by Неизвестный
IV
The next morning, the wind was blowing noisily. As was his custom, Jūkichi took a cold bath, ate a light breakfast of bread and milk while he read the newspaper, and then, still in his robe, went to his desk in front of the window. He picked up one of the volumes of classical Chinese poetry at his side and began thumbing through it, reading at random. He was tired of the great masters of the European literary tradition. In their plays and novels they had shown him more than enough of the misery of the human condition. He had gone searching through his old books and found collections of poetry and anthologies of classical Chinese and Japanese literature, titles like Tales of Famous Japanese. As he thumbed through these, Jūkichi remembered his boyhood in the mountain school, reciting from these books with other students as the songs of woodsmen drifted in from outside. When he encountered a poem he vaguely recalled, he felt particular pleasure. The beautiful lines that had once transported him as he recited them aloud now took on new meaning. He heard voices from his past reciting these lines: “Our youth passes all too quickly / We awake from pleasure all too soon.” Twenty years ago, when he was a boy, he had only half-listened to his classical Chinese teacher’s explanation of a famous poem by Li Bo.
Li Si, Emperor Qin’s prime minister, led to execution along with his son,
Turned to him saying, “If only we were still at Shang Cai, chasing the hare
With our yellow hound!”
Not me! I shall fill my golden cup under a serene moon
And what has become of the monument to the good Governor Yang?
The stone turtle is worn by wind and rain,
All is covered by moss.
Now he was grateful for the teacher’s explanation of the historical tale on which the poem was based. Jūkichi repeated the lines to himself and understood the significance of the poem, that prestige and wealth were fleeting. He heard a hoarse, unfamiliar voice at the entrance. His housekeeper came in and told him that a Mr. Shiga had arrived. The man she led in was Tokiko’s father. After a courteous greeting, the gentleman looked around the room and then held forth on how it was as he expected, that the life of a man of letters was both more elegant and more intense than the life of a vulgar merchant like himself. Suspicious of the motive for this visit, Jūkichi replied curtly. “My life is not as enjoyable as it may look to the outsider,” he said, intending to rudely disabuse the old man of his preconceptions. On previous occasions, Jūkichi had impugned his own way of life in front of marriage intermediaries and fathers of prospective brides, and the result was that they appeared to dislike him. In the case of this old man, however, it had the opposite effect. Mr. Shiga said he was impressed by Jūkichi’s honesty and manliness.
“My daughter’s shy. She doesn’t like noise or crowds. She’ll be perfectly satisfied to stay at home,” he declared. After about ten minutes, he apologized for interfering with Jūkichi’s studies and left. Jūkichi closed the sliding door after him and returned to his desk. There was no point, he thought, in meeting with the old man time and again. He immediately wrote a letter to the Yazawas. “Mr. Shiga came to visit. Since I have not yet replied in either the affirmative or negative to the marriage proposal, I felt I was being unduly pressured. I am quite busy right now, so I will not have time to meet Mr. Shiga for some days.”
A few days later, letters arrived from his mother and father. His father agreed to the marriage and would send money to defray the expense of the wedding as soon as Jūkichi requested it. As for the other matters, they could be decided later. His mother’s letter was typical of mothers’ letters. She wrote that she was old and was growing weaker day by day. She believed that the end was coming soon. But she could not die in peace until she saw Jūkichi settled in life. She repeated more emphatically her usual entreaties. She was overjoyed that he planned to wed. Jūkichi felt no love for his crass and fretful mother. Still, from time to time, he felt the impulse to please her. Over the years, he had observed that most people were untrustworthy and that human relationships were ephemeral. Nonetheless, he could not doubt the love of a mother for her children.
He considered the advantages of marriage. He would gain the trust of society, the trust of his family, and he would be financially better off. He thought about the shabbiness of old men who had remained bachelors. But more than material benefit, he desired the gentle love of a woman. Rather than erotic passion, he hoped to find composure for his restless and exhausted mind through a tranquil, quiet love. Even in his dreams, he did not believe that marriage would utterly transform his life. On the other hand, he did not know another way to find peace.
It suddenly occurred to him that his thinking revealed a man aging and growing more conservative. The realization depressed him beyond words.
While he was inclined to marry, he had not yet decided on the proposal before him. After four or five days without news, he visited the Yazawas. As soon as he entered the house, Mrs. Yazawa began speaking about the proposed match.
“Tokiko is staying on alone in Tokyo at her aunt’s house. When do you plan to meet her again?” She told Jūkichi that Mr. Shiga was filled with admiration for him and had become enthusiastic about the marriage.
“I heard he says you’re younger than your years and look like a serious person. He praised you!”
“He did seem to like me. I’m quite attractive to old men who aren’t members of my family,” Jūkichi said, laughing. “But don’t you think the old man’s a little rash in his judgments? He may come to regret his decision. Has he had me investigated?”
“Of course! He may be a little rash, but he loves his daughter. I’m certain he’s taken every precaution.”
Jūkichi thought it odd that a father who loved his daughter so much would marry her off to a man like himself.
“I’ll meet her today, then. The sooner I come to a decision, the better for everyone.”
“Good! I’ll call Onose now on the telephone.” As she put on her coat, she observed that she, too, was falling behind in her work, and she went out to make the call.
Until three, when Tokiko and her party were to arrive, Jūkichi helped Mrs. Yazawa. Joking with each other, they straightened the main room and worked in the garden. Jūkichi remembered the marriage meeting he attended in this room during the summer of the previous year. How quickly the time had passed!
“Last year you made sushi for us. What treat are you going to make for us this time?”
“Nothing!” she replied. “If that girl dresses and does her makeup and hair in the latest Tokyo fashion, she’ll be very attractive,” she said after she sent the maid out to a local shop to buy cakes. “Yazawa, you’ve never seen her before. Look her over carefully and give me a critique by an objective third party. Don’t take sides with your wife,” Jūkichi said to Mr. Yazawa. His friend smiled wanly and nodded.
Two or three times, they thought it might be Tokiko and her party, but it was only passersby. They finally arrived. Tokiko, hidden behind her large aunt, was the last to come in. She was better dressed this time and had had her hair freshly done. Because she kept her head bowed for most of the interview, it was difficult to see her features, but Jūkichi was certain she seemed more like an adult than the last time he had seen her. In her desire to have her niece come to live in Tokyo, the aunt flattered Jūkichi in obvious ways. “I heard that Mr. Shiga inconvenienced you with a visit,” she began. “When he returned home with no gifts for the family, someone asked him if he didn’t at least bring back interesting news. He sat down without eating his dinner and talked only about you. He said that as soon as you got up in the morning, you went to your desk and started working without changing out of your robe. You were so eager to get to work, you probably didn’t bother to wash your face. Then when he was about to leave, you simply said ‘Good-bye,’ shut the sliding door, and went back to your studies. That’s the way a man has to be, is what he said, resolute, single-minded to the end.” As she spoke, the aunt illustrated her speech with broad gestures.
“I’m not really all that studious,” Jūkichi said, flustered by the praise.
Mrs. Yazawa stared intently at Tokiko and Jūkichi as she facilitated a lively conversation. After the guests had left, Mr. Yazawa expressed the same opinion as his wife and sincerely urged Jūkichi to marry the young woman. Mrs. Yazawa was undoubtedly tired of running around on Jūkichi’s behalf. For his part, Jūkichi was sick to death of meetings to arrange a marriage.
“I suppose I should submit to heaven’s will and marry her,” he let slip without thinking. Always, at this stage in the negotiations, no matter how beautiful or intelligent the young woman, Jūkichi would back away from the final step of marriage. Now it appeared that he was going to abandon, on a mere whim, ten years of determined efforts to remain a bachelor. “Violating a sacred fast to eat a sardine”: the old saying certainly applies in my case, he thought.
“So you’ve decided. I’ll inform Onose immediately.” Mrs. Yazawa appeared to be happy and relieved. Seven years of diligent effort had not been for nothing. “Miss Otoku has a great deal to thank you for,” Jūkichi said, joking. Otoku was the young woman who already had a fiancé and who had refused Mrs. Yazawa’s offer to act as an intermediary.
“I’ll have a lot to take care of from now until the ceremony,” Mrs. Yazawa observed and counted off the duties expected of an intermediary. Making certain that Jūkichi bought suitable clothes for the ceremony, found a proper house, and furnished and equipped it with the necessary items would require even more effort. She would have to assume all the responsibilities of Jūkichi’s mother and sisters. Since she had been brought up by her old-fashioned grandfather in a strict samurai household, she was not the sort of person to ignore or shirk arduous formalities. Having taken on the role of matchmaker, Mrs. Yazawa would make certain there was a wedding ceremony that no one would be ashamed of. Jūkichi left everything to Mrs. Yazawa and returned home. He felt that it was not himself but someone else who was getting married.
V
“I’m getting married soon. I’ll be finding a new place to live,” Jūkichi informed his housekeeper the next morning.
The old woman seemed shocked by the news but was finally able to mutter, “Congratulations.”
Jūkichi, born and raised in the provinces, had contempt for ceremony and etiquette. He resented Mrs. Yazawa for leading him into this constraining situation. How had he ended up having to do these things, he wondered, and regretted his unthinking acquiescence the day before.
Jūkichi took his newspaper out onto the veranda and sat in the warmth of the sun. He looked up at the small patch of sky visible over his neighbor’s roof and lethargically watched the thin white clouds drift slowly by. He glanced down at the paper, and his attention was caught by a photograph. The caption stated that the young women pictured had graduated with honors from a women’s college. The face he had recognized was that of Kimura Otoku.
“With a little luck, she would have been my better half.” He felt regret, but he was also amused by his own reaction. An arranged marriage was like a blindfolded man and woman bumping into each other by chance and thereupon exchanging vows to bind them together forever. He found it curious that two people could find happiness together under such circumstances. After several days, however, Jūkichi, as he always did when events did not turn out as he expected, shrugged his shoulders and concluded, “Whatever happens will happen.” He still had not come to the full realization that he would marry soon. Mrs. Yazawa had found him a suitable house in Ushigome Ward, and he had moved in. New surroundings, however, did not improve his chaotic lifestyle. Ceremonial betrothal gifts had been exchanged; he had new clothing made for the wedding; and he had informed his family and a few friends of the date of the ceremony.
Jūkichi told the news to a merchant in the Kabuto district with whom he was acquainted, “Congratulations! There’s no greater treasure than a good wife. You won’t have conflicts of interest as we merchant families always do,” the merchant said, chuckling. “Once a man’s developed a taste for the pleasures of the demimonde, he can’t stay away, even after he’s married. But never spend the whole night away from your bride. Another thing. For better or worse, stick with your first wife. I’m on my third wife now, but I can’t forget the first one, no matter how hard I try. Don’t change wives again and again.”
“Good for you!” a former schoolmate commented. “You’ll discover new meaning in life.”
“I wonder if I can give up my bad habits and ‘discover new meaning in life,’ ” Jūkichi declared theatrically, mimicking his friend for Mrs. Yazawa.
“We can joke, but the bride and her family are probably frantically busy. She has to visit each of her relatives to bid farewell. She has the ceremony to formally part from her parents. There’s the trousseau and all the rest to prepare. I heard they intend to have most of the things made in Tokyo. I wonder what they’re going to do about the clothes. Since it’s the same amount of money, I’d have new kimonos made by Daihiko. They know the latest fashion in Tokyo. But her people in the countryside seem to want her to use the Matsuya store.”
Mrs. Yazawa wanted to advise Tokiko and her family on the style of kimono they should have made. She had confidence in her eye for fashion and seemed to resent Mrs. Onose’s lack of concern about clothing.
“We’ll receive money and property from my family as well. Personally, though, I’ve been hard pressed for cash recently. I’ve run out of things to pawn!” He imagined the goods and furnishings the bride would bring with her.
The wedding was to be held before the cherry blossoms scattered in the wind. But this year spring had come early to Tokyo, and the cherry trees along the Sumida River had already lost half their blossoms. Only a few days remained before April 7, the auspicious date Mrs. Onose had chosen by leafing through an astrology book. Mrs. Yazawa had arrived and was supervising Jūkichi’s housekeeper as she pasted new paper on the shōji and took apart Jūkichi’s old clothing to wash it. The old woman dragged herself outside and slowly raked the garden. Chests, a large brazier, and a makeup stand with a full mirror had been arranged in the middle room. “This’ll be your wife’s room. See how the house has a focus now,” Mrs. Yazawa said and seemed very happy. The new look of the house pleased Jūkichi, too. His old furniture looked shabby. “This marriage business has advantages. I don’t have to say a word, and people haul in all this new stuff.”
“From now on, your house is going to look much neater.”
“How old is the new mistress?” the housekeeper asked in a small voice, a rag still in her hand.
“She’s twenty, and she’ll make a fine young wife,” Mrs. Yazawa answered.
“Twenty? She’s not so young, is she?”
“Young women who graduate from college are different from the girls of your day. She’s just the right age.”
Mrs. Yazawa inspected every corner of the kitchen and parlor and drew up a list of utensils and other things the house needed. She insisted that Jūkichi buy them that evening.
Jūkichi and Mrs. Yazawa went out to shop in the neighborhood around Kagurazaka. In front of this shop and that, Mrs. Yazawa continued to refer to “Jūkichi’s wife”: “This’ll be your wife’s tea bowl”; “These are perfect; your wife’s chopsticks; perhaps your wife already has one of these. . . .” This had a strange ring to Jūkichi’s ears. They descended the hill, crowded with people, and took a side street to a dim shop where they bought an earthen saké vessel to be used in the ceremony. On the way back to the main street, Jūkichi suddenly blurted out, “The fate that binds us is curious. It never leads us where we expect, always to where we don’t expect, as the saying goes.” A sense of futility welled up inside him. His dissatisfaction was not directed at anyone in particular. He had once been convinced that somewhere there existed a woman whom he could love with his whole heart and physical being and that she would love him in the same way. This illusion was now dead. Still, the notion remained with him that fate never aligns with our expectations an
d leads in unanticipated directions. This made more appealing a marriage for which he otherwise had little enthusiasm.
“It’s the same with everyone in this world,” Mrs. Yazawa agreed with unexpected feeling.
“But I suppose if you live with a woman for a few years, a certain intimacy and sense of affection is bound to come about.”
“That’s true. Therefore you must be loving and true to your wife. After all, a wife has only her husband to depend on.”
“I know,” Jūkichi said, but he did not pursue the matter further. Jūkichi and Mrs. Yazawa parted company. He walked to the streetcar line and boarded a tram for downtown. He amused himself at one place and another, wandering until late at night in the lively entertainment districts. Still, he felt compelled to return to his own house to sleep that night.
On the seventh, the sky was clear and there was no wind. A variety of people in formal dress had crowded into the small house. Jūkichi followed Mrs. Yazawa’s suggestion in serving a large fish, with head and tail attached, for lunch. After this auspicious meal, the hour of the ceremony was approaching and Jukichi went to bathe. Dressed in his newly tailored, soft silk kimono, he studied himself in Tokiko’s full-length mirror. “I look great!” he said to himself, smiling, “I guess the clothes do make the man.” As someone who always wore cotton, the new clothing felt pleasant against his skin. However, he experienced no special sense of anticipation of the sort the guests were probably imagining. He wished only that at least for the day of the wedding, his bride would be beautiful and charming, but he realized this was too much to expect.
The bride and her party arrived before dusk, later than they were expected. Engaged in conversation, the guests suddenly became piously silent. In the next room, Jūkichi could hear the light patter of feet and the rustling of silk. Then Mrs. Yazawa returned and had the mirror and stand hauled out to the veranda, where she began fixing the bride’s makeup.
