Some Prefer Nettles

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  "I have noticed, though, that his letters have been coming oftener. Possibly a sign that he's upset.... Well, that's everything." Takanatsu sat down heavily on the bed and gave himself up to his cigar. "You haven't said anything to him yet?"

  "Not yet."

  "That's where I think you make a mistake, of course. But we've been over it before."

  "I probably would tell him if he asked."

  "Surely you don't expect him to bring the subject up first?"

  "I suppose not. And so I go on not telling him."

  "But that's wrong. Really it is. When the time finally does come, it will be much worse to have to break everything at once. Shouldn't you explain, with all the reasons, step by step, and make him understand what has to come?"

  "He's already sensed it in a vague way. We haven't said anything directly, but we've shown enough to make him guess. He's probably resigned to the fact that something has to happen, even if he doesn't quite know what."

  "But that should make it easier to tell him.... Look at it this way. As long as you say nothing he imagines the worst, and that's why he has a case of nerves. If he thought he might never see his mother again, wouldn't it actually relieve him to know the truth?"

  "I've thought the same thing. But I dread the shock it might give him, and I go on delaying."

  "I doubt if it would be the shock you think it would. Children are strong—you'd be surprised how strong. You think it would be a terrible blow to him, but you're a grownup and can't really know. The boy is growing and changing, and this is the sort of thing he takes in his stride. If you do your explaining well, he'll probably just resign himself to what can't be helped."

  "I've thought over all that. I've thought over everything you've said."

  The truth of the matter was that Kaname had awaited the visit of this cousin with a mixture of eagerness and dread. He was disgusted with his own indecision, his tendency to postpone action from day to week to month until it had become clear that he would not be able to speak out until a final crisis forced him to. He felt that if only Takanatsu would come, he would be pushed forward, even rudely and painfully, to a point where the elements of a solution would fall in place almost of their own accord. But now, faced with Takanatsu and what had before been only a distant possibility, he felt less encouraged than frightened, less inclined to face a decision than to recoil from it.

  "What are your plans for today?" Kaname changed the subject. "Can you come directly to the house?"

  "I have business in Osaka, but it can wait."

  "Suppose you come and get settled first, then."

  "And Misako? Is she at home?"

  "She was when I left."

  "Will she be waiting for me?"

  "Possibly. Or possibly she'll have gone out. She's very diplomatic, and she may think it would be better to let us talk by ourselves first. Or at least she may have taken that excuse."

  "I want to talk to her too, of course, but before that I'd like to find out exactly what you have in mind yourself. It's a mistake for an outsider to get mixed up in a divorce, no matter how good a friend he may be, but with you two it's a matter of getting you to make up your own minds."

  "Have you had lunch?" Kaname changed the subject again.

  "Not yet."

  "Why don't we eat at the Mitsuwa, then? Hiroshi can go on ahead. He has the dog to entertain him."

  "I saw him." Hiroshi burst back into the room. "He's a beauty. Just like a deer."

  "You ought to see him run." Takanatsu turned toward the boy. "Faster than a train, they say. The best way to exercise him is to lead him along on a bicycle. Greyhounds run in horse races, you know."

  "You must mean dog races," Hiroshi corrected.

  "You have me there."

  "Has he had distemper yet?"

  "He's past all that, a year and seven months old. The question is how you are to get him home. A train to Osaka and then a taxi?"

  "It's much easier. He can ride on the electric train all the way. Just muzzle him with something and he can go right along with the rest of us."

  "We have electric cars like that now? Japan is catching up with the world."

  "Oh, we have everything." Hiroshi brought a trace of the Osaka dialect into his speech.

  "We have, have we." Takanatsu tried to imitate him.

  "Terrible. Not a bit like Osaka."

  "The boy's really become too good. He speaks a different language with Misako and me from the one he uses at school."

  " I can talk with a Tokyo accent when I want to, but everyone at school is from Osaka." Hiroshi was still displaying his Osaka dialect proudly.

  "Hiroshi"—Kaname interrupted the boy, who seemed prepared to run away with the conversation—"why don't you see about getting off the ship and then go along with Jiiya? Your uncle has business in Kobe."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I thought I'd go along with him. It's been a long time since he's had any Kobe sukiyaki, and I thought he might like some. I don't suppose you're hungry. You had a late breakfast. And then there are some things we have to talk about."

  "I see." Hiroshi knew what that meant. He looked fearfully up at his father, trying to read something from the expression on his face.

  "IN any case, let's decide what to do about Hiroshi. It would be best to tell him, and if it's too hard for you to, I suppose I can." Takanatsu's manner of speaking was not quite impatient. He was used to acting with efficiency and dispatch, however, and he launched into the main problem as soon as they were seated in the restaurant, unable to waste even the few minutes while the sukiyaki was stewing.

  "No, please don't. I should do it if anyone is to."

  "You should, of course. But the point is that when the time comes you don't."

  "Anyway, leave the boy to me. I know him better than anyone else—you may not have noticed the way he was behaving today."

  "How was that?"

  "Catching you in your mistakes, showing off his Osaka accent—he never used to be that way. He doesn't have to be so playful, no matter how well he knows you."

  "I did notice that he was livelier than he needed to be. You think he was acting?"

  "He was indeed."

  "He thought he had to go out of his way to entertain me?"

  "Partly that, I suppose. But the truth is that he's afraid of you. He likes you and at the same time he's afraid of you."

  "Why should he be afraid of me?"

  "He has no way of telling what an impasse we've come to, of course, but I suspect he sees your visit as a sign things are going to change. We could go on indefinitely as we are without you, but with you here, a decision may come out. Or so he probably thinks."

  "And he's really not glad I came?"

  "Well, you bring presents, and he likes that. He's glad to see you. He's fond of you, but he's afraid to have you come. We feel rather alike about it, I think, Hiroshi and I, and that's one reason I hate to break the news to him. He doesn't want to be told any more than I want to tell him. I can see it in the way he acts. And he can't be sure what you might say. He probably knows there are things I myself would leave unsaid, and he's afraid he might have to hear them from you."

  "And so he makes noise to cover his fright?"

  "In a way the three of lis, Misako and Hiroshi and I, are alike. We're all different, of course, but we're weak in the same way, and all of us would tend to leave things as they are. Then you come along and it seems as though we're to be forced to a decision. To tell you the truth, I'm a little afraid of you myself."

  "Maybe I should wash my hands of the whole thing."

  "No, not that. I'm afraid, as I say, but even so, it would be better to have the matter out finally."

  "All in all, the outlook couldn't be cloudier. What about this fellow Aso? Maybe we could begin with him."

  "But he's like Misako and me. He says that as long as Misako refuses to act, there's nothing he can do."

  "He's right, I suppose. He could make himself look
like a home-wrecker."

  "We've promised to talk it over and agree on a time good for the three of us. We're to consider everyone's interests."

  " But that means you will forever do nothing. Really, what can be accomplished unless one of you finally takes the initiative? Your good time will never come."

  "That's not quite true. Spring vacation this month would have been a good time, for instance. One of the things holding me back has been the idea of having Hiroshi in school when the break comes. I can't stand the thought of him away by himself, completely upset, maybe breaking into tears right in class. During a vacation I can go off somewhere with him, take him to the movies. I can do something anyway to keep him occupied until the first shock passes and he begins to adjust himself."

  "Why haven't you done it this month, then?"

  "Because it's bad for Aso. His brother is going abroad early next month and Aso would rather not worry him with family problems while he's getting ready. It would be much better to wait till he's out of the country, Aso says."

  "So that the next opportunity will be summer vacation?"

  "That's right. Summer vacation is longer, too, and the chances will be better."

  "And something will come up then, too, and we'll have another delay. Really, there's no end to it all." Takanatsu's hand, thin but strong-looking, heavy-veined over the knuckles, trembled slightly as though gripping something heavy. The sake was possibly having its effect. He reached over and flicked the ashes from his cigar, and they fell like heavy flakes of snow into the water around the base of the brazier.

  Kaname always felt a certain unreality when he talked to this cousin, back from China every two or three months; the conversation always proceeded as though the only question were: "When is the divorce to be?" Actually the earlier question: "Will there be a divorce?" was still far from answered. Takanatsu took it as firmly decided that there was to be a divorce and worried only about the time and the method. He was not on his own initiative insisting on a divorce; it was simply that he had been called into consultation only on the question of means—the more basic question, he could assume, having already been settled. Kaname for his part was not purposely displaying a strength he did not feel; but perhaps a contagious air of strength and virility about Takanatsu stirred him to a bold enthusiasm and led him to suggest more decision than he should in honesty have allowed himself. More than that: part of the pleasure he got from Takanatsu's visits lay in the feeling they gave him of controlling his own destiny. Quite unable to take action, sunk in daydreams of what it would be like once action was finally taken, he found that Takanatsu's visits stimulated the daydreams to a pleasant new liveliness, an immediacy, as though they were about to become realities. Still, it would not be right to say that he used Takanatsu only as a sort of vehicle for turning out more vigorous daydreams. Rather he hoped that through Takanatsu the daydreams might turn into something solid.

  A separation is always sad. Regardless of who is involved, there is a certain sadness in the mere fact of a separation, and Takanatsu was of course right that nothing would ever come of their waiting arm in arm for the perfect moment. There had been none of this hesitating when Takanatsu himself had left his wife. After he made up his mind he simply called her into the room one morning and informed her, and spent the rest of the day explaining his reasons. And when it was settled, they lay in each other's arms all night, the final parting before them —"She cried, and I cried—I wailed, too," Takanatsu told Kaname later. Kaname had crane to Takanatsu with his problem because the latter had been through the experience and because Kaname had watched with some envy the firmness he had shown. Kaname could tell himself that the sort of man who could face sorrow squarely and who could weep as the situation demanded was more composed when the crisis had passed—that, indeed, without some such ability one could not make a break at all. But Kaname was not up to following the example. He was guided by a Tokyo-bred sense of how to comport himself, and with his dislike for the unrestrained Osaka drama he could only with revulsion see himself as the contorted, weeping principal in a scene from an Osaka melodrama. He wanted to carry through cleanly, without disfiguring tears. He wanted the decision to be as though he and his wife had arrived at it in complete harmony, their separate feelings melted into a general, embracing consent.

  And he did not think that was impossible. His case was after all not like Takanatsu's. He had nothing against his wife. They simply did not excite each other. Everything else—their tastes, their ways of thinking—matched perfectly. To him she was not "female," to her he was not "male"—it was the consciousness of being hubsand and wife and yet not being husband and wife that caused the tension between them, and had they not been married they could probably have been excellent friends.

  Kaname felt, indeed, that there was no reason why he need stop seeing her after they had separated. He saw no reason why, with the passage of the years, he could not meet her pleasantly and without rancor as the wife of Aso and the mother of Hiroshi. When the time came, of course, it might not be so easy to do, out of deference to Aso and public opinion, as it seemed now, but the sorrow and regret which the simple word "parting" carried with it would be lessened he did not know how much if they parted with at least the intention of seeing each other again. Misako had once said: "You will let me know, won't you, if Hiroshi is ever seriously ill?—you must promise me you will. I should hate to think I couldn't see him. Aso says he wouldn't mind." Kaname felt sure that "Hiroshi" included "Hiroshi's father," and he of course wanted similar permission from her. They had not been entirely happy perhaps, but they had after all lived together as husband and wife, gone to bed together and got up together, for more than ten years, had even had a child together. Was there a law requiring that once they parted they must be to each other as strangers passing in the street, that if the worst came they might not even meet at one or the other's deathbed? If as time went by they acquired new mates and new children, the desire to see each other might fade, but at least for the present the reservation with which they would part was the best comfort they had.

  "As a matter of fact, there's another point. You may laugh, but it wasn't only because of the boy that I wanted to make the break this month."

  "Oh?" Takanatsu looked questioningly at Kaname, whose eyes had fallen to the brazier and whose lips were curled slightly in an uncomfortable smile.

  "I spoke of a time that's good for all of us, but one of the things I wanted to consider was the season. Some seasons would be so much sadder than others. It would be hardest to separate in the fall. Much the saddest time of the year. I know a man who was all ready for a final break, and then his wife broke into tears and told him to take care of himself with the winter coming on, and he canceled the whole thing. I can see how that might happen."

  "Who was it?"

  "No one in particular. I heard the story somewhere."

  "You seem to go about gathering examples."

  "I keep wondering how other people managed. I don't especially go around asking, but I seem naturally to hear of every sort of case. But then ours is rather an unusual one and there aren't many precedents that help."

  "The best time of the year, then, is when it's warm and sunny, like now?"

  "That's my theory. It's still a little chilly but it's getting warmer, and before long the cherry blossoms will be out and after that the new leaves— everything to make a separation as easy as it could be."

  "Have you come to this conclusion by yourself?"

  "Misako agrees. If we're to separate, it should be in the spring."

  "Splendid. That means, I suppose, that now you have to wait till next spring."

  "Summer wouldn't be too bad... but my mother died in the summer. July. I can remember it so well. Everything should have been warm and alive, but summer that year was sadder than I'd ever thought it could be. The sight of green leaves made me choke up with tears. There was nothing I could do."

  "You see, then? It makes no difference whether it's th
e spring or any other time of the year. If something happens while the cherries are in bloom, you choke up when you see cherry blossoms."

  "I've wondered myself if that might not be true. But if I let myself think so, my chance goes and I find myself with no hope at all."

  "And you might end up by not getting a divorce?"

  "Do you think so?"

  "The question is: do you?"

  "I honestly don't know. The only thing I know is that the reasons for getting a divorce are all too clear. We didn't get on well before, and certainly we can't go on being married to each other—we really aren't any more—now that this affair with Aso has developed. Or I should say now that I've encouraged her into it. That's all I really know. Misako knows it too, but we can't make a decision between being sad for a little while and being wretched for the rest of our lives. Or rather we've made the decision and have trouble finding the courage to carry it through."

  "Suppose you think of it this way: if you're no longer married anyway, then it's only a question of whether you go your own ways or not—a question of whether you go on living in the same house or not. Might that make it easier?"

  "I've tried that. But it isn't as easy as you'd think."

  " Because of Hiroshi? It's not as if he'd have to stop calling Misako his mother, though."

  "I suppose it's a common enough thing for families to be separated. In the civil service the father has to live abroad or in the provinces and leave the children in Tokyo. And in the country where there are no schools, children have to live away from home. I could think of it that way if I had to."

  "You're telling yourself how sad it all is. Really it isn't so sad as you let yourself think."

  "But, after all, sorrow is a very subjective thing. The real trouble is that Misako and I have no resentment against each other. If we did, it would be easier, but each of us thinks the other is perfectly right, and that makes everything impossible."

  "It might have been best of they'd grabbed the reins and eloped."

  "As a matter of fact, before we found ourselves in this tangle Aso apparently suggested that. But Misako laughed and said she couldn't possibly do it unless he gave her ether and carried her away unconscious."