Read Online The Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw - Free Book Online Page B

wind snatched my hat off and sent it bounding along the platform, as though
it was racing crazily along ahead of me. All at once, it changed direction and veered
into the path of the train. Disappeared. One instant, it was there, the next it was
not. The train was gathering speed. There was nothing I could do, and I came to a
stop.
    As the sound of the train died away, a stillness, vast and desolate, descended upon
the platform. And I was lost, and utterly, utterly alone.

Part II
    KATSUO

Chapter 8
    YOU asked me, Inspector, about Katsuo. What he was like.
    Where do I begin? We were childhood friends. Katsuo was a little older than me. Like
me, he was an only child. But when his father was killed in the war—in a bomb explosion—and
his mother died not long afterwards, he was taken in by an uncle who lived in a different
part of the city. An uncle on his mother’s side. A poor uncle. For a couple of years
after that I hardly saw him.
    Katsuo proved to be a gifted student. As a consequence, as was not unusual at that
time, particularly for children who had been orphaned by the war, an anonymous benefactor
arranged to pay the fees for him to go to a good Middle School. My school.
    He arrived midyear, in the ninth grade. I can still picture him standing at the classroom
doorway with the principal, Mr Nakajima. I was overjoyed to see him again. I could
hardly wait to tell my parents. For his part, Katsuo barely glanced at me. It was
as if he no longer knew me.
    This is Master Katsuo Ikeda, the headmaster said to our teacher.
    She too seemed a little surprised to see him. They exchanged a few words. And then
the headmaster introduced him to the rest of us. After which, with a gentle prod,
Katsuo went to sit at the back of the class.
    After the bell, Katsuo stayed behind, I assumed to talk to the teacher about where
he was up to, and to sort out his books.
    Guess who’s come back, I said to my parents when I returned home from school that
afternoon. Of course, they had no idea.
    Katsuo, I said. He’s back. And he’s in my class.
    And so we resumed our friendship. He started to visit us again. In fact, he was always
at our house. It almost seemed as if he lived there. His father and my father had
been old friends. We were like brothers again. Both my parents loved Katsuo, loved
him as if he was a second son. If only we had adopted him, my mother would say. As
if they could have taken legal precedence over Katsuo’s own flesh and blood.
    For a long time, I thought it was my father who had provided the money for Katsuo’s
education. Years later, when I asked him about this, he became very angry. One does
not ask such questions, Tadashi, he said. I should know better.
    I never knew—until much later—whether he was angry because he had provided the money,
but it was a matter of family honour that this not be revealed; or whether he was
angry because he had never thought to do so, and wished he had.
    But that was later. At the time, when Katsuo came to my school, and we resumed our
friendship, he reignited a joy in my parent’s life which had long been absent. Not
that my parents were unhappy. They weren’t. But he seemed to bring them closer together
again, to remind them that good things in life still existed after all.
    Of course, Katsuo did brilliantly at school—we both did, except that Katsuo did so
effortlessly. Moreover, unlike me—I have always been somewhat reserved—Katsuo always
seemed to know what to say. How to win favour with people. Teachers, his fellow students,
other adults. Even when it was clear that what he was saying was exaggerated, or
could not possibly have been the case, people did not take offence. Instead, they
laughed at his audacity, became affectionately complicit, as though they enjoyed
being taken in. He had the happy knack of stealing the limelight, by some witty remark
or droll observation. But he did so in a way that almost always won him friends.
Perhaps we thought that by being around