"We are not allowed to read this book," Sadako explained; "the police have forbidden it. But I found a secret copy. It was undutiful of your father to write such things. He went away from Japan; and everyone said, 'It is a good thing he has gone; he was a bad man; he shamed his country and his family.'"
There was much in the book which Asako could not follow. Her cousin tried to explain it to her; and many nights passed, thus, the two girls sitting up and reading by the pale light of the andon. It was like a renewal of the old friendship. Sometimes a low whistle sounded from outside the house. Sadako would lay aside the book, would slip on her cloak and go out into the garden, where Sekiné was waiting for her.
When she was left to herself Asako began to think for the first time in her life. Hitherto her thoughts had been concerned merely with her own pleasures and pains, with the smiles and frowns of those around her, with petty events and trifling projects. Perhaps, because some of her father's blood was alive in her veins, she could understand certain aspects of his book more clearly than her interpreter, Sadako. She knew now why Geoffrey would not touch her money. It was filthy, it was diseased, like the poor women who had earned it. Of course, her Geoffrey preferred poverty to wealth like that. Could she face poverty with him? Why, she was poor already, here in her cousins' house. Where was the luxury which her money used to buy? She was living the life of a servant and a prisoner.
What would be the end of it? Surely Geoffrey would come back to her, and take her away! But he had no money now, and it would cost much money to travel to Japan. And then, this terrible war! Geoffrey was a soldier. He would be sure to be there, leading his men. Supposing he were killed?
One night in a dream she saw his body carried past her, limp and bleeding. She screamed in her sleep. Sadako awoke, terrified.
"What is the matter?"
"I dreamed of Geoffrey, my husband. Perhaps he is killed in the war."
"Do not say that," said Sadako. "It is unlucky to speak of death. It troubles the ghosts. I have told you this house is haunted."
Certainly for Asako the Fujinami mansion had lost its charm. Even the beautiful landscape was besieged by horrible thoughts. Every day two or three of the Yoshiwara women died of disease and neglect, so Sadako said and therefore every day the invisible population of the Fujinami garden must be increasing, and the volume of their curses must be gathering in intensity. The ghosts hissed like snakes in the bamboo grove. They sighed in the pine branches. They nourished the dwarf shrubs with their pollution. Beneath the waters of the lake the corpses—women's corpses—were laid out in rows. Their thin hands shook the reeds. Their pale faces rose at night to the surface, and stared at the moon. The autumn maples smeared the scene with infected blood; and the stone foxes in front of the shrine of Inari sneered and grinned at the devil world which their foul influence had called into being through the black witchcraft of lechery, avarice and disease.