by Taeko Kono
Little boys inhabited such an infinitely wholesome world — Akiko always had the impression that it restored and purified her. Its simplicity was so all-encompassing that anything out of the ordinary about her could pass without notice there. Little boys went along with her in her games — sometimes they almost seemed to egg her on.
Akiko realized that she was still holding the watermelon and the boy’s hands up close to her.
“Thank you,” she said, letting them go. “That was delicious.”
The child stared intently at the watermelon, and before she knew it, he had given it back.
“You have it,” he said. “I don’t want it anymore.”
He probably no longer wanted to eat it now that somebody else’s mouth had touched it. He ran off, wiping his fingers on the seat of his trousers. A little way down the street he stopped, turned, and looked back at Akiko, who stood rooted to the spot, not knowing what to do with the unexpected gift in her hands.
Snow
Yuki, 1962
At the end of the year, Hayako’s mother became ill and suddenly died. Their New Year’s vacation had to be postponed, and by the time they decided to set out again it was already late January.
Kisaki told Hayako that traveling would actually be better this way, since there’d be fewer crowds. “Let’s go,” he said to her. “The trip will do us good, now that all that business is over.”
Her mother had lived in Osaka, in Hayako’s brother’s house. She had moved there along with him and his wife at the time of his company transfer. Perhaps once a year, Hayako would visit them, and usually returned to Tokyo after just four or five days. She’d last been there in the fall. When her mother asked about her next visit, she’d replied, “Oh, I’ll come again in the summer,” though she suspected she might not make it that soon.
The first telegram informing her that her mother was critically ill had arrived in early December: Hayako had dropped everything and got the first train to Osaka. Her mother had heart disease, she was told, and had had an attack; the doctor said they should expect the worst. But it didn’t look to her as if her mother would suffer another attack soon. She spent a few days at her mother’s bedside, and then, considering it safe to leave, returned to Tokyo.
Within ten days, however, she received a second telegram with the same message. Again Hayako went to Osaka, and learned that the night before her mother had had another even more serious heart attack. She had lost all appetite, and mostly lay in a state of drowsiness. But at times she was quite alert, and able to chat with her as if nothing was wrong. The day of Hayako’s departure, after about a week’s stay, her mother said to her: “Why not get your hair done before you leave? The place where Sakiko goes does a good job.” Hayako went to her sister-in-law’s salon, and returned to Tokyo certain that her mother would last out the year.
It was a relief to be able to report this to Kisaki, but this time Hayako felt guilty too. “The family is probably overreacting,” she said. “I’ll telephone next time before going all that way.”
“You should go,” Kisaki replied. “Don’t worry about me. Take all the time you want to look after her. It’ll probably be your last chance.”
Hayako smiled apologetically. It was her adoptive mother who was dying, a woman Kisaki had, in fact, never met. She found it amusing to see him behaving just like the solicitous husband and son-in-law, even though, legally speaking, he didn’t have the right to care one way or the other. So, she thought, perhaps it doesn’t matter to a man.
Hayako would always be sent into a panic by her mother’s letters — the smallest phrases would make her think: “So she’s found out about Kisaki!” Even the last two trips home, Hayako — gazing at her mother’s eyelids as she slept, or at her mouth drooped open for a spoonful of food — had been preoccupied: did her mother really still know nothing about him?
Hayako had stayed at home after graduating from school, merely taking a few lessons in flower arranging and the tea ceremony. When her brother married, however, and brought his young wife home to live with them, Hayako decided to take a job in her father’s law firm. The company occupied a single room in an old building in Kanda, heated in winter by a kerosene stove. It was staffed by three lawyers, a middle-aged typist who had graduated long ago from M— University’s law department, and a younger clerical assistant; the assistants never stayed very long, perhaps because it was hardly the workplace to appeal to a girl with any ambition. Hayako’s father gave her the job partly because of his difficulty finding anybody else to take it.
It was at this office that she had met Kisaki, who came by from time to time. He was her age, and had only just joined his company, a firm that manufactured steel. He and Hayako’s father shared the same alma mater, and that year both were on the alumni association board, which was why the two men had to meet regularly. Kisaki usually came by at lunchtime, probably the only time he wasn’t always busy. He never stayed very long, and he always kept an eye on the clock. Even so, he and Hayako started talking, and eventually they started going out together.
By the time her father died, Hayako had no desire to return to her former life. The job gave her an excuse to spend time away from home, and money to spend on dates with Kisaki. When she asked the new boss of the office, a former colleague and friend of her father, if she could stay on, he had let her. She’d continued to work there until very recently.
The only one in her family she’d told about Kisaki was her brother, Toshio. She had told him four years ago, just before the move, when she realized, seeing him arranging an exchange of houses with a colleague being transferred from his company’s Osaka branch, that he intended to take the whole family with him. At first she said simply that she didn’t want to leave Tokyo; she would rent a room.
“Oh, all right,” he said, immediately. “Well, that’s understandable — you have a job. All right. I’ll talk to Mother about it.”
Her mother, however, had been much more difficult to convince. She was impatient to see Hayako married. If only she’d known Father was going to die so early, she said, she would have insisted he hurry and settle the matter of Hayako’s husband. Father always said he would take care of it; that was why she hadn’t bothered. Why couldn’t Hayako give up her job? she asked. It was out of the question to leave her behind, alone in Tokyo, when she was so overdue for marriage.
“She won’t be persuaded,” Toshio had said, reporting her objections to Hayako. “I think you’d better come with us.” Seeing this sudden change of attitude, Hayako felt she had to tell him the truth: the real reason she wanted to stay was Kisaki.
“Well, if you care so much about him, why don’t you get married?” her brother asked, astonished.
“I know it must seem strange,” Hayako admitted. “But that’s the situation. . . .”
The “situation” was mostly Hayako’s making. There was nothing, in fact, to prevent them becoming husband and wife. It was just that, whenever the topic of marriage came up, Hayako got terribly uncomfortable. She could not bear to consider it. Since she seemed to have so many misgivings and was so evasive, Kisaki himself rarely mentioned it. This silence, however, would start to prey on Hayako’s mind, and if it continued too long, she would try, very timidly, to broach the topic. But no sooner had she done so than she would feel compelled to shut it out altogether again, and concentrate instead on the happiness they shared as things were.
Something was blocking her, that much her brother understood. Well, the least he could do, given the circumstances, he said, was help her to be as happy as possible. Yes, he remonstrated with their mother, Hayako was single, but she was earning her own living; she was independent; why shouldn’t she stay in Tokyo? In the end, their mother had agreed.
Hayako dreaded her mother finding out that she was living with Kisaki. Not only from fear of her disapproval or the regret of deceiving her at the time of the move, but also be
cause she couldn’t bear to witness her mother heap accusations upon herself when she realized that nothing but doubts and vacillation had kept her daughter from marrying.
But surely her mother must know something about her relationship with Kisaki. After moving to Osaka, she hardly ever brought up the subject of marriage, which before had so much concerned her. And her mother had never suggested paying her a visit in Tokyo. Toshio must have told her. Once when he came on a business trip to Tokyo, Toshio had met Kisaki. Waiting till Kisaki was out of earshot, he had said to her: “I’m sure Mother wouldn’t mind. Why don’t you just get married now?”
Yes, her mother probably hadn’t said anything because she was taking a tolerant view of the situation, having been assured by her son about Kisaki, and told that Hayako still needed time. Toshio had told Hayako that he hadn’t breathed a word, but surely, she thought with some gratitude, there was room to doubt him.
For a while, no further news came from Osaka. The 30th of December arrived. One more day, Hayako hoped as she went to bed, and Mother really will live into the New Year.
That night, Hayako had a dream about her mother.
In the dream, she was trying to wake up from a deep sleep. “Hayako!” she heard her mother calling: “Get up, Hayako!” But she felt herself drifting off again into a warm, comfortable, pleasurable world. “Hurry, or you’ll be late!” she heard, and the door to her room quickly slid open. Hayako peered through her eyelashes over her covers, and saw her mother, looking extraordinarily young in the gloom. The next instant, her mother rushed straight toward her, as if to attack her. Hayako’s first impulse was to flinch, as she used to as a child. But instead she defiantly pulled the bedclothes over her head. She was not a child anymore, she told herself; she was a full-grown woman. When there was no reaction, however, she pushed the covers away. Her mother was still there, hovering by her pillow.
“So that’s the kind of daughter you are,” her mother said, in a low voice. “You’re not going to get up. You don’t even care that I’m about to die!” She turned to leave.
“Don’t go!” Hayako cried, trying to move. “Please! I’ll get up!” But her mother was already out in the corridor, framed in the space between the sliding doors. She turned and looked back at Hayako, with the most tender smile. She nodded twice, and faded away.
When Hayako realized that she really was sitting up in bed in the darkness, her blood ran cold. Had she just been dreaming, sitting in that position? That was impossible. Her mother’s face, nodding gently and smiling, had been there in the room. The vision had not been a figment of her imagination. Her mother had been there, before her eyes.
Kisaki turned over in bed. “Go back to sleep,” he muttered, sleepily.
Hayako pulled herself together. She groped around her pillow, found the switch to the lamp, and turned it on. In the strange glare, she saw that it was just past three o’clock. She turned off the light and eased her cold shoulders under the covers. But it was impossible to go back to sleep.
Before dawn, there was a pounding at the entrance of their building, and a voice announced that a telegram had come for one of the tenants. Hayako prepared herself for the inevitable. She heard the sound of the front door opening, some voices, and then a slam. Footsteps came up the stairs, and along the corridor. They stopped outside their door. A knock, as she had feared.
“It’s for you.”
“Just a minute!” Switching on the light, she started struggling with the tangle of clothes she’d slipped off that night.
“That’s all right, I’ll push it under,” the voice said. A piece of white paper came rustling under the door.
Hayako opened it up. The message consisted of only two words: Mother Dead.
Kisaki held the note up to his eyes with both hands, squinting in the brightness of the lamp, still lying in bed.
“I see. So she was near the end, after all,” he said, after a pause, putting the telegram down. “What time is it?” He twisted his head and looked at the clock.
Less than two hours had passed since the dream. All that time she had struggled alone to control her fear and anxiety. She had once been told that in order to prevent a nightmare from coming true, you have to tell someone about it, but she had been terrified that saying anything about this dream might have the opposite effect, so she’d resisted her first impulse to wake Kisaki up. Waiting for daylight, unable to tear her thoughts from her mother, determined to telephone first thing, she had wept anxious tears. But with the telegram in her hands, the news hardly seemed to affect her at all.
Hayako lit the gas heater. The line of points burst into flame with a bang that seemed terribly loud in the silence of the building. She adjusted it, and tried to speak about practical matters.
“It’s New Year’s Eve. The trains will be packed.”
Despite her fears, Hayako arrived in Osaka rather early that afternoon. At Tokyo station in the early morning, when he had seen the platforms crowded with passengers, Kisaki had told her to board the first rapid train. He knew she could never get a reserved ticket, but she should board anyway, explain to the conductor that she had to get to Osaka for an emergency, and ask for the seat of a passenger who had canceled his reservation. She could travel first-class if necessary. But Hayako had hesitated: what if there were no cancellations? Well, he said, urging her on board, she would just have to ask to transfer at the next stop to a regular express. In the end, she had found herself looking out at him through the thick stormproof glass of the train window.
Kisaki’s strategy had been a good one. Hayako had to stand between cars for a while, but when the train left Atami, the conductor came, picked up her suitcase, and told her to follow him. He had assigned her a seat. It was in first class, but she could keep it for the entire trip.
When Hayako reached her brother’s house, she found everything remarkably quiet. The commotion that follows a death had subsided, and there were still a few hours to go before the wake. The smell of incense hung in the air.
“Ah, here you are.”
“Pity you couldn’t be with her at the end.”
“Well, come in and . . .”
Hardly acknowledging their greetings, Hayako hurried into her mother’s room. When she slid open the door, she saw several people sitting inside: here too, she faced a barrage of greetings. But before she did anything else, Hayako went to look at her mother’s face.
Laid out on a pure white bed, covered in a white sheet, her mother gave the impression of being very cold. Sticks of incense had been placed by her pillow. Hayako knelt down by the bed. Her sister-in-law came and knelt on the other side.
“She died very peacefully,” her sister-in-law said. “She just slipped away.” She touched the white cloth draped over the body.
In the train, Hayako had kept trying to picture what her dead mother would look like. This would have been her sixty-first year. She had never been very robust, but even bedridden in her final illness, she had been quite beautiful and never looked her age. Her hair was still almost totally black; she hadn’t needed dentures; and her face was hardly wrinkled. Hayako was sure that her face in death would be just as beautiful. But as for whether it would be peaceful, Hayako couldn’t help having her doubts.
Hayako drew back the sheet. Just as she’d thought, her mother’s face was beautiful. Her final illness had left no marks of suffering. Yet there was no peace in it. Perfect and unblemished, that was all. How different this dead face was from the image of her living mother in Hayako’s mind’s eye. The lips, the line of her nose, everything belonged to the mother whom Hayako had known and loved. And yet, at the same time, she realized, they were all utterly alien. Her mother was gone from her forever, it was clear.
“Mother,” she murmured, laying a hand on the edge of the cover. “Thank you for looking after me for so long.” A sob rose in her throat.
“Oh, don’t!
” shrieked her sister-in-law.
Everybody leapt to their feet. Hayako herself recoiled. A stream of bright red blood spurted out of the corpse’s nose, running down the sides of the mouth onto the neck, and soaking the white cotton sheet.
The elderly housekeeper who had looked after Hayako’s mother during her illness came into the room.
“Don’t be alarmed,” she said. She turned to Hayako. “You were your mother’s only daughter, weren’t you? But you live so far away. She must have been longing to see you when she died. They say dead people do this as a sign when the ones they most wanted to see come and pay their last respects. This is the third time I’ve seen it happen now.”
The woman took some lint and a bottle of alcohol from a cupboard and started to wipe up the blood, which spread out over the white cotton wads in red blotches, looking frighteningly fresh and alive. Hayako stared in confusion at the bright red stains.
The weather had been fine earlier in the day, with the promise of a lovely Saturday afternoon. But not long after the train left Tokyo Station, the skies started to cloud over. For a while, a few patches of blue remained in the distance, but little by little they vanished altogether from view behind low swathes of dark gray snow clouds.
“It’ll be warm in Ito. The weather there will be nice,” Kisaki said, from his seat opposite Hayako. He had noticed her looking again and again out the window at the gathering snow clouds.
Hayako resolved not to look out at all. “If it’s too warm, I might refuse to come back,” she answered, trying to match his mood. “Then what’ll you do?”
“I’ll leave you there.”
“And go home?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t mind?”
“No. I’ll bring this with me,” Kisaki joked, patting his jacket over his wallet. Hayako laughed, but she couldn’t help stealing another glance out the window.