The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by Неизвестный

  Mrs. Yazawa joined Jūkichi, and they were finally called into the main room. The bride, dressed in the traditional three-layered kimono, seemed to shrink under the weight of the heavy clothing. She kept her head bowed in embarrassment. Her white face powder had been applied too heavily. Onose was accustomed to acting as the intermediary at weddings, and the ceremony proceeded smoothly. Seated across from the bride, Jūkichi was contemplating the absurdity of his situation. The exchange of nuptial cups began. Three times they each drank saké from three cups to represent the bond formed between them in the past, present, and future worlds. But Jūkichi found it difficult to believe that any kind of bond had been formed at all. Indeed, he was repelled by drinking from the same surface that had touched her unappealing lips, and he unobtrusively wiped the rim of the cup when it was his turn to drink from it. They say that for those in love, a pockmark looks like a beauty spot, but even when Jūkichi was in love, he remained critical. He certainly was not going to be carried away by infatuation for his new bride.

  Jūkichi approached Mrs. Yazawa on the veranda and whispered, “Tell her to keep her chin up. Her forehead looks even larger when she bows her head. Also, tell her she’s wearing too much face powder.”

  Ten rickshaws arrived. The neighbors came out to see off the bride, groom, and guests. The party went to a restaurant in the Kagurazaka area. The bride’s relatives were already waiting in the large banquet room upstairs. There was the faint sound of someone playing the shamisen in the large room below. Jūkichi forced himself to carry on lively conversations and drink more than his customary amount of saké, which he did not enjoy. He observed the gentle features of Tokiko’s mother and the pretty features of her older sister, who resembled her mother. There must have been some mistake when Tokiko was born, for she was the image of her father. After the guests had consumed a fair amount of alcohol, Jūkichi’s friends rose and gave congratulatory speeches. At the end of the party, Mrs. Onose and Mrs. Yazawa sang a duet, the American ballad “My Sweet Home.” The provincial guests found this quite impressive, and it lent an air of solemnity to the occasion.

  Mr. and Mrs. Yazawa accompanied the newlyweds back to their new home. As Jūkichi was changing out of his formal clothing, he commented, “At last I’ve done something respectable. I’ve done my duty.”

  “It’s a load off my shoulders. I’m still in shock that you actually went through with something I suggested,” Mrs. Yazawa replied, sounding inordinately self-satisfied.

  When Tokiko left the room, Jūkichi said, “Her older sister is an elegant woman. She’s much prettier than Tokiko.”

  “Stop it!” she said, waving her hand as if to brush his remarks away. “It’s bad luck. You’ll remember your wedding day for years to come.”

  After the Yazawas left, Jūkichi spoke to his bride for the first time.

  “Aren’t you hungry? You ate next to nothing.”

  “No, I’m full,” she replied. Jūkichi was surprised by the frankness of her answer.

  “I suppose if you always have enough to eat in life, you’re doing fine.” Jūkichi was wide awake and knew he could not sleep. He lit a cigarette and asked, “Why did you decide to marry me?”

  “Because my father told me to,” she replied.

  “That’s your only reason? Did you immediately agree just because he told you?”

  “No. I thought about it for quite a while. After the marriage was arranged, I didn’t sleep much. I thought I’d be happy married to you.”

  “I don’t know whether you’ll be happy or not,” Jūkichi said and did not try to engage Tokiko in further serious conversation. Instead, he tried to imagine what happiness might consist of for a young bride. It was a lonely night for him.

  Neither of them could sleep, but the thoughts that kept them awake were quite different.

  VI

  The next day, the weather was warm but strangely unpleasant. The wind was blowing dust all about. Tokiko, having barely dozed off, woke with a start when she heard the old housekeeper opening the shutters in the room below. She hurriedly got up and went down to the kitchen, where she clumsily tried to be of help. Jūkichi also got up early. He went down to his desk and, bored, stared out the window. It was a desolate sort of spring. The veranda, swept and polished the day before, already was white with dust. The soil in the garden was dry as stone. There were three red blossoms on the camellia bush and a small white flower, he did not know the name, blooming in the shade of a butterbur plant, but the colors seemed faded.

  “Nasty weather today,” Jūkichi muttered. “Certainly is,” Tokiko replied.

  “We have to get our photograph taken,” Jūkichi said. “I don’t want to. I won’t,” Tokiko declared. She seemed almost frightened. Her hand covered her breast, her eyes grew wide, and she was trembling. Jūkichi noticed for the first time that her eyes were like lusterless blackberries.

  “I don’t want to have photographs taken either,” he replied sharply. In truth, he disliked the idea of having his image and hers preserved together forever. “Now, why don’t you take off that fancy kimono and change into plain cotton clothes? You can’t work in that billowing thing with long sleeves flapping. You didn’t marry just so you’d have time to amuse yourself, did you?”

  “I have no intention of amusing myself. But I didn’t bring any cotton clothes.”

  “Why not?”

  “Onose told me I shouldn’t pack them.”

  Tokiko hesitantly recounted what Mrs. Onose had told her father and aunt. Jūkichi was a professor at a private university. He had studied abroad. His acquaintances included many famous people. Because guests were visiting Jūkichi all the time, Tokiko must never wear cotton clothes, not even while doing everyday chores in the house. She innocently repeated what she had been told. They had even said that Jūkichi was madly desirous of the match and had sent numerous telegrams asking for Tokiko’s hand in marriage.

  “This is news to me,” he exclaimed and thought that this is what was meant by the phrase “matchmaker’s talk.”

  “It’s all lies. I’m not a professor. I’ve never studied overseas. Also, I didn’t ask to marry you specifically. I got into this mess on an impulse. For thirty years I’ve searched for a woman or a cause to which I could devote my life. I’ve never found such a person or thing.” Jūkichi felt the sudden need to rouse himself from his lethargy. “I’ll write your father and tell him the truth,” he said gravely.

  “You needn’t inform my father,” Tokiko said, showing no reaction to Jūkichi’s statement. “We’re already married. What does it matter how we got that way?”

  “No! We have to tell the truth! I’ll write your father today.” Jūkichi, as if relishing the thought of a melodramatic scene, began scribbling down his feelings on paper.

  “My father is a timid man. You’ll make him worry.” Tokiko looked uncomfortable.

  “Can’t be helped. If I take action now, there’s still a way out. It’s for your benefit, too.”

  “What do you mean, ‘There’s still a way out’?”

  “I mean if you don’t like it here, you’ll have an excuse to return to the provinces,” he replied with a smile. “For my part, I have no objection.” Jūkichi deliberately wrote Shiga’s address on the letter and handed it to the housekeeper.

  Tokiko was taken aback. She was not able to regard Jūkichi’s remark as a joke. She had trouble understanding her husband.

  “I am your wife, aren’t I?”

  “Not yet!”

  “But . . . everyone seems to think we are married!”

  About midday, Yazawa, Jūkichi’s younger brother from the provinces, and several other people came to congratulate the newlyweds. Tokiko was busy. The next day, dressed in the formal clothing they wore for the ceremony, Tokiko and Jūkichi went out together to express their gratitude at the homes of Tokiko’s aunt and the intermediary, Onose. The physical strain and psychological pressure that had been building since before the wedding had left Tokiko exhausted. But she
was not sleeping soundly. She had been raised in a lively environment with many people about. The silence at night in this strange new home made her feel lonely and abandoned. Soon after she would doze off, she would be awakened by disturbing dreams. She had yet to feel intimacy with her new husband. It frightened her to hear Jūkichi gasping for breath in the night or muttering incomprehensible phrases in his sleep. At times she would curl up in her bedding and wait impatiently for the dawn. During the day, she would become unbearably sleepy. She would enter the maid’s small, dirty room, block the sliding door, and nap seated in an old chair. Jūkichi seemed not to notice when his wife disappeared. He would nap in the afternoon as well.

  Letters from the provinces soon arrived. His younger brother, who had two children, circumspectly cautioned Jūkichi. “I know women are a nuisance, but you must not treat them too callously. . . . Your life will be very different now that you are married.”

  Neither did the letter from Tokiko’s father give Jūkichi any encouragement. “The things Mrs. Onose said about you were intended, I am sure, to bring about this excellent marriage. For our part, we take no offense, nor do we think the worse of you. . . . Without doubt, our daughter has many defects. We can only request that you show no leniency in improving her demeanor and guiding her through life.” Jūkichi opened the sliding door to the next room and saw that Tokiko was at his desk reading letters.

  “Did you receive news from home?” he asked.

  “Yes, do you want to read them?” She scooped up the letters and brought them over to him.

  The letters from her father, mother, and aunt all were very long. They consisted of trivial matters, entirely predictable. But as he was reading the mother’s letter, Jūkichi was taken aback by the depth of the love that a mother feels for her child: “I have been unable to attend to my household duties this past week out of worry for you, my dear daughter. You still are inexperienced and have not been exposed to people in the world, so I am certain you are suffering in a new environment. Still, to endure is the primary virtue of the way of women. Discuss your problems with Mrs. Yazawa; you can trust her. Your conduct must be above reproach. Do nothing to give others the opportunity to criticize you behind your back. Please know that your mother is praying for you night and day. Try not to catch cold, and don’t drink unboiled water.”

  “Natural enough for your mother to show such concern for her daughter, but for your father to obsess like this. You’ve been protected too much!” Jūkichi exclaimed as he skimmed through her father’s letter. He picked up the next letter, which was from his mother to Tokiko. “Jūkichi is a cranky sort of fellow. I am certain, dear Tokiko, that you are having a difficult time with my son. Please do your best with him. . . .” Jūkichi abruptly stopped reading and hastily put this letter aside.

  “You have only just left your father’s and come here, so you haven’t experienced much of the world. You don’t realize how crucial it is for a woman’s future to choose the right husband,” Jūkichi declared.

  “Even I know that much,” Tokiko replied, “I saw what happened to my sister when she divorced. I don’t want to suffer the way she did.”

  “That gentle-looking sister of yours, a divorcée? Then she’s remarried?” he asked, comparing in his mind his wife and her sister. “You must care a great deal for your sister. At night I hear you calling out to her in your sleep. You never say the names of your mother and father.”

  “I talk in my sleep?” Tokiko asked, looking disconcerted. “It’s odd because I don’t like my sister much. Our personalities are entirely different.”

  Tokiko wondered why she had been dreaming about her sister, to whom she seldom spoke with familiarity. In response to Jūkichi’s persistent questioning, she told him the story of her sister’s divorce. Tokiko’s father had forced his eldest daughter to marry a wealthy benefactor’s son, a young man who had insisted on having Tokiko’s sister as his bride, despite being refused on several occasions. Perhaps because the young man was suffering some sort of mental illness, he could not keep a job, and he spent his days hovering around his wife with a silly and lascivious grin on his face. It soon seemed to the young woman that she too would become ill in this situation, and she fled to her parents’ house.

  “My mother was constantly harassing her, ‘Why did you run away? Why didn’t you stick it out?’ Day after day, my sister was berated by the family. That’s why when I left home to come here, my father told me several times to never cross his threshold again!” As she was recounting these incidents, Tokiko recalled her sister’s deep depression and her constant tears. She remembered how her sister remained indoors, ashamed to go out and be seen in public.

  “But you and your sister only did as your father told you. If someone’s to blame for a bad marriage, it’s him. Don’t let them intimidate you.”

  “Things don’t work that way in my family.”

  The couple occasionally shared this sort of conversation, but Jūkichi never attempted to please his wife with flattery or words of affection. He never once offered to take her out for a walk. Since she had not had her father’s permission when she stayed with her aunt in Tokyo, she had not once attended the theater or vaudeville halls. She had hoped that after her marriage she might be free to visit some lively, entertaining places, but Jūkichi did not show the slightest inclination to take her out.

  “I’d love to see the cherry blossoms falling this year,” Tokiko muttered to herself one afternoon.

  “Well, then, go to the banks of the Edogawa. There are lots of cherry trees there. You can go by yourself any time you like,” Jūkichi observed nonchalantly. “But the flowers there aren’t famous. I wanted to see the blossoms at Ueno in the evening.”

  “Cherry blossoms are about the same everywhere you go!”

  “They aren’t, either. I don’t want to see the flowers in bloom. I want to see them scattering on the evening breeze.”

  Tokiko felt a desire to weep as she looked at the falling blossoms. After dinner, she went out into the small garden, took the ribbon out of her hair, which she let flutter in the breeze as she sang “Die Lorelei.” A puppy crawled in through a hole in the fence and circled the garden sniffing the ground.

  “Come, Snowball. Come here!” Tokiko called and began playing with the puppy.

  That night, Tokiko wrote letters to her mother and friends. She also began recording her thoughts again in her diary, which she had neglected for a long time.

  VII

  For the first week after the wedding, a guest or two visited every day. Some of Jūkichi’s friends came to see the new bride. One old friend that Jūkichi had not seen for a year arrived with the attitude that he had dropped by to see what kind of woman Jūkichi had finally decided to marry. The aunt from Aoyama visited all in a flurry to see how her niece was doing, and she even went in to inspect the kitchen. Mr. and Mrs. Yazawa visited frequently during their daily walk and entertained everyone with lively gossip. When Jūkichi and Mr. Yazawa withdrew to talk about serious matters, Mrs. Yazawa spoke candidly about what she had observed in the house. Tokiko made a point of remembering the things she was advised to do, and she also felt free to talk about her own feelings. Tokiko’s old-fashioned long sleeves and the countrified pattern of her kimono caught Mrs. Yazawa’s eye. “You’ve trained in classical Japanese dance, haven’t you?” Mrs. Yazawa observed, surveying Tokiko’s dress and demeanor.

  Jūkichi did not wish to speak with his guests about his new wife. He did almost no work; instead, he often napped with a collection of poetry in his hand. After about a week, as if he were finally rested, Jūkichi went out after dinner. A fine spring rain was falling. Jūkichi strode lightly down the road with his umbrella on his shoulder. Lanterns hanging from eaves of shops had been lit. He felt it had been a long time since he had been touched by the open air. He looked, with fond remembrance, on the figures of men and women on the road and in the shops. When he reached the Edo River, he did not feel like returning home, and so, with no particu
lar destination in mind, he hopped aboard a streetcar. He suddenly became aware of the fresh beauty of the four or five young women in the car. They seemed far more attractive than young women had seemed before his marriage. “There certainly are a lot of pretty girls around these days,” he thought, unaware of what his thoughts signified.

  The streetcar was bound for the Honjo district of the Hongo ward. Jūkichi got off at the main avenue in Ueno and entered a beer hall at the corner. He ordered coffee and sat sipping it as he gazed out the window at the street. The bustle of people in the rain stirred his sentiments. He suddenly was overcome by an irrational desire to find happiness. How he longed to forget his sense of lack of fulfillment and lose himself in tears of joy! But what should he do? Where could he go? He aspired to nothing.

  Jūkichi left the beer hall and wandered around the neighborhood. It rained harder. Drops from the edges of the umbrella fell on his sleeves. He entered a narrow side street. In front of him was a place he had visited before, an establishment called Kawachiya. He intended to ignore the place and pass on when a dark shadow stepped out and called his name. It was a shrewish-faced, unattractive maid.

  After a brief conversation, Jūkichi opened the front entrance and went upstairs. On a night in February he had come here to listen to a performance of traditional ballads in the Shinnai style, but the rendition of “Akegarasu” was third rate at best, and he had left. He had told that girl Komatsu, “I’ll never see you again.” He wondered what had become of her.

  “It is funny you should ask. We were just gossiping about her,” the maid replied politely. “She left this district. You didn’t know?”

  “Did she shift her contract to another geisha house?”

  “No, she left for the provinces. She said she saw you on the avenue at around the end of the year.”