the signals of the Shinjuku station coming out of the darkness, and the lights of neon signs revolving through the night. The sound of train whistles, mingling with the sounds of passing car horns, cut through the atmosphere. I had a woolen shawl over my shoulders to protect my neck from the penetrating cold.
If I pulled away the inhalator now, no one would know. There was nobody to see it. I didn’t believe in any witnessing agency other than men’s eyes. Yet I couldn’t do it. I went on till dawn holding the inhalator alternately in each hand. What were the powers that made me hold back? Love? No, never. My love would have wanted him dead. Reason? No, not that either. Reason would have needed only the certainty that no one was watching. Cowardice? Not at all. After all I wasn’t even afraid of catching typhoid fever! I still don’t know what the powers were.
I found out, though, in the coldest hour before day break, that no untoward action was necessary. The sky was turning white. Great sections of cloud waiting to reflect the glow of morning’s coming stood in the heavens, but all they could do at this early hour was lend the sky a cast of severity. Suddenly Ryosuke’s breathing became extremely irregular. As a child who has had enough turns his face suddenly from the breast, so he turned his face from the inhalator—as if the cord that held him had broken. I was not surprised. I placed the inhalator beside him on the pillow and took my hand mirror from my sash. It was a keepsake from my mother—who died when I was young. It was an old-fashioned mirror, backed in red brocade. I brought it close to my husband’s mouth; the glass did not cloud. His lips, fringed with whiskers and pouting, appeared in the mirror bright and clear.
* * * *
Was Etsuko’s acceptance of Yakichi’s invitation to come to Maidemmura perhaps based on the same resolve as that which had brought her to the Hospital for Infectious Diseases? Was coming here like returning there?
Didn’t the air of the Sugimoto family seem to be, the more she inhaled it, the air of the hospital? An overpowering, corrupting spirit seemed to hold her in invisible chains.
It was in the very middle of April, that night when Yakichi came to Etsuko’s room to press her to finish some mending she was doing for him.
Until ten o’clock that evening, the whole household—including Etsuko, Kensuke and his wife, Asako and her two children, as well as Saburo and Miyo—had been in the eight-mat workroom busy making bags for the loquats, a little behind schedule. In normal years the task of making bags began early in April, but this year a bumper crop of bamboo sprouts had taken up their attention and made them late. If one did not cover the loquats with a bag while they were still the diameter of a fingertip, weevils would get into them and suck out the juices. Thus, as they went about fashioning the many thousand bags required, each person had beside him a pile of pages from old magazines, to which he applied the flour-and-water paste from a basin in the middle of the group. They were competing with each other, and many were the interesting pages they had to fold without reading.
Kensuke’s impatience with this night work was vociferous. His folding was punctuated by incessant griping: “How I hate this. It’s real coolie labor. I don’t see any reason why we have to do this. Father’s gone to bed, I’ll bet. That’s just like him. But why do we sit here obediently working? What if we revolted? If we don’t fight for a raise or something he’ll keep right on with what he’s been doing. How about it, Chieko? Shall we ask for double what we’re getting? Of course, I get nothing, so twice that will amount to the same thing. Look at this magazine: ‘The Determination of the Japanese People over the North China Revolt.’ How do you like that? And on the other side: ‘Wartime Menus for Four Seasons.’”
Thanks to observations of this kind, Kensuke was
If I pulled away the inhalator now, no one would know. There was nobody to see it. I didn’t believe in any witnessing agency other than men’s eyes. Yet I couldn’t do it. I went on till dawn holding the inhalator alternately in each hand. What were the powers that made me hold back? Love? No, never. My love would have wanted him dead. Reason? No, not that either. Reason would have needed only the certainty that no one was watching. Cowardice? Not at all. After all I wasn’t even afraid of catching typhoid fever! I still don’t know what the powers were.
I found out, though, in the coldest hour before day break, that no untoward action was necessary. The sky was turning white. Great sections of cloud waiting to reflect the glow of morning’s coming stood in the heavens, but all they could do at this early hour was lend the sky a cast of severity. Suddenly Ryosuke’s breathing became extremely irregular. As a child who has had enough turns his face suddenly from the breast, so he turned his face from the inhalator—as if the cord that held him had broken. I was not surprised. I placed the inhalator beside him on the pillow and took my hand mirror from my sash. It was a keepsake from my mother—who died when I was young. It was an old-fashioned mirror, backed in red brocade. I brought it close to my husband’s mouth; the glass did not cloud. His lips, fringed with whiskers and pouting, appeared in the mirror bright and clear.
* * * *
Was Etsuko’s acceptance of Yakichi’s invitation to come to Maidemmura perhaps based on the same resolve as that which had brought her to the Hospital for Infectious Diseases? Was coming here like returning there?
Didn’t the air of the Sugimoto family seem to be, the more she inhaled it, the air of the hospital? An overpowering, corrupting spirit seemed to hold her in invisible chains.
It was in the very middle of April, that night when Yakichi came to Etsuko’s room to press her to finish some mending she was doing for him.
Until ten o’clock that evening, the whole household—including Etsuko, Kensuke and his wife, Asako and her two children, as well as Saburo and Miyo—had been in the eight-mat workroom busy making bags for the loquats, a little behind schedule. In normal years the task of making bags began early in April, but this year a bumper crop of bamboo sprouts had taken up their attention and made them late. If one did not cover the loquats with a bag while they were still the diameter of a fingertip, weevils would get into them and suck out the juices. Thus, as they went about fashioning the many thousand bags required, each person had beside him a pile of pages from old magazines, to which he applied the flour-and-water paste from a basin in the middle of the group. They were competing with each other, and many were the interesting pages they had to fold without reading.
Kensuke’s impatience with this night work was vociferous. His folding was punctuated by incessant griping: “How I hate this. It’s real coolie labor. I don’t see any reason why we have to do this. Father’s gone to bed, I’ll bet. That’s just like him. But why do we sit here obediently working? What if we revolted? If we don’t fight for a raise or something he’ll keep right on with what he’s been doing. How about it, Chieko? Shall we ask for double what we’re getting? Of course, I get nothing, so twice that will amount to the same thing. Look at this magazine: ‘The Determination of the Japanese People over the North China Revolt.’ How do you like that? And on the other side: ‘Wartime Menus for Four Seasons.’”
Thanks to observations of this kind, Kensuke was
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