sit through a talk, a Japanese domestic drama in which the characters seem to behave very hysterically, a recital of Japanese songs sung alternately by men and women in kimono, the news, and a commentary on the news. This takes us until after eleven. The commercials increase. A sex show starts: a scantily dressed blonde winding a python erotically round herself. Kazumi seems to like this. I don’t. I hate striptease and the drooling it is meant to incite. I get up. She at once rises and turns off the television.
“No, don’t move,” I say. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Please go on watching the-”
“It is late. You must be tired. I am sorry.”
“There is nothing to be sorry about.”
“It is a little late to go to my apato.”
“You mustn’t dream of going to your apato. You must stay here.” Do I sound too eager?
“Simpson-san he say maybe you like me stay few days so as you say before I show you-”
“Stay as long as you please.”
“Thank you. It is very kind of you.”
Our politenesses continue for a little longer until I break them off by going into the bathroom to clean my teeth. When I get up to the bedroom, Kazumi is standing by the bedside table lighting a green coil, an anti-mosquito device that lets off a pleasant aroma.
Kazumi says, “I light katori senko.”
“Thank you very much. But is it necessary? The windows are screened.”
“Maybe some mosquitoes come in.” She bends over the ashtray to see if the coil is burning properly; this action is redundant as I can see from the other side of the room that it is well alight; such fussing is typical. But in this case does it have a meaning? Is it a signal? I go down the gap between the bed and the window (she is still bending over the coil), put my hands on her tiny waist. She twists her head and my lips land on her cheek.
“No,” she says.
“Why?”
“I am sorry.”
I am blocking the way so she jumps on the bed and then off the other side. “Goodni’,” she cries, and runs down the ladder stairs with the agility of an acrobat. I do not give chase.
The fan blows the fragrance of the katori senko into my face as I lie in bed thinking of Kazumi. I tell myself that the best thing has happened, for once one has been to bed with a woman and whispered all those meaningless terms of endearment she has you trapped. I have come to Kyoto to get out of a trap. Nevertheless, my pride has been slightly wounded.
The trap I have come here to get out of is Noriko. Fortunately she has a job in Tokyo and is not able to travel. Perhaps meanly, I have never given her much money; perhaps wisely, I have never allowed her to live with me; perhaps cruelly, in the last year or so I have usually only let her see me once a week. Saturday has been our day. Often I have not met her till six in the evening and sometimes on Sunday I have invented a luncheon engagement which has meant she has had to be out of my flat by eleven o’clock. The trouble is that she has not minded all this; and more, she has never objected to the fact that I am married and that because of my child I am unwilling to divorce my wife. Noriko is content to be my mistress, it seems; or possibly she may regard herself as my Number-Two wife, a status that is recognized in Japan. My Number-One wife, my English wife, would never have accepted Noriko and so I deceive her or think I do; there is a chance that she guesses, but she has not mentioned anything. Our daughter is of elementary school age, and my wife and I agreed that she should be educated in England; in any case Monica detests Japan and prefers living in our house in Suffolk.
My decision to spend the two-months’ holiday in Japan has not been challenged by my wife; she has got to the state, I think, whereby she doesn’t much care what I do or where I am; divorce, though, we have never seriously discussed. At the moment we seem to be going our own ways, occasionally corresponding. I have purposely not given her my address in Kyoto, simply saying that I’d be traveling about during July and August. I have come here to escape, to be out of touch-it was impossible, though, not to give Noriko my telephone number. I chose Kyoto for this interval of freedom because I infinitely prefer it to any other city in Japan and to most in the world.
Wooden clappers start to clack in the temple. Their loud tapping pierces the night. A priest must be saying a sutra.
4
The heat prevented me from drawing the curtains in the bedroom so the light wakes me at five. The sun, however, does not enter the room as the windows face south and west. From my bed I can see the gray tiles of the roof of a subsidiary building in the temple courtyard, the roof of the outhouse in the garden of this house behind which rise a palm, a ginkgo tree, and a maple-the paulownia tree is not in view. The ridge of the outhouse roof finishes with an elegantly shaped end-tile composed of three curls like a snake, the middle curl being higher than the other two.
I gaze out of the window and muse, enjoying the cool which will not last. Then I doze off again and do not stir until the metallic click of the refrigerator doors awakens me. It is eight-fifteen according to the electric digital bedside clock. Kazumi must be up.
It is inconvenient that the bathroom and the lavatory are on the ground floor, for now that Kazumi is up I shall have to put on some respectable garment when I descend. I put on my yukata, rather a hot piece of clothing even though it is made of cotton, and wind the obi around my middle; a Western dressing-gown is more sensible than a Japanese summer kimono, but most foreigners in Japan wear yukata in the same way that visitors to Kabul buy fur hats, tourists to Morocco buy djellabahs. One has a desire to identify oneself with the country one is living in.
“Ohayo gozaimasu,” says Kazumi politely, when I have clambered down the stairs.
“Good morning.” I see she has laid breakfast on the low dining table. “How good of you!”
She is dressed in a clean white sleeveless blouse and a blue cotton skirt. Her face has only the suggestion of make-up and her hair is done differently from last night; she has no fringe and her locks are pinned closely to her head. She looks the businesslike, efficient office girl she no doubt is. She fidgets with the knot in my obi, retying it; this is unnecessary as I shall have to undo the sash in the bathroom.
“I must go now. Kettle boiling, bread in toaster. I am sorry no corn flakes, no-”
“It doesn’t matter. What time will you be back?”
She hesitates, then says, “Six or six-thirty.”
“Goodbye till then.”
“Itte kimasu.”
“Itte irasshai.”
She smiles at my Japanese reply, which means literally “going come back,” places her feet into her shoes which are on the genkan step, opens the door very carefully, goes out, and slides the door to. I am pleased, for she is obviously not cross with me; after all, it is flattering to have an advance made to one.
I sit at the low dining table with my legs dangling into the pit below and push the lever on the toaster that lets fall the two slices of bread into the machine. As I am stirring the instant coffee the telephone rings. Watkins probably. The instrument is on the floor just behind me, two feet away; to lift the receiver I only have to stretch back my arm but I don’t do so. I let the phone ring. I don’t know why but I suddenly have a feeling that I do not want to see Watkins. I simply can’t be bothered to behave conventionally and accept an invitation to dinner and then in a few days invite him back and so start a social round. The telephone stops ringing, but in a few seconds it starts again. As if to make excusable my ignoring of this persistent summons I struggle to my feet (really a table and chairs are much more practicable for eating than this “floor” nonsense!), pass into the sitting room, and pretend to myself that I am completely absorbed in a TV samurai film. It seems rather early in the morning for a tale of grisly violence (perhaps Japanese housewives like this sort of stuff), but better to see samurai grunting, losing their tempers, wielding their