“Is he sick? Shall I drop by and say hello? I was just on my way to the
hospital, actually. . . . I’m on my way to see the young woman whose face
was cut by the carpenter’s chisel. ’
“You’re taking Yoko with you?”
“No” Ichiko put the child down and walked into the living room. She
came back with three or four foreign architecture magazines.
“Chiba asked me to bring some of these to the hospital. They’re doing
plastic surgery—they say there’ll be almost no scar at all. ’
The two women walked out to the street together. Takako stood on the
doorstep for a moment, watching Ichiko’s back as she moved off. Her
flashy umbrella bobbed vigorously, keeping time with her rapid steps.
Takako felt a flicker of pain every time she realized that Ichiko was
neither insecure nor jealous.
Chiba had looked very upset when he got home on the day Mizuta, the
young woman, had been injured. It was perfectly natural for him to be
excited and disturbed, of course—the person who helped him at work had
cut her face, and he had taken her to the hospital himself. But Takako knew
that he was feeling more than that. She had seen Chiba’s love for the girl,
exposed. She had come close to trembling.
The thought that Ichiko had seen her like that left Takako feeling weak.
Ichiko, Chiba’s own wife, wasn’t at all jealous. Yet she herself, the
neighbor’s wife, was.
Takako had realized then that Chiba’s emotions lay with Mizuta, that he
only lived with Ichiko.
But if that was the case, why had Chiba returned home? Takako didn’t
believe that he had come to get the papers—none of them had seemed to be
things he needed immediately. No, Chiba, unsettled, had come to see his
