The husband tended to turn commiserative when he got drunk.
“I’ve made up my mind,” the wife declared. “I’m going there to live—among those people.”
“They’d say you’ve got to be kidding. You’d only be an added drain on the city’s food supply.”
“I don’t care what they say. I’ll live in the old part of town and work as a seamstress.”
The husband shrugged his shoulders at the absurdity of it. The wife went down to the kitchen and came back with a second bottle of beer. Grabbing it away from her, the husband opened it with an exaggerated flourish.
“I’ll let you have just one glass,” he said.
“Merci, monsieur.”
“Ooh! I’m impressed! Cheers!”
When he finished his beer, his daughter was chewing on a wedge of tomato. Carrying her to the window rail, he began to sing:
Gin-gin gira-gira, the burning sun goes down. Gin-gin gira-gira, the sun goes down. Red as red as red can be, the clouds in the sky; And all the people’s faces, too, red as red can be. Gin-gin gira-gira, the sun goes down.
The child begged him to sing the song again so he started in a
second time. A dragonfly flew by overhead, skimmed past the leaves of the paulownia tree next door, and disappeared, but not before the sharp-eyed girl had caught sight of it.
“Butterfly! Catch it!” she cried in a rising voice, looking up at her father’s face.
“Not a butterfly. A dragonfly.”
“Dramfly? Catch butterfly!”
“All gone.”
The wife, who had been listening to the exchange between her husband and daughter, now went downstairs and came back with the portable record player.
“Shall we dance?”
“Oui, Madame.”
The lovely glow of the lingering light slowly melted away into the summer night. A waltz began to play. The husband, still wearing only his shorts, turned to his wife in her white dress.
“Pardon,” he said, and took her in his arms.
“What?”
Ignoring her question, he drew her close and started to dance. The fragrance of a fine perfume tickled his nose. In his wife’s hair was a small white ribbon. He thought how nice his girlfriend would look if she wore a brown ribbon in her hair. As they turned, their cheeks touched.
The child tried to approach but bumped into the wife’s leg and fell down. She had been taught not to cry when she fell.
They danced to five or six tunes, and the husband’s face dripped with sweat.
“Are we stopping already?” the wife asked.
“It’s just too hot,” the husband said.
“In Paris they go all night long.”
The husband went downstairs, and the wife could hear him pouring water over himself in the washroom. She stood by the window and gazed up at the stars beginning to twinkle in the sky. The child lay on her stomach on the tatami, fast asleep. The wife continued to gaze at the sky in silence, but the sound of her husband coming back up the stairs brought her out of her reverie with a start, and she quickly moved away from the railing.
Evenings at the Pool
at the pool, a series of spirited final sprints were in progress.
Chestnut-tanned swimmers hit the water in rapid succession, chased by the shouts of their coach.
One girl pulled herself up beside the starting block and collapsed on her stomach, her back pumping up and down as she struggled to catch her breath.
At that moment a commuter train came around the gentle curve of the tracks skirting the school grounds beyond the pool. Salary-men returning from work crowded every car, hanging onto the straps. When their view opened up as the train emerged from behind the school building, the blue of the water stretching across the face of the new pool and the swimsuited figures of the girls resting on the concrete deck leaped into their eyes. We may imagine this scene cast a measure of comfort upon the hearts of the sorry, wilted workers besieged by the heat of the day and a thousand private woes.
A single tall man stood watching the animated practice from the far end of the pool. He had the air and features of a gentle, easygoing man. He wore swimming trunks, and a cape hung from his shoulders.
The man’s name was Aoki Hiroo. He was an old alumnus of this school, and his two sons were now enrolled in its elementary division. He had long worked for a certain textile company, most recently as acting section head.
In the open lane at one side of the pool, Mr. Aoki’s boys frolicked like two happy puppies. The older boy was a fifth grader, the other a year younger.
The Aokis had first appeared at the pool four days ago, and they had returned each evening since. Mr. Aoki and the coach knew each other by sight, and the coach had agreed to let the boys practice their swimming so long as they didn’t get in the way of the swim team.
Every so often, Mr. Aoki would dive smoothly into the water and do a slow crawl to the other end of the 25-meter pool. He was quite an accomplished swimmer. Lest he distract the swim team, though, he mostly just stood at the side of the pool while his boys played in the water by themselves. Now and then the boys would ask him something, and he would give them a pointer or two about their form, but the rest of the time he gazed at the intense training of the girls with a look of quiet admiration.
After a while, Mrs. Aoki appeared at the pool gate leading a large, white, bushy-haired dog. When he finally noticed her several minutes later, Mr. Aoki immediately called to the boys, now engaged in a contest of who could send a bigger splash into the other’s face. The boys did not dawdle. They leaped from the pool and raced for the showers.
After changing into his shorts, Mr. Aoki went to thank the coach, ensconced as usual in his chair at the center of the starting blocks, and then followed the boys out of the enclosure. Mrs. Aoki smiled and bowed to the coach from where she stood at the gate. She handed the dog’s chain to the older boy and started off down the street, walking side by side with her husband. The family lived only two blocks away.
As he gazed after the Aokis disappearing into the shade of the Chinese tallow trees, the coach felt a wonderful warmth fill his heart.
Now that’s living, he thought. That’s really living the way we all should live. Going home together for a family dinner after an evening dip at the pool . . .
In the deepening shadows, the Aoki family walked homeward down the paved street with their large, white, bushy-haired dog leading the way. Awaiting them at home was a bright and joyous table, and a summer’s evening full of family fun.
But, in fact, it was not so. What really awaited this couple was something quite different—something neither the children nor the neighbors nor anyone else could be told.
It was hard to know just what to call it—this thing that lurked at home.
A week ago, Mr. Aoki had been let go from his job. The cause: embezzling company funds.
Now each evening, after the children went to bed, husband and wife were left to face each other alone. Stretched out on deck chairs on the patio beneath the wisteria arbor, neither said a word. Their only motions were to wave their fans in pursuit of an occasional mosquito hovering near their legs.
Mrs. Aoki was a smallish woman of trim build. When she came down the street in her red sandals with her hempen shopping bag over her arm, she was the picture of youthful buoyancy. Sometimes she could be seen with her dog in tow, eating ice cream at the coffee shop near