The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  April 4

  DEAR TSURUKO,

  It has been a very long time since I last wrote. And now it is spring again, the pleasantest time of the year of this part of the country. Every day there is a mist over Rokkō, and I find it hard to stay in the house. For the most part we have been well, as we hope you have been.

  I must tell you unpleasant news. Koi-san has amoebic dysentery, and her condition is serious.

  I have told you, I believe, that after your letter we turned her out with orders not to come back. Perhaps I told you too that she did not, as we had feared, go to live with Kei-boy, but took a room of her own. Though we worried a great deal, we neither asked about her nor had word from her. It would seem that O-haru visited her in secret, and learned that she still had her own room and that she was seeing Kei-boy, though she never spent the night in his house. With that news we felt a little easier. Then, toward the end of last month, Kei-boy called O-haru to tell her that Koi-san was ill. She was ill at Kei-boy’s, and it was not possible to move her. At first we paid little attention, but gradually the symptoms of dysentery became clearer. Even then we could not decide what to do—we had turned her out, after all, and we did not know whether we should take her from Kei-boy’s house or not. O-haru was most upset, and reported among other things that it was dysentery of the worst kind, that Kei-boy had called in a rather unreliable doctor from the neighborhood, that the treatment was far from satisfactory, that Koi-san had a high fever and was in great pain from diarrhea, and that she was so thin one would almost take her for a different person. For a while I did nothing. Without my permission, Yukiko went off to help take care of her, and finally I went myself. I was thoroughly shocked when I saw her. The doctor said that she seemed to have a disease called anthrax along with dysentery, and suggested that we call in a specialist. If it was anthrax, he said, she might even die. Koi-san, when she saw me, began wailing and begging to be moved. I could not help thinking she meant that she did not want to die in Kei-boy’s house. Yukiko too has a theory: with the first anniversary of the other man’s death coming, she suspects, Koi-san has the idea that he—the photographer, Itakura—is somehow putting a curse on her; she seems to have had nightmares about him. Possibly Yukiko is right, and possibly too Koi-san has thought how difficult it would be for the rest of us if she were to die at Kei-boy’s. In any case, it takes more than a slight indisposition to leave someone like Koi-san so helpless. Since yesterday she has lain staring into space, not a muscle on her face moving—she has the look of death, you might say. That expression terrified me when I saw her this morning. I felt that I had to follow her wishes. Taking full responsibility on myself, then, and asking Kei-boy to keep his distance, I had her moved to Dr. Kambara’s hospital in an ambulance today. All of the isolation wards were full, and Dr. Kambara agreed to take her in, though secretly. Dr. Kushida, whom I believe you know, has charge of the case.

  This, in general, is the situation. Whatever Tatsuo thinks, I know you will admit that we could have done nothing else. Teinosuke seems to agree with me, and to be greatly worried, although he has not yet been to see her. I will telegraph you if the end seems in sight (I trust I will not have to do so), and I want you to know that the worst predictions are not entirely out of the question. The expression on her face, and her general appearance, are like signs that something terrible is coming. I hope I am wrong. I am sure this is a confused letter, but I have felt I must give you the whole story, right down to this moment. I am about to leave again for the hospital. I have not been able to fix my mind on anything, and Yukiko has accomplished far more than I. At times like this she is a real tower of strength. She has been up night after night, hardly closing her eyes.

  I will write more later.

  As always,

  SACHIKO

  Though she felt certain qualms at frightening her genial sister, Sachiko exaggerated the illness a little to win sympathy for Taeko. There could be no doubt, however, that for the most part she was writing what she felt. When she had finished the letter, she started for the hospital. She wanted to be out of the house before Et-suko came home.

  22

  ONE COULD SEE the improvement within a few days after Taeko was moved. Strangely, that look of death lasted but one day. The day after she entered the hospital, the frightening shadow had disappeared. As though roused from a bad dream, Sachiko remembered Dr. Kushida’s confidence, and could only be impressed anew at his prowess as a diagnostician. Thinking too how she must have frightened Tsuruko, she immediately sent off a second letter. Tsuruko was delighted. This time there was none of the usual slowness—a special delivery letter came two days later.

  April 6

  DEAR SACHIKO,

  Your most unexpected letter was such a blow that I did not know how to answer. Now your second letter has come, and I cannot describe my relief. I could not be happier, for Koi-san, of course, and for the rest of us too.

  I may tell you now that I really did not think Koi-san would live. I should not say so, perhaps, but I could not help thinking that she was gone, that this was the punishment for the trouble she has caused all these years. If she had died, who would have arranged the funeral? And where would it have been? Tatsuo would refuse, I am sure, to take charge, and it would have been still more unreasonable to ask you, and we could hardly have had the funeral at Dr. Kambara’s. I was extremely worried, and I thought how Koi-san would be a problem to the very end.

  But now we are rescued from the dilemma, largely through your labors and Yukiko’s. Do you suppose Koi-san is grateful? If she is, she might take this as the occasion for a clean break with Kei-boy, and the opportunity to begin a new life. Has she any mind to?

  Dr. Kushida and Dr. Kambara have been a great help. It is very sad not to be able to thank them openly.

  As ever,

  TSURUKO

  Sachiko made a special trip to show Yukiko the letter.

  “I have had this.” She quietly took the letter from her handbag as Yukiko was seeing her to the door. “Read it here.”

  “How like her,” said Yukiko.

  Sachiko did not know exactly what that meant, but the truth was that the letter had made an unfavorable impression on Sachiko herself. Tsuruko had unwittingly revealed how very little affection she had for Taeko. Her chief concern was to protect the family, and while she did have a point, Sachiko had to feel sorry for Taeko. Perhaps Taeko was being punished. Yet it seemed that she had already had punishment enough: as became a child of storm and violence, she had nearly died in a flood; she had lost the lover for whom she was prepared to throw away her good name, and she had suffered time and time again in a manner hardly imaginable to her more decorous sisters. Sachiko doubted whether Yukiko or herself could have endured as much. And she could see only too vividly Tsuruko’s initial confusion, and the immense relief described in the letter. She found herself smiling at the picture.

  Okubata telephoned the Ashiya house the day after Taeko was moved. Sachiko reported Dr. Kushida’s diagnosis in detail, and added that they had reason to feel more hopeful. For the next two or three days there was silence. On the evening of the fourth day, after Sachiko had left for home, Yukiko and Mito were at the bedside and O-haru was heating gruel over a hot plate in the next room. Someone, probably from the family, had come to see them, said the old man who took care of the house. The caller would not give his name, but maybe it was Mr. Makioka. “Teinosuke?— that hardly seems likely,” said Yukiko, looking at O-haru. Just then there were footsteps outside, and a figure appeared in the shrubbery: a showy double-breasted blue suit, dark glasses with gold rims (though there was nothing wrong with his eyes, Okubata had taken to wearing dandified dark glasses), and that cane, swinging as always. The outbuilding had its own entrance, but people who called for the first time usually came through the main hospital. Somehow Okubata had learned of the separate entrance and come directly to it, and while the old man was bringing his message had, uninvited, gone around to the garden. (They heard late
r that he had abruptly asked where Miss Makioka Taeko’s room was, and had dismissed the old man’s questions rather airily: “Just tell them I am here.” How did he know that Taeko was in this separate building, and how had he found the way through the grounds to the second entrance? At first they suspected O-haru, but it later seemed less likely that he had had a secret informant; he had probably done his own detective work. Since the Itakura incident he had been strangely interested in spying on Taeko, and no doubt he had hovered about the place until he had the information he wanted.) The garden ran in an L-shape around the east and south verandas. Brushing against the spiraea, then in full bloom, he came up to the front veranda and pushed the glass door open—it was already open a crack—through which he could see Taeko’s face. He took off his glasses, smiled, and announced, not quite apologetically, that he happened to be in the neighborhood and thought he should stop by. Yukiko was reading a newspaper over a cup of tea. Noting Mito’s fright at this strange intruder, she went out to speak to him as though there were nothing to be surprised at. He was standing on the steps in some discomfort, and his manner suggested that he would like to come in. She hastily pushed a cushion out to him. Ignoring his attempts at conversation, she withdrew to the next room, and, putting on a kettle in place of the gruel O-haru was heating, made him a cup of tea. She thought of having O-haru serve it, but reconsidered when it occurred to her that O-haru’s good nature might cause trouble. “You may go, if you like, O-haru,” she said. “I can manage by myself, I think.” She went back into the smaller room after she had served the tea.

  It was the sort of warm, overcast day one expects when the cherries are in bloom. The doors on the inside of the veranda were open. Lying with her face toward the garden, Taeko had seen Okubata. She watched him impassively. A little embarrassed at being deserted by Yukiko, he lit a cigarette. As the ash grew longer, he started to drop it at his foot, then hesitated, and, peering into the room, asked no one in particular if there was an ash tray. Mito brought him a saucer.

  “I hear you are better.” He brought a foot up to the veranda and rested the heel on the frame of the open door. The stylish shoe was in full view. “You were really in danger, I can tell you now.”

  “I know, I know.” Her voice was stronger than it had been. “Just a step this side of hell.”

  “When will you be up? You are missing the cherry blossoms.”

  “I can do without them. I am more worried about Kikugoro.”

  “If you are healthy enough to worry about Kikugorō, we can stop worrying about you.” He turned to Mito. “Will she be up by the end of the month?”

  “I wonder.” Mito too seemed disinclined to talk.

  “I had dinner with Kikugorō last night.”

  “Oh? Someone had a party?”

  “Shibamoto.”

  “Oh, Shibamoto. He has always been a Kikugorō man.”

  “He said a long time ago that he was going to have Kikugorō for dinner and wanted me to come too. Kikugorō is not easy to get, you know.”

  A restless, inattentive person unable to concentrate on any one thing, Okubata went to the movies but found the legitimate theater rather hard work. For all that, he loved to be with actors, and in the days when he had had money to spend he had frequently taken this actor or that actor to a teahouse. Very friendly with Mizutani Yaeko, Natsukawa Shizue, and Hanayagi Shōtarō, for instance, he would visit the dressing room when one of them came to Osaka, even if he had not bothered to see the play. He had been wanting to meet Kikugorō less because he admired that actor than because it was fun to know popular actors.

  He proudly told of the dinner party, embellishing his narrative with imitations of Kikugorō. It seemed clear that he had come especially to boast of this new adventure. In the next room, O-haru was entranced. Yukiko would suggest that she hurry back to Ashiya, and O-haru would nod and go on listening. When Yukiko pointed out that it was five o’clock, O-haru saw that what must be must be, and stood up to leave. She generally came in the afternoon, did the cooking and washing, and returned to Ashiya in time for dinner. How long would young Mr. Okubata go on talking? she asked herself as she walked toward the National Highway. He was not supposed to come to the hospital. Mrs. Makioka would be very, very surprised. And what would Miss Yukiko do if he stayed on? Miss Yukiko would have trouble scolding him for the broken promise. While O-haru was waiting for a streetcar, a cab driver she knew happened to go by in the direction of Osaka. The cab was empty—if he was on his way back, would he mind taking her? He made a detour to deliver her at the corner below the Makioka house, and she came panting up to the kitchen door. Where was Mrs. Makioka? Had Mr. Makioka come home yet? She sped through the kitchen, where O-aki was making an omelette. “A terrible thing,” she said dramatically. “Young Mr. Okubata has been to the hospital.” She found Sachiko alone, resting in the parlor.

  “Mrs. Makioka,” she said in a hushed voice. “The young master has been to the hospital.”

  “What!” Sachiko jumped up in alarm. O-haru’s tone, far more solemn than the occasion demanded, had caught her off guard. “When did he come?”

  “It was just after you left for home.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “He was still there when I left”

  “What can he be thinking of!”

  “He said he happened to be in the neighborhood. And he came in through the garden without waiting for the old man to show him the way. Miss Yukiko ran off and left him, and he stayed and talked to Koi-san.”

  “And was Koi-san put out?”

  “She seemed to be enjoying herself.”

  Sachiko went out to telephone from the study. (Yukiko at first sent Mito to take the message, and went reluctantly to the telephone herself when Sachiko said that she must speak to Yukiko, much though it pained her to be so insistent.) Kei-boy was still there. When it began to grow chilly, he had moved in from the veranda without being invited and closed the door behind him, and now he was sitting by the bed. Koi-san did not seem in the least annoyed. Yukiko had finally moved back into the main room, where she sat listening to the conversation—she could not wait in the next room forever. Hoping to suggest that he ought to be going, she poured him another cup of tea, and made it a point not to turn on the lights even after the sun had gone down. Paying no attention whatsoever, he chattered on. The man was shameless, said Sachiko. Unless they protested he would come again and again. Should Sachiko herself go see what was to be done? No, said Yukiko. It was time for dinner, and besides, knowing that Sachiko had called, he would be leaving soon. There was no need for Sachiko to make a special trip. Teinosuke would be coming home, moreover, and Etsuko would be after her, wondering why she was going out at that time of the night. Very well, then, said Sachiko; she would leave everything to Yukiko, and she hoped Yukiko would get rid of the man. Sure that Yukiko would say nothing, she could only wonder what had happened afterwards. The evening went by, and she did not find another chance to telephone, As she started upstairs after Teinosuke, O-haru came up behind her.

  “He seems to have left about an hour after you called.”

  “You called, did you?”

  “I went out a little while ago to a public telephone.”

  23

  AT THE HOSPITAL the next day, Sachiko learned that even after her call, Okubata had showed no sign of leaving, and Yukiko had again withdrawn into the next room. Since it was by that time really dark, she finally had to turn on the lights. Meanwhile Taeko’s dinner hour passed, and Yukiko had Mito take her a bowl of gruel. Okubata seemed quite at home. Did she have an appetite? And when would she be able to eat heavier things? He was a little hungry himself—would they mind ordering him something to eat? What would be good? he wondered. Some time after Mito too had fled, he apparently became really hungry, and, calling his apologies for having bothered them, went out the way he had come. Yukiko opened the door a crack and pointedly refrained from seeing him to the gate. She would guess that he had been inside with Koi-san
two hours, from four to six, and in all that time could Koi-san not have said one word to suggest that he was not welcome? Coining in on them from the garden with that supercilious way of his (Yukiko had said before that Okubata became a different person when Sachiko was not present; and he was particularly disagreeable that day)—Mito must have thought it very strange. Surely, knowing how he was embarrassing them all, Koi-san could have said something. Would it not have been natural for her to say something? Such were Yukiko’s views. She did not confront Taeko, however, but complained rather to Sachiko.

  Fearing that Okubata would come again before long, Sachiko thought it might be better to visit him and ask him to stay away, and she still had a duty call to make. Okubata had evidently paid Dr. Saitō’s bill, and miscellaneous expenses—medicine, and food for the nurse, and so on—must have mounted up in the ten days he had Taeko in his house. There were many small items besides: taxi fares for the doctor, tips for the driver, supplies of ice. All in all he must have paid rather heavily, and Sachiko had not even been around to thank him. He probably would not take money. She would of course make him take money for the doctor’s bill, but the rest would have to be paid in gifts. How much would it all come to? She asked Taeko one day, and Taeko answered that she would pay back everything herself, that Sachiko was not to worry. It was only right that she should take care of all the expenses both at Okubata’s and now in the hospital, she continued. Because she could not conveniently draw money from the bank while she was in bed, she was letting Okubata and Sachiko pay in her place. She would clear all her debts when she recovered, and Sachiko was not to worry.