Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

roots, fur spiked with rain and feathers fluffed. Cold water is beginning to seep through the shoulder seams of his jacket, but he’s warm enough, walking fast.

He’s only beginning to settle into the forest, to the rhythm of his tread and his breathing and the rain, when he comes to the torii gates, their red deeper and brighter than it was yesterday, echoing under the dim greys of a wet wood. He pauses to touch one again, as if physical contact could substitute for understanding. Each one is raised in prayer, he remembers. They are memorials, or hopes or fears made manifest in wood and left to glow here under the trees. His fingers graze each one as he passes, but as he comes towards the clearing he stops. There is something there, low to the ground and fleet in sinuous movement. He freezes. Two of them, feline in their delicacy. He slows his breathing. A fox sitting on the lowest step of the temple, tail curled around its feet, sharp nose turned towards its mate who swirls and leaps in the open space between the water stoup and the building. Dancing, the other fox is dancing, turning fast as a fish back on itself, flowing, red fur rain-dark and the white bib bright. Tom and the fox-wife watch. Fine feet lope, feathery tail brushes the damp air and flickers over the fallen leaves. The dog fox leaps and bends low, waltzes and jumps. And then the dancer sees the intruder. There is a moment’s shock and they are gone so fast that for a moment he thinks they have vanished where they stood, vanished into thin air.

He stands a long time, in case they come back, and eventually makes his way to the step. There is no sign, no token of their presence, no footprints or shed hair.

* * *

He had planned to return to the summerhouse, to hope that no one would notice that he’d ever left, but he’s too wet not to go straight in to change. He returns the way he set out, through the back gate into the compound. The surface of the pond is still dimpling, circles still spreading, drops still gathering on the overhanging leaves. He can feel wet socks squishing in his shoes as he makes his way along the gravel path, and the water that crept through his jacket is now pasting his shirt sleeves to his arms. He climbs onto the veranda. The screens are open, but not far enough for him to pass through. It seems uncouth, to walk into someone’s house. At home he would knock, or at least call as he opened the door. He hesitates, and hears footsteps. Makoto, looking like a willow pattern figure clasping his gown under an umbrella, is coming along the path.

‘I am sorry to leave you again. I had a call to pay, and then I was in discussion with my father. I hope you have not been dull.’

Makoto’s eyes are hooded, his gaze just below Tom’s face.

‘Not in the least. I would not have guessed that a summer house would be so beguiling in the rain.’

He finds that he does not want to tell Makoto about his walk.

Makoto nods. ‘In such a climate, we must build for wet weather also. But you are very wet!’

As we should build at home, Tom thinks, but who makes a rain garden? We huddle in our dimmed rooms and blinker the grey skies with net curtains. And he is being foolish. There is no possible call for secrecy. In any case, most of the village has probably heard that he passed by.

‘Not so very wet. I took a short walk. Mostly I have been admiring your garden.’

Their eyes meet, and slide away.

‘Back to the shrine?’ Makoto asks, as if he doesn’t already know, as if he hasn’t already been told that his foreigner has been sneaking around up there in the rain.

‘Makoto,’ he asks. ‘Makoto, just for this evening, do you have a suit of Japanese clothes I could wear? Perhaps you keep one for guests?’

Rain scrabbles on the roof and the fire hisses and shifts. In the kitchen, cups and bowls chime as water pours and the maids’ voices rise and fall. What do they talk about, two servants at night in a Japanese mountain village? Makoto’s face is burnished by firelight, intent on the charcoal glow. Without looking up, he calls. There is silence in the kitchen and then lamplight from behind the curtain, the shuffle of sock feet over straw. Tom adjusts the cotton gown, feeling, as he has all evening, half-dressed, as if he’s gone to the office in his nightshirt. He thinks Makoto is asking for sake.

It comes in a stoneware bottle, with two cups.

‘Yes?’ asks Makoto. No bowing, no invitation.

‘Please,’ says Tom.

He repeats what Makoto says as well as he can—a toast, probably—and sips. His eyes water. Not sake but some kind of spirits.

‘No,’ says Makoto. ‘Like this.’ He tips back his head and tosses the draught. ‘Again.’

The firelight dissolves and spins. They are both lying down now, like Roman senators at a feast. Makoto reaches for the bottle and closes his hand on it the second time he tries. Tom holds his hand over his cup, no more, but Makoto pours anyway. The charcoals glow dragon-red and Makoto’s legs and feet fade away into the room’s night. Tom licks his hand.

‘You’re so sad, to leave home again?’

Tom hasn’t visited his mother since before his marriage, but his last nights there have usually been marked by a guilty sense of freedom, of a duty discharged, like the trickle of outdoor air into a stale room.

Makoto rolls onto his back. ‘No. I have asked my parents for something and they have declined.’

He’s too drunk to phrase an indirect question. Arranged marriages, they still have arranged marriages in Japan. Often, he’s read, the couple hardly meet before the wedding.

‘A woman? You want to marry.