Snow Country Read Online Free PDF

some travelers down from the mountains that evening, men she had been friendly with during the skiing season the winter before. They had invited her to the inn, whereupon they had had a riotous party, complete with geisha, and had proceeded to get her drunk.
    Her head waved uncertainly, and she seemed prepared to talk on forever. Presently she remembered herself. “I shouldn’t be here. I’ll come again. They’ll be looking for me. I’ll come again later.” She staggered from the room.
    An hour or so later, he heard uneven steps coming down the long hall. She was weaving from sideto side, he could tell, running into a wall, stumbling to the floor.
    “Shimamura, Shimamura,” she called in a high voice. “I can’t see. Shimamura!”
    It was, with no attempt at covering itself, the naked heart of a woman calling out to her man. Shimamura was startled. That high, piercing voice must surely be echoing all through the inn. He got up hastily. Pushing her fingers through the paper panel, the woman clutched at the frame of the door, and fell heavily against him.
    “You’re here.” Clinging to him, she sank to the floor. She leaned against him as she spoke. “I’m not drunk. Who says I’m drunk? Ah, it hurts, it hurts. It’s just that it hurts. I know exactly what I’m doing. Give me water, I want water. I mixed my drinks, that was my mistake. That’s what goes to your head. It hurts. They had a bottle of cheap whisky. How was I to know it was cheap?” She rubbed her forehead with her fists.
    The sound of the rain outside was suddenly louder.
    Each time he relaxed his embrace even a little, she threatened to collapse. His arm was around her neck so tight that her hair was rumpled against his cheek. He thrust a hand inside the neck of her kimono.
    He added coaxing words, but she did not answer. She folded her arms like a bar over the breast he was asking for.
    “What’s the matter with you.” She bit savagely at her arm, as though angered by its refusal to serve her. “Damn you, damn you. Lazy, useless. What’s the matter with you.”
    Shimamura drew back startled. There were deep teeth-marks on her arm.
    She no longer resisted, however. Giving herself up to his hands, she began writing something with the tip of her finger. She would tell him the people she liked, she said. After she had written the names of some twenty or thirty actors, she wrote “Shimamura, Shimamura,” over and over again.
    The delicious swelling under Shimamura’s hand grew warmer.
    “Everything is all right.” His voice was serene. “Everything is all right again.” He sensed something a little motherly in her.
    But the headache came back. She writhed and twisted, and sank to the floor in a corner of the room.
    “It won’t do. It won’t do. I’m going home. Going home.”
    “Do you think you can walk that far? And listen to the rain.”
    “I’ll go home barefoot. I’ll crawl home.”
    “You don’t think that’s a little dangerous? If you have to go, I’ll take you.”
    The inn was on a hill, and the road was a steep one.
    “Suppose you try loosening your clothes. Lie down for a little while and you’ll feel well enough to go.”
    “No, no. This is the way. I’m used to it.” She sat up straight and took a deep breath, but breathing was clearly painful. She felt a little nauseated, she said, and opened the window behind her, but she could not vomit. She seemed to be holding back the urge to fall down writhing on the floor. Now and then she came to herself. “I’m going home, I’m going home,” she said again and again, and presently it was after two.
    “Go on to bed. Go on to bed when a person tells you to.”
    “But what will you do?” Shimamura asked.
    “I’ll just sit here like this. When I feel a little better I’ll go home. I’ll go home before daylight.” She crawled over on her knees and tugged at him. “Go on to sleep. Pay no attention to me, I tell you.”
    Shimamura went back to bed. The woman