Beauty in Disarray. Harumi Setouchi

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СКАЧАТЬ swimming suit. Everyone swam stark-naked. Noe loved diving, but Chiyoko was more like what you'd call an athlete today and swam as far as Nokonoshima. It doesn't seem as if the way we spent our days as children and the way Noe did were very different.

      "Since we didn't have any really interesting things to do, several times a year when plays came to Shusenji village, she would go to see them, since those plays offered the greatest enjoyment she'd be able to have. She'd go to the Festival of the Dead dancing in a red cotton apron, with cutouts of colored paper proudly sewn on it... Well, Noe's love of learning was probably inherited because my mother Sato was so good at reading and writing that she taught the neighborhood children. What's more, my mother had a real taste for songs accompanied by the samisen, and the fondness in Noe's father's blood for dancing and singing was probably inherited from my mother. At village plays and other kinds of entertainment, the first person lively enough to go up on the stage and play the samisen or dance was Noe's father.

      "When we moved from Nagasaki to Tokyo, we sent Noe back to Imajuku for a while, and from there she went to an elementary school in Shusenji. When she graduated from that school and got a job at the post office, Noe sent letters to our home in Tokyo day after day, letters so thick that they fell with a heavy thud. Those letters begged us to grant her wish to come up to Tokyo and attend a girls' high school like Chiyoko was doing. Living right next door to us at the time was the novelist Namiroku Murakami. When my husband showed him Noe's letters, the handwriting and the contents were so good that he advised us she showed some promise and that we ought to let her come up to Tokyo, so my husband felt inclined to do so and we decided to take charge of her again. But when she finally did come, Mr. Murakami was quite surprised to see that Noe was a girl. He was convinced on reading those letters that the writer had to be a young man. My husband was really a person who preferred bringing up someone to saving money, and he took a liking to people of character, be they friend or foe. Later on, even though he belonged to the right-wing Gen'yosha group, he felt inclined to take care of Osugi, more, I believe, from my husband's fondness for human beings than from any sympathy with Osugi's doctrines and principles...

      "Are you asking me about Osugi? Yes, I knew both Osugi and Jun Tsuji real well. I found that while Tsuji was a gentle hesitating person, Osugi was a really fine man. His gentleness, especially toward women and children, was exquisite. Sometimes I wondered why the world feared such a gentle person. Certainly Tsuji was also gentle. All of Noe's men were devoted to her...

      "Oh yes, are you asking me about Noe's first husband? He was a son of the Suematsu family in Shusenji, and since both fathers were friends, it was natural for the subject of marriage to come up. I've heard that the young man's entire family had settled in America and opened up a shoe store. Noe hesitated in giving her answer, but since she'd be able to go to America, she agreed. But when she found out that she couldn't go to America, she said marrying was out of the question and she began to balk. Nevertheless, during the summer vacation when she was in the fifth grade at the girls' high school, the marriage took place. Somehow, though, I've forgotten all the details concerning the marriage at the time...

      "I'm good for nothing, since I'm apt to forget everything. I don't even know how I manage to go on living. You took the trouble to come all this way, and I want to give you some memento of Noe, but I've nothing to offer. Well, at any rate, during my life my husband took me to many places I wanted to go to. Yes, he took me just about everywhere. I've probably been to all the famous hot-spring resorts in our country. He even took me climbing with him to the top of Mount Fuji...

      "Yes? Are you asking me about the time Noe was murdered? I certainly do remember that real well. Before the special edition came out, a newsman let us know about the murder, so my husband and Noe's father rushed up to Tokyo. The members of her family weren't that surprised. I guess they expected it. Noe had the habit of saying that she and her husband would never die peacefully in their beds like ordinary people.

      "Oh yes, now I remember. When my husband went up to Tokyo to get Noe and Osugi's ashes, Mr. Toyama was kind enough to lend them his car for as long as they needed it. They told me that several men, Mr. Toyama's followers, protected them as guards. They said there was fear of an attack by some of those right-wingers.

      "Yes, that's the way my husband was, and I guess Mr. Toyama was also the kind that took a liking to men of character, even if their principles were different and even if they were his opponents. He treated Noe with affection, and it seems that he gave her pocket money sometimes. Once, thanks to Mr. Toyama's help, Noe went to Shimpei Goto's house to get some money. I remember hearing that Mr. Goto, laughing, told Mr. Toyama everything with the remark 'She's an interesting girl.' It seems that Noe grabbed the money, which had been placed on a table, and as if it were natural to not even bow in thanks, had quietly left. There must have been many times when my husband took the trouble to help Osugi meet Mr. Toyama and Mr. Goto. At first, when Noe ran off to live with Osugi, my husband was very angry with him, but discovering at last that Osugi was a great man, my husband took charge of Osugi's body when he died. You see, a big gravestone, unusual since it didn't have any names on it, was set up in Imajuku for the three victims. What had been put up was merely an unworked stone, but the grave site was big enough to serve as a play area for children, and it became an attraction. Even that grave my husband built. Later the stone was removed due to some city-planning ordinance, but I don't know what became of it, though I heard that someone thought it interesting and in the middle of the night secretly carted it off and put it in his own garden. But not long afterwards, I heard that he fell into his garden pond and drowned. These are the only things I remember... Well, I'm really sorry, seeing you have come all this way..."

      In the Dai home there were two large thick calico-covered albums that Junsuke Dai had assembled. The pictures of Osugi and Mako were carefully laid out, and I also found a photograph of that gravestone for the three victims, a stone that no longer existed but had looked like some queer abstract work of art. From just one of those albums I could surmise the history of the opulent, showy life of the Dai family, and I could imagine the life and character of Junsuke Dai, something of a big shot with his mind bent on business and a fondness for politics.

      Mako searched one of the albums for a large photograph of a high school graduation and showed it to me. It was Noe's graduation picture from Ueno Girls' High School. Attired in a long-sleeved kimono and wearing a ceremonial skirt and a formal black jacket decorated with her family crest, Noe, her hair in the long chignon style of graduation ceremonies at girls' high schools of the time, was in the middle of the top row. While all the other students directly faced the camera, Noe was standing with her body sideways, her profile taken as her eyes stared at the sky. The moment the visiting photographer, completely hidden behind the black, red-lined cloth of his old-fashioned camera, had shouted out, "All right, I'm ready to shoot!" and released the shutter by pressing the round rubber ball with a theatrical gesture of his hand, Noe had struck this pose, her manner of looking up at the empty sky either affected or sulky. At eighteen years of age according to the Japanese method of counting, Noe had put on weight, her face, shoulders, and breasts visibly plump.

      When Noe went up to Tokyo, she often continued studying through the night for her entrance examinations, all of a sudden deciding to take them to enroll in the fourth-year class at Ueno Girls' High School, where her cousin Chiyoko, two years older than Noe, was in attendance. Noe succeeded. As a result, she finished high school in only two years. This was the fruit of Noe's effort to reduce as much as possible the burden of her uncle Junsuke Dai's school expenses, but it also revealed she was endowed with real talent. In a corner of this graduation picture was a round photograph of Jun Tsuji.

      It was in the spring when Noe was in the fifth-year class that Jun Tsuji assumed his post as an English teacher at the school. Pictured as a handsome man with delicate features on a slender face, Jun Tsuji is wearing glasses whose thin frames seem to be made of silver, his kimono neckband joined so tightly at the neck and showing his dark undergarment that instead of looking like an English teacher at a girls' high school, he appears more like a Japanese dancing instructor or a young actor impersonating a female. His features alone give the impression of a nervous СКАЧАТЬ