Thousand Cranes

by Yasunari Kawabata

  ‘And now you say it to me.’

  ‘But it’s different.’

  ‘You said several times that I would be getting married.’

  ‘But your case is so different.’ She gazed at him with tear-filled eyes. ‘You’re different from me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Your position, your place.’

  ‘My position?’

  ‘Your position is different. Shouldn’t I say position? I’ll say the degree of darkness, then.’

  ‘In a word, the guilt? But mine is deeper.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head violently, and a tear spilled over, drawing a strange line from the corner of her left eye to her ear. ‘The guilt was Mother’s and she died – if we have to talk about guilt. But I don’t think it was guilt. Only sorrow.’

  Kikuji sat with bowed head.

  ‘If it was guilt,’ she continued, ‘it may never go away. But sorrow will.’

  ‘When you talk about darkness, aren’t you making your mother’s death darker than you need to?’

  ‘I should have said the degree of sorrow.’

  ‘The degree of sorrow.’

  ‘Is the degree of love,’ he wanted to add; but he stopped himself.

  ‘And there is the question of you and Yukiko. That makes you different from me.’ She spoke as if she meant to bring the conversation back to reality. ‘Miss Kurimoto thought Mother was trying to interfere, and she thought I stood in the way too. And so she said I was married. I can’t think of any other explanation.’

  ‘But she said that the Inamura girl was married too.’

  For a moment her face seemed to collapse. Again she shook her head violently. ‘A lie, a lie. That’s a lie too. When?’

  ‘When did she get married? Very recently, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s sure to be a lie.’

  ‘When I heard that the two of you were married, I thought it might be true about you,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But the other may really be true.’

  ‘It’s a lie. No one gets married in this heat. In a summer kimono, sweat pouring off – can you imagine it?’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a summer wedding?’

  ‘Only now and then. People put weddings off to fall, or …’ For some reason, tears came to her eyes again, and fell to her knee. She gazed at the wet spot. ‘But why should Miss Kurimoto tell such lies?’

  ‘She cleverly took me in, did she?’ Kikuji deliberated for a time.

  But what had brought the tears?

  It was certain that at least the report about Fumiko was a lie.

  Had Chikako said that Fumiko was married to drive her off, the Inamura girl in fact being married? He weighed the possibility.

  There was something in it he could not accept, however. He, too, began to feel that she had lied.

  ‘Well, as long as we don’t know whether it’s a lie or the truth, we don’t know the extent of Kurimoto’s prankishness.’

  ‘Prankishness?’

  ‘Suppose we call it that.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t telephoned today I’d have been left married. A fine prank.’

  The maid called Kikuji again.

  He came back with a letter in his hand.

  ‘Your letter, and no stamp.’ He lightly turned it over.

  ‘No, no. You’re not to look at it.’ She brought herself toward him, still kneeling, and tried to take it from his hand. ‘Give it back to me.’

  Kikuji whipped his hands behind him.

  Her left hand fell on his knee, and her right hand reached for the letter. With left hand and right hand thus making contradictory motions, she lost her balance. The left hand was behind her to keep her from falling against Kikuji, the right was clutching at the letter, now behind Kikuji’s back. Twisting to the right, she was about to fall. The side of her face would be against his chest – but she turned supplely away. The touch of her left hand on his knee was unbelievably light. He could not see how she had supported the upper part of her body, twisted as it was and about to fall.

  He had stiffened abruptly as she threw herself upon him; and now he wanted to cry out at the astonishing suppleness. He was intensely conscious of the woman. He was conscious of Fumiko’s mother, Mrs Ota.

  At what instant had she recovered and pulled away? Where had the force spent itself? It was a suppleness that could not be. It was like the deepest instinct of woman. Just as he was expecting her to come down heavily upon him, she was near him, a warm odor. That was all.

  The odor was strong. It came richly, the odor of a woman who had been at work through the summer day. He felt the odor of Fumiko, and of her mother. The smell of Mrs Ota’s embrace.

  ‘Give it back to me.’ Kikuji did not resist. ‘I’m going to tear it up.’

  She turned away and tore her letter to small bits. The neck and the bare arms were damp with perspiration.

  She had suddenly paled as she fell toward him and recovered herself. Then, kneeling again, she had flushed; and in that time, it seemed, the perspiration had come out.

  3

  Dinner, from a near-by caterer, was uninteresting, exactly what one would have expected.

  Kikuji’s teacup was the cylindrical Shino bowl. The maid brought it to him as usual.

  He noticed, and Fumiko’s eyes too were on it. ‘You have been using that bowl?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘You shouldn’t.’ He sensed that she was not as uncomfortable as he. ‘I was sorry afterward that I’d given it to you. I mentioned it in my letter.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘What … Well, I apologized for having given you a bad piece of Shino.’

  ‘It’s not a bad piece at all.’

  ‘It can’t be good Shino. Mother used it as an ordinary teacup.’

  ‘I don’t really know, but I’d imagine that it’s very good Shino.’ He took the bowl in his hand and gazed at it.

  ‘There is much better Shino. The bowl reminds you of another, and the other is better.’

  ‘There don’t seem to be any small Shino pieces in my father’s collection.’

  ‘Even if you don’t have them here, you see them. Other bowls come into your mind when you’re drinking from this, and you think how much better they are. It makes me very sad, and Mother too.’

  Kikuji breathed deeply. ‘But I’m moving farther and farther from tea. I have no occasion to see tea bowls.’

  ‘You don’t know when you might see one. You must have seen much finer pieces.’

  ‘You’re saying that a person can give only the very finest?’

  ‘Yes.’ Fumiko looked straight at him, affirmation in her eyes. ‘That is what I think. I asked you in my letter to break it and throw away the pieces.’

  ‘To break it? To break this?’ Kikuji sought to divert the attack that bore down upon him. ‘It’s from the old Shino kiln, and it must be three or four hundred years old. At first it was probably an ordinary table piece, but a long time has gone by since it became a tea bowl. People watched over it and passed it on – some of them may even have taken it on long trips with them. I can’t break it just because you tell me to.’

  On the rim of the bowl, she had said, there was a stain from her mother’s lipstick. Her mother had apparently told her that once the lipstick was there it would not go away, however hard she rubbed, and indeed since Kikuji had had the bowl he had washed without success at that especially dark spot on the rim. It was a light brown, far from the color of lipstick; and yet there was a faint touch of red in it, not impossible to take for old, faded lipstick, It may have been the red of the Shino itself; or, since the forward side of the bowl had become fixed with use, a stain may have been left from the lips of owners before Mrs Ota. Mrs Ota, however, had probably used it most. It had been her everyday teacup.

  Had Mrs Ota herself first thought of so using it? Or had Kikuji’s father? Kikuji wondered.

  There had also been his suspicion that Mrs Ota, with his father, had used the two cylindrical Raku bowl
s, the red and the black, as everyday ‘man-wife’ teacups.

  His father had had her make the Shino water jar a flower vase, then – he had had her put roses and carnations in it? And he had had her use the little Shino bowl as a teacup? Had he at such times thought her beautiful?

  Now that the two of them were dead, the water jar and the bowl had come to Kikuji. And Fumiko had come too.

  ‘I’m not just being childish. I really do wish you would break it. You liked the water jar I gave you, and I remembered the other Shino and thought it would go with the jar. But afterward I was ashamed.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be using it as a teacup. It’s much too good.’

  ‘But there are so many better pieces. You’ll drink from this and think of them. I’ll be very unhappy.’

  ‘But do you really believe that you can’t give away anything except the finest pieces?’

  ‘It depends on the person and the circumstances.’

  The words had rich overtones.

  Was Fumiko kind enough to think that for a souvenir of her mother, a souvenir of Fumiko herself – perhaps something more intimate than a souvenir – only the finest would do?

  The desire, the plea, that only the finest be left to recall her mother came across to Kikuji. It came as the finest of emotions, and the water jar was its witness.

  The very face of the Shino, glowing warmly cool, made him think of Mrs Ota. Possibly because the piece was so fine, the memory was without the darkness and ugliness of guilt.

  As he looked at the masterpiece it was, he felt all the more strongly the masterpiece Mrs Ota had been. In a masterpiece there is nothing unclean.

  He looked at the jar and he wanted to see Fumiko, he had said over the telephone that stormy day. He had been able to sa it only because the telephone stood between. Fumiko had answered that she had another Shino piece, and brought him the bowl.

  It was probably true that the bowl was weaker than the jar.

  ‘I seem to remember that my father had a portable tea chest. He used to take it with him when he went traveling,’ mused Kikuji. ‘The bowl he kept in it must be much worse than this.’

  ‘What sort of bowl is it?’

  ‘I’ve never seen it myself.’

  ‘Show it to me. It’s sure to be better. And if it is, may I break the Shino?’

  ‘A dangerous gamble.’

  After dinner, as she dexterously picked seeds from the watermelon, Fumiko again pressed him to show her the bowl.

  He sent the maid to open the tea cottage, and went out through the garden. He meant to bring the tea chest back with him, but Fumiko went along.

  ‘I have no idea where it might be,’ he called back. ‘Kurimoto knows far better than I.’

  Fumiko was in the shadow of the blossom-heavy oleander. He could see, below the lowest of the white branches, stockinged feet in garden clogs.

  The tea chest was in a cupboard at the side of the pantry.

  Kikuji brought it into the main room and laid it before her. She knelt deferentially, as though waiting for him to untie the wrapping; but after a time she reached for it.

  ‘If I may see it, then.’

  ‘It’s a bit dusty.’ He took the chest by the wrapping and dusted it over the garden. ‘The pantry is alive with bugs, and there was a dead cicada in the cupboard.’

  ‘But this room is clean.’

  ‘Kurimoto cleaned it when she came to tell me that you and the Inamura girl were married. It was night, and she must have shut a cicada in the cupboard.’

  Taking out what appeared to be a tea bowl, Fumiko bent low to undo the sack. Her fingers trembled slightly.

  The round shoulders were thrown forward, and to Kikuji, looking at her in profile, the long throat seemed even longer.

  There was something engaging about the pouting lower lip, which pushed forward in proportion as the mouth was drawn earnestly shut, and about the plain swell of the ear lobes.

  She looked up at him. ‘It’s Karatsu.’1

  Kikuji came nearer.

  ‘It’s a very good bowl.’ She laid it on the floor matting.

  It was a small, cylindrical Karatsu bowl, which, like the Shino, could be used for everyday.

  ‘It’s strong. Dignified – much better than the Shino.’

  ‘But can you compare Shino and Karatsu?’

  ‘You can tell if you see them together.’

  Held by the power of the Karatsu, Kikuji took it on his knee and gazed at it.

  ‘Shall I bring the Shino, then?’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Fumiko stood up.

  They put the Shino and the Karatsu side by side. Their eyes met, and fell to the bowls.

  ‘A man’s and a woman’s.’ Kikuji spoke in some confusion. ‘When you see them side by side.’

  Fumiko nodded, as if unable to speak.

  To Kikuji too the words had an odd ring.

  The Karatsu was undecorated, greenish with a touch of saffron and a touch too of carmine. It swelled powerfully toward the base.

  ‘A favorite your father took with him on trips. It’s very much like your father.’

  Fumiko seemed not to sense the danger in the remark.

  Kikuji could not bring himself to say that the Shino bowl was like her mother. But the two bowls before them were like the souls of his father and her mother.

  The tea bowls, three or four hundred years old, were sound and healthy, and they called up no morbid thoughts. Life seemed to stretch taut over them, however, in a way that was almost sensual.

  Seeing his father and Fumiko’s mother in the bowls, Kikuji felt that they had raised two beautiful ghosts and placed them side by side.

  The tea bowls were here, present, and the present reality of Kikuji and Fumiko, facing across the bowls, seemed immaculate too.

  Kikuji had said to her, on the day after the seventh-day services for her mother, that there was something terrible in his being with her, facing her. Had the guilt and the fear been wiped away by the touch of the bowls?

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Kikuji, as if to himself. ‘It wasn’t Father’s nature to play with tea bowls, and yet he did, and maybe they deadened his sense of guilt.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘But when you see the bowl, you forget the defects of the old owner. Father’s life was only a very small part of the life of a tea bowl.’

  ‘Death, waiting at your feet. I’m frightened. I’ve tried so many things. I’ve tried thinking that with death itself at my feet I can’t be forever held by Mother’s death.’

  ‘When you’re held by the dead, you begin to feel that you aren’t in this world yourself.’

  The maid came with a kettle and other tea utensils.

  She had evidently concluded that, so long in the cottage, they needed water for tea.

  Kikuji suggested to Fumiko that they use the Shino and the Karatsu here as if they themselves were on a trip.

  Fumiko nodded simply. ‘May I use the Shino one last time before I break it?’ She took the tea whisk from the box, and went to wash it.

  The long summer day was still bright.

  ‘As if on a trip,’ said Fumiko, twirling the small whisk in the small bowl.

  ‘Off on a trip – and are we at an inn?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be an inn. A river bank, or a mountain top. Maybe cold water would have been better, to make us think of the mountains.’ As she lifted the tea whisk, her near-black eyes rose and for an instant were on Kikuji. Then she looked down at the Karatsu, which she turned in the palm of one hand.

  The eyes moved forward with the bowl, to a spot before Kikuji’s knee.

  He felt that she might come flowing over to him.

  When she started to make tea in her mother’s Shino, the whisk rustled against the bowl. She stopped.

  ‘It’s very hard.’

  ‘It must be hard in such a small bowl,’ said Kikuji. But the trouble was that Fumiko’s hands were trembling.

  Once she had stopped, there was no makin
g the whisk move again.

  Fumiko sat with bowed head, her eyes on her taut wrist.

  ‘Mother won’t let me.’

  ‘What!’ Kikuji started up and took her by the shoulders, as if to pull her from the meshes of a curse.

  There was no resistance.

  4

  Unable to sleep, Kikuji waited for light through the cracks in the shutters, and went out to the cottage.

  The broken Shino lay on the stepping stone before the stone basin.

  He put together four large pieces to form a bowl. A piece large enough to admit his forefinger was missing from the rim.

  Wondering if it might be somewhere on the ground, he started looking among the stones. Immediately he stopped.

  He raised his eyes. A large star was shining through the trees to the east.

  It was some years since he had last seen the morning star. He stood looking at it, and the sky began to cloud over.

  The star was even larger, shining through the haze. The light was as if blurred by water.

  It seemed dreary in contrast to the fresh glimmer of the star, to be hunting a broken bowl and trying to put it together.

  He threw the pieces down again.

  The evening before, Fumiko had flung the Shino against the basin before he could stop her.

  He had cried out.

  But he had not looked for the pieces in the shadows among the stones. He had rather put his arm around Fumiko, supporting her. As she fell forward in the act of throwing the Shino, she seemed herself about to collapse against the basin.

  ‘There is much better Shino,’ she murmured.

  Was she still sad at the thought of having Kikuji compare it with better Shino?

  He lay sleepless, and an echo of her words came to him, more poignantly clean in remembrance.

  Waiting for daylight, he went out to look for the pieces.

  Then, seeing the star, he threw them down again.

  And looking up, he cried out.

  There was no star. In the brief moment when his eyes were on the discarded pieces, the morning star had disappeared in the clouds.

  He gazed at the eastern sky for a time, as if to retrieve something stolen.

  The clouds would not be heavy; but he could not tell where the star was. The clouds broke near the horizon. The faint red deepened where they touched the roofs of houses.