well. When she doesn’t understand my Japanese (the Kyoto dialect is different from that of Tokyo!), she roars with laughter and I can see Mrs. Webb laughing on my telling her that I had been gated for three weeks-”You’ll ‘ave to borrow me ‘usband’s ‘at and coat then.” And that laugh! It’s so like Mrs. Webb’s. It is a surprise to examine Misa-san’s face and register that her nose is squat and her eyes are hooded, that she is Oriental; doing so is like being shaken out of a reverie; I am suddenly reminded that I am in Japan.
I spend a pleasant hour or so with my notebooks, fiddling physically with pieces of paper and pencils, and mentally with thoughts of Kazumi, Noriko, my wife, my daughter, whom I hardly know, Mrs. Webb, Misa-san, and Li Ho, the Chinese T’ang poet about whom I am supposed to be writing.
The morning is periodically punctuated by the school bell followed by the buzz of girls’ voices. I can see the tops of the girls’ black heads in the classrooms, and their white blouses. When I have written “Li Ho was born in the seventh year of the reign of Emperor Te Tsang (a.d. 791) . . .” I decide it is time to go shopping for dinner tonight.
At six-thirty when I am sitting at my desk in the bedroom with a towel round my waist, the bell rings. Is it a punctual Bob or a late Kazumi who has forgotten her key? I expected the professor to arrive at seven and the woman to return at six. Slowly, I put on a shirt and a pair of slacks. It is Watkins.
“Hello, Bob! How delightful!”
“Well, the mystery man!” Watkins lowers his bulk on to the genkan step and takes off his shoes. His back is towards me and I have a view of the top of his pink scalp through his thin gray hair and of his bovine neck. He is sweating. With a grunt, he rises, turns, banging the chest of drawers and causing some of the water to spill out of the vase of gladioli.
“Come into the cool.”
“Be glad to.”
“Whiskey?”
“Please.”
Watkins is a large man and when seated on one of the exiguous bench seats, the sitting room seems full. Perhaps he finds this land of the dainty and the minuscule attractive because he is so much the opposite of these qualities himself.
“Kazumi is staying here,” I shout from the kitchen as I am preparing the drinks.
“Uh?”
“I’m expecting her back soon.” I return to the sitting room and hand Watkins his whiskey. “Cheers!”
“Cheer-ho!” he replies, imitating my English accent and twinkling his blue eyes. “Scotch, eh? You say Kazumi-san is staying here?”
“Yes. I asked her to for a few days while I am settling in. Simpson apparently left her in charge as a caretaker.”
“She usually acts as rusuban while he’s away. One doesn’t leave Japanese houses empty in case of fire and so on.”
Bob is a little inclined to explain Japanese customs to everyone, but why to me? He must know that I am aware of this precaution. “Is Kazumi Oliver’s mistress?” I ask.
“I’ve never been sure. It was Oliver’s wife who took pity on Kazumi, and then when his wife died Kazumi helped him out a bit in the house. Oliver works out his paternal instinct on her perhaps. He has no children.”
“Why didn’t he adopt her?”
“I don’t know. Oliver’s wife, Betty, took Kazumi up when Kazumi’s mother died. The mother worked in this house as a cleaning woman. She wasn’t married, so Kazumi was a love-child or a lust-child.” Bob laughed. “Then Betty died or was killed, rather, and Oliver kept up with Kazumi.”
“How was Oliver’s wife killed? Murder?”
“Nothing so dramatic. She was run over by a truck.”
“Oh yes, I remember something about it now. Last year, wasn’t it?”
“Last summer. She was crossing the street not far from here, that main street: Higashiyama-dori.”
“How terrible!”
“In a way yes. They weren’t getting on, you know.”
“Because of Kazumi?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“What’s Kazumi do?”
“Some office job. Oliver and Betty sent her to a business school.”
“Why hasn’t she married?”
“Hard for her to find a Japanese husband with her background: illegitimate, her connection with foreigners. You know all the detective work that goes on before marriage. It would be impossible for her to conceal her past. She ought to marry, though; she must be getting on towards thirty.”
Bob’s words make me feel guilty about Noriko, but I can’t marry her as I already have a wife and I told Noriko this from the beginning.
“I wonder where Kazumi is.”
“You’ve fallen for her?”
“I haven’t. It’s simply that I’m expecting her back to dinner.”
“Oliver told me that she had her wayward ways.”
“You mean-?”
“She strayed sometimes. He never knew where she went.”
“I wonder if she’s straying tonight.”
“Probably, but that shouldn’t bother you, or-” Bob smiles, gives me a significant look-”Have you fallen for her?” He laughs, making the nostrils of his large nose dilate.
A door slides open and little bells tinkle. “Is that my door?” I ask anxiously.
“No, the one of the house opposite.”
“Why the bell?”
“So the occupants are warned.”
“I shouldn’t want to be warned of an arrival at three in the morning, for example.”
“You would if it were a burglar.”
“Not even then, might have a knife.”
“I can’t for the life of me understand why you choose to come to Kyoto of all places for the summer. I’m pleased you did, mind, but you know well it’s the hottest city in Japan at this time of the year.”
“I came here to see you, Bob; and also, I’ve never been to your drama festival. No, seriously, I just happen to like Kyoto very much. Let’s have another drink.”
When the bottle is finished, we go out to a restaurant.
“What do you think happened to Kazumi?” I ask Bob for the umpteenth time.
“If you ask that question once more I shall know you are falling for her.”
“What’ll you have?”
“Dinner’s on me,” Bob insists.
“I invited you to dinner.”
“You did all those drinks.”
“Now, Bob . . .”
“I won’t hear of it.”
Bob is a nice chap.
One of the advantages of the shoe-taking-off business is that as soon as one opens the door one knows by the shoes in the genkan if someone has come back or not. Kazumi’s gray suede shoes are not visible, but to make sure she is still out I climb the staircase to her bedroom. She is not there. I presume she is fed up with me and has gone to her apartment. This thought makes me want her even more.
The clappers from the temple opposite start up as soon as I get into bed. At first the clacks are slow and measured, then they break into waltz time, which seems improbable, but they do-a merry sutra? Now and again I hear the