by Donald Keene
Ragetsu drank the cold tea offered him and asked, “How is Chokichi?”
Otoyo answered with an air of pride, “His school has summer vacation now, but I thought it wouldn’t do for him to waste his time, so I’m sending him to night school.”
“He doesn’t get back till late, I suppose.”
“Yes. It’s always past ten. There is a streetcar, but it’s a long distance.”
“Young people today really impress me—they’re not at all the way I used to be.” Ragetsu broke off this train of thought. “He’s at middle school, isn’t he? I don’t know a thing about the schools nowadays, having no children of my own. Is he still a long way off from the university?”
“After he graduates next year he takes an examination. Then there’s another big school before he can go to the university ...” Otoyo was only too eager to explain everything, but being a woman quite ignorant of what was going on in the world, she faltered.
“It must be a terrible expense.”
“Yes. I can tell you, it’s all I can do to keep up with it. It’s one yen a month for tuition alone, and what with books and all those examinations, you can’t get by for less than two or three yen. And besides, he needs Western clothes, a summer suit and a winter suit both. Do you know he wears out two pairs of shoes a year?”
Otoyo, warming to her subject, laid heavy emphasis on her words as if to lend increased urgency to the description of her troubles. Ragetsu thought to himself, “If it’s such a hardship, I should think Chokichi could find some way of making a living more in keeping with their means, even if she doesn’t send him to the university.” But he did not feel this strongly enough to voice it. He searched instead for some way of changing the subject, and naturally enough thought of Oito, the girl who had been Chokichi’s playmate when he was a child.
“Let’s see, Chokichi is seventeen—Oito must be a big girl now. Does she come to you for lessons?”
“No, she doesn’t. She goes every day to Mr. Kineya down the street. I hear she’ll soon be appearing in Yoshicho.” Otoyo broke off as if she were thinking of something.
“Yoshicho? That’s splendid. She was always a good girl, and very clever even when she was just a little thing. It’d be nice if she came over tonight. Wouldn’t it, Otoyo?” The haiku master had grown more cheerful.
Otoyo knocked the ashes out of her pipe and answered, “It’s different now. Chokichi, after all, is in the midst of his studies.”
Ragetsu laughed. “You mean there mustn’t be any mistakes? Yes, that’s so. His is one career in which you can’t afford to be careless.”
“You’re right.” Otoyo thrust forward her chin. “It may only be a mother’s prejudice, but to tell the truth I’ve been terribly worried about Chokichi.”
“Well, then, you must tell me about it,” Ragetsu said, striking his knees with lightly clenched fists. Otoyo had become very disturbed about Chokichi and Oito. The reason was, as she related, that Oito never failed to stop by every morning on her way back from her singing lesson, even when she had nothing to stop for. Chokichi would always wait for her, not budging from the window until she appeared. Moreover, when Oito was taken sick for ten days some time ago, Chokichi had behaved so distractedly that an outsider would have found him positively comical. All this Otoyo related without so much as pausing to draw breath.
Just as the clock in the next room was striking nine, the lattice door was flung open. Otoyo knew at once by the way the door was opened that Chokichi had returned. Abruptly breaking off her story, she called to him, “You’re very early this evening.”
“The teacher was sick and they let us go home an hour early.”
“Your uncle has come.”
His answer could not be heard, but from the next room came the sound of a parcel being thrown down, and a moment later Chokichi poked his gentle, weak, pallid face through the door.
2
For a while the late August sunset shone more intensely even than at the height of summer: the broad band of the river’s surface was aflame, and the light was reflected dazzlingly from the white-painted boards of the university boathouse. Suddenly, as if a lamp had gone out, everything turned a dull gray, and only the sails of the cargo boats gliding over the swelling evening tide still glowed a pure white. Quickly, so quickly that there was not time to see, the early autumn twilight had become night, as though with the dropping of a curtain. In the harsh glare from the water the figures of the people aboard the ferryboat were dyed an inky black, with the bold relief of a monochrome. The long row of cherry trees on the opposite bank seemed of an almost terrifying blackness. The cargo boats which for a while had been plying to and fro in long chains, as if deliberately to create a charming effect, had disappeared all at once in the direction of the upper reaches of the river, and now there were only little fishing boats, back perhaps from the open sea, which floated here and there like leaves in the water. The River Sumida, as far as one could see, was again calm and lonely through all its expanse. Far off, in a corner of the sky upriver, a bank of cloud that still showed traces of summer was rising, and again and again lightning flashed in thin streaks.
Chokichi for the last hour or so had been wandering idly, now leaning on the railing of the Imado Bridge, now walking down from the stone embankment to the ferry slip, watching the river change from evening to dusk and from dusk to night. He had promised to meet Oito on the Imado Bridge tonight as soon as it was too dark to distinguish people’s faces. Unfortunately, it happened to be a Sunday, which meant that he could not offer his mother the excuse of going to night school, and no sooner had he swallowed the last mouthful of dinner than he dashed out of the house, though the sun had not yet set. When he first arrived people were hurrying to and from the ferry, but now there was almost no one, and the lights of the cargo boats that anchor for the night under the bridge trembled in the water, just where the tall trees of a temple were reflected. A samisen could be heard from a newly built house that had a willow by its gate, and outside the lattice doors of the little houses along the water, the owners were beginning to come out, half-naked, to enjoy the cool. Chokichi stared intently over the bridge, thinking that it was time for Oito to be coming.
The first figure to cross the bridge was a priest in a black hempen robe. Then came a man in rolled-up trousers and rubber shoes, followed a few minutes later by a poorly dressed woman carrying an umbrella and a parcel, who strode by mannishly, kicking up the dust. Then, though he waited a long while, nobody at all. Chokichi, discouraged, turned his tired eyes to the river. The surface of the water was brighter now, and the unpleasant bank of clouds had entirely dissolved. He watched the big reddish moon rise from the trees over the embankment. The sky was clear as a mirror, making the embankment and trees that stood against it seem perfectly black. The evening star alone was visible; the light from the overbright sky blotted out the others. Broken pieces of clouds lay scattered horizontally the length of the sky, shining a translucent silver. Presently, as the full moon rose above the trees, its light was caught by the tile roofs along the river glistening with the night dew, by the stakes wet in the water, the strands of seaweed under the stone embankment lapped by the tide, the sides of the boats, the bamboo punting poles: the whole landscape gave off a pale glow. Chokichi was suddenly aware of how much more sharply now his own shadow was etched on the boards of the bridge. A man and a woman, street singers, passed by him exclaiming, “Just look at the moon!”, and stopped for a moment. No sooner had they reached the row of houses on the other bank than they began to sing in insinuating tones, “A student sat on the rail of a bridge”; but realizing, apparently, that it would bring them no money, they hurried off without bothering to finish the song.
Chokichi felt not only the anxiety any lover experiences before a secret meeting and the irritation that comes from weary waiting, but a certain inexpressible sadness. What could the future be for Oito and himself? Leaving the distant future aside, what could their tomorrow be after they met tonig
ht? It had been arranged that Oito should go tonight to a geisha house in Yoshicho to discuss plans, and she had promised Chokichi to walk there with him and talk on the way. If Oito were really to become a geisha now, they could no longer meet every day as they had. That was not the worst of it—he could not help feeling that everything was at an end, quite as if she were going off to some unknown, distant country from which she would never return. He would always remember the moon tonight. Chokichi was quite certain that one could not see such a moon twice in one lifetime. Many, many memories of every kind flashed through his mind like lightning. When they had attended elementary school they used at first to quarrel almost every day, but soon the other students were teasing them by linking their names on all the fences and walls of the neighborhood. His uncle would take them to see the circus; or they would throw crumbs to the carp in the pond.
Oito danced one year on the stage at the Sanja festival. She often danced too on the boats that took the neighborhood on the annual excursions to gather sea shells. On the way back from school they would meet almost daily in the grounds of a temple, and walk through the rice fields on the road they alone knew. ... Ah, why should Oito become a geisha? He wanted to stop her; he had resolved to prevent her from becoming a geisha, by force if necessary, only to realize on second thought that he could by no stretch of the imagination show such authority towards Oito. He felt at once hopeless despair and resignation. Oito was fifteen, two years younger than himself, but of late, and particularly today, Chokichi had been unable to shake off the feeling that she was far older. From the first Oito had been stronger than Chokichi, and not nearly so cowardly. Even when the other students had made fun of them by sketching them together on the walls it had not bothered her in the least. She had shouted back at those who teased her, “Yes, Chokichi is my husband!” It was Oito who last year had proposed that they meet every day on the way back from school, and Oito who suggested that they see a play together from the gallery. When they returned late at night she was never afraid, and even when they lost their way on some unfamiliar street, she would be the one to say, “Let’s see how far we can go. All we have to do is ask a policeman.” She would walk blithely on, as if it were a delightful adventure.
There was a loud clatter of geta on the wooden bridge as Oito suddenly ran up. “I’m late, I’m sure. I don’t like the way Mother’s done my hair.” She straightened a side-lock disarranged by her running. “It looks funny, doesn’t it?”
Chokichi could only stare at her in surprise. She looked high-spirited and full of fun as always, but under the circumstances he found this somehow displeasing. He was filled with things he wanted to say—“don’t you feel the least bit sorry at going away and becoming a geisha”—but the words did not come from his mouth. Oito, apparently oblivious to the crystalline moonlight shining in the water of the river, began to walk briskly. “Let’s hurry. Tonight I’m rich. I’m going to buy a present.”
“You’ll come back for sure tomorrow, won’t you?” Chokichi blurted out, almost stammering in his distress.
“If not tomorrow then certainly the morning of the day after. I have to go back home to get my clothes and all kinds of things.”
They were passing through a narrow alley. She asked, “Why don’t you say something? What’s the matter?”
“When you come back the day after tomorrow you’ll be going off again for good. Yes. You’ll become one of them. You won’t be able to see me anymore.”
“I’ll come back sometimes to visit you. But I’ll have to practice very hard.”
There was a slight cloudiness in her tone, but it was not pathetic enough to satisfy Chokichi. He said after a while, “Why are you becoming a geisha?”
“Oh, there you go asking that again. Don’t be silly, Chokichi.”
Oito repeated in great detail to Chokichi facts which he already knew only too well. He had known for two or three years that Oito would become a geisha—no, longer. It had all begun when Oito was seen by a certain lady maintained in a separate establishment in Hashiba. Oito’s mother used to do sewing for her to help make ends meet, even while Oito’s father, a carpenter, was still alive; and one day the lady said, “You must let me have Oito as my daughter. I will make a wonderful geisha out of her.” The lady came, in fact, from a very distinguished geisha house in Yoshicho. At the time, however, Oito’s family was not so pressed for money, and they found it too painful to part with their child just when she was at her most captivating age. They decided instead to have her taught music and the other necessary accomplishments while still keeping her under the parental roof. Later, when Oito’s father died and her mother was for a time without means of support, the lady in Hashiba had given her the money to open the pastry-shop she now ran. It was thus not merely because of monetary obligation but out of real gratitude for the lady’s kindness that it had been decided quite naturally, without anyone’s having forced the issue, that Oito should go to Yoshicho. Chokichi was perfectly well acquainted with this whole history, and had not asked simply in order to hear it from Oito. He had hoped that she would adopt a slightly sadder tone in relating it, as if she were sorry to leave him—granted that she had no choice but to go. Chokichi was keenly aware that sooner or later differences of feelings would arise between them which could never be communicated, and this realization brought him an even deeper sadness.
His sadness became quite unbearable when Oito went into the shop arcade to buy a present. She suddenly stopped in the middle of the busy throng, out for the evening cool, and tugged at Chokichi’s sleeve. “Chokichi,” she murmured, “that’s the way I’ll be dressed soon, won’t it? Gauzy crepe, just like that coat. ...”
Chokichi turned around to see what she was referring to. A geisha went by, her hair piled high on her head. With her was a distinguished gentleman in crested black silks. Chokichi sighed—when Oito became a geisha, that was the kind of fine gentleman who would hold her hand as they walked together. How many years, he wondered, would it take him to become such a gentleman? His present schoolboy appearance filled him with inexpressible misery; at the same time, he felt that already he was disqualified even to be a simple friend to Oito.
By the time they reached the entrance to the street of Yoshicho with its row of hanging lanterns, Chokichi had lost even the strength necessary to reflect on how hopeless and tragic his situation was—all he could do was stand there absent-mindedly, looking in dumb dismay at the narrow dark street that twisted remotely and mysteriously out of sight.
“It’s the first, second, third—fourth gas lamp. You can see, it says ‘Matsubaya.’ That’s the house.”
“Well, I’ll be going now,” Chokichi said, but did not move.
Oito held lightly to his sleeve. Suddenly she drew closer, as if to cajole him, and said, “Tomorrow or the day after. I’m sure we’ll see each other when I get back home. Is that all right? I promise. Come to my house.”
“Mmm.”
Oito seemed to be entirely satisfied by this answer and went off, her geta clattering on the wooden sidewalk, without so much as turning back. Her footsteps sounded to Chokichi as if she were running away from him. A moment later he heard a bell tinkle at a lattice door. Chokichi unconsciously started to follow Oito down the street, but just then the door of the house nearest him opened. There were voices, and a man carrying a long paper lantern emerged. Nothing actually happened, but Chokichi quite lost heart, and he was so loath to be seen that he ran all the way to the main street. The round moon had become much smaller, and its clear light was pale; high above the roofs of the storehouses along the quiet narrow streets it climbed, in a sky full of stars.
3
Rising later and later, the moon every night grew steadily more luminous. One felt the dampness of the river wind ever more sharply, and it became unpleasantly chilly for a summer kimono. Before long the moon, rising too late, went unobserved. Morning, noon, and night, the sky was always full of clouds, which moved perpetually, in great heavy banks, sometim
es covering the whole sky except for a few rifts of dark blue, which seemed deliberately left exposed. The weather turned oppressively humid, and a greasy clamminess clung to the skin. But even in such weather, a wind of uncertain strength and direction was quite likely to spring up, and rain fell intermittently, stopping only to start again. There was in this wind and rain a special mysterious power which transmitted a music never heard in spring or summer to the temple trees, to the reeds on the river-banks, and to the shingled roofs of the slums stretching away to the edges of the city. Sunset came so early it was startling, and the long nights deepened at once into silence. The temple bell at eight or nine o’clock, which in summer often could not be heard for the clatter of people strolling in the evening cool, now brought a midnight hush to the vicinity. Crickets chirped frantically. The lamplight took on an unpleasant brightness. Autumn. Chokichi, for the first time, felt keenly that autumn was just as hateful as people said, that it really was unbearably lonely.