Thirst for Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

pregnant, from which they deduced that she was a woman with a past.
    From a corner of the Sugimoto property, one could look across the creek at the expanse of the Hattori Garden of Souls. Very few people visited the graves there except during the equinoctial holidays. In the afternoons, on the broad slopes of the cemetery, the countless tombstones threw tiny shadows on the ground. From here the cemetery, wavy with undulations and surrounded by hilly woodland, seemed cheerful and pure. At times one could see the sun reflecting off single granules in the white quartz of one or another of the tombs.
    Etsuko was particularly fond of the breadth of the sky above the cemetery and the stillness of the broad path that ran through it. This white, bracing tranquillity, mixed with the scent of shrubbery and tender tree shoots, made her feel as at no other time that her spirit was unclothed.
    It was the time for gathering herbs. Etsuko walked along the creek collecting horsetail and starwort in her sleeve. In one place the creek water had run over the bank. There was parsley there. The creek flowed under a bridge and then cut past the concrete drive that came from Osaka where it terminated at the cemetery gate. Etsuko circled the round, grassy plot at the entrance and headed for her favorite path. She marveled that this respite had been vouchsafed her. It was like a reprieve.
    She passed by some children playing catch. After a time she came to a green plot that as yet bore no monuments. It lay inside the wall that ran along the creek. As she started to sit down, she noticed a boy lying on his back evidently absorbed in the book he held over his face. It was Saburo. He felt her shadow as it hovered over him and sat up.
    “Mrs. Sugimoto,” he said. At that moment all the star-wort and horsetail fell from her sleeve onto his face.
    The changes of expression that then rapidly passed over Saburo’s face gave Etsuko a cool and distinct sense of joy, of the kind that comes to one who encounters a simple and neatly soluble equation. When the herbs first struck his face, he thought she was teasing him and exaggerated his efforts to escape. Then he looked at Etsuko’s expression and realized it had been an accident. His face swiftly sobered and turned apologetic. He stood up. Then he sank down on his knees and helped Etsuko retrieve the spilled starwort.
    Then I asked him : “What have you been up to?”
    “I’ve been reading a book, madam.”
    He blushed and showed her the samurai adventure story. His “madam” made her think of military usage, though this boy only eighteen had not been a soldier. He had been brought up hearing the dialect of Hiroshima and was now testing his use of standard speech.
    Saburo volunteered that he had gone to get the bread ration and was relaxing on the way back when Etsuko discovered him. His plea was more ingratiating than defensive. “I won’t tell,” said Etsuko.
    She recalled that she had asked about the damage done to Hiroshima by the atomic bomb. He said that his immediate family lived outside the city proper but that one whole family of his relatives had died in the bombing. There was nothing more for Etsuko and Saburo to say. He did not wish to be so forward as to ask her any questions.
    When I first saw Saburo, I thought he must be at least twenty. I can’t recall how old he looked when I saw him as he lay on the grass of the Hattori Garden of Souls. He was young. His cotton shirt, which was full of patches, was open, and his sleeves were rolled up. Perhaps he was hiding his badly frayed cuffs. His arms were splendid, arms that city men don’t acquire until much later. They were tanned, those well-developed arms; all the golden fuzz on them made them look as if their maturity embarrassed them.
    Etsuko could only look at him reprovingly. It wasn’t an expression that suited her, but she had no other. She wondered if he knew why. Of course he didn’t. He was conscious only of the presence of