REGGIE OLIVER
Fly, fiend! Over the Western Sea
Followed by cries of hate from the Afterworld
—Aya no Tsuzumi (The Silken Drum),
Japanese Noh play, origin and author unknown.
“She’s Japanese,” said Karen from the estate agent’s. I noticed a hint of apprehension in her voice, as if she had felt compelled to warn me.
“Fine,” I said. I had no particular prejudice. It was my father who had suffered at their hands in the war, not me, and my father was dead.
“So, shall I bring her round to view the property about ten tomorrow morning, Mr. Weston?” Karen sounded relieved. I agreed on the time and put down the phone. When I told my wife that we might have found a Japanese tenant for the cottage on our land, she seemed mildly interested.
“I suppose she’ll keep the place nice and clean,” she said.
Karen brought her at the appointed time in her car. My wife, Danielle, was content to watch her arrival from her wheelchair through the window. She did not want to meet the lady just at the moment. Danielle was not shy, but increasing disability had enhanced her natural social reticence.
I went out to meet them. Karen introduced her to me as Mrs. Naga. Mrs. Naga said: “I am Yukie,” and so she became Yukie to us—or, more familiarly, Yuki.
She was tall, I thought, for a Japanese woman: about five foot eight, slim, with a narrow waist and an almost absurdly perfect figure. Her features were small and delicate, her lips were the color of raspberries, unaided by lipstick. I am not sure whether I would describe her as beautiful—we all have our personal criteria, which are far from objective—but she immediately gave an impression of charm and allure. When she smiled it was with her whole face, and her exquisite almond-shaped brown eyes shone.
Her only unattractive feature to me was her hair. It was jet-black and lustrous but somehow too fine, hanging limp over her forehead, so that the exact contours of her skull could be discerned beneath. The top of her head was somewhat flat, a black lake over which a single streak of white shivered like a water snake, swimming away from her left temple. It could have been the work of a hairstylist, but I thought not. She had the most perfect skin, magnolia-colored, smooth and unblemished as an unused bolt of silk.
Was I attracted to her? This is a subject that is still oddly painful. I can only say that when she was in the room with my wife I always avoided looking at her for too long. My wife, Danielle, was a very observant woman.
That first time I met her I noticed that she was very well dressed in tones of black but with a bright crimson shawl draped elegantly over one shoulder. I was not surprised when she told me that she was connected to the fashion business. She said she was a designer, but whether of fabrics, clothes or accessories was not made clear.
She had come to this country so that her nine-year-old son, Lee, could go to school here. According to her, education in Japan was a very rigid affair and she had decided that Lee needed a freer approach. She had heard of a school in Suffolk called Springfields which is only a few miles away from us. It was founded in the 1920s by an educationalist of extreme libertarian views and had acquired a worldwide reputation for its eccentric, antiauthoritarian ethos. Pupils could go to classes or stay away as they chose, rise and go to bed when they wanted, all that sort of thing. Needless to say, rumors of more scandalous happenings on its premises abounded.
At any rate, Yuki had decided to send Lee there. Evidently the father, whoever or wherever he might have been, had no say in the matter. Yukie Naga was someone who did nothing by halves.
I took Karen and Yuki down the drive to show them the cottage. It is a converted barn of brick and black weatherboarding, essentially a bungalow, but with a bedroom and bathroom in the roof space. I am not sure if it was particularly Japanese in aspect but its open planning, its use of wood and its plain white walls would perhaps appeal to the Japanese sensibility. Yuki seemed to approve, but she was particularly charmed by the fact that, adjoining the cottage, there was a small pond presided over by a weeping willow which trailed its long fronds in the mirror-still surface.
I suppose there was something Japanese about this, especially as there was also a flowering cherry nearby. Yuki observed it with pleasure, though she would not go very close to the water’s edge. Having made this inspection, Yuki smiled and nodded at Karen, the estate agent, and that, I gathered, was that. She had taken Manor Farm Cottage at the rent we were asking.
She and Lee moved in the following week and on their first night there I invited them up to supper with us. Danielle by this time had expressed some curiosity about our new neighbors.
It was the first time that I had met Lee and I was impressed. Danielle and I had no offspring of our own and I am not in the habit of rhapsodizing over children, but Lee was exceptional. He was extraordinarily like his mother, with a perfect oval face and unblemished silken skin. His hair was as fine as Yuki’s and he wore it rather long so that, at a distance, he might have been mistaken for a girl. He was exquisitely polite and obliging, and seemed almost unnaturally self-possessed for a nine-year-old. That was the only aspect of him that made me uneasy.
He said little because his English was even more rudimentary than Yuki’s, but one small exchange I do remember. I had been telling Yuki that I had been an actor, which she conveyed to her son. Through her, he asked me:
“Were you a waki or a shite?”
The Japanese theater, Noh drama in particular, is very formal, and you are, I understand, either a waki, or a shite, pronounced “shté.” They have certain prescribed traits, and the shite is generally thought to be the player of more important roles. I replied that I had in my time been both waki and shite. This puzzled Lee, but no more was said on the subject.
Though Yuki’s English was patchy she was very charming and, in her way, good company. She showed enormous interest in our house and pictures and was very good at quietly attending to Danielle’s needs when this was required. Both she and Lee were quite unselfconscious in the presence of her disabilities and for this I was grateful. I began to feel that I could invite her to dinner parties and introduce her to our small circle of friends.
Despite being of necessity left out of much of our conversation, Lee seemed at ease, particularly as our black and white cat, Laura, took a fancy to him. After supper they played together contentedly while Yuki, Danielle and I drank coffee in the sitting room.
Above the fireplace in the sitting room is a large Regency mirror, and though I had indicated a place for Yuki next to my wife’s wheelchair and opposite the looking glass, I noticed that she took a seat very deliberately with her back to it. It was no more than slightly puzzling, as was the fact that Laura the cat, though very much enamored of Lee, seemed to take pains not to come too close to Yuki.
When they had gone I made some general remark to Danielle about Yuki, to the effect that we were lucky to have such a delightful tenant. Laura jumped onto Danielle’s wheelchair and began eagerly purring and nuzzling her as she was stroked.
“Yes, she’s charming,” said Danielle in that deliberately neutral tone of voice she adopted when she wanted to imply something but was in no mood for a discussion. I said nothing and took note.
My days, when I am not looking after Danielle, are relatively idle. Because I cannot leave my wife, I no longer work as an actor but do some PR work for a firm from home, so I was able to indulge my natural curiosity by watching Yuki.
During the week, while Lee boarded at Springfields, Yuki was mostly away, but she would appear at odd times. On one occasion I noticed that her door was open and so I strolled down to the cottage and knocked. My ostensible purpose was the traditional landlord’s excuse of asking if everything was all right. Yuki was hanging a picture and I offered to help. She smiled and invited me in.
I was surprised by the way in which she had transformed the cottage into something Japanese. The Turkish rugs had gone and the polished floorboards were now covered with Japanese matting. The padded furniture had been covered by plain white or off-white throws. All Western ornaments and pictures had been cleared away. It was not something to which I objected—she had asked my permission, even though she had taken the cottage furnished—but I was surprised by the extent of the transformation.
I hammered in the hook for her picture. It was a Japanese print depicting an old man sweeping leaves beside a pond fringed with laurel and other vegetation. The sky was dark and in it hung a large moon across which a bat flew. Despite this there were no shadows or darkness in the main part of the picture, which gave it a strange surreal effect, like one of Magritte’s paintings of bright skies and dark lamp-lit streets, only in reverse. The effect was rather beautiful, I thought, except for the face of the old man, which was riddled with wriggling lines. He looked like a soul in torment. In one of the trees beside the lake hung a flat, disk-like object, resembling a tambourine. Yuki thanked me when I had hung the picture, then said:
“How come your wife, Danielle, is in a wheelchair?”
The question took me aback. It came without preliminary or excuse. I explained as briefly and coolly as possible, knowing how much my wife (and I for that matter) detested expressions of sympathy, but she offered none. She merely smiled—rather inappropriately, I thought—and nodded her head, as if the cause (multiple sclerosis, as it happens) was the diagnosis she had expected.
“How soon will she die?”
I was so startled by the baldness of this second question that I did not think to be offended. I stuttered out a very vague answer, feeling somehow guilty that I had given any answer at all.
Then Yuki said: “Please, may I ask something else?”
“Carry on.” I braced myself for more personal probing.
“In your garden, there is a lake. May I walk beside it if I wish?”
“Of course.” Besides the small pond next to her cottage, there is also a lake, fed by springs, in our grounds.
“Thank you very much, Weston-san.” She bowed formally.
I took this to be the politest form of dismissal from her premises, so I went. I reflected for a while on the curious behavior in which she had unashamedly asked about my wife’s condition and yet had sought permission to walk by the lake in my grounds. Another instance of: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” I suppose. The other odd thing I had noticed was that she had removed the large mirror in the main room and, in the wall space left vacant, had hung a number of Japanese theatrical masks, exquisitely modeled and painted. One of them seemed to me identical to Yuki’s face, just a little whiter in complexion. The smile was hers to the last dimple, but the emptiness of the eyes gave it a disconcerting ambiguity.
I did not like myself for having her constantly on my mind. Whenever she came into my head I would drive her out, but there were so many unanswered questions about her. I even picked up a Japanese phrase book in a secondhand bookshop so that I could get the rudiments of her language. I hid this from Danielle, knowing that she would disapprove. I would often catch myself looking out of the window from which Yuki’s cottage could be seen, but most of the time her curtains were drawn.
The lake in our grounds lies at the bottom of a slope in our garden and is fringed by alders and willow. It is plainly visible from our house, though not from Yuki’s cottage. I have mown a pathway around it, along which, on fine days when the ground is dry, I wheel Danielle.
I often rise early so that I can find time to be with myself before I have to help Danielle. In these quiet moments I walk about the house, feed Laura the cat and open the curtains to let in the day. I can feel unconstrained by the limits of Danielle’s disability, as can she, in her own way, in sleep.
One morning I remember standing at the sitting room window, which has a fine view down to the lake. The sun was just up and had not yet burned the dew off the grass, which glistened grayly. A few tendrils of mist were suspended over the lake. A figure of a woman, her back to me, was standing by the water. She was naked and her skin in that morning glow was as white as a sheet of paper, so that for several moments I doubted my senses. A long fall of lustrous black hair with a thin white streak in it came straight down her back to the top of her buttocks, almost obscuring that absurdly narrow waist. It was Yuki.
With a steady, slow walk, like a priest performing a ritual immersion, she descended into the water. Barely a ripple flowed out from her wading thighs. Then the water touched her hair and began to splay it out in a black fan. When it was above her waist she launched herself gently into a swimming position and began to navigate the lake with a gentle breaststroke, still barely disturbing its surface, except with a few fine undulating rings of water.
I watched avidly, telling myself that, since the lake was on my property, I was entitled to the spectacle. Besides, I imagined that my feelings in those moments were not predominantly sexual. I was filled with the desire to possess her, but in the way that one longs to possess some exquisite little object—an ivory statuette, perhaps, seen in the window of an antique shop.
The still of the morning was utterly noiseless, so that I seemed to hear the blood running through my veins and my heart drumming. Laura the cat, having had her fill of breakfast, came over and began to nose my legs. I continued to watch, motionless.
Presently Yuki dived down into the depths of the lake, leaving the surface a dark, unblemished mirror. Her absence stretched from fifteen to thirty seconds, so that I began to be concerned for her, then to wonder if my vision of her had not been some kind of illusion.
Thirty seconds stretched to a minute and my concern became a fever. I considered running down to the lake to rescue her. Then at last she broke the surface and was swimming toward me. Strangely she had allowed her hair to fall over her face so that I could barely see her features, and what I could see was blurred by the water that dripped over it.
As she walked up the bank the water seemed to cling to her like a viscous veil. There was a moment when she stopped abruptly and lifted her head, still partially covered with her hair. I was reminded of an animal in a forest suddenly scenting danger and felt sure that she had somehow become aware that I was watching her. With instinctive quickness—again I was reminded of an animal—she crouched down and turned her head away from me.
When she rose again she had her back to me and was clutching something white. It was a robe of some kind—toweling, perhaps—and when she had put it on she began to run up the bank and across the grass in the direction of her cottage as if seven devils were behind her. I turned away from the window, not wanting to be seen and feeling obscurely guilty. I had seen her breasts: they were small but perfectly formed and the nipples, like her lips, were the color of raspberries.
In the next few days I tried to avoid all contact with Yuki. I occupied myself with the small amounts of work to which I had been delegated: writing articles for trade magazines and the like. Danielle, whose powers of observation had been enhanced rather than dimmed by her condition, noticed at once that I was in an odd, distracted state. Of course I tried to conceal it from her, but it was no use. Her oblique, intuitive intelligence devised a plan to shake me free of my neurosis. She proposed that we should have a dinner party, and that our pretext should be that we were inviting friends and neighbors to meet our charming new tenant, Yuki. I agreed, knowing that any reluctance on my part would immediately invite further suspicion.
In the country one can become extremely attached to rather dull people simply because they live nearby and are pleasant and kind. So we invited the Havards and the Spences. I say they were dull, but, to be as objective as I possibly can, I can’t really say they were any duller than Danielle and I had become over the years. They were almost inevitable choices because, apart from anything else, we owed them hospitality. The difficulty was to find a spare man to partner Yuki, and Danielle was oddly insistent that we should sit down to table as four couples. Eventually, for want of anyone more suitable, we invited Justin.
Justin lived in a small cottage in our village and was an artist. That is to say, he painted and called himself an artist, though I have never heard of anyone buying one of his paintings. His means of subsistence was a small inherited private income. I found his choice of lifestyle on the whole rather admirable. He never complained, as some artists do, about the neglect to his genius, perhaps because he never did anything to inflict it upon others; at the same time I did wonder how he found purpose in life. He was a tall, lean man in his fifties, not unattractive, but too diffident to be a charmer. He had about him the slightly wistful, neglected air that you find in many unpartnered middle-aged men. He was not dull; at any rate his form of dullness was peculiar to himself, which, in our part of the world, counts as being interesting.
Yuki was the first to arrive for the dinner party. It was a warm July evening, so we had decided to have drinks on the terrace overlooking the lake. Danielle and I noticed at once that in the fortnight since she had come to us her English had improved enormously. Paradoxically, this only served to make her seem more Japanese, since she had managed to translate the formal conversational patterns of her native language into equally formal English. On arrival, having first presented Danielle with a bonsai tree in a pot, she handed me something wrapped in black tissue paper.
“Because you a famous and popular actor interested in theater,” she said.
I had come across this penchant for meaningless flattery in the Japanese before and knew that it required no denial from me that I had ever been famous or popular. We both understood it was nonsense, just part of the game.
I opened the tissue paper and found that it was a book called Noh Plays of Old Japan Translated by A Lady. The edition, dated 1867, was bound in Hessian cloth and printed on what looked like handmade paper. There were full-page illustrations too, in black and white. I thanked Yuki profoundly for this strange rarity and she bowed in acknowledgment. She told me she had discovered it in a local secondhand bookshop.
The next person to arrive was Justin, carrying an untidy bunch of flowers plucked from his garden, which he presented to Danielle. It was typical of him that the shirt and jacket he had decided to put on for the occasion were almost smart, but his jeans were clearly the ones he had worn all day and were smeared with countless dabs of paint. Yuki seemed bewildered at first by this vision of British eccentricity.
Egoists like Justin can occasionally deliver bursts of enormous charm, and for about twenty minutes he showed his best side, but as soon as the Spences and the Havards arrived he began to devote his attention exclusively to Yuki. From then until the end of the evening he monopolized her. It was difficult to say whether he had captivated her or she him, but there was clearly a mutual fascination. I have to say that their relationship bothered me from the first, but I did nothing at all to hinder it. It was partly that any interference would have aroused Danielle’s suspicions; in any case, I could never decide whether I should warn Justin about Yuki or vice versa.
That night, after our guests had left, I said to Danielle: “That seemed to go all right.” Usually this rather banal opening was the prelude to a discussion about the social interactions that had just taken place. It was a process which both Danielle and I were still able to share and enjoy, but on this occasion Danielle was not in the mood for postmortems. Rather abruptly she asked to be put to bed. I wanted to ask what was the matter, but was afraid of a rebuff.
Having settled Danielle, I went to my own study to drink a final glass of whisky on my own. I often feel that the best thing about exercising hospitality is the stillness that follows it. Outside in the darkness an owl shrieked. I started violently and was a little alarmed by my reaction. My nerves were unexpectedly on edge. I picked up Yuki’s gift and leafed through it.
Noh plays are not really dramas as we would understand it. They consist mostly of narration and comment. To the Westerner they are more like cantatas or liturgies with responses and lyrical interludes, and yet, though the tales they tell are often vanishingly slight, they have a compelling quality. Events pass as if in a dream; delicate atmospheres are invoked. There is sometimes a harshness and cruelty about them which may even enhance their beauty.
I turned the pages dreamily and was surprised to find that one of the illustrations was similar to the print I had hung on Yuki’s wall. It was in severe black and white as opposed to color and the lines were more crudely engraved, but the image was the same. An old man is sweeping leaves beside a pond. His face is a serpentine wriggle of black lines that simply but effectively convey the man’s age and the torture of his soul. In the trees that fringe the pond hangs an object like a tambourine.
On the page facing the picture was the beginning of a play that announced itself as Aya no Tsuzumi, The Silken Drum. After a list of characters came the first speech of one designated as COURT OFFICIAL (Waki):
“You have before you an official at the Palace of the Moon in the province of Chukuzen. Let me relate to you the history of this place. There was once a beautiful Princess who lived in the Palace of the Moon which was surrounded by a lovely garden. The garden was tended by an old man who regularly came to sweep the leaves by the Laurel Pond. There one day he saw the Princess and fell in love with her. He was a very foolish old man because one day he could not prevent himself from declaring his love for the Princess, but she was born of a water spirit and had no heart, and when she was alone she had no face. The Princess appeared to take pity on the old man and hung a drum in the tree beside the Laurel Pond telling him that every time he beat it, she would hear the drum in the Palace of the Moon and come to him. But when the old man beat the drum he found that she had mocked him by stretching silk instead of skin across the drum so that it made no sound. The old man would beat the drum in vain and in the end he went mad with despair and threw himself into the Laurel Pond. And now his angry ghost haunts the Laurel Pond with his endless torment and those who come to it at night hear inside their heads the beating of the silken drum.”
The rest of the play seemed to me to be a simple working out of this strange little story, and not very impressive save for a few stray lyrical fragments from the chorus:
“A silken drum, hung in a laurel tree,
Beats out the autumn of his lust,
As rainfall on withered leaves,
As the fall of a dragonfly into a moonlit lake.”
I found it hard to sleep that night, possessed by the sheer strangeness of what I had read. The story stuck in my mind, despite its cruel pointlessness, or perhaps because of it. In my fitful dreams I seemed to discover a meaning which, when I woke, evaporated. Eventually I could stand it no longer and decided to get up.
Laura the cat was pleased to be fed so early. She nuzzled my hand tenderly before attacking the sachet of food I had opened for her. I wandered about the sitting room, idly clearing up after the previous night’s party. I pulled open the curtains.
The dew was heavy on the lawn. The sun had only just risen above the horizon behind a thin veil of cloud. Over the lake hung mist like a congregation of specters, twisted into strange shapes. I had hoped—yes, I admit it—that I might have seen again the naked form of Yuki dipping in those waters, but she was not there. Of course not! Why should she have been? It was a shameful idea.
A figure stood on the far side of the lake, but it was fully clothed and male. I could not tell immediately who it was because of the mist. The figure was pacing around, hands in pockets with slightly hunched shoulders. He was an odd sort of trespasser. Was he waiting for someone? I found a pair of binoculars and looked again. This time I could see that it was Justin.
It angered me to find this artistic deadbeat making free with my property at such an early hour. I decided to go down and challenge him, firmly but politely, of course, but just then Danielle called out from the bedroom. Once I had attended to her needs I came back into the sitting room to look again, but Justin was gone.
There was no doubt, however, that something was happening between Yuki and Justin. I would often see Justin walking down the drive to pay a call on her. If I waved or called out to him he would often ignore me, or offer the most perfunctory of salutes. Frequently he would be carrying a brush and a tin of paint or a box of tools, presumably with a view to making some minor adjustment to Yuki’s domestic arrangements. I might have told him that any repairs or alterations were my responsibility, not his, but somehow I did not. When Lee was at home Justin could be seen out on the lawn with the boy, bowling to him with a tennis ball or catering to some other childish whim. He seemed to me to have become a slave to Yuki and her son.
I remember on one occasion watching Justin as he wheeled Lee around the lawn in a wheelbarrow which had been lined with cushions for the boy’s comfort. It was a hot August afternoon and Justin was sweating from the exertion. Every time he stopped, Lee would yell at him and insist on one more circuit of the lawn. Dimly through the window of the cottage I could see Yuki looking out. Her face was expressionless, the eyes dark. It was as if she had placed a mask at the window instead of her own face to look out on the scene.
As time went on, my concern—you might say my obsession—with Yuki and Justin’s relationship increased. Even now I cannot fully explain it. I even voiced it to Danielle, though I knew I would get no sympathy there. In the last few weeks Danielle had begun to withdraw into herself. Acute illness and disability sometimes take people in this way. When I mentioned Yuki and Justin almost lightheartedly to her, saying something like “I just can’t make out their relationship,” she looked at me with that unnervingly penetrating gaze she had.
“Why on earth are you bothering about them?” she said. “Just thank your stars she hasn’t got her little hooks into you.” In other words it was none of my business, and of course she was right.
I tried not to think about it, but it was difficult. One evening in mid-September, just as autumn was beginning to encroach on us, having settled Danielle in front of the television with a light supper, I went out for a walk. I went down the road to the stream which divided us from the next village and lingered at the ford, watching the light drain from the sky behind the black trees. By the time I was returning it was darker than I had expected. At the top of the drive I looked down toward Yuki’s cottage.
The curtains of one of the windows to her sitting room were open and the interior was bathed in the yellow glow of a standard lamp. In the background on the opposite wall I could make out the array of white theatrical masks that had replaced the mirror. In front of them were two people. Yuki was standing up and Justin was sitting or kneeling in front of her, I could not tell which.
Yuki’s face was almost entirely obscured from me by her long black hair. I could see her figure down to just below the thigh and she was naked. Though half turned away from me, I saw the contour of her breast and its raspberry-colored nipple. Justin’s face was clearly visible and his expression gave me a shock. He was gazing up at her and his look was one of perplexity and terror. I could not help approaching for a closer look.
Yuki lifted up one arm and from a cup began to pour a liquid over Justin’s head. His expression turned from one of fear to acute agony and he covered his face with his hands. I heard her laugh. It was a terrible laugh, high-pitched, like an animal’s shriek—a laugh of pure vicious mockery without a trace of humor or humanity in it.
I stepped forward, half-minded to intervene, but then something was in my hair, fluttering and screeching. Glancingly I touched it, and there were no feathers, so not a bird. It was only a second or two, but I believe that I had touched the fur and leathern wing of a bat. I turned and ran back to my house.
After that I became still more distracted and out of touch. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Danielle did not notice. She was by that time too involved in her own physical deterioration. I had begun to hire carers for her on a more regular basis, and this in turn gave me more time for my own obsessions.
A few days later I was taking a walk through the village when I happened to pass Justin’s cottage. Morbid curiosity had been growing in me and I decided to satisfy it.
His was one of a row of workmen’s cottages, barely large enough for one, of the two-up and two-down variety with a kitchen extension at the back. His front door was not open, so I concluded that he must be in his studio, a brick outhouse at the end of his garden. Its door was standing open and I could see him within, his back to me, attending to one of two canvases, both of which were on easels. Not wishing to extend the period of my unobserved scrutiny of him, I knocked tentatively at the door.
He started violently and turned round. “Christ, where did you spring from?”
I was shocked to see how he had aged in a few short weeks. His lean face was now scribbled over with lines that I had not seen before. Deep grooves creased his cheeks and curved around his mouth from the nostrils; the eyes were puddled in grayish-purple sleeplessness. His sparse hair was in wild confusion over the top of his head, with more gray in it than previously. It broke like a storm over the shore of his temples. I thought I saw madness on him, but this may be the product of hindsight or wishful thinking.
“I’m sorry,” he said, with an effort to control himself. “I don’t really like to be disturbed when I’m working.” Working, he called it: a small vanity, I suppose.
“Looks interesting,” I said.
Justin’s paintings were vaguely reminiscent of the sloshy semiabstract style of Willem de Kooning, an artist whom he admired. The two canvases before me seemed more controlled and less abstract than his usual work. Both showed roughly the same scene: a woman standing beside a pond fringed with trees. The woman was wearing a traditional Japanese kimono, sketchily done, but well enough to create a clear impression. In one painting the woman was bent over the pond so that her long black hair, blazoned with a single streak of white, streamed over the front of her head, obscuring her face. But there was no reflection of her in the water. In the second she was standing upright and her face, fringed by the black hair, had no features; it was a smooth white oval, like an egg. Hanging in the bushes behind her was a tambourine-like object covered with patterned cloth.
“Piss off! Look, just . . . piss off!”
I did as I was told. I had seen the anguish on Justin’s face and knew that it was no use arguing. As I left the cottage an autumn wind sprang up and began to snatch leaves from the trees. Later that afternoon from the windows of my house I caught sight of Justin again. He was raking dead leaves from the lawn in front of Yuki’s cottage. A white face seen dimly through a windowpane indicated that she was watching.
One morning, about a week later, I found a woman wandering about in our driveway. She had evidently been down to the cottage and was returning from it, somewhat indecisively. Her car was parked across the road. When she saw me she flinched slightly, but seemed reassured when I smiled and asked if I could help.
“I’m Leonie,” she said with a downward emphasis on the second syllable. “I’m the deputy head of Springfields. In charge of pupil welfare.”
She was in her late thirties, a shapeless woman dressed mostly in handwoven garments of sage green. She had a long, sagging face and wore a necklace of hand-beaten copper disks. Rather naïvely, perhaps, I thought she looked somewhat careworn for an employee at a supposedly “free” school.
“I rang up yesterday to make an appointment to see Mrs. Naga this morning, but she doesn’t seem to be there.”
“Her car isn’t in the drive. She must have gone out,” I said.
“I’m sorry. You are . . . ?”
“I’m John Weston. Her landlord. I live here at the main house.”
“I see,” said Leonie. There was a faint note of disapproval in her voice. “Do you know when she will be back?”
“I’m afraid I have no idea. Mrs. Naga is a law unto herself.”
“Yeah,” said Leonie. My last words seemed to have struck a chord. “Look, I think I should wait here a little in case she does turn up. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” I said, and invited her into our house for a coffee. Leonie seemed very awkward at first, but when she met Danielle in her wheelchair she relaxed a little. While I made coffee, Leonie began talking earnestly to my wife. Danielle still liked company in small doses, but became easily tired, especially when she had to address herself to strangers. Every now and then Leonie would go to the window to see if Yuki’s car was back in the carport beside the cottage.
When we were finally settled with our coffee, Leonie said: “Look, Mrs. Weston—Danielle, if I may—can I be frank with you?”
“Please do,” said Danielle, throwing me a quizzical glance. She was beginning to tire.
“It’s about Lee, Mrs. Naga’s son.”
“Oh, yes. Sweet boy.” My wife’s bland words troubled Leonie.
“Yeah, well . . . He can be difficult. I mean, it’s not his fault or anything. We don’t play the blame game at Springfields, but there must be some sort of trauma there. Perhaps abuse by the father. This is why I made an appointment to see Mrs. Naga. Lee is a bright boy, but he is being quite a disruptive influence. I have to think of all the kids, not just one. As you know, Springfields has a very nonauthoritarian ethos. There are no rules as such, but there are, well, like, lines in the sand. You know? Lee can behave very inappropriately, especially around the girls.”
“But he’s barely nine!”
“I know! I know! But that’s not all. There are other things. Worse. I can’t say, obviously. And he has this thing about fire. Twice he’s tried to burn down the tree house in the grounds. When there were kids in it too! And he put dead frogs in our vegetarian food—at least they were dead when we found them. The fact is, in all the eighty or so years of Springfields we have never had to ask anyone to leave. It looks as if we may have to. I’m sorry to burden you with all this, Danielle.” Leonie’s hand was trembling as she put down her coffee cup.
“That’s quite all right, Leonie,” Danielle said, with obvious weariness.
“The fact is, I don’t want to be judgmental, but the boy is a fucking little devil—oh, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Weston! I shouldn’t have said that—”
In her embarrassment Leonie got up and went to the window. Yuki had still not come home. When Leonie turned back from the window she saw that my wife had suddenly dropped off to sleep in her wheelchair, as she sometimes did toward the end.
“I’m sorry,” said Leonie, and fled from the house. Soon after she drove away.
Yuki did not come back until after six o’clock. I heard her car enter the carport by her cottage as I was preparing the supper. I thought it was necessary for me to tell her of Leonie’s visit, so when we had had our meal and Danielle was settled in front of the television, I went down to the cottage and knocked on Yuki’s door. The curtains were drawn and the lights were on, so she was obviously in, but there was no response. Perhaps she had not heard. I knocked louder, but there was still no reply. Then I walked around the cottage and rapped on one of the sitting room windows. Almost immediately the curtains were drawn and Yuki’s face was looking at me, her eyes black with fury. Then I saw a look of recognition in them and she indicated to me that she would go to open the front door.
The Yuki who met me there was smiling demurely, though I could not dispel the impression that this was only a mask that concealed other thoughts. She wore a peach-colored silk kimono that trailed round her feet and over it hung her lustrous black hair. Gone was the Western chic of her designer clothes; she had reverted to a more ancient archetype.
“What is it you must say, please?”
I gave her a brief résumé of what Leonie had told us that afternoon. Yuki listened impassively, the mask-like smile still on her lips, then she said:
“It does not matter. I am taking Lee away from Springfields in any case. It is a stupid school and he hates it. We will go back to Japan, I think.”
“When?”
“Soon. Very soon.”
I reminded her that, as her landlord, I needed at least a month’s notice of her departure.
“That will be no trouble,” she said carelessly. Her indifference was infuriating. I wanted somehow to smash the mask.
“And what about Justin?” I asked. “Have you told him you’re going?”
For a brief moment I saw surprise on her face. I have broken the mask, I thought. Then she began to laugh, that high-pitched bat-screech of a laugh that was barely a laugh at all. Her mouth opened enough for me to see her perfect little sharp teeth and the bright red interior of her head. The laughter went on until I could not bear it, so I got up and left.
Outside the cottage it was dark and a full moon hung in a clear night sky. Yuki had stopped laughing and I could hear nothing but a faint squeaking that came from the guttering of the cottage. There, almost on the corner of the building, an object like a black leather bag was suspended. I stared at it for some time, not daring to approach, let alone touch it.
A slight quiver told me that it was alive and then the lower part of it began to raise itself. Soon I would see its head. It was a bat, of that I was now sure. We had had them roosting in our roof and I was well-disposed toward the creatures, but this was so much larger than the pipistrelles to which we were accustomed. Soon I would see its deep brown Pekinese face and bulging black eyes. I wanted to move, but could not. Then I saw its face. It was not black at all, but white, almost like a mask, almost human, but through it the black eyes gleamed with senseless, feral hatred.
Up at the house, when I reached it, Danielle was calling to be taken to the bedroom. The tasks of a carer helped to wipe away some of the confused horror of that night. I began even to believe consolingly that I had been the victim of an illusion or a practical joke.
The following morning I rang Karen at the estate agent’s and asked her to deal with Yuki’s departure from the cottage. I wanted as far as possible to distance myself from her and the whole business. It was a relief to me that during the next few days I saw neither Yuki nor Lee nor Justin.
I live in a quiet lane of a quiet village in a quiet part of Suffolk. Apart from the occasional hooting of owls or the shriek of a vixen, the nights are virtually noiseless. That night, five days after my last interview with Yuki, was still and quiet. The sky was clear and the moon only just past its fullness. Danielle and I had retired early. Since her illness we had had separate bedrooms: it was easier, we were both agreed on that. Her room was at the front of the house, mine at the back, closer to Yuki’s cottage.
At about three o’clock I was woken by what my confused brain first told me was thunder. Yet I heard no rain to accompany it. The sound was rhythmical, almost like the banging of a drum. That was even more absurd. But the noise persisted: it was real.
I rose and put on a dressing gown and slippers. In the sitting room Laura was running about fearfully and clawing at the carpet. I looked out of the window and down to the cottage. I could just make out a dark figure at the door, banging at it. A faint light glowed from behind the drawn curtains; the figure went on banging. This was intolerable.
I picked up a flashlight and ran out of the house, down to the cottage. My flashlight shined onto the face of Justin. It was he who was standing at the door and banging on it with his fists. His face was ruined. Dark circles surrounded his eyes; his mouth was set in a rictus of pain. He looked like a soul in torment.
He did not stop when he saw me. He gave me one fleeting, agonized look, then returned to his drumming on the door, as if he were compelled to continue his work, regardless.
I shouted at him: “For God’s sake, stop that!”
“Go away!”
“Stop that at once.”
“Leave me alone!”
“No, I will not! This is my property. We can’t get to sleep with that racket.”
“All right, I’ll stop.” He stopped. “Now go away.”
After getting an assurance that there would be no more noise, I did. There was nothing I could do for him. The man was in Hell.
For the next hour or so I lay in bed waiting for the drumming to return, but it did not. I heard nothing more that night except, when my mind was just on the edge of sleep, a shrill, thin cry—like a beast in agony. That may have been an illusion.
I woke early. My mind was still unrested and I took my time with the simple pleasure of feeding Laura. When I looked out onto the garden, mist was coming up in strange spirals from the lake and I saw something dark floating on its surface.
I think instinct told me what I would find before I did. I unlocked the French windows and ran down the grass slope to the lake. The body of a man was lying face-downward on the still water. I waded in and pulled the thing out. Of course it was Justin. Of course he was dead. His mouth gaped madly.
I ran back to get to a telephone in the house, passing as I did so the little pond beside Yuki’s cottage. There I saw on its bank another body, again facedown, dressed in a kimono of peach-colored silk. The silk was torn and sprayed with blood. The body was battered and bruised, but when I turned her over I saw that the head was undamaged.
This was odd, but not so odd nor so horrible as the fact that her face, framed by the familiar shiny flat black hair with its lightning streak of white, was not only without a wound but completely featureless. Across the oval space where her eyes, nose, mouth and chin should have been was a flat expanse of bare magnolia-colored flesh with not a mark on it. The skin appeared to be stretched tightly, like that on a drum.