Quicksand Read online

  “That’s all very fine, but I wonder if you ever intend to finish it.”

  “I’m in no hurry. Mitsuko’s so beautiful I can’t take my eyes off her—not just her face but that lovely body. When she poses for me I could study her hour after hour, even without painting a stroke.”

  “She doesn’t mind if you spend all that time looking at her undressed?”

  “Of course not. No woman is embarrassed to show herself to another woman, and no one minds being admired.”

  “Even so, people would think you were crazy, having a young girl stand around naked in broad daylight.”

  “That’s because I’m not like you, so conventional. Didn’t you ever want to see a gorgeous movie actress in the nude? To me, it’s the same as looking at a beautiful landscape. I’m spellbound; somehow it makes me happy, glad to be alive. Tears come into my eyes. But I suppose you can’t explain that to a person who has no sense of beauty.”

  “What does a sense of beauty have to do with it? You’re just being perverse!”

  “And you’re just narrow-minded.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! You’ve poisoned yourself reading sentimental trash.”

  “And you’re insufferable!” I turned away, trying to cut off the argument.

  “As for that Mitsuko, I can’t believe she’s a decent young woman, or she’d never dream of intruding into our bedroom, trying to break up our marriage. She must have an evil character. You’ll get into trouble yourself if you keep on seeing somebody like that.”

  An attack on the one I loved stung far worse than an attack on me, and the moment he started criticizing Mitsuko I flew into a rage. “The very idea! What right have you to say that about my dearest friend? I’m sure there’s no one in the whole world as virtuous and beautiful as Mitsuko! She’s simply divine—she’s as pure in heart as Kannon herself! It’s evil of you to slander her. You’ll be sorry for it!”

  “There, you see! You’re out of your mind, talking like that! You’re a raving lunatic!”

  “And you’re a living fossil!”

  “Somehow you’ve turned into a terrible, loose woman. You’re completely shameless!”

  “Isn’t that just my own character? Why did you marry a woman like that, when you knew it all along? I suppose you wanted my father to pay for your education and a trip abroad. That must have been the reason.”

  Even my usually mild-mannered husband was aroused. The veins stood out on his forehead, and for once he roared at me.

  “What? Say that again!”

  “Yes, I’ll say it over and over! You’re no real man; you only married me for money. Spineless coward!”

  Then suddenly he drew himself up and shook his fist at me, and something white came whizzing by and crashed against the wall. I ducked instinctively, so I wasn’t touched, but he had picked up an ashtray and thrown it. Never before had he raised a hand against me, and my temper flared.

  “Is that how you feel? I’m warning you—if I get the slightest scratch, my father will know about it. So go ahead and do your worst. Beat me! Kill me! I want you to! I told you to kill me!”

  “Idiot!”

  That was all he said. He looked at me in disbelief as I yelled at him, weeping and half-crazed.

  Neither of us said another word. The next day we only glared at each other, keeping silent even after we went to our bedroom that evening. But around midnight my husband turned to me and grasped my shoulder, drawing me toward him. I pretended to be asleep and let him do it.

  “I went a little too far myself last night,” he said. “Still, you must realize it’s because I love you. I may seem cold, with my blunt manner, but I don’t think my heart is cold. If I’m at fault I’ll try to correct it—can’t you respect the one thing I ask? I won’t interfere with you in anything else, only please stop seeing Mitsuko. Just promise me that much.”

  “No!” I shook my head vigorously, my eyes still closed.

  “If you won’t, you won’t, but at least don’t bring her into this room or go anywhere alone with her. And from now on let’s go out and come back together too.”

  “No!” I shook my head again. “I can’t stand being tied down—I’ve got to be absolutely free!”

  With that, I turned my back to him.

  9

  AFTER THAT OUTBURST I wasn’t afraid of anything. Why should I care? I longed all the more to be with Mitsuko. But when I hurried to school the next morning she was nowhere in sight. I called her home, only to be told she had gone to visit a relative in Kyoto. Eager to see her, and with the emotions of last night’s quarrel surging in me, I dashed off that letter, but after I sent it I asked myself what she would think of a frantic letter like that. Suddenly I felt anxious again, wondering if she might say she felt guilty toward my husband and had better keep her distance.

  Then the following morning, as I was waiting in the shade of the plane tree, she came running up to me, calling out “Sister!” in front of everyone.

  “I just got your letter, Sister, and I was so worried I couldn’t wait to see you!”

  Putting her arms around my shoulders, she gazed up at me, tears in her eyes.

  “Oh dear, Mitsu, you must be upset by what my husband said about you. . . .” I began to cry too. “Does it make you angry? I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have written that letter.”

  “It’s not that—as long as it’s just about me, I don’t care what anyone says. But are you sure he hasn’t turned you against me? Are you quite sure, Sister?”

  “Silly! Would I have written to you that way, or tried to phone you? How could I bear to part from you, whatever happens? If he grumbles about it, he’ll be the one to pay!”

  “That’s what you think now, Sister, but I wonder if you won’t get tired of me. Maybe it’s your husband you love after all. They say married couples are like that. . . .”

  “I don’t consider myself married to that man. I’m still my own woman. If you’re willing to run away together, Mitsu, I’ll run away with you—anywhere you like!”

  “Oh, Sister! You will? Are you sure of that?”

  “Of course I am! I’m ready to leave anytime.”

  “I’m ready too! And what if I said I was going to die: would you die with me, Sister?”

  “Yes, yes, I’d die with you! Would you really die with me, Mitsu?”

  And so our relationship deepened after that quarrel with my husband. Still, he said nothing, perhaps because he had given up. I took advantage of that to become even bolder.

  “He’s resigned to it,” I told Mitsuko. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  So she became bolder too, and if he came home while we were in the bedroom, she would tell me not to go down to greet him. Of course she wouldn’t go downstairs herself. Sometimes she stayed until ten or eleven o’clock at night.

  “Sister, could you please phone home for me?” she’d ask, and I’d assure her mother she was having dinner with us and would be ready to leave at such and such an hour. Then her maid, Ume, would come after her in a taxi. Often we had dinner alone upstairs, but sometimes I invited my husband to join us since he had nothing else to do; he always agreed, and the three of us would eat together. By now Mitsuko never hesitated to call me Sister in his presence. When she wanted to talk to me, she would phone me even in the middle of the night.

  “What is it, Mitsuko, at this hour? You’re still awake?”

  “Did you go to bed already, Sister?”

  “But it’s past two o’clock . . . I was sound asleep.”

  “Well, do forgive me . . . just when you were enjoying your nice warm bed together.”

  “Mitsu, is that why you called me?”

  “It’s all very well for somebody with a husband, but I’m here all by myself, and I feel lonely. As late as it is, I just can’t sleep.”

  “Really, you’re hopeless! Stop fretting and go to bed! You can come to see me tomorrow.”

  “I’ll come as soon as I’m awake, so be sure to get that husband of your
s out of bed early!”

  “All right, don’t worry.”

  “You’re sure, now?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  We would spend twenty or thirty minutes on the telephone talking nonsense like that. Gradually our secret notes and letters were not so secret either, and I would leave a letter from Mitsuko lying open on the desk . . . Of course my husband was not the sort to read other people’s mail on the sly, I needn’t worry about that, but in the past, once I’d read a letter, I used to hurry to lock it away in a cabinet drawer. . . .

  As things were going, I realized I might be in for another stormy session with my husband at any moment, but we were getting along better just then, so I let myself become more and more infatuated, a slave to passion, and in the midst of it came something I hadn’t dreamed of—an absolute bolt from the blue. That was on the third of June. Mitsuko had come over around noon and stayed until about five P.M., after which my husband and I finished dinner together at eight o’clock; about an hour later, a little past nine, the maid told me I had a phone call from Osaka. “From Osaka? Who could that be?”

  “They didn’t say,” Kiyo replied. “They wanted you to come to the phone right away.”

  When I went to the telephone and asked who was calling, all I heard was: “It’s me—it’s me, Sister.” That sounded as if it had to be Mitsuko. But I could hardly make out the words, whether because the connection was bad or the other person was talking in such a low voice, and I felt that someone might be playing a trick on me.

  “Who is this?” I insisted. “Please speak up and give me your name. What number are you calling?”

  “It’s me, Sister. I’m calling Nishinomiya 1234.” The moment I heard that voice repeat our telephone number, I knew it had to be Mitsuko. “Listen, I’m in Osaka, down by Namba, and something terrible has happened—I’ve had my clothes stolen!”

  “Your clothes? . . . What on earth were you doing?”

  “I was taking a bath. It’s a restaurant in the pleasure quarter, so they have a Japanese bath—”

  “But why would you be in a place like that?”

  “Well, actually, I’ve been wanting to tell you about it, Sister—anyway, you can hear all that later. . . . I’m in a terrible fix—please help me. I need that matching kimono of yours, just as soon as I can!”

  “So you went straight to Osaka after you left here?”

  “Mm, yes.”

  “Who’s there with you?”

  “Somebody you wouldn’t know, Sister. . . . If I don’t get that kimono, I can’t go home tonight. Please, I’m begging you, won’t you have someone bring it to me?”

  Mitsuko’s voice sounded tearful. For my part, I was so disturbed that my heart was pounding and my knees had begun to tremble. But I asked where to take it, and she told me she was at a place called the Izutsu, a restaurant I’d never heard of, in Kasayamachi, on a pleasure quarter street south off the Tazaemon Bridge avenue. In addition to the kimono, she wanted a certain matching sash and its fastenings, which luckily I also had, along with a waistband and inner sash and socks. It seemed strange that all those things had been stolen too.

  “What about the underslip?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “They spared me that much.”

  I was to have a trustworthy person deliver everything within the hour, by ten o’clock at the latest, so I decided I couldn’t leave it to anyone else: I had no choice but to hurry there in a taxi myself.

  When I asked if it was all right for me to bring the clothes, I thought I heard someone beside her at the phone coaching her on what to say.

  “Maybe that would be better, Sister . . . or you could give them to Ume; she must be waiting for me at the Hanshin station in Umeda by now. She doesn’t know where I am, so you’ll have to tell her how to come. And have her ask for Suzuki.”

  Then I heard another whispered consultation. After a while Mitsuko went on, hesitantly: “And, Sister . . . I’m really sorry to bother you, but somebody else lost his clothing. Could you possibly bring along one of your husband’s kimonos, or a suit? It doesn’t matter which.” And then: “One more thing . . . I’d be ever so grateful if you could bring twenty or thirty yen too.”

  “I can manage that,” I said. “Just wait for me.”

  After I hung up, I immediately called a taxi. All I told my husband was that I’d be going in to Osaka briefly—Mitsuko needed some help. Then I went upstairs to the cabinet and hastily took out my matching kimono and the accessories, along with one of my husband’s best summer kimonos of silk serge, a tie-dyed sash, and a haori coat. I wrapped all of it together in a cloth parcel and had the maid spirit it out to the entrance hall for me.

  Sure enough, he seemed suspicious. “Why are you taking her a parcel at this hour?” he asked, coming out of the house just as I was ready to get into the taxi. Probably I looked flustered and pale; of course it was odd for me to be going somewhere without changing clothes or tidying my hair.

  “I don’t know why, but she wants my matching kimono,” I said, deliberately pulling an edge of it past the knot of the parcel to show him. “She has to have it, she says, and I’m to take it to their shop in Osaka. Maybe she’s going to be in some kind of amateur theatrical. Anyway, I’ll ask the taxi to wait, and come right back.”

  At first I thought I’d go directly to that Izutsu restaurant, since it was already so late—it must have been about nine-thirty—but then I decided I’d better go to the Hanshin station and pick up Ume, to try to find out how much she knew. When I reached the station I saw her standing by the central entrance, looking around impatiently. I called to her and beckoned from the taxi.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Kakiuchi!” She seemed embarrassed as well as startled.

  “You’re waiting for Mitsu, aren’t you?” I said. “Something awful has happened; she phoned me to come right away. You come too!”

  “My, is that so?”

  Ume hesitated, as if she didn’t know what to think, but I drew her into the taxi and gave her the gist of our telephone conversation as we went along.

  “Who could that be, the man with her? Can you tell me, Ume?” She was tongue-tied at first and looked very distressed, but I kept after her. “Surely you know something about it. This isn’t the only time she’s been out with him, is it? I won’t cause you any trouble, whatever comes of this, and you’ll be well rewarded. . . .” I let her see me take out a ten-yen note and fold a sheet of paper around it.

  “No, no,” she protested, “you’re too kind.”

  But I slipped it into her sash. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

  “I wonder if I ought to go along with you, Mrs. Kakiuchi, to a place like that. Won’t I get scolded?”

  “Why should you? She wanted me to have you come, if I couldn’t.”

  “Did she tell you all that on the phone? It makes me nervous. . . .”

  Ume seemed to feel I was luring her into a trap. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said, to reassure her. “I only know about it because Mitsu called me.”

  “Yes, but I’ve wondered why you didn’t notice anything before. That’s been bothering me all along. . . .”

  “Oh? And how long has it been going on?”

  “A long time—at least since April; I’m not really sure.”

  “Who is this man she’s with?”

  “I don’t know that either. She gives me money and tells me to go to a movie, and then wait for her at Umeda at a certain time. I can’t imagine where she goes. I thought she might have been meeting you somewhere. Even when we get home late, she wants me to say we were at Mrs. Kakiuchi’s house.”

  10

  I ASKED UME how often it had happened

  “That’s hard to say too. She’d tell me she was going to her tea-ceremony lesson, or to Mrs. Kakiuchi’s . . . but she’d always seemed agitated. Now I have to do an errand, she’d say, and go off alone.”

  “Are you sure you’re telling me the truth?”

  “Wh
y would I lie to you? Didn’t you suspect it yourself, Mrs. Kakiuchi? Didn’t you ever think something was going on?”

  “I’m just too stupid. All this time I’ve been treated badly, simply walked all over, and I never knew it till this very day. What cruel behavior?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid my young mistress doesn’t have much of a conscience. . . . Whenever I see you, I feel guilty. I’m so sorry for you. . . .”

  Ume seemed genuinely sympathetic, and much as I disliked confiding in her, I had become so bitter, so distraught, that I wanted to tell her everything that was on my mind.

  “Listen, Ume, you must have known how I felt. I never dreamed of anything like this. Lately I’ve been quarreling terribly with my husband over Mitsu. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in her I’d surely have caught on, no matter how dull-witted I seem. Well, never mind, but how on earth could she telephone me like that tonight? She must take me for a fool!”

  “Really, how could she! But maybe she was at her wits’ end.”

  “I don’t care what trouble she was in—how could she dare to tell me she went to a restaurant with her boyfriend and they had a bath there! You can draw your own conclusions!”

  “Yes, of course, but still, once she had her clothes stolen she couldn’t go home naked. . . .”’

  “I’d have done it. Rather than make such a shameless phone call, I’d have gone home stark naked!”

  “And to get robbed at a time like that—it doesn’t pay to keep bad company.”

  “Anyway, it serves them right—not just to lose their money but to lose all their clothes, right down to their underwear. . . .”

  “Yes, yes indeed. It serves them right!”

  “When we got our matching kimonos, it wasn’t for a thing like this. . . . How far will she go to take advantage of me?”