by Naoya Shiga
There were few passengers in his coach. It was a sultry day for spring, but a pleasant, strong breeze was coming in through the window. He pulled the window down a little and leaned his head against the pane. He had not slept well the night before, and very soon he was dozing.
He became aware of busy activity around him. Lazily he opened his eyes, and saw that they had already arrived in Okayama. The three women who were sitting in front of him—were they respectable housewives or something else?—got up and left and were replaced by a young couple with two children. The husband was a tall man in uniform, a lieutenant in the artillery. He put their luggage away neatly on the rack first, then folded a traveling rug, laid it on the seat, and bade his wife, his son, who was about six, and his daughter, who was younger and had a fine head of hair, sit on it. He himself chose to sit at the end of the seat by the aisle, somewhat removed from his family.
Kensaku went to sleep again. He was very tired. He woke up about an hour before the train was due to arrive in Himeji. This time he felt wide awake. He could stay on the train as far as Kyoto and catch the express there. But he wanted to see the castle in Himeji, commonly called the “White Heron”; also, he remembered that Oei had asked him to get some brazier tongs that Himeji artisans were known for.
The boy lay down between the folds of the rug, his head toward his father. Now the little sister wanted to lie down too. The mother, who was sitting by the window, stood up and helped the girl get inside the rug from her end. The air cushion which she had put up against the window for her own use she now put under her daughter’s head. The little girl was delighted. The mother sat down, brought out a small towel, rolled it up and rested her head on that. She was a young woman, but she did everything calmly, without fuss.
“Mama, I want my pillow lower,” said the girl. The mother lazily reached for the valve and let some air out. “I want it lower.” The mother obliged. “But I want it still lower.” This time the mother said, “Do you want a pillow or don’t you?” The girl became silent; she then closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep.
The army officer reached into his pocket as if he just remembered something. He pulled out a pocket mirror, then a small tube. He squeezed some greasy substance out of the tube onto the tip of his forefinger, and began twirling the turned-up ends of his short, reddish mustache. He looked into the mirror all the while, seemingly with great satisfaction.
His wife watched him expressionlessly, her head resting on the towel. The man continued to fondle the ends of his moustache with unabated pleasure. A smile slowly spread over his wife’s face. Then her shoulders began to shake. She made not a sound, but she was laughing. The officer, choosing not to notice her amusement, twirled on.
The children, still with their eyes closed, began kicking each other. The girl was trying her best not to giggle.
The officer moved his eyes away from the mirror for an instant and ordered them to be still. His wife merely smiled.
The boy, not heeding his father’s command, kicked harder. The top fold of the rug fell to the floor, exposing four small legs. Bored with their game, the two sat up.
The boy went to the window beside his mother and opened it. The girl followed his example and opened the window beside Kensaku. There was a strong wind blowing outside. The boy stuck his head out and began singing as loud as he could. The girl, not so intrepid, merely joined in the singing. Their voices were drowned out by the noise of the wind. The boy sang louder, but it was no good. He gave up singing and tried a few crude, guttural shouts, but that was no good either. His singing and shouting became more and more frantic. How much of a male he already is, Kensaku thought, enjoying the spectacle.
“Be quiet!” shouted the officer. The girl, terrified, stopped immediately. The boy took no notice. The wife just kept on smiling.
The train arrived in Himeji at five o’clock, four hours before the next express was due to leave for Tokyo. Kensaku went to an inn opposite the station, and there he changed the poultice and had dinner. Then on a rickshaw he went to see the castle. The white-walled keep, made to seem at once grander and more distant by the mist, stood high above the ancient pines. The rickshaw man, a local patriot, was an eager guide, and was disappointed that Kensaku did not want to go beyond the entrance to the outer grounds. Kensaku allowed himself to be taken next to the shrine commemorating Okiku, the hapless serving girl of the legend. It was quite dark by then. Kensaku walked around the grounds quickly, then climbed back on the rickshaw. In late autumn of every year, the rickshaw man said, Okiku’s spirit would return in the form of swallowtail butterflies which would hang from the branches of the trees in the shrine.
On hearing that the inn sold brazier tongs and other local specialties, Kensaku had the rickshaw man take him straight back there. At the inn he bought several pairs of tongs and a swallowtail. The swallowtail, said the manager, represented the figure of Okiku as she hung over a well in the castle, her hands tied behind her back. Even the rouged lips, he said, were on the butterfly.
The departure time of the express was nine o’clock. He had booked a berth, so he lay down immediately upon boarding the train. He woke up just as the train was approaching Shizuoka. It was already light outside. In Shizuoka Station he bought a Tokyo newspaper which he began reading avidly. He had not laid eyes on one ever since he left Tokyo. Mt. Fuji soon came into view, then the mountains of Hakone with their many crevices. He gazed at them with loving familiarity. And the Tokyo speech of the family that came on at Numazu was like music to his ears.
Ōiso, Fujisawa, Ōfuna—these were now behind him. He was filled with such an overwhelming desire to see Tokyo that he could hardly sit still. To keep himself occupied and under control he began to count the loose threads on the ends of the cords of his outer kimono.
He had sent Oei a telegram from Himeji. He was sure she would be waiting for him at Shinbashi Station. He supposed that there would be a moment of embarrassment when they first saw each other. Never mind, he reassured himself, the important thing was that he would be seeing her again in less than half an hour.
The train began slowing down. Before it had reached the platform he stuck his head out to look for her. He saw her immediately. Her head was turned toward him. Thinking that she had seen him, he waved at her. She showed no sign of recognition. With an inane expression on her face she was peering into the windows of another coach. He got off, handed the various small pieces of baggage he had with him to the porter, then hurried toward her.
He was only a few paces away from her when she at last saw him. With a look of relief she rushed up to him. “I was beginning to think you weren’t on the train,” she said. “But what on earth have you got on your face!”
“I have a little trouble with my ear,” he said. “But it doesn’t hurt any more.” His pleasure at seeing her was as great as he had expected; and there was no awkwardness on either side. If she felt any embarrassment, she was hiding it very well. As far as he could tell, she was the same Oei that he had always known.
As they moved along the platform with the crowd she asked again about his ear; then almost in a congratulatory tone she said, “What a good thing you decided to cut short your stay in Onomichi.” She lowered her voice as she added, “You’re thinner. Obviously trips like that don’t agree with you.” Kensaku smiled in reply. “I telephoned your brother at his office,” she continued, “and he said he would stop by on his way home.”
At the gate the rickshaw man whom Kensaku regularly hired was waiting with a traveling rug folded over his arm. Kensaku gave him the ticket for his suitcase and asked him to take that and the smaller pieces to his house. He and Oei would go home by streetcar. “You haven’t had lunch yet, have you?” said Oei.
“No, I haven’t.”
“I’ve got something ready for you at home, but shall we go to a restaurant instead?”
“I don’t mind either way.”
“How was the food in Onomichi?”
“Well, if you were
willing to cook yourself, you could get all kinds of nice fresh fish.”
They passed Seihintei. Not wanting to be recognized by Okayo, Osuzu and the rest, Kensaku tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. When they came to the streetcar stop, Oei asked again, “Well, what shall we do about lunch?”
“All right, let’s go to a restaurant. It would be nice to have decent European food for a change.”
They went to Fugetsudo which was quite near. There Oei kept on asking questions about Kensaku’s life in Onomichi. After lunch Kensaku telephoned Nobuyuki from the restaurant.
When they got home, Kensaku immediately went upstairs to his study. The pictures on the walls, the bookshelves, the desk—they were all exactly as he had left them. But the room looked a little different. It was too tidy, and the camellias in the alcove looked a little out of place.
Oei came into the room and said, “There’s nothing better than home, is there?”
“I feel like a poor boy who’s just moved into a mansion.”
“I suppose your house in Onomichi was pretty dirty. Widowers and cockroaches live together, as they say.”
“The old lady next door kept it quite clean.”
“Your bath is ready, so go and have it now.”
10
After his bath Kensaku went immediately to “T” Hospital, not far from his house, which specialized in the nose, ear and throat. It was a small, private hospital where Sakiko had stayed, so that he was fairly certain the doctor would agree to see him even if the visiting hours were over.
Though the actual pain had lasted only that one night, when he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together close to the bad ear he could hear no sound; and he felt generally dull and debilitated.
The doctor appeared immediately in his kimono and examined the ear with a reflector. “Yes, it’s congested,” he said lightly. “I don’t think it’s anything serious. I’ll just get some of the fluid out.” He reached for his white jacket hanging on a hook and put it over his kimono. His manner was extraordinarily casual.
The fat, young nurse picked up a scalpel, pincers and other shiny instruments out of a container with disinfectant in it and arranged them neatly on a piece of gauze.
“Haven’t they turned on the electricity yet?” asked the doctor. The nurse played with the switch, then shook her head. “Never mind, we’ll do without it,” he said. Sunlight was still coming in through the west window. The nurse proceeded to wrap the ends of several short pieces of wire with cotton wool.
The surgery was simple and quick. There was a loud sound as the scalpel touched the eardrum. Simultaneously he felt a sharp prick. The scalpel in his ear felt very large and ominous for a moment, and he wondered briefly if the doctor was about to inflict more pain than he had led him to think. But his fear proved to be groundless.
“There’s more fluid than I thought,” said the doctor as he cleaned out the ear with the cotton wool tips. Kensaku could see that they came out slightly bloody. The doctor then put some medicine in the ear and applied a poultice. “Come back again tomorrow morning,” he said.
In the anteroom, while waiting for his prescription, Kensaku began to wonder what had become of the nurse who had encouraged the young man to write the letter to Sakiko. It was only when he saw the fat nurse that he had remembered her. Was she still working there? He hoped not, for he was not particularly anxious to see her. He had not disliked the woman. She was rather good-looking. She was also bright, and possibly a little too cynical. But toward him she had behaved modestly, almost demurely. She had little of that aggressive, down-to-earth manner so characteristic of nurses. She would smile shyly when he spoke to her and say something noncommittal in reply. He had at about that time published a few short stories in a journal run by a group of old university friends. Hearing about this from Sakiko, this nurse asked her if Kensaku would lend her copies of the journal. He knew of course that she had little interest in the journal itself, and that she was merely curious to see what sort of things the brother of one of her patients wrote. He would not have minded if she had gone and borrowed copies of the journal from someone else; but he was not about to exhibit his own writings to her. At home he picked out a half-dozen issues of the journal which did not contain his stories and took those to the hospital and left them with Sakiko.
On his next visit Sakiko chided him for his perversity. The nurse was standing by her, smiling. Soon after that Sakiko left the hospital. And then about a year later the young man, encouraged by the nurse, had written that ill-advised letter. That so demure-seeming a girl could be capable of such impropriety had come to Kensaku as an unpleasant surprise. It was just as well, he had thought at the time, that he had refused to let her see his stories.
Outside on the street the children were playing noisily. Kensaku thought again about the nurse as he walked toward home. Was she still working in the hospital? Had she seen his letter to the young man? If indeed she had, if she had been told about the outcome of the young man’s silly overture, a sudden encounter now between them at the hospital would be embarrassing to them both. The imagined encounter soon led to musings of a much less innocent sort. No doubt about it, the streak of impropriety in her made her a fitting object of Kensaku’s low desires.
Nobuyuki was waiting for him at the house. He came out to the front hall and, instead of greeting him in the ordinary way, said, “I hear you’re having ear trouble.”
“There was some fluid, but the doctor got it all out.”
“It wasn’t too serious, then?”
“No. I feel fine now.”
Kensaku followed Nobuyuki into the morning room. Nobuyuki’s dinner was on the table. He sat down and bowed. “Welcome home.” Kensaku bowed back, saying nothing.
“Your brother was just about to have dinner,” Oei said. “Do you want yours now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? It’s your stomach, after all.”
“All right, I’ll have it now.”
She began serving his dinner with ill-disguised enthusiasm.
“You said he had aged ten years,” Nobuyuki said to Oei. “You were exaggerating.”
“He certainly has aged. Look at him, he’s like an old man.”
“He’s lost some weight, I admit.”
“He doesn’t look so bad to me now, but when he first came up to me at the station I thought for a moment it was his grandfather.” The word “grandfather” hit Kensaku like a blow in the stomach. Nobuyuki noticed immediately, but Oei was unaware of what her remark had done to Kensaku. “There he was, his face wrapped up in that huge piece of cloth,” she went on blithely. “I suppose he looked more like him then because only his features were showing.”
To be told that he resembled that common old man hurt Kensaku deeply. He looked at Oei, scarcely able to hide his anger at her insensitivity. And then he became conscious of a new, complicated emotion arising within himself. From the time he was six, when he had first encountered his grandfather, the nasty first impression of him had remained. Not once had he felt a trace of love for him; always he had felt as though they were strangers, without any bond of kinship. It had not been entirely his fault. For his grandfather had been born with a truly common streak in him. A certain cheapness had hung about him all his life, in everything he did and said. That Kensaku, on first learning about his own illicit birth, should have wished that some other man had fathered him was therefore unavoidable. And what had been most unbearable of all was the thought of this detestable man going to bed with his mother. No wonder, then, that he should now feel so resentful at being told that he resembled him. But what took him by surprise was this other conflicting emotion that emerged side by side with the resentment and the hurt—an emotion whose nature he was for a moment at a loss to understand fully. It was, he sensed vaguely, a kind of love for one’s flesh and blood, a kind of longing for that man who was in fact his father. And he realized that behind his resentment at being told tha
t he resembled him, there lurked a strange, secret joy. The sudden, unexpected intrusion of this new emotion threw him into complete confusion.
During dinner Nobuyuki asked questions about Kensaku’s experiences in Onomichi. Kensaku answered as pleasantly as he could. When they had finished eating he invited Nobuyuki upstairs.
“Yes, of course,” said Nobuyuki, trying his best to sound casual. But as he stood up, he could not hide his resignation. Oh God, he might have said, the time has come to talk of unpleasant things. Kensaku followed his brother up the stairs, feeling both compassion and amusement.
The two brothers sat down with the fireless brazier between them. Nobuyuki broke the long silence. “You didn’t get the letter I sent you the day before yesterday, did you?”
“No.”
“Well, as I tried to say in the letter, there’s nothing I can do about the situation now. You do what you think is best, and let father do what he thinks is best. Given your character and his, that’s what would happen anyway, even if I were to try to intervene. Besides, there’s really no place for me in all of this. I know that it was my thoughtlessness that caused all the trouble, and I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I’ve decided to keep my mouth shut and let the two of you work out your own solutions. I said so to father the day before I wrote you my last letter. You may think me irresponsible, but I feel I have no alternative. There will again come a time, I’m sure, when I can be of help; but until then, I shall mind my own business. All right?”
“Certainly. Mind you, I don’t know exactly where father and I stand now, but I do think that so long as you continue to involve yourself, nothing definite is likely to happen.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“You see, the trouble with you is that you want everything to stay the way it was. But now that I know who I am, that’s impossible. What has to be broken has to be broken. And if there’s something left that can’t be broken, then perhaps that can help us establish a new kind of relationship. But if there’s nothing worth keeping intact, why bother to pretend there is?”
