anyone who dropped from the ranks would henceforth travel a path different from her own. Each woman's prayer was her own problem, and even in such an emergency Masako could not be expected to shoulder anyone else's burden. It would not be helping someone to carry a heavy load up a mountain - it would be doing something which could not be of use to anyone.
The name 'Irifuna Bridge' was written in white letters on a horizontal metal plaque fastened to a post at the end of the bridge. The bridge itself stood out in the dark, its concrete surface caught in the merciless glare reflected from the Caltex petrol station on the opposite bank. A little light could be seen in the river where the bridge cast its shadow. The man who lived in the broken-down hut at the end of the fishing-pier was apparently still up, and the light belonged to him. His hut was decorated with potted plants and a sign announcing: 'Pleasure Boats, Tow Boats, Fishing Boats, Netting Boats.'
The roof line of the crowded range of buildings across the river gradually dropped off, and the night sky seemed to open before them. They noticed now that the moon, so bright a little while earlier, was only translucently visible through thin clouds.
All over the sky the clouds had gathered.
The women crossed Irifuna Bridge without incident.
Beyond Irifuna Bridge the river bends almost at a right angle.
The fifth bridge was quite a distance away. They would have to follow the river along the wide, deserted embankment to Akatsuki Bridge.
Most of the buildings to their right were restaurants. To their left on the river bank were piles of stone, gravel, and sand for some sort of construction project, the dark mass spilling at places half-way over the roadway. Before long, the imposing buildings of St Luke's Hospital could be seen to their left across the river. The hospital bulked gloomily in the hazy moonlight.
The huge gold cross on top was brightly illuminated, and the red lights of aeroplane beacons, as if in attendance on the cross, flashed from rooftops here and there, demarcating the roofs and the sky. The lights were out in the chapel behind the hospital, but the outlines of its Gothic rose window were plainly 96
visible. In the hospital windows a few dim lights were still burning. The three women walked on in silence. Masako, her mind absorbed by the task ahead of her, could think of little else.
Their pace had imperceptibly quickened until she was now damp with perspiration. Then - at first she thought it must be imagination - the sky, in which the moon was still visible, grew threatening, and she felt the first drops of rain against her forehead. Fortunately, however, the rain showed no signs of developing into a downpour.
Now Akatsuki Bridge, their fifth, loomed ahead. The concrete posts, whitewashed for some unknown reason, shone a ghostly colour in the dark. As Masako joined her hands in prayer at the end of the bridge, she tripped and almost fell on an exposed iron pipe in the roadway. Across the bridge was the streetcar turn before St. Luke's Hospital.
The bridge was not long. The women were walking so quickly that they were across it almost immediately, but on the other side Koyumi met with misfortune. A woman with her hair let down after washing and a metal basin in her hand approached from the opposite direction. She was walking quickly, her kimono opened in slatternly fashion off the shoulders. Masako caught only a glimpse of the woman, but the deadly pallor of the face under the wet hair made her shudder.
The woman stopped on the bridge and turned back. 'Why, if it isn't Koyumi! It's been ages, hasn't it? Are you pretending you don't know me? Koyumi - you remember me!' She craned her neck at Koyumi, blocking her path. Koyumi lowered her eyes and did not answer. The woman's voice was high-pitched and unfocused, like the wind escaping through a crevice. Her prolonged monotone suggested that she was calling not Koyumi but someone who wasn't actually there. 'I'm just on my way back from the bath-house. It's really been ages. Of all places to meet!'
Koyumi, feeling the woman's hand on her shoulder, finally opened her eyes. She realized that it was useless to begrudge the woman an answer - the fact that she had been addressed by an acquaintance was enough to destroy her prayer.
97
Masako looked at the woman's face. She thought for a moment, then walked on, leaving Koyumi behind. Masako remembered the woman's face. She was an old geisha who had appeared for a while in Shimbashi just after the war - Koen was her name. She had become rather peculiar, acting like a teenage girl despite her age, and she finally had been removed from the register of geisha. It was not surprising that Koen had recognized Koyumi, an old friend, but it was a stroke of good fortune that she should have forgotten Masako.
The sixth bridge lay directly ahead, Sakai Bridge, a small structure marked only by a metal sign painted green. Masako hurried through her prayers at the foot of the bridge and all but raced across. When she looked back she noticed to her relief that Koyumi was no longer to be seen. Directly behind her followed Mina, her face maintaining its usual sullen expression.
Now that she was deprived of her guide, Masako had no clue where to find the seventh and last bridge. She reasoned, however, that if she kept going along the same street she would sooner or later come to a bridge parallel to Akatsuki Bridge.
She would only have to cross the final bridge for her prayers to be answered.
A sprinkling of raindrops again struck Masako's face. The road ahead was lined with wholesale warehouses, and construction shacks blocked her view of the river. It was very dark.
Bright street lamps in the distance made the darkness in between seem all the blacker. Masako was not especially afraid to walk through the streets so late at night. She had an adventurous nature and her goal, the accomplishment of her prayer, lent her courage. But the sound of Mina's geta echoing behind her began to hang like a heavy pall on Masako. The sound actually had a cheerful irregularity, but the utter self-possession of Mina's gait, as contrasted with her own mincing steps, seemed to be pursuing Masako with its derision.
Until Kanako dropped from the ranks, Mina's presence had merely aroused a kind of contempt in Masako's heart, but since then it had come somehow to weigh on her, and now that there 98
were only two of them left, Masako could not help being bothered, despite herself, by the riddle of what this girl from the backwoods could possibly be praying for. It was disagreeable to have this stolid woman with her unfathomable prayers treading in her footsteps. No, it was not so much unpleasant as disquieting, and Masako's uneasiness gradually mounted until it was close to terror.
Masako had never realized how upsetting it was not to know what another person wanted. She felt there was something like a lump of blackness following her, not at all like Kanako or Koyumi, whose prayers had been so transparently clear she could see through them. Masako tried desperately to arouse her longings for R to an even more feverish pitch than before. She thought of his face. She thought of his voice. She remembered his youthful breath. But the image shattered at once, and she did not attempt to restore it.
She must get over the seventh bridge as quickly .as possible.
Until then she would not think about anything.
The street lamps she had seen from the distance now began to look like the lights at the end of a bridge. She could tell that she was approaching a main thoroughfare, and there were signs that a bridge could not be far off.
First came a little park, where the street lights she had seen from the distance shone down on the black dots the rain was splashing into a sand pile, then the bridge itself, its name 'Bizen Bridge' inscribed on a concrete pillar at the end. A single bulb at the top of the pillar gave off a feeble light. Masako saw to her right, across the river, the Tsukiji Honganji Temple, its curved green roof rising into the night sky. She recognized the place.
She would have to be careful once she crossed the bridge not to pass over the same route on her way back home.
Masako breathed a sigh of relief. She joined her hands in prayer at the end of the bridge and, to make up for her perfunctory performances before, this time she prayed carefully and devoutly. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Mina, aping her as usual, piously pressing together her thick palms.
The sight so annoyed Masako as to deflect her prayer somehow