Dark Water Read Free Page A

television program. This melody served as a time signal, indicating on this particular morning that she still had plenty of minutes to spare before setting off for work. She would take Ikuko to the nursery school by nine o'clock, then catch a bus from the school for a twenty-minute ride to her office in Shimbashi. The time and energy required to get to work here was truly nothing compared to what her commuting hassle used to be. It really made the move here worthwhile. Had they stayed in Musashino, she wouldn't have been able to put Ikuko into nursery school, and certainly couldn't have worked. She could always find another job, but it was unlikely that she'd ever find anything as good as her present position in the proofreading department of a publishing company. The job not only allowed her to devote herself to the world of the printed word, which was one of her passions, but there was no overtime and little need to associate with other people. On top of this, the pay was quite adequate. Ikuko came into the room with a pink ribbon and asked her mother to tie back her hair with it. The knot she had just tied had come loose and Ikuko's hair draped down, almost covering her shoulders.
    As she touched her daughter's hair, she found herself surprised at how unmistakably the child had inherited her genes. It was strange that such an obvious fact should not have occurred to her until now. Their two faces looked identical in the three-sided mirror before them: the same chestnut-colored curly hair, the same white skin, and the same freckles under both eyes. One face belonged to a woman in her mid-thirties and the other was that of a little girl turning six.
    'Noodles…' She remembered a boy once looking at her in high school and announcing that her hair looked as if someone had dumped a bowl of noodles on top of her head. She hated everything about herself in those days, her natural curls, her face, her freckles, and her skinny body. How many boys told her how passionately they felt about her in high school? It never occurred to her to count. She had no idea what they saw in her, and had to conclude that her criteria as to what constituted beauty were totally at odds with those of others. Everyone remarked on the beauty of her cute little face, freckles and all, and her natural brown hair, a rarity among Japanese. She simply didn't understand. When the boys caught on to her indifference, they began to make fun of her auburn hair behind her back. There were a lot of girls who knew how to handle things better, saying what they liked without the slightest risk of backbiting. Hiromi, a classmate in junior high school, was a typical example of that type.
    With her hair now tied up, Ikuko said a quick 'thank you' to her own reflection in the mirror rather than to her mother, and dashed back into the living room to watch television. Yoshimi could detect no trace of her former husband's physique or manner in Ikuko's figure. That at least was a blessing. She had never once found anything enjoyable about the physical union of man and woman. Her only word for it was 'agonizing'. Yet there is never any shortage of talk about sex in the world. She simply couldn't understand it. Perhaps some insurmountable barrier separated her from other people. They differed on everything from what constituted beauty and ugliness to definitions of pain and pleasure. The world as she perceived it was largely at odds with the world as others saw it.
    When her husband learned of his wife's unwillingness to accommodate his needs, he would often resort to solitary measures, casually tossing the tissue paper under the sofa. She once got some of the fluid on her fingertips when she'd inadvertently picked up a ball of tissue the following morning. The image of his idiotic expression of bliss came to her mind, leaving no room for the desire to understand. At such times, her entire body would shudder with extreme loathing and scorn.
    The familiar voice of a female