by Taeko Kono
Hayako was worried that she might get an attack of her usual ailment. It would start with a twinge in her right temple. The twinge always let her know when snow was about to fall. What a relief that the past few winters had been relatively mild! But she knew only too well that only one year had seen no snow at all. And she had already suffered one bout of her illness this winter.
Hayako’s well-being was usually unaffected by the weather. She rarely felt queasy during the early spring or the rainy season. On summer days of record-breaking heat, she was fine, surprised at other people’s discomfort. On cold winter mornings, she would forget to close the windows after cleaning the house, and sit absorbed in her newspaper. But she could only stand dry cold weather. As soon as it grew damp and snow clouds appeared, Hayako’s spirits would flag.
The twinge in her right temple at first occurred every half hour, spreading down her cheek to die out after a few seconds. Inevitably this would be followed by snow, even if only a flurry. At this, the twinge would be protracted into a sharp ache that occurred every few minutes: it felt as if a thick rod of ice were being pushed from the center of her forehead right through her temple. At each renewed attack, she had to hold her breath, using every ounce of strength to endure it.
When the headaches let up, they didn’t take long to abate completely. There would be a sudden easing off, both in frequency and intensity, and then they would disappear — but not until at least two days after all traces of the snow had melted away.
Hayako’s ailment seemed to be a kind of conditioned reflex to snow. Since her childhood, she had viewed snow with fear and loathing, and even now, the incident that had brought this all on remained a painful memory.
One morning, when she had been quite small, too young even for nursery school, the maid had come into her room to wake her, telling her that there had been a snowfall. When the light was switched on, the shutters were still drawn, but Hayako, normally a lazybones, leapt straight out of bed. She slipped through the hands of the maid, who warned her she would catch cold, out into the corridor. The sight of the snow lying against the glass doors took her breath away.
The length of garden was covered with white hills and hollows, and the snow lay in neat ridges on the tiles atop the garden wall, and even on the finest branches of the trees. It was still falling, whirling and hurrying down, impatient to join the strange, white world being created on the ground. Perhaps no snow had fallen during the few winters that she had known, or perhaps she had not been old enough to feel such an emotion up till then — but Hayako was dazzled by the fantastic scene.
“So much snow!” she cried. “So pretty! Lovely, lovely snow!”
“Who’s that?” she heard her mother say from a room two doors away.
“Me!” Hayako shouted at the top of her voice. She heard the door open, and turned to greet her mother, as she came down the corridor. She gasped when she saw her mother’s stern expression. By now the maid had caught her, and was trying to dress her where she stood. That must be why mother was angry, Hayako thought, trying to retreat to her room. The scolding that followed, however, was for something else entirely.
“How dare you!” her mother said. “ ‘Pretty, lovely snow’ indeed!” She grabbed Hayako’s head, and yanked up her chin. “I’ll make sure you’re never able to say that again!” Hayako was now in tears, trying to squirm free of her grasp, and sobbing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” She had no idea of what she had done wrong. Her mother, pinching the sides of her daughter’s mouth, pressed her lips together, very hard. “You still don’t understand, do you?” she demanded, trapping Hayako’s head under her arm. She pulled open the glass door and flung Hayako into the deep snow beyond the veranda.
“You said you like snow! Well you can stay there,” she said, standing over Hayako, gasping for breath. “I forbid you to come back inside!” She went back in and closed the door.
Her father had poked his head out between the doors to his room. Only when her mother swept by and went back inside her room did he emerge.
“Leave her!” her mother ordered. “I put her there because she likes it so much!”
Opening the glass doors to the garden, her father crouched down and beckoned to her. Hayako retreated, shaking her head. She couldn’t go back inside; her mother wouldn’t allow it.
“It’s all right,” her father said softly, reaching out for her shoulder. He put a hand under her arm and lifted her out of the snow and into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” said the maid. “I’m the one who mentioned snow. Was it wrong?”
Hayako’s father was silent. He glanced at Hayako’s cold wet feet. “Get a towel,” he said. Holding Hayako in his arms, he stepped into her still-illuminated room.
“It’s naughty. You mustn’t talk about the snow,” he chided, as he waited for the maid.
Hayako burst into another flood of tears. “I didn’t know I shouldn’t talk about it — I didn’t,” she wanted to plead. “I only did so because I didn’t know.” But she was too choked for words to come out, which only increased her despair.
She had been so young that the question of why she should not say “snow” did not occur to her. It was the unfairness of the punishment that made her so distraught. Child that she was, she had only needed one cruel scolding like that to ingrain the thought: she must never speak of the snow. Simply mentioning it would merit punishment.
Now the beautiful snow really did seem harmful. She should not celebrate its coming — it should be shunned. Hayako gazed at the tiny flakes falling out of the sky, and imagined that they were the incarnation of some demonic power.
After that, Hayako couldn’t remember letting the word “snow” cross her lips. During social occasions, whenever she had to comment on the weather, she would avoid direct mention of snow. “It’s started, hasn’t it,” she would say, or “When this . . . melts, the roads will be awful.” Often she would stammer her way to the end of the sentence.
The worst episode of her phobia had occurred while she was still living with her family in Tokyo: Kisaki had suggested one day that they get married since it would soon be his turn to be transferred. The town he mentioned was M—— City, in a very cold mountainous part of the country, where his company had a factory.
“But all winter, it’ll be — ” Hayako started, then found herself unable to finish. Her lips began to quiver, and the trembling became more severe, and finally she was gasping for breath. The mystified expression on Kisaki’s face only fed her panic. She covered her mouth with a handkerchief. “I’d die if it got really deep,” she managed to say, regaining some composure.
Hayako never recovered from her dread of snow — she still hated any mention of it. And when she did finally learn why her mother punished her that day, her reaction only grew worse. Eventually, headaches, the very malady that had always plagued her mother, made their appearance. Though they shared no blood, this mother and daughter in illness, at least, were related.
But Hayako had never imagined that she might have to live in the snow country.
From morning to night, snow would be falling, for months on end. She would suffer from her headaches continually — the pain, the insomnia, the lack of appetite, the depression. . . . Her body would be consumed. She would die. Either that, or she would lose her mind.
“Are you that affected by the cold?” Kisaki had inquired.
She would have to tell him. But what would happen then? She was overwhelmed by insecurity. No, she couldn’t tell him yet. And even as she wondered, she felt the snow’s pitiless embrace tighten around her.
The train left Yokohama Station. Fresh air had filtered into the carriage while the train was standing: the windows were clear of all condensation, as if wiped clean. The sky outside seemed more threatening, with baleful icy-looking snow clouds jostling up against one another.
“Are you all right?” Kisaki asked, pointing a
finger at his temple.
“Fine,” she replied. “P-p-perhaps there won’t be any after all.”
“You don’t think so?” Kisaki looked out at the sky. “Still, I think you’d better avoid this.” He knocked the window with the back of his hand, meaning that her head shouldn’t be so near it. “Let’s change places.” He rose from his seat.
Her seat was by the window, it was true, and she would feel the cold, but that wasn’t the cause of her malady. And anyway, once the headaches started, precautions were useless.
“It’s all right,” she said, looking up at him. “Stay where you are.”
But the passengers next to them, two older men sitting opposite each other who looked like company colleagues, paused in midconversation and shifted their knees, covered with bulky overcoats, as if waiting for her. Hayako squeezed her way around to Kisaki’s vacated seat.
Kisaki sat down and lit a cigarette. “What are you laughing about?” he asked her, calmly exhaling smoke.
Hayako did not reply, but simply looked at him in even greater amusement. She didn’t know why it was, but whenever Kisaki took care of her or showed concern for her well-being, he always struck her as very much the little boy.
Six years ago, the talk of his transfer at his company had been dropped. But it was only a question of time, he warned. Every employee had to do a stint at the factory before being promoted to management, and for at least three years. It didn’t look as if he would consider getting out of the transfer, still less quit his job.
But, Kisaki had urged her, that did not mean they shouldn’t get married, did it? “You can spend the winters in Osaka, with your family,” he said. “I’ll let you go. I promise.”
Again, Hayako had been struck by Kisaki’s boyishness. Full-grown a moment before, the disciplined company man was suddenly nowhere to be seen. She knew he was trying his best to show her how considerate and devoted he could be. But to her, his words were empty promises: what faith could she put in them? He was a child, a naive, cruel boy. If she went ahead and married him, she was sure it would not be long before his boyish face turned away from a wife who caused him so much trouble. She longed so much to keep him, but the thought of marriage made her back away in fear. Nothing else in her life had proved reliable: why should she hope for things to be different now? The snow had placed its mark on her. The only existence she could have was like the snow’s, forever in danger of melting away.
Long before the snow incident, Hayako had been timid and apprehensive. Ever since she’d been quite small, too small to comprehend how she was treated, she had been indecisive and lacking in confidence.
As a toddler, whenever somebody asked her how old she was, she would stick out the appropriate number of fingers. Adults who asked would always be disconcerted. “Are you really that old already?” they would say. “You’re so little!” she would sometimes be told, in obvious astonishment.
It did not take Hayako long to suspect that she must be very small for her age. This was confirmed when, at six, she went to kindergarten and saw that she was indeed much smaller than anybody else. She also learned she was inferior in other ways.
“I went to talk to Teacher today,” her mother announced, a few days into the summer holidays. “She says the class is far beyond you.”
Hayako had sensed she wasn’t as deft as the others, but she still enjoyed her friends.
“Teacher says she can’t let you stay in that class. Next term, you’re going down to the one below. That’s what they call ‘failing,’ Hayako. Remember that: it’s nothing to be proud of. You understand why you’re going down a grade, don’t you? You can’t keep up. Mommy can’t stand lazy good-for-nothing children like you!”
Hayako did not feel it was so very bad. What if she did go one grade lower? It would still be kindergarten.
“Next term you must try your best, at games and origami, too. Understand? And I’ll be asking Teacher if you’re working hard. If you fail any more, Mommy won’t let you go to kindergarten at all.”
So what? Hayako told herself. She wouldn’t care.
But her mother’s words made it clear that it was not just her body that was undeveloped compared to the other children, but something about her very being.
Autumn came, and Hayako went back to kindergarten. Since she had dropped down a class, she assumed she would be there for a whole year. The next spring, however, she found herself going to school. She seemed to manage the first year well enough. But in the second year things started to go wrong again: she could not manage the tests. She knew the answers to a few of the questions; but the spaces provided to write on the test sheets were much smaller than the year before. Try as she might, she just could not make her characters fit into the cramped little boxes.
She drew in her chair, pushed it back, and picked up her pencil. Turning it upside down, she stared at its end. She counted its ridges: it was a hexagon. Pressing the hexagon to her cheek, she bent over the exam sheet and sighed. She still hadn’t written anything but her name. Failing would mean another scolding at home: she should try to write something. She turned the pencil the right way again. Carefully aiming the sharp point at an easy question, she wrote two or three characters. Then, she realized that she was about to run out of space. Her upper body suddenly felt paralyzed, hot, and in pain. But she knew the answer, she thought, rubbing resentfully at the space on the exam sheet, smudging the print. Before she knew it, the lines were fuzzy, her fingers smeared with lead, and the few characters she had managed to write covered with blotches. What a mess she’d produced — a reflection of her state of mind. This scenario went on until the end of the exam.
Hayako never knew if she had been expelled, but before the start of summer vacation, she was taken away from school. A young man started coming to the house every afternoon to tutor her. The following spring, she went to another school, where she was put in the second grade for the second time. Her classmates were eight and nine years old, and she was ten. She was still the third smallest in the class.
Hayako was well aware that her parents worried terribly about her school performance, and that all in all it was not very good. But she was sure she wasn’t incapable or lazy, and it exasperated her that she couldn’t keep up with the others.
Little by little, Hayako came to suspect that there was something unnatural about the gap between her age and her development. The older she grew, the more her suspicions grew, until they became a deep anxiety gnawing away at her very being.
Everything became clear later when she learned that she was not her mother’s natural daughter. This was a shock, of course, but what really jolted her was her suspicions being proven true.
Hayako managed to pass her classes and graduate, and she went on to girls’ school. It was during her second year there when one winter night, as she went to bed after staying up late to study for an exam, she heard her father return home. A little while later, she heard raised voices from the living room. Suddenly, the voices became very loud. She heard a door fling open, a scuffle, and then from the corridor, her mother screamed, “Don’t!”
“This is only to satisfy you!” Her father’s angry voice came rushing headlong down the corridor, and he slid open her door.
“Hayako!” he said, his voice calm but trying to catch his breath in the darkness.
“Yes?”
“Get dressed and come to the living room.”
She found her mother and father, their faces white with anger, seated on opposite sides of the brazier, waiting for her. Hayako sat down, and looked from one to the other. Her father, who’d had both hands stuck in his sash, took one out and motioned to her.
He then looked at her mother, who was silent. “Well? What’s the matter? Can’t you start?”
“You’re the one who woke Hayako up,” her mother said.
“Don’t be an idiot! You’re the one with someth
ing to say! Why don’t you get it off your chest?” Then he blurted out: “Hayako. Mother isn’t your real mother.”
“Now there’s no going back,” her mother sighed.
Hayako’s father had had a mistress. She had given birth to a child. His wife had begged him to part with the woman, and finally he did so, on her condition that he and his wife take the baby into their home.
The family already had a six-year-old boy, Toshio, and a little girl of two. The boy slept with his grandmother, who at that time was still alive and well, but the girl slept with her parents. Now they were to have yet another little baby. Although Hayako’s mother had herself insisted on this arrangement, living with the third child came to seem nothing but a burden. There was also a sharp disagreement about how to record the baby in the family register. Hayako’s father wanted to register the baby as their own, but after initially consenting, her mother soon started to insist that they first register her as the child of a mistress, and only then officially adopt her.
Late one night, their two-year-old daughter started to cry. Her mother took her on her back to soothe her, walking up and down the corridor outside the bedroom. But the child refused to calm down, howling even more loudly.
“Can’t you shut that child up?” her father shouted from his bed.
After a while he dozed off. When he awoke, everything was hushed and still. The baby had probably gone to sleep. A light from the next room seeped in underneath the doors, but when he opened them, nobody was there. And looking round his room, he saw that mother and child hadn’t come back to bed.
He got up and went out into the hall: the light was on, and the front door open. There was a snowstorm that night and he caught sight of his wife’s silhouette. She was sitting out on the front steps, alone in drifts of snow.
“Where’s the child? What have you done with her!” her father shouted, his voice growing sharper as he tried to make his wife stand up. Struggling out of his grasp, she mumbled a denial and sank down on her haunches.