Yasushi Inoue - Counterfeiter and Other Stories

About thirty minutes later, Teruko returned to the inn.

"When did you go to Fukuoka by plane?" asked Kagebayashi. Teruko was startled and turned pale. On receiving a postcard from Toyama saying that he was not going to the moon-viewing party this year, Teruko knew that she would not be able to go by car with him to wherever the party was to be held as she had done every year until now. She had suddenly realized that she was still as much in love with him as she had been all these years. And she wondered if, after all, it wasn't just to have this drive with Toyama once a year that she even had this sort of relationship with Kagebayashi and had kept it going. Thus reasoning, she had been struck by the feeling that she didn't know what she should do, but she had bought a ticket to Fukuoka and had left Haneda Airport by JAL on the afternoon of the day that she received the postcard.

Toyama had gone to meet her at Fukuoka airport. From there they went together by car to Hakozaki and spent the night at an inn there. And the next day, Toyama went to the Kyushu Branch Office while Teruko headed back to the airport in a separate car. Since her car had traveled along the seacoast, she must gone through Fukuoka, but she had no specific recollection of any place in that city.

For a while, Kagebayashi and Teruko looked daggers at each other, but Teruko quickly regained her composure. She did not believe that Kagebayashi could possibly know of her surreptitious rendezvous with Toyama which had been carried out with such careful precautions. At worse, somebody may have seen me getting on that plane.

"I heard there was a good diamond there, and I went to see it. What's the matter? Why are you looking like that? If you think that's strange and if you don't believe it, then you just think about this for a while. All month long I stay at home alone like somebody on a shelf. What if I did go to buy a diamond?"

Then Teruko lavishly displayed her knowledge of diamonds. For the moment, the greater problem directly involving Kagebayashi was the high price of diamonds that he was hearing bandied about. . although that did not mean that his doubts about Teruko had been dispelled. But, without further ado, they stopped this fencing and broke off their conversation.

IV

IT WAS in the fall of 1957 that for reasons of a slump in business Kagebayashi was forced to resign from the President's chair at a Big Stockholders' General Meeting. Clearly, people inside and outside the company had gotten together and hatched a plot, but there were no measures he could take to avert this. Finally, the dust went flying. This was inevitable for Kagebayashi who was surrounded by a pack of fawning flatterers among whom was also Toyama. And so it came about that Kagebayashi had to follow the same path as Otaka had before him. Kagebayashi must have had many supporters besides people like the President of the Bank, the President of the Securities Company, and the President of the Insurance Company, who had signatory powers with regard to the company's personnel, but those who would have lent their support to Kagebayashi for some reason did not appear. Seeing that this was the case, there was nothing for him to do but to admit that he had behaved with complete incompetence. Kagebayashi thought that while the basic cause of all this lay half with himself, the other half lay with Toyama's stratagems. They had not decided who would become the new shacho , but they did set a time for his selection, and it looked as though the name of Toyama was appearing on the horizon. There just could not be anyone but Toyama!

It was a week after the Stockholders' General Meeting that Kagebayashi, looking like a samurai with his sword broken and his arrows spent, at a Directors' Meeting announced his resolution to resign. When he left the Directors' meeting room and returned to the President's office, he realized the terrible fatigue that was coursing through his body and mind, lowered himself into a chair, and sat there immobile. It appeared that rumors of the shacho's resignation were already spreading through all the departments of the company, and there was a different feeling toward Kagebayashi all the way down to the office boys and the girl secretaries.

At seven o'clock, when Kagebayashi ordered the Secretariat to send his car around to take him home, Jiro Kaibara's hulk appeared at the President's office. "Tomorrow is Harvest Moon, so what do we do this year? No notices have gone out," said the stupid baseball commentator. This was also the first time that Kagebayashi had thought about it. The days had flown by without anyone's choosing a place for the moon-viewing party that fall. The business situation was that serious.

The two men left the President's office and got into the automobile in front of the company lobby. Night was falling. The member of the Secretariat who had come down to see him off handled the old shacho even more courteously than he usually did and bowed politely. For some unknown reason he seemed to have a strong feeling of respect for the President who would soon be leaving the company.

"Drive to Kamakura," Kagebayashi instructed the driver. He was in no mood to go home. He seemed beguiled by a feeling that only by being beside Teruko could he ease his miserable depression.

The car ran along the Tokyo-Yokohama National Highway. One after another, cars from behind caught up with and passed the car Kagebayashi was in. Because Kagebayashi always disliked going fast, the driver went slowly and hung cautiously onto the steering wheel. When they were crossing Rokugo Bridge, a small bang under the chassis shook the old man's body. The driver stopped the car.

"I'm sorry, but we've got a flat. Please give me about five minutes and wait till I fix it. I really apologize," he said with embarrassment. Kagebayashi knew that his driver had not yet lost his feeling of awe and respect toward him, and for that reason he found it possible to pardon the driver's ineptitude.

The automobile crossed the bridge with the tire flat, and after going on a little further, turned off the highway onto a rice-paddy field. Kagebayashi and Jiro Kaibara both remained silently sitting in the parked car. Kaibara thought that by the time they arrived at Kagebayashi's second home in Kamakura he should be able to consolidate his arguments for setting up an employees' baseball team at the company. This was something that he had been proposing for the past year, at least whenever he met Kagebayashi, but he was never able to get a definite reply. The baseball commentator figured that by having them set up an employees' baseball team at S — Industries, he could solidify his own very insecure standing at the company, where he was just receiving a retaining allowance.

However, Kaibara was born superstitious, and an ill-omened flat tire was not the occasion for broaching this subject, so the better part of wisdom was to forget this talk for today. But if I keep all this to myself what's the purpose in my riding in the President's car when he's going to his second home in Kamakura? When it turned out that he was unable to answer his own question, Kaibara's actions became strikingly peculiar. I have to talk to him about something! But nothing intelligent or relevant came into Kaibara's head, as always.

Kagebayashi was also exasperated by the flat. My car, which did not have a flat even once during my presidency, has to have a flat now that I've stopped being president! Just as he was thinking this, he for some reason or other became filled by an uneasiness about going to Teruko's house in Kamakura. Whenever he was going down to Teruko's, he always put in a telephone call a few days in advance, but this time his visit was without notice. Mightn't she not be there? Didn't she go to Fukuoka to buy a diamond? (Kagebayashi had by now convinced himself that this had been true.) And once this uneasiness reared its head, he began quickly to accept it as established irrefutable truth that Teruko would not be home.