Death in Midsummer & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

there was no help for it. Taking advantage of the fact that his mother was not holding his hand, he ran towards the steps. Where was he going? she called sharply, For a drink of water, he answered over his shoulder. She ran after him and took both his arms firmly from behind. 'That hurt,' he protested. He was frightened. Some terrible creature had pounced upon him from behind.
    Tomoko knelt in the coarse gravel and turned him towards 26

    her. He looked at his father, gazing in astonishment from beside a hedge some distance off.
    'You are not to drink that water. We have some here.'
    She began to unscrew the lid of the thermos flask on her knee.
    They reached their bit of property. It was in a newly opened section of the cemetery behind rows of tombstones. Frail young box-trees were planted here and there, after a definite pattern, one could see if one looked carefully. The ashes had not yet been moved from the family temple, and there was no grave marker. There was only a roped-off bit of level land.
    'And all three of them will be here together,' said Masaru.
    The remark did little to Tomoko. How, she wondered, could facts be so completely improbable? For one child to drown in the ocean - that could happen, and no doubt anyone would accept it as a fact. But for three people to drown; that was ridiculous. And yet ten thousand was different again. There was something ridiculous about the excessive, and yet there was nothing ridiculous about a great natural catastrophe, or war. One death was somehow grave and solemn, as were a million deaths. The slightly excessive was different.
    Three of them. What nonsense! Three of them,' she said.
    It was too large a number for one family, too small a number for society. And there were none of the social implications of death in battle or death at one's post. Selfish in her womanly way, she turned over and over again the riddle of this number.
    Masaru. the social being, had in the course of time come to note that it was convenient to see the matter as society saw it; they were in fact lucky that there were no social implications.
    Back at the station, Tomoko fell victim again to that doubling up of time. They had to wait twenty minutes for the train.; Katsuo wanted one of the toy badgers on sale in front of the station. The badgers, dangling from sticks, were of cotton wad*
    ding scorched a badger colour, to which were added eyes, ears, and tails.;
    'You can still buy these badgers!' exclaimed Tomoko.
    'And children seem to like them as much as ever,'
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    'I had one when I was a child.'
    Tomoko bought a badger from the old woman at the stall and gave it to Katsuo. And a moment later she caught herself looking around at the other stalls. She would have to buy something for Kiyoo and Keiko, who had been left at home,
    'What is it?' asked Masaru.
    'I wonder what's the matter with me. I was thinking I had to buy something for the others.' Tomoko raised her plump white arms and rubbed roughly with clenched fists at her eyes and temples. Her nostrils trembled as though she were about to weep.
    'Go ahead and buy something. Buy something for them.'
    Masaru's tone was tense and almost pleading. 'We can put it on the altar.'
    'No. They have to be alive.' Tomoko pressed her handkerchief to her nose. She was living, the others were dead. That was the great evil. How cruel it was to have to be alive.
    She looked around her again: at the red flags hanging from the bars and restaurants in front of the station, at the gleaming white sections of granite piled high before the tombstone shops, at the yellowing paper-panelled doors on the second floors, at the roof tiles, at the blue sky, now darkening towards evening clear as porcelain. It was all so clear, so well defined. In the very cruelty of life was a deep peace, as of falling into a faint Autumn wore on, and the life of the family became day by day more tranquil. Not of course that grief was quite discarded.
    As Masaru saw his wife growing calmer,