Death in Midsummer & Other Stories Read Free

about the incident that involved him so deeply.
    She could have telephoned. She was afraid to talk to me.
    With a husband's intuition, he sensed the truth. But in any case the first problem is to go and see for myself.
    He looked out of the window as they came near the heart of the city. The sun of the midsummer morning was even more blinding because of the white-shirted crowds. The trees along the road cast deep shadows directly downwards, and at the entrance to a hotel the gaudy red-and-white awning was taut, as if the sunlight were a heavy metal. The newly dug earth where the street was being repaired was already dry and dusty.
    The world around him was quite as it had always been.
    Nothing had happened, and if he tried he could believe that nothing had happened even to him. A childish annoyance came over him, in an unknown place, an incident with which he had had nothing to do had cut him off from the world.
    Among all these passengers none was so unfortunate as he.
    The thought seemed to put him on a level above or a level below the ordinary Masaru, he did not know which. He was someone special. Someone apart.
    No doubt a man with a large birthmark on his back sometimes feels the urge to call out: 'Listen, everyone. You don't know it, but I have a big, purple birthmark on my back.'
    And Masaru wanted to shout at the other passengers: 'Listen, everybody. You don't know it, but I have just lost my sister and two of my three children.'
    His courage left him. If only the children were safe. ... He began trying to think of other ways to interpret the telegram.
    Possibly Tomoko, distraught over Yasue's death, had assumed that the children were dead when they had only lost their way.
    Might not a second telegram be waiting at the house even now?
    Masaru was quite taken up with his own feelings, as if the incident itself were less important than his reaction to it He regretted that he had not called the Eirakusd immediately.
    The plaza in front of lto station was brilliant in the mid'.
    17

    Her husband, Masaru Ikuta, was thirty-five. A graduate of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, he had gone to work for an American company before the war. His English was good, and he knew his business - he was abler than his silent manner suggested. Now the manager of the Japanese office of an American automobile company, he had the use of a company automobile, half as advertising, and he made 150,000
    yen a month. He also had ways of appropriating certain secret funds for himself, and Tomoko and Yasue, with a maid to take care of the children, lived in comfort and security. There was no pressing need to cut the family down by three.
    Tomoko sent a telegram because she did not want to talk to Masaru over the telephone. As was the custom in the suburbs, the post office telephoned the message when it arrived, and the call came just as Masaru was about to leave for work. Thinking it a routine business call, he calmly picked up the telephone.
    'We have a rush telegram from A. Beach,' said the woman in the post office. Masaru began to feel uneasy. 'I'll read it to you.
    Are you ready? "YASUE DEAD, KIYOO AND KEIKO MISSING, TOMOKO." *
    'Would you read it again, please?'
    It sounded the same the second time: 'YASUE DEAD.: KIYOO AND KEIKO MISSING, TOMOKO.' Masaru was angry.: It was as though, for no reason he could think of, he had suddenly received notice of his dismissal.
    He immediately telephoned the office and said he would not be in. He thought he might drive to A. Beach. But the road was long and dangerous, and he had no confidence that he could drive it, upset as he was. As a matter of fact he had recently had an accident. He decided to take a train to ltd, and a taxi from there.
    The process by which the unforeseen event works its way into a man's consciousness is a strange and subtle one. Masaru, who set out without even knowing the nature of the incident, was careful to take a good supply of money with him. Incidents required