‘They detained her?’
‘No, no. In fact, I had the impression she was not at all surprised to see them. A question of loyalties, no doubt.’
They begin where they are, lifting the Buddha back to his niche by the door, furling the antique scrolls, setting the dragon pipes in their rack again. The books, as Yuji gathers them reverently from the floor, seem, in the trembling of their pages, to possess some knowledge of their recent treatment. From one of them, a Maison Gallimard edition of Anna Karenina, a piece of lilac paper flutters to the floor. When Yuji picks it up it’s obviously a letter. He passes it to Feneon, who scans a few lines of the small precise handwriting and shakes his head.
‘Not the one you were hoping for, I’m afraid. This is from a young woman I met before the war. The last war.’ He holds the letter out between two fingers. ‘Put her back with Anna and Vronsky. She’s been in there so long they must all have become good friends by now.’
They are nearly two hours in the study. The salon, more spacious, less easy to ransack, is dealt with more quickly.
‘Can you believe that they searched the stove?’ says Feneon. ‘Perhaps they expected to find the charred remains of secret documents. One of them even took a photograph of it. I’m pleased to report the stove maintained a heroic silence.’
When the last lamp is righted and the crystal fragments of a broken eau de vie glass have been swept onto a sheet of newspaper and carefully wrapped, they go to the bottom of the stairs.
‘You won’t have been up here before,’ says Feneon. ‘That painting is of Sézanne. The very street I was born in. This house here. You see? I looked through those windows as a child without the slightest idea there might be a place in the world called Japan.’
They go into his room. In the daylight it is less plain, less sparely furnished than it appeared the last time Yuji saw it. At the foot of the open wardrobe is a man-thick heap of shirts, and sprawled beside them, like a shot ghost, is the goose-grey smoking jacket.
‘This they also photographed,’ says Feneon, nodding to the bed. ‘Really, when you think of it, it was the behaviour of lunatics.’ With his sleeve he rubs at one of the brass orbs on the footboard as if to remove from it the smudge of a policeman’s fingerprints, then he grimaces and presses at some stiffness in his neck. ‘I‘m too ancient for this kind of trouble,’ he says. ‘Let’s do Alissa’s room and then I’ll investigate the kitchen. See if I can find us some lunch.’
They go to the end of the corridor. Feneon opens the door wide. The light in there, pouring through a mesh of fine lace, is softer, dimmer, paler. If, thinks Yuji, following the Frenchman inside, if he turns and looks at me now, will he not see everything, know everything? But Feneon does not turn. He is reaching over the bed, smoothing the bedding, the quilt of ivory satin.
There are clothes on the floor. Yuji is not sure if he should touch them, but fearing stillness, how it might betray him, he scoops up an armful of silks and linens, and briefly, as he inhales the scent his pressing releases, his behaviour of that night, of the following morning, of all the nights and mornings since, seems like the actions of a man impossible to respect or like, a small-natured man whose timidity has made him cruel.
‘They wanted to take these,’ says Feneon, crossing to the dressing table and tidying the photographs. ‘I told them they would have to take me away with them. It seems they were not quite ready for that.’
He lifts one of the pictures and holds it out to Yuji. ‘Recognise anyone?’
‘Who could I recognise?’
‘The child?’
‘The face is so small . .’
‘It’s Alissa! The girl holding her was one of our servants in Saigon. When we came to leave she was inconsolable. You would have thought she was losing one of her own.’ He stares at the picture, then puts it back among the others. For a count of three, four seconds, he keeps his face averted. ‘We’re worn out,’ he says, at last. ‘Epuisé.’
They go down to the kitchen, a room that seems not to have held much interest for the Tokko. Feneon finds two eggs and puts them in a pan to boil. Yuji slices a large nashi pear left ripening on the windowsill. ‘And look,’ says Feneon, ‘half a loaf from the last decent bakery in Kanda. They bake for the Russian priests at the cathedral. I wonder what will become of those gentlemen.’
Rather than eat in the dining room, they sit at the little knife-scored table in the kitchen. They share a bottle of beer, clink glasses, though neither of them suggests a toast. When they have finished, Feneon sits back and wipes his lips, delicately, with the fat of his thumb.
‘Now,’ he says, ‘it’s time for you to leave, my friend. You have been very kind but I should not have let you stay so long. Is your bicycle at the front?’
Yuji nods.
‘You can go through the garden. There’s a gate behind the rose bush that leads into an alley. The gate is stiff but it works. The alley will take you back to the street. Don’t wait around. Just ride home. You understand? I’ll find some way of letting you know if I have to go away. We won’t lose each other. And tell the rest of them. No visits, for everyone’s safety, until this fever is over.’
They go to the kitchen door. Feneon pulls the bolts, opens the door cautiously and looks out.
‘The gate is straight ahead. You see? And when we meet again I expect you to have written a poem or two.’
‘I will try,’ says Yuji, taking the other’s proffered hand, feeling his own disappear into that large, dry grip.
‘Shall I give your regards to Alissa?’
‘Please.’
‘Go quickly now. Be very careful.’
‘And you, monsieur.’
Their hands part. Yuji, unsure if he is supposed to run or if running would simply draw attention to himself, begins to stride across the lawn. He does not look back, and as he passes the early afternoon shadows under the magnolia tree, he hears the sound of the kitchen door being shut again, shut and bolted.
13
He is squatting under the bulb in his room sewing a button onto a shirt. It’s midnight. A week has passed since he went through the gate behind the rose bush, a week since he cycled home, wind tears and tears of shame in his eyes. A week in which he has been left to wonder if his rashness — that blind eagerness to demonstrate his loyalty — might not have brought much closer the day his own house, his own family, will be visited by ‘the horribly rigid minds’. It is not hard to picture them, a gang in tight-fitting suits, chrysanthemum badges beneath the lapels of their jackets, rousting Mother from her room, harrying Father from his bed or his study. (And if he saw one lay a hand on Mother, grip her roughly, insult her perhaps, would he have the decency to attack that man?) He has even considered whether Kushida, knowing that his information would send him running down to Kanda, was setting a trap for him. Is that possible?
He is lost in these thoughts, biting the taut thread with his teeth, when he hears his name being called from the street. Once. Twice. A pause. Then a third time — a yowl like a cat on heat. He turns off the light, pads to the window. There are no cars out there, no crop-haired strangers under the lamps. Anyone at all? Did he dream that uncanny voice? Then he sees a movement, something crawling from the shadows outside Otaki’s, a creature of some sort, certainly not a cat, more like a giant turtle dragging itself out of the sea. It moves towards the house, stops, looks up, a man now, a man suddenly, his face livid with the glare of the lamp. Then the voice again, that anguished cry.