Yasushi Inoue - The Izu Dancer and Other Stories

She set it down sharply in an effort to save herself, but she succeeded only in spilling it. I was hardly prepared for confusion so extreme."Dear me. The child's come to a dangerous age," the older woman said, arching her eyebrows as she tossed over a cloth. The girl wiped tensely at the tea.The remark somehow startled me. I felt the excitement aroused by the old woman at the tea-house begin to mount.An hour or so later the man took me to another inn. I had thought till then that I was to stay with them. We climbed down over rocks and stone steps a hundred yards or so from the road. There was a public hot spring in the river bed, and just beyond it a bridge led to the garden of the inn.We went together for a bath. He was twenty-three, he told me, and his wife had had two miscarriages. He seemed not unintelligent. I had assumed that he had come along for the walk-perhaps like me to be near the dancer.A heavy rain began to fall about sunset. The mountains, gray and white, flattened to two dimensions, and the river grew yellower and muddier by the minute. I felt sure that the dancers would not be out on a night like this, and yet I could not sit still. Two and three times I went down to the bath, and came restlessly back to my room again.Then, distant in the rain, I heard the slow beating of a drum. I tore open the shutters as if to wrench them from their grooves and leaned out the window. The drum beat seemed to be coming nearer. The rain, driven by a strong wind, lashed at my head. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the drum, on where it might be, whether it could be coming this way. Presently I heard a samisen, and now and then a woman's voice calling to someone, a loud burst of laughter. The dancers had been called to a party in the restaurant across from their inn, it seemed. I could distinguish two or three women's voices and three or four men's voices. Soon they will be finished there, I told myself, and they will come here. The party seemed to go beyond the harmlessly gay and to approach the rowdy. A shrill woman's voice came across the darkness like the crack of a whip. I sat rigid, more and more on edge, staring out through the open shutters. At each drum beat I felt a surge of relief. "Ah, she's still there. Still there and playing the drum." And each time the beating stopped the silence seemed intolerable. It was as though I were being borne under by the driving rain.For a time there was a confusion of footsteps — were they playing tag, were they dancing? And then complete silence. I glared into the darkness. What would she be doing, who would be with her the rest of the night?I closed the shutters and got into bed. My chest was painfully tight. I went down to the bath again and splashed about violently. The rain stopped, the moon came out; the autumn sky, washed by the rain, shone crystalline into the distance. I thought for a moment of running out barefoot to look for her. It was after two. IIITHE man came by my inn at nine the next morning. I had just gotten up, and I invited him along for a bath. Below the bath-house the river, high from the rain, flowed warm in the South Izu autumn sun. My anguish of last night no longer seemed very real. I wanted even so to hear what had happened."That was a lively party you had last night.""You could hear us?""I certainly could.""Natives. They make a lot of noise, but there's not much to them really."He seemed to consider the event quite routine, and I said no more."Look. They've come for a bath, over there across the river. Damned if they haven't seen us. Look at them laugh." He pointed over at the public bath, where six or seven naked figures showed through the steam.One small figure ran out into the sunlight and stood for a moment at the edge of the platform calling something to us, arms raised as though for a plunge into the river. It was the little dancer. I looked at her, at the young legs, at the sculptured white body, and suddenly a draught of fresh water seemed to wash over my heart. I laughed happily. She was a child, a mere child, a child who could run out naked into the sun and stand there on her tiptoes in her delight at seeing a friend. I laughed on, a soft, happy laugh. It was as though a layer of dust had been cleared from my head. And I laughed on and on. It was because of her too-rich hair that she had seemed older, and because she was dressed like a girl of fifteen or sixteen. I had made an extraordinary mistake indeed.We were back in my room when the older of the two young women came to look at the flowers in the garden. The little dancer followed her halfway across the bridge. The old woman came out of the bath frowning. The dancer shrugged her shoulders and ran back, laughing as if to say that she would be scolded if she came any nearer. The older young woman came up to the bridge."Come on over," she called to me."Come on over," the younger woman echoed, and the two of them turned back toward their inn.The man stayed on in my room till evening.I was playing chess with a traveling salesman that night when I heard the drum in the garden. I started to go out to the veranda."How about another?" asked the salesman. "Let's have another game." But I laughed evasively and after a time he gave up and left the room.Soon the younger women and the man came in."Do you have somewhere else to go tonight?" I asked."We couldn't find any customers if we tried."They stayed on till past midnight, playing away at checkers.I felt clear-headed and alive when they had gone. I would not be able to sleep, I knew. From the hall I called in to the salesman."Fine, fine." He hurried out ready for battle."It's an all-night match tonight. We'll play all night." I felt invincible.We were to leave Yugano at eight the next morning. I poked my school cap into my book sack, put on a hunting cap I had bought in a shop not far from the public bath, and went up to the inn by the highway. I walked confidently upstairs — the shutters on the second floor were open-but I stopped short in the hall. They were still in bed.The dancing girl lay almost at my feet, beside the youngest of the women. She flushed deeply and pressed her hands to her face with a quick flutter. Traces of make-up were left from the evening before, rouge on her lips and dots of rouge at the corners of her eyes. A thoroughly appealing little figure. I felt a bright surge of happiness as I looked down at her. Abruptly, still hiding her face, she rolled over, slipped out of bed, and bowed low before me in the hall. I stood dumbly wondering what to do.The man and the older of the young women were sleeping together. They must be married — I had not thought of it before."You will have to forgive us," the older woman said, sitting up in bed. "We mean to leave today, but it seems there is to be a party tonight, and we thought we'd see what could be done with it. If you really must go, perhaps you can meet us in Shimoda. We always stay at the Koshuya Inn-you should have no trouble finding it."I felt deserted."Or maybe you could wait till tomorrow," the man suggested. "She says we have to stay today. . But it's good to have someone to talk to on the road. Let's go together tomorrow.""A splendid idea," the woman agreed. "It seems a shame, now that we've gotten to know you. . and tomorrow we start out no matter what happens. Day after tomorrow it will be forty-nine days since the baby died. We've meant all along to have a service in Shimoda to show that we at least remember, and we've been hurrying to get there in time. It would really be very kind of you… I can't help thinking there's a reason for it all, our getting to be friends this way."I agreed to wait another day, and went back down to my inn. I sat in the dirty little office talking to the manager while I waited for them to dress. Presently the man came by and we walked out to a pleasant bridge not far from town. He leaned against the railing and talked about himself. He had for a long time belonged to a theater company in Tokyo. Even now he sometimes acted in plays on Oshima, while at parties on the road he could do imitations of actors if called upon to. The strange, leglike bulge in one of the bundles was a stage sword, he explained, and the wicker trunk held both household goods and costumes."I made a mistake and ruined myself. My brother has taken over for the family in Kofu and I'm really not much use there.""I thought you came from the inn at Nagaoka.""I'm afraid not. That's my wife, the older of the two women. She's a year younger than you. She lost her second baby on the road this summer-it only lived a week-and she isn't really well yet. The old woman is her mother, and the girl is my sister.""You said you had a sister thirteen?""That's the one. I've tried to think of ways of keeping her out of this business, but there were all sorts of reasons why it couldn't be helped."He said his own name was Eikichi, his wife was Chiyoko, the dancer, his sister, was Kaoru. The other girl, Yuriko, was a sort of maid. She was sixteen, and the only one among them who was really from Oshima. Eikichi became very sentimental. He gazed down at the river, and for a time I thought he was about to weep.Читать дальше