The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker

seemed to Shingo that there was a peculiar radiance in his part of the room.
    To Yasuko, her sister and brother-in-law were inhabitants of a dream world. In marrying her, Shingo had tacitly descended to her own lower rank.
    He felt as if her brother-in-law were coldly looking down on the wedding from an elevation.
    And the blank left by his failure to speak of so small a thing as the falling chestnut probably stayed on in their marriage.
    When Fusako was born, Shingo secretly hoped that she might be a beauty like her aunt. He could not speak of this hope to his wife. But Fusako proved to be even homelier than Yasuko.
    As Shingo would have put it, the blood of the older sister had failed to flow through the younger. He was disappointed in Yasuko.
    Three or four days after Yasuko dreamed of the house in the country, a telegram came from a relative saying that Fusako had arrived with her two children.
    Kikuko signed for the telegram and passed it on to Yasuko, who waited for Shingo to come home from the office.
    ‘Was something warning me in that dream?’ She was remarkably calm as she watched Shingo read the telegram.
    ‘Back to the country, is it?’
    So she won’t kill herself – that was the first thought that came to him.
    ‘But why didn’t she come here?’
    ‘She probably thought Aihara would find out and be after her.’
    ‘Has anything come from Aihara?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I suppose it’s finished, then, with Fusako taking the children, and not a word from him.’
    ‘But she came home the other time, and maybe she told him she was coming home again for a while. It wouldn’t be easy for him to show his face.’
    ‘It’s all over, whatever you say.’
    ‘I’m surprised that she should have had the nerve to go back to the country.’
    ‘Couldn’t she just as well have come here?’
    ‘Couldn’t she just as well – that’s not a very warm way to put it. We have to feel sorry for her, when she can’t come back to her own home. We’re parents and child, and this is what we’ve come to. I’ve been very unhappy.’
    Frowning, Shingo raised his chin to untie his necktie.
    ‘Where’s my kimono?’
    Kikuko brought a kimono, and went off silently with his suit.
    Yasuko sat with bowed head while he was changing.
    ‘It’s not at all impossible that Kikuko will run out on us,’ she muttered, looking at the door Kikuko had closed behind her.
    ‘Do parents have to be responsible forever for their children’s marriages?’
    ‘You don’t understand women. It’s different when women are sad.’
    ‘And do you think a woman can understand everything about every other woman?’
    ‘Shuichi is away again tonight. Why can’t the two of you come home together? You come home by yourself and here is Kikuko to take care of your clothes. Is that right?’
    Shingo did not answer.
    ‘Won’t we want to talk to him about Fusako?’
    ‘Shall we send him off to the country? We’ll probably have to send him for her.’
    ‘She might not want him to come for her. He’s always made a fool of her.’
    ‘There’s no point in talking about that now. We’ll send him on Saturday.’
    ‘We look good before the rest of the family, I must say. And here we stay away as if we never meant to have another thing to do with them. It’s strange that she should pick them to run off to, when they’ve meant so little to her.’
    ‘Who is taking care of her?’
    ‘Maybe she means to stay in the old house. She can’t stay on forever with my aunt.’
    Yasuko’s aunt would be in her eighties. Yasuko had had very little to do with her or with her son, the present head of the family. Shingo could not even remember how many brothers and sisters there were.
    It was unsettling to think that Fusako had fled to the house seen ruined in his dream.

3
    On Saturday morning, Shingo and Shuichi left the house together. There was still some time before Shuichi’s train.
    Shuichi came into Shingo’s office. ‘I’ll leave this with you,’