The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  The food was cleverly prepared though not remarkably good— some five dishes, and two or three flagons of sake. It was early when they sat down, and Teinosuke, sensing that Hashidera was extremely busy, meant to take his leave early. There were still traces of light in the early-spring sky when they left the restaurant. The meal could have taken no more than two hours. Although it was clear that Hashidera was only returning a courtesy, and although the conversation, of the most desultory, touched on none of the significant matters Teinosuke had hoped it might, he did learn something of Hashidera: his specialty was internal medicine, and in particular the gastroscope; he had chanced upon his return from Germany to become acquainted with this phannaceutical company, and circumstances had compelled him to give up medicine and turn instead to business; the company had a president, who was never seen; Hashidera did most of the work; when he went out into the provinces to sell new medicines, the confusion of the customer who had assumed he was not a doctor, and learned in the course of the conversation that he was, could sometimes be very amusing. Hashidera did not once ask about the Makioka family, and Teinosuke found it difficult to speak of Yukiko, but when fruit was brought he gathered his courage and, working his remarks into the conversation so that they did not sound like an apology, mentioned the fact that his sister-in-law was far from the moody girl she at first impressed one as being.

  16

  THE NEXT DAY Sachiko had a call from Mrs. Niu. So Teinosuke had visited Mr. Hashidera. It was splendid that he had gone ahead by himself. She hoped that he would keep up the work and that they would become close friends. The Makiokas had been in the habit of leaving everything to others—hence their reputation for haughtiness. Mrs. Niu and Mrs. Itani had brought matters thus far, and it remained to see what their own efforts would do for them. The work of the two ladies, she thought, was at an end. They would withdraw for the time being. She was sure everything would be arranged beautifully. The Makiokas should do their best and see what came of the negotiations. And she would be waiting to hear the good news. She even offered congratulations. To Sachiko and Teinosuke, it hardly seemed that they were ready to be congratulated.

  Immediately afterwards they had a visit from Dr. Kushida, who was passing the house on his way to see a patient. He had the information Sachiko had requested. Sachiko had some time before remembered that Dr. Kushida and Hashidera were both alumni of Osaka University, though not in the same graduating class, and had thought to ask about the latter. Always busy, Dr. Kushida did not even take off his coat. He handed Sachiko a piece of paper. She would find on it all he could tell her, he said, and left. Fortunate to have a classmate who was a very close friend of Hashidera’s, Dr. Kushida had been able to make detailed inquiries about the man, his family in Shizuoka, and even the daughter, a quiet, docile girl whose reputation at school was far from bad. In general the information agreed with what Teinosuke had already been able to gather. As he left, Dr. Kushida added that he could give the man his highest recommendation.

  At last Yukiko’s luck had turned, said Teinosuke to his wife. They must do something to bring the negotiations to a happy conclusion. Though aware that he might seem wanting in common sense, therefore, he sat down and wrote Hashidera a letter some five or six feet long. He must apologize for his rudeness in discussing so delicate a problem by mail, and yet he must tell Hashidera about his sister-in-law. He had been on the verge of speaking the day before. Now, quite without regard for the proprieties, he would unburden himself. The question was this: why had his sister-in-law reached such an age without marrying? Possibly Hashidera suspected something dark in her past or something wrong with her health. There were no such complications. One reason, and one reason alone, explained her not having married, and perhaps he had already heard of it from Mrs. Niu or Mrs. Itani: the people around Yukiko, even though they belonged to a family of little importance, had chosen to be fussy about position and pedigree, and had succeeded in making themselves unpopular by turning down good proposal after good proposal. The result he would not attempt to disguise: people no longer brought word of likely candidates. It would be ideal if Hashidera would investigate for himself until his last suspicions were cleared away. The responsibility lay with the people around her. Yukiko herself was unblemished and had a perfectly clean conscience. He knew that he might seem to be boasting too much about a relative, but he could give Yukiko good marks in intelligence, learning, deportment, artistic ability. And what touched him particularly was that Yukiko was fond of children. Teinosuke’s own daughter, ten this year, was actually closer to Yukiko than to her own mother. It seemed only natural that she should be. Yukiko watched over her school work and piano practice, and was a devoted nurse when she was ill. Here again he hoped that Hashidera would investigate and see for himself. And the matter of whether or not she was moody: as he had suggested the day before, she was not. Hashidera need feel no uneasiness on that score. If he might be permitted to speak quite openly, continued Teinosuke, he was prepared to offer it as his opinion that Yukiko would in no way disappoint Hashidera. There was no doubt that she could at the very least make the little girl happy. He was aware that in writing with such warmth of a relative he might embarrass Hashidera, but it was his desire to see Yukiko married that compelled him to write. He hoped again that Hashidera would forgive his unconventional behavior.

  Such was the letter, which Teinosuke took great care to write in the gravest and most formal language. Confident since his student days of his ability to write, he had no particular trouble discussing the most delicate matters in the most circumspect fashion. This time, however, he was afraid of over-writing. He labored to avoid seeming importunate on the one hand and stiffly reserved on the other. The first draft was too strong and the second too weak, and immediately after he had mailed the third draft he began to wonder whether he had made a mistake. If Hashidera did not want to remarry, the letter was not likely to change his mind; and if he was interested, the letter might alienate him. It might have .been better to wait.

  Not really expecting a reply, Teinosuke found himself on edge even so when two or three days passed and he heard nothing. The following Sunday he left the house after telling Sachiko that he was going out for a walk. He found himself in a cab at Osaka Station and ordered it to Tennōji Ward. Though he had no real intention of calling on Hashidera, he remembered the address and thought he would just wander by for a look at the house. Leaving the cab in what he took to be the neighborhood, he walked along •reading the names at the gates, and, possibly because the air felt like spring, his step became brisker, and the future seemed bright. Hashidera’s house was relatively new, a cheerful house with a sunny southern exposure. It was one in a row of three or four trim two-storey houses, each with its board fence and its pine trees, far from badly built for houses to rent—a little suggestive in their way of the house one might choose for setting up a mistress. Perhaps even so small a house was too large for a middle-aged widower with only one daughter. Teinosuke stood for a time looking up through the pine needles, each separate needle aglitter in the morning sun, at a half-open upstairs window. It seemed a shame to have come so far for nothing. He pushed open the gate and rang the bell.

  The housekeeper, fifty or so, led him upstairs.

  “Good morning.”

  He turned and saw Hashidera at the foot of the stairs, a spruce kimono pulled over his nightgown. “Could you wait just a few minutes? I seem to have overslept.”

  “Please, please. It was rude of me not to warn you.”

  Hashidera bowed genially and started toward the back of the house. Teinosuke was much relieved. He had felt that he could not rest until he saw the man again. The letter had obviously not offended him.

  Teinosuke waited in the front room on the second floor, apparently the parlor. There were no flowers in the shelved niche, but the wall-hanging, the porcelain below it, the framed motto over the door, the double screen, the sandalwood table, and the smoking set were carefully arranged and in good taste,
and the fact that the paper-panelled doors and the mats on the floor were spotless and had none of the shabbiness one associates with widowers’ apartments suggested what sort of man Hashidera was, and suggested too what his wife must have been. The house had seemed bright and cheerful as he looked up from the gate, and it was even brighter than he had expected. The door panels, white with a leaf pattern in mica, turned off the sunlight brilliantly. The air was crystal clear to the farthest corners of the room, the smoke from Teinosuke’s cigarette hung motionless in a sharply defined spiral. Though he had felt a little forward as he handed his card to the housekeeper, he was glad now that he had come. It was something to be a guest in the house, and to see that the master was not out of sorts.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  Some ten minutes later, Hashidera came back in a carefully pressed blue-serge suit. It was wanner on the veranda, he thought —he led Teinosuke to wicker chairs from which they looked out over the street. Not wanting it to seem that he had come for an answer to his letter, Teinosuke meant to leave immediately, but the sun was warm through the glass doors, and Hashidera as always made it easy to stay on, and presently an hour had gone by. Teinosuke did finally mention the letter, for which he said he must apologize. Hashidera answered that on the contrary he had been most grateful. For the rest, the conversation flowed in an effortless detour around the really significant matter. Teinosuke roused himself and stood up to leave. Hashidera was going to the movies with his daughter, however, and if Teinosuke had no other business he might go at least that far with them. Anxious for a glimpse of the daughter, Teinosuke accepted the invitation.

  Cabs were becoming scarce. Hashidera called a Packard from a garage he knew, and Teinosuke rode with him as far as the Asahi Building. Hashidera would of course be glad to see him to the station—if he had no other plans, though, suppose he join them. Teinosuke was uncomfortable at the thought that he would be one more meal in debt. But he did want to know the daughter, and it was such a good opportunity to become friendlier with Hashidera too.

  For another hour or so they talked over dinner. This time, with the daughter along, the conversation was little more than innocent chatter about movies and the Kabuki, and American actors and Japanese actors, and school. The girl was thirteen, three years older than Etsuko, and much more poised. Though she still wore a student’s uniform and there was no sign that she used make-up, her. face was no longer that of a little girl. It was the delicately molded face of an adult, rather long and thin, with a proud, high nose. Inasmuch as she did not look like Hashidera, Teinosuke suspected that she took after her mother, who must have been a beauty. Probably Hashidera saw in the girl the image of his dead wife.

  Teinosuke tried to pay the bill. No, the invitation had been Hashidera’s, and Hashidera would pay. Very well, said Teinosuke, the next party would be his. He would like to show them Kobe. He left them at the elevator with a promise to meet again the following Sunday. The girl was to be along too. That promise was the gift he brought home from his expedition.

  17

  SACHIKO laughed at news of this remarkable success. He was becoming rather brazen these days, she said, but secretly she was very pleased. There was a time when she would have been furious at this lack of restraint, and Teinosuke himself, knowing that until recently he would not have been up to such forwardness, could only marvel at the change their search for a husband had brought. But he had gone far enough. He would wait to see what came of the Sunday meeting. In the meantime there was a telephone call from Mrs. Niu. She had heard that Teinosuke had met the girl too, and she could not tell them how delighted she was at the brightening prospects. And Hashidera and his daughter were to be their guests. Mrs. Niu hoped everything would be done to make them feel welcome. She hoped especially that Yukiko would do her best to cancel out that first impression of “moodiness,” an impression that had troubled Mrs. Niu deeply. It seemed then that Hashidera reported each new development to her. He could not be entirely cold to the proposal.

  On Sunday, the Hashideras stopped by the Ashiya house for an hour or two, and a party of six set out in a cab for Kobe. The Makiokas had debated at some length what to eat—Chinese food, Western food at the Oriental Grill, or Nagasaki food—and had decided that the Kikusui, a Sukiyaki restaurant, was most like Kobe. Lunch was over at four. After a stroll through the city and tea at Juchheims, the Hashideras left for Osaka. The Makiokas went on to see the American movie Condor at Hankyu Hall. It was not to be expected that one meeting would bring any real intimacy between the two families, and in fact they had scarcely gotten to know one another’s faces.

  The next afternoon Yukiko was upstairs practicing her calligraphy.

  “Telephone, Miss Yukiko.” O-hani came running up.

  “For Mrs. Makioka?”

  “He said he would like to speak to Miss Yukiko.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Mr. Hashidera.”

  Yukiko put down her brush in great consternation. She hovered at the foot of the stairs, her face a flaming red, and went no nearer the telephone.

  “Where is Mrs. Makioka?”

  “She stepped out for a minute.”

  “Where?”

  “To mail a letter, I believe. She left just this minute. Shall I call her?”

  “Quick! Go call her. Quick!”

  O-haru hurried out the door. Half for the exercise, Sachiko generally went out to mail her own letters, and while she was about it to take a stroll along the embankment. O-haru found her just around the first corner.

  “Mrs. Makioka,” she panted. “Miss Yukiko wants you.”

  “Why?”

  “There is a telephone call from Mr. Hashidera.”

  “From Mr. Hashidera?” This was quite unexpected. “For me?”

  “No, for Miss Yukiko. But Miss Yukiko sent me to call you.”

  “Did she go to the phone?”

  “She was standing by the stairs when I left.”

  “Yukiko is so odd. She could just as well go to the phone herself.”

  Most unfortunate, thought Sachiko. Yukiko’s dislike for the telephone was no secret, and when—rarely—there was a call for her she usually had someone else do the talking and went to the telephone herself only on very special occasions. No one had objected up to now, but this was one of those special occasions. Whatever Hashidera’s reasons for calling, it seemed imperative, since he had asked for her, that Yukiko take the call. He would receive quite the wrong impression if Sachiko were to talk to him instead. Yukiko was after all not a sixteen-year-old. Though her sisters understood this shyness, they could hardly expect a stranger to understand. They would be lucky if Hashidera was not offended. Perhaps Yukiko had gone to the telephone, timid and protesting? But to go reluctantly after having made him wait, to say almost nothing—she was even worse over the telephone than she was face-to-face—and as a result to have him break off the negotiations—the better alternative might be to let him go on waiting. There was always that stubborn core. Possibly she had refused to go near the telephone, and was waiting for Sachiko to rescue her. Even if Sachiko were to rush home, however, she would probably find that he had given up, and if he had not, what could she say by way of excuse? This was one time when Yukiko herself should have taken the call, and promptly. Something told Sachiko that this trivial incident could mean the end of the negotiations on which they had worked so hard. But surely Hashidera, polished and amiable gentleman that he was, would not exaggerate the incident. If Sachiko had only been at home, she could somehow have dragged Yukiko to the telephone. Wretched luck that he had picked a time—no more than five or six minutes—when she was out of the house.

  The receiver was back on the hook, and Yukiko was nowhere in sight.

  “Where is Miss Yukiko?” she asked O-aki, who was making cakes for tea.

  “She went upstairs, I believe. She is not in her room?”

  “Did she answer the telephone?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

>   “Right away?”

  “She waited and waited, and then finally …”

  “And did she talk long?”

  “No more than a minute or so.”

  “When did she finish?”

  “Just this minute.”

  Upstairs, Yukiko was studying a copybook.

  “What did Mr. Hashidera want?”

  “He said he would be waiting at Osaka Station at four-thirty, and he wanted me to meet him.”

  “I suppose he wanted to go for a walk with you.”

  “He said he was thinking of walking through Shinsaibashi and having dinner somewhere, and he wondered if I would go with him.”

  “And what did you say?”

  Yukiko did not answer.

  “Are you going?”

  Yukiko muttered something that sounded very much like “No.”

  “Why?”

  Silence again.

  “You do not agree, Yukiko, that it might be a good idea to go?”

  Sachiko knew her sister well enough not to need an answer: it would be unthinkable for Yukiko to go walking alone with a prospective husband, a man she had met but two or three times. And yet Sachiko was angry. No doubt Yukiko disliked the thought of having dinner with a man she did not know well, but did she feel no obligation to Sachiko—more important, to Teino-suke? If she would only consider the embarrassment and the humiliation Teinosuke and Sachiko had endured, she ought to think of doing something for herself. It had been bold of Hashidera to make the call in the first place, and it must have been a deep disappointment to be turned away so brusquely.

  “You refused, then?”

  “I said I was very sorry.”

  If she had to refuse, she could have refused gracefully, but the art of graceful refusal was foreign to Yukiko. Tears of resentment came to Sachiko’s eyes at the thought of the strained, inept reply Yukiko must have made. Angrier and angrier the longer she looked at her sister, Sachiko turned abruptly and started downstairs. She went out to the terrace and on into the garden.