One Morning Like a Bird Read Online Free

was involved in the decision to stop the allowance – especially if he was involved – would he not agree to a small loan? There have been several in the past (some of them repaid). But with Grandfather there is always the difficulty of knowing what he has anymore, whether he has given all his money away to shrines (a new carved roof for the shrine at Mita, a god-car for the shrine at Kitazawa), to family spinsters in the country, to former employees on hard times, or whether it is still lying in bars of jade and bolts of silk in a fireproof godown somewhere by the river.
        Horikawa (of Horikawa and Son, Horikawa Trading Inc., the Horikawa Talent Bureau) can usually be counted on, but only for scraps  . . .
        And Makiyama? Whatever one thinks of him, whatever one cannot avoid thinking, it must be admitted he has the necessary connections. He took the John Ford essay last summer, placed it with Eastern Review , and might, if Yuji can find him sober, be persuaded to take something else, something on Fritz Lang, or the stories of Akutagawa, or even – why not? – on Arthur Rimbaud. For that he would need only the books that lie around in his room. He could write it in a week, in two days, though he would have to find some contemporary relevance, some angle to make a dead French poet enticing to a modern Japanese readership  . . .
        There is a way, of course, a way he has thought of countless times. Monsieur Feneon must be persuaded to show him the letter, the one he mentioned (and so casually!) that spring afternoon in Professor Komada’s rooms, but which, in the years since, nobody in the club has succeeded in gaining so much as a glimpse of, all requests met with the same enigmatic smile, the same flutter of the hand. But a story based on the letter, an essay that linked the names of Rimbaud, Feneon and Yuji Takano, a literary detective story, a kind of séance, it could even make a news story, something for the human-interest pages in the Yomiuri , a respite from reports of battlefield sacrifice, or some village in Shikoku where they have vowed to give up sleep so they can plant more rice. With the letter in his hand, would he need Makiyama?
        Out in the garden the crows are squabbling. In the Western room the clock is chiming the hour. He puts down his pen. Today, perhaps, he will see Mother. Today is one of the usual days, one of those appointed to such meetings. He combs his hair, goes downstairs to find Haruyo. She is in the kitchen squatting by the half-open door to the passage along the side of the house, a heavy shawl across her shoulders, her long-stemmed pipe in her mouth. Without looking at him, she says that Mother is too tired to see anyone, that she is resting. Resting? She nods. He wonders if she also forbids Father, this nurse-servant who has become Mother’s warder. He wonders, too, how a person can be tired when they do nothing, when they have done nothing for seventeen years, when every day they are resting, resting.
        Back in his room, he picks up the little sheet of accounts, stares at it, then takes his fountain pen and writes across the bottom, in the neat, cursive script he first learnt at middle school, ‘ Ô saisons, Ô château, quelle âme est sans défauts? ’ Then he rips the page in two, drops the halves into the brazier. Black-ringed holes appear. Finally, a flame.

4
    Early on the morning of the last day of the holiday, Uncle Kensuke rings. Yuji, still in bed, knows it must be Uncle calling because Father, who has answered the phone, is asking about the snow in the mountains. ‘Has there been much yet? Hmm. I see. That must be difficult for you  . . . Yes. Here too, a few inches.’
        Sometimes Uncle Kensuke and Auntie Sawa come to Tokyo for the holiday, but this year they will not be coming until the Festival of Lanterns, the Festival of the Dead. Father asks about the children, Hiroshi and Asako, and Asako’s husband, who everyone says is doing so