'So she didn't even know he was dead.' How long after the old man died had the girl, put to sleep, lain warming the corpse? She had not know when the body was carried away.
'My blood pressure is good and my heart is strong and you have nothing to worry about. But if it should happen to me, I must ask you not to carry me away. Leave me here beside her.'
'Quite out of the question.' said the woman hastily. 'I must ask you to leave if you insist upon saying such things.'
'I'm joking.' He could not think that sudden death might be near.
The newspaper notice of the funeral had but mentioned 'sudden death'. The details had been whispered to Eguchi at the funeral by old Kiga. The cause of death had been heart failure.
'it wasn't the sort of inn for a company director to be found in… ' said Kiga '… and there was another he often stayed at. And so people said that old Fukura must have died a happy death. Not of course that they know what really happened.'
'Oh!'
'A kind of euthanasia, you might say. But not the real thing. More painful. We were very close, and I guessed immediately, and went to investigate. But I haven't told anyone. Not even the family knows. Do those notices in the newspapers amuse you.'
There was two notices side by side, the first over the names of his wife and son, the other over that of his company.
'Fukura was like this, you know.' Kiga's gesture indicated a thick neck, a thick chest, and especially a large paunch. 'You'd better be careful yourself.'
'You needn't worry about me.'
'And they carried that huge body away in the night.'
Who had carried him away? Someone in an automobile, no doubt. The picture was not a pleasant one.
'They seem to have gotten away with it.' Whispered old Kiga at the funeral. 'But with this sort of thing going on, I doubt if that house will last long.'
'Probably not.'
Tonight, sensing that Eguchi knew of old Fukura's death, the woman of the house made no attempt to hide the secret. But she was being careful.
'And the girl really knew nothing about it?' Eguchi was unnecessarily persistent.
'There would be no way for her to know. But he seems to have been in pain. There was a scratch from her neck over her breasts. She of course did not know what had happened. 'What a nasty old man', she said when she woke up the next morning.'
'A nasty old man. Even in his last struggles.'
'It was nothing you could call a wound, really. Just a welt with blood oozing out in places.'
She now seemed prepared to tell him everything. He no longer wanted to hear. The victim was but an old man who had been meant to drop dead somewhere some day. Perhaps it had been a happy death. Eguchi's imagination played with the picture of that huge body being carried to the hot spring inn.
'The death of an old man is an ugly thing. I suppose you might think of it as rebirth in heaven… but I'm sure he went the other way.'
She didn't comment.
'Do I know the girl who was with him?'
'That I cannot tell you.'
'I see.'
'She will be on holiday till the welt goes away.'
'Another cup of tea, please. I'm thirsty.'
'Certainly. I'll change the leaves.'
'You managed to keep it quiet. But don't you suppose you'll be closing down before long?'
'Do you think so?' Her manner was calm. She didn't not look up from the tea. 'The ghost should be coming out one of these nights.'
'I'd like to have a good talk with it.'
'And what about?'
'About sad old man.'
'I was joking.'
He took a sip of tea.
'Yes of course. You were joking. But I have a ghost here inside me. You have one too.' He pointed at the woman with his right hand. 'How did you know he was dead?'
'I heard a strange groaning and came upstairs. His breathing and his pulse had stopped.'
'And the girl didn't know.' he said again.
'We arrange things so nothing as minor as that will wake her.'
'As minor as that? And she didn't know when you carried the body out?'
'No.'
'So the girl is the awful one.'
'Awful? What is awful about her? Stop this talk and go on into the other room. Have any of the other girls seemed awful?'
'Maybe youth us awful for an old man.'
'And what does that mean?' Smiling faintly, she got up, went to the cedar door, opened it a crack, and looked in. 'Fast asleep. Here. Here.' She took the key from her obi. 'I meant to tell you. There are two of them.'
'Two?' Eguchi was startled. Perhaps the girls knew if the death of old Fukura.
'You may go in whenever you're ready.' The woman left.
The curiosity and the shyness of his first visit had left him. Yet he pulled back as he opened the door.
Was this also an apprentice? But she seemed wild and rough, quite unlike the 'small girl' of the other night. The wildness made him almost forget about the death of Fukura. It was the girl who had been put to sleep nearer the door. Perhaps because she was not used to such devises for the aged as electric blankets, or perhaps because her warmth kept the winter cold at a distance, she had pushed the bedding down to the pit of her stomach. She seemed to be lying with her legs spread wide. She lay face up, her arms flung out. The nipples were large and dark, and had a purplish cast. It was not a beautiful color in the light from the crimson velvet curtains. Nor could the skin of the neck and breasts have been called beautiful. Still it had a dark glow. There seemed to be a faint odor at the armpits.
'Life itself.' muttered Eguchi. A girl like this breathed life into a sixty seven years old man. Eguchi had doubts as to whether the girl was Japanese. She could not yet be twenty, for the nipples were flat despite the width of the breasts. The body was firm.
He took her hand. The fingers and the nails were long. She would be tall, in the modern fashion. What sort of voice would she have, what would be her way of speaking? There where numbers of women on radio and television whose voices he liked. He would close his eyes and listen to them. He wanted to hear this girl's voice. There was of course no way of really talking to a girl who was asleep. How could he made her speak? A voice was different when it came from a sleeping person. Most women have several voices, but this girl would probably have only one. Even from the sleeping form he could see that she was untutored and without affectation.
He sat toying with the long fingernails. Were fingernails so hard? Were these healthy young fingernails? The color of blood was vivid beneath them. He noticed for the first time that she had on a golden necklace thin as a thread. He wanted to smile. Although she had pushed the bedding down below her breasts on so cold a night, there seemed to be a touch of perspiration at her forehead. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it away. The scent was strong on the handkerchief. He also wiped her armpits. Since he would not be able to take the handkerchief home, he wadded it and threw it into a corner of the room.
'She has on lipstick.' It was most natural that she should, but with this girl the lipstick too made him want to smile. He gazed at it for a time. 'Has she had an operation for a harelip?'
He retrieved his handkerchief and wiped at her lipstick. There was no trace of surgery. The center of the upper lip was raised, to cut a clean pointed line. It was strangely appealing.
He remembered a kiss from more than forty years before. With his hands very lightly on the shoulders of the girl before him, he had brought his lips to her. She shook her head left and right.
