Andrew Miller - One Morning Like a Bird

‘The Montparnasse?’

‘Yes.’

‘What a nice way to spend the afternoon. What did you see?’

He tells her (‘Gabin is a favourite of mine,’ she says), and then, to defend himself against the charge no one has made, the accusation that he is the sort of young man who spends the day in cinemas instead of taking part in the physical labour even fashionable woman are preparing for, he gives an absurdly detailed reprise of his day — the failed search for Horikawa, his inability to find even the mechanic who would surely have been able to tell him where Horikawa was — an account she listens to intently and with just the faintest smile on her lips.

‘And the dance school?’ he asks, blushing and scowling at the paving stone between their feet.

She thanks him for his kind enquiry. It is not, she explains, a time favourable to an enterprise such as hers, but she has been able to keep a few of her older students, the professionals mostly. The others, one by one, have dropped away. She was particularly sorry not to have Mademoiselle Feneon any more.

‘Alissa?’

‘We have not seen her since the rainy season, though she wrote a most polite letter. I hope her ill health is no longer troubling her?’

‘She’s away,’ says Yuji, quickly.

‘In the country, perhaps?’

‘Yes. In the country.’

‘For a foreigner she danced very well.’

‘She did?’

‘Oh, yes. You should have seen her dancing “Snow”. Really, a quite unexpected poise.’

‘I have heard her play the piano. When she plays Chopin, it’s as good as the radio.’

Mrs Yamaguchi nods, amused again. ‘I hope you find your business acquaintance,’ she says.

‘My . .?’

‘The man you were looking for?’

‘Oh . . yes. Thank you.’

She bows and moves away, pigeon-toed, her dancer’s back straight as a board above the immaculately tied obi. Then she turns — sinks it seems — into one of the alleys that wind like waterless streams down towards the river.

A polite letter? Ill health? What else did the letter say? And if Alissa was ill, why had Feneon not spoken of it? What sort of illness? A serious one?

He recrosses the street. Outside the Montparnasse a small queue is forming for the evening showing. Suzuki is in his booth again, scissors and tickets at the ready. And something — the white of his suit, perhaps — brings unbidden to Yuji’s mind the Hitomaro lines Alissa recited in the moonlit study: ‘One morning like a bird she was gone in the white scarves of death.’

And then? Something about a child, who cries for her, who she left behind . .

He looks towards the alley where Mrs Yamaguchi disappeared. If he ran, he might catch up with her, stop her, question her. What she doesn’t know she will be able to guess, a woman like her. Who else can he ask now that Feneon’s house is forbidden to him? He bites his lip, stares as though staring would bring her back, draw her to him. Then he looks down, walks to the wall beside the cinema, and quietly takes his place at the end of the queue.

Meetings of the local neighbourhood association are held in Otaki’s noodle bar, a familiar space — gloomy, savoury, endearingly scuffed — where nobody’s intimate domestic life need be exposed to the curiosity of his neighbours. There has not been a meeting since the irises were in flower. Then — at the firm request of the Home Ministry — associations from Okinawa to Hokkaido, gathered to discuss how they might contribute more to the national struggle, what they might cut back on, what they could do without, how, in this particular hour of destiny, they might, somehow, be better neighbours to each other.

This evening’s meeting, twilight, the second week of November, is also at the exhortation of the ministry. A new guide has been issued, a booklet with the imperial standard on the cover, and inside, in numbered paragraphs, a list of the duties all loyal subjects must be ready to perform. Through the neighbourhood associations (the national defence women’s groups, the Great Japan youth associations, the patriotic workers committees), every man and woman in the home islands will be welded into a single disciplined force. Everyone will have his place. Everyone will wait on the Emperor’s word, ready, should the order come, for the ‘smashing of the jewels’ — the final sacrificial battle. There’s a new slogan, the winning entry in a competition run by the Asahi newspaper. ‘Abolish desire until victory!’ Associations could, if they wished, shout this heartily at the conclusion of their meetings. Such behaviour, the booklet suggested, was in the interests of everyone.

Yuji, who has been delivering cigarettes to a beer hall in Shibuya with Mr Fujitomi and the blue Nissan, is the last to arrive. He nods his apologies to his neighbours, takes his place beside Father.

‘You saw him today?’ whispers Father.

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘Sonoko says his appetite is improving.’

‘And his movement?’

‘Not yet.’

The men are ranged around a long low table at the back of the restaurant. Otaki, Itaki, Ozono, old Mr Kawabata, Mr Kiyama the wedding photographer, Father, Yuji. Saburo is at the top of the table, his crutch angled against the wall behind him. He is, apparently, in full uniform. He has a medal on his chest, the Wound Medal (Second Class). Of the others, three of them — Itaki, Otaki and Mr Kiyama — are in civil defence jackets. Behind the curtain, in the kitchen, Otaki’s wife and sister are preparing refreshments for the end of the meeting. The only other woman present, kneeling in the obscurity by the door, is Grandma Kitamura.

‘I suppose,’ says Otaki, clearing his throat, ‘we should make a start?’ He glances at Father, the disgraced but still august professor of law, a man to whom the procedures of meetings must be almost second nature, but Father keeps his gaze on the tabletop.

‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’ says Otaki, and laughs with embarrassment.

Yuji looks over at Saburo. Saburo is staring at him. Yuji looks away.

‘It seems,’ continues Otaki, doubtfully, ‘we have to make some decisions?’

‘An auspicious day for it,’ says the wedding photographer.

‘Indeed,’ says Itaki, reverently inclining his head. ‘The two-thousand-six-hundredth anniversary of the Empire!’

‘Have you seen the pavilion outside the palace?’ asks the photographer.

Yuji has seen it through the window of the Nissan. An immense and lavishly decorated tent, the centrepiece of the week’s celebrations, radiant in the November sunshine. Crowds of police, crowds of soldiers . .

‘All the big ones will be there,’ says the photographer. ‘Prince Konoe, General Tojo, Admiral Nagano . .’

‘Imagine the food,’ says Itaki, sighing. ‘Though they say the Empress will never open her mouth in public.’

‘I’ve heard that myself,’ says the photographer. ‘The thought of such modesty moved me greatly.’ He straightens his back. His face takes on an expression of awed contemplation.

After a respectful interval (briefly disturbed by Mr Kawabata excusing himself and tottering away towards the toilet), Otaki holds up the ministry booklet. ‘There’s quite a lot in it,’ he says. ‘I was quite surprised.’

‘The most important thing,’ says Itaki, whose civil defence jacket is obviously home-dyed, and recently too, for some of the dye, a curious dun colour, has rubbed off on his wrists, ‘is to elect a block captain. No?’