Thousand Cranes Read Online Free PDF

the hobby with your father? But we couldn’t, at this hour. Shall I call the Inamura girl?’
    ‘You’re joking.’
    ‘Why shouldn’t I call her? The Inamuras are very interested in you, and this will be your chance to see the girl again, and have a good look at her and talk to her. I’ll just call her up. If she comes it will be a sign that as far as she’s concerned everything is settled.’
    ‘I don’t like anything about the idea.’ Kikuji’s chest tightened painfully. ‘And I won’t be coming home anyway.’
    ‘This isn’t the sort of question you settle over the telephone. We’ll talk about it later. Well, that’s how things are. Come right home, now.’
    ‘How things are – what are you talking about?’
    ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m just being bold.’ The venomous persistence came at him over the wire.
    He thought of the birthmark that covered half her breast. The sound of her broom became the sound of a broom sweeping the contents from his skull, and her cloth polishing the veranda a cloth rubbing at his skull.
    Revulsion came first. But it was a remarkable story, this marching into a house with the master out, and taking over the kitchen.
    She would have been easier to forgive if she had limited herself to cleaning the cottage and arranging flowers in memory of his father.
    Into his revulsion flashed the image of the Inamura girl, a vein of light.
    Chikako had drifted away after his father’s death. Did she mean to use the Inamura girl as bait to draw him near again? Was he again to become entangled with her?
    As always, she had made herself interesting, however – one smiled ruefully at her, and one’s defenses fell. Yet her obstinacy seemed to carry a threat.
    Kikuji feared that the threat came from his own weakness. Weak and quivering, he could not really be angry at the importunate woman.
    Had she sensed the weakness, and was she hastening to take advantage of it?
    Kikuji went to the Ginza, and into a dirty little bar.
    Chikako was right: he should go home. But the weakness was an oppressive burden to have to take with him.
    Chikako could hardly know that Kikuji had spent the night in that Kamakura inn. Or had she seen Mrs Ota afterward?
    It seemed to him that there was more than Chikako’s usual brazenness in this persistence.
    Yet perhaps, in the way most natural for her, she was pushing the Inamura girl’s suit.
    He fidgeted for a time in the bar, then started home.
    As the train approached Tokyo Central Station, he looked down upon a tree-lined avenue.
    It ran east and west, almost at right angles to the railroad. The western sun poured into it, and the street glittered like a sheet of metal. The trees, with the sun behind them, were darkened almost to black. The shadows were cool, the branches wide, the leaves thick. Solid Occidental buildings lined the street.
    There were strangely few people. The street was quiet and empty all the way to the Palace moat. The dazzlingly bright streetcars too were quiet.
    Looking down from the crowded train, he felt that the avenue alone floated in this strange time of evening, that it had been dropped here from some foreign country.
    He had the illusion that the Inamura girl was walking in the shade of the trees, the pink kerchief and its thousand white cranes under her arm. He could see the cranes and the kerchief vividly.
    He sensed something fresh and clean.
    His chest rose – the girl might even now be arriving at his door.
    But what had Chikako had in mind, telling him to bring friends, and, when he refused, suggesting that she call the Inamura girl? Had she meant from the start to call the girl? Kikuji did not know.
    Chikako came hurrying to the door. ‘You’re alone?’
    Kikuji nodded.
    ‘It’s better that way. She’s here.’ Chikako took his hat and briefcase. ‘You made a stop on your way home, I see.’ Kikuji wondered if his breath smelled of liquor. ‘Where was it? I called the office again and was told you had left, and I knew