The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  “Well, let me see her.” When she had heard the story from Yukiko and Okubata in turns, Sachiko headed for the stain. The six-mat room, which faced south, had a little balcony and a foreign-style hinged door. Though the floor was matted in the Japanese fashion, the room was otherwise occidental but for a closet with sliding doors; there was no alcove, the walls and even the ceiling were white”. As for furnishings: a triangular cupboard stood in a corner of the room, and on it a dirty candlestick, apparently a foreign antique, covered with drops of wax; two or three other knickknacks, probably from second-hand stalls; and a faded French doll that Taeko had made long before. As for hangings, there was only a painting on glass. It would have been a singularly ugly room but for the thick crepe-covered quilt of large scarlet-and-white checks, like a blaze of flowers in the sunlight that poured through sliding windows some two yards wide. The fever had fallen, it seemed. Taeko lay on her right side with her eyes fixed on the door, waiting for Sachiko. Sachiko had dreaded this first encounter, but, perhaps because O-haru had prepared her well, she found Taeko less wasted than she had expected. Yet there was no denying that Taeko had changed. The round face had become long and thin, and the swarthy skin was even darker. And the eyes seemed to have grown as the rest of the face shrank.

  Something else caught Sachiko’s attention. It was natural that Taeko, unable to bathe, should be a little dirty, but there seemed to be rather a special kind of uncleanness about her. Ordinarily she was able to hide the effects of her misbehavior under cosmetics. Now, as a result of the emaciation, a certain darkness, a shadow of what one might call dissoluteness, had come over the face and throat and wrists. It must not be supposed that Sachiko was immediately conscious of all this, but there her sister lay, like a charity patient picked up in a gutter, her arms lifeless on the bed, as though she were quite exhausted from something besides the dysentery, from her intemperance over the years. A woman Taeko’s age, long in bed, often seems to revert to the pretty little girl she was at twelve or thirteen, to take on a cleanness, a spiritual quality almost. With Taeko it was the opposite: she had lost her youthfulness, and she even looked older than she was. And, strangely, that fashionable modern air had disappeared. She reminded one of a servant in some teahouse or restaurant, a not-too-proper establishment at that. Though she had always been the different one, the scapegrace, no one could have denied that there was something fresh and girlish about her, and now this muddy, sagging skin—a skin that seemed to hide some loathsome disease, and made one thing of a fallen woman. The brightness of the quilt set the diseased look off more sharply. It occurred to Sachiko that Yukiko must have noticed, and that she had quietly been watching “the diseased look” develop. When Taeko had had a bath, Yukiko refused to use the tub afterwards. She would borrow the most intimate garments from Sachiko without thinking twice, but she never tried to borrow anything from Taeko. Sachiko had noted all this vaguely, whether or not Taeko had, and she had noted too that Yukiko’s squeamishness had begun at about the time a rumor came to them that Okubata had chronic gonorrhea. Taeko was fond of saying that her relations with both Itakura and Okubata had been nothing but “clean,” and Sachiko had made it a point not to challenge her. Yet Sachiko had trouble accepting these protestations, and it seemed that Yukiko, without saying a word, had for some time been critical and even contemptuous of her sister.

  “How are you, Koi-san?” Sachiko asked lightly. “They said you had wasted away to nothing, but you really look much better than I expected. How often have you used the bedpan today?”

  “Three times since this morning.” Her face as expressionless as ever, Taeko answered in a low but distinct voice. “Only pains, and nothing comes out.”

  “That happens with dysentery. ‘Tenesmus’ is the word doctors have for it.”

  “Oh?” Taeko was silent for a moment. “I hope I never see another mackerel.” She smiled for the first time, albeit faintly.

  “I quite agree with you. Never have mackerel again.” Sachiko’s manner changed a little. “There is nothing to worry about, but Dr. Saitō says we must be careful, and he wants to call in another doctor. I thought we might ask Dr. Kushida.”

  The three of them had decided downstairs that, since Taeko did not know how serious her condition was, a direct statement might upset her less than a long explanation, and that, though Dr. Saitō had suggested calling a specialist from Osaka University and there was much to be said for the suggestion, they might only succeed in frightening her. It would not be too late to call a specialist after they had heard what Dr. Kushida had to say. Taeko listened vacantly, her eyes on the floor.

  “Do you mind, Koi-san?”

  “Dr. Kushida is not to see me here.” She spoke with sudden determination, and there were tears in her eyes. “I would be ashamed to have him see me here.”

  The nurse was tactful enough to leave. Okubata and Sachiko and Yukiko stared in surprise at the tears that were streaming down Taeko’s face.

  “Let me talk to her alone.” In much confusion, Okubata cast a pleading glance at Sachiko. His eyes swollen from lack of sleep, he sat across from Sachiko in a flannel nightgown over which he had thrown a blue-gray silk bathrobe.

  “Never mind, Koi-san,” said Sachiko. “We can do without Dr. Kushida.” The important thing was to avoid exciting her. Sachiko could not help feeling that she had gone too far already, and though Okubata probably knew what had caused this outburst, Sachiko had no idea.

  It was almost noon, and she had come without Teinosuke’s permission. An hour or so later, when Taeko was quiet again, she picked her moment to withdraw. Meaning to go home by bus or streetcar, she walked south through the mambō of which O-haru had spoken. Yukiko was beside her and O-haru a little to the rear—they would see her part of the way.

  “Something strange happened last night.”

  So Yukiko began. It was at about two in the morning, she said. Yukiko and the nurse were sleeping across the hall. (They usually took turns with Taeko. The latter having gone comfortably to sleep at about twelve, however, Okubata suggested that the two have a good night’s sleep. He would take care of the patient himself. They had left everything to him, and he must have been dozing beside the bed.) Suddenly they heard a loud groaning from the other room. Was she in pain, was she having a nightmare?—but Kei-boy would surely be watching over her. As Yukiko jumped out of bed and opened the door across the hall, she heard Okubata trying to rouse Taeko, and she heard Taeko call out for Itakura: “Yone-yan,” she said, using the affectionate nickname. She said no more. Evidently the dream had passed. But there could be no doubt about that cry: “Yone-yan.” Yukiko closed the door and went back to bed, and for the time being everything was quiet. At that point the full force of her exhaustion struck her, and she slept until, at about four, the diarrhea began with intense pains, and Okubata, unable to manage alone, came to call her. She had been up ever since. She was surer and surer that “Yone-yan” was Itakura, and that Taeko had been frightened by a dream of the dead man. The first anniversary of his death was approaching—he had died in May. One knew, from the way Koi-san visited the grave in Okayama every month, that she still thought about him, possibly because he had died so horribly, and one could not help suspecting that it must trouble her, with the anniversary approaching, to be seriously ill in the house of his rival. Koi-san had depths beyond depths. It was not easy to know what she was thinking. Still it seemed fairly certain that this much at least was on her mind, and that she had had a nightmare somehow related to Itakura. Or possibly Yukiko was imagining things—she could not really be sure she was right. The physical anguish since that morning had left Koi-san no room for mental anguish; and when, finally, the pain subsided, she only lay apathetic. And Kei-boy was an even better actor than Koi-san, and from his manner one would never have guessed that anything untoward had happened. But if even Yukiko had noticed, did it seem likely that Kei-boy had not? And that outburst this morning: this was pure conjecture on her part, said Yukiko, but did it not
seem likely that Koi-san, having been tormented by Itakura’s ghost, was afraid to stay with Okubata? Might she be thinking that she would not recover while she was here—that she would grow weaker and die? If so, might she be telling them less that she did not want to see Dr. Kushida than that she wanted them to move her?

  “You may be right.”

  “I might try to find out more. But Kei-boy is always around.”

  “I just happened to think. If we have to move her, how would Dr. Kambara’s hospital be? I am sure he would take her if we explained.”

  “Of course he would. But can he treat dysentery?” “If he will let us have a room, we can have Dr. Kushida come in.”

  Dr. Kambara had a surgical hospital between Osaka and Kobe. Long before, when the sisters had been girls and Dr. Kambara himself a student in Osaka University, he had frequented the Osaka house and the Semba shop. Old Mr. Makioka had learned that he was a very gifted student and that he was short of money, and, going through a suitable intermediary, had offered help. When Dr. Kambara returned from Germany to open his hospital, part of the capital came from the Makiokas. With all the qualities of a great surgeon and with complete confidence in himself, he soon prospered. Before many years he was able to repay the debt in full, and afterwards when someone from the Makioka family or the shop would go for treatment he would accept only a small part of the usual fee. He was in part still repaying the old debt, of course, but he had about him a fatherly expansiveness, and a natural warmth that told of his east-country origins. If Sachiko were to explain what had happened, and ask him to find a suitable pretext for taking Taeko in, he would not be likely to refuse. They would have to trouble Dr. Kushida to look in on the patient now and then, since Dr. Kambara had only surgeons on his staff. Fortunately Dr. Kushida and Dr. Kambara were classmates, and on good terms.

  As Yukiko and O-haru saw her through the underpass, Sachiko worked out her plans: she would call Dr. Kushida and Dr. Kambara; because Taeko was growing weaker, and because Dr. Saitō had even suggested that they might expect the worst, they could no longer leave her at Okubata’s even if she had wanted to stay; they could not be too careful, and Yukiko was to approach Dr. Saitō and insist on injections; and if Yukiko could not prevail by herself she was to talk to Okubata. At home, Sachiko called Dr. Kambara. Quite as she had expected, he said he would have a room ready, and they should bring the patient immediately. Dr. Kushida was a different matter: always busy, he was difficult to catch. After following him around from patient to patient, Sachiko found him at about six in the evening. She was all for moving Taeko immediately. There were all sorts of details to be arranged, however, and she had to explain everything to Teino-suke, who seemed worried in spite of his silence, and make him agree to pay the expenses, and the move finally had to be put off until the next morning. Sachiko called Nishinomiya at about seven in the morning. O-haru, back at noon with messages from Yukiko, reported new developments. First the illness: chills and tremors had begun again shortly after Sachiko left, and the temperature for a time rose above one hundred four. In the evening it was still over one hundred. Okubata went to the phone and insisted on injections, and Dr. Saitō said he would give them a try, but it, was his father who appeared and who, after an examination and some deliberation, said that the time had not yet come for injections, and shoved the hypodermic needle (the nurse had it ready) into his case. Convinced that they must change doctors, Yukiko waited until Taeko seemed relatively comfortable and suggested again that they call Dr. Kushida. Her suspicious were confirmed: Taeko did not want to be in Okubata’s house—though she did not give her reasons. She wanted to be moved to a hospital or even back to her room. She would not mind seeing Dr. Kushida afterwards, but she would not see him here. Because Okubata was sitting tensely beside the bed, she talked with great reluctance. Much annoyed, he tried several times to make her reconsider: she was not to say such things, she was to stay in his house, there was nothing to worry about. She ignored him and talked only to Yukiko, and finally he lost his temper. Why did she dislike it here, he asked, his voice rising. Suspecting that Taeko’s nightmare had brought emotional complications, Yukiko tried to calm him without touching on what had evidently upset him. She was most grateful for his kindness, she said, but they could not leave Taeko on his hands forever. And then Sachiko had said—and Yukiko told of the arrangements with Dr. Kambara. In the end he was somewhat calmer.

  21

  THERE WAS ANOTHER small incident when at eight the following morning Taeko was taken away in an ambulance. Okubata insisted that he would go with her. It was his duty to see her to the hospital. Sachiko and Yukiko took turns arguing, almost pleading, with him. They quite understood, but they wanted him to leave everything to them. Though they would not keep him from seeing Koi-san afterwards, the relationship between the two was not publicly recognized, and Koi-san herself worried about appearances, and the sisters hoped he would leave her with them for a time, and try to stay in the background. They would let him know of any changes, and they would always welcome telephone calls from him. After a great struggle, they made him promise to telephone only in the morning, to ask only for Sachiko or O-haru, and not to telephone the hospital directly. Sachiko explained everything to Dr. Saitō and thanked him for his trouble. He was most agreeable, and offered to see Taeko to the hospital, where Dr. Kushida would be waiting.

  Yukiko rode in the ambulance with Dr. Saitō, while Sachiko stayed behind to clean house. An hour or so later, after paying the nurse and tipping the old woman, Sachiko followed by cab. That indescribable tension when someone near her was sent to the hospital, that terrible foreboding—Sachiko had experienced it before and feared it again now, and she could not fight off a growing heaviness of spirit even as she looked out at scenery that would ordinarily have left her buoyant and gay: the spring sunlight was more radiant than the day before, the Rokkō mountain chain carried a still heavier spring mist, and here and there magnolias and forsythias were in bloom. Taeko had changed dreadfully in one short day. Yesterday Sachiko had been able to tell herself that Dr. Saitō was trying to frighten them. Today she began to wonder whether it was not just possible—those fixed, staring eyes, quite unlike the eyes of yesterday. Taeko did not have a really expressive face at best, but that morning she looked numb and apathetic. Those strangely wide eyes seemed fixed on a point in the air, like the eyes of one who watched death. Sachiko could not look at them without feeling a new wave of terror. Yesterday Taeko had wept, and argued with some warmth, but during that discussion this morning—should Okubata go along, should he stay behind—she had only stared blankly ahead, as though the matter did not concern her.

  Dr. Kambara had said over the telephone that he would have a special room for her, and her room was in fact an expensive one in the pure Japanese style, the main room of an outbuilding joined to the main hospital by a covered corridor. Built originally as Dr. Kambara’s residence, it had become a sort of rest house when, the year before, he bought a mansion a half mile or so away, and now, since it could easily be turned into an isolation ward, Taeko was offered a luxury suite: an eight-mat room and an adjoining four-mat room surrounded by wide verandas, with access to kitchen and bath. Sachiko had called the agency to ask if they might have the “Mito” who had seen Etsuko through scarlet fever, and Mito was available. She came on duty that same morning. The popular Dr. Kushida was a different matter: although Sachiko had been most careful to specify the time, he did not come and he did not come, and again they had to chase him from patient to patient, and call two or three times to hurry him. Though Dr. Saitō did look at his watch occasionally, he waited politely and left after turning Taeko over to Dr. Kushida. The conversation between the two doctors, full of ponderous German words, was not entirely clear to the others. Dr. Kushida’s diagnosis seemed to differ considerably from Dr. Saitō’s. The liver was not swollen, he said, and he could not believe that Taeko had anthrax. The violent temperature fluctuations and the chills went perfectly well with amoebic dyse
ntery, and were not so extremely unusual. She was making good progress, he added, but there was no denying that she was weak. He would give her injections of Ringer’s solution and camphor, and afterwards “Mito” would give her prontosil. He would call again the next day. There was nothing to worry about. Sachiko, not wholly convinced, saw him to the gate and asked in a tearful voice if everything was really going as well as he suggested. Of course, of course, he said, overflowing with confidence. But might they not call in a specialist from Osaka University? No, Saitō was exaggerating. If it seemed necessary Dr. Kushida would call a specialist. Everything could be left to him. But, persisted Sachiko, Koi-san had changed even to the layman’s eye. Only yesterday she had seemed so different. Did she not have the look of one who faced death? Dr. Kushida refused to consider the possibility. Exactly that expression came at some time to anyone who was seriously debilitated.

  Sachiko paid her respects to Dr. Kambara and returned to Ashiya. Sitting in her hushed Western-style parlor, with Teino-suke, and Etsuko, and Yukiko, and O-haru all out of the house, she found her uneasiness coming back. Dr. Kushida had taken care of them for many years, and not yet made a mistake. She ought to believe him—and there were any number of reasons why she wanted to give more weight to his opinion than to Dr. Saitō’s. But just this time—in Taeko’s eyes there had been something that tormented Sachiko, and filled her with forebodings only a person who shared the same blood could understand. She had come home to write a difficult letter, thinking that it would be best to take her fears seriously and tell Tsuruko everything. But she would need two or three hours, and only after lunch was she able to drag herself upstairs: to explain, with suitable embellishments, what had happened since they turned Taeko out, and why, when they heard she was ill, they had felt that they had to take care of her. The most talented calligrapher among the four sisters, and the master of a polished style as well, Sachiko was never reluctant to write letters. Her brush would sweep over the paper, leaving behind bold, powerful strokes. Unlike Tsuruko, she never bothered with a first draft. But this time she made two or three false starts before she finally finished her letter: