The shops were shuttered. The town too had taken on a melancholy aspect in the course of the night. People were on their way home from the movie through silent, deserted streets.
‘I couldn’t sleep last night. I’m going to bed early.’ Shingo felt a lonely chill pass over him, and a yearning for human warmth.
And it was as if a crucial moment had come, as if a decision were forcing itself upon him.
The Chestnuts
1
‘The gingko is sending out shoots again,’ said Kikuko.
‘You’ve only just noticed?’ said Shingo. ‘I’ve been watching it for some time now.’
‘But you always sit facing it, Father.’
Kikuko, who sat so that Shingo saw her in profile, was looking at the gingko behind her.
The places of the four as they took their meals had in the course of time become fixed.
Shingo sat facing east. On his left was Yasuko, facing south, and on his right Shuichi, who faced north. Kikuko, facing west, sat opposite Shingo.
Since the garden was to the south and east, it might be said that the old people occupied the better places. And the women’s places were the convenient ones for serving.
At times other than meals, they had come to occupy the same fixed places.
So it was that Kikuko always had the gingko behind her.
Yet Shingo was troubled: that she had not noticed unseasonal buds on the great tree suggested a certain emptiness.
‘But you ought to notice when you open the shutters or go out to clean the veranda,’ he said.
‘I suppose that’s true.’
‘Of course it is. And you’re facing it when you come in the gate. You have to look at it whether you want to or not. Do you have so much on your mind that you come in looking at the ground?’
‘This will never do.’ Kikuko gave her shoulders that slight, beautiful shrug. ‘I’ll be very careful from now on to notice everything you do and imitate it.’
For Shingo, there was a touch of sadness in the remark. ‘This won’t do either.’
In all his life no woman had so loved him as to want him to notice everything she did.
Kikuko continued to gaze in the direction of the gingko. ‘And some of the trees up the mountain are putting out new leaves.’
‘So they are. I wonder if they lost their leaves in the typhoon.’
The mountain in Shingo’s garden was cut off by the shrine precincts, a level stretch just above. The gingko lay at the boundary, but from Shingo’s breakfast room it looked as if it were yet higher.
It had been stripped bare on the night of the storm.
The gingko and the cherry were the trees left bare by the wind.
Since they were the larger of the trees around the house, they were perhaps good targets for the storm. Or was it that their leaves were especially vulnerable?
The cherry had had a few drooping leaves even after the storm, but it had shed them since, and now stood quite naked.
The leaves of the bamboo up the mountain had withered, perhaps because, with the ocean so near, the wind had brought in salt spray. Stalks of bamboo had broken off and blown into the garden.
The great gingko was again sending out buds.
Shingo faced it as he turned up the lane from the main street, and every day on his way home he looked at it. He also saw it from the breakfast room.
‘The gingko has a sort of strength that the cherry doesn’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking the ones that live long are different from the others. It must take a great deal of strength for an old tree like that to put out leaves in the fall.’
‘But there’s something sad about them.’
‘I’ve been wondering whether they’d be as big as the leaves that came out in the spring, but they refuse to grow.’
Besides being small, the leaves were scattered, too few to hide the branches. They seemed thin, and they were a pale yellowish color, insufficiently green.
It was as if the autumn sun fell on a gingko that was, after all, naked.
The trees in the shrine precincts were mostly evergreen. They seemed to be strong against wind and rain, and were quite undamaged. Above the luxuriant evergreens was the pale green of new leaves. Kikuko had just discovered them.
Yasuko had come in through the back gate. He heard running water. She said something, but, over the sound of water, he could not make out what.
‘What did you say?’ he shouted.
Kikuko helped him. ‘She says that the bush clover is blooming very nicely.’
‘Oh?’
Kikuko passed on another message. ‘And she says that the pampas grass is putting out plumes.’
‘Oh?’
Yasuko had something more to say.
‘Oh, be quiet. I can’t hear you.’
‘I’ll be happy to interpret.’ On the edge of laughter, Kikuko looked down.
‘Interpret? It’s just an old woman talking to herself.’
‘She says she dreamed last night that the house in Shinano was going to pieces.’
“Oh?”
‘And what is your answer?’
‘I said “Oh,” and that’s all I have to say.’
The sound of water stopped. Yasuko called Kikuko.
‘Put these in water, please, Kikuko. They were so beautiful that I had to break some off. But you take care of them, please.’
‘Let me show them to Father first.’
She came in with an armful of bush clover and pampas grass.
Yasuko had evidently washed her hands and then moistened a Shigaraki vase, which she brought in.
‘The amaranth next door is a beautiful color too,’ she said as she sat down.
‘There is amaranth by the house with the sunflowers,’ said Shingo, remembering that those remarkable sunflowers had been knocked down in the storm.
Blossoms had lain in the street, broken off with six inches or so of stem. They had been there for several days, like severed human heads.
First the petals withered, and then the stems dried and turned dirty and gray.
Shingo had to step over them on his way to and from work. He did not like to look at them.
The bases of the stems stood leafless by the gate.
Beside them, five or six stalks of amaranth were taking on color.
‘But there aren’t any around here like the ones next door,’ said Yasuko.
2
It was her family house that Yasuko had dreamed of.
It had been unoccupied for several years now, since her parents’ death.
Apparently meaning Yasuko to succeed to the family name,* her father had sent his older daughter out in marriage. It should have been the opposite for a father who favored his older daughter, but, with so many men asking for the hand of her beautiful sister, he had probably felt sorry for Yasuko.
Perhaps, therefore, he gave up hope for Yasuko when, after her sister’s death, she went to work in the house into which the sister had married, and seemed intent upon taking her place. Perhaps he felt a certain guilt because parents and family had made her feel so inclined.
Yasuko’s marriage to Shingo seemed to please him.
He decided to live out his years with no family heir.
Shingo was now older than the father had been when he gave Yasuko in marriage.
Yasuko’s mother had died first, and the fields had all been sold when the father died, leaving only the house and a modest amount of forest land. There were no heirlooms of any importance.
The remaining property was in Yasuko’s name, but the management had been turned over to a country relative. The forests had probably been cut down to pay taxes. It had been many years since Yasuko had last had either income or expenses related to the country place.
There was a prospective buyer when, during the war, the countryside was crowded with refugees, but Yasuko felt nostalgic about the house, and Shingo did not press her.
It was in that house that they had been married. In retur
n for giving his only surviving daughter in marriage, the father had asked that the ceremony be held in his house.
A chestnut fell as they were exchanging marriage cups. It struck a large stone in the garden, and, because of the angle, rebounded a very long way and fell into a brook. The rebound was so extraordinary that Shingo was on the point of calling out in surprise. He looked around the room.
No one else seemed to have noticed.
The next day Shingo went down to hunt for it. He found several chestnuts at the edge of the water. He could not be sure he had the one that had fallen during the ceremony; but he picked one up, thinking to tell Yasuko of it.
But then he decided that he was being childish. And would Yasuko, and others to whom he might speak of it, believe him?
He threw it into a clump of grass by the water.
It was less fear that Yasuko would not believe him than shyness before her brother-in-law that kept him from speaking.
Had the brother-in-law not been present, Shingo might have spoken of it at the ceremony the day before. In the presence of her brother-in-law, he felt a constraint very like shame.
He had certain feelings of guilt for having continued to be drawn to the sister even after she was married, and the sister’s death and Yasuko’s marriage had disturbed her brother-in-law.
For Yasuko, the feelings of shame must have been even stronger. One might say that, pretending not to know her real feelings, her sister’s widower had used her as a convenient substitute for a maid.
It was natural that, as a relative, he should be invited to Yasuko’s wedding. Very uncomfortable all the same. Shingo found it difficult to look at him.
The brother-in-law was a handsome man who quite outshone the bride. It seemed to Shingo that there was a peculiar radiance in his part of the room.
To Yasuko, her sister and brother-in-law were inhabitants of a dream world. In marrying her, Shingo had tacitly descended to her own lower rank.
He felt as if her brother-in-law were coldly looking down on the wedding from an elevation.
And the blank left by his failure to speak of so small a thing as the falling chestnut probably stayed on in their marriage.
When Fusako was born, Shingo secretly hoped that she might be a beauty like her aunt. He could not speak of this hope to his wife. But Fusako proved to be even homelier than Yasuko.
As Shingo would have put it, the blood of the older sister had failed to flow through the younger. He was disappointed in Yasuko.
Three or four days after Yasuko dreamed of the house in the country, a telegram came from a relative saying that Fusako had arrived with her two children.
Kikuko signed for the telegram and passed it on to Yasuko, who waited for Shingo to come home from the office.
‘Was something warning me in that dream?’ She was remarkably calm as she watched Shingo read the telegram.
‘Back to the country, is it?’
So she won’t kill herself – that was the first thought that came to him.
‘But why didn’t she come here?’
‘She probably thought Aihara would find out and be after her.’
‘Has anything come from Aihara?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose it’s finished, then, with Fusako taking the children, and not a word from him.’
‘But she came home the other time, and maybe she told him she was coming home again for a while. It wouldn’t be easy for him to show his face.’
‘It’s all over, whatever you say.’
‘I’m surprised that she should have had the nerve to go back to the country.’
‘Couldn’t she just as well have come here?’
‘Couldn’t she just as well – that’s not a very warm way to put it. We have to feel sorry for her, when she can’t come back to her own home. We’re parents and child, and this is what we’ve come to. I’ve been very unhappy.’
Frowning, Shingo raised his chin to untie his necktie.
‘Where’s my kimono?’
Kikuko brought a kimono, and went off silently with his suit.
Yasuko sat with bowed head while he was changing.
‘It’s not at all impossible that Kikuko will run out on us,’ she muttered, looking at the door Kikuko had closed behind her.
‘Do parents have to be responsible forever for their children’s marriages?’
‘You don’t understand women. It’s different when women are sad.’
‘And do you think a woman can understand everything about every other woman?’
‘Shuichi is away again tonight. Why can’t the two of you come home together? You come home by yourself and here is Kikuko to take care of your clothes. Is that right?’
Shingo did not answer.
‘Won’t we want to talk to him about Fusako?’
‘Shall we send him off to the country? We’ll probably have to send him for her.’
‘She might not want him to come for her. He’s always made a fool of her.’
‘There’s no point in talking about that now. We’ll send him on Saturday.’
‘We look good before the rest of the family, I must say. And here we stay away as if we never meant to have another thing to do with them. It’s strange that she should pick them to run off to, when they’ve meant so little to her.’
‘Who is taking care of her?’
‘Maybe she means to stay in the old house. She can’t stay on forever with my aunt.’
Yasuko’s aunt would be in her eighties. Yasuko had had very little to do with her or with her son, the present head of the family. Shingo could not even remember how many brothers and sisters there were.
It was unsettling to think that Fusako had fled to the house seen ruined in his dream.
3
On Saturday morning, Shingo and Shuichi left the house together. There was still some time before Shuichi’s train.
Shuichi came into Shingo’s office. ‘I’ll leave this with you,’ he said, handing his umbrella to Eiko.
She cocked her head inquiringly. ‘You’re off on a business trip?’
‘Yes.’
Putting down his bag, Shuichi took a seat by Shingo’s desk.
Eiko’s eye followed him. ‘Take care of yourself. It will probably be cold.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Shuichi spoke to Shingo, though he was looking at Eiko. ‘I was supposed to go dancing with the young lady this evening.’
‘Oh?’
‘Get the old man to take you.’
Eiko flushed.
Shingo did not feel inclined to comment.
Eiko picked up the bag as if she were going to see Shuichi off.
‘Please. That’s not for a lady to do.’ He snatched the bag and disappeared through the door.
Eiko made an unobtrusive little motion toward the door, and returned disconsolately to her desk. Shingo could not tell whether the gesture had been from confusion or calculation; but it had had in it a touch of the feminine that pleased him.
‘What a shame, when he promised you.’
‘I don’t put much stock in his promises these days.’
‘Shall I be a substitute?’
‘If you like.’
‘Are there complications?’
‘What?’ She looked up, startled.
‘Does Shuichi’s woman come to the dance hall?’
‘No!’
Shingo had learned from Eiko that the woman’s husky voice was erotic. He had not asked for further details.
It was not perhaps remarkable that his secretary should be acquainted with the woman when his own family was not; but he found that fact hard to accept.
It was particularly hard to accept when he had Eiko here before him.
One knew that she was a person of no consequence, and yet on such occasions she seemed to hang heavily before him, like the curtain of life itself. He could not guess what was passing through her mind.
‘Did you meet her when he took you dancing?’ he asked lightly.
‘Yes.’
‘Many times?’
‘No.’
‘Did he introduce you?’
‘It wasn’t an introduction, really.’
‘I don’t understand. He took you to meet her – he wanted to make her jealous?’
‘I’m no one to be jealous of.’ Eiko shrugged her shoulders very slightly.
Shingo could see that she was drawn to Shuichi, and that she was jealous.
‘Then be someone to be jealous of.’
‘Really!’ She looked down and laughed. ‘There were two of them too.’
‘What? She had a man with her?’
‘Not a man. A woman.’
‘I was worried.’
‘Worried?’ She looked at him. ‘The woman she lives with.’
‘They have a room together?’
‘A house. It’s small, but very nice.’
‘You mean you’ve been to the house?’
‘Yes.’ Eiko half swallowed the word.
Once more Shingo was surprised. ‘Where is it?’ he asked, somewhat abruptly.
‘I shouldn’t tell you,’ she said softly, a shadow crossing her face.
Shingo fell silent.
‘In Hongo, near the University.’
‘Oh?’
She continued as if the pressure had been relieved, ‘It’s up a dark narrow lane, but the house itself is nice. And the other lady is beautiful. I’m very fond of her.’
‘You mean the one that’s not Shuichi’s?’
‘Yes. She’s a very pleasant person.’
‘Oh? And what do they do? Are they both single?’
‘Yes – I don’t know, really.’
‘Two women living together.’
Eiko nodded. ‘I’ve never known a pleasanter person. I’d like to see her every day.’ There was a certain coyness in her manner. She spoke as if the pleasantness of the woman made it possible for her to be forgiven something in herself.
All very strange, thought Shingo.
It did occur to him that, in praising the other woman, she might be indirectly reprimanding Shuichi’s woman; but he had trouble guessing her real intentions.
Eiko looked out of the window. ‘It’s clearing.’
‘Suppose you open it a little.’
The Sound of the Mountain Page 5
