The Sound of the Mountain

by Yasunari Kawabata

  ‘What!’

  ‘I think it’s a little too early, but Fusako has suspicions.’

  Nothing remained in Yasuko’s manner from the days when she had announced her own pregnancy.

  ‘Fusako said so?’

  ‘It’s a little early,’ said Yasuko again. ‘But they say another often follows along after that sort of thing.’

  ‘Did Kikuko or Shuichi speak to Fusako?’

  ‘No. Fusako’s own investigations.’

  ‘Investigations’ was a strange word. It seemed that Fusako, who had left her own husband, was particularly inquisitive in matters having to do with her brother’s wife.

  ‘You should say something to her yourself,’ Yasuko went on. ‘Persuade her to have it this time.’

  Shingo felt a tightening at the throat. The news that Kikuko might be pregnant again made the fact of Kinu’s pregnancy weigh on him the more oppressively.

  It was not so very unusual, perhaps, that two women should simultaneously be pregnant by the same man. But if the man was one’s son, then it brought with it a strange fear. It had a hellish aspect, as of retribution, or a curse.

  One might look upon these various events as evidence of the healthiest physiological processes; but such magnanimity was at the moment rather beyond Shingo.

  This would be Kikuko’s second pregnancy. Kinu had been pregnant at the time of the abortion. Before the latter had had her child, the former was pregnant again. Kikuko did not know of Kinu’s condition. Kinu would already be attracting attention, and feeling the motions of the child within her.

  ‘If she knows we know, then she won’t be able to do quite as she pleases this time.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Shingo weakly. ‘You ought to have a talk with her.’

  Shingo could not sleep.

  He found sinister thoughts coming to him. He asked himself irritably if violence of some description might not prevent Kinu from having her child.

  She had said that the child was not Shuichi’s; if he were to investigate her activities might he not come upon something to ease his mind?

  There was a loud humming of insects in the garden outside. It was past two. The humming was not the clear and distinct sound of bell crickets or pine crickets. It was blurry and ill-defined, rather. It made Shingo think of sleep in dark, dank earth.

  He had been much given to dreams lately, and toward dawn he had another long dream.

  He did not know by what road he had come. When he awakened he could still see the two white eggs in the dream. He was on a sandy moor, there was sand as far as he could see. Two eggs lay side by side, one of them large, an ostrich’s egg, and the other small, a snake’s. The shell of the latter was cracked and an engaging little snake was waving its head back and forth. To Shingo it did seem engaging.

  There could be no doubt that he had been thinking about Kikuko and Kinu. He did not know which child was the ostrich’s, which the snake’s.

  It occurred to him to wonder whether snakes were oviparous or viviparous.

  3

  The next day was Sunday. Feeling quite drained of energy, Shingo stayed in bed until nine.

  Now, in the morning, both the ostrich egg and the little snake’s head seemed vaguely sinister.

  He brushed his teeth gloomily and went into the breakfast room.

  Kikuko was tying up the accumulated newspapers, no doubt preparing to sell them to a junk dealer.

  It was among her duties, for Yasuko’s convenience, to arrange the morning and evening newspapers in order.

  She went to get tea for him.

  ‘Did you see the news about the lotuses?’ She put two newspapers on the table before him. ‘Two articles. I kept them out for you.’

  ‘It does seem to me that I read something of the sort.’

  He took the papers up all the same.

  Lotus seeds some two thousand years old had been dug from a Yayoi tumulus. The ‘lotus doctor’, a botanist who specialized in lotuses, had succeeded in making them sprout. News that they had bloomed had been in the papers earlier, and Shingo had taken it to Kikuko’s room. She had been resting, having recently had her abortion.

  Items about lotuses had appeared twice since. One described how the lotus doctor had divided the roots and transferred a part of them to Sanshiro’s Lake, on the grounds of Tokyo University, from which he had graduated. The other had to do with America. A scientist at Tohoku University had found lotus seeds, apparently fossilized, in a marl stratum in Manchuria and sent them to America. The rock-like outer shell had been removed at the National Botanical Gardens, and the seeds wrapped in permeated cotton wadding and put under glass. They had sent out delicate shoots the year before.

  This year, set out in a lake, they had produced two buds, which had opened into pink flowers. The national park service announced that the seeds were from a thousand to fifty thousand years old.

  ‘I thought so when I read it the first time,’ laughed Shingo. ‘A thousand to fifty thousand years old – a broadish sort of calculation.’ He came upon a Japanese scholar’s opinion: that, to judge from the nature of the marl stratum, the seeds would be some tens of thousand of years old. Carbon radiation tests run on the shells in America, however, had shown them to be a thousand years old.

  The two articles were reports from Washington correspondents.

  ‘Are you finished?’ asked Kikuko, picking up the newspapers. No doubt she meant to ask whether she had permission to sell them when next the junk dealer came by.

  Shingo nodded. ‘A thousand years or fifty thousand, a lotus seed lives a long time. Almost an eternity, when you compare it with a human life.’ He looked at Kikuko. ‘It would be good to lie in the ground a thousand years or two without dying.’

  ‘Lie in the ground!’ Kikuko half muttered the words.

  ‘Not in a grave. And not dying. Just resting. If it were possible just to rest in the ground – you would wake up after fifty thousand years and find all your own problems settled and the problems of the world, and you would be in paradise.’

  ‘Kikuko, will you see to Father’s breakfast, please?’ called Fusako from the kitchen, where she seemed to be feeding the children.

  Kikuko came back with the breakfast.

  ‘You’re all by yourself. The rest of us have eaten.’

  ‘Oh? What about Shuichi?’

  ‘He’s gone out to the fishing pond.’

  ‘And Yasuko?’

  ‘Out in the garden.’

  ‘I think I’ll do without eggs this morning,’ he said, handing back the saucer that contained eggs. He disliked the memory it brought of the snake’s egg.

  Fusako came in with a dried and roasted flounder. She put it down in silence and went back to the children.

  Looking Kikuko in the eye as he took the bowl of rice she handed him, Shingo said in a low voice: ‘Are you going to have a baby?’

  ‘No.’ She answered readily, and seemed only afterwards to be taken by surprise. ‘No. Nothing of the sort.’ She shook her head.

  ‘So it wasn’t true.’

  ‘No.’

  She looked at him curiously, and flushed.

  ‘I hope you’ll treat it better next time. I argued with Shuichi over the last one. I asked if he could guarantee that you would have another, and he said he could. As if it were all very simple. I told him he ought to be a little more God-fearing. I asked him whether anyone could guarantee that he would be alive the next day. The baby would be yours and Shuichi’s, of course, but it would be our grandchild too. A child you would have would be too good to lose.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Kikuko, looking down.

  He was sure that she was telling the truth.

  And why then had Fusako thought her pregnant? Fusako’s investigations had evidently outdone themselves. She could scarcely be aware of a situation of which Kikuko herself was ignorant.

  Shingo looked around, afraid that Fusako might have overheard the conversation. She seemed to be out in front with her chi
ldren, however.

  ‘Has Shuichi been to the pond before?’

  ‘No. I think he must have heard about it from a friend.’

  To Shingo the unusual event seemed evidence that Shuichi had in fact left Kinu. He had on occasion used his Sundays to visit her.

  ‘Would you like to go have a look at it yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Shingo stepped into the garden. Yasuko was looking up at the cherry tree.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Nothing. But it’s lost most of its leaves. I wonder if something might be eating it. The summer crickets are still singing, and here it has lost most of its leaves.’

  Even as they talked, yellowish leaves came down, one after another. In the still air, they fell straight to the ground.

  ‘I hear Shuichi’s gone fishing. I’m going to take Kikuko for a look.’

  ‘Fishing?’ Yasuko looked around.

  ‘I asked her about it, and she said it wasn’t true. Fusako’s investigations have misled her.’

  ‘You asked her about it?’ There was something a little slow-witted about Yasuko. ‘What a shame.’

  ‘Why does Fusako have to be so energetic with those investigations of hers?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m the one who’s asking.’

  Back in the house, Kikuko had put on a white sweater and was waiting for him. She had touched her cheeks with rouge, and seemed unusually bright and lively.

  4

  One day, without warning, there were red flowers outside the train window, equinox lilies all along the railway filling, so near that they seemed to quiver as the train passed.

  Shingo gazed too at the lilies on the cherry-lined Totsuka embankment. Just coming into bloom, they were a fresh, clear red.

  It was the sort of morning when flowers made one feel the quiet of the autumn meadows.

  The pampas grass was beginning to send out plumes.

  Taking off his shoe, Shingo raised his right foot to his knee and rubbed at the instep.

  ‘Is there something the matter with it?’ asked Shuichi.

  ‘It seems so heavy. Sometimes climbing the stairs in the station my feet seem so heavy. This hasn’t been a good year. The life is going out of me.’

  ‘Kikuko has been worried. She says you seem tired.’

  ‘I’d like to rest in the ground for fifty thousand years – that’s the sort of thing I’ve said to her.’

  Shuichi looked at him curiously.

  ‘There was something in the paper about old lotuses. Remember? Some ancient lotus seeds that sent out shoots and finally bloomed.’

  ‘Oh?’ Shuichi lit a cigarette. ‘You asked her whether she was going to have a baby. She was very upset.’

  ‘Well, is she?’

  ‘It’s too soon, I think.’

  ‘And what about Kinu’s? That’s more important.’

  Though cornered, Shuichi took the offensive. ‘I understand you went to see her. To give her consolation money. There was no need for that.’

  ‘When did you hear about it?’

  ‘Oh, I heard indirectly. We’ve separated, you know.’

  ‘Is the child yours?’

  ‘Kinu says it isn’t.’

  ‘The matter has to do with your own conscience.’ Shingo’s voice was trembling. ‘What about that?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the sort of thing your conscience tells you much about.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Suppose I am suffering. Will that do anything to shake her? There is something demented about the woman and that determination of hers to have the baby.’

  ‘She’s suffering more than you are. So is Kikuko.’

  ‘Now that we’ve separated, I can see that she’s been going her own way all along.’

  ‘And that’s enough for you? You really don’t want to know whether or not it’s your child? Or does your conscience tell you?’

  Shuichi did not answer. His large eyes, almost too good-looking for a man, were blinking.

  On Shingo’s desk was a black-bordered postcard. The cancer patient had died somewhat more swiftly than the natural course of the illness would have led one to expect.

  Had someone brought him poison? Perhaps Shingo had not been the only one of whom the request had been made. Or perhaps the man had found another way to commit suicide.

  There was also a letter from Tanizaki Eiko. She had moved to another shop. Kinu had left the earlier shop shortly afterwards, the letter continued, and was in seclusion in Numazu. She meant to open a small business of her own, she had told Eiko. Tokyo would present too many complications.

  Although Eiko had not touched upon the matter, it seemed likely that Kinu had retired to Numazu to have the baby.

  Was it as Shuichi had said, that she went her own way quite without regard for others, for Shuichi or for Shingo himself?

  He sat for a time looking absently into the clear sunlight.

  What would the Ikeda woman, now left alone, be doing?

  Shingo thought he would like to see either her or Eiko and make inquiries about Kinu.

  In the afternoon he went to pay his condolences to the cancer victim’s family. He learned for the first time that the wife had died seven years before. The man had apparently lived with his oldest son, and there were five children in the house. It did not seem to Shingo that either the son or the grandchildren resembled the dead man.

  Shingo suspected suicide, but could not of course make inquiries. Giant chrysanthemums were conspicuous among the flowers by the coffin.

  Going over the mail with his secretary, he had an unexpected telephone call from Kikuko. He feared that something untoward had happened.

  ‘Where are you? In Tokyo?’

  ‘Yes. Visiting my family.’ There was bright laughter in her voice. ‘Mother said she had something to talk over with me, and here I am, and it turns out to be nothing at all. She was just lonely and wanted to see my face.’

  ‘Oh?’ Softness flooded into his chest, and the pleasingly girlish voice over the telephone was not the whole explanation.

  ‘Will you be going home soon?’ asked Kikuko.

  ‘Yes. And is everyone well there?’

  ‘Very well. I thought I’d like to go back with you.’

  ‘Take your time, now that you’re here. I’ll tell Shuichi.’

  ‘I’m ready to go.’

  ‘Suppose you come to the office, then.’

  ‘That will be all right? I thought I might wait at the station.’

  ‘No, come here. Shall I connect you with Shuichi? The three of us might have dinner together.’

  ‘The operator tells me he isn’t at his desk.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I can start out right away.’

  Shingo felt warm to the eyelids, and the city beyond the window seemed lighter and clearer.

  Fish in Autumn

  1

  It was an October morning. Shingo, tying his necktie, felt his hands go wrong.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ He paused, and a troubled expression came over his face. ‘How does it go?’

  He untied it and tried again, but was no more successful the second time.

  Pulling the two ends up to his face, he gazed at them inquiringly.

  ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

  Behind him and a little to one side, Kikuko was holding his coat. She came around in front of him.

  ‘I can’t tie my tie. Very strange.’

  Slowly and awkwardly, he wound an end around a finger and tried to pull it through the loop, but the result was a strange lump. The word ‘strange’ was most appropriate for describing the performance, but fear and despair were written on Shingo’s face.

  It was an expression that seemed to startle Kikuko. ‘Father!’ she cried.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  Shingo stood as if without strength for trying to remember.

  Unable to watch in silence, Kikuko came up to him, the coat ove
r her arm.

  ‘How do you do it?’

  In some consternation, she took up the tie. Her hands were dim to Shingo’s old eyes.

  ‘That’s what I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘But you tie it yourself every day.’

  ‘So I do.’

  Why should he suddenly this morning have forgotten a process he had repeated every morning through the forty years of his office career? His hands should have moved automatically. He should have been able to tie his tie without even thinking.

  It seemed to Shingo that he faced a collapse, a loss of self.

  ‘I’ve been watching you every morning,’ said Kikuko solemnly as she twisted the tie and then straightened it out to begin again.

  Quite giving himself up to her, he was like a small, spoiled child that is feeling somehow neglected.

  The scent of her hair came to him.

  ‘I can’t do it.’ Kikuko flushed.

  ‘Haven’t you ever tied Shuichi’s?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just untied it when he’s come home drunk?’

  She drew back a little and, her shoulders taut, gazed at the tie.

  ‘Mother might know,’ she said, at length releasing her breath. ‘Mother,’ she called, ‘would you come here, please? Father says he can’t tie his tie.’

  ‘And why in the world should that be?’ Yasuko’s face suggested that she had never before been witness to such nonsense. ‘Why can’t he tie it for himself?’

  ‘He says he’s forgotten how.’

  ‘Something went wrong, and I forgot everything. Very strange.’

  ‘Very strange indeed.’

  Kikuko moved aside and Yasuko took her place.

  ‘I don’t seem to remember it all that well myself.’ She gave his chin a gentle shove upward as she took the tie in her hands. Shingo closed his eyes.

  Yasuko did somehow seem to be producing a knot.

  Perhaps because of the pressure at the base of his skull, he felt a little giddy, and a golden mist of snow flowed past his closed eyelids. A mist of snow from an avalanche, gold in the evening light. He thought he could hear the roar.