was grotesquely lurching along, 91

kicking up the hems of her dress at each step. Her eyes stared vacantly into space, devoid of any purpose. Masako and Kanako felt that Mina's appearance constituted an insult to their prayers.

They turned right on Showa Avenue, just where the first and second wards of the East Ginza meet. Light from street lamps fell like splashes of water at regular intervals along the row of buildings. Shadows hid the moonlight from the narrow street.

Soon they could see Miyoshi Bridge rising before them, the first of the seven bridges they were to cross. It is built in a curious Y-shape because of the fork in the river at this spot.

The gloomy buildings of the Central District Office squatted on the opposite bank, the white face of a clock in its tower proclaiming an absurdly incorrect hour against the dark sky.

Miyoshi Bridge has a low railing, and at each of the corners of the central section, where the three arms of the bridge meet, stands an old-fashioned lamp post hung with a cluster of electric lights. Each cluster has four lamps, but not all were lit, and the unlit globes shone a dead white in the moonlight. Swarms of winged insects flocked silently round the lamps.

The water in the river was ruffled by the moonlight.

At the end of the bridge, before they crossed it, the women, led by Koyumi, joined their hands in prayer. A dim light went out in the window of a small building near by, and a man, apparently leaving after finishing his overtime work, the last to leave, emerged from the building. He started to lock the door when he noticed the strange spectacle and stopped in his tracks.

The women gradually began to cross the bridge. It was hardly more than a continuation of the pavement over which they had been striding so confidently, but, faced with their first bridge, their steps became heavy and uncertain, as though they were stepping on to a stage. It was only a few feet to the other side of the first arm of the bridge, but those few feet brought a sense of accomplishment and relief.

Koyumi paused under a lamp post and, looking back at the others, joined her hands in prayer again. The three women imitated her. According to Koyumi's calculations, crossing two of 92

the three arms of the bridge would count as crossing two independent bridges. This meant that they would have to pray four times on Miyoshi Bridge, once before and after crossing each arm.

Masako noticed, when an occasional taxi passed, the astonished faces of the passengers pressed against the windows, but Koyumi paid no attention to such things.

The women, having arrived before the District Office, turned their backs to it and prayed for the fourth time. Kanako and Masako began to feel, along with relief at having safely crossed the first two bridges, that the prayers which they had not taken very seriously until now represented something of irreplaceable importance.

Masako had come to feel that she would rather be dead if she couldn't be with R. The mere act of crossing two bridges had multiplied many times the strength of her desires. Kanako was now convinced that life would not be worth living if she couldn't find a good patron. Their hearts swelled with emotion as they prayed, and Masako's eyes suddenly grew warm.

She happened to glance to her side. Mina, her eys shut, was reverently joining her hands. Masako was sure that Mina's prayer, whatever it was, could not be as important as her own.

She felt scorn and also envy for the empty, insensible cavern in Mina's heart.

They walked south, following the river as far as the streetcar line. The last car had, of course, departed long ago, and the rails which by day burned with early autumn sunlight now stretched out two white, cool lines.

Even before they reached the streetcar line Kanako had begun to feel strange pains in her abdomen. Something she ate must have disagreed with her. The first slight symptoms of a wrenching pain were forgotten two or three steps farther on, followed by recurring sensations of relief that she had forgotten the pain, but a crack developed in this reassurance, and even while she was telling herself that she had forgotten the pain, it began to reassert itself.

Tsukiji Bridge was the third. They noticed at the end of this bleak-looking bridge in the heart of the city a willow-tree, faith-93

fully planted in the traditional manner. A forlorn willow that they normally would never have noticed as they sped past it in a car grew from a tiny patch of earth at a break in the concrete.

Its leaves, faithful to tradition, trembled in the river breeze.

Late at night the noisy buildings around it died, and only this willow went on living.

Koyumi, standing in the shadow of the willow, joined her hands in prayer before crossing Tsukiji Bridge. It may have been her sense of responsibility as the leader which made Koyumi's plump little figure stand unusually erect. As a matter of fact, Koyumi had long since forgotten what she was praying for. The important thing ahead of her now, she thought, was to cross the seven bridges without major mishap. This determination to cross the bridges, no matter what happened, was, she felt, a sigh that crossing the bridges had itself become the object of her prayers. This was a very peculiar outlook, but she realized that it, like her sudden seizures of hunger, belonged to her way of life, a reflection which hardened into a strange conviction as she walked in the moonlight. Her back was held straighter than ever, her eyes looked directly before her.

Tsukiji Bridge is a bridge utterly without charm. The four stone pillars marking the ends are equally unattractive. But as the women crossed the bridge they could smell for the first time something like the odour of the sea, and a wind reminiscent of a salt breeze was blowing. Even the red neon sign of an insurance company, visible to the south farther down the river, looked to them like a beacon warning of the steady approach of the sea.

They crossed the bridge and prayed again. Kanako felt that herpain,nowacute,was making her sick.They crossed the streetcar line and walked between the old yellow buildings of the S

Enterprises and the river. Kanako gradually began to fall behind. Masako, worried, also slowed her pace, but unfortunately she could not open her mouth to ask if Kanako was all right. Kanako finally made her understand by pressing her hands against her abdomen and grimacing with pain.

Koyumi, in something like a state of inebriation, continued to march triumphantly ahead at her usual pace, unaware that 94

anything had happened. The distance between her and the others widened.

Now, when a fine patron loomed before her eyes, so close she need only reach out her hands to grab him, Kanako realized helplessly that her hands would never stretch far enough. Her face had turned deathly pale, and a greasy sweat oozed from her forehead. The human heart, however, is surprisingly adapt-able: as the pain in her abdomen grew more intense, Kanako's wish, so ardently desired a moment before, her prayer which had seemed so close to fulfilment, somehow lost all reality, and she came to feel that it had been from the start an unrealistic, fantastic, and childish dream. She felt as she struggled painfully ahead, fighting the relentless, throbbing pain, that if only she gave up her foolish delusion her pain would immediately be healed.

When at last the fourth bridge came into sight, Kanako laid her hand lightly on Masako's shoulder, and, in something like the gesture language of the dance, she pointed to her stomach and shook her head. The stray locks plastered with perspiration against her cheeks seemed to say that she could go no farther.

She turned abruptly on her heels and dashed back towards the streetcar line.

Masako's first impulse was to run after Kanako, but, remembering that her prayer would be nullified if she turned back, she checked herself and merely watched Kanako run. Koyumi first realized that something was amiss when she reached the bridge.

By then Kanako was running frantically in the moonlight, not caring how she looked. Her blue-and-white kimono flapped, and the sound of her geta echoed and scattered against the nearby buildings. A lone taxi could be seen, providentially parked at the corner.

The fourth bridge was Irifuna Bridge. They would cross it in the direction opposite to that they had taken over Tsukiji Bridge.

The three women gathered at the end of the bridge and prayed with identical motions. Masako was sorry for Kanako, but her pity did not well up as spontaneously as usual. What passed through her head instead was the cold reflection that

anyone who dropped from the ranks would henceforth travel
a
path different from her own. Each woman's prayer was her own problem, and even in such an emergency Masako could not be expected to shoulder anyone else's burden. It would not be helping someone to carry a heavy load up a mountain - it would be doing something which could not be of use to anyone.

The name 'Irifuna Bridge' was written in white letters on a horizontal metal plaque fastened to a post at the end of the bridge. The bridge itself stood out in the dark, its concrete surface caught in the merciless glare reflected from the Caltex petrol station on the opposite bank. A little light could be seen in the river where the bridge cast its shadow. The man who lived in the broken-down hut at the end of the fishing-pier was apparently still up, and the light belonged to him. His hut was decorated with potted plants and a sign announcing: 'Pleasure Boats, Tow Boats, Fishing Boats, Netting Boats.'

The roof line of the crowded range of buildings across the river gradually dropped off, and the night sky seemed to open before them. They noticed now that the moon, so bright a little while earlier, was only translucently visible through thin clouds.

All over the sky the clouds had gathered.

The women crossed Irifuna Bridge without incident.

Beyond Irifuna Bridge the river bends almost at a right angle.

The fifth bridge was quite a distance away. They would have to follow the river along the wide, deserted embankment to Akatsuki Bridge.

Most of the buildings to their right were restaurants. To their left on the river bank were piles of stone, gravel, and sand for some sort of construction project, the dark mass spilling at places half-way over the roadway. Before long, the imposing buildings of St Luke's Hospital could be seen to their left across the river. The hospital bulked gloomily in the hazy moonlight.

The huge gold cross on top was brightly illuminated, and the red lights of aeroplane beacons, as if in attendance on the cross, flashed from rooftops here and there, demarcating the roofs and the sky. The lights were out in the chapel behind the hospital, but the outlines of its Gothic rose window were plainly 96

visible. In the hospital windows a few dim lights were still burning. The three women walked on in silence. Masako, her mind absorbed by the task ahead of her, could think of little else.

Their pace had imperceptibly quickened until she was now damp with perspiration. Then - at first she thought it must be imagination - the sky, in which the moon was still visible, grew threatening, and she felt the first drops of rain against her forehead. Fortunately, however, the rain showed no signs of developing into a downpour.

Now Akatsuki Bridge, their fifth, loomed ahead. The concrete posts, whitewashed for some unknown reason, shone a ghostly colour in the dark. As Masako joined her hands in prayer at the end of the bridge, she tripped and almost fell on an exposed iron pipe in the roadway. Across the bridge was the streetcar turn before St. Luke's Hospital.

The bridge was not long. The women were walking so quickly that they were across it almost immediately, but on the other side Koyumi met with misfortune. A woman with her hair let down after washing and a metal basin in her hand approached from the opposite direction. She was walking quickly, her kimono opened in slatternly fashion off the shoulders. Masako caught only a glimpse of the woman, but the deadly pallor of the face under the wet hair made her shudder.

The woman stopped on the bridge and turned back. 'Why, if it isn't Koyumi! It's been ages, hasn't it? Are you pretending you don't know me? Koyumi - you remember me!' She craned her neck at Koyumi, blocking her path. Koyumi lowered her eyes and did not answer. The woman's voice was high-pitched and unfocused, like the wind escaping through a crevice. Her prolonged monotone suggested that she was calling not Koyumi but someone who wasn't actually there. 'I'm just on my way back from the bath-house. It's really been ages. Of all places to meet!'

Koyumi, feeling the woman's hand on her shoulder, finally opened her eyes. She realized that it was useless to begrudge the woman an answer - the fact that she had been addressed by an acquaintance was enough to destroy her prayer.

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Masako looked at the woman's face. She thought for a moment, then walked on, leaving Koyumi behind. Masako remembered the woman's face. She was an old geisha who had appeared for a while in Shimbashi just after the war - Koen was her name. She had become rather peculiar, acting like a teenage girl despite her age, and she finally had been removed from the register of geisha. It was not surprising that Koen had recognized Koyumi, an old friend, but it was a stroke of good fortune that she should have forgotten Masako.

The sixth bridge lay directly ahead, Sakai Bridge, a small structure marked only by a metal sign painted green. Masako hurried through her prayers at the foot of the bridge and all but raced across. When she looked back she noticed to her relief that Koyumi was no longer to be seen. Directly behind her followed Mina, her face maintaining its usual sullen expression.

Now that she was deprived of her guide, Masako had no clue where to find the seventh and last bridge. She reasoned, however, that if she kept going along the same street she would sooner or later come to a bridge parallel to Akatsuki Bridge.