by Meira Chand
She could never forget she was a Nagai, nor the feeling that her life, unlike other women’s, was not to be tempered by circumspection. In a house of women she had never known the traditional subservience to brothers, never had to knuckle beneath a mother-in-law. Early in life she saw a path marked out for herself as if she were a body; these were strange thoughts in the head of a woman.
But she had still to wait for her husband’s death. She seized that moment to succeed to the headship of the family until her son, Jun, came of age. Senior male relatives of branch families were powerless before the fact of shares and her will; they helped her for a while. Ambition was solid as her own flesh, before her directions took clear shapes and consolidated strength. She refused the passive place of widow and her allotment as a woman, she stepped in every way far beyond her role. She was shrewd and cunning, she had vision and charm and an essential business acumen. In the twenty years since her husband’s death, she had moulded the Nagai Spinning Mills from a large into a prominent concern. Her name was known beyond spheres of work, for she was all but alone in Japan’s industrial world as a powerful, active businesswoman. ‘It is only,’ she had said, ‘until my son comes of age.’ But the words did no more than wet her lips and dissolved again to the shapelessness that was then all the years ahead. Now Jun was thirty-one, impatient for his future.
There was much less to be said of Fumi. Accepting and effacing with hair as short and coarse as badger fur, she began sometimes to knit a garment that had no destination, that might begin as a jumper and end as a scarf. Fumi, in widowhood, accepting and effacing, receded to her proper place, as a “cold rice relative”, at the beck and call of the family and mute to all decisions. She became her sister’s housekeeper and closed her eyes to that other life that had deprived her of a husband and at different times, two children. Her daughter had died in infancy, and her son had been killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of nineteen. The unrelenting destiny that left her so plain and homely refused to endow her life with more than a minimum of warmth. Her husband’s fortunes had dwindled quickly into debt and soon he took his life. These sorrows shattered her last assumptions and left her as she was. The past was mirrored in her untidy outline, compassion was solid in her face.
Yoko was the baby, twenty years her sister’s junior, born late in life to elderly parents. She saw her sisters’ marriages from her mother’s knee. Her eyes still held in their waywardness the results of early spoiling, and a certain exclusion through age from the centre of the family. She had always lived in a world of her own, believing the difference in years placed her in another era; she was a modern woman. Her independent spirit made it difficult to arrange the most suitable marriages. She offended, deliberately, any number of go-betweens, and when pressed to attend miai meetings with designated bachelors, spoke or acted commonly or afterwards found a birthmark, baggy trousers, or a tendency to drunkenness in her suitors that no one else had noticed. In spite of an exclusively feminine education, she found at sixteen an unlikely romance with the son of the gardener. This was soon smothered by the family in shame, and fear of leaks that might wreck her chances of a future marriage. The family could never see it was the instinctive rebellion in Yoko that aborted each attempt to marry her.
When their parents died in a car crash, Itsuko continued the campaign to get Yoko married. At last she consented, with stubborn bad grace, to marry the son of an old business acquaintance, but almost at once she took a lover. Her husband divorced her immediately. All she did was heave a sigh of relief and refuse to feel the stigma. Such shame, such gossip, such wantonness was a slur upon the good name of her husband’s family. Yoko did not care, she had a worldly new status, financial means, and was a woman of her time. She began to earn her own living, cashing in a small reserve of talent and numerous connections. She became first a designer in a fashion firm and then left to start her own boutique. Now she had a thriving business of her own, and lived by herself in a flat in Kobe. Itsuko disowned her, but time, the proverbial healer, mellowed the wound. There was talk upon the telephone, and sometimes now a visit. At forty, Yoko was beautiful still in her selfish, languid way, with wine-dyed hair and the fineness of Itsuko’s skin and features in broader bones and jaw.
Once, thought Kate, looking across the table, her mother-in-law had been a passive bud, mild and charming, and submissive. Kate had seen old photographs that showed a face where dreams and gentle secrets were sewn up deep inside.
The child quickened in Kate once again, she held her breath and closed her eyes upon its strange, determined presence, turning in her like imprisoned vines. Perhaps this child would be the link across histories and mentalities, would change things in touching, innocent ways. She willed and prayed it, pushing tears away. She felt ill with natural causes.
Jun touched her gently. He survived each meal in silence, ignoring her before his mother. She felt mean to blame him for her difficulties. It was not his fault. He lay between his mother and herself like a frail, slat bridge across a chasm.
She remembered the Baileys’ mixed response to the news of her engagement to Jun.
‘We’re so happy for you.’ Paula had hugged her, but in the same breath expressed caution. ‘It is not an easy society to marry into.
‘The Baileys don’t think I should marry you.’ She told Jun later.
‘Kate. Believe me. Everything will be all right.’ He took her hand, clasping it firmly. It was as if in a choppy sea, someone had thrown her a rope, and she grasped it gladly.
They married, and in one breathless year she saw her certainties fulfilled and her doubts dissolve. She made a beginning with the language, taking lessons at an institute and acquired a taste for the cuisine. She achieved a deft use of chopsticks and spoke of the meaning of inner space in Japanese art and architecture. In a luxury flat above Holland Park, with a view of lawns and chestnut trees and some swans upon a lake, she seemed with ease to possess Japan already in the palm of her hand. Nothing prepared her for the reality.
She looked up to find Fumi’s eyes upon her and smiled. Aunt Fumi nodded, fussing with some stubborn wool caught about a button. Kind as always, she differed from her worldly sisters in character and also in looks, for as Itsuko had decided, she was indistinguishable from the maid. Her life had been drained of happiness, yet there was no bitterness in her face. She smiled encouragingly to Kate.
Jun drank his soup, bowl to his face, his eyes safe within its circle. Kate wanted to turn to him, to remind him of today, for clearly, he had forgotten. She did not eat much, nervously mashing the thick wedge of fish with her chopsticks, picking small flakes from a bone. She had no appetite, yet dare not leave it, already she felt Itsuko marking the mess on her plate. The silence was broken only by the faint wheeze of the oil stove glowing within its corner, the slurp of soup and the knock of chopsticks on a bowl. They concentrated on the meal, Itsuko’s will reflected on them all.
Kate moved uncomfortably on her cushion. She had been five months with the child when she arrived, and almost at once her own clumsy body seemed to turn against her and refused to manipulate the sitting and sleeping on floors, the deep baths, the narrow corridors and small rooms. And her own solidity terrified her, growing as she watched, unstoppable. She shifted heavily, moving an aching leg. She had never complained, managing to sit as required through each meal but day by day as her weight increased she new how clumsy she appeared, in a way she had never known before.
Jun put down his chopsticks. His mother’s eyes stung like nettles in his face. He ignored her and turned to Kate.
‘You can’t sit like that. Wait. I know what to do.’ He got up and left the room.
‘Yes. Yes.’ Fumi read his thoughts and hurried after him.
Itsuko continued with her soup in silence, the bowl before her face, her chopsticks guiding the stalks of mushrooms into her mouth, ignoring Kate. Soon Jun and Fumi returned with the soft, yellow backrest from Fumi’s room, and pushed it beneath Kate’s cushion.
‘That’s better,’ nodded Kate. But it was the closeness of his concern and hand as much as any backrest. It seemed less painful that he had forgotten today. Soon they would be alone; she would not allow her disappointment to weigh upon them. She placed a hand gratefully on Jun’s knee beneath the table.
Itsuko’s eyes narrowed. From the end of the table Fumi darted a harassed glance at her sister, and was at pains to refill the sake cups before Kate could be admonished. Yoko leaned on the table, refusing to be part of the moment. Her sister’s predilections had nothing to do with her. She had long since washed her hands of Itsuko’s affairs. Jun did not speak, sitting again like a statue, guilt and anger at his mother raging within him. He did not dare to look at Kate, the meal continued slowly.
‘We must hurry,’ Itsuko spoke suddenly, looking across at Jun. ‘Don’t forget, we have an appointment, they will be waiting for us.’ Jun nodded silently and continued with his meal.
‘Out? You’re going out?’ Kate asked dismayed.
‘Yes, there are things to discuss with a tenant of my mother’s.’ He had told her nothing of his plans, not wanting to disappoint her. He was waiting for the outcome of this evening before he approached his mother.
Fumi’s kindness was far away, unable to help, and the words burst out Kate.
‘Do you have to? Do you have to go?’
‘Yes.’ He spoke sharply, in an effort to appease Itsuko. Kate did not understand this strategy, she could not see the more gentleness Itsuko sensed, the more distaste stirred within her. Kate’s eyes filled with tears, Jun looked away, hating himself.
‘Will you be long? Will you be late?’ Her voice was low and flat.
‘I don’t know, possibly. Don’t wait up. I have no idea when we might be back.’ He forced himself to say it with cruel detachment. Itsuko granted her approval with a small, firm nod. A tear trickled from Kate’s eyes.
‘What’s the matter now?’ he frowned. Afterwards he would explain why he had to do this.
‘I haven’t seen you today. You went out at five this morning. Today was our wedding anniversary.’
She had not meant to say it, but fatigue was a weight she could no longer carry. Now she had said it she knew it did not really matter, that it had little to do with her tears.
How could he have forgotten? Jun cursed himself and saw sudden light in Itsuko’s eyes. He could keep up the pretence no longer, and took Kate’s hand apologetically, Tears spilled down Kate’s face.
Itsuko looked on in disgust at such overt demonstrativeness. She did not glance in Kate’s direction but returned with dainty expertise to a last piece of ginger pickle. Jun took no notice of Kate’s tears, he stood up and left the room. Itsuko nodded her approval, laid her chopsticks on their rest, her rice bowl cleaned of each single grain, and followed him from the table. Soon there was the sound of the front door closing behind them.
Kate tried to sleep, but the waterfall disturbed her, rushing as always through each night, and through each day behind the clack of the bamboo water-pipe in the garden. The contraption filled and emptied ingeniously, with a sharp noise that scared away birds. A January cold consumed the dark, polished surfaces of old wood in the large, bare room. A space that smelled astringently, of smooth rush mats, padded tight, of mothballs in a chest of drawers and the fumes of the small oil stove. She wished for a chair, but there were none. She was not yet used to a life on her knees, to the sudden drop of eye levels and the altering of perspectives. She heard Yoko depart, and later Fumi brought hot chocolate and biscuits as an offering of comfort. Kate lay in the bed of thick quilts spread upon the floor, and listened to the waterfall. Falling, falling without end, its sound spinning through the weeks behind, connecting for her the days, the week. And the mortar, that ornamental bamboo pipe, marking the passing of each moment.
At first she could not stand the mortar, like a loud, clacking clock in the garden, like a self-important mechanical duck, its bamboo throat filling with water, then clapping down empty spilling water upon the stones. Again and again. It did not disturb Jun, beside her he slept, she watched him most nights in the moonlight that speared a crack in the window shutters. Clack, clack.
Through the frozen nights, through the icicles that formed like daggers in the pond about the water plants. Through the frost that made of moss between small trees hard, bruised passages of ground. She had never been so cold. There seemed in the house a blatant disregard for the necessity of creature comforts. Or they simply did not feel it. Her mother-in-law was wrapped snugly into layer upon layer of winter kimono, bound at the midriff, tight and firm, and Aunt Fumi sagged untidily beneath muddy-coloured woollens, thick stockings and thicker underwear. They sat mostly beside a few smouldering bits of charcoal in a green china brazier. Sometimes they lit the oil stove, but opened a chink in the window to dissipate the fumes. The cold was at her fingertips in the touch of frozen glass, the wood upon the bannisters, the dark corners in the upper storey of the house. Hirata-san, the ancient maid, survivor of another era, gold-toothed and spry as morning light, delighted in a pocket warmer and electric slippers plugged in at the sink. Green lichen on stone lanterns froze, cold tiles near the bath tub made her feet ache. The blooms on a bush of white camellia, small and pinched, soon died and faded to the colour of brown paper. Pipes burst. A frozen kitten was found dead at the gate. Then there was snow, its white light illuminating the secrets of the house and its fossilised interiors. She cried with the frugality, discomfort and cold.
‘So soon?’ Jun had said. ‘Just because of a little cold?’ And from an iron-bound chest pulled out two padded men’s kimono, slipped them one inside the other and held it open for her. It barely met across her distended belly. She looked down forlornly as he laughed, turning her around and around, winding the thin silk obi low beneath her stomach as if she were a man.
‘This is the coldest part of the winter. We call it daikan.’ And he had shown her a photograph in the newspaper of half-naked kindergarten children exercising in the snow. ‘We breed hardiness early. We learn to live with nature, we do not kick against it. We don’t cosset ourselves with central heating, electric blankets and the like,’ he had laughed.
‘Why not? Why not? Why suffer like this?’
‘We do not feel it as you do. You too will learn,’ he promised.
Even her thoughts had frozen.
But the next day he came home with an electric blanket, with thick, sock slippers and a mohair shawl. Then she had felt better, the bed was warm. She was a hibernating thing in a secret nest unsavaged by the season. She resisted when they came to roll the quilts away, to face her again with bare floors. She begged she was unwell, that she needed to rest through the day.
‘It is not customary,’ said Itsuko when she heard, tight-lipped, ‘for quilts to be left like that all day. It is a sign of slovenliness. They must be folded and stored, the table and cushions must be laid out instead.’
But Kate had clung to her bed, swaddled and warm, her brittle emotions thawing, taking on once more vital form. She feigned exhaustion, which was not untrue. But after two days Fumi swirled in again with the maid, opening windows, whipping up quilts, spilling them out upon the thick tiled roof to air. The room was filled by a frozen gust, and the precious yellow rectangle of her electric blanket was shaken free of the bed. Fumi laughed and laughed, soft and kind, and soon brought an extra oil stove, dusty still with cobwebs, from a forgotten cubby-hole.
Unable to sleep, Kate got up again and went to the window, to watch for Jun’s return. A single clear pane of glass had been fitted into the frosted window, for she had found it unbearable, not to see out. She spent a great part of each day in the room, and the opaque window threw her in upon herself, cutting her off from the wor
ld outside, refusing to reveal sharp mornings or the passage of the day upon the sun. To observe these things she must open the window and meet an Arctic blast. It became a point of desperation that she herself did not understand. If she could see the sky, the road, the tops of trees, something in her might be eased.
‘But it is precisely because you should not see the road, and not be seen from it. It is for privacy,’ Itsuko explained stiffly, unable to understand such a blatant need to display oneself to the curiosity of the world. She was adamant on the matter, but gave way at last to Jun’s persuasion. Kate stood before the window now in the dark, staring out, waiting for Jun to return. The waterfall rushed on behind her thoughts.
A few flakes of snow drifted down, then quickened in a sudden flurry and stopped again. In the distance she could see the lights of the town and beyond it the bay, its vast black waste of water illuminated by the moon that rose above the small stout trees of the garden. The branches of an old loquat tree clawed against the glass in a breeze, and the bamboo mortar continued to knock unceasingly on the stones beside the pond, almost hidden by a dwarfed and ancient fir. There was nothing to be seen of the waterfall. It lay at the back, beyond the compound of the house, fed by springs and streams spilling down from the pine covered hills that backed the town of Kobe.