Autumn Wind & Other Stories. Lane Dunlop. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Lane Dunlop
Издательство: Ingram
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Сказки
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781462903092
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stories who forget themselves because they're alone with a young woman in a dark house in a thunderstorm—it's rating yourself too cheap." The guest tried to upbraid himself. But in the dark a series of sensual apparitions passed before him. As if it was stamped there, he felt the touch of the woman's cold, wet palm on the back of his right hand.

      About ten feet away from the main part of the house the twenty-one-year-old houseboy crouched in the servant's room. Afraid of the thunder, he had blushed scarlet with shame when, at intervals in the storm, he'd heard the rain shutters being slid shut across the way. (In this house it was the custom to employ a young male student rather than a maid.) Starting to his feet, he bounded at two strides into the entryway.

      "Takebe-san, have you been cowering in your room all this time?"

      In the dark corridor, looking startled and ready to flee, the wife was caught in the pallid light that just reached her from the entryway. Dripping wet, her sleeves were rolled up all the way to her shoulders, like those of the villain Sadakuro in the puppet play The Treasury of Loyal Retainers. Her white, plump arms hung limply at her sides. The inner front skirt of her summer kimono, pulled high up on her thighs and tucked into her half-width obi, revealed a slightly damp-looking white muslin slip and, beneath it, her bare feet to clear above her ankles. The houseboy, who'd literally taken a leap in the dark, stood as if fixed to the spot when he saw the wife before his eyes in a state of undress.

      The pale face, dimly afloat in the half light, gave a casual laugh and asked again, "You have been, haven't you?"

      ". . . "

      The houseboy's answer, drowned out by the sound of the rain, did not reach the wife's ears. But that does not matter much. What's more interesting is that the houseboy himself had no memory of how he'd replied. He knew that the husband had gone for a swim. But he did not at all know that the guest had dashed into the house just before the downpour began. That was how mesmerized he had been by the thunder. The thought now took hold in him that he was alone with the wife in the darkened house. Until that moment when, working himself up with a desire to do his duty, he had rushed inside the main house, he'd been as good as ignorant of this fact. But now that he stood face to face with his mistress, it flashed through his mind like a lightning bolt. His knowledge of it at once took on a weird clarity that clung around his heart. From here on he would follow a psychological path that was more or less the same as that described for the guest. He too heard the thudding of his heart. He too regretted having come into the house. And in listening hard to the storm outside as he did so, he was also like the guest. That the wife, with a levity unusual for her, had teased him this way went far to stir up a certain thought in him. In the darkness before his eyes, he repeatedly visualized and erased the wife's face that had just now sunken into them. Thanks to that "certain thought," this houseboy who was even younger than the guest was finely trembling. There was a tightness in his chest, as if his breath was coming and going only in his mouth.

      When he heard the wife's voice from over toward the entryway, the guest, his heart beating harder than ever, stood up to go to that part of the house. He thought he'd heard her say "Kato-san, will you please help me" or words like these. Then he heard a man's voice, mumbling what sounded like an apology. When only now he realized that it was the houseboy, he tried to feel relieved. But that was not at all what he really felt. At once the sallow face of the houseboy came back to him. Even more than before, it seemed the face of someone who belonged to the lower classes. It irked him extremely that the vulgar houseboy should make his appearance in what up until now had been a splendid pantomime. But when he guessed at the passions that even in the oafish servant must be making his heart pound with exactly the same temptation as his own, he felt an almost unbearable self-contempt. "This hackneyed role is just right for him. It's quite clear that he's not the leading man. As for the woman's part . . . h'm, I'll let you have it. Here it is. Eat." As if tossing a piece of tainted meat to a dog, the guest did his best to hold aloof from the scene. Just then he heard the wife's footsteps coming his way.

      The wife was not at all concerned about her husband's whereabouts. A very good friend of his lived on the bank of the river where he'd gone for a swim. He always invited this man to join him, so it was almost certain that having encountered this sudden storm her easygoing husband was enjoying himself at his friend's house. He was not one to come home if it meant charging through wind and rain.

      When, having changed out of her wet kimono, she came into the eight-mat guest room, this fact floated across the wife's heart with a strange clarity. But unlike the two men (the guest and the houseboy) she did not at all feel bothered and menaced by her awareness of it. Like most women, as she considered a fact that she had placed center stage in her consciousness, if she felt it was an inconvenient fact that might make for trouble in a given situation, she at once and skillfully pushed it back down under the threshold of her thoughts, using sensitivity, guile, timidity, and wisdom to make sure it didn't raise its head again. This is a characteristic of women that might well be called intelligent foolishness. It gives a lot of men difficulty.

      "My, my ... it's pitch-dark. Where are you?"

      "Shall I open one of the shutters a little? It's too dark."

      From the darkness came the guest's voice, tinged with a faint trembling and heavy, as if he were sighing. "But it's still teeming."

      The wife was the same age of twenty-eight as the guest. But she had always tended to treat this young man, who was much younger than her husband, as if he were a child. In fact, this young bachelor who as the child of a good family had known no hardship, was quite often startled and hurt by her sharp-tongued way with him. The wife, liking to watch the look on the young man's face at such times and enjoying herself often so, had decided that he was easily manipulated, a man whose strings she could pull as she pleased. However, this belief of hers was mistaken, in that she observed only his momentary expression and not the movements of his heart afterward. It was not that she had the bad nature to flaunt her superiority and torment the young man. On the contrary, at ease in her superiority, she did not grudge him her special loving friendship. Now when the wife heard the young man's voice, she was immediately able to picture to herself his rigid attitude in the dark. Lured by the usual pleasure of her superiority, an utterly female playfulness reared its head in her.

      "My word, it was simply awful out there. I was absolutely soaked ... oh, and you too, surely? You must have gotten all wet. Why don't you change? I'll give you some of my husband's clothes ... if it won't make you feel odd."

      "No, it's all right. I'm fine this way."

      "Really, though, do change. You'll catch your death of cold. You must have been drenched."

      "No, not all that much." As he said this, the guest patted his clothes here and there.

      Wouldn't the wife's hand, any second now, reach out to feel how wet his clothes were and happen to touch his hand? It was this fear that made him say "No, not all that much" and move his hand around on his clothes. But in the dark where the wife's voice had come from, there was only silence. He did not know how to interpret it. A fear arose in him that it would be broken by the wife's all-too-innocent surprise attack. Against the dusky light that leaked through cracks and knotholes in the shutters, opening his eyes wide, the guest studied even the faint tremors of air. Suddenly a flash of lightning shone into the room. As he saw her at that instant, the wife's figure had a calmness about it that disappointed him. Leaning on her left hand planted on the tatami behind her, her half-opened right hand lightly resting palm upward on her relaxed, slightly sideways lap, she sat at an angle across from him. His fear had been like a sumo wrestler grappling with himself. And yet the space between their knees was much smaller than he'd thought. Pushing himself back a little, he said, "That brightened it up a lot." No sooner had he spoken than an earsplitting peal of thunder broke with a shattering roar that seemed right outside the room. It rattled the glass panes in the sliding doors. The guest felt as if his blood had leapt all at once into his head.

      "That was a big one."

      He spoke these words to himself to quell his uneasiness. The next moment, however, he already felt somewhat free of his unease.

      "It really came down that time. And it seemed rather nearby."

      Even when he spoke out loud to her,