Some Prefer Nettles

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  The dramatic bill of complaints, however, with its straining and its storming, contained enough comedy to dispel the threat. The shutters were drawn, and the noonday sun of the late spring shone red through the cracks as through stained glass, bringing out the objects in the room in dim outline and lighting up the body of this powdered Kangiten, this Goddess of Joy, a faint pink. Her words poured forth with that faint north-country accent, her hands rose and fell, her hips squirmed. The effect was much less one of tragedy than of aggressive, noisy vitality. Kaname felt most reluctant to interrupt the performance. If only she had on the traditional blue bib, he thought, she would resemble no one so much as Kintarō, the ruddy boy wonder of stage and legend. It was not easy to keep from laughing.

  At precisely four thirty as instructed, the boy drew his bath.

  "When will you come again?"

  "Next Wednesday or so, possibly."

  "You'll bring the money?"

  "I'll bring die money." The electric fan cool against his bare back, Kaname stepped into his underwear. He affected a certain briskness, covering the distaste he felt at his own coldness, at his tendency to look upon the day's affair as a closed cash transaction.

  "You won't forget?"

  "I'll bring it." And as he put his hand on the doorknob he said to himself: "I'll not come again."

  "I will certainly not come again." Each time he was seen to the door and into a waiting cab by the boy, Kaname made the same resolution, and as he turned to look back at Louise, blowing a kiss from the door, he secretly said good-by forever. But, strangely, the resolution never lasted three days. By the fifth or seventh day the desire to see her again was quite out of control, and no matter what the complications, back he came running to Kobe. Longing before and revulsion after—this flying between extremes was of course not limited to his relations with Louise. He had felt much the same thing with geisha he had known well. But in Louise's case the extremes were farther apart. There must in the final analysis be a physical reason for it —Louise must be a stronger liquor than any of the others. In the days when he still believed what she told him, the idea of her Western birth—and in that he was no different from most young Japanese men —had drawn him to her with a special fascination. Louise's best points, one might say, were that she was fully aware of the attraction and took great care not to show her real color, and that, given this need to deceive, her body and skin and features made it possible for her to carry the deceit off. Kaname admired the natural golden brown of her skin, but even so he was unwilling to break the spell of the white coating, and he had never asked her to take it off. "You would have a hard time finding a woman like her even in Paris." With the impression left by his friend's remark still a strong one, he found something of his longing for Europe satisfied in his relations with Louise. He had had any number of opportunities to go to Europe. Inertia and timidity, however, had always led him to think up obstacles in the way of the trip; and as some of the longing was satisfied, the enthusiasm for Europe subsided. It made him a little sad sometimes, but then he congratulated himself that he had got over the matter with the least possible inconvenience.

  Kaname raised his right hand to his face. For some reason, he did not know why, the smell of Louise's powder always seemed to penetrate deepest into the palm of his right hand and to stay there longest when he had his bath. Lately he had taken to leaving it unwashed, to going home with the voluptuous secret clasped there in his hand.

  "Will I really be able to stay away this time?" he asked himself. In his younger days, from an over-strong sense of virtue and propriety, he had dreamed of steady devotion to one woman, and even now, when he could hardly deny that he was being a little wanton and when, anyway, there was no call for scruples and inhibitions, he could not drive that dream from his mind. He rather admired men who could turn from their wives with decision and find consolation in more satisfactory women, and he thought sometimes that if he had been capable of following their example things could somehow have been patched up between him and Misako. He neither boasted of this particular quirk of his nor apologized for it. He sometimes interpreted it to himself, however, less as a hard sense of duty than as a pandering to his own laziness and a fussy prudishness. To keep for a lifetime companion a woman with whom he did not feel half—not a quarter—the delight he felt when he embraced a woman of a different nation and a different race, a woman whom he encountered, so to speak, only at scattered points along the way—surely that was an intolerable dislocation.

  Notes

  1 Japanese movie stars of the 1920's. Suzuki recently made an unsuccessful attempt to break into politics. Okada, the Mary Pickford of Japan, is now in Moscow, where she is said to be writing propaganda.—Tr.

  MY DEAR KANAME:

  Our trip after we left you went quite as we had planned it. We returned on the 25th of last month. Your most esteemed letter of the 29th arrived yesterday and was read with the deepest astonishment. Though I was aware that Misako's character left something to be desired, I must say that it was not for this piece of effrontery that I reared her. The devil must have given her the itch, if I may be forgiven the expression. I am truly grieved, and I find myself wondering why the fates have conspired to bring such news to me at this age. There is no way, I fear, to convey to you the shame and remorse I feel.

  The circumstances being as you have described them, you can hardly be expected, in your indignation, to take kindly to interference. There are nevertheless certain matters which must be discussed, and I shall have to take the liberty of asking whether you and Misako could in the near future visit me. I shall discuss the problem with her in a friendly manner and attempt to make her see her folly, and if she appears not to be in a penitent mood I shall punish her as seems proper. I must ask you most humbly to forgive her should she wish to reform.

  I was fortunate enough to find a puppet, and would have written you of it immediately but for a stiffness in the shoulder, which stiffness I was still nursing when this bewildering news arrived. An old man may perhaps be forgiven for complaining that his pilgrimage seems to have won him no grace, that he seems to have earned for himself only the wrath of the Buddha.

  I shall be waiting for you whenever it is possible for you to come; even tomorrow would not be too soon. And please—I must be emphatic—do nothing extreme until we have had our talk.

  "This will never do." Kaname handed the letter to Misako. " i am truly grieved, and I find myself wondering why the fates have conspired to bring such tidings to me.' "

  "What in the world did you say to him?"

  "I tried to put it as simply as I could without leaving out the important part. I did everything I could to show him that neither of us was any more wrong than the other. I said that I was responsible too, and that I wanted a divorce as much as you did."

  "I knew what sort of answer you would get, though."

  But to Kaname it was a surprise. Misako had argued that the news must be broken face to face, that if one tried to explain through a letter, mistakes were sure to arise. Kaname had not been able to answer the argument very successfully, but there were reasons why he had felt he must first send off a warning, and after a few days go for a conference. He wanted to lessen the shock as much as he could, and he knew that, after those pleasant days on Awaji when he had not so much as hinted that anything was amiss, he would not be able to bring the matter up without having sent off a preliminary explanation. Then too, as the letter showed clearly enough, the old man would think he had come to see the puppet. To interrupt the proud story of the new acquisition with unpleasant news would be too cruel. Surely one could have expected the old man to be a little more understanding, in view of his own hardly puritanical past. He liked to let it be known that he was an uncompromising gentleman of the old school. That, however, was an affectation, a hobby of sorts, common enough with men his age, and when it came to practical and immediate matters he ought really to be a little more up with the times. Not only had he refused to take Kaname'
s letter in the spirit in which it was intended, but his own letter was full of phrases that showed a complete misreading of even its literal sense. "You can hardly be expected, in your indignation," and "There is no way, I fear, to convey to you the shame and remorse I feel." Had he deigned to read only what Kaname had written, he would surely not have felt called upon to mention his "shame." Kaname had taken great pains to phrase his letter in terms that could arouse neither accusations nor apologies. But perhaps the old man's letter, full as it was of formal rhetorical flights, was to be taken as no more than a gesture demanded by his standards of good form.

  "I think you cart discount a lot of this. When you write an old-fashioned letter you pretty well have to say old-fashioned things. Probably he did it just for the fun of being old-fashioned, and I doubt if he's really as upset as he pretends to be. Only annoyed to have something like this cut him off when he wants to talk about his puppet."

  Misako was a little pale, but she tried to make it appear that the matter disturbed her not in the least, that she was quite above it. Her face was expressionless.

  "What are you going to do?" Kaname asked.

  "What am I going to do?"

  "Are you going to Kyoto with me?"

  "I couldn't bear to." It was clear from the way she threw out the words that she really couldn't. "Why don't you go by yourself and have it out with him?"

  "You saw what he said. It would be better if you went along. It shouldn't be as hard as you think."

  "I can't stand the idea of being lectured to in front of that O-hisa. I'll go after you have everything settled."

  They were, for once, looking straight into each other's eyes, but Kaname found Misako's manner a little embarrassing. To hide her self-consciousness she flung her words at him with a certain harshness, blowing smoke rings from a gold-ripped cigarette all the while. Though she was probably not aware of it, her speech and her facial expressions were changing. Perhaps it was Aso's influence. Perhaps she was taking over his mannerisms. It was at times like this that Kaname was most painfully aware of how far from him his wife had gone. She was no longer a part of his house. In her choice of words, the tone of her speech, there was something that might still be said to carry his family name, but he could see it disappearing. He had not been prepared for the pain that came with the realization, and he sensed something of the pain that the final scene, pressing so close, must bring. It occurred to him, however, that his wife had in a way already disappeared. The Misako he saw here—was she not an entirely new person? She had—who knows when?— slipped free of her past and the destiny it had carried with it. Kaname found that sad, but the sadness seemed rather different from regret. And so, perhaps, the final crisis that he so dreaded had already passed....

  "What was in Takanatsu's letter?" he asked.

  "He has business in Osaka again before long, but he doesn't want to see us until everything is decided. He says he'll probably go back to China without stopping by here."

  "And that's all?"

  "Well—" Misako was sitting on the veranda. With one hand she rubbed her foot, and in the other she held a cigarette, flicking the ashes into the garden. The azaleas were in full bloom. "He did mention something. He said he would leave it to me whether I wanted to tell you or not."

  "Oh?"

  "He said he went ahead without asking us and told Hiroshi everything."

  "Takanatsu did?"

  "Yes."

  "When?"

  "When they were in Tokyo together. During spring vacation."

  "Why the devil did he do that?"

  Even now, when he had gone so far as to tell the old man in Kyoto, Kaname had said not a word to Hiroshi. So the child knew everything, and had contrived to keep them from suspecting. It was moving and yet a little repelling.

  "He said he didn't intend to, but it all started one night after they had gone to bed. He heard Hiroshi crying and wanted to know what was the matter."

  "Then?"

  "It was in a letter, after all, and he couldn't write everything. He told Hiroshi we might separate and I might go to live with Aso. Hiroshi wanted to know what would happen to him then, and Takanatsu said that he had nothing to worry about, that he could go on seeing me as though he had two houses, and that some day he would understand why it had happened. That was the sum of it."

  "Was Hiroshi satisfied?"

  "He didn't say anything. He cried himself to sleep. The next day Takanatsu watched to see how he had come through. They went to the Mitsukoshi, and Hiroshi asked for everything in the store, exactly as though nothing had happened. Takanatsu said he was sure the worst was over—he hadn't known how soon children forget."

  "But it's not the same as if I had told him myself."

  "Oh yes—he said too that he didn't think we needed to tell Hiroshi anything more if it bothered us to. He said he was sorry he had gone ahead without asking us, but he thought he had taken care of at least that much for us."

  "It won't do. I may not be exactly decisive, but I have to have it a bit more definite than that."

  Kaname had hoped to postpone telling Hiroshi to the very last moment of the very last scene, but he could hardly tell Misako his reason. He still felt that the near future could bring a sudden and complete change, that he really could not know yet what the final outcome would be. Misako was determined, of course, and yet her very hardness was somehow brittle and fragile, and under the surface she seemed consumed by the strongest doubts. It would take very little, Kaname thought, to make her collapse in tears. Both of them dreaded such a crisis and both of them were constantly on guard to avoid it, but even now as they talked to each other it seemed as though the workings of an instant could cancel out the distance they had come and put them back again at the beginning. He did not for a moment think that Misako would follow the old man's advice. Still, if she did, he himself would have no alternative but to follow along—somewhere in the depths of his consciousness that feeling persisted. Neither resigned nor hopeful, he was a little awed by it.

  "If you'll excuse me, then—" The prospect of further discussion apparently too much for her, Misako glanced at the clock as though to signal that the usual hour for her to go out had come, and got up with a rather harried look to change her clothes.

  "I've been putting it off, but do you think I ought to see Aso again some time myself?" Kaname asked.

  "You really should. Before you go to Kyoto or after?"

  "Which would be best?"

  "'Even tomorrow would not be too soon.' Maybe you'd better go to Kyoto first. It would be a nuisance if Father were to come here, and besides, once everything is settled, Aso wants us to meet his mother."

  "What did you do with Takanatsu's letter?" he called into the hall after her. No more than an attractive and appealing woman in a most womanly rush to be off to her lover, she seemed to him.

  "I left it somewhere to show you, I've forgotten where. Won't it do as well if I look when I get back? I've told you fairly well what he said, anyway."

  "It really doesn't matter."

  After Misako had left, Kaname went out to feed the dogs, a biscuit to one and a biscuit to the other in turns. He helped Jiiya brush them, then went into the small breakfast room and absently lay down.

  "O-sayo!... Someone!"

  He would have liked some tea, but the maids were evidently shut in their rooms and no one answered. Hiroshi was not yet back from school. Kaname felt lonely and abandoned in the quiet house. Ought he perhaps to go to see Louise again? Always at times like this the urge came upon him, but today for some reason he pitied himself more than usual. Always he found himself reconsidering that vow to stay away from her, pointing out to himself the foolishness of being held to it—what if she was only a prostitute?—deciding that he would see her again; but today in addition he found the house unbearable. The sliding doors, the alcove decorations, the trees outside, were all in place and unchanged, and yet the whole seemed stark and gaping. The previous owner had built the house and lived
in it only a year or two, and Kaname had bought it when they moved to Osaka. This room had been added on afterwards. Its fine-grained fir and cedar pillars had, almost untended, taken on a soft glow over the years, and presently they would have an overlay of age that would please even the old man in Kyoto. Lying on the matted floor, Kaname looked with new interest at the mellowed woodwork, at the stand in the alcove and the trailing branch of bright yellow flowers, at the polished wood in the hall reflecting the light from outside like water. For all the excitement of her love affair, Misako still changed the decorations in the Japanese rooms now and then, the hangings and the flowers, to harmonize with the changing of the seasons. No doubt she did it from inertia and habit. Still, when Kaname thought of the day when the flowers would disappear, he knew that even this lifeless marriage, like the sheen of woodwork seen and remembered morning and evening and morning again, was something so near and so familiar that it would continue to pull at him even after it was gone.

  "O-sayo, bring me a towel," he called from the hall. Slipping off his serge summer kimono, he wiped the sweat from his back, then changed to the suit Misako had laid out. The old man's letter lay on the floor with the discarded kimono. He was about to put it into his coat pocket when he thought of Louise's coy habit ("Is this from a geisha?" she would say) of going through his pockets for letters. As he started to push it out of sight under the lining of the dresser drawer, his hand brushed against something. Misako had hidden Takanatsu's letter in the same drawer.

  "I wonder if I ought to read it." He hesitated before he took it from the envelope. She had hidden it carefully and could hardly have forgotten where. He could see now how little she had wanted to show it to him—indeed, her harried manner had said as much. But she was not given to hiding things from him. The contents must be particularly unpleasant, he thought. It would not be kind to read it. Still—