Soon it was fall. Although Sōsuke had little interest in sightseeing in Kyoto, as he had done the previous autumn, when invited by Yasui and Oyone to gather mushrooms, he discovered a fresh aroma in the bright, crisp air. He also accompanied the two of them on an outing to enjoy the autumn foliage. As they made their way from Saga toward Takao, cutting across the flanks of the mountains, Oyone used her parasol as a walking stick and hiked up her kimono in a manner that left her underskirt showing around her ankles. As the sun shone down on a stream more than three hundred feet below their high vantage point, revealing clearly, even from this distance, the streambed beneath the translucent flow, Oyone looked over at the two men and said, “Kyoto is lovely, isn’t it?” Still gazing down on this scene, Sōsuke exclaimed to himself that Yes, Kyoto was lovely indeed.
Outings of this sort, the three of them together, were not uncommon. More often, though, they would get together at Yasui’s house. Once, when Sōsuke stopped by for one of his regular visits, he found Yasui to be out and Oyone sitting alone in the house as if abandoned in the midst of autumn’s desolation. After a few words of sympathy he ensconced himself in the parlor, where, as they warmed their hands over the brazier that stood between them, Sōsuke lost himself in an unexpectedly lengthy conversation before returning home. Another time, he was sitting idly at his desk in his lodging room, uncharacteristically at loose ends, when all of a sudden Oyone turned up at his door. She had been shopping nearby and was just dropping in for a moment, she said. At Sōsuke’s urging she stayed for some tea and sweets, and left only after a long, leisurely chat.
Amid these various comings and goings, the leaves had fallen from the trees. Then, one morning, the high mountain peaks were capped with white snow. The dry riverbed was scoured by winds, and thin, long shadows of people moved across the bridge. The Kyoto winter that year was utterly merciless, inflicting its piercing cold silently yet relentlessly. Yasui was hard hit by the harsh weather and contracted a severe case of influenza. He alarmed Oyone by running a fever a good deal higher than those brought on by an ordinary flu. Before long, however, his temperature went down. He seemed to be coming out of it, but his symptoms lingered and he was never able to make a full recovery. Thereafter Yasui would suffer the ups and downs of a slight fever for days on end.
The doctor said that the respiratory tract appeared to have been affected and urged a rest cure away from the city. Yasui reluctantly packed his wicker trunk; Oyone, her carryall. Sōsuke accompanied them to Shichijō station and saw them to their compartment, keeping up a cheerful conversation until it was time for the train to depart.
“Come visit us sometime,” said Yasui from the compartment window after Sōsuke had alighted from the train.
“Yes, please do,” Oyone chimed in.
The train slowly slipped by Sōsuke, who stood on the platform glowing with good health; then, with a sudden acceleration and a belch of steam, it headed for Kobe.
The convalescing Yasui welcomed the New Year in his new surroundings. From the first day of his arrival on he sent Sōsuke a picture postcard more or less every day, in none of which was omitted an invitation to come visit them anytime. Each card also included without fail a couple of lines in Oyone’s hand. Sōsuke made a special stack of these cards on his desk so that whenever he came home they were the first thing to catch his eye. From time to time he went back over them all in order, reading some through again, glancing at others. Finally another card arrived in which Yasui had written that he was completely well now and would be coming home. But here they’d come all this way and had yet to receive a visit from Sōsuke, so as soon as he got this card he should leave immediately, even if he would only be able to stay a brief while. These few words supplied a sufficient goad to Sōsuke, who abhorred above all the tedium of an uninterrupted routine. He boarded a train and arrived at Yasui’s inn that very night.
As the three of them, now happily reunited, sat facing one another in the bright lamplight, the first thing Sōsuke noticed was the lustrous color that the recently ailing Yasui had regained. If anything, he looked healthier than ever. Yasui himself announced that yes, he was feeling very well indeed, and as if to prove the point rolled up his shirt sleeve and stroked a pulsing blue vein. Oyone’s eyes sparkled with delight. Sōsuke took particular note of their sheer liveliness. Heretofore his dominant impression of Oyone had been one of utter composure, even in the midst of riotous noise or scenes of disorder. Now it became obvious to him that this image had been largely conveyed through the steady gaze that she seldom allowed to be diverted.
The next morning the three of them went out in front of the inn and gazed at the sea’s dark currents flowing far offshore. They breathed air redolent of pitch oozing from the pine trees. The winter sun unabashedly ran its short course across the sky and sank into the west. As it receded from sight it dyed the low-hanging clouds yellow and red, like cooking-stove flames. Even when night fell no wind blew; only the occasional passing breeze bestirred the pines. The warm, sunny weather lasted through the entire three days of Sōsuke’s stay.
Sōsuke said he wanted to stay on awhile before returning. Oyone said they should indeed enjoy themselves a little longer. Yasui said they owed the fine weather to Sōsuke’s arrival. But at last the three of them packed up their wicker trunks and carryalls and returned to Kyoto. The rest of the winter had proved mild, with the north winds deflected back to the cold lands from whence they came. The patches of snow that clearly marked the mountaintops here and there gradually melted away, and then, all at once, green buds burst forth everywhere.
Whenever Sōsuke thought back on those months, it struck him that had the progression of the seasons been arrested then and there, and had he and Oyone been turned into stone on the spot, they would have been spared much pain. The drama commenced at winter’s end, when the faint signs of spring were just emerging, and reached its climax when the cherry blossoms scattered, giving way to fresh green leaves. It had been a life-and-death struggle. Their agony could be likened to that of raw, green bamboo being roasted over a hot flame until the oil came out. The unwary couple had been suddenly knocked over by a furious wind. By the time they got back on their feet, their entire world was covered with grit. They found themselves likewise encrusted, yet they had no inkling of when the storm wind had blown them over.
The world had heaped on the couple unmitigated censure for their moral failings. At first they were taken aback, but before they could accept the censure of their own consciences, they felt obliged to establish their own sanity. To their astonishment, what they discerned was not a pair of shameful sinners but rather two senseless people who had defied all logic. There was no excuse, no reason whatsoever for their actions. Therein lay their unspeakable anguish. They were left to contemplate ruefully how this cruel fate had lashed out against them so suddenly, as if on a whim, and, in a perversely playful way, ensnared two innocent mortals in its trap.
By the time the couple’s conduct had been fully exposed to the glaring scrutiny of others, they were themselves beyond any tortured moral equivocation. Submissively offering their pale foreheads, they were branded with the mark of burning flames. Henceforward they found themselves bound together by invisible chains and were constrained to walk lockstep, hand in hand, wherever they might go. They abandoned their parents. They abandoned their other relatives. They abandoned their friends. More generally, they abandoned society. Or they were abandoned by all of them. Sōsuke naturally faced expulsion from the university. He chose, for the sake of appearances, to withdraw formally, thus managing to salvage some shred of human dignity.
Such was the past shared by Sōsuke and Oyone.
15
BURDENED with such a past, the couple had gone off to Hiroshima, where they continued to suffer. Then they went on to Fukuoka. There, too, they suffered. Returning to Tokyo, they remained weighed down by the crushing burden of their past. It had proved impossible for them to enter into close relations with the Saekis. After Sōsuke??
?s uncle died, the attitude of his survivors, the aunt and Yasunosuke, grew ever more distant, such as to preclude for a lifetime a relationship based on full mutual trust. This year Sōsuke and Oyone had not even gone to pay them their annual year-end visit, nor had the Saekis come to visit them. Even Koroku, whom they had recently taken in, did not at heart respect his brother. When the couple first returned to Tokyo, Koroku had openly detested Oyone, and with a childlike forthrightness—a sentiment not lost either on her or on her husband. Under the sun the couple presented smiles to the world; under the moon they were lost in thought: And so they had quietly passed the years. Now another year had consumed itself and was about to end.
In the waning days of December all of the shops along the area’s main street were festooned with straw roping and paper amulets. Dozens of ornamental bamboo stalks flanked the busy street, reaching up to the shop eaves and rustling in the cold wind. Sōsuke had bought a slender pine bough, slightly over two feet long, and nailed it to a pillar on their gate. Then he placed a large, yellowish orange[63] on top of the New Year’s rice cakes and put them on a stand in the alcove. On the wall in back of this offering hung a black-ink sketch of doubtful quality, depicting a plum tree from which protruded a clamshell-shaped moon. Sōsuke himself was at a loss as to why the orange and rice cakes should be set before this peculiar scroll.
“What on earth is all this supposed to mean?” he asked Oyone as he studied his own handiwork.
Oyone had no idea, either, what was signified by this perennial decoration. “I really don’t know. But you should just leave them,” she said, turning toward the kitchen.
“So we can eat them later, I suppose . . .” Sōsuke ventured, tilting his head quizzically as he fussed a bit more over the cakes and orange.
The preparation of the New Year’s dumplings was left until the evening, when the sticky rice dough and a cutting board were brought into the sitting room so that everyone could take part. There were not enough knives to go around, however, and Sōsuke sat through the proceedings without lifting a finger. Koroku, by dint of brute strength, carved out the most dumplings; by the same token he produced the largest number of lopsided duds, some of them truly grotesque. Every time he came up with a particularly odd shape, Kiyo burst out laughing. With a wet dish towel to protect his hand, Koroku pushed the knife hard against the crusty edge of the dough. “The shape doesn’t matter so long as we can still eat them,” he said, his whole face flushed from exertion.
All that remained to welcome in the New Year was to roast the anchovies and fill the stacks of serving boxes with assorted vegetables boiled in soy. As the darkness gathered on this last night of the old year, Sōsuke, rent money in hand, went up to the Sakais to pay his respects. Intending to make his visit as unobtrusive as possible, he went around to the kitchen door, where bright lights blazed beyond the frosted glass and a great commotion could be heard. A shop boy clutching an account book, evidently come to settle some outstanding balance, rose from his perch on the raised threshold and greeted Sōsuke.
The master of the house and his wife were both in the sitting room. In one corner sat a tradesman in a liveried jacket who appeared to be well-acquainted with the household, his head bent over an ample pile of small straw wreaths, for which he was now assembling various attachments.[64] Beside him were strewn the necessary materials: sprigs of yuzuriha and urajiro,[65] sheets of calligraphic paper, and scissors. A young housemaid sat in front of Mrs. Sakai on the tatami, spreading out bills and coins that appeared to be change from some payment.
“Thanks for coming by,” Sakai said, looking over at Sōsuke. “Now that we’re down to the wire you must be very busy. You can see the mess things are around here. Please have a seat. Well, I’m sure you’re as fed up with this New Year’s business as I am. No matter how much fun something may be, after it’s rolled around more than forty times it gets pretty stale.”
Sakai spoke as though the New Year’s observances were a great nuisance, yet in his demeanor there was not a trace of exasperation. Belying his tone were lively words, a glowing face, and cheeks still tinged, it seemed, from the strength of the libations poured out at the dinner table. Sōsuke chatted for twenty or thirty minutes, smoking the cigarettes that were proffered, before taking his leave.
At home, Oyone was waiting, soap and towel in hand, to go out to the baths. She had planned to take Kiyo with her, it seemed, and so could not have left in her husband’s absence.
“Did something keep you up there? You’ve been gone quite a while.”
Oyone glanced at the clock. It was getting on toward ten. Besides the bath, Sōsuke was informed, Kiyo was supposed to have her hair done afterward. Even in a quiet, modest household like theirs such little crises could arise on New Year’s Eve.
Still standing, Sōsuke asked Oyone if all the year-end bills had been paid. Only one remained, she answered, for firewood. “If the man turns up, please pay him,” she said, removing from her breast pocket a soiled billfold of the sort men carry around, along with a change purse, which she handed to her husband.
Pocketing these, he asked, “Where is Koroku?”
“Oh, he went out. He said he wanted to take in the city lights on New Year’s Eve. In this frigid weather, no less! He certainly is putting himself out.” Oyone’s reply elicited giggles from Kiyo, who followed close on her heels.
“Well, he’s still young,” said Kiyo by way of justification, after she stopped laughing. Then she stepped down to the kitchen door and set out Oyone’s clogs for her.
“What lights did he hope to take in?” Sōsuke asked.
“Oh, he said something about the main avenue from Ginza to Nihombashi.”
Oyone had already stepped down into the well of the kitchen doorway. The sound of the back door being slid open reached Sōsuke’s ears soon after that. Sitting alone beside the brazier he gazed into the glowing charcoal until it was reduced to ashes. He could already imagine the Rising Suns that would be flying tomorrow, the sheen of silk top hats on the heads of men making their New Year’s rounds. He could hear the sounds of sabers rattling, horses neighing, and shuttlecocks being struck.[66] In just a few hours he would be obliged to observe those seasonal rituals supposedly designed, more than any others on the calendar, to bring about a sense of spiritual renewal.
Many scenes of apparent gaiety and conviviality thus flashed through his mind, but none caught his imagination and swept him up in the spirit of the season. He felt like an outsider at a banquet who, not having been invited, had no right to become intoxicated. But he was, by the same token, spared from getting drunk. No expectations for the future arose other than to continue his life with Oyone and to weather the ordinary vicissitudes of each passing year. It was a fitting emblem, then, of his everyday life for him to be sitting here alone on this tumultuous eve of the New Year, quietly minding the house.
It was well after ten when Oyone returned. In the lamplight her cheeks radiated an unusually healthy glow. Still warm from the bathhouse, she wore her kimono open at the neck, revealing her undergarment and the full length of her nape.
“It was absolutely mobbed,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. “It was hard to find a bucket or a faucet that was free.”
Kiyo did not return until after eleven. Thrusting her head out from behind the shoji, her hair neatly arranged, she apologized for being so late: She had been made to wait, she explained, while the hairdresser finished with a couple of other customers.
This left only Koroku, who was still out somewhere. When the clock struck midnight, Sōsuke suggested that they retire. Oyone, feeling that on this night of all nights in the year it would be odd not to wait up for Koroku, tried to keep their conversation going as best she could. Fortunately, it was not long before he turned up. He had strolled from Nihombashi to Ginza, he explained, but by the time he circled back toward Suitengū,[67] the outbound streetcars were packed and he’d had to let a number of them go by before he could board one.
Koroku ha
d stopped at the Hakubotan in hopes of winning the gold watch that was one of the luck-of-the-draw prizes the shop was giving away to lure customers. Having to buy something in order to qualify even as there was nothing he wanted, he settled on a box of little beanbags with bells on them. He had then seized one of the hundreds of numbered balloons that were being spit out by a machine. His number did not get him the gold watch, but it did win something else, he said, producing a packet: the store’s brand of powdered soap.
“Please take it,” he said, setting it down in front of Oyone. “It’s for you.” Next, he plunked down in front of Sōsuke the bell-studded beanbags, which had been sewed in the shape of plum blossoms, saying, “Please pass these on to the Sakai daughters.”
Thus concluded the small household’s meager celebration of New Year’s Eve.
16
THE SECOND day of the new year brought a snowfall that coated the capital and its festive straw-and-paper garlands with white. Before the roof became visible again, the couple was startled more than once by the sound of snow cascading down the tin flashing on the eaves. The loud thuds in the middle of the night were especially alarming. The mud that covered their lane as the snow melted, unlike the mud created in the wake of rain, refused to dry out in just a day or two. Every time Sōsuke went out he returned with his shoes in a complete mess, and as soon as he stepped into the house and caught sight of Oyone he would say, “This simply won’t do.”
Sōsuke’s manner suggested that his wife was at fault for the state of the lane outside their house. Finally she made as if to apologize. “Well, I beg your pardon, I am most dreadfully sorry!” she said, and burst out laughing. Sōsuke was at a loss for a suitably sharp quip.