‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

‘The women in those erotic prints. Remember? I showed them to you once, didn’t I?’

‘Well! Of all the –’ Suga reddened.

‘That kind of woman may be all right as a wife for a semiidiot like Michimasa, but …’ He left the rest to her imagination and putting an arm around the shoulders that were cool and white as newly fallen snow drew her to him. She snuggled up to him docilely, convinced by his unspoken comment, it seemed, of the scorn in which he held Miya.

Tomo’s fears had not after all been unfounded.

Perhaps because of the unusual fierceness of the summer, Miya, who had been troubled with pleurisy as a girl and was excessively susceptible to the heat, became a semiinvalid, losing weight visibly and spending half the time in bed upstairs. Then, one morning around the time when the first cool breezes were beginning to blow, an alarming noise came from upstairs where the young couple lived. Miya came rushing down the stairs, almost falling over herself in her haste, and nearly collided with Tomo in the corridor.

‘Mother …’ she gasped, and suddenly burst out weeping in a loud voice. Upstairs, Michimasa could be heard stamping on the floor and yelling imprecations, but no one made to go up to him. Startled though she was, Tomo had been expecting that this day would come sooner or later. Putting her arms about the shivering, uncontrollably sobbing Miya she led her into a room at the back of the house and tried, almost apologetically, to calm her down while seeking to elicit the details of her quarrel with Michimasa.