Yumiura
His daughter, Tagi, came to tell him that there was a woman at the door
who said she’d met him thirty years earlier in Yumiura, Kyushu. Kozumi
Shozuke thought for a moment and decided that he might as well have the
woman shown into the drawing room.
Unexpected callers came almost every day to see Kozumi Shozuke, the
novelist— even now there were three guests in the drawing room. The
three guests had come separately, but they were all talking together. It was
about two o’clock on an afternoon unusually warm for the beginning of
December.
The fourth caller, the woman, knelt in the hall just outside the door she
had opened, evidently embarrassed before the other guests.
“Please, come right in,” Kozumi said.
“Oh—it’s truly, it’s truly . . .” said the woman, in a voice that almost
shook. “It’s been such a long time! My name is Murano now, but when we
met my name was Ta’i. Perhaps you remember?”
Kozumi looked at the woman’s face. She was a little past fifty, but she
looked younger than her age— her pale cheeks were tinged with red. Her
eyes were still large, despite her age. No doubt this was because she hadn’t
grown plump in middle age, as people often do.
“Just as I thought—you are the man I met. There’s no doubt about it.”
The woman’s eyes gleamed with pleasure as she stared at Kozumi. There
was an enthusiasm in her gaze that was lacking in Kozumi’s own as he
looked back at her, trying to remember who she was. “You really haven’t
changed at all, have you? The line from your ear to your jaw, yes, and there
—the area around your eyebrows—it’s all just as it was. . . .” She pointed
out each of his features, one by one, as if she were reciting a description of
