Dandelions

by Yasunari Kawabata

  “Oh, mom,” Ineko said, stretching out the syllables the way she used to when she wanted something from her mother as a little girl. This made her mother feel a little calmer. Ineko went on, as if she what she was saying were utterly obvious. “That’s basic conversation. It’s one of the easiest, most basic techniques. When you’re telling someone something unusual, or when you want to draw someone in, you start out with a question like that, right?”

  “But in this case — ”

  “What?”

  “I still feel,” Ineko’s mother said, “as if this is the first time I’ve heard it.” Her eyes clouded, as if she were combing through her memories, and finding nothing.

  Ineko regarded her for a moment, then lowered her voice. “You think so? You honestly think I never told you about that?”

  “I don’t think I’d forget something like that. A story like that leaves an impression. Even if I didn’t recall the details, I think I would at least remember having heard it.”

  “Yes.” Ineko nodded. “But if I didn’t tell you, why didn’t I?”

  “That I don’t know.” The mother smiled gently. “Anyway, that’s enough. We don’t need to get so hung up on whether or not you told me. Let’s just let it go.”

  “It’s a problem, though,” Ineko said. “It could be. A little bit.”

  If anything, all this was more of an issue for Ineko’s mother than for Ineko herself. To some extent, the mother had let this conversation continue for so long because she hoped it would give form to a certain vague unease that had been troubling her. Naturally, she tried hard not to reveal to Ineko, through either her tone or her expression, how she was feeling.

  Unease wasn’t even the right word — it was like the churning of a fog from which, at any moment, a feeling of unease might emerge. She had found herself wondering, all of a sudden, whether Ineko’s becoming unable to see the ping-pong ball during her match that day might be connected in some obscure way to the fact that she had never mentioned that field trip, years ago, where she saw the blind students playing ping-pong and baseball. If there were some link, though, some connection, it would indeed be obscure — there was no other word for it — and she couldn’t immediately recall any incident that might confirm its existence.

  When Ineko herself referred to her silence about the trip as a problem, he tone had been casual. It didn’t seem to have occurred to her, as it had to her mother, that there might be something darker there to explore. And yet she did return to it once more: “Why wouldn’t I have told you, if it’s true that I didn’t? I can’t figure it out. Maybe something happened that same day, something disturbing. Maybe I was too preoccupied with that to tell you about blind ping-pong. Maybe . . . but I don’t remember anything happening.”

  Just then, Ineko’s mother started thinking of something else. “You were so quick to cry when you were little,” she said. “You used to feel sorry for the camellia blossoms when they dropped, so you would gather them up. Put them in envelopes, between the pages of a book. I never once saw you sweep the flowers up and throw them away.”

  “Not when I was little, no.”

  “You used to make cushions from flowers, too, stuffing them with dried camellia blossoms, winter daphne, violets. I remember you would embroider the covers, with a violet if a cushion was filled with violets, and so on. Even dried, the petals had a slight fragrance. They weren’t particularly good as cushions, to tell the truth, but you put a lot of effort into them — each year, after a particular flower had bloomed, you would take out the old petals and replace them, or make a new cover and embroider it.”

  “Father liked those cushions. Their sweet smell.”

  “You even made one for his bed so he could enjoy the fragrance as he slept. It took a while for him to get used to it, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.”

  “I remember.”

  “You once asked him, as serious as could be, how the trees in our garden ended up there. Couldn’t they have bloomed somewhere else, you asked him, in the mountains or the woods, or in someone else’s garden? You remember that, Ineko? At first he didn’t know how to reply, but then after a moment he said that maybe the flowers wanted to be in his pillow, and that was why they came and blossomed here. That made sense to you. Yes, you told him, the trees and the flowers must be happy about that, too. And your father smiled and said you were the most adorable child, and he stroked your hair.”

  “He certainly did not stroke my hair. He grabbed one of my pigtails and yanked it two or three times in a row.”

  “I’m impressed you remember.”

  “Well, it hurt.” Ineko looked out at the garden, at the camellias. She was thinking of her lover, Kuno, and how he liked to toy with her hair.

  “That’s the sort of girl you were,” her mother said. Thinking not of Kuno, of course, but of Ineko gathering blossoms. “You felt sorry for fallen flowers.”

  “What made you think of that?” Inkeko asked.

  “Actually,” her mother replied without answering, “I remember your father said something else then, too, when you asked that childish, difficult question about why the trees in our garden grew there, and bloomed for us. He said trees have their own destiny.”

  “Did he?”

  “Children ask difficult things, don’t they?”

  “They’re amazed by everything,” Ineko said. “When something impresses them, they start being struck by everything they see, each little event. Because they don’t have any answers — why is it there, why did it happen? I think all children are that way. If a child finds a worm while she’s digging in the garden and asks what it is, the adults will tell her it’s a worm. There are worms in the soil? Why? That’s just where they are, they live there, the adults tell her. This won’t satisfy her, though. Because what amazes her isn’t just that the worms live in the soil, it’s the very fact of their existence — that the world is home to such creatures, so different from people that the two can’t even be compared. That’s what’s beyond her, what dazzles her. When a mosquito bites her, she wants to know why. Because of course it ends up dead, right? She swats it with her hand and kills it. When I was small, I used to hate when it got dark at night, and so one day I asked Father why it couldn’t always be daytime. And he said I wouldn’t be able to sleep then, and neither would he. I remember that. So I asked him who made the night for us. That’s a good question, he said. The god of sleep, I guess. There’s a god of sleep? What kind of god is he? Where is he? Father gave the most absurd answers: you can’t see him, he’s asleep. Lies only a child would believe.”

  “Who made the night . . . that’s an interesting question,” the mother replied.

  “Of course nighttime doesn’t exist to put humans to sleep; even if there were no people, the planet would still have nights. If anything, it’s the opposite: we sleep because night exists.”

  “You think so? I doubt we would stop sleeping just because nighttime ceased to exist. Though this is all nonsense. Night does exist.”

  “And why is that? If I were still a child, I’m sure I’d ask. Children question things that are amazing to them, or that they can’t comprehend, and then adults try to get out of answering with remarks about the difficult things children say.”

  “But truly difficult questions are just that, and there’s no way to answer them. Night exists because it does; worms live in the soil because that’s where they are. That’s all there is to it — at least as far as ordinary people like us are concerned. Humans evolved on a planet that has nights, so it’s in our nature to sleep at night. And the same goes for most animals.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And what?”

  “You were in the middle of saying something earlier. You were talking about what I was like as a child, how I used to feel sorry for flowers when their petals dropped, and I asked why you brought that up. That’s how we got on this topic.”r />
  “Ah, that’s right. I was just remembering your father’s comment about how each tree has its own destiny, and that’s what brought those trees to our garden.” The mother’s memory seemed to have been set in motion again. “You know he called you his little philo­sopher.”

  “I’d ask something difficult. He couldn’t answer. And so he would try to put me off by calling me a philosopher — that’s all it ever was. I remember saying that every child would be a little philosopher according to his definition, the younger, the more philosophical. Perhaps the origins of philosophy are there, in that period when infants start becoming aware of their surroundings, when they start to see, to remember words. And he said yes, that was probably true. That seemed like a good way to think about it. I remember the expression on his face as he nodded then, how he didn’t seem to have given the slightest thought to what I had said. I mean, please . . . telling a little girl she’s a philosopher? I even asked him what a philosopher was once, and he couldn’t answer. A child wouldn’t understand, he said. That was it.”

  “I couldn’t explain philosophy myself, and I doubt you could, either. Although it’s . . . .” Her mother paused. “I suppose it involves feeling something, and then using that feeling as a starting point for a train of thought. The feeling itself may be naïve, a lingering sense of wonder at something most people take for granted but you hold on to it, and think it through as far as you can. Does that sound right?”

  “Mother,” Ineko said, her brow clouding suddenly. “When I stopped seeing the ball earlier, in the middle of the game, it wasn’t because I took it for granted — and the experience wasn’t exactly wonderful.”

  Even as the conversation moved back to the vanished ball, the mother struggled to hide her distress. “There has to be another explanation. It wasn’t that you couldn’t see it, you just thought you couldn’t see it. For a moment. You returned the ball, didn’t you? How could you hit a ball you can’t see?”

  “I do play ping-pong, Mother. My hand just knew where to go.”

  “I don’t believe it. Tell me, did you feel that you had hit the ball?”

  “That’s a good point. I can’t say for sure, but now that you’ve asked, I guess I’d say that I did feel I had.” Ineko’s eyelids trembled in a manner that suggested she was trying, but failing, to put herself back in the moment. “I’m really not sure. As you said, it was a reflexive motion, and it only lasted an instant.”

  “An instant so short you can’t even say for sure that you didn’t see the ball.”

  “No, I can. I know I didn’t see it. When I realized I couldn’t see it, I got so scared I just stood there, stunned, and then I bent down to the floor.”

  “You felt ill, that’s all. You didn’t faint, I know — maybe it was your nerves or something, maybe there’s a bit that you’re missing.”

  “Missing? My nerves?”

  “Well, maybe not your nerves. Something. And I don’t know if it’s missing or you lost it or what. But isn’t that how you felt? Vague, absent, dizzy?”

  “No.”

  The mother gazed at Ineko for a moment without speaking. Then, lowering her voice, “It’s possible to lose your memory, to have parts go missing. You know that, right? You remember what happened with your father?”

  “Yes. That’s my earliest memory.”

  “We weren’t there, of course. We just heard about it from him.”

  “I believed it was all exactly as he said, that there really was a maiden or a sprite who served a god deep in the mountains, and she protected him, saved him. I was only three at the time. I was only three, and yet I still remember it, even now.”

  “The day Japan surrendered, your father was completely hollowed out, as they used to say — nowadays I guess you would say he was wiped out. In actuality, it was much worse than either phrase suggests. It wasn’t just that a commanding officer had gone missing, and for a whole five days — for some significant portion of that time when he was wandering in the mountains, who knows how long, he had no awareness of himself. There was a period when he lost his memory, when bits of it vanished. It’s even scarier than that, really, because he was on horseback. I’m almost positive that he stayed on his horse the whole time. Though he did get down in front of the camphor tree, that’s clear.”

  “He rode back to his men, right? I remember hearing that.”

  “Yes, he rode back to his men,” the mother said, repeating Ineko’s words. “Though when you say his men . . . it was headquarters, actually.” She paused, then continued. “He would have had to get off his horse to carve his name on the trunk of that huge camphor. He said he had no recollection of who he was, even as he etched the characters with his sword. And no idea how he had come to be there, by that tree. No memory of it at all. And then a young woman from the mountains happened along and spoke to him, and he came to — that’s what he said. She was so lovely and had such a noble air that she seemed like a heavenly maiden. That was how your father described her. A maiden in the service of a god, or maybe a sprite. They were so deep in the mountains that there wasn’t even a path; the young woman couldn’t possibly have gotten there on her own. Father had been carving his rank in the bark, Army Lieutenant Colonel, and when the woman saw the words she was startled, and she did all she could to nurse him, and that was how your father made it back down the mountain alive.”

  “Did he ever thank her? Did they exchange letters or anything?”

  “Not as far as I know. I don’t think they were ever in touch after he left.”

  “That’s not nice. Assuming she was human.”

  “I doubt she was just an illusion. Though I’m sure at that moment he would have been grateful for anything that helped him survive, even a fantasy girl in the mountains. He had no idea what he was doing, it seems, but I think it’s obvious that the words he was carving in the bark of that camphor tree must have been something like Army Lieutenant Colonel Kizaki Masayuki ended his life on this spot. He said when the young woman appeared, he had only made it as far as Army Lieutenant Colonel Ki . . . .”

  “He actually carved the characters? Even though he wasn’t himself?”

  “I wonder. I imagine they were at least legible.”

  “You’ve never seen them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to? I would. I’d want to very badly,” Ineko said, her voice growing more forceful. “I bet the writing is still there. It must be.”

  “Probably. Until the tree dies, or gets chopped down. I’ve always assumed the characters are still there on the trunk.”

  “Let’s go find them, Mother. Will you take me there, please?”

  “What a strange child you are, suddenly coming out with such a thing. You realize it’s in Kyūshu? Well, we can get to Kyūshu, but even assuming someone could tell us which mountain he was on, no one knows where on the mountain that particular camphor tree was. We would have no way of finding it, would we?”

  “There’s the girl who saved him. We just have to find her.”

  “And how would we do that?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. She’s sure to remember him — there can’t have been that many lieutenant colonels in the area. We just have to ask around about the girl who saved a lieutenant colonel deep in the mountains immediately after the defeat. We’ll find her in no time.”

  The mother looked on somewhat suspiciously as Ineko was seized with a somewhat odd enthusiasm. Then, as if to calm her, “I wonder what your father ate then, during those days — three or four, however many it was — when he was wandering, before he carved his name on the tree. The horse, too. I can’t imagine your father was in any state to pack food before he rode up into the mountains. Don’t you think?”

  “You’re right. It’s so like you, Mother, that kind of sympathy,” Ineko said. “Did you ever ask him? What he ate?”

  “I never did.
He didn’t like to talk about his time in the mountains, so I tried not to ask. I knew he was searching for a place to commit suicide, after all. And as the years passed, the thought that even then, when he seemed to have lost himself, he still carved his rank in the bark — that really must have left a bitter taste in his mouth.”

  “That’s so sad,” Ineko said.

  “Ah?” Ineko’s mother replied, not with her voice but with her breath. For a moment she just stood there with her mouth open, saying nothing.

  The word “sad” holds a vast range of meanings, and can be used in all sorts of situations. It is as ambiguous as any other word that describes a feeling, and among the most banal; yet when someone uses it unexpectedly it can hit hard, make a person emotional.

  “It’s good if you can savor the sadness, the loneliness of this world,” Ineko’s mother said eventually, then added, “Of course, it has to be just right. Some people go through life without experiencing even that much, and it can . . .”

  “Yes?” Ineko said as her mother searched for her next words. “Just right? You mean the right amount? Is there an appropriate amount of sadness?”

  “For people like us, I mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think this may be the right amount. Don’t you?”

  “Ah.”

  “When you’ve felt what it’s like to be lonely, you realize there’s no limit. You see how many people there are in the world who are so much sadder and more lonely than you. Compared to them, I don’t think you and I are so badly off.”

  The sorrow Ineko’s mother experienced as a military wife after the defeat, and that she and her daughter endured after Kizaki’s unexpected death, went well beyond mere loneliness; and yet somewhere along the way the intensity of the emotion had been softened, and transformed, you might say, into a sense of forlornness that permeated their days together. So it seemed to the mother now as she looked back, prompted by Ineko’s comment.