sliding doors, resembles a waiting-room, an ante-room, and long occupation of it would make one restless; the bench seats are narrow and although they have backs and springs they are not comfortable. We sit: I on one bench seat and Kazumi on the other. I feel we are patients awaiting our turn and that we should be flipping over the pages of glossy magazines. Our conversation is desultory.
“What is the name of the temple opposite?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I am sorry.”
“What sect does it belong to?”
“I am sorry. I don’t know.”
The silence into which we lapse is interrupted by the telephone. Kazumi jumps up, goes to the dining recess, kneels, and picks up the instrument which is kept on the floor in a corner.
“It is for you from Tokyo.” She rises in one easy, graceful movement and I take the receiver from her. I bend over the phone as the wire is short. It is Noriko, my mistress.
“Who is she?” Noriko asks, peremptorily.
“Wait a moment.” I squat on the floor.
“Who is she?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Who is she?”
It is difficult to explain with Kazumi sitting three yards away. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Who is she?”
“Friend.”
“Your friend?”
“My friend’s friend.” I stretch out my legs.
“Why is she there?”
“Showing me the place.”
“I see,” says Noriko, suspiciously.
I lie flat on my back with my head in the sitting room. Kazumi is staring at me.
“Will she stay there with you?”
“Of course not.”
“I think she may stay.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, does it matter.” Noriko has always made this mistake.
I try to change the subject. “Thank you for coming to see me off at the station this morning.”
Noriko came to Tokyo Station to say goodbye this morning. She didn’t bow like some other Japanese on the platform who were seeing off a senior member of their company, she just looked sad and anxious. This made me feel guilty. I always feel guilty when I leave Noriko and yet when I am with her I am bored and often long to get away.
She continues, “Will that person stay in the house with you?”
“No.”
“Where will she go?”
“I don’t know. I’ll explain in a letter. When will you come down?” Feeling contrite about leaving her for two months, I asked Noriko to come and stay in Kyoto for a few days during the summer.
“Soon, I think.”
“Let me know in good time.” I don’t want any surprise arrival.
There is a pause which is disconcerting as it is a long-distance call.
“I’ll write,” I say. “Goodbye for now.”
I ring off.
I roll over on my stomach, replace the receiver and crawl to the bench seat against which I lean.
“That was your girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“She ask about me?”
“Yes.”
The fact that one takes off one’s shoes in a Japanese house produces a feeling of informality, at least it makes one feel informal and promotes the possibility of making informal moves. “Footsie” is a game played with more subtlety in Japan than in those lands where feet remain shod most of the time; it is easy to press one’s toes inadvertently-on-purpose against the stockinged foot of another person and for the gesture to be as vague as a Japanese answer to a direct question. I push my right foot slowly forward and touch Kazumi’s instep. She does not move her foot. I apply pressure. I gently rub my big toe up and down. Her foot remains stationary.
“What did she say?” inquires Kazumi, after a few moments of instep rubbing.
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend.” She withdraws her foot, but naturally, for she shifts slightly in her seat. I do not take the movement as a rebuff.
“She was surprised that you answered the phone.”
“Jealous?”
“I suppose so.” I push my foot forward and touch hers again. “I don’t care.”
Kazumi gets up and switches on the television set. A panel game is in progress. The panel of four judges has to guess which of three sets of identically dressed people is the singer, the pet-bird keeper, or the folk dancer. The Japanese is too fast for me to follow so I ask Kazumi to translate; she does, but perfunctorily; she seems to have a deep interest in the game and concentrates on it as if it were important. She is no intellectual.
While she gazes at the screen I gaze at her-she is too absorbed to notice that my eyes are scrutinizing her face. I admire her nose that turns up at the end (I dislike turned-down noses; my wife’s nose turns down); it is a little nose, being a Japanese one, but it has character, as does her forehead, which is high and therefore rather contradicts her partiality for TV guessing games. Her hair, black of course, is neatly waved and a few strands fall over her forehead making a slight fringe; her eyebrows have been weeded rather than plucked for they are fairly thick, but they are tidy and form perfect arcs. Her mouth is well shaped. It goes without saying that her eyes are dark, but Japanese eyes vary within their small range from very dark brown, almost black, to hazel. Kazumi’s eyes are chestnut. But features mentioned singly mean little; dissecting a face and describing its parts is as pointless as pulling an orchid to bits-”’tis not a lip or eye we beauty call, but the joint force and full result of all.” And the “joint force” and “full result” of Kazumi’s face is pleasing. I find her attractive in a Japanese way, but then I like Mongolian features more than Western ones.
I renew my game of footsie but this time Kazumi removes her toe to the other side of the occasional table, a converted wooden charcoal brazier, heavy as a boulder-what Japanophile aesthetes will go through to show their preference for things indigenous!
The wretched quiz game ends.
“You like call Professor Watkins?”
“I’ll call him tomorrow.”
Watkins is an American. He has lived in Kyoto for many years and is married to a Japanese whom he keeps firmly under control in the manner of husbands of this country-at least that is what everyone says. I like him, although I don’t know him very well; I am not in the mood, though, to see him at the moment. I am sure he will want to tell me about the drama festival he helps to organize and I don’t want to hear about it, not tonight anyway.
Kazumi switches to another TV station. Commercials are on and when at last they are over she becomes absorbed again in a dubbed Western. It is funny to hear cowboy-hatted, horse-riding, pistol-twirling Americans speaking fluent Japanese.
I want to ask her if she is going home tonight or not, but I fear that if I do pose the question she will take it to mean I want her to go, and I don’t. I want her to stay. One has to be careful; it is easy to upset someone unintentionally; even after five years I am always saying the wrong thing. The language is the trouble: English is so direct in comparison with Japanese, and therefore what would seem to a Westerner an innocuous remark bereft of any innuendo might be interpreted by a Japanese as being heavy with hints; so should I say anything slightly connected with the immediate