Thousand Cranes Read Online Free

knew, but he had stayed with Mrs Ota until his death. Still it seemed probable that Chikako had treated Mrs Ota with derision. Kikuji saw signs of much the same cruelty in himself, and he found something seductive in the thought that he could do her injury with a light heart.
    ‘Do you often go to Kurimoto’s affairs?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you have enough of her in the old days?’
    ‘I had a letter from her after your father died. I missed your father a great deal. I was feeling very lonely.’ She spoke with bowed head.
    ‘And does your daughter go too?’
    ‘Fumiko? Fumiko just keeps me company.’
    They had crossed the tracks and passed the North Kamakura Station, and were climbing the hill opposite the Engakuji.
4
    Mrs Ota was at least forty-five, some twenty years older than Kikuji, but she had made him forget her age when they made love. He felt that he had had a woman younger than he in his arms.
    Sharing a happiness that came from the woman’s experience, Kikuji felt none of the embarrassed reticence of inexperience.
    He felt as if he had for the first time known woman, and as if for the first time he had known himself as a man. It was an extraordinary awakening. He had not guessed that a woman could be so wholly pliant and receptive, the receptive one who followed after and at the same time lured him on, the receptive one who engulfed him in her own warm scent.
    Kikuji, the bachelor, usually felt soiled after such encounters; but now, when the sense of defilement should have been keenest, he was conscious only of warm repose.
    He usually wanted to make his departure roughly; but today it was as though for the first time someone was warmly near him and he was drifting willingly along. He had not until then seen how the wave of woman followed after. Giving his body to the wave, he even felt a satisfaction as of drowsing off in triumph, the conqueror whose feet were being washed by a slave.
    And there was a feeling of the maternal about her.
    ‘Kurimoto has a big birthmark. Did you know it?’ He bobbed his head as he spoke. Without forethought, he had introduced the unpleasant. Possibly because the fibres of his consciousness had slackened, however, he did not feel that he was wronging Chikako. He put out his hand. ‘Here, on the breast, like this.’
    Something had risen inside him to make him say it. Something itchy that wanted to rise against Kikuji himself and injure the woman. Or perhaps it only hid a sweet shyness in wanting to see her body, to see where the mark should be.
    ‘How repulsive!’ She quickly brought her kimono together. But there seemed to be something she could not quite accept. ‘I hadn’t known,’ she said quietly. ‘You can’t see it under the kimono, can you?’
    ‘It’s not impossible.’
    ‘No! How could you possibly?’
    ‘You could see it if it were here, I should imagine.’
    ‘Stop. Are you looking to see if I have a mark too?’
    ‘No. But I wonder how you’d feel at a time like this if you did have a mark.’
    ‘Here?’ Mrs Ota looked at her own breast. ‘But why do you have to speak of it? Does it make any difference?’ In spite of the protest, her manner was unresisting. The poison disseminated by Kikuji seemed to have had no effect. It flowed back to Kikuji himself.
    ‘But it does make a difference. I only saw it once, when I was eight or nine years old, and I can see it even now.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You were under the curse of that birthmark yourself. Didn’t Kurimoto come at you as if she were fighting for Mother and me?’
    Mrs Ota nodded, and pulled away. Kikuji put strength into his embrace.
    ‘She was always conscious of that birthmark. It made her more and more spiteful.’
    ‘What a frightening idea.’
    ‘And maybe too she was out for revenge against my father.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘She thought he was belittling her because of the birthmark. She may even have persuaded herself that he left her because of it.’
    ‘Let’s not talk about