Modern Japanese Short Stories
Page 37
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to cut your throat with that, Granny,” he said to her. “It’s too blunt.”
“What a hateful old woman you really are!” cried Sachiko bitterly. “All you wanted to do was to get even with me for scolding you this morning. The one emotion you haven’t forgotten in all these years is—is spite!”
VII
In his spare time Minobé unpacked the numerous trunks and cases which they had brought from the country. One day he came upon a small photograph that had lain hidden for years among some old papers. He examined it for a moment, then took it to Umé’s room.
“I expect you’ll remember this, Granny,” he said.
Old Umé was busy tearing to pieces a pair of her great-grandson’s pants. She was having some trouble with the elastic band around the waist. She looked up and took the photograph which Minobé handed her, and suddenly a strange, choked cry escaped her throat.
“Oh, oh, I’ve missed her so terribly! It’s my darling little girl. My only daughter! I’ve missed her for so long!”
She put her hand to her forehead and rubbed her cheek against the photograph of the daughter, who had died more than thirty years before; her whole body was shaking.
“Why did you have to leave me? Life has never been the same since. How I miss you!”
Minobé was deeply moved. Now at last he seemed to have discovered, beneath all the physical and moral ugliness with which age had marked old Umé, a human heart that felt and suffered. Bowing his head he left the room. He did not want to intrude on her terrible grief.
As soon as he closed the door, the sound of sobbing appeared suddenly to stop. He stood listening in the passage. There seemed to him something ominous about this silence following directly on the old lady’s desperate weeping. Opening the door quietly, Minobé looked in. With an air of rapt concentration, Umé was removing the rubber band from her great-grandson’s pants. The photograph lay discarded upon a heap of tattered cloth.
DOWNTOWN
BY Fumiko Hayashi
TRANSLATED BY Ivan Morris
Fumiko Hayashi, born in 1904, was the daughter of an impecunious peddler and from her early childhood she moved from one part of the country to another with her parents. As soon as she had finished school, she launched out on her own in a desperate effort to support herself. She tried innumerable ways of making a living—as a maid, a clerk in a stockbroker’s office, a worker in a celluloid factory, an assistant in a maternity hospital, a waitress in a German café, a street-stall vendor, to name only a few of her occupations. She was in constant poverty and often on the verge of starving or of taking to the streets; on at least one occasion she attempted suicide. All these experiences are realistically described in her first well-known work, “A Roving Record” (Hōrōki, 1922–27).
Fumiko Hayashi’s devotion to literature started at an early age and continued during the course of her unsettled and esurient life. In her brief spare time she wrote poems, short stories, and children’s tales, and gradually these began to attract attention. She went through a period of left-wing writing, but in describing poverty and social injustice her approach was always very different from that of the tough-minded authors of the proletarian school.
It was not until after the war that Fumiko Hayashi’s literary reputation became established. By the time of her death in 1931 she was undoubtedly the most popular woman writer in Japan.
In her stories and novels Fumiko Hayashi portrays with realism and compassion the hardships of the Tokyo lower classes, with which she was so intimately acquainted from her own youth. She shows us a world of degeneration, humiliation, and instability in which men tyrannize over women and women themselves are, all too often, merely apathetic. Yet, tough as this world is, Miss Hayashi suggests that there is a surprising degree of cheerfulness and hope in the lives of the members of the lower stratum that she describes. Her principal women characters are of the humble, yet undaunted, type. As in the present story, their impulses of despair are almost always balanced by a strong will to live and a faith in the future. Given its dominant subject and approach, it is inevitable that Fumiko Hayashi’s writing should frequently verge on the sentimental; yet there is a simple, poetic quality about her language and a directness about her telling method that save her work from ever becoming maudlin.
“Downtown” (Shitamachi) was first published in 1948, when the author was forty-four.
IT WAS A BITTER, windy afternoon. As Ryō hurried down the street with her rucksack, she kept to the side where the pale sun shone over the roofs of the office buildings. Every now and then she looked about curiously—at a building, at a parked car, at one of those innumerable bombsites scattered through downtown Tokyo.
Glancing over a board fence, Ryō saw a huge pile of rusty iron and, next to it, a cabin with a glass door. A fire was burning within and she could hear the warm sound of the crackling wood. In front of the cabin stood a man in overalls with a red kerchief about his head. There was something pleasant about this tall fellow and Ryō screwed up her courage to call out.
“Tea for sale! Would you like some tea, please?”
“Tea?” said the man.
“Yes,” said Ryō with a nervous smile. “It’s Shizuoka tea.”
She stepped in through an opening in the board fence and, unfastening the straps of her rucksack, put it down by the cabin. Inside she could see a fire burning in an iron stove; from a bar above hung a brass kettle with a wisp of steam rising from the spout.
“Excuse me,” said Ryō, “but would you mind if I came in and warmed myself by your stove a few minutes? It’s freezing outside, and I’ve been walking for miles.”
“Of course you can come in,” said the man. “Close the door and get warm.”
He pointed toward the stool, which was his only article of furniture, and sat down on a packing case in the corner. Ryō hesitated a moment. Then she dragged her rucksack into the cabin and, crouching by the stove, held up her hands to the fire.
“You’ll be more comfortable on that stool,” said the man, glancing at her attractive face, flushed in the sudden warmth, and at her shabby attire.
“Surely this isn’t what you usually do—peddle tea from door to door?”
“Oh yes, it’s how I make my living,” Ryō said. “I was told that this was a good neighborhood, but I’ve been walking around here since early morning and have managed to sell only one packet of tea. I’m about ready to go home now, but I thought I’d have my lunch somewhere on the way.”
“Well, you’re perfectly welcome to stay here and eat your lunch,” said the man. “And don’t worry about not having sold your tea,” he added, smiling. “It’s all in the luck of the draw, you know. You’ll probably have a good day tomorrow.”
The kettle came to a boil with a whistling sound. As he unhooked it from the bar, Ryō had a chance to look about her. She took in the boarded ceiling, black with soot; the blackboard by the window; the shelf for family gods, on which stood a potted sakaki tree.1 The man picked up a limp-looking packet from the table and, unwrapping it, disclosed a piece of cod. A few minutes later the smell of baking fish permeated the cabin.
“Come on,” said the man, “sit down and have something to eat.”
Ryō took her lunch box out of the rucksack and seated herself on the stool.
“Selling things is never much fun, is it?” remarked the man, turning the cod over on the grill. “Tell me, how much do you get for a pound of that tea?
“I should get about a hundred and fifty or sixty yen a pound, but then there’s a lot of trash in it, and if the price is too high, it just won’t sell.”
In Ryō’s lunch box were two small fish covered with some boiled barley and a few bean-paste pickles. She began eating.
“Where do you live?” the man asked her.
“In Shitaya. Actually I don’t know one part of Tokyo from another. I’ve been here only a few weeks and a friend’s putting me up until I find something better.”
“Put this into the kettle,” she said, holding it out to him.
He shook his head and smiled, showing his white teeth.
“Oh, never! It’s far too expensive.”
Ryō removed the lid and poured the tea in before he could stop her. Laughing, the man went to fetch a teacup and a mug from the shelf.
“What about your husband?” he asked, while ranging them on the packing case. “You’re married, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes, I am. My husband’s still in Siberia. That’s why I have to work like this.”
Ryō’s thoughts flew to her husband, from whom she had not heard for six years; by now he had come to seem so remote that it required an effort to remember his looks, or the once-familiar sound of his voice. She woke up each morning with a feeling of emptiness and desolation. At times it seemed to Ryō that her husband had frozen into a ghost in that subarctic Siberia—a ghost, or a thin white pillar, or just a breath of frosty air. People no longer mentioned the war and she was almost embarrassed to have it known that her husband was still a prisoner.
“It’s funny,” the man said. “The fact is, I was in Siberia myself. I spent three years chopping wood near the Amur River—I managed to get sent home only last year. Well, it’s all in the luck of the draw. It’s tough on your husband. But it’s just as tough on you.”
“So you’ve really been repatriated from Siberia! You don’t seen any the worse for it,” Ryō said.
“I don’t know about that,” the man shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, as you see, I’m still alive.”
Ryō was studying him as she closed her lunch box. There was a simplicity and directness about this man that made her want to talk openly in a way that she found difficult with more educated people.
“Got any kids?” he said.
“Yes, a boy of six. He should be at school, but I’ve had difficulty getting him registered here in Tokyo. The government officials certainly know how to make life complicated for people!”
The man untied his kerchief, wiped the cup and the mug with it, and poured out the steaming tea.
“It’s good stuff, this,” he said, sipping noisily.
“Do you like it? It’s not the best quality, you know: only a hundred yen a pound wholesale. Still, you’re right—it’s quite good.”
The wind had grown stronger while they were talking; it whistled over the tin roof of the cabin. Ryō glanced out of the window, steeling herself for her long walk home.
“I’ll have some of your tea—a pound and a half,” the man told her, extracting three crumpled hundred-yen notes from the pocket of his overalls.
“Don’t be silly,” said Ryo. “You can have it for nothing.”
“Oh no, that won’t do. Business is business.” He forced the money into her hand. “Well, if you’re ever in this part of the world again, come in and have another chat.”
“I’d like to,” said Ryō, glancing around the tiny cabin. “But you don’t live here, do you?”
“Oh yes I do. I look after that iron out there and help load the trucks. I’m here most of the day.”
He opened a door under the shelf, disclosing a sort of cubbyhole with a bed neatly made up. Ryō noticed a colored postcard of the actress Yamada Isuzu tacked to the back of the door.
“My, you’ve fixed it up nicely,” she said smiling. “You’re really quite snug here, aren’t you?”
She wondered how old he could be.
* * *
From that day on, Ryō came regularly to the Yotsugi district to sell tea; each time she visited the cabin on the bombsite. She learned that the man’s name was Tsuruishi Yoshio. Almost invariably he had some small delicacy waiting for her to put in her lunch box—a pickled plum, a piece of beef, a sardine. Her business began to improve and she acquired a few regular customers in the neighborhood.
A week after their first meeting, she brought along her boy, Ryukichi. Tsuruishi chatted with the child for a while and then took him out for a walk. When they returned, Ryukichi was carrying a large caramel cake.
“He’s got a good appetite, this youngster of yours,” said Tsuruishi, patting the boy’s close-cropped head.
Ryō wondered vaguely whether her new friend was married; in fact she found herself wondering about various aspects of his life. She was now twenty-eight, and she realized with a start that this was the first time she had been seriously interested in any man but her husband. Tsuruishi’s easy, carefree temperament somehow appealed to her, though she took great care not to let him guess it.
A little later Tsuruishi suggested taking Ryō and Ryukichi to see Asakusa2 on his next free day. They met in front of the information booth in Ueno Station, Tsuruishi wearing an ancient gray suit that was far too tight, Ryō clad in a blue dress of kimono material and a light-brown coat. In spite of her cheap clothes, she had about her something youthful and elegant as she stood there in the crowded station. Beside the tall, heavy Tsuruishi, she looked like a schoolgirl off on a holiday. In her shopping bag was their lunch: bread, oranges, and rice wrapped with seaweed.
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t rain,” said Tsuruishi, putting his arm lightly around Ryō’s waist as he steered her through the crowd.
They took the train to Asakusa Station, then walked from the Matsuya Department Store to the Niten Gate, past hundreds of tiny stalls. The Asakusa district was quite different from what Ryō had imagined. She was disappointed when Tsuruishi pointed to a small red-lacquered temple and told her that this was the home of the famous Asakusa Goddess of Mercy. Although Tsuruishi explained that, until the air raids, it had been a towering pavilion, it was hard for Ryō to visualize a huge temple. All she could see were the hundreds of people thronging about the little red shrine from all four directions. In the distance she could hear the plaintive wail of trumpet and saxophone emerging from some loud-speaker, mingling strangely with the sound of the wind whistling through the branches of the ancient trees.
They made their way through the old-clothes market and came to a row of food stalls squeezed tightly against each other beside the Asakusa Pond; here the air smelled of burning oil. Tsuruishi went to one of the stalls and bought Ryukichi a stick of yellow cotton candy. The boy nibbled at it as the three of them walked down a narrow street plastered with Ameri-can-style billboards advertising restaurants, films, revues. It was less than a fortnight since Ryō had first noticed Tsuruishi by his cabin, yet she felt as much at ease with him as if she had known him all her life.
“Well, it’s started raining after all,” he said, holding out his hand. Ryō looked up, to see scattered drops of rain falling from the gray sky. So their precious excursion would be ruined, she thought.
“We’d better go in there,” said Tsuruishi, pointing to one of the shops, outside which hung a garish lantern with characters announcing the “Merry Teahouse.” They took seats at a table underneath a ceiling decorated with artificial cherry blossoms. The place had a strangely uncozy atmosphere, but they were determined to make the best of it and ordered a pot of tea; Ryō distributed her stuffed seaweed, bread, and oranges. It was not long before the meal was finished and by then it had started raining in earnest.
“We’d better wait till it lets up a bit,” suggested Tsuruishi. “Then I’ll take you home.”
Ryō wondered if he was referring to her place or his. She was staying in the cramped apartment of a friend from her home town and did not even have a room to call her own; rather than go there, she would have preferred returning to Tsuruishi’s cabin, but that too was scarcely large enough to hold three people. Taking out her purse, she counted her money under the table. The seven hundred yen should be enough to get shelter for a few hours at an inn.
“D’you know what I’d really like?” she said. “I’d like us to
go to a film and then find some inn and have something to eat before we say goodbye. But I suppose that’s all rather expensive.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Tsuruishi, laughing. “Come on. We’ll do it all the same.”
Taking his overcoat from the peg, he threw it over Ryukichi’s head and they ran through the downpour to a cinema. Of course there were no seats. As they stood watching the film, the little boy fell sound asleep, leaning against Tsuruishi. The air seemed to get thicker and hotter every moment; on the roof they could hear the rain beating down.
It was getting dark as they left the theater and hurried through the rain, which pelted down with the swishing sound of banana-tree leaves in a high wind. At last they found a small inn where the landlord led them to a carpeted room at the end of a drafty passage. Ryō took off her wet socks. The boy sat down in a corner and promptly went back to sleep.
“Here, he can use this as a pillow,” said Tsuruishi, picking up an old cushion from a chair and putting it under Ryukichi’s head.
From an overflowing gutter above the window the water poured down in a steady stream into the courtyard. It sounded like a waterfall in some faraway mountain village.
Tsuruishi took out a handkerchief and began wiping Ryō’s wet hair. A feeling of happiness coursed through her as she looked up at him. It was as if the rain had begun to wash away all the loneliness that had been gathering within her year after year.
She went to see if they could get some food, and in the corridor met a maid in Western clothes carrying a teatray. After Ryō had ordered two bowls of noodles, she and Tsuruishi sat down to drink their tea, facing each other across an empty brazier. Later Tsuruishi came and sat on the floor beside her. Leaning their backs against the wall, they gazed out at the darkening, rainy sky.