Shimamura could think of nothing to say. Komako did not seem to care particularly what he thought of her playing, however. She was quite unaffectedly pleased with herself.

"Can you always tell which geisha it is from the tone of the samisen?"

"That"s easy. There aren"t twenty of us all together. It depends a little on the style, though. The individual comes out more in some styles than in others."

She took up the samisen again and shifted her weight so that her feet were a little to one side and the instrument rested on the calf of one leg.

"This is the way you hold it when you"re small." She leaned toward the samisen as though it were too large for her. "Da-a-ark hair...." Her voice was deliberately childish and she picked out the notes uncertainly.

" "Dark Hair" was the first one you learned?"

"Uh-uh." She shook her head girlishly, as no doubt she did in the days when she was still too small to hold the samisen properly.

Komako no longer tried to leave before daybreak when she stayed the night.

"Komako," the two-year-old daughter of the innkeeper would call from far down the hall, her voice rising in the mountain-country lilt. The two of them would play happily in the kotatsu until nearly noon, when they would go for a bath.

Back from the bath, Komako was combing her hair. "Whenever the child sees a geisha, she calls out "Komako" in that funny accent, and when she sees a picture of someone with her hair done in the old way, that"s "Komako" too. Children can tell when you like them. Come, Kimi. Let"s go play at Komako"s." She stood up to leave, then sat down lazily on the veranda. "Eager people from Tokyo already out skiing."

The room looked from high ground directly south over the ski runs at the base of the mountain.

Shimamura glanced up from the kotatsu. There were patches of snow on the mountain, and five or six figures in black ski clothes were moving about in the terraced fields. It seemed a trifle silly. The slope was a gentle one, and the walls between the fields were not yet covered with snow.

"They look like students. Is today Sunday? Do you suppose that"s fun?"

"They"re good, though," Komako said, as if to herself. "Guests are always surprised when a geisha says h.e.l.lo to them on the ski grounds. They don"t recognize her for the snow-burn. At night the powder hides it."

"You wear ski clothes?"

She wore "mountain trousers," she said. "But what a nuisance the ski season is. It"s all coming again. You see them in the evening at the inn, and they say they"ll see you again the next day skiing. Maybe I should give up skiing this year. Good-by. Come along, Kimi. We"ll have snow this evening. It"s always cold the night before it snows."

Shimamura went out to the veranda. Komako was leading Kimi down the steep road below the ski grounds.

The sky was clouding over. Mountains still in the sunlight stood out against shadowed mountains. The play of light and shade changed from moment to moment, sketching a chilly landscape. Presently the ski grounds too were in shadow. Below the window Shimamura could see little needles of frost like ising-gla.s.s among the withered chrysanthemums, though water was still dripping from the snow on the roof.

It did not snow that evening. A hailstorm turned to rain.

Shimamura called Komako again the night before he was to leave. It was a clear, moonlit night. At eleven o"clock the air was bitterly cold, but Komako insisted on going for a walk. She pulled him roughly from the kotatsu.

The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.

"We"ll go to the station," said Komako.

"You"re insane. It"s more than a mile each way."

"You"ll be going back to Tokyo soon. We"ll go look at the station."

Shimamura was numb from his shoulders to his thighs.

Back in his room, Komako sank disconsolately to the floor. Her head was bowed and her arms were deep in the kotatsu. Strangely, she refused to go with him to the bath.

Bedding had been laid out with the foot of the mattress inside the kotatsu. Komako was sitting forlornly beside it when Shimamura came back from the bath. She said nothing.

"What"s the matter?"

"I"m going home."

"Don"t be foolish."

"Go on to bed. Just let me sit here for a little while."

"Why do you want to go home?"

"I"m not going home. I"ll sit here till morning."

"Don"t be difficult."

"I"m not being difficult. I"m not being difficult."

"Then ...?"

"I ... don"t feel well."

"Is that all?" Shimamura laughed. "I"ll leave you quite to yourself."

"No."

"And why did you have to go out and run all over town?"

"I"m going home."

"There"s no need to go home."

"But it"s not easy for me. Go on back to Tokyo. It"s no easy for me." Her face was low over the kotatsu.

Was it sorrow at finding herself about to sink into too deep a relationship with a traveler? Or at having to keep herself under control at so dear a moment? She has come that far, then, Shimamura said to himself. He too was silent for a time.

"Please go back to Tokyo."

"As a matter of fact, I was thinking of going back tomorrow."

"No! Why are you going back?" She looked up, startled, as though aroused from sleep.

"What can I do for you, no matter how long I stay?"

She gazed at him for a moment, then burst out violently: "You don"t have to say that. What reason have you to say that?" She stood up irritably, and threw herself at his neck. "It"s wrong of you to say such things. Get up. Get up, I tell you." The words poured out deliriously, and she fell down beside him, quite forgetting in her derangement the physical difficulty she had spoken of earlier.

Some time later, she opened warm, moist eyes.

She picked up the hair ornament that had fallen to the floor.

"You really must go back tomorrow," she said quietly.

As Shimamura was changing clothes to leave on the three-o"clock train the next afternoon, the manager of the inn beckoned Komako into the hall. "Let"s see. Suppose we make it about eleven hours," he could hear Komako"s answer. They were evidently discussing the bill for her services as a geisha, and the manager perhaps thought it would be unreasonable to charge for the whole sixteen or seventeen hours.

The bill as a matter of fact was computed by the hour-"Left at five," or "Left at twelve"-without the usual charge for overnight services.

Komako, in an overcoat and a white scarf, saw him to the station.

Even when he had finished buying presents to take back to Tokyo, he had some twenty minutes to kill. Walking with Komako in the slightly raised station plaza, he thought what a narrow little valley it was, crowded in among the snowy mountains. Komako"s too-black hair was a little touching, a little sad, in the loneliness of the shadowed mountain pocket.

The sun shone dimly on a spot in the mountains far down the river.

"It"s melted a good deal since I came."

"Two days of snow, though, and we"ll have six feet. Then it snows again, and before long the lights on those poles are out of sight. I"ll walk along thinking of you, and I"ll find myself strung up on a wire."

"The snow is that deep?"

"They say that in the next town up the line the schoolchildren jump naked from the second floor of the dormitory. They sink out of sight in the snow, and they move around under it as though they were swimming. Look, a snowplow."

"I"d like to see it that deep. But I suppose the inn will be crowded. And there might be danger of slides along the way."

"With you it"s not a question of money, is it? Have you always had so much to spend?" She turned to look up at his face. "Why don"t you grow a mustache?"

"I"ve thought of it." Shimamura, freshly shaven, stroked the blue-black traces of his beard. A deep line from the corner of his mouth set off the softness of his cheek. Was that, he wondered, what Komako found attractive? "You always look a little as though you"d just shaved too when you take off that powder."

"Listen! The crows. That frightening way they sometimes have. Where are they, I wonder? And isn"t it cold!" Komako hugged herself as she looked up at the sky.

"Shall we go in by the stove?"

A figure in "mountain trousers" came running up the wide road from the main highway into the station plaza. It was Yoko.

"Komako. Yukio-Komako," she panted, clinging to Komako like a child that has run frightened to its mother, "come home. Right away. Yukio"s worse. Right away."

Komako closed her eyes, as if from the pain of the a.s.sault on her shoulder. Her face was white, but she shook her head with surprising firmness.

"I can"t go home. I"m seeing off a guest."

Shimamura was startled. "You needn"t see me off."

"It"s not right to leave. How do I know you"ll come again?"

"I"ll come, I"ll come."

Yoko seemed not to hear the exchange. "I just called the inn," she went on feverishly, "and they said you were at the station. So I came here. I ran all the way. Yukio is asking for you." She pulled at Komako, but Komako shook her off impatiently.

"Leave me alone."

It was Komako who reeled back, however. She retched violently, but nothing came from her mouth. The rims of her eyes were moist. There was goose flesh on her cheeks.

Yoko stood rigid, gazing at Komako. Her face, like a mask, wore an expression of such utter earnestness that it was impossible to tell whether she was angry or surprised or grieved. It seemed an extraordinarily pure and simple face to Shimamura.

She turned quickly and, without the slightest change of expression, clutched at Shimamura"s hand. "I"m sorry, but would you let her go home?" A tense, high-pitched voice a.s.sailed him. "Let her go home."

"Of course I"ll let her go home. Go on home," he called out to Komako. "Don"t be a fool."

"And what say do you have in the matter?" Komako pushed Yoko roughly away from him.

Shimamura tried to signal the taxi waiting in front of the station. Yoko clutched at his arm so tightly that his fingers were numbed. "I"ll send her home in a taxi," he said. "Why don"t you go on ahead? People will be watching us."

Yoko nodded quickly, and turned away with almost unbelievable alacrity. Why was the girl always so earnest, so sober, Shimamura wondered. But such musings did not seem entirely in keeping with the occasion.

That voice, so beautiful it was almost lonely, lingered in Shimamura"s ears as if it were echoing back from somewhere in the snowy mountains.

"Where are you going?" Komako pulled at Shimamura. He had signaled the taxi and was walking toward it. "I won"t. I"m not going home."

For an instant Shimamura felt something very near physical revulsion.

"I don"t know what there is among the three of you, but the man may be dying even now. She came for you, didn"t she, because he wants to see you. Go home like a good girl. You"ll regret it all your life if you don"t. What if he dies even while you"re standing here? Don"t be stubborn. Forgive and forget."

"Forgive and forget? You don"t understand. You don"t understand at all."

"And when they sent you to Tokyo, he was the only one who saw you off, didn"t you say? Do you think it"s right not to say good-by to the man you yourself said was on the very first page of the very first volume of your diary? This is the very last page of his."

"But I don"t want to. I don"t want to see a man die."

It could have been the coldest heartlessness or too warm a pa.s.sion-Shimamura did not know which.

"I"ll not be able to write in my diary any more. I"ll burn it," she said softly, almost to herself. Her cheeks were flushed. "You"re a good, simple person at heart, aren"t you? If you really are, I won"t mind sending my whole diary to you. You won"t laugh at me? You"re a good, honest person at heart, I"m sure."

Shimamura was moved by a wave of feeling he could not define himself. He thought he must indeed be the plainest, most honest person in the world. He no longer worried about sending Komako home. She said nothing more.

A porter from the inn came to tell them that the gate to the tracks was open.

Four or five villagers in somber winter dress got on and off the train.

"I"ll not go to the platform with you. Good-by." Komako stood inside the closed window of the waiting-room. From the train window it was as though one strange piece of fruit had been left behind in the grimy gla.s.s case of a shabby mountain grocery.

The window of the waiting-room was clear for an instant as the train started to move. Komako"s face glowed forth, and as quickly disappeared. It was the bright red it had been in the mirror that snowy morning, and for Shimamura that color again seemed to be the point at which he parted with reality.

The train climbed the north slope of the Border Range into the long tunnel. On the far side it moved down a mountain valley. The color of evening was descending from chasms between the peaks. The dim brightness of the winter afternoon seemed to have been sucked into the earth, and the battered old train had shed its bright sh.e.l.l in the tunnel. There was no snow on the south slope.

Following a stream, the train came out on the plain. A mountain, cut at the top in curious notches and spires, fell off in a graceful sweep to the far skirts. Over it the moon was rising. The solid, integral shape of the mountain, taking up the whole of the evening landscape there at the end of the plain, was set off in a deep purple against the pale light of the sky. The moon was no longer an afternoon white, but, faintly colored, it had not yet taken on the clear coldness of the winter night. There was not a bird in the sky. Nothing broke the lines of the wide skirts to the right and the left. Where the mountain swept down to meet the river, a stark white building, a hydroelectric plant perhaps, stood out sharply from the withered scene the train window framed, one last spot saved from the night.

The window began to steam over. The landscape outside was dusky, and the figures of the pa.s.sengers floated up half-transparent. It was the play of that evening mirror again. The train, probably no more than three or four worn-out, faded, old-fashioned coaches strung together, was not from the same world as the trains one finds on the main lines. The light inside was dim.

Shimamura abandoned himself to the fancy that he had stepped into some unreal conveyance, that he was being borne away in emptiness, cut off from time and place. The monotonous sound of the wheels became the woman"s voice.