Thousand Cranes Read Online Free Page A

the repulsive thing.’ But she seemed to be drawing no clear picture of the birthmark in her mind. ‘I don’tsuppose Miss Kurimoto worries about it any more. The pain must have gone long ago.’
    ‘Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’
    ‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.’ She spoke as if still half in a dream.
    Then Kikuji said what he had meant at all costs not to say.
    ‘You remember the girl on your left this afternoon?’
    ‘Yes, Yukiko. The Inamura girl.’
    ‘Kurimoto invited me today so that I could inspect her.’
    ‘No!’ She gazed at him with wide, unblinking eyes. ‘It was a miai , was it? I never suspected.’
    ‘Not a miai , really.’
    ‘So that was it. On the way home from a miai .’ A tear drew a line from her eye down to the pillow. Her shoulders were quivering. ‘It was wrong. Wrong. Why didn’t you tell me?’
    She pressed her face to the pillow.
    Kikuji had not expected so violent a response.
    ‘If it’s wrong it’s wrong, whether I’m on the way home from a miai or not.’ He was being quite honest. ‘I don’t see the relationship between the two.’
    But the figure of the Inamura girl at the tea hearth came before him. He could see the pink kerchief and the thousand cranes.
    The figure of the weeping woman had become ugly.
    ‘Oh, it was wrong. How could I have done it? The things I’m guilty of.’ Her full shoulders were shaking.
    If Kikuji had regretted the encounter, he would have had the usual sense of defilement. Quite aside from the question of the miai, she was his father’s woman.
    But he had until then felt neither regret nor revulsion.
    He did not understand how it had happened, it had happened so naturally. Perhaps she was apologizing for having seduced him, and yet she had probably not meant to seduce him, nordid Kikuji feel that he had been seduced. There had been no suggestion of resistance, on his part or the woman’s. There had been no qualms, he might have said.
    They had gone to an inn on the hill opposite the Engakuji, and they had had dinner, because she was still talking of Kikuji’s father. Kikuji did not have to listen. Indeed it was in a sense strange that he listened so quietly; but Mrs Ota, evidently with no thought for the strangeness, seemed to plead her yearning for the past. Listening, Kikuji felt expansively benevolent. A soft affection enveloped him.
    It came to him that his father had been happy.
    Here, perhaps, was the source of the mistake. The moment for sending her away had passed, and, in the sweet slackening of his heart, Kikuji gave himself up.
    But deep in his heart there remained a dark shadow. Venomously, he spoke of Chikako and the Inamura girl.
    The venom was only too effective. With regret came defilement and revulsion, and a violent wave of self-loathing swept over him, pressing him to say something even crueller.
    ‘Let’s forget about it. It was nothing,’ she said. ‘It was nothing at all.’
    ‘You were remembering my father?’
    ‘What!’ She looked up in surprise. She had been weeping, and her eyelids were red. The eyes were muddied, and in the wide pupils Kikuji still saw the lassitude of woman. ‘If you say so, I have no answer. But I’m a very unhappy person.’
    ‘You needn’t lie to me.’ Kikuji roughly pulled her kimono open. ‘If there were even a birthmark, you’d never forget. The impression …’ He was taken aback at his own words.
    ‘You aren’t to stare at me. I’m not young any more.’
    Kikuji came at her as if to bite.
    The earlier wave returned, the wave of woman.
    He fell asleep in security.
    Half awake and half asleep, he heard birds chirping. It was as if he were awakening for the first time to the call of birds.
    A morning mist wet the trees at the veranda. Kikuji felt that the recesses of his mind had been washed clean. He thought of nothing.
    Mrs Ota was sleeping with her back to him. He wondered when she had turned away. Raising himself to an elbow, he looked