Jiro had replied curtly, “I’m allergic to war.”
His method succeeded once again now, as he held Utako the way he used
to.
Utako felt for Jiro’s cheek in the dark, as if she too were wondering—
what’s wrong?
“What are you thinking about?”
“Unpleasant things from the war.”
Utako wondered if he wasn’t remembering his wife.
Jiro stroked Utako’s hair gently.
Coming suddenly to Hakone, lying together at night like this—it all felt
entirely natural to Jiro, as it had all been planned out. Perhaps it was
because Utako was being so docile. Although there was no doubt in his
mind that her quietness was due to the fact that she was exhausted, terribly
wounded.
“I probably would have been with you like this the whole time if there
hadn’t been a war. Don’t you think so?”
“But we met at the factory. You would never have gone to the factory if
there hadn’t been a war.”
“Even if we hadn’t met at the factory, though—1 think we would have
met somewhere. I’m sure we would have.”
Jiro was conscious that the scent of Utako’s hair was unique, that it was a
scent no other woman had.
What had changed in the quiet young woman he had known? How had
she changed during her seven or eight years of marriage, in giving birth to
two children? Jiro felt jealousy and temptation, but he filed his head again
with images of the war’s broken corpses.
