by Ogai Mori
“You're really confusing me. We're their parents. They can never be that.”
“Are you sure? Do you really believe that? What an egotist you are! Do you mean then to have everything just as it is?”
“Of course.”
“Oh? Letting pretty and plain have the same parasols?”
“What did you say? Now what are you up to? Are you telling me the plot of a farce?”
“Yes I'm not allowed to have a part in a serious play.”
“Can't you talk about something more serious than a play? What do you mean by parasols?”
“You know what I mean.”
“How can I? I haven't any idea about them.”
“I'll tell you then. Do you remember when you bought me a parasol from Yokohama?”
“What about it?”
“You didn't buy it only for me”
“If I didn't, then who else did I buy it for?”
“No, that's not exactly what I mean, I suppose. You did buy it for me, isn't that right? Because the idea just occurred to you when you picked one out for the woman at Muenzaka.”
Otsune had injected the subject of the parasols into their discussion, and now that the words had taken definite shape, she couldn't help remembering her earlier rage.
Suezo was startled by this direct hit from his wife, and he almost said aloud: “She's getting closer!” But he was able to look astonished and said: “Impossible! Do you mean, actually mean that—that the same parasol I bought for you is owned by Yoshida's woman?”
“Why not? Since you bought her the very same kind!” she said, her voice suddenly turning into a shriek.
“Is that the only thing you're getting excited about? What an idiot you are! Look. I'm warning you—don't carry your silliness too far. When I bought that parasol for you, they told me it had just come in as a sample. I'm certain of that. But the same kind must easily be available on the Ginza by now and in the neighborhood. I assure you that this case is the same as the play with the theme of the innocent man who was found guilty. Tell me, Otsune, have you met Yoshida's mistress? I don't see how you could have identified her.”
“Nothing's easier than that. Everyone in the neighborhood knows her because she's such a pearl! ”
Otsune's hatred was bound up in her words. Before this she had let him take advantage of her with his lying, but now, as though she were vividly seeing the affair acted out in front of her eyes, nothing could make her feel that her husband's words were convincing enough.
All the while Suezo had been wondering how his wife had met his mistress and if they had spoken to each other, but he thought it would look bad for him at present if he asked Otsune any of the details.
“A pearl do you call her? Is that the kind of woman you call a pearl? I would think her face was too flat.”
Otsune said nothing about this reply, but the fault Suezo had found with the face of the hated woman appeased her somewhat.
During the night a conciliation again took place after the heated argument, but in Otsune's heart was the pain of a thorn not yet pulled out of flesh.
Chapter Fifteen
THE ATMOSPHERE in Suezo's house was gradually becoming more and more gloomy. Otsune was often seen gazing absent-mindedly into space and neglecting her work. At such times she paid no attention to the children and scolded them if they bothered her. But then she suddenly realized what she had done and said to them: “I'm sorry. What was it you wanted?” And later she would cry alone.
When the maid said: “What shall I prepare today?” Otsune often failed to answer. Or she might say: “Oh? Anything, anything you wish.”
Suezo's children were shunned by their classmates, who sometimes shouted at them: “Moneylenders! Money-lenders!” At Suezo's insistence Otsune had kept them unusually neat. But now they were seen playing in the streets with their hair full of dust and their clothing torn.
The maid went about grumbling at the carelessness of her mistress, and, like a horse that dawdles along the road with an unskilled rider on its back, also became negligent of her own duties so that the fish rotted in the cupboards and the vegetables dried up.
With his passion for order, Suezo found the slovenly state of his home painful. But he couldn't complain because he knew that the cause and the fault were his own. He had prided himself on his ability to correct others by alluding to their weaknesses in a light-hearted manner, but he found that his wife became even more violent when he tried to humor her.
He began to observe her secretly, and he was surprised to find that her strange behavior was more noticeable when he stayed at home, for when he was out of the house she seemed like a person who had awakened from a stupor, and she went about her household tasks. When he learned this fact after talking with the children and the maid, he was at first startled. With his shrewdness in logic he tried to account for her conduct. Her illness, he reasoned, grew worse in his presence because she was dissatisfied with his behavior. He had tried not to act like a cold-hearted husband, and he had avoided any possibility of giving her the impression that there was any estrangement between them. But since he noticed that she was even more out of sorts when he purposely stayed at home, it seemed that his remedy only aggravated her illness. “I'll change my methods,” he said to himself.
He began to leave earlier and return later than usual, But the results were worse. The first time he went away earlier, his wife merely looked up in surprise, but when he came back late, instead of giving him a moody glance, she marched upon him with “What you been doing out this long!” Her behavior suggested that she was no longer able to put up with the situation, that she had reached the limits of patience and suffering. And then she burst out crying.
From that time on, whenever he wanted to leave before the usual hour, she tried to stop him with force, saying: “Why so early?”
And when he began to explain, she said: “You're lying!”
But when he started outdoors in spite of her protests, she pleaded: “Wait! Don't go yet! There's something I must ask you!” She would keep him there by holding on to his clothes or by standing in front of the door and refusing to let him pass. She did this even in the presence of the maid.
Usually Suezo would pass over anything unpleasant by joking about it in order not to make a great issue of a point, but sometimes the maid saw an ugly scene in which he shook off his clinging wife and she fell. But if Suezo said: “All right, I won't go. Tell me what you have to say,” his wife would submit a series of difficult problems by no means solvable in a day.
“What,” she would say, “do you want me to become?”
Sometimes she said: “The way things are, what will my future be?”
In short, Suezo's experiment of an early departure and a late return was totally ineffective in curing his wife of her illness.
He went about the problem in a different way. He realized that when he stayed at home his wife was worse. With this fact in mind he had attempted to be away, but then she had tried to force him to remain. This meant that she was deliberately making herself ill by deliberately keeping him at home. The situation reminded him of an experience he had had when the university medical school was still at Izumibashi.
A student, one Ikai, had borrowed money from him. The boy would pretend he was unconscious of his own appearance, wearing a pair of high clogs on his naked feet and striding with his left shoulder two or three inches higher than the other. Ikai had put off paying Suezo back, had even refused to rewrite his bond, and somehow had always evaded Suezo's pursuit.
One day at the corner of an alley Suezo had come upon him and asked: “Where are you running to?”
“Oh? Why—just over to the jujitsu master's across the way. I say—about that business of yours. You can expect me one of these days.” And with that Ikai slipped away.
Suezo pretended to continue on ahead, but he secretly came back, stood at the corner, and spied on the boy. He saw him enter a high-class restaurant.
Suezo hurried t
hrough his business, and a short time later he dared to enter the restaurant, saying: “Where's that student Ikai?”
As you might have expected, Ikai was quite surprised to find Suezo there, but assuming his characteristic pose as a hero, called out: “Come into the room, Suezo! I've got a few geishas!” And then forcing the usurer to have some saké, he said: “Don't talk about business here. Just drink at my expense.”
This had been Suezo's first experience with geishas, and he couldn't help thinking that one of them, Oshun by name, was quite a filly. She had been drinking too much and, sitting before Ikai, had begun to denounce him for some reason or other. Suezo hadn't forgotten her words: “Ikai-san, you want us to believe you're brave, the way you put on those grand airs of yours! But you're really nothing but a coward! Let me tell you something for your own benefit. A woman never loves a man who's not kind enough to hit her occasionally. Try to remember that!”
Suezo thought that this might be true not only of geishas but of women in general. Lately his own wife had tried to keep him near her with sulky looks and resistance. This meant that she wanted him to do something to her. “She wants me to hit her!” he said to himself. “Yes, that's it. To really strike her!”
He had forced her to work like an animal without giving her enough food, and, with her feminine qualities held back, she had been transformed into a kind of beast. But since she had moved into a new house and had acquired a servant to help her and to call her okusan , she had been raised to a human level and had actually become an ordinary woman. And now she wanted to be beaten like that geisha Oshun.
But what about him? He had pushed his own way through the world with a determination to make a fortune, and cared nothing about what others said of him. He had bowed before fledglings and called them master. It had been his principle that being kicked and trampled didn't matter as long as he made money. And for most of his life, no matter what place he was in or what person came to him, he had prostrated himself as flat as a spider. From what he had seen and learned of the men he had associated with, those who were very considerate of their superiors bullied the people below them and, when they were drunk, even struck their wives and children. But with him no one was higher or lower. He would have thrown himself at any man's feet if it had made him wealthier. Otherwise he had no use for such a person. He would have nothing to do with him, would ignore him. He wouldn't even take the trouble to lift his hand against him. He would rather think about his interest than waste his energies that way. He had treated his wife similarly.
Otsune wanted him to attack her. “Too bad for her, but she won't get that from me.” If his debtors had been lemons, he would have squeezed them to the last drop of bitter juice, but he would fight no one.
These were Suezo's latest thoughts on the subject.
Chapter Sixteen
MORE AND more people passed along Muenzaka. It was September, and the beginning of the term at the university saw the students returning from their homes to their lodgings.
The mornings were as cool as the nights, but the days were still hot. In Otama's house the bamboo blinds were still drawn, their unfaded green covering the window from top to bottom. Otama sat inside with nothing to do. She leaned against a post hung with fans and vacantly looked into the street. After three o'clock the students would pass in small groups. And she knew that whenever they came, the voices of the girls next door would rise like the sounds of so many young sparrows. And attracted by the noise, she would also glance out.
At that time most of the university students were of the type who were later to be called “henchmen.” If there were a few gentlemen among them, they were about to graduate. Those who were fair and handsome were mostly unattractive to her, for they seemed shallow and conceited. And those who were not superficial and vain, even the bright students amount them, were not preferable because from a woman's point of view they appeared too rough-mannered. Nevertheless, every afternoon Otama, without any particular interest, would look at the students walking past her window.
But one day she was startled by an awareness of something sprouting inside her. This embryo within her imagination had been conceived under the threshold of consciousness and, suddenly taking definite shape, had sprung out.
Her aim in life had been her father's happiness, so she had become a mistress, almost forcibly persuading the old man to accept. She knew she had degraded herself to the lowest limits, yet she had still sought a kind of spiritual comfort in the unselfishness of her choice. But when the person who supported her turned out to be a usurer, she did not know how to cope with this new source of misfortune. The thought tormented her, and she was unable to remove it. She had gone to her father to tell him about it and to ask him to share her pain. But when she had visited him and had seen him living comfortably for the first time, she didn't want to pour a drop of poison into the saké cup he held in his hand. Whatever pain the decision might cost her, she was determined to keep her sadness to herself. And when she had made this decision, the girl, who had always depended on others, had felt for the first time her own independence.
After that, she secretly began to watch what she said and did, and when Suezo came, she started to serve him self-consciously instead of accepting him frankly and sincerely as she had previously done. She would be with him in the room, but her real self was detached, watching the scene from the side. And there it would deride first Suezo and then the other Otama for being under his control. When she first became aware of this condition, she was shocked. But in time she accepted it, and she said to herself: “That's the way you should feel.”
Her treatment of Suezo became more cordial but her heart more remote. She came to feel that he did not deserve her gratitude for the protection he gave her, nor could she feel obligated to him for what he did. She did not even feel sorry for him because of her indifference. Conversely, in spite of the fact that she had no accomplishment she could boast of, she couldn't help thinking: “Ah, to be only a usurer's possession all my life.”
And watching the students in their walks along the street, she began to speculate: “Isn't there a hero out there? I'll be rescued!”
But when she suddenly found herself indulging in such fancies, she was startled.
It was at this point that Okada got to know her. She saw him as just another student who walked past her window, yet when she realized that even though he was eminently handsome, he didn't seem to be conceited, she suspected that there was something about him that made her feel tender toward him. She began to watch for him to pass in the street.
She didn't even know his name or address, but since they exchanged glances so often, she began to have a natural and familiar feeling toward the young man. Once, before she had realized what she was doing, she had even smiled at him, an act of the sort that eludes suppression at the moment when thought is relaxed and restraint paralyzed. She was not the kind of person who had any conscious intention of making him her lover.
When Okada took off his cap and greeted her for the first time, her heart seemed to lift, and she felt herself blushing. A woman has a keen intuition. And Otama clearly knew that Okada's action was done on impulse and not deliberately. She was pleased by this new phase of their friendship, which was casual and quiet and had the window as a sort of boundary. And she pictured to herself again and again the image of Okada at the moment he had bowed.
A mistress who resides in her keeper's home can have the usual protections, but one who lives by herself has troubles she alone knows about.
One day a man in a happi coat—a fellow about thirty years old—came to Otama's house and said: “I need some money. I've got to travel, but I can't walk with this wound on my foot.”
Otama sent Ume out with a ten-sen piece wrapped in paper. The man opened the wrapper on the spot. “Ten sen? Is that all? It's a mistake!” And he tossed the coin back to her.
Ume was embarrassed, but picked it up and went back in, only to find the man rudely following her and taking a seat
opposite Otama, who had been putting some charcoal into the fire. He talked incoherently at great length, bragging at first about having been in prison and then making sentimental complaints. Otama could smell saké on his breath.
She was afraid, yet she held back her tears. Under his eyes, she wrapped in a piece of paper two fifty-sen card-like green-notes current at that time and gave them to him. She found that he was more easily satisfied than she had hoped.
“They're halves, but two'll do. You're pretty clever. And you'll do all right in your life—you will.” And with these words he swaggered out with faltering steps.
The incident made Otama feel helpless, and she learned to “buy” her neighbors. She would prepare a special dish and send it over to the sewing teacher, who lived alone.
Her name was Otei, and she was a matron over forty with a fair complexion. She still looked young, though it was difficult to say just why.
“Until I was thirty,” she had told Otama, “I was a high-class servant at a marquis'. But I married and then lost my husband soon after.” She spoke elegantly and boasted of her ability to write characters.
“Can you teach me how to write?” Otama had asked. So the woman lent her some copybooks.
One morning Otei came to the back door to thank Otama for what she had sent over the day before. In the course of their talk while Otei stood at the door, the woman said to Otama: “I believe you know Okada-san, isn't that so?”
Otama had never heard the name before, yet it flashed through her mind that the sewing teacher had referred to the student, that she had seen Okada greeting her, and that the situation compelled her to pretend she knew him. After a brief hesitation that was not perceptible to the other woman, Otama readily answered: “Yes, I do.”
“He's handsome all right,” said Otei, “and yet, I hear there's not a flaw in his conduct.”
“You seem to know him well,” said Otama boldly.
“Madame Kamijo tells me that none of the students at her lodging can match him.” And with these words Otei returned to her house.
