“Just a friend,” she replies, putting some cold stew into her mouth. “Very delicious, really. Very delicious.”
“It’s easy to make. Tell me about your friend.”
“I’ve known him long time. He’s married. Sometimes he visit me. I did not know he was coming. He came to the house soon after I come home.”
“Does Oliver know him?”
“Yes, of course. Oliver-san he like him very much.”
“I see.” But I don’t really understand at all. Oliver Simpson seems odder than ever: he allows his ward or his mistress to act as his caretaker and has been, for some time apparently, compliant about her having friends like Mr. Ohno. Perhaps Oliver likes threesomes. He becomes more puzzling each day and I wish I had met him.
I do not protest when Kazumi offers to do the washing up, nor do I help her. It is, after all, more of a woman’s task than cooking. Also, I know sufficient about Japanese psychology to realize that it is a mistake to put anyone too much under an obligation. Her washing the dishes will in her simple mind balance my having done the cooking, and we shall be equal, but to be completely equal in my mind I must return the morning kiss.
Impatiently, I wait for her to join me in the sitting room. I sit on the floor with my back against the bench seat, hoping that she’ll sit beside me when she has finished. The washing-up noises cease and Kazumi enters the room.
I pat the tatami. “Come and sit down.”
“Terebi?”
“All right.”
She switches on the set, goes back to the kitchen, and in a few moments reappears with an iron and a legless ironing board which she places on the floor. The iron is plugged in and stood on its end. Then she fetches a pile of blouses and underwear and proceeds to iron these garments sitting on her heels and now and then glancing at a guess-the-tune game. I realize that doing such prosaic tasks after dinner in the sitting room is quite normal and not meant to be insulting (so many Japanese houses or flats have one room for sleeping, eating, sitting, and ironing), nonetheless I find it irritating. I get up.
“Going out?” she asks, not looking up from the ironing board.
“A walk.”
“Itte irasshai,” she says, making the first fold in a blouse.
8
I wander down the road past the shop that has just had the fire. About thirty firemen are sitting on benches outside in the road (there is no pavement) and merrily drinking sake. The shopkeeper is fussing over the guzzling firemen, opening bottles, passing apples; he wears the worried expression of a man who is host to superior and demanding guests that he is obliged to entertain. Written on the faces of the firemen are the marks of self-satisfaction and self-importance that victory brings. Custom no doubt demands that the owner of the “saved” premises should reward the firemen; he must rid himself of his immediate obligation to them in the same way that Kazumi relieves herself of her burden of obligation to me by washing the dishes.
A few years ago when my wife was in England and my affair with Noriko was at its height, I returned home two hours later than promised to find Noriko coming down the stairs from my apartment to which she had the key.
“Why you late?” she asked, her face cross and tearful.
“The party went on longer than I thought it would.”
“You said it was only a cocktail party and you’d be back at eight-thirty.”
“Oh God, does it matter all that much?”
“Yes, does it matter.” She ran down the stairs and out.
I did not follow her. I let myself into the apartment and began to pack-I was going on a tour of Kyushu the following day. Although it was not a Saturday, Noriko was to have spent the night with me as it was my “last night” in Tokyo for three weeks. I found a note from her on my desk. “I go out alone sad. I am very foolish. What can I do? I don’t know what can I do.”
The veiled threat this note seemed to contain unsettled me, partly for selfish reasons, as I did not want a scandal: “Married Englishman’s Japanese girlfriend throws herself under train . . .” The press would certainly rub in the fact that I was married and suggest that I was having a passing affair with Noriko. Fear that one’s mistress may run out and commit suicide is constantly at the back of the mind of any Westerner who has an affair with a Japanese, for to a Japanese who has lost face (and loss of face can occur without the foreigner realizing it), lost hope, been seriously frustrated, the world may suddenly become all black and the only apparent solution is to put an end to oneself. I was worried, therefore, when I read the note and angry with Noriko for making me worried, for spoiling my holiday on the eve of my departure. Noriko had possibly further lost face by meeting me unexpectedly on the stairs; she had obviously expected to get away before I returned. Was Noriko capable of throwing herself under a train? A common method of suicide in Japan. I was beginning to think she had done so and to wonder what I should do. I would have to see her parents (a thing I have always avoided doing), go to the funeral-the whole experience would be ghastly and sad. Just as I had buried Noriko and tried to console her parents with a large check there was the sound of a key being inserted in the lock. Her face was streaked with tears and she flung herself at once into my not very welcoming arms.
“When I go out,” she sobbed, “I think I never see you again, but as I walk to the station I remember that everything I wear came from you: my ring, my watch, the stuff for this coat, this dress you bring from Hong Kong. . . .” As she clasped me my eyes caught her cheap little handbag, which she was clutching, and I made a mental note to buy her a handbag next.
The apparent reason for forgiving my “monstrous” behavior (I really think that whenever I was somewhere for longer than I said I would be she believed I was in bed with someone) was because she felt under an obligation. The immediate mention of my practical presents shows this. According to her reckoning her obligation to me at that moment was greater than mine to her (I had incurred an obligation to her by taking her on as a mistress), and it was the feeling of obligation that brought her scurrying back as much as that of affection. The incident marked the beginning of the decline in my affair with Noriko.
After sauntering round the streets, my shirt is soaked and my trousers cleave uncomfortably to my legs, but I am purged of the feeling of exasperation which overcame me while watching Kazumi iron her clothes. The district has enchanted me and I enter the house with the same feeling of elation one has from seeing a perfect piece of art or hearing a consummate rendering of a concerto.
The sitting room light and the television are still on, so I know that Kazumi has not gone to bed. I slide open the door and there she is in her brief shorts and sleeveless blouse, lying full length on the bench seat in the same position she was in last night, but now she is alone, or more or less alone, for she is watching television and the box engrosses her as much as Mr. Ohno.
She does not get up or go down on all fours and touch the tatami with her forehead as used to be the custom when the master of the house came home, she just flicks her eyes at me and says, “Where did you go?” Before I have replied she is again looking at the screen.
“Just for a walk. I think I’ll have a shower.”
I have a mad idea that if I am also in the state of seminudity an approach may be easier. After the shower I sit on the other bench seat with a towel round my waist trying hard to hold in my belly. “Is this a good play?” I ask, referring to the domestic drama on the screen that for the last ten minutes has consisted of a conversation among a lower middle class family who are sitting on the floor of their living room.
“Yes,” Kazumi replies, not turning her head. She has the TV look on her face, the vacant gape television addicts acquire.
I wait for the commercials to interrupt her absorption, but they don’t; they seem as compelling to her as the play, and they can’t be, for even I,