Spring Snow

  The circumstance of the Marquise accompanying Satoko to Osaka could now be utilized to give the meeting with Kiyoaki an uncontrived appearance. Nothing would be more natural than a son coming to the station to see his mother off, and at such a time no one would have any cause to look askance if Kiyoaki exchanged a word or two with Satoko.

  With matters thus concluded, the Marquis, at the suggestion of his wife, secretly summoned Dr. Mori to Tokyo, even though he was fully occupied with his Osaka practice. The doctor stayed with the Matsugaes for a week prior to Satoko’s departure on November 14, always in reserve in case she should need him. For if a message came from the Ayakuras, he was ready to rush over there at once. It was the danger of a miscarriage, looming from moment to moment, that made these precautions necessary. If such a thing did occur, Dr. Mori himself would have to attend to it and in such a way that no word would escape. Furthermore, he was to be on hand during the long and extremely perilous train trip to Osaka, traveling inconspicuously in another car.

  A renowned obstetrician thus surrendered his freedom and put himself at the beck and call of the Matsugaes and Ayakuras, something that only the Marquis’s money could have achieved. And if things progressed as he hoped, the trip to Osaka would itself greatly contribute to keeping the truth hidden from the world. For who would imagine a pregnant woman undertaking any venture such as a train journey?

  Although Dr. Mori wore suits tailored in England and was the very model of a Western gentleman, he was a stumpy little man, and there was something about his face that put one in mind of a clerk. Before he examined each of his patients, he spread a fresh layer of high-quality paper over the pillow for her, and would carelessly crumple it up and throw it away afterwards, a practice that enhanced his reputation. He was flawlessly polite and his smile never waned. He had numerous patients among women of the upper class. His skill was unsurpassed and his mouth as tight as an oyster.

  He enjoyed talking about the weather, and apart from this, there seemed to be no topic capable of capturing his interest. However, he was able to muster enough charm for his patients merely by remarking how terribly hot it was today or that it was getting warmer after each shower. He was skilled in Chinese poetry and had expressed his impressions of London in twenty Chinese poems in the seven-line form, which he had published privately under the title London Poems. He wore a huge, three-carat diamond ring, and before examining a patient he would screw up his face ostentatiously and pull off the ring with apparent difficulty, throwing it brusquely on whatever table was close at hand. However, no one ever noticed him forgetting to pick it up again. His stiff moustache had the subdued luster of a fern after rain.

  It was incumbent on the Ayakuras to accompany Satoko to the Toinnomiya residence so that she could pay her respects before her trip to Osaka. Since a trip by carriage would increase the risks involved, Marquis Matsugae furnished them with an automobile. Moreover, Dr. Mori accompanied them disguised as a butler, sitting up beside the driver and wearing an old suit of Yamada’s. By a stroke of good fortune, the young prince himself was away on maneuvers. Satoko was able to greet Princess Toin just inside the entranceway and then withdraw. The perilous expedition was thus completed without mishap.

  Though the Toinnomiyas planned to dispatch a household official to the station to see Satoko off on November 14, the Ayakuras politely declined this favor. Everything was going exactly according to Marquis Matsugae’s plan. The Ayakuras would meet Marquise Matsugae and her son at the Shimbashi station. Dr. Mori was to board a third-class carriage without so much as a glance in their direction. Since the purpose of the trip was supposedly the perfectly laudable one of paying a farewell visit to the Abbess of Gesshu, the Marquis did not hesitate to reserve the entire observation car for the Ayakuras and his wife. This belonged to a special express bound for Shimonoseki which left Shimbashi station at nine thirty in the morning and arrived at Osaka eleven hours and fifteen minutes later.

  Shimbashi station, designed by an American architect, had been built in 1872 at the beginning of the Meiji era. It had a timber frame, but its walls were of dark, speckled stone cut from quarries on the Izu Peninsula. Now, on this clear, bright November morning, the sunshine sharply etched the shadows cast by the projecting cornice onto their austere surface. Marquise Matsugae, rather tense at the prospect of setting out on a trip from which she would have to return on her own, arrived at the station having said hardly a word on the way either to Yamada, who was carrying her baggage with his usual deference, or to Kiyoaki. The three of them climbed the long flight of stone steps that led to the platform.

  The train had not yet pulled in. The slanting rays of the morning sun poured down on the broad platform and the tracks to either side of it, and motes of dust stirred in the brilliant air. The Marquise was in such a state of anxiety about the trip that confronted her that she heaved deep sighs at frequent intervals.

  “I don’t see them yet, I wonder if something has happened?” she said from time to time, but she could get no response from Yamada but a reverent and meaningless “Ah!” Although she had known what to expect, she could not refrain from her question.

  Kiyoaki realized how disturbed his mother was, but being in no mood to alleviate her distress, he stood some distance away. He felt faint, and his stiff posture was expressive of the effort he was making to keep a grip on himself. It seemed as if he might topple over still rigid like a statue, cast in one piece but lacking any vital strength to sustain it. The air on the platform was chilly but he threw out his chest under his braided uniform jacket. The bleak distress of waiting seemed to have frozen him to the marrow.

  The train backed into the station with ponderous dignity while the sun streaked the tops of the cars with brilliant ribbons and flashed from the rail at the rear of the observation car. Just at this moment, the Marquise picked out Dr. Mori by his neat moustache, in the midst of a group waiting some way down the platform. She felt a measure of relief. It had been agreed that, barring some emergency, the doctor would keep to himself throughout the trip to Osaka.

  The three of them climbed into the observation car, Yamada carrying the Marquise’s luggage. While she was giving Yamada further instructions, Kiyoaki stared out of the window at the platform. He was watching Countess Ayakura and Satoko approaching through the crowd. Satoko was wearing a rainbow shawl wrapped around her shoulders. When she reached the bright flood of sunlight that poured past the edge of the platform roof, her expressionless face looked as white as curds.

  His heart beat wildly both with distress and joy. And as he watched her, with her mother at her side, drawing steadily closer but moving at a slow and measured pace, he was taken for a moment with the fancy that he was the bridegroom waiting there to receive his bride. And the solemn ceremonial march, like a cumulative weariness that settled over him particle by particle, stirred a joy that was painfully intense and left him quite enervated.

  Countess Ayakura stepped up into the car, and, leaving the servant to carry Satoko’s luggage, offered her apologies for being late. Kiyoaki’s mother naturally greeted her with the utmost courtesy, but a certain contraction still visible in her forehead gave adequate expression to the haughty displeasure she felt.

  Satoko covered her mouth with her rainbow shawl and kept herself hidden behind her mother. She exchanged the normal greetings with Kiyoaki and then, urged by the Marquise, sat down promptly in one of the deep scarlet upholstered chairs which furnished the car.

  Kiyoaki then realized why she had arrived so late. She must have delayed her arrival at the station for no other reason than to shorten, even by a fraction, the length of their parting. In the light of this November morning, clear as bitter medicine, they would have no time to say anything to each other. While their mothers were talking, he stared down at her as she sat with bowed head, and in so doing, he began to be concerned about the rising intensity of passion that must be evident in his gaze. His whole heart was in it, but he feared that, like too powerful sunlight, it might s
corch Satoko’s fragile pallor. The forces at work within him, the emotion he wanted to communicate, had to have subtlety and grace, and he realized how crude a shape his passion had given it. He now felt something that had never touched him before, and he wanted to beg her forgiveness.

  As for her body, now covered by her kimono, he knew all there was to know about it, even its tiniest recesses. He knew where her white flesh would first flush crimson with embarrassment, where it would yield, where it would throb with the wingbeat of a snared swan. He knew where it would express joy and where it would express sorrow. Because he knew it in its totality, it seemed to give off a faint glow which could be sensed even through her kimono. But now something he didn’t recognize within that body, deep within her very heart, which she seemed to be protecting with the flowing sleeves of her kimono, was pushing its way into life. His nineteen-year-old imagination could not deal with a phenomenon such as that of a child, something that, however intimately bound up with dark, hot blood and flesh, seemed altogether metaphysical.

  But even so, the only thing of his that had entered Satoko and become part of her had to be a child. Soon, however, this part would be torn from her and their flesh would become separate once again. And since he had no means whatever of preventing this, there was nothing to do but stand by and let it happen. In a way the child involved here was Kiyoaki himself, for he was still lacking in the power to act independently. He trembled with the bereft loneliness and bitter frustration of a child forced to stay at home as a punishment for a misdeed while the rest of the family went happily off on a picnic.

  She raised her eyes and stared vacantly out of the window on the platform side of the train. She seemed entirely absorbed in the vision of what would be cast out from her and he was sure that there was no hope he would ever be reflected in them again.

  A piercing whistle sounded a warning. She stood up. It seemed to him that her action was a decisive effort that had demanded all her strength. Her anxious mother reached out and seized her arm.

  “The train’s about to leave. You’ll have to get off,” Satoko said to him. Her voice sounded almost cheerful, but it was a trifle shrill.

  Inevitably there ensued a hurried conversation between him and his mother, consisting of the usual admonitions and good wishes exchanged between mother and son before she goes off, leaving him behind. He wondered at the skill he was able to bring to supporting his role in this little skit.

  When he had finally freed himself from his mother, he turned to the Countess and quickly ran through the correct formulas of farewell with her. Then, as though nothing could be more casual, he said to Satoko, “Well, take care of yourself now.” At that moment he felt able to lend lightness to his words, and this was reflected in an impulse to put out his hand and lay it on her shoulder. But at the next moment, his arm seemed stricken with paralysis and hung useless at his side, for he had met her gaze in its full intensity.

  Her large, beautiful eyes were certainly wet with tears, but tears quite different from those he had been dreading up to now. They were something living that was being cut to pieces. Her eyes held the terrible glance of a drowning man, and he could not bear this gaze. Her lovely long eyelashes spread wide, like a plant bursting into flower.

  “You too, Kiyo. Good-bye,” she said in one breath, her tone quite proper.

  He fled from the train as if pursued, just as the stationmaster, wearing a short sword at the belt of his black five-button jacket, raised his hand in signal. Once more the conductor’s whistle sounded. Although restrained by Yamada’s presence beside him, he called her name in his heart again and again. The line of cars gave a brief shudder and then, like a length of yarn being unwound from a spool, the train began to move. In a few brief moments the observation car and its rear railing were far away, and neither Satoko nor the two mothers had shown themselves. The trailing smoke that poured over the platform testified to the power unleashed in the train’s departure. Its acrid smell filled the untimely darkness that it had left behind.

  43

  ON THE MORNING after two days in Osaka, Marquise Matsugae left the inn where she was staying and went to the nearest post office to send a personal telegram. Her husband had given her strict instructions that she was not to delegate this task to anyone. This being the first time in her life that she had entered a post office, she was thoroughly flustered, although in the midst of her confusion she somehow happened to recall a princess, recently deceased, who was convinced that money was filthy and passed her life without ever laying hand on it. But willy-nilly, she sent a telegram couched in the wording agreed on with her husband: “Visit safely accomplished.”

  She felt a surge of relief sweep through her as if a heavy burden had slipped from her shoulders. She returned to the inn to pay her bill and then went to Osaka station, where Countess Ayakura was waiting to see her off on her solitary return trip to Tokyo. In order to pay her these respects, the Countess had momentarily slipped away from Satoko’s bedside in the hospital.

  Satoko had entered Dr. Mori’s private clinic under an assumed name, in conformity with the doctor’s insistence on two or three days of complete rest. The Countess had been with her constantly, but although her physical condition was excellent, she had not said a word to her mother since the operation, an attitude that pained the Countess deeply.

  Since the comfortable stay in the hospital was prescribed merely as a precautionary measure, when Dr. Mori gave his permission for her to leave, she was quite fit to move about, almost as if in perfect health. Now, with her morning sickness a thing of the past, she should have become more buoyant both physically and mentally, but she obstinately held to her silence.

  According to the plan arranged for them, they were to go to Gesshu Temple next for Satoko’s farewell visit to the Abbess. They would stay there one night and return to Tokyo the next morning.

  In the middle of November 18, then, the two of them got off a Sakurai Line train at Obitoké station. It was a warm and beautiful autumn afternoon, and despite her uneasiness over her taciturn daughter, the Countess felt more at rest.

  Since she had wanted to avoid putting the old nuns to any inconvenience, she had not informed the convent of their time of arrival. Now, however, though she had asked a station attendant to call two rickshaws for them, there was still no sign of them. While they were waiting, the Countess, who had a fondness for exploring unfamiliar places, went for a stroll in the quiet vicinity of the station, leaving her daughter to her own reflections in the first class waiting-room. Just outside, she came across a signboard directing visitors to the Obitoké Temple nearby.

  OBITOKÉ TEMPLE OF MT. KOYASU.

  The Bodhisattva Obitoké Koyasu Jizo is revered here. Japan’s most ancient and hallowed place of prayer for obtaining the favor of children and their safe birth. Sanctified by the imperial prayers of the Emperors Montoku and Seiwa and the Empress Somedono.

  She felt it just as well that these words had escaped Satoko’s eye. To lessen the chance of her daughter seeing the signboard, she would have to let the rickshaw pull in deep under the station roof and help her in. It seemed to her that the words were unexpected drops of blood tainting this lovely scenery underneath so brilliant a November sky.

  Obitoké station had a well beside it, and white walls under a tiled roof. Opposite it stood an old-fashioned house surrounded by a roofed-in mud wall and boasting an imposing storehouse at the back. Although the white storehouse and mud wall made the bright sunlight dance, an eerie silence hung over the scene. The road surface was gray with thawing mud and glinted with traces of frost, which made for difficult walking. However, her eye was caught by an attractive splash of yellow in the distance. This lay at the approach to a small bridge; it crossed the railway line at a spot where the tall bare trees that bordered the track in ascending ranks came to an end, although they seemed to file on into infinity. So she gathered up her skirts and began to make her way up a slight gradient in the direction of this diversion.

&
nbsp; As it turned out, the bridge approach had been decorated with flowerpots of trailing chrysanthemums. Any number of them were dotted about haphazardly in the shelter of a pale green willow that stood beside the path leading onto the bridge. Though it served its purpose as an overpass, it was unpretentious, made of wood, and seemed barely larger than a saddle. Some checkered quilts, hung out to air, were draped over its railing, soaking up the sun and fluffed out as they swung gracefully in the breeze. In the yard of a house close by, diapers were drying in the sun and a length of red material was stretched out and secured by clothespins. The dried persimmons that lined the eaves still had a luster like the glow of sunset. And there was no one to be seen anywhere.

  Far down the road, she caught sight of the swaying black hoods of two rickshaws coming in her direction. She hurried back to the station to tell Satoko.

  ∗

  Because the weather was so pleasant, she had the men lower the rickshaw hoods. They left the town and its two or three inns behind them and traveled for a time along a road bordered with rice paddies. If one looked up carefully at the mountains, one could pick out Gesshu Temple at the very heart of them.

  Some distance farther on, the road was lined with persimmon trees, whose branches, although bare of almost all their leaves, were heavy with fruit. All the rice fields looked festive, decked all over with a maze of drying racks.

  The Countess, in the first rickshaw, turned around from time to time to look back at her daughter. Satoko had folded her shawl and laid it in her lap. When her mother saw that she was looking around her as though she were enjoying the scenery, she felt somewhat relieved.