by Ivan Morris
Hawkers occasionally came peddling their wares even inside the police station, and at this juncture a woman in work trousers, with a cotton towel draped over her head and fastened beneath her chin, entered hesitantly and called out: “Would any of you gentlemen like to buy a bird?”
“Buy a bird?” said a policeman, glancing up from a bowl of noodles. “To eat, do you mean? Or to keep in a cage?”
“It’s a beautiful songbird,” the woman replied. “A nightingale.” And, looking thoroughly pleased with herself now, as if she had already found a buyer, she advanced further into the room and began to untie a cloth-wrapped bundle.
“Well, look at this!” The policemen, sitting or standing idly about and delving with chopsticks into their lunch boxes, peered into the smoke-blackened wooden cage resting on the floor. “It’s a nightingale, right enough. But, does it sing?”
“Well, really, would I try to sell a bird that doesn’t sing?” The woman looked genuinely shocked.
They asked her the price.
“Well, now, how much is it worth, I wonder?” she said, looking inquiringly around at their faces. “I don’t know what they sell for, myself, but if any of you gentlemen will say what you think is a fair price, anything will do.”
“Anything will do, eh?” laughed one of the policemen. “You’re the first hawker I’ve met who doesn’t know the price of his goods!”
“I’ll give you fifty sen,” said another.
“How much did you say?” The woman’s face fell. “Can you buy a nightingale for fifty sen?”
“I thought you said you didn’t know about these things,” said the policeman who had just named the price. “In any case, you can’t expect much from poor fellows like us.”
But the woman was not to be put off so easily.
“If officials like you, with monthly salaries, haven’t got any money,” she retorted, “just where is the money in this town, I should like to know.”
Constable Miyoshi had meanwhile joined the group, and now, catching sight of the woman’s face, he looked suddenly annoyed and shouted: “You again! Have you come to talk more of that silly nonsense?”
“Oh, no, not this time, sir—I’m trying to sell a bird,” she said, evidently flustered.
“You are, eh? Well, if that’s all….” Miyoshi peered into the cage.
Miyo was the woman’s name, and when her husband had been arrested two months back for the unlicensed brewing of saké and had been given a spell in the workhouse in place of a fine, Miyo had come along to the police with the awkward request that she and her children, since they now had no idea where tomorrow’s meals might come from, should be sent to the workhouse too. She had argued obstinately in this room for the best part of half a day, giving Miyoshi no end of trouble. The brewing of a rough, cloudy saké from crushed rice was a time-honored custom among the impoverished petty farmers roundabout, any form of refined saké being hopelessly beyond their means; since it was impossible to stop this practice, the police had abandoned imposing fines and, instead, merely consigned offenders to the workhouse. Miyoshi, recalling now the pinched, sad-eyed faces and soiled kimono of the three children Miyo had brought with her on that occasion, felt strongly inclined to make some sort of offer for the bird himself.
“My, now, it’s a nightingale!” he exclaimed, bending over the cage. “How much are you selling it for?”
But at that moment Constable Fujioka, who had been to the railway station, reappeared with the teacher Onozaki and some other people, and Miyoshi returned to his desk. Yaé was still being questioned by the legal-affairs officer, but on seeing her neighbor Harukichi with his daughter Haru enter in the custody of a policeman, she beamed at him with her fat, moonlike face and cried: “Just fancy! You here too! What have you been up to, then?”
Harukichi had intended to accompany his daughter on the train as far as Owari, and now, dressed for the trip in a dark-blue kimono, with the white sleeves of his knitted underwear showing for several inches on each arm, he was following behind Onozaki in evident dejection at this sudden confusion of his plans. But when he saw Yaé’s face he appeared to recover his spirits a little, as if he had found an ally.
“I’ve done nothing wrong as far as I can see,” he said, “but just as I was thinking to send this girl off to a job in the central provinces, along came somebody and said I mustn’t do it.”
He studiously avoided looking at either Onozaki or the policeman as he spoke.
“Nothing wrong, do you say?” broke in Miyoshi. “Do you call it right to sell a girl that age into forced service?”
Onozaki, too, looked highly incensed. “This time I’ve had enough!” he said angrily. “You asked me to help, so I got in touch with the employment clerk, and now you’ve done this. You just don’t know a promise is a promise!”
It was some time before that Harukichi, embarrassed by an excessively large family of small children, had first told Onozaki he wanted to put Haru out to service; but the girl was a promising student, and on that occasion Onozaki had managed to persuade Harukichi to let her stay on and proceed to high school, arranging meanwhile that she should receive a grant, and covering all minor expenses himself. Shortly after the start of this term, however, there had been expenses for the grandmother’s funeral, and Harukichi, now desperate for money, had once more come along to say that he wanted to send his daughter out to work. Onozaki had reluctantly agreed, and, enlisting the help of the employment clerk at the Town Office, had undertaken to find a suitable opening. But Harukichi, whose visits on this matter had been fairly frequent for some time after this, had just lately ceased to appear, and yesterday morning (by which time Onozaki was already growing suspicious), Harukichi’s sister-in-law had come to the school in his stead on some business connected with Haru. The school’s spring excursion was only four days off, and it had been decided that the students of Haru’s class should take the two-hour train journey to the prefectural capital. It had also been decided that certain money held in trust at the school, the proceeds of a sale of straw rope made at home by students, should be used for the children who could not afford the fares. Haru was one of those children. But Haru—her father’s sister-in-law said—would unfortunately not be able to go on the excursion, so could they please have her share of the rope money now? When pressed for a further explanation, the woman had merely shaken her head as if she knew nothing more. Onozaki had felt almost sure then that Harukichi must have fallen for the smooth talk of some commission agent and sold his daughter into service, and on inquiry at the Town Office he had found—as he had expected—that the procedure there, at any rate, was not yet completed. Today, to add to his uneasiness, Haru had failed to appear at school and when he had heard her classmates, during recess, mention seeing Haru and her father set out that morning in the direction of the town, he had ridden off on his bicycle at once, asking a colleague to take over his class, and had discovered the two of them at the railway Station, waiting idly for a train that was not due for almost another hour.
Onozaki had felt that now he really knew what people meant when they talked about the foxy cunning of these rustics. If the man was going to do this, why hadn’t he come along decently and asked him to stop his inquiries? To treat their private agreement as if it had never existed, to go slyly behind his back and carry on secret negotiations, to pretend be wasn’t doing a thing…. Inwardly seething, he had controlled his temper and tried to reason quietly with the man. But Harukichi had stubbornly refused to move from the waiting-room bench, claiming, with the despairing look of a man hounded by fate, that the twenty yen advanced to help with the preparations had already been spent on family needs and on payments to creditors. It was then that Onozaki had gone to the police for help. Haru, wearing an apron of red muslin over her cheap, gaudily patterned kimono, and white cotton socks with holes at the toes, was gazing up in awe at the faces of Onozaki and the policemen, making herself inconspicuous behind her father’s back; but when Constable Miyoshi, who was
a fearsome sight with the red scar running across one eyebrow, started severely lecturing her father—“What! When this gentleman takes all this trouble on himself to find a good job, you go to an agency? And don’t you think it’s hard on the poor girl, eh, sending her off to years of forced labor?”—she trembled suddenly, as if on the verge of tears and, turning abruptly away, pressed her hands to her face.
The job the employment clerk had been recommending was with a certain large spinning factory, but it had offered an advance payment of only ten yen, and, since Harukichi’s situation had moved hopelessly beyond the stage where that sort of money could be of any use, he had decided, even if the working conditions should be a trifle rough, there was nothing for it but to sell the girl’s services for a fixed period to some small factory which would give him a good lump sum of ready cash in advance. And he had not had the face to mention this to Onozaki, who had busied himself in so many ways to help his daughter.
“Ah, what can I say?” Harukichi began. “There were the debts, you see, and nothing to eat in the house, and when, on top of that, my third boy, Zenkichi, fell off a ladder and broke his leg and we had to have the doctor….”
Children in Harukichi’s household, whether there was anything for them to eat or not, sprouted into being like baby potatoes, and the eighth had been born at the end of the last year. Harukichi had been vaguely thinking, therefore, that with a family of eleven to support (for, although the grandmother could now at last be counted out, there were still, in addition to the eight children, two parents and a grandfather), and not the remotest chance of managing it on the scanty produce of his single acre of land, he might reasonably be excused if, in order to reduce the number of mouths by one at least, he considered some arrangement for Haru now that she had finished junior school; and in any case—he had reasoned—no matter what sort of job the girl was sent to, she could hardly be worse off than she was now, living on starvation rations in a jerry-built shack crawling with children. And when the boy Zenkichi had injured his leg, and the bone had become infected so that expensive treatment became necessary, Harukichi had finally made up his mind to go to an employment agent and beg an advance on the security of his daughter’s services.
“Here, how old are you?” asked Miyoshi suddenly.
“Thirty-four, sir,” Harukichi replied, with a puzzled air.
“Thirty-four”—Miyoshi looked at the man in amazement—“eight children at thirty-four! That’s good work, eh? Is it the truth, though?”
Yaé leaned across at this. “Eight it is, sure enough,” she said. “Starting with this girl here, I’ve helped to bring out every one of them, so there’s no mistake. He’s not telling lies. If ever you go to his house there’s always two rocking baskets there, side by side.”
Miyoshi, who had been gazing in surprise at Yaé as she rattled briskly on, looked suddenly annoyed and shouted: “Hi. that’s enough! Who asked you to talk?”
“Yes, that’s how it is,” said Harukichi, glancing apologetically toward Yaé, who had lapsed into a pained silence. “And we’ve never given you a thing, have we, for all that trouble? It isn’t right?” He turned and indicated his daughter. “I was thinking, though, that when we’d sent this girl out to work we might have a chance to do something for you.”
The hundred yen he had expected to receive on delivering Haru at the Owari weaving factory was to have been applied chiefly to the settlement of certain pressing debts, contracted on the security of the house, and to provision of the family’s immediate needs; but Harukichi’s plans for the money were laid in some detail, and even things like a gift for Yaé had not been forgotten.
Miyoshi, on being told that the twenty yen advanced as preparation money was all gone and knowing, moreover, that every penny in the Office’s various relief funds was already out on loan, could think of no answer to the present problem, and he retired to confer with the superintendent; but there too, it seemed, no solution presented itself.
“Well, I really don’t know,” Miyoshi mumbled as he came back from the superintendent’s office. “What’s it best to do, I wonder.”
Onozaki had at first listened to the excuses of the nervous, shiftyeyed Harukichi with unconcealed disgust, but as he came to learn more of the circumstances behind the case, his angry, tense features had gradually relaxed, and now he turned abruptly to Miyoshi and said: “That’s it. I’ll lend him a little money. If I do that”—he looked across at Harukichi—“you can manage all right, eh?”
“Well, seriously, you know, I just can’t take it.” Harukichi recoiled at the offer, his yellow, wizened face becoming momentarily resolute. “I’m not going to put you to any more trouble, sir, not on my account.”
But Miyoshi was looking immensely relieved. “Now you,” he said quickly. “That’s no way to talk. You should accept a kindness in the proper spirit. Let’s settle things the way the gentleman says, and let’s hear no more about sending this girl into service.”
Miyoshi was obliged to devote a large part of each day to people who came to the police to beg help of some sort, getting them cards for free medical treatment, arranging for assistance to be given from the Town Office, and so on, and Onozaki’s simple solution seemed to attract him strongly, for he now added, as good measure: “And tomorrow I’ll go to the Town Office myself and see if they’ll let you have a bale of rice.”
At that moment there was the sound of a motor car drawing up outside the entrance. Visitors in cars were rare, and as the policemen turned curiously toward the door there emerged from the vehicle a man whose face was a familiar sight to everyone in town. It was Dr. Yokota. He entered without removing his hat and, leaning unceremoniously across the handrail of the reception desk, cast affable, beady-eyed glances about the room from behind his thicklensed spectacles. After a few bantering remarks—“Hello, Miyoshi, has the fishing started yet?”—his expression grew suddenly serious and he turned to Saitō, the hygiene officer. “I’ve just had a call from that prayer-mongering priest at Tora-no-kuchi,” he said, “and I find there’s a case of dysentery.”
The hygiene officer rose from his chair. “Is it the priest, then?” he asked.
“No such luck,” said the doctor. “It’s an old woman stopping at his house. No one knows where she comes from. And, what’s more, the so-called medicine he’s giving her is stewed pine-leaf juice, or something of that sort, so you’ll have to investigate this thoroughly.”
With surprising suddenness Dr. Yokota now resumed his former cheerful manner and started gossiping with the other policemen. From across the room, where someone—to see whether the nightingale would sing or not—had lifted the cage onto a window ledge, there now sounded a single, brief, melodic call—“Ho-o-kekkyo!”
“Did you hear that?” cried the countrywoman excitedly. “Isn’t that a lovely voice now?” She moved across to where Dr. Yokota was sitting. “How about it, sir? Wouldn’t you like to buy that bird?”
The doctor, it so happened, wasted a great deal of time and money on pet birds, boasting quite a collection of them in his house.
“Eh, what sort is it?” he asked. He rose and walked over toward the window, moving around the rear of the small group centered about Harukichi. On the way he passed Constable Saitō. The constable, with great zest, was pulling out the sterilization equipment for use in case of infectious diseases, rejoicing that a time of action had at last arrived; for he had long been meaning to check up on this priest, a mendicant holy man who had established himself last spring in a shack near the Tora-no-kuchi cremation ground and, after acquiring a devoted flock of followers by the recitation of weird prayers for long life and happiness, had even, just lately, been credited with miraculous healing powers.
“I hear there’s any number of sick people nowadays going to that priest,” the doctor called out as he passed; and then, drawing up some two or three yards short of the window, lest the bird should take fright and refuse to sing, he peered from that considerable distance at the little creatur
e fluffing its glossy yellow-green feathers inside the cage. Turning to the countrywoman, he said: “How much do you want?”
“Well, first of all, sir,” said the woman, gazing hopefully at the doctor in his smartly cut lounge suit and clearly expecting a handsome offer, “how much would you be prepared to give?”
As she stood waiting for his reply, the nightingale apparently finding the warm spring sunshine to its liking, gave vent to yet another full-throated, high-pitched burst of song. Constable Miyoshi looked up sharply at the sound. His face was now stern, as if some irregularity had just occurred to him, and striding quickly across the room, he stood directly before Miyo and glared at her accusingly.
“Here you,” he said, “this is a protected bird. Where did you get it, eh? It’s against the law to catch birds like this.”
“I didn’t catch it, sir,” Miyo replied. “It flew into my house all by itself.”
But Miyoshi had already formed his own opinion on the matter and was obviously prepared to listen to no excuses. “Now then, no lies!” he scolded. “Who ever heard of a bird flying into a house of its own accord? You caught it with a net, there’s no doubt about it.”
In truth, however, Miyo had done nothing by design. That morning, shortly after dawn, a small bird had come flying into her house, beating its wings noisily against the walls, and when she and the children, after a wild and disorderly chase, had eventually trapped it inside a beanpaste sieve they had discovered that it was a nightingale. Miyo was in ill health, unable to do heavy work as a laborer, and after her husband’s departure to the workhouse and the rejection of her tearful request to be put in there with him, she had racked her brains in desperation for some means—when there was not even food in the house for tomorrow—of keeping herself and the children alive for the next three months, until her husband came out again. Eventually she had decided, rashly, to borrow ten yen from a moneylender, at a daily interest rate of five sen, and with this as her capital had walked about the town selling apples; but although she had been able, for a few days, to buy sometimes five and sometimes ten small measures of rice, in less than a month she had run through both capital and profits, and after that she could find nothing but occasional odd jobs here and there, at the more well-to-do houses, helping in the kitchen or weeding the garden; and the three children had eaten rice scarcely once in ten days. When the bird, in the midst of these misfortunes, had flown of its own free will into her house, Miyo had felt convinced that this was the work of providence. “Today,” she had told her dejected and starved-looking children, “I’m going to town to get you some presents. So just be good and wait.”
