He tried not to look at her. He wasn’t sure how to tell her. “Your sister,” he began, and then he swallowed and tried again. “Your sister, Teshi. Did she have a … very bad sickness before? Was there a day, a night, when you were afraid for her life?” He studied her. “She must be very cold all the time. She’s so pale. Does she ever sleep?”
“Never,” she whispered. “She never does.”
“Her teeth. Are they … sharp? Does she have three red lines around her throat, here?” His fingers worried at his hat. “Teshi isn’t sick, Komako-chan. It isn’t a sickness.”
Slowly the girl turned her face, looked up at him, a terrible question in her eyes.
“Your talent. It isn’t just dustwork. It’s something else, too.” He studied her face, the stillness of it, and he felt sick with what he was going to say. “It’s you. You’re keeping her here, your love for her has been keeping her here. It’s not hurting her,” he added quickly. “But … you need to let her go. You need to give her peace.”
The girl was shaking her head, as if she didn’t believe it, or understand it, or maybe both. But he knew some part of her did understand it, some part of her knew it was so.
“She’s already gone,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
And he was, he felt it deep in his heart, a deep violent ache in his chest. He couldn’t look at her. He thought she’d scream at him, strike his chest with her little fists, or maybe just sneer, or get up and walk angrily away, but she did none of those things. She only sat, observing the darkness, as if she hadn’t even heard him. And that was when he felt it again, the presence, and he peered across the rooftop. The woman of smoke was back, standing on the clay tiles, silhouetted darkly against the night’s darkness. Jacob felt something cold and unhappy go through him. It started to rain, softly, a warm curtain of water dripping from the gables in front. The shadow’s attention seemed taken by something in the street below, some flicker of movement, and she extended a long arm and pointed, and Jacob got to his feet to see.
A small shape, very white in the darkness, ghostlike and eerie, was running along the street, away from the theater, into the heat and darkness of the old quarter. He heard Komako breathe in sharply beside him.
It was her sister, Teshi.
She’d got loose.
15
THE GIRL WHO WAS SEEN
Komako flew through the trapdoor, taking the stairs two at a time, fear and confusion rising like a hurt in her throat, and then she was hurtling along the dark corridor, past the empty chamber she shared with her sister, and she was cursing the folds of her kimono as she leaped the next flight to the landing, leaped again to the last. She could hear Jacob behind her, slower, heavier, his boots banging over the hardwood, but she didn’t wait, she couldn’t, not with Teshi going out into the poor districts in the dark while the cholera raged, Teshi who was like a five-year-old silhouette of the disease itself. Komako knew the superstitious poor, had lived among them all her life; she knew what they were capable of. Stagehands stood at their brooms, heads turning, as she sprinted past. She didn’t care. It felt to her already as if something she’d always had was ending. She threw open the alley-side door, plunged into the warm rain.
She wasn’t thinking about Jacob’s words, what he’d been trying to tell her. She understood, or thought she did, or understood enough at least, to feel an indignant fury swelling in her at what he’d dared suggest. Let him be gone too, she thought. If he won’t help Teshi, then he’s no use either.
The rain was lashing her face now, in her eyes. She wiped at it with an open hand. She could hear shutters banging closed all along the Asakusa district, as if worse weather were coming. There were still lanterns burning under some of the eaves, a few still lit and swaying on their ropes above the street crossings.
Then, ahead, she saw it: a wisp of white kimono trailing around a corner.
Jacob was calling to her to slow down. He was right behind her, a big dark shadow, bareheaded, his hat swinging in one fist. But she was close, so close to Teshi. She came around a corner and ducked down a narrow dripping alley, past the huddled poor, one woman under a ragged parasol, and then she saw her sister.
She was so little, so pale. She was standing very still, a tiny confused creature with her hair wet, shivering, cold in the swampy heat, staring at the wrapped bodies stacked like cordwood under the coffin maker’s awning. Lanterns within were lit. There was a sound of steady hammering.