Quicksand (24 page)

. . .
YES, I
DID
manage to escape on the third day. The weather and the timing were exactly as I had hoped: a little past ten o'clock, I put on my bathing suit and went down to the beach. When I saw Ume, I signaled to her with a glance, and we walked as fast as we could along the beach for about half a mile, not saying a word, before I stopped to slip on a light cotton print dress. Then Ume gave me a handbag containing ten yen, and a parasol to shield my face, as we separated and headed out to the highway. Luckily a taxi came along, and I got in and went straight to Namba. So I reached the villa before eleven-thirty, and Ume arrived half an hour later.

“My, but you were quick!” she exclaimed. “I never thought it would go so well. Now come out to the cottage with me, before we begin getting those phone calls!”

Ume hustled Mitsuko and me off to an elegant little thatch-roofed cottage in the garden, quite a long way from the house. Once inside, I saw that beds had been laid out with pills and water right by the pillows; I changed from the dress into a summer kimono and sat down facing Mitsuko, wondering if I might really die and if this might be my last glimpse of her.

“If it turns out to be a fatal dose for me, would you die too, Mitsu?”

“And you'd die with
me
, wouldn't you, Sister?”

We wept together, our arms around each other.

Then Mitsuko showed me two farewell notes she had written, one to her parents and one to my husband. “Please read them,” she said.

I took out my own farewell notes, and we compared what we had written. They were like real suicide notes, especially Mitsuko's letter addressed to my husband: “I cannot apologize enough for taking your precious wife along with me. Please find the strength to resign yourself to fate.” When my husband read it, he would surely be so moved that he would forget his bitterness. Even we ourselves, looking at the letters there before us, had to take this seriously. We couldn't help feeling as if we were actually going to our deaths.

After spending about an hour like that, we heard the clatter of garden clogs as Ume came running toward us.

“Miss! Miss! You have a call from Imabashi! Please come out for a minute, if you can.”

Mitsuko hurried off to the phone, and when she came back, she said: “Everything has gone beautifully. Now we needn't wait any longer!”

Once again we embraced, trembling with genuine grief, and we swallowed the pills.

It seems I was completely unconscious for about half a day. Later I heard that by eight o'clock that evening I began now and then to open my eyes and stare anxiously around, but I have no clear memory of anything for the next two or three days—only a sensation of nausea, of suffocating, of pressure inside my head, along with a kind of confused vision of my husband sitting by my pillow—and through the whole time a series of dreams, one after another. First of all I, my husband, Mitsuko, Ume—the four of us seemed to be off on a trip somewhere, sleeping under a mosquito net in a room at an inn. It was a little six-mat room, and Mitsuko and I were lying there together, with my husband and Ume on either side of us, all under the same net. . . . That image lingered vaguely in my mind like a scene from a dream, but judging from the look of the room, dream and reality must have been mingled. Another thing I heard afterward was that late that night my bedding had been drawn into the next room, but then Mitsuko opened her eyes and started calling for me deliriously: “Sister's gone! Bring back my sister! Bring her here!” Her tears were flowing, I was told, and they had to bring me back to the same room with her.

That was the room I had dreamed about, but there were other, stranger dreams. Once, I was taking a nap in another room at an inn, as Watanuki and Mitsuko whispered together beside me.

“Is Sister really sleeping, I wonder?”

“We mustn't waken her.”

Dozing off from time to time, I could hear snatches of their secret talk. But where on earth was I? It must have been that Kasayamachi inn—unfortunately I was lying with my back toward them and couldn't see the expression on their faces. Even so, I understood what was going on. I had been deceived after all! Only
I
had taken the sleeping pills, I thought, and I'd been deluded into letting myself be put into this condition; meanwhile Mitsuko had called Watanuki here. Ah, how hateful! I wanted to leap up and tear the masks off those liars! But try as I might, my body refused to obey. I wanted to cry out, but the harder I tried, the more frustrating it was. My tongue stiffened and wouldn't move; I couldn't open my eyes. How infuriating! Yet as I was asking myself what
could
I do, somehow I began dozing off again. . . . Still I heard voices talking on and on for a long time. Strangely, though, the man's voice had changed from Watanuki's to my husband's. . . . Why was my husband in a place like this? Was he so intimate with Mitsuko?

“Won't Sister be angry?”

“I think it's what Sonoko's always wanted.”

“Then the three of us should be good friends.”

Snatches of talk like that filtered into my hearing. Even now, I'm not sure what to make of it. Were they really talking with each other, or was it partly my imagination, shaping reality as I dreamed? . . . And then, if that was all, it might have been simply an illusion, the product of my confused mind. I denied it myself, thinking it couldn't be true, but there was another scene I recalled, a scene I still can't forget. . . .

At first I thought it was another nonsensical dream, but although the earlier dreams slowly faded as the medicine wore off and I began to come to, that scene alone burned even brighter in my mind—there was no longer any room for doubt. Actually, we both swallowed the same number of pills, but it seems that I was unconscious longer. Mitsuko had eaten her fill around eleven o'clock, combining breakfast with lunch, but I rushed out to the beach without a proper breakfast and had absorbed the medicine on an empty stomach. While I was still half asleep and dreaming, Mitsuko had long since vomited up the medicine and fully recovered consciousness.

Later, though, Mitsuko herself told me: “I didn't know what was going on, except that you were supposed to be lying there by my side, Sister.” In that case, my husband would seem to be the guilty one. But according to what
he
confessed, it was the afternoon of the second day at Hamadera; Ume went off to the main house, and he was fanning the flies away from my sleeping face, when Mitsuko murmured “Sister,” as if in her sleep, and began moving closer to me. Afraid she might waken me, he slipped between us and took her in his arms, lifting her away, and then put the pillow under her head and pulled the coverlet over her. . . . Convinced that she was fast asleep, he let down his guard and, before he realized it, found himself drawn into an unyielding embrace. Anyway, my husband was like a child, with no experience in such things, so I'm sure he must have been telling the truth.

WELL, THERE'S NO USE
trying to find out who was to blame, but it seems that once they made that first mistake, even though they felt guilty toward me, they kept on repeating it. Considering all that, I can't excuse my husband completely, and yet, for my part, I was able to sympathize with him. I knew we were hopelessly incompatible, as I'd told him over and over, and so, just as I was always seeking another love partner, he must have been unconsciously seeking one too. Besides, he didn't know how to fill that lack by drinking and amusing himself with geisha, like other men, and so he was all the more susceptible to being seduced. What happened then was like a dam bursting: blind passion surged up, overwhelming his strength of will and reasoning powers, and he was far more violently carried away than Mitsuko. That was why I had no trouble understanding the change in my husband's feelings.

But how to account for Mitsuko? Had she really been almost asleep, acting on a moment's impulse, or did she have some clear purpose in mind? Did she mean to get rid of Watanuki and take up with my husband, causing so much jealousy between us that she could manipulate us any way she liked? Of course it was her nature to want to attract as many admirers as possible, so perhaps she was back to that old habit. If not, maybe it was a trick to win his support. “I can see that it's wrong,” she might have said to herself, “but still this is the best way to keep him on our side.” It was too complicated for me—you really can't tell how a person as devious as that feels—but I suppose all those motives worked along with that chance moment together.

Anyway, it wasn't till long afterward that they both confessed to me; in the beginning I just lay there in bed feeling vaguely betrayed, without asking myself why. I was half pleased, half resentful, when Ume came to my bedside and said: “Mrs. Kakiuchi, you needn't worry anymore. Your husband knows everything!” Since I obviously wasn't all that happy about it, he and Mitsuko seem to have had an inkling that I suspected them.

On the evening of the third day, the doctor told me: “It's all right for you to get up now.”

The next morning, we left Hamadera. At that time, too, Mitsuko made a point of assuring me: “Everything's fine now, Sister. Tomorrow I'll come to your house and talk it all over with you.” But she looked a little guilty, and her attitude toward me was curiously reserved. Somehow she and my husband appeared to be in collusion. As soon as he had taken me back to Koroen, he announced that he had to go to his office.

“I have a little work to finish up,” he said, and promptly left the house. When he came home after eight o'clock that evening, all he said was: “I've had dinner.” He seemed afraid I'd want to talk.

I knew that my husband wasn't good at deceiving anyone, so I felt sure he'd soon come out with something or other. I'd let him stew in his own juice as long as he liked. I pretended not to notice how he was acting, and at bedtime I went straight to bed, ahead of him. He seemed more nervous than ever and at midnight was still tossing and turning as if he couldn't get to sleep. Even in the dark I could tell that he opened his eyes now and then, glancing over stealthily to see if I was really asleep and breathing evenly.