“Your father told me. I got a letter saying that the child had died.”
“He-?”
“Probably he meant to say—‘The ties that bound you have been cut’—
I’m sure that’s why he wrote. At the time I thought it might have been that
he had lost his spirit—we were losing the war and all— and I thought
maybe he felt guilty, that maybe that was why he let me know.”
“You mean—my father told you?” Utako asked again, as though she was
unable to believe what she had heard.
Then she leaned lightly against Jiro. Why she had drawn toward him like
that he was unable to guess, whether it was because she had come to feel an
intimacy of some sort between them, or because she no longer had the
energy to support herself.
Feeling the warmth of Jiro’s body, Utako let her eyelids drop.
Jiro waited for Utako to go on speaking, but she said nothing.
“Its all right if you lean on me,” he mumbled.
Utako nodded, but she didn’t come any closer. Indeed, her shoulders
stiffened slightly, and she remained still.
“But even if my father told you, we don’t know that what he told you
was true. Being here with you like this, I feel sure that it can’t be true,” she
said, speaking slowly, quietly.
It was like a lover’s whisper. Utako’s knees were almost trembling as she
sat there pressed against Jiro. To control this trembling she tried to call up
images of the children she had left at Someya’s house, and spoke of the
child she had conceived with Jiro.
Utako knew that Jiro pitied her. For this reason one part of her tried to
hold back from him, to resist.
