45.
Strength and Flexibility

THUS FAR, though a hint of yesterday’s rain had returned, only a slight breeze connected the rooms of the inn. Nevertheless there may have been some sorcery in it, for while Fumiko sang her song on the stairway and Manjiro and Tsune examined the comb and carving upstairs, in their room outside the bath, with only the kitchen noises to guide them, Ned and O-bata tumbled about in a solemn imitation of the scene that the little netsuke carving depicted, for the third time since their arrival late that morning.

When Manjiro turned the netsuke to see, for example, how the carved woman’s left leg so easily circled the carved man’s neck while her right leg somehow also wrapped his thigh, O-bata pulled Ned into her with just such strength and flexibility. Ned’s body, like that of the man in the carving, was perfectly rigid, save for one radically bent knee, and a foot which held O-bata’s hips against him, long toes tapping lightly at her buttocks.

In the room upstairs there was silence now, and an energized stillness as Tsune and Manjiro listened to Fumiko’s song, while in the room below, Ned’s eyes, dark and round as plums upon a plate, searched O-bata’s, his prosthesis resting on the table by their side.

Sex and grief. Oh, it was strange! What could they possibly have in common?

It was a question that Fumiko had been fearful of asking herself all along.