‘Ah, it’s nice and cool. I said it would be pleasanter here. What a nice breeze.’ She walked toward him as she spoke and seated herself unceremoniously on the floor beside the rattan chair. Just as her mother Miya had an air of worldly sophistication that somehow called to mind a geisha, so everything about Ruriko – her beautifully shaped eyes with the striking eyebrows, the rounded cheeks curving down toward the gentle firmness of the jaw, the slightly square shoulders on the short trunk with the firm, well-shaped buttocks – combined to give her a clearcut, pert air that suggested not so much the daughter of a good family as a young geisha, onetime dancing girl, who had tied her hair up in a knot in imitation of the style of a well-bred young lady. Compared with the other young girls among his relatives or the sisters of his friends, this neat femininity had for Takao the attractive fragility of some delicate bloom.

‘Takao, when did you see Mother last?’

‘Let’s see – it was when I was home for the April vacation, so it must be about four months ago. She was well then, though.’

‘She was. It was just after that she had morning sickness. Mother always has it badly, doesn’t she? So nobody realized what was really wrong with her.’

At this point she seemed suddenly to be overtaken by sadness again and her voice became thick with tears.

‘You’ll see today. You’ll get a shock. She used to be plump, but now she’s so thin, and deathly pale; it suits her of course, but it’s horrid all the same. And she can hardly talk. You can’t put your face close to listen, either, as Grandmother and the others say it’s catching if you go too near.’

‘Well, what do you expect with a disease?’ said Takao frowning with obvious distaste. ‘Has she got as thin as all that?’

‘Yes. She’s literally only half the size she was.’