of marriageable age for himself, a compulsion so strong that he had actually tried to do it, thereby getting himself into very serious trouble. The girl's father had nearly killed him, and he had escaped only by making an abject apology.
With the spread of rumors of that encounter, even the widows who had been giving him their favors became wary of their reputations and would no longer let him come near them. And now, having thus tasted sex and being unbearably hungry for more, the only way he could see to get it was to steal into a house under cover of night and make a woman his. Such a custom had long since disappeared from the village, but he knew that it had once existed, and he had resolved to follow it.
Stealing through the hallway, he did worry that he was setting his sights terribly high, but he had persuaded himself that if he was going to do it at all, he might as well do it big. Taki had always been like a goddess to him. A marriage to her was something worth risking his life for. Besides, the only other people in the house were an old servant couple, Keijiro and his wife, so even if something did go wrong, he would not be likely to encounter such an ugly scene as had occurred last time.
* * *
Descendants of a long line of old-time diviners, the Tendoh family held a special position among the hereditary families of Shinto priests who tended the Togakushi Shrines. Taki was the Tendohs' only daughter, a girl of extraordinary beauty even in early childhood, whose fame had spread to places as far distant as Tokyo through visitors to the shrine and students of Shintoism. As a little girl dancing in her shrine-maiden's outfit, she had always enthralled her audiences.
As she grew up, her looks had ceased to be the only thing extraordinary about her. Time and again, she had seemed possessed, in words and conduct. Science could not explain her behavior, leaving it to individual opinion whether she was merely insane, or whether she was truly possessed by spirits. But belief in spiritual possession was in the nature of the Togakushi region, and she quickly became known among the villagers and Shintoists as a girl of very special powers.
Fearing what those powers might become when they matured, however, Taki's parents had not welcomed their daughter's singular predisposition, so when she graduated from grade school in the spring of her fourteenth year, they had sent her to Tokyo—on the pretext that she was going there to learn manners—to be entrusted to the care of the family of a viscount, who was their close friend and an enthusiastic worshipper at the Togakushi shrines.
She had returned to Togakushi three years later, along with the viscount's son, who was being sent to stay with the Tendohs in hopes of effecting a cure for his tuberculosis through a change of climate. It had been given out that Taki was to act as his nurse, but those close to the Tendohs could see that the two young people were strongly attached.
That had been in the summer of the year before last, and since then, the Tendoh household had been visited by misfortune. At the end of last year, Taki's parents had both died within a short time of each other of malignant influenza compounded by pneumonia, there being no way to get the proper medicines to fight the diseases. Then, at the end of the summer of this year, with the war situation worsening and even students rapidly being drafted, the viscount's son had finally been called back to Tokyo, leaving the stately Tendoh home inhabited only by Taki, about to turn nineteen, and the elderly servant couple, both over sixty.
* * *
The intruder had thus persuaded himself that there was nothing to fear—except perhaps Taki herself. He was not sure that he would not lose his nerve when he came face to face with her, whom he had always considered totally out of his reach. The respected Tendoh family, with its long line of Shinto priests, had a history dating back to the Muromachi period, and what was he but the son of miserable peasants? To be sure, he had been born with a good head on his shoulders and had attracted a fair amount of attention to himself in school, serving as class leader and all that, but graduation had left him still just the son of peasants. By no stretch of the imagination was he a suitable match for a girl of her class. In a peaceful world with a stable society, he would never have been trying such a preposterous trick. But times were different now, maybe so different that he might even succeed. If he did, he would be taking the heiress of the Tendoh family for his bride. Carnal desire and greed were making him bold as well as desperate.
Having helped out at the end of every year with the traditional housecleaning, he was thoroughly familiar with the rooms Taki used. The first double sliding door past the turn of the hallway was the entrance to her bedroom, but just before he got to the turn, he heard her coming out. Hastily, he took cover behind a large cabinet. The sliding door opened and a dim light threw her snadow across the floor. Holding a candlestick, she stepped out into the hall. He almost said something at the sight of her in her shrine-maiden's dancing costume of white tunic and crimson pantaloons, red lips vibrant in a pale face illuminated by the flickering candle. When she closed the door behind her, her face looked even more a vision in the candlelight, and though he wondered what she could be up to at this time of night, he was overcome by her otherworldly beauty.
Quietly, she opened the big sliding closet door across the hallway. The closet appeared to be stuffed with instruments of Shinto rituals. Taking hold of a big cross-tied box on the far right, she lifted it without seeming effort, which surprised him, because it looked quite heavy. Setting it down in the hallway, she stepped into the closet. He couldn't imagine what she was doing, and he was even more surprised when she closed the door behind her, leaving the hallway dark again, except for a dim light visible under the door. Soon, even that disappeared.
For a while he just stood there, expecting her to come out again any second. But she didn't. He stood motionless for five or ten minutes. Then he thought he heard voices, hushed whispers that seemed to come from far away, but he could tell they were young, much too young to be those of Keijiro and his wife.
Pretty soon, he recognized one of the voices as Taki's, but he still could not identify the other. He found enough courage to go over to the closet door, press his ear against it, and listen hard. Now he clearly heard laughter, hers and someone else's, fainter. He opened the door and entered the closet. Taki was not there, but the voices became much clearer. Then he heard her, in a passionate voice, say the name "Tomohiro."
It was that fellow! Tomohiro was the name of the viscount's son—Tomohiro Tachibana. The intruder felt the blood rush to his head. While helping in the garden, he had often seen Tachibana pass by on the veranda. He could see the pale oval face, the face of a boy with an elite upbringing. Taki was always following close behind, with no concern for the eyes of a mere hired hand like himself. He had hardly existed for either of them, but the effeminate boy from Tokyo was robbing him of his goddess, and he could not bear the humiliation and jealousy.
As he cursed to himself about the viscount's son enjoying Taki's favors, probably in a secret room behind the closet, he suddenly remembered that Tachibana shouldn't be there at all. He had received his draft notice and was supposed to have returned to Tokyo! But who else could it be? The intruder groped frantically along the wall. There had to be a device somewhere for moving it! Finally, by mere chance, he touched something and felt a slight motion, seemingly of the entire wall in front of him sliding to the left a bit. With great caution, he pushed it further, until suddenly he was blinded by a bright light shining through the opening. When his eyes adjusted, what he saw made him dizzy.
The area of the room was only about three mats, but still, having worked in that house practically every day, he didn't see how he could have failed to notice it, small as it was. He could not imagine how the space had been designed to hide such a discrepancy.
Against the opposite wall, a girl and boy were locked in an embrace. On a thick silk pallet, the boy was lying on his back and the girl was face down on top of him, her crimson pantaloons discarded near her feet. Her white tunic mostly covered them, but he could tell from the protruding hands and feet and a glimpse of the girl's back that they were naked.
There
