When they arrived at Hakone, it was already the middle of the night. The roads were damaged so severely and the traffic jams had been so fearful that they had been able to average no more than six miles an hour.
A small, almost hidden private road wound through the cryptomeria forest at a point midway between Ubako and Gojiri Pass. As the car was climbing the steep, winding road, a one-story house came into view. A brushwood fence surrounded it, and an air of stillness hung over it. The car stopped beside a gate crowned with a crossbeam. And after someone had gotten out and announced their presence into an interphone, it swung open by remote control. The Oribe votive lanterns in the garden lay overturned. Their stone caps had left gouges in the mossy ground.
The old man was sitting by himself in a rather small room ten mats in size, his legs covered by a quilt concealing a foot-warmer. A cushion seat covered with purple figured silk sup ported his back. He wore a sleeveless padded robe of dark brown over a fine kimono of Yuki pongee. Around his neck a wide scarf of white linen was loosely wrapped. His solitary figure with its bent back looked small and shriveled. His eyes, sheltered by the white brows above, were closed, and he seemed to be dozing.
Their party of five, including Tadokoro, knelt by the door-way, but Watari gave no sign that he had noticed, merely nod ding as though in his sleep.
“Well, Hakone is cold, as usual,” said Tadokoro in a loud, heedless voice, very much in character, as he got to his feet and strode boldly into the room. His greasy socks were baggy at the toes, and they made a floppy sound upon the tatami floor.
A faultlessly groomed girl, dressed in a short Chichibu Meisen kimono too sober for her age, invited them to take places around a huge quilt-covered foot-warmer. Her hair, so thick as to be unruly, was gathered in back. The eyes, set in a face showing no trace of cosmetics, were large. She was tall, and her firm mouth gave her a formidable air. When she happened to laugh, however, one caught a glimpse of dimples and a single crooked tooth which seemed altogether becoming, and her expression became one of artless innocence.
“You’ve taken a little punishment, I see,” said Tadokoro, stretching his neck as he looked at the alcove behind the old man. Up where the ancient alcove posts of cryptomeria from the northern mountains joined the ceiling, raw cracks ran along the wall, and sand had spilled down upon the alcove step of black persimmon.
Yukinaga, noticing the Southern Sung painting that hung in the alcove, spoke abruptly. “I believe that’s a Tanomura Chokunyu, is it not?”
“Very perceptive,” said Watari, his voice hoarse as he laughed. “But it happens to be an imitation. Well done, isn’t it? Do you like the Southern School? What about Tessai?”
“No, I don’t care much for him.”
“I see. Well, I’m not too fond of him myself. At my age, that sort of style becomes tedious, you see.”
The young girl came in with tea, pointing her white tabi-shod feet gracefully as she walked. How like a Noh actor, thought Yukinaga as he watched her.
In the teacups that she distributed, instead of ordinary tea there was a beverage in which lay a single brownish leaf of some sort of plant.
It’s an orchid, thought Onodera as he took a sip. Through the steam that rose from the cup, he gazed absently at the scarlet color of the maple leaves in the Mosochiku vase that stood in the alcove.
“Well, then,” said the old man, coughing faintly, “how do things stand, Professor Tadokoro?”
“That’s why we’re here, sir,” said Tadokoro, leaning forward.
“As far as the Tokyo disaster goes, I’m well informed.”
“I expected that,” answered Tadokoro, gulping down the rest of his orchid tea. “The way I see things now is exactly in line with what I told you before. We must by all means mount an investigation of still larger scope in order to get the facts more certainly in hand. The question is how are we going to accomplish that. And how, furthermore, are we going to broach our desire to the government?”
The old man, his wrinkled hand like a withered branch, gave the Rakuyake teacup a slight shake. The surface of the orchid tea trembled. His eyes were hidden, sunk deep within their sockets, and there was no way of knowing which way they were looking. He seemed to be staring with a child’s detachment at the trembling liquid. Was he lost in thought, oblivious to every thing? A silence came over the room, and Onodera became aware of a rustling from the dark forest outside. And farther off, the mountains themselves seemed to give off a faint, indistinct noise that was like a moan.
“From now on . . .” Nakata, urged by some impulse, suddenly spoke out, his voice little more than a whisper. “If we go on as we are, it’s hopeless. If you say go on with the number of men we have now, using the means we have now, we’ll go on ... but it won’t do much good. As the day approaches, of course, more and more people will become aware, but by then it will be too late.”
The old man was still jiggling his teacup. A faint cough echoed from the throat covered with wrinkled folds. Everyone stared fixedly at the teacup.
“Professor Tadokoro,” said the old man, raising his eyes and moving his head slightly to one side, “have you seen the flower in that vase there?”
Tadokoro raised his eyes. From one of the posts at the rear of the alcove hung a gourd vase. Within it was a small flower of vivid red, picked in full bloom and set off by two or three branches of dark green leaves.
“A Chinese camellia, isn’t it?” muttered Tadokoro.
“That’s right. Every bush is blooming with wild profusion. It seems to me, Professor, that nature is running wild in all sorts of ways in Japan this fall. A scientist looks at this, and perhaps it strikes him as not too significant. But as for me, I have lived with nature for one hundred years, and I can’t escape the feeling that nature in Japan—plants and trees and birds and insects and fishes—all alike have grown fearful and have lost their composure.”