The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  Yukiko might still try to recover the lost ground by calling Hashidera immediately, apologizing for her rudeness, and offering to meet him in Osaka that evening, but there was very little chance that Sachiko’s arguments would move her. They would only quarrel if Sachiko tried to use force. Should Sachiko go to the telephone herself? Could she offer an explanation ingenious enough to convince him that Yukiko had good reasons for not meeting him today? Suppose they meet tomorrow, then, he might say, and what could she answer? Yukiko would continue to refuse until she felt that she really knew the man. Giving up the thought of immediate remedies, might Sachiko succeed in pacifying Hashidera if she went to Mrs. Niu the next day, explained Yukiko’s feelings and general nature very carefully, and had Mrs. Niu pass the explanation on? Yukiko was in no sense keeping aloof from Hashidera, she would explain, and did not object to walking with him. She had simply led too sheltered a life, and she lost her self-possession when she met strange men. And was that fact not evidence of something pure and clean in her nature?

  As Sachiko walked through the garden turning these various possibilities over in her mind, she thought she heard the telephone ring.

  ‘Telephone, Mrs. Makioka,” O-haru called down from the terrace. “From Mrs. Niu.”

  Startled, Sachiko turned to go into the house. She decided to take the call from Teinosuke’s study instead.

  “Sachiko. I just had a call from Mr. Hashidera. He was furious.”

  Mrs. Niu’s tone was ominous. That crisp, assured Tokyo speech was even crisper when she was aroused. She did not know exactly why, but he was furious. He did not like spineless, quivering, old-fashioned women. Mrs. Niu had said that Yukiko was bright and lively, but where in the world was the liveliness she spoke of? He wanted no more talk of his marrying the woman, and he hoped Mrs. Niu would tell the Makiokas immediately. Mrs. Niu did not know exactly what had annoyed him, but he had evidently wanted to have a good conversation alone with Yukiko, and had invited her to go for a walk that evening. The maid who answered the telephone said that Yukiko was at home, and then there was no Yukiko. He waited and waited. When she finally came to the telephone he asked if she was free that evening. “Well,” she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she meant yes or no. As he pressed her for a clearer answer, she finally said, in a voice he could barely hear, that there were reasons why she could not see him. She said not another word. He left the telephone in great anger.

  Such was his story, said Mrs. Niu. And what did the lady have in mind, he had asked—was she intent on making a fool of him? He was really furious. Mrs. Niu hardly stopped for breath as she reported the conversation.

  “And so I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do.”

  “I am terribly sorry. Terribly sorry—after all the trouble you have gone to. If I had only been at home. I stepped out for just a minute.”

  “Even if you weren’t at home, Yukiko was.”

  “That is very true. I am really terribly sorry. And I suppose there is nothing to be done now.”

  “Nothing.”

  Sachiko would have liked to crawl away and hide. She could only listen, and now and then offer a hesitant, incoherent answer.

  “I know I shouldn’t say all this over the phone, Sachiko, but I don’t think there will be any point in seeing you to talk about what has happened. I hope you won’t mind.” Mis. Niu seemed ready to end the conversation.

  “Really, really. I will be around to apologize. And you are quite right to be angry.” Sachiko hardly knew what she was saying.

  “You needn’t apologize, Sachiko, and there’s no reason for you to come and see me.” Mrs. Niu wanted to hear no more. She cut Sachiko’s apologies short and said goodbye.

  Chin in hand, Sachiko sat for a time at her husband’s desk. When Teinosuke came home, she must tell him the unpleasant news. Or should she wait until tomorrow, when she would be calmer? She knew how disappointed he would be, and what worried her most was the thought that the incident might turn him against Yukiko. He had always tended to dislike Taeko and to sympathize with Yukiko. Might he not come to dislike both of them? Taeko had someone else to watch over her, but what would Yukiko do if Teinosuke were to abandon her? Sachiko was in the habit of going to Yukiko when she had to talk about Taeko, and to Taeko to talk of Yukiko. She suddenly felt very lonely. How inconvenient it was not to have Taeko with her!

  “Mother.” From the doorway, Etsuko looked curiously at her mother. Coming home from school and finding the house quiet, she had sensed that something was wrong. “What are you doing?” She came into the room and peered over her mother’s shoulder. “What are you doing, Mother? Tell me what you are doing.”

  “Where is Yukiko?”

  “Upstairs reading. Is something wrong?”

  “No. Suppose you go talk to Yukiko.”

  “You come too.” Etsuko tugged at her mother’s hand.

  “All right.” Sachiko stood up. Back in the main house, she sent Etsuko upstairs and sat down at the piano.

  Teinosuke came home about an hour later. Sachiko was still at the piano when she heard the bell. She followed him out to the study.

  “Something terrible has happened. And after you went to all that trouble.”

  Not sure whether she would tell him today or wait until tomorrow, Sachiko had found when she saw him that she could not keep the news to herself. His expression changed for a moment, and she thought she heard a sigh. For the rest he listened quietly, showing no sign of displeasure. In the face of this composure, Sachiko felt her resentment at Yukiko well up again. Who had caused them all this trouble? she thought bitterly. There was nothing to be gained by going over the whole story again, she knew, but it seemed clear that Hashidera had been in a mood to marry. Even though he refused to give a definite answer, there could be no doubt that he was interested in Yukiko. Why else would he have called today to invite her out? The telephone incident seemed too unfortunate—she wanted to stamp her feet and wail like an angry child. But wailing would do not good. The opportunity was gone, forever. Why had she not been at home? She might not have been able to make Yukiko accept the invitation, but she could at least have seen that her sister was polite to the man. And the negotiations would have progressed smoothly. Perhaps a formal engagement was in sight. She did not think she was dreaming when she said so. The chances were, or should have been, eight or nine in ten. And then came that call, when Sachiko was out of the house for no more than five or six minutes. That the merest trivialities should determine a person’s future! Sachiko was inconsolable. She even seemed to blame herself for having left the house. And it had been Yukiko’s unhappy fate that the call came at that time of all possible times.

  “I am furious, of course. But poor Yukiko.”

  “It happened because Yukiko is what she is. I imagine it would have been the same even if you had been there to answer the telephone.”

  Teinosuke set about comforting his wife. Even if Sachiko had been with her, Yukiko would not have been able to talk to the man. And short of her accepting the invitation and going out with him, it did not seem likely that he would have been satisfied. The ultimate source of the trouble was to be found in Yukiko’s nature, and not in the simple question of whether or not Sachiko was with her at the telephone. Even if they had made their way safely through this crisis, there would have been others ahead. The talks were doomed to failure from the start. Yukiko had not managed to change herself.

  “Do you mean that she will never marry?”

  “Not at all. A girl too shy to go to the telephone has good points of her own. There are men who would never think of calling her spineless and old-fashioned—men who would see some- thing very charming in her shyness. And only a man who sees her good points is qualified to be her husband.”

  Sachiko’s anger subsided. Noting that she was not so much comforting her husband as being comforted by him, she felt more apologetic than ever. She made a special effort to feel sorry for Yukiko, who had come downstairs and was s
itting on the parlor sofa with Bell in her lap. But some of the anger returned— Yukiko was really too lackadaisical.

  “Yukiko.” Sachiko flushed from the strain of keeping back her anger. “I had a call from Mrs. Niu. She said Mr. Hashidera was furious and wanted nothing more to do with us.”

  “Oh?” Yukiko showed little concern. Possibly she was feigning an indifference she did not feel. She rubbed the throat of the purring cat.

  “And not just Mr. Hashidera. Mrs. Niu too, and Teinosuke, and myself,” Sachiko wanted to add. Somehow she held herself back. Did Yukiko agree that she had blundered? If so, she might at least offer a word of apology to Teinosuke. But Sachiko knew that Yukiko would never apologize even if she knew she should. The resentment rose anew.

  18

  THE NEXT DAY Irani came to Sachiko with all the details.

  She knew that Hashidera had called Mrs. Niu, and as a matter of fact he had called her too. She felt almost as though he were springing at her throat (he was such a gentleman, too), and, guessing that the matter was no ordinary one, she immediately set out for Osaka to see both Hashidera and Mrs. Niu. And when she heard the story, she agreed that Hashidera had reason to be angry. His dissatisfaction was a result not only of what had happened the day before. It had had its beginnings the day before that, when Hashidera and his daughter had gone to Kobe with the Makiokas. As they were walking back toward the station, Hashidera and Yukiko were cut off for a few minutes by a parade in honor of the expeditionary forces. Glancing at a haberdashery window, Hashidera remarked that he thought he would buy some socks. Would Yukiko mind helping him? Yukiko stammered and stuttered, and looked back for help from Sachiko, fifty yards away. Finally Hashidera, much annoyed, went into the shop and bought the socks by himself. The incident took no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and no one else noticed, but for Hashidera it was most disagreeable. He tried to take a liberal view, to convince himself that such was Yukiko’s nature and that she did not especially dislike him. Still it weighed on his mind, and since the weather was so good and he happened to have time to spare, it occurred to him the next day that he might telephone and see whether she did indeed dislike him. And so, as they knew, insult was piled on insult. He had thought the first time that she was only embarrassed and uncomfortable. When he was treated with similar disdain a second time, he could only conclude that she disliked him thoroughly. Her abrupt refusal amounted to asking if he was too dull to see the point. She could surely have found a more graceful way to phrase it. The young lady was trying to wreck the talks on which the people around her had worked so hard. He was most grateful for Mrs. Niu’s kindness and Itani’s—and Sachiko’s and Teinosuke’s too, he added—but however much he wanted to please them, there was little he could do. He did not feel that he was breaking off the negotiations—he felt rather that Yukiko had broken them off. But it had been Mrs. Niu who was really angry, said. Itani. She could not approve of Yukiko’s attitude toward men. Because she had thought an impression of “moodiness” highly probable, Mrs. Niu had especially advised Yukiko to leave a warm, lively impression instead, and Yukiko had refused to take her advice. Mrs. Niu found it even harder to understand Sachiko, who allowed Yukiko to have her way. Such aloofness was no longer permitted to a princess even, or to the daughter of a noble family, and what precisely did Sachiko think her sister was? So Mrs. Niu had said. Sachiko suspected that Itani was putting her own resentment into Mrs. Niu’s mouth. Severe though the reproaches were, Sachiko had no answer. There was something mannish about Itani, however, and once she had had her say she felt better and moved on to more comfortable topics. It was not such a tragedy, she said, noting Sachiko’s dejection. She did not know about Mrs. Niu, but she herself meant to go on doing what she could for Miss Yukiko. In the course of the conversation, that spot over Yukiko’s eye had come up for discussion. Although he had seen her three times in all, Hashidera had noticed nothing, said Itani, and the daughter had first called the spot to his attention. They need not worry, then. It made no difference whatsoever.

  Sachiko told Teinosuke nothing of the incident in Kobe. Telling him could only have the effect of alienating him from Yukiko. Teinosuke for his part wrote a letter to Hashidera of which he said nothing to Sachiko. He had no apologies to offer, he wrote, and he knew his letter might sound querulous, but there was one thing at least that he must be allowed to explain. Perhaps Hashidera thought that they, his wife and Teinosuke himself, had pushed the marriage talks without attempting to learn Yukiko’s views. That was far from the case. Yukiko did not dislike Hashidera, and they had cause to believe that her feelings were the opposite. If Hashidera wanted an explanation for her strange manner of a few days before, or for her manner over the telephone, then her general shyness before men was explanation enough. There was no evidence of any dislike for him. Though it would seem ridiculous to outsiders that a woman past thirty should be so shy, her family, those who knew her well, saw nothing whatsoever to be surprised at. She had always behaved thus, and her fear of strangers had if anything begun to leave her. They knew, however, that they could not expect people to understand, and he had no apologies to offer—especially for that telephone incident. He had denied that she was moody and had insisted that at heart she was gay and bright, and even now he felt that he had not been mistaken, but for a woman past thirty to be incapable of the simplest greeting was evidence of bad training in the extreme. Hashidera had every right to be angry. If he had been forced to conclude that she was not qualified to become his wife, then there was no quarreling with his decision. Teinosuke would have to admit that Yukiko had failed the test. He did not have the impudence to ask that Hashidera reconsider. Improper upbringing had left her behind the times: she had early lost her mother, and she had still been young when her father had died—and of course a good part of the responsibility lay with Teinosuke and his wife. Though it was possible that he had come to overrate Yukiko, he did want Hashidera to know that he had no recollection of having resorted to distortion or falsehood in his efforts at matchmaking. He hoped that Hashidera would soon find himself a good wife, and that something would be arranged for Yukiko too, so that they could both forget the unpleasantness, and he hoped that one day they might all be friends. Since it had been such a pleasure to know Hashidera, it was an irreparable loss that through so trival an incident they might not see each other again.

  That was the substance of the letter. Almost immediately a polite answer came from Hashidera. He was most grateful for Teinosuke’s admirable letter. Teinosuke was being modest when he said that his sister-in-law had been reared in an outmoded manner. The fact was that Yukiko could never really be at home in the modern world. She would therefore always retain something pure and maidenly. What she needed was a husband who would place a proper value on her virtues, someone who would see it as his duty to cherish and protect them, and unfortunately the deep understanding and the delicate sensibility required were quite lacking in a countrified boor like himself. He had therefore come to believe that a match would make neither of them happy. He would be most distressed if he thought he had said anything about the lady that might seem insulting, and he was most grateful for all their courtesies. The tranquil happiness of the Makioka family was something for the world to envy. Because she was lucky enough to be a member of such a family, Yukiko had become the gem she was. Like Teinosuke’s, the letter was carefully written in brush on Japanese paper. Though it was not in the most formal of language, no one could have taken exception to the careful, polished sentences.

  In Kobe with the Hashideras, Sachiko had picked out a blouse for the daughter and asked to have an initial embroidered on it. Some days after the marriage talks were broken off, the blouse was delivered. Thinking Hashidera might find it strange if she let the matter drop, Sachiko sent the gift through Irani. When she visited Itani’s beauty shop two weeks later she was given a manila-wrapped package that had been left by Hashidera, and when she got home she found that it contained a crepe singlet from the Erim
an in Kyoto. It was exactly right for her—perhaps Mrs. Niu had done the selecting. They concluded that it was in return for the blouse, and they thus had further evidence of Hashidera’s scrupulous attention to the proprieties.

  Though it was not easy to tell how Yukiko felt, outwardly she was neither disappointed nor apologetic. One would have said—she might have had a guiltier conscience than she chose to reveal—that she appreciated what Sachiko and the others had done for her, and yet, since she was incapable of doing more for herself, she was not one to grieve over a man who could reject her on such grounds. Sachiko found that the opportunity to speak of her resentment had passed, and soon the two sisters slipped back into their old relationship, though Sachiko still felt a vague rankling. She would have liked to tell everything to Taeko. Unfortunately it had been some twenty days since Taeko’s last visit. She had come on a Tuesday early in March, the morning after the fateful telephone call; had stayed only long enough to hear that again it was “no match”; and had gone away looking bitterly disappointed. Afraid that Itani and Mrs. Niu knew a good deal bout Taeko and were hoping to learn more, Sachiko gave carefully evasive answers each time they asked what had happened to “Koi-san.” She did not want it to be known that Taeko was living out, and yet she had to be prepared, if Taeko’s relations with Okubata attracted notice, to say that Taeko was no longer one of the family. Now that her efforts in Yukiko’s behalf had come to nothing, she found herself wanting intensely to see Taeko. What might have happened to Koi-san—ought they to telephone her? They discussed the matter over the breakfast table one morning, and that morning O-haru, who had taken Etsuko to school, was some three hours coming home.