The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  “But Sister, you know yourself that your health is not good. Please make yourself strong again. As soon as you’ve done that, we’ll get a house for you right away.”

  “No! No! I don’t want to go into a hospital!” Ogen refused to agree. She went on to say, “Do you really think I came all the way in from the country for that?”

  Perhaps feeling that Ogen simply did not understand the difference between a hospital and a rest home, Kumakichi began making preparations to send her off the next day. Then he came to Ogen. He got down on the floor and bowed low before her, begging her to go. She despaired. If her own blood brother said that she had to go there, it seemed that there was no way out. With a sharp rap to the bowed head of her brother, she gave her assent.

  Ogen immediately left the second-floor room over the notions shop and returned to Naotsugu’s place to make her preparations. She thought over the kind of appearance she should make when she went to the rest home, taking care that she would not appear completely foolish. Among the clothes she had brought from home was an underrobe that had been torn in the upper body and patched with another kind of cloth. It had been painstakingly done, and she was fond of the restrained, striped pattern. Now she deliberately put on that underrobe, strange as it must appear, and fastened her sash over it.

  She borrowed a jacket from Naotsugu’s daughter and strolled casually out of the house, but her feet would carry her no further. Kumakichi was waiting for her at the corner nearest the notions shop, and the short-statured lady of the shop had come out to wait with him.

  “Please go in good health,” the shop lady said, wringing her hands as she spoke.

  Kumakichi stood in the street, staring in astonishment at his sister’s costume. He looked as though he was about to burst out laughing like a child, but they set out together. The people they met on the street would turn back to stare at Ogen and then walk off shaking their heads. It gave Ogen a kind of sad pleasure whenever she noticed this. A vague uneasiness combined with melancholy fantasies seemed to overwhelm her as she set out for the rest home. Some of her little nephews who had been playing in the street went with them. Under Kumakichi’s guidance, Ogen walked to the stop at the bottom of the slope to catch a streetcar. Naotsugu was waiting for them when they got off in front of Shinbashi Station, and he took over from his younger brother in taking her the rest of the way.

  A rest home awaited Ogen on the heights in Koishikawa. It seem like a dream that after leaving home in search of a final “retreat,” she should now find herself in her old age in this rest-home room, listening to the sound of white-uniformed nurses coming and going in the corridor. Her sickroom was one of a row occupied by other patients, all facing this corridor. Although it had a window, this room felt even more confining than the inner sitting room that she had shared with Oshin in the Oyama household.

  Ogen began to have strange dreams in the rest home each night after she was put to sleep with medication. When she awoke in the sickroom and looked around her, even the lifeless furnishings would have gender.13 It was a humiliating fact that Ogen had long been so disturbed by the intimacies of her adopted heir and his wife that she had been aroused to envy by even the wife’s most casual reference to her husband. Now, in Tokyo, she was appalled at the vanity of people like Naotsugu’s foster mother, still concerning themselves about the condition of their coiffures despite their advanced years. Ogen thought of them all as monsters. She felt the same envy even when the husband of Kumakichi’s niece, the daughter of her first brother, came to pay his respects—how could it be that her brother’s daughter should have such a splendid husband? In this embarrassing state of mind, she went to the window and stood on tiptoe to watch the man who was sweeping the garden. Even in the sounds he made while sweeping the leaves, Ogen found a monster that might lead a woman astray. She kept craning her neck, unable to believe her eyes.

  Then came a certain evening after which Ogen no longer could remember clearly just how long it had been since she had come to the rest home. She went down the corridor past the nurses’ room to stand at a glass window that looked out on the twilight garden. She caught sight of a white dog walking here and there along the corridor. It was a tiny Pekingese, and its long, curly hair standing above its ears like a hat looked particularly white in the darkening corridor. At the same moment, a fine-looking woman patient of thirty-five or so started to come down the hall from the nurses’ room. This patient was from an important family, and she was treated with respect by nurses and patients.

  “After you!” Ogen said, gesturing with her open right hand. The other woman passed in front of Ogen with downcast eyes. The dog that had been playing in the corridor caught sight of her and ran after her.

  “Dinner is served in your room, Mrs. Oyama!” called the nurse, and Ogen returned to eat.

  From that time on, Ogen constantly heard the sound of a dog walking in the hall. Even after she got into the bedding that the nurse had laid out early for her, the sound of the dog’s footsteps made it impossible to sleep. She heard the tiny animal outside the shōji of her room and she heard it under the veranda. She had the most vivid images of the dog walking around under the floor of the distinguished lady patient’s room. Images rose in her breast of Fusehime who had consorted with the loyal watchdog Yatsufusa and had given birth to eight children.14 Ogen groped through her memories of Bakin’s novel, which she had read as an impressionable young girl, and of Hokusai’s portrayal of Fusehime, which she began to confuse in her imagination with the distinguished lady patient. These imaginings placed her in the grip of an indescribable terror.

  “Your brother’s here, Mrs. Oyama,” the nurse said one day as she brought Kumakichi in. Ogen received her eagerly awaited brother in her own room.

  “A rickshaw man recognized me when I got off at the end of the line at the Edo River today. He kept asking me to engage him, but I came on foot today.” Kumakichi took out the box of pastry that he had brought along.

  “It’s a nice, quiet place, isn’t it?” he said as though in approval of the rest home that he had found for his sister.

  “What could you have brought me? I’ll have to see,” Ogen said, taking the cover off the pastry box on her lap. It was filled with hard candies that her brother had chosen in the hope that she might enjoy them in her sickroom. But in this place she found that even these candies were male or female.

  Ogen laughed, saying, “There still is some of the candy left that Otama brought when she visited, so I’ll divide this among the nurses later.”

  Otama was the daughter of Shōta, the oldest of her brothers.15 Otama and her husband were living in Tokyo, but Shōta had been far away for a long time. Ogen got up to show Kumakichi where she had put the candy she had received from Otama, even going so far as to open the sliding doors on the cupboard. Delighted by this visit from a relative, she paced around the room, treasuring her brother’s gift.

  “Kumakichi,” Ogen lowered her voice. “There is an awful lady patient in this rest home. She is the most terrifying of all the patients. You probably saw her in the corridor. She’s got a dog, and it’s frightening, too. It keeps running into everybody’s room. It even comes in here. If you don’t give it something to eat, it’ll search through the whole place.”

  As she spoke, she took out two or three pieces of the candy her brother had brought, put them on a piece of paper, and went over to the shōji. She stood by the shōji for some time, listening carefully for sounds of movement in the hall.

  “Here it comes! That dog can smell everything! If I just put them here by the shōji, we’ll be all right.”

  Smiling at her brother as if to share with him her pleasure in her own cunning, Ogen set down the candy next to the threshold and then tiptoed over to him.

  “But, Sister! The dog can’t get in here if you leave the shōji closed.”

  “Oh, no! He can get in through the tiniest crack. He’ll be coming in sooner or later. It wouldn’t do to speak about this too loudly, but that la
dy patient gave birth to it. I’ve seen through all that! Oh, it’s frightful, frightful!” Ogen made a show of drawing in on herself, making herself look small.

  Seeing that Kumakichi showed no interest in talking about the dog, she tried to change the subject, but all that he wanted to talk about was the conditions in this rest home, and that was something she had no interest at all in talking about. Nevertheless she took great pleasure simply in having her brother there.

  Kumakichi started to rise to his feet, saying that he was going to ask the head nurse to give his sister special attention.

  “You don’t have to rush off like that, Kumakichi!” Ogen went on, trying to persuade him to stay. “You’re the one who put me in this place. Now get me out of here right away!”

  At these words, Kumakichi got up. Ogen found it both strange and disconcerting that every relative who came to visit would sooner or later speak of meeting with the head nurse and then vanish. Kumakichi came back from the lounge to call out at his sister’s door, and Ogen came out to see him off.

  The faces of the numerous nurses reading newspapers and magazines in the spacious room by the entrance were youthful. The distinguished lady patient put in an appearance.

  “This is my younger brother,” Ogen said, extending her right hand out from behind her brother’s back as he was tying his shoelaces. She went on standing there for a while after he had left. “I know he’s going to come and get me out of here,” she said to herself once she was alone.

  The next morning the nurse brought in a bottle of medicine for Ogen.

  “We’re changing your medication from this morning on, Mrs. Oyama.” The nurse’s voice was somehow disturbing.

  Ogen took the candy that her brother had brought her from the cupboard, gave the nurse some, and then said, in a tiny voice, “The lady patient’s dog terrifies me, absolutely terrifies me.”

  The nurse stared at Ogen in astonishment. “There’s no such dog here,” she said as she left the room. Her remark left the mentally exhausted Ogen in a state of shock.

  “Something’s wrong with me.” The realization suddenly struck Ogen. But then she decided that the mischievous nurse had simply been playing a game to cheer her bored patient. That dog had been getting into everyone’s room, no matter whose. How could such a tiny dog acquire such a knowledge of human depravity? That creature that was prepared so casually to shatter the virtue of a woman who had remained so painfully chaste for so long, at whom not a single person had pointed the finger of blame even when her husband deserted her? The thought made Ogen fearful of remaining in the rest home. By the time evening came and the other patients were walking up and down the corridor, she looked out through the glass window into the garden and decided that evil intent had been behind the nurse’s remark that there was no such dog. She saw that dog always following after the distinguished lady patient’s skirts, and she saw it now, out playing in the garden. She could plainly see the white dog in the pale, dreamlike light striking the glass shōji.

  The cold, cold days came on suddenly. Ogen waited and waited, but Kumakichi never came for her. Visits from the other relatives gradually tapered off. Even Naotsugu and his daughter rarely appeared at the rest home.

  Ogen began thinking of how she used to pickle turnip greens for the Oyama family every year. She went off to the kitchen near her sickroom where a mountainous heap of turnip greens in the sink and freshly washed greens had caught her eye. She left the faucet turned all the way on as she worked at the pickling, and the sink soon overflowed. Water ran across the floor toward the garden entrance. Ogen went on swirling the greens, her hands plunged deep in the chilly water.

  An alarmed nurse rushed in to turn off the faucet.

  “You mustn’t get your hands in the water that way, Mrs. Oyama. Just look at your hands! They’re all chapped aren’t they?”

  Scolded by the nurse, a crestfallen Ogen returned to her room. Then it happened. Ogen was sitting alone by her brazier when a nurse called.

  “A guest for you, Mrs. Oyama!”

  Of all people, it was Shōta’s daughter, Otama, who came in and started taking off her coat.

  “You haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”

  “They should be bringing my tray in any moment now.”

  “Well then, let’s have dinner together. We can ask the nurse to bring something for me, too.”

  “What a surprise!”

  “To tell the truth, Uncle Kumakichi sent me. I’ve come to get you out.”

  Ogen was reduced to staring at her niece for a moment, unable to speak.

  “You’re playing games with your old auntie!” Ogen laughed, unable to believe the joyful news that Otama had brought.

  It appeared, however, as though Otama really had come to get her out. To Ogen’s stricken eyes, it was impossible to tell just how much of this was an answer to her long wait to be taken home and how much of it had been a fantasy about her relatives that might disappear like a dream. She repeatedly scrutinized Otama’s face, the face of this niece who, though now the mother of two children, still seemed as young as ever. The nurse came in with two trays, one for Ogen and one in response to Otama’s request. Ogen found herself shuddering. After spending two or three lonely months—which had felt like two or three years—in this rest home, the day at last had come when she would once again find herself at her brother’s side.

  After dinner Otama was busy for a time with the formalities connected with leaving the hospital. Ogen’s room had suddenly become a lively place. The cheerful young nurses helping with her preparations to leave were coming and going along the corridor.

  The head nurse came to share her pleasure. “Congratulations on your departure, Mrs. Oyama.”

  “Well, Auntie, you just go and thank everybody who has helped you here. I’ll take care of your luggage.”

  “Will you? It feels as though I’m dreaming.”

  Ogen went on chatting happily with her niece as they made preparations for her departure. She began at last to feel the excitement herself while she was putting on a good sash for going out.

  “The rickshaws are here. Good-bye! Take care of yourself, Mrs. Oyama!” came the voice of the head nurse as Ogen left the sickroom.

  The rickshaws, their black hoods raised, had been pulled into tile garden of the rest home. By the time Ogen had bid everyone a final farewell and climbed into her rickshaw, it was already dark outside. Chilly night air with a hint of frost in it struck at Ogen’s face. The light spilling out from the entrance made it just barely possible to see the faces of the rickshaw men and of those who had come out into the garden to see her off. Her rickshaw was soon bumping its way out of the garden and through the gate of the rest home.

  Ogen found herself riding for a while along rather quiet streets, and then they came to more brightly lighted main streets. She had no idea of where she was in the vast city of Tokyo nor even of which direction she was going in. She could only see directly ahead through the small opening in the hood of her rickshaw, hear the cries exchanged by the rickshaw men whenever they came to a crossroads, or sense whenever they came out into a relatively spacious open area. After she had ridden for an intolerably long time, the rickshaw started to move up a grade. The lights of an unknown street, lit up as if for a night sale, gleamed outside the hood. People were passing close by the rickshaw. Ogen experienced a sense of elation, almost of intoxication. She thought of how her brothers and their children would be waiting for her. In her excitement she began to nod her head and chant a line from some nō play, jiggling her way up the grade in high spirits. Charmed by the sound of her own voice, she soon forgot completely that she was out in a public street.

  At last the rickshaw reached a certain street and stopped.

  “Today is your lucky day, madam!” the rickshaw man cheered as Ogen got down. She was exhausted by the long rickshaw ride. All that she could think of was getting to her brothers’ place as quickly as possible so that she could rest. An old woman servant whom she
had not seen at her brothers’ house came out of the entrance and spoke in familiar tones. “We’ve got tea all ready for you!”

  Ogen followed the woman down a corridor. She walked past room after room, and then found herself at another corridor. It all seemed too large for the house that her brother was going to find for her. The longer she walked, the more she somehow felt that she had been here before. As she turned into the second corridor, she gasped when she spotted a huge saw and a forbidding iron mallet and other kinds of rusty cutting implements that, once seen, could never be forgotten. The old woman whom she had been so certain was a servant of her brothers’ was, now that she looked at her more closely, the elderly nurse who had cared for her in the Negishi hospital years ago. Otama, whom she thought had come along with her in another rickshaw, was nowhere to be seen.

  “I feel as though I have had a spell put on me by a fox,” Ogen muttered to herself as she walked along.

  “Mrs. Oyama! It’s been a long time!” There was no question about this person who now rushed out to greet her. It was a middle-aged nurse in a white uniform. The elderly woman who had guided her this far now turned her over to this nurse and went back in the direction of the entrance. Ogen clearly recognized every detail of wall, pillar, and outer passage.

  “Where is this? Where on earth have I come to?”

  “You have a bad memory, Mrs. Oyama. Isn’t this the Negishi hospital? You’ve been here before, after all!”

  As Ogen talked with the middle-aged nurse, her whole body began to tremble as though from electric shocks.

  The next morning Ogen found herself in a large ward where a great number of women patients all lived and slept together. She could only hope that she was dreaming about all these unnatural-appearing women, young and old, who were lying about everywhere, each lost in her own world. Now she understood still more clearly just why Otama had vanished after bringing her out of the rest home and conducting her to the entrance of this place.

  “Damn it!” Ogen cried to herself, but there was nothing to be done now.