Dandelions

by Yasunari Kawabata

  There was a woman, the widow of a soldier who had died in the war, who knew how to speak English quite well and thus served as a point of contact with the occupation and generally gadded about with the foreigners. She was called Mrs. Kitao, and she was often at the club. A rumor started going around that Kizaki had gotten involved with this flashy widow, and some busybody talked to Ineko’s mother. She didn’t actually believe it, but it occurred to her that having her husband take Ineko along to the club would allow her to keep an eye out and prevent anything from happening. Kizaki didn’t hesitate a bit; far from it. He was thrilled. Ineko, with her five-year-old-girl instincts, took an immediate dislike to Mrs. Kitao. And she saw that her father disliked the widow, too. As a former army officer, the fierce pain of the defeat and the ruins around him continued to rankle; his prosthetic right leg and the aching nerves in the stump were a constant reminder — or perhaps a consolation. He was in no state to be making eyes at such a woman. For her part, Mrs. Kitao was just learning to ride, though sticking a little too close to her teacher.

  The first time little Ineko mounted a horse, she sat pressed against her father’s stomach while he cradled her in his arm. She grew to like horses, and learned to ride alone. All through her childhood, people thought of her as the club’s mascot. Her father looked on her as more than just his greatest treasure; she was the very source of his life. And he loved more than anything to see his young daughter on horseback. He didn’t just take her to the club; he let her come along on the excursions, too. Ineko was happy. Her father took pride in her, and she felt proud of him. But Kizaki, who had always hated losing, began on account of his missing leg to shy less and less from danger, both at the club and on excursions. Ineko saw only what a magnificent rider he was.

  “I felt so awful it was like the blood had frozen in my veins. I still do,” Ineko’s mother said, continuing her story. “I know I killed him, I did — by giving in to the jealousy we women feel, the suspicions. If I hadn’t told him to take our little Ineko to the club she would never have started riding, and he would never had gone on that trip with her.”

  “Ah?” Kuno didn’t quite know what to say to this.

  “Well it’s true, isn’t it?” the mother said, her tone full of self-reproach. “I wanted to die, too . . . not a double suicide, that’s not it — to follow him in death. If it hadn’t been for Ineko, I would have. To atone for my sins, in part.”

  “Hold on.”

  “What?”

  “You’re suggesting that if you hadn’t been jealous, if you hadn’t let Ineko learn to ride, then the accident that killed your husband would never have happened?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How strange.”

  “It’s not strange at all.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. It feels sort of like we’ve just switched places, the way you’re talking to me now, and how I was talking to you before.” Kuno thought for a moment. “I wonder if people all think alike at these times, in these extreme circumstances.”

  “You think so?” Ineko’s mother said. Kuno’s remark seemed to have her caught off guard. “I don’t know about that, but . . . I think my wanting to die after Kizaki’s accident and your wanting to marry Ineko even though she has lost her mind are two entirely different things. I would feel terrible for Ineko if they aren’t.”

  “No, no, they are different. I’m not saying I want to marry her because she’s been diagnosed with somagnosia — we decided to marry before. I just haven’t changed my mind.”

  “I know. But now you feel sorry for her.”

  “Yes, pity is part of it now, too. But let’s not talk about that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You could say compassion has deepened my feelings for her. But I really just want to stay with her, to be with her constantly and help her recover.”

  “I understand that,” the mother said simply.

  Kuno looked at her. “Have you ever told Ineko how you feel about her father’s accident, Mother? That maybe ultimately your jealousy was to blame?”

  “Ineko felt that way before I did. She was obsessed with the thought that it was her fault, her responsibility — that she had killed her father. It’s only natural. After all, it happened right in front of her. They were galloping along side by side when he tumbled off the cliff into the ocean. And she was just a girl, at the most sensitive age. It’s enough to drive anyone mad.”

  “Ah.”

  “That’s partly why I told her about that pathetic jealously of mine — to calm her, to loosen the knot in her heart.”

  The mother’s feet slowed as she walked the narrow path, and for a moment it seemed she might stumble into the grass along the bank. Kuno put a hand lightly on her shoulder.

  “A woman must never be jealous, Ineko — you must never doubt a man. In the end, that’s what I told her. She was choked with tears at the time, sobbing at her father’s death, but then just like that she stopped, stunned, and stared at me.” The mother looked as if her eyes were hurting her. “I’m sure my words must have struck a chord, given the timing, given how she was feeling, and now she’ll never forget them. If she ever does get better, Mr. Kuno, and you marry her, I can promise you she won’t ever be jealous. She’ll never doubt you, Mr. Kuno.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Yes, it is. I felt bad later, having said such a thing, but by then it was too late. There’s no way for me to take it back now.”

  “So Ineko will never be jealous. She’ll never doubt me!” All of a sudden, Kuno burst out laughing. His tone was cheerful, as if he were trying to persuade himself that Ineko’s mother had been joking. “No, she’ll be jealous. She sulks in the most adorable way. For instance . . . here, I’ll give you an example. You know those very tightly rolled cigarettes? The ones you’ve got to soften a bit in your palm first, before you light them? So I was squeezing one of those stiff cigarettes one day, and Ineko lit a match. And here’s what she says — it’s great. She says, ‘I’m sure the girls in bars are always ready with a match. You were thinking of one just now, weren’t you. I can tell’.”

  “Please,” the mother muttered, unimpressed.

  “One more. Back when I was sitting for my graduation exams, this girl I knew lent me her notes for two of the subjects, so I danced with her more than anyone else at the graduation party. When I told Ineko that story, she asked, ‘And what was she wearing, this girl? A kimono or a dress? Did the dress have an open back?’ I suppose she was imagining my hand on the girl’s skin while we danced, if the dress were backless. It was a shock to realize how sensitive young women are about these things. ‘And how was her handwriting? Was it neat? Pretty? Maybe I should take some lessons to improve my penmanship.’ Isn’t that adorable?”

  “Please don’t confuse the issue, Mr. Kuno. These childish anecdotes won’t distract me,” the mother said. “You don’t really believe a woman’s jealousy is as silly as all that?”

  “. . . . . . . . . . . .”

  “You don’t, do you?”

  “But — ”

  “But what? Ineko and I both detest that word. It would be nice if you could avoid using ‘but’ in conversation with her.”

  “Yes, but . . . listen Mother. The conjunction but lets us change our thoughts, steer them in a fresh direction — it’s how we humans rescue ourselves from the anxieties that entrap us, and open new paths forward. I couldn’t survive in any place, be it paradise or hell, where the use of but was forbidden.”

  “All right. But . . . what?”

  “Okay, let’s think hypothetically a moment. Whenever Ineko sees a horse, she goes pale and her body starts shaking. And yet she can still ride a horse if she tries. I’ve never had riding lessons. But I can at least stay on a horse. Ineko would find it horrible to return to the cliff where her father fell and died, there’s no question about that. But as long as that
road in Izu exists, as long there are horses in the world and she and I are still alive, there’s always a possibility that she and I might one day get up on our horses and ride down that road.”

  “What are you trying to say? I don’t understand.”

  “That’s how but works. It’s an example.”

  “Ah, I see.” The mother nodded, then continued: “So you’re thinking of taking Ineko to that spot, having her ride past it with you, the two of you, as a way of healing the pain and the sorrow she still carries in her heart from her father’s death — is that the idea? I think I’ve heard of neurologists or psychiatrists or some sort of doctor using a method like that.”

  “It makes sense. I suppose it could happen, especially if Ineko and I were married, living happily together, and we made a trip to Izu to pray for her father’s spirit . . . Well, she might have a sort of catharsis,” Kuno said calmly. “And if, on that cliff, her father’s spirit should call and Ineko herself, on her horse, should tumble into the ocean, I would go down with her. I think I would be happy with that.”

  “Stop it, Mr. Kuno. Her father’s spirit isn’t vengeful, that I can say for sure,” the mother said emphatically. “If the cliff should crumble beneath her, her father’s spirit would lift Ineko up, hold her aloft in space, so she could live. I’m convinced of that. The dead protect the living. Ineko’s father isn’t in a grave, or enshrined in an altar, but he is there inside her, within Ineko — clearly, strongly there. He’s inside me, too.”

  “Mother,” Kuno said. “The trip to Izu, that was just an example.”

  “You can go riding there if you like, if it will make Ineko better.”

  “What you said before was very sad — that Ineko could never be jealous, never doubt me. And now I’m wondering whether that might have been it. Maybe something made her jealous, suspicious, and suppressing it took so much effort that it drove her crazy.”

  “Some trifle like your friend in the backless dress?”

  “No. Something I never even noticed, but that was very hurtful to her — that’s what I’m asking myself. That’s the sort of sickness somagnosia seems to be, right? An effort not to see a part of yourself, of a loved one, of life. A blindness that stems for some deep wound.”

  “You understand her that much?”

  “That much even I can see,” Kuno said. “But you know, Mother, I brought up that idea of riding in Izu just as an example, but I wonder . . . is it better to let her rest in the asylum with her eyes closed, waiting until the film that clouds her vision falls away on its own, or to let her marry me and then make her open them, by force if need be? Have you really thought about that, in a serious way? Are you afraid to take that risk?”

  “Don’t you remember what I said, Mr. Kuno? Will you really be content if she can’t see you when you lie together? Wouldn’t that disturb you?”

  “It’s fine. I told you before. So she can’t see me; she’ll feel me touching her.”

  “There you go again.” Once more, the mother blushed slightly. “Have you considered how awful that would be for Ineko? All that matters is how it is for you?”

  “Now that’s ridiculous.” Kuno gazed at the mother, his gaze more pitying than anything else. “How could any man say such a thing?”

  “Men have that side to them, I think.”

  “Do they? Because they’re not as sensitive as women, I suppose?”

  “Being ill isn’t the same as being sensitive.”

  “Clearly you think it was her sensitivity that brought the illness on. Maybe it did, I don’t know. But either way, is tossing a sensitive person into a madhouse a sensitive treatment?”

  “Please don’t, Mr. Kuno.” Ineko’s mother grimaced. “I took our doctor’s advice. Doctors know about sickness.”

  “Doctors. Doctors, too, for diseases of the heart. Like they know anything.”

  “Ikuta Clinic seems like a nice place. Warm, peaceful.”

  Kuno looked back at the hill where the clinic stood, hidden by trees.

  “You can still hear Ineko’s bell. The ringing seems regular enough, even if it’s a lunatic striking it. You can hear the sound flying through the sky, over the town, flowing out to sea. Seeing us down the road.”

  “Ineko isn’t a lunatic now, Mr. Kuno. Not when she’s striking the bell.”

  “No, I know. I wonder how long she plans to keep on with it, though? Maybe the nurse makes her go on striking it? Or can she decide to stop on her own? If she pushes herself too hard, she might stop seeing the bell. From her somagnosia, I mean.”

  “A bell isn’t a body.”

  “Ah.” Kuno nodded, then murmured, as if to himself, “A bell is not a person. Kizaki’s horse wasn’t a person, either. And yet when these things are connected to someone in an extreme state, they become people. Isn’t that right, Mother?”

  “Let’s not talk about horses anymore.”

  “You realize, Mother, that you and Ineko may have been on completely the wrong track with this fatalistic, karmic-retribution-style idea you’ve been beating yourselves up with, about the horses. That you might just be thinking too much. That’s the sense I got, listening to you. The way you see it, right, you had little Ineko’s father take her to the riding club because you were jealous, suspicious, and if you hadn’t then Ineko would never have learned to ride. If she hadn’t become a rider, she and her father wouldn’t have taken that trip to Izu. And without that trip, Father never would have had his accident. So in the end, your jealousy was the cause that resulted in Father’s death.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a pretty conceited sense of fate, if you ask me. A very self-centered take on karma, or destiny, if you prefer. You flatter yourself with an enlightenment you don’t possess.”

  “What a thing to say!”

  “If that’s really how you see things, Mother, then shouldn’t you blame the very fact that you and Father were born in the same age? And that life brought the two of you together? Worst of all, of course, was your marriage to him, and that you gave birth to a baby girl named Ineko. Isn’t that right? All that together is what caused Father’s accident — in a distant way, yes, but still. If you follow the chain of your regrets to the end, that’s where you end up. What a stupid way to think about fate. Okay, maybe it’s not stupid, I don’t know. But your regrets certainly are. There’s no end to it, once you start feeling bad about things in the past. You can’t even stop with your own generation. It was your parents’ fault for giving birth to a woman like you, and it was . . . so it goes, on and on. Before you know it, you’ll end up laying the responsibility on the very existence of the human race.”

  “Are you trying to bully me?” Ineko’s mother asked bluntly, though she had plainly been shaken by Kuno’s agitated tone. “Or did you mean all that to be comforting?”

  “I don’t know that it’s comforting . . . at any rate, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kuno said. “It’s another but, actually. I just wanted to point out that there’s another way of looking at it — precisely the opposite of yours. Can’t you look at it like this instead? If Ineko hadn’t started visiting the riding club with her father, if she hadn’t learned to ride, and if they never went on that trip together, Father might well have died sooner still, before the accident even had a chance to happen?”

  “What!”

  “After all, Ineko was his joy, his happiness, perhaps even the source of his life. For all we know, she might have given him more time to live. Not even the gods of destiny could say for certain that that wasn’t the case.”

  “It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose.” Ineko’s mother uttered this platitude in the most commonplace tone she could manage, but she had a look on her face as if she’d spotted an unexpected patch of blue in a cloudy sky. It was possible to think of things the way Kuno had said. At the very least, it was true that Ineko’s father had been happy watc
hing his daughter learn to ride, and traveling with her on horseback. The young Ineko wasn’t the only one who was happy then.

  “All a matter of perspective? That’s just the kind of careless, evasive response that — ” Kuno paused a moment, then continued, “I don’t like. It irritates me.”

  “Because you’re young, Mr. Kuno.” Once again the mother replied with a platitude, and in the same platitudinous tone. She didn’t necessarily mean to hide her feelings, but it struck her as she spoke that her comments might have kept Kuno from noticing that bit of sunshine in her heart. “Isn’t that what saves us? The idea that it’s all perspective?”

  “Well, yes, I guess you could say that religion, philosophy, and morality are all rooted in perspective,” Kuno said. “But the way you used the phrase just now, that was simply a trick, a clever attempt to avoid having to formulate an actual perspective. Saying I’m young, too . . . that’s just one of those slimy things old people say. Thinking like that leads nowhere. To be frank, it isn’t really thinking at all. That sort of ‘perspective’ is where people end up when they’ve thought so long and so hard that they just don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “I see no reason I should have to listen to you scolding me like this, Mr. Kuno,” said the mother. Something close to a smile was playing on her face, though — an outward sign that the tightness in her chest had loosened. “Hearing you before, those things you said, I saw that there was another way of looking at things that could give us, Ineko and me, some comfort. I really mean that. When you’ve been hammered down by something awful, it’s easy to think you have no choice but to keep walking down the same road, looking neither right nor left, your hair as disheveled as your thoughts, with the echoes of that awful event coming after you, or dragging you forward, since either way it’s their road. That’s how it has been for Ineko and me. But it seems maybe there are times when, just like that, you can turn off onto a side street.”