“You’ve brought it off this far all alone; now we’ll help you with the rest. Don’t hesitate. We’ll do whatever is in our power,” said Kensuke.
“I’ll do anything you say, Etsuko. What Father might think doesn’t matter now,” said Chieko.
The two vied with each other for Etsuko’s attention as they looked out the window with her between them. Etsuko rose, started to brush back the hair at her temples and moved over to Chieko’s mirror stand.
“May I use some of your cologne?”
“Do.”
Etsuko took up the green bottle, sprinkled several drops in her hand and nervously applied it to her temples. The mirror was covered with a faded cover of Yuzen silk, which she did not remove. She was afraid to look at her face. Before long, however, she began to worry about how she would look to Saburo, whom she must meet in a few minutes. She pushed back the mirror cover. Her lipstick seemed too thick. She wiped her lips with a little lace-edged handkerchief.
How quickly we forget our actions! While the emotions in our memory linger, our actions pass without a trace. The Etsuko who had listened unmoved to the sobs of Miyo, unceremoniously and unfairly informed of her discharge; the Etsuko who had forced this poor pregnant girl to shoulder her belongings and then had practically prodded her onto the train—she found it hard to believe that that Etsuko and this Etsuko were the same woman. She felt no remorse; in fact she did not restrain the obduracy of her tense spirit in resisting remorse. She found herself perched helplessly on the series of agonies of her past, on the accumulated heap of her immobile, rotting emotions. Isn’t the thing we call guilt the emotion that over and over brings men new lessons in lethargy?
Kensuke and his wife did not let this opportunity to help pass unnoticed. “If Saburo ends up hating you now, everything will be wasted. If only Father would say he was the one who fired Miyo! But, of course, he isn’t big enough,” said Chieko.
“He said that he wouldn’t say anything to Saburo, that he was going to take no responsibility for it,” said Etsuko.
“I don’t blame him. Anyway, leave it to me. I won’t do you any harm. What if I tell him that Miyo got a telegram saying her mother was sick, and she had to go off into the country and see her?” said Chieko.
Etsuko returned to herself. She saw this pair not as good counselors, but as two untrustworthy guides conducting her into a tepid, misty region she did not wish to enter. If she followed them, yesterday’s determined actions would have no meaning.
Perhaps her act of firing Miyo had been nothing but a confession of her desperate love for Saburo. She preferred to think, however, that it was done for herself alone, so that she herself could live—an act which she could not avoid and which, therefore, she was justified in taking.
“Saburo must be given to understand clearly that it was I who discharged Miyo. And I’ll be the one to tell him. Please don’t help me. I’ll do it alone.”
Kensuke and Chieko could only view Etsuko’s cool resolve as wild-eyed determination born of desperation and bewilderment.
“Now look at it calmly. If you do what you say you’ll ruin everything.”
“Chieko’s right; it isn’t going to work. Just leave it to us. We won’t harm you.”
Etsuko smiled enigmatically and twisted her mouth slightly. She was arriving at the opinion that the only way she could remove the gratuitous obstacle this pair was placing in the way of her actions was to anger and alienate them. She slipped her hands back into her sash and adjusted it, and, like a great, weary bird listlessly adjusting its feathers, stood up. As she started down the stairs, she said: “You really needn’t bother helping me. I’ll get along.”
Kensuke and Chieko were taken aback by Etsuko’s rebuff. They were angry—with the anger that men wishing to help fight a fire might feel when restrained by the officer in charge. When it comes to controlling fires, the proper use of water is an absolute necessity, but this husband and wife were like the people who keep basins of lukewarm water ready to throw on fires.
“I wish I were able to turn away kindness like that,” said Chieko.
“Incidentally,” said Kensuke, “I wonder why Saburo’s mother didn’t come.” They had been so involved with Etsuko’s panic over the simple fact of Saburo’s return that they had not even discussed this additional complication. The oversight irked Kensuke.
“Forget it. Just see if we help her anymore! It’s a lot easier this way.”
“Yes, we’ll just relax and watch.” Kensuke was himself at last. He regretted, nevertheless, that he had lost the sense of humane satisfaction that usually supported his taste for human misery.
Etsuko had returned to the charcoal burner, which rested on a counter Yakichi had installed by the veranda, where they cooked their meat and vegetables. She removed the iron kettle and replaced the grill.
With Miyo gone, the women had decided to take turns at cooking the rice. Today, the first day, it was Asako’s turn. Nobuko was helping her by taking care of Natsuo. She was singing to him: their wild laughter echoed about the house, already thick with twilight.
“What’s happening?” said Yakichi, coming out of his room and crouching down by the brazier. He nervously took up the cooking chopsticks and turned the fish.
“Saburo’s come back.”
“Is he here?”
“No, not quite.”
The last traces of the setting sun clung to the leaves of the hedge of tea bushes that ran a few feet from the veranda. Tiny hard buds that had not yet flowered stuck out in a multitude of silhouettes. A branch or two protruding high out of the rather unkempt hedge shone gaily in the low rays of sun.
The sound of Saburo’s whistle came up the stone stairs.
Etsuko recalled the tenseness of that time when Saburo had come to say goodnight and she, playing go with Yakichi, could not look his way. She dropped her eyes.
“Well, I’m back,” called Saburo, standing on the other side of the hedge, which concealed his body below the chest. His shirt was open at the neck; his dark throat was bare. Etsuko’s glance collided with his youthful, innocent grin. The thought that this would be the last time she would see his smiling face free of reproach imparted a painful intensity to her glance.
Yakichi grunted and bowed absently. He was looking at Etsuko, not Saburo.
The oil under the mackerel broke into flame. Etsuko did not move. Yakichi hurriedly blew it out.
“What is this? Here the whole house has seen more of Etsuko’s love than it cares to, and this whippersnapper alone isn’t aware of it,” he said to himself.
With considerable annoyance, Yakichi again blew out flames that threatened to devour the fish.
Etsuko was now aware that she had deluded herself. She had bragged to Kensuke and Chieko that she would tell everything to Saburo, but now she saw clearly that her resolve was based on an imaginary courage. Having met this open, innocent, smiling face, how could she maintain that unlucky resolve? Yet now there was no one to whom she could turn for help.
Still, there had been in the courage Etsuko had paraded, even from the first, the fear that it would prove insufficient. Did it not contain, also, the fond hope that the hours of grace during which Saburo had not yet been told the truth, during which Etsuko could live under the same roof with him unhated by him, might ever be extended just a moment more?
After a time Yakichi said: “I don’t understand. His mother isn’t with him, is she?”
“No?” said Etsuko, with a question in her tone, as if she were noticing the fact for the first time. She felt uneasy, yet somehow happy: “Shall I go ask him if she is coming later on?”
“Forget it,” muttered Yakichi; “if you do, you’ll have to mention Miyo.” The irony with which he cut off the discussion had the quality of aged, sagging skin.
For two days after that, Etsuko felt as if she was existing in the middle of an extraordinary calm. Those two days seemed like inexplicable, false symptoms of recovery occurring in someone hopelessly ill, ironic in
dications of a rally that ease the minds of his relatives and once again, however delusively, bring back hopes lost for a time.
What had happened? Was this happiness?
Etsuko took Maggie for a long walk. Then she went, with Maggie on her leash, to Okamachi station with Yakichi. He was going to Umeda terminal to make arrangements for the Special Express tickets. It was the afternoon of the twenty-ninth.
Three days earlier, she had gone, her face rigid, with Miyo to this same station. Now Yakichi stood there, leaning on the newly painted fence, chatting with her. He was dressed in a suit and carried a snakewood cane—he had even shaved. He let a number of Umeda-bound trains go by.
Etsuko was unusually cheerful, a fact that made Yakichi uneasy. She would scold the busily sniffing dog for rocking her off balance on her geta. Or she would gaze, smiling gently with slightly brimming eyes, at the people standing or passing by the bookstore and the butcher shop by the station. Red and yellow flags glistened in the advertisements of the children’s magazines in the bookstore. It was a cloudy afternoon, with a cutting wind.
“I wonder if she’s happy because she’s been able to talk to Saburo,” Yakichi mused. Maybe that’s why she isn’t coming to Osaka with me today. Yet, if so, I wonder why she hasn’t objected to taking this long trip with me tomorrow.”
Yakichi was mistaken. Etsuko’s seeming happiness was the result of hours of pondering, which had brought her face to face with a vast enigma, which she was now quietly surveying with folded arms.
Yesterday Saburo had passed the day working in the fields as if nothing had happened. When Etsuko passed, he doffed his straw hat politely. This morning he had saluted her in the same way.
This quiet young man had nothing to say to his employers save as their orders or their questions required. He felt no discomfort when saying nothing all day. Were Miyo here, he would have been lively enough, all in fun. His resplendently youthful mien, even in silence, however, did not show the slightest trace of introspection or reserve. As if his whole body spoke, indeed sang, to nature, to the sun, every inch of him at work seemed brimming with the garrulity of life.
It even seemed possible to believe that deep in his simple, guileless spirit he was blithely confident that Miyo was still a member of this household and that, after the little business that kept her away was complete—perhaps even today—she would return. He might have felt a little uneasy about Miyo’s absence, but he would never ask Yakichi or Etsuko where she was.
Etsuko liked to think that Saburo’s demeanor was entirely attributable to her. After all, she had not told him what had happened to Miyo. Thus Saburo, naturally, had neither reviled her nor gone after Miyo. Etsuko’s resolve to inform Saburo was weakening, though not only for her own sake. She was beginning to feel that she must do what she could to preserve this fleeting happiness she imagined she saw in Saburo.
But why his mother had not come back with him Etsuko was still at a loss to explain. Unfortunately, Saburo was simply not one to volunteer information about his trip and the events of the Tenri Festival.
Faint, inexpressible hopes—shadowy and imaginary, too ridiculous to articulate—came into being at the root of Etsuko’s doubts. Torn between guilt and these hopes, she found that she dared not look Saburo in the face.
“That Saburo. Nothing bothers him. He looks as if he doesn’t have a care in the world,” Yakichi thought to himself as he stood in the station. “I figured, even Etsuko figured, that when we fired Miyo he would quit and go after her. But somehow we were wrong.
“But, what’s the difference? When Etsuko and I go away, that will be the end of it. And when I get to Tokyo, who knows what good things may happen?”
Etsuko tied Maggie’s chain to the fence and looked down the tracks. The rails gleamed in the cloud-wrapped day. Their dazzling steel surfaces, faceted with countless abrasions, seemed linked to Etsuko in undemonstrative, yet tender comradeship. From the blackened pebbles between the tracks traces of fine steel filings glinted. Soon the rails began to ring faintly, transmitting a distant vibration.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” said Etsuko, abruptly. She thought of the trip she had taken to Osaka in September.
“Judging by this sky, it won’t,” said Yakichi, inspecting the clouds. The ground shook as the Osaka-bound train came into the station.
“Are you ready to go?” said Etsuko.
“Why aren’t you coming too?” insisted Yakichi, in a tone the noise of the train somehow justified.
“Look how I’m dressed. And there’s the dog, too,” said Etsuko lamely.
“We can leave Maggie at the bookstore. We’ve been buying there a long time, and they like dogs.”
Etsuko thoughtfully untied the dog’s leash. She was attracted to the notion of relinquishing this last half day in Maidemmura. To return home now to spend this evening with Saburo, as matters stood, suddenly seemed painful to her. She still found it difficult to believe that he was there, and that he had not left, never to be seen again, when he returned from Tenri a few days before. To make matters worse, he made her uneasy. Watching him in the field, swinging his mattock as if nothing mattered, filled her with fear.
Even the long walk she had taken the day before—had she not taken it in order to rid herself of that fear?
She unhooked the leash and said: “All right. I’ll go.”
Now here she was, in Osaka, where she had imagined she might end up when she had walked with Saburo down that untraveled highway. But now she walked with Yakichi. What strange events, what unexpected alterations, come into men’s lives! Not until they were outside in the crowds did it occur to them that there was an underground passage leading to the Osaka terminal from the platform under the Hankyu store at which they had debarked.
Yakichi held his cane forward at an angle and, holding Etsuko’s arm with his other hand, started across the intersection. Somehow they became separated.
“Hurry up! Hurry up!” he shouted at last, from the safety of the sidewalk on the other side.
They went halfway around the parking area, constantly menaced by blasts from the horns of passing cars, and were finally pushed into the turbulence of the Osaka terminal. A tough-looking young man was there, hawking tickets for the night train to anyone carrying luggage. Etsuko stared at this young ruffian, imagining how much his slender dark nape looked like Saburo’s.
They crossed the great main floor, echoing with the noise of the loudspeaker announcing train departures and arrivals, and entered a hallway that seemed tranquil by contrast. Then they came to a sign reading: “Stationmaster.”
While Yakichi talked to the stationmaster, Etsuko sat down in the anteroom, and there, ensconced in a white-linen-covered armchair, she unexpectedly dozed off. She was awakened by a loud voice shouting into a telephone. As she watched the station clerical personnel move about in the large office, she began to realize how exhausted she was. A great load of some kind oppressed her. Her weary heart felt pain simply from watching the violent motions of life. She sat there, her head pillowed in the chair back, watching the spectacle of a lone desk-top telephone drawing to itself now bell tones, now high chattering voices.
A telephone—it seems a long time since I last saw one. It’s a strange device, constantly entangling the emotions of human beings within itself, yet capable of uttering nothing more than a simple bell tone. Doesn’t it feel any pain from all the loves, the hatreds, and the desires that pass through it? Or is the sound of that bell really a scream of the pain, convulsive and unendurable, that the telephone continually inflicts?
“I’m sorry I was so long. I have the tickets, though. Seats on tomorrow’s Special Express are very scarce. He was very kind.”
Yakichi placed the two blue tickets in her outstretched hand. “They’re second-class—just for you.”
Actually, it was the third-class tickets that had been sold out. He could have purchased second-class tickets even at the windows. Once Yakichi set foot inside the stationmaster’s office, ho
wever, he had to accept what was given him.
After that they went to the department store to buy some toothpaste, some toothbrushes, some vanishing cream for Etsuko, and some cheap whisky for the going-away party—if one could call it that—they were having this evening. Then they went home.
Their bags had been packed for tomorrow’s trip since that morning. All Etsuko had to do, once she had packed the few items they had purchased in Osaka, was prepare the food—only slightly more elaborate than usual—for the party. Asako and Chieko (who had not been talking to Etsuko much of late) helped her in the kitchen.
Custom produces an almost superstitious way of observance. Thus Yakichi’s decree that the whole family eat together in the unused ten-mat drawing room was not received with very good grace. “Etsuko,” said Kensuke, in the kitchen, “it’s strange that Father should ask that. It’s almost as if you were going to Tokyo to stand by his deathbed. How good of you to take the trouble.” He filched a piece of the food she was preparing.
Etsuko left to see whether the cleaning of the parlor was yet complete. In the faint glow of dusk, the unlighted room seemed as desolate as a great empty stable. Saburo was there alone sweeping, his face to the garden.
Perhaps it was the darkness of the room, or the broom in Saburo’s hand, or the muffled sound of the broom gently brushing across the tatami, but the inexpressible loneliness of the young man there made a deep impression on Etsuko as she stood on the threshold observing. It was enough to make her believe she was seeing his inner self for the first time.
Guilt and passion alternately gnawed and burned her heart, each with equal intensity. As this new pain coursed through her, she felt the anguish of love as she had never before felt it. It must have been love that had made her feel since yesterday that she could not bear to look at him.