GAN

by Mori Ogai

  “Well...” Otama began, tilting her head and speaking as though if to herself. “He certainly doesn’t seem to be a bad person. We haven’t been together all that long, but he doesn’t speak poorly to me.”

  “You don’t say,” the father huffed as if dissatisfied. “Well, I suppose he wouldn’t be a bad guy...”

  Otama looked him in the eyes and felt a sudden palpitation of spirit. If she were to speak of what she came to speak of, now was a good time. But her father appeared to be living so peacefully, and she wanted him to be happy —how could she introduce new insecurities into his life? At the same time, the last thing she wanted was to expand this new distance between them. Still, she’d come with a secret that day, one she’d considered disclosing. It was shut away, safe under its lid, and she decided to leave without opening it to observation.

  “I mean, we’ve talked about all sorts of things. He says that he’s achieved all this on his own, and even so, I didn’t know what sort of person he was. I was a little worried. But, well... How should I describe it? I suppose he’s a masculine sort of guy. I’m not sure how sincere a lot of it is, but at the very least he makes an effort to show himself that way. It’s how he wants to be seen, you know? But, think about it Father, doesn’t that show how much he cares about others?” She met his gaze. No matter how honest the woman, nothing causes men more pain than when she hides what she feels and speaks of something else. And when she does so her sentences ramble and grow—isn’t that a show of her honesty?

  “Well, that might be so. But, I don’t know what it is, but you look like you want to say something about him. Like you don’t trust him or something.”

  Otama smiled. “I just keep growing up, don’t I? It must be because I was always made fun of. Pretty tough, huh?”

  Her father made a pained face. He felt as though his beloved daughter had finally turned her stinger on him. He looked at her and spoke. “Yes. I’ve been outcast and condemned all my life. That’s been the whole thing for me. But look, it’s easier to be duped than to do the duping. No matter your business, you have to treat people fair, you have to value the people who have helped you.”

  “I know that. Father, didn’t you always say I was an honest little thing? And I am. But still, lately I’ve thought, enough with the duping, I don’t want it. If I’m not going to lie and trick people, I think I deserve the same in return.”

  “So you mean to say that you don’t believe the things he says to you?”

  “That’s right. I tell you he thinks I’m a baby or something. Now sure, to someone as smart as him I might look that way, but I’m not quite the child he thinks I am.”

  “Then what is it? Was there something he said that wasn’t true? Something you noticed?”

  “Yes. The old lady said so, remember? His wife died and left him with the child, so the woman who lives with him is not actually his wife but is basically the same thing. That he had a reputation to maintain, so he couldn’t bring someone from the back streets into his house—she said that, right? Well he does have a wife. He says so straight to me. Took me by complete surprise.”

  Her father ’s eyes grew wide. “Really? Well, there’s a matchmaker for you.”

  “So I’m a secret from his wife. A big secret of his. Well, if he can lie to his wife about all this, you think he wouldn’t lie to me? I suppose I need to watch out for his tricks.”

  Her father sat there looking over his daughter, suddenly so grown up, that he forgot to ash his cigarette. Otama suddenly, as if coming out of a dream, said, “I need to go home now. Now that I’ve come I see it’s not such a big deal, so I’ll try to come everyday, all right? To tell the truth, until he told me to come I thought it might be a problem if I left the house, so I refrained. We finally talked about it last night, and there was no problem. That’s why I came this morning. Anyway, the servant girl there is only a child, and if I’m not there to help she won’t be able to handle the chores herself.”

  “If he says it’s all right then you might as well have lunch here as well.”

  “I can’t do that. But I’ll be back soon. Father,” she paused. “Goodbye.”

  Otama stood, and the servant quickly rushed over to straighten and lay out her shoes. Even the most careless women have eyes for such things. Women pass one another on the streets and are in endless competition with one another, or so said a philosopher. Even the type of girl to slip her fingers into the soup seemed to pay attention to Otama and her beauty, and moved as if called for when she stood.

  “Well then, I’ll see you soon. Tell Suezo I said hello,” said her father, remaining seated.

  Otama removed her money fold from her belt and passed a few bills to her father ’s servant before putting on her geta and leaving the house.

  She ’d entered the gate, painfully shutting her secrets away, planning to keep all her unhappiness a secret. And yet, to a mysterious degree, when she left the gate she felt light and happy. At the sight of her father, living so peacefully, she’d thought that rather than trouble him with her worries she wanted to show herself as strong and able, and in presenting herself as so she discovered something sleeping inside herself. She felt as though she had become an individual, no longer forced to rely on others, and she walked the footpath across the lake, her face relaxed and vivified.

  Ueno Hill was bathed in sharp light, and the Yushima Benten shrine was shining bright red in the sun. She had brought her parasol, but she walked without opening it.

  Chapter Twelve

  One day, upon returning from Muenzaka, Suezo found his wife had put the child to sleep but was still awake. She usually laid down with the child and slept, but tonight she was still sitting there, awake though with her eyes on the floor. When Suezo came under the mosquito net she did not turn to greet him.

  Suezo ’s bed had been set up at the very back of the room, removed from the rest of them. Near the pillow was set a cushion and a tray on which saw teacups and tobacco. Suezo sat on the cushion, lit some tobacco, and said kindly, “What happened? It’s not like you to be awake.”

  His wife said nothing.

  Suezo intended to make no other concessions. He had made a peace offer and received no reply, and as far as he was concerned that was the end of it. He put on an affected air of disinterest and continued smoking.

  His wife raised her head and looked to him. “Where have you been?” Since they came to have a servant she’d made an effort speak with greater refinement, though when alone it was as if nothing had changed.

  Suezo shot her a cold glance but said nothing. Even if she had somehow discovered something, he had no way of knowing what it was. So he remained silent. Suezo was not the type to speak when it was unwarranted and provide articles to the enemy.

  “I already know everything,” came her voice, sharp edged and angry. It then began to crumble into sobs.

  “You’re talking nonsense. What do you know?” he said as if caught completely off guard, a kind confusion punctuating his speech.

  “How awful! You’re amazing, you know? That you can just act like nothing is going on!” Her husband sat, calm, while she grew further upset, and began to sob heavy tears. She dabbed at them with the sleeves of her nightgown.

  “Come on. Out with it now. I can’t imagine what you’re talking about if you don’t tell me, can I?”

  “There you go. Again with that! Even though I’m sitting here asking you where you’ve been tonight. You’re really something. Tell me you have some errands and you... you go out and get yourself a mistress.” Her blunt, red face was streaked with tears, her hair was disheveled. She tried to open her little scrunched eyes as wide as she could to examine his face, but he only looked off into the distance and lit a cigarette. He pinched it hard between his fingertips.

  “Let me go,” he said and, pulling back, knocked the burning tobacco onto the floor. He rushed to rub out the embers.

  His wife, now hiccuping, seized his hand. “Where does a man like you come from? You make
all the money in the world, dress as you please but won’t buy your wife a single kimono. You make me take care of the children, and you run off with a whore?”

  “Let go,” he said again, his voice growing into an angry hiss. “You’re going to wake the children. And the servant can hear you from her room.”

  The child rolled in his sleep, apparently deep in a dream. His wife lowered her eyes. “Just what do you expect me to do?” She pressed her face against his chest and sobbed.

  “There’s nothing to be done. You're just so nice that someone is having fun on your account. A mistress, a concubine? Come on, who said these things to you?” He looked down at her hair, tied in a bun, shaking then against him and wondered why it was that ugly women always choose hairstyles that don’t suit them. And then, just as her bun began to break apart from her sobs, her enormous breasts, filled with more than enough nourishment for any child, began to press harder against his pocket warmer and into his chest. “I asked who said it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who said it. It’s true.” The pressure against his chest increased.

  “Well, it’s not true, so I think I should know who said it.”

  “Why should I care if you know? It was the wife of the fish monger.”

  “You’re going to have to speak up. Who’s Mr. Mumble-Mumble-Butt now?”

  His wife pulled her head from his chest and smiled an embarrassed smile. “The wife of the fish monger,” she repeated.

  “Uh-huh. Her. Why am I not surprised?” he said, looking into his wife’s eyes. He silently lit a cigarette. “The papers call it social manipulation, not that I really understand that. The fishmonger’s wife wants to start rumors to exercise her power over the neighborhood, simple as that! You aren’t going to take a woman like that at her word, are you? I’ll tell you what really happened, so you better listen up.”

  His wife sat as if in a fog for a moment, though the suspicion that she was being deceived was still niggling within her. Even so, she listened carefully to what Suezo said. It was true that social control was evident —or that such things were said—at any rate, when Suezo pulled out the big words he read in the papers she fell behind in the conversation and was forced to surrender.

  Suezo took occasional draws on his cigarette and blew out puffs of smoke. He looked his wife deep in the eyes, as if implying something of great importance. “You know all this too. Remember Yoshida? He used to come over here all the time when the university was still around. He had those gold-rimmed glasses and that saggy kimono. He’s off at some hospital in Chiba now, but his bill with me won’t be settled for another two or three years. Yoshida had a thing with her since way back when he was in the dorms. He ended up buying her an apartment. He’d been sending her money every month, for her needs, you know, but since the start of the year she’d gotten nothing from him. Not even a letter.”

  “And then this girl asks me to go out there to meet with her. I was curious how she knew me. Apparently Yoshida thought that if people see him always coming to my house then his reputation will be at stake, so anyway, I’ve been out to her apartment to go over the documents with him, and she says she’s known of me since Yoshida was in the dorms. Well it was a pain for me, but I went out to see her anyway. Regardless, the bill has yet to be settled. She keeps begging me. I figure I’ve been pulled in with some real nut-jobs. Then they come and say that they’ve found this nice shop and they’d like to move there, and won’t I please help them out. They were talking about this retirement home the old pawnshop owner used to have. Anyway, I helped them out. So then, there have been all these little issues that have popped up , and I’ve had to make a few visits there, and sometimes those visits involve me sitting and having a smoke or two. That must be why the nosy neighbors are getting all excited. Next door is this woman who runs some kind of tailor shop, has tons of kids working there. The woman never shuts up. You’d have to be an idiot to try and hide a mistress next to all that.” He ended with a note of condescension.

  His wife listened carefully, her eyes shining, and finally responded sweetly. “That may be so, and everything may be just as you said, but that's not the kind of rumor that starts with just a few visits. Women are free if they have money anyway.” She’d forgotten her manners.

  “Don’t be a fool. I have you! What kind of idiot would I have to be to go snooping after other women. Have I ever cheated on you before? Now come on, we’re not so childish as to turn our jealousies into fights, are we? Now, let’s put all this to rest!”

  Suezo was impressed by how well he’d handled the situation. He privately gloated inside.

  “Well, any woman would want a man like you. That’s why I get worried.”

  “I think you’re out of your mind.”

  “How so?”

  “Because you’re the only person who could love a man like me. You know it’s true. Goodness, it’s past one already. Let’s get to sleep.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Suezo ’s mixture of truth and lies had, for the moment, extinguished the fires of his wife’s jealously, but they stood only as stop-gap measures, and as long as his secrets continued to exist as they had in Muenzaka, he had no reason to suspect the gossip and suspicions to fade. Even the women’s simple chatter of “I saw that man of hers sneaking into the house again today” would eventually reach the ears of his wife. But Suezo would not stop his excuses. To the suspicion that his business would really keep him out at night he would reply, “You think people want to talk about their debts first thing in the morning?” To the question of why he had not previously been out at night he would reply, “It’s proof of my expanding business!”

  Before Suezo moved out to his lakeside house, he had done everything on his own. Now he had an office set up in the neighborhood, and had taken a house in Ryusenji and turned that into a second office. Students in need of cash no longer had to travel far to receive it. Those in Nezu who needed money could simply visit the office. Later, Suezo became friendly with a cafe in Yoshihara that had a reputation for setting up men with drinks and women. They built a system in which, if they were in Suezo’s books, students could be set up for their nightly entertainment without having to pay in advance.

  A month passed, and Suezo did not run into any incidents that further increased the discord in his home. One might say his sophistry had been a success. But one day his story began to unravel from an unexpected direction.

  Luckily her husband was home, so Otsune decided to go shopping while the morning was still cool. She took the maid with her and left for Hirokoji. On her way home she passed through Nakacho, where the maid suddenly tugged at her sleeve from behind. “What is it?” she barked, turning to look at the maid. The maid was silent but was pointing to a woman standing before a shop to their left. Otsune reluctantly turned to look, but soon stopped in her tracks. At the same time the woman at the shop turned to look in her direction. Their eyes met.

  Otsune first thought the woman was a geisha. But if she had been, this perfectly composed, beautiful woman would not have been out in the streets. She reasoned restlessly with herself. She then realized that the woman carried none of a geisha ’s typical articles. Otsune was not able to list what such articles would have been, and, outdone, mind rushing for explanation, she eventually decided that the typical exaggerated attitude of a geisha was absent from the woman. Geishas wore the most beautiful kimonos. Those kimonos contributed to their exaggerated sense of importance, which in turn diminished their meekness. What was missing, as Otsune saw it, was this exaggerated since of importance.

  The woman before the store felt someone pass by and stop to look in her direction, and therefore, without really intending to, turned around to look in their direction. She saw nothing of any discernible importance so, resting her parasol against her knee, produced a small pouch from the waist of her kimono and looked inside. She was looking through her coins.

  The store was called “Tashigara,” and it stood at the southern end of Nakacho. Th
e woman was for a rare item: toothpaste. It was wrapped in paper and printed with a gold seal. Before foreign toothpastes appeared in the country, our own toothpastes were rare, this Tashigara being one of the only places to purchase them. The one she held smelled of Peony trees. The woman is not unknown to us. It was Otama. She’d stopped to buy the toothpaste on her way home from visiting her father.

  When Otsune had moved on down the street, the maid approached from behind and whispered to her. “Ma’am, that’s her. That’s the Muenzaka woman.”

  Otsune silently nodded, lending no special significance to the revelation. The maid was confused by this, but from the moment Otsune had realized the woman had not been a geisha she had decided she was most likely the woman from Muenzaka. Had the maid thought she had simply been a beautiful woman she would not have tugged on her master’s sleeve to mention it, but there was something special and important about the scene that struck her. It was the parasol leaning against Otama’s leg.

  It was of interest because of something that had occurred more than a month prior. The husband of the house had returned from Yokohama one day and brought with him a parasol as a souvenir. The handle was absurdly long, and when opened the parasol itself was too small in comparison. It might have been balanced well for a tall, European woman, but with Otsune it looked like, for lack of a better expression, a diaper hung on a clothes pole. That being the case, she never used it and kept it in the closet. It was a white cloth died with dark blue, thin stripes. The woman before the Tashigara shop was holding on to just such a parasol, and Otsune had noticed.