Dark Pictures and Other Stories by Noma Hiroshi

Author:Noma Hiroshi [Hiroshi, Noma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan
Published: 2000-04-18T17:00:00+00:00

2

The shadows of evening had already completely fallen on the base of the bridge. In a long line, homeward-bound commuters waited their turn on the safety island of the city tramway. Oikawa Ryuichi got off at the Iidabashi station of the Government Line. As he left the exit he checked, noticing that Nishihara Shizuko’s rounded back was not to be seen on the railing of the familiar, faintly curving concrete Iidabashi bridge, as she leaned forward with her left elbow thrust out behind her, forming the centerpiece of an evening landscape that stretched out towards distant Suidobashi. Under normal circumstances it would be Shizuko’s figure—the fringe of her bobbed hair, spread out wide, and the gentle upthrust of her shoulder blades, seemingly visible through her clothes—that would catch his eye before everything else, in the midst of the frenzied scene of cars and trams coming and going, stimulating his body with an indefinable mixture of hatred, torment, and relief. And he would feel as though the white heels of Shizuko’s shoes had leaped to the center of his vision as she waited by the bridge, looking as if she were choosing a train. Thrusting his left hand, which he was suddenly conscious of, into his pocket, he would advance straight towards the steps of the bridge. Then he would wordlessly place his right hand on Shizuko’s left shoulder as she, while aware of his approach, continued to stand facing the other way.

“Hello, sorry to be so late … I must have kept you waiting a long time … I’m really sorry about that … The train was so terribly crowded I couldn’t get on … I really am very sorry,” he would say quietly, smiling at her with a smile that he forced his face to assume.

“It’s perfectly all right. I only just got here myself,” she would turn to reply in the same quiet tone, although her face would be twisted as if enduring some minor humiliation. This might be called one of the scenes that was played out when he had kept her waiting. Yet in the scene as it was today at Iidabashi, the focal point, the essential nexus, that was Shizuko was absent.

As always, Oikawa Ryuichi displayed a particular kind of semiconsciously simulated, superficial calm as he walked slowly as far as the bridge. As he did so, he turned his head this way and that as he looked for his object. Yet he couldn’t see what he was seeking anywhere. It was, then, exactly as he had been anticipating when amidst the crush of people on the train while journeying there. «She won’t still be waiting. Shizuko won’t still be waiting. It would be actually strange if she were there after being kept waiting for over an hour, wouldn’t it?» he had told himself as he hung from the strap, squeezed between the bodies of other commuters. «After all, if it were me, I wouldn’t be able to wait around for someone for over an hour.

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