From the time she began her studies, it was well known that Nobuko was a gifted young writer. There was scarcely anyone who doubted that sooner or later she would make her way into the literary world. It was even widely reported that while yet a student at her women’s university she had written more than three hundred pages of an autobiographical novel. Upon graduation, however, she found herself in circumstances sufficiently strained as to leave no room for idle self-indulgence: with her widowed mother resolved not to remarry and her sister, Teruko, still attending a girls’ school, she was obliged, in conformity to social custom, to set aside her creative endeavors and seek a marriage partner.
Their cousin Shunkichi, enrolled in the literature department of his own university, appeared to have likewise set his sights on a writer’s career. Nobuko had long been on friendly terms with him, and now their common interest in literary topics made for even closer ties. He did not, however, share her unbridled enthusiasm for Tolstoyism, then very much in vogue. He was forever making ironic comments à la française or speaking in aphorisms. His sardonic manner sometimes angered the intensely earnest Nobuko, but despite herself she was unable to be entirely contemptuous of his manner. Thus, even while still in university, they would not infrequently attend exhibits and concerts together, usually in the company of Teruko.
In their comings and goings, the three laughed and chattered freely. When, as they strolled along, the talk turned to matters beyond her ken, Teruko would peer childlike into the show windows at the parasols and silk shawls, without appearing to feel in the slightest neglected. Whenever Nobuko noticed this, she never failed to change the subject and to bring her sister immediately back into the conversation. Yet it was she herself who was the first to forget her sister. Shunkichi appeared to be oblivious to it all, tossing off clever comments as he swung his way slowly through the pell-mell of pedestrian traffic . . .
In the eyes of everyone, needless to say, the relationship between Nobuko and her cousin gave more than enough reason to suppose that the two would wed. Her classmates were filled with envy and spite at her prospects, and, as foolish as it may sound, it must be said that it was among those who knew Shunkichi the least that such emotions were the most intense. For her part, Nobuko denied—and yet by insinuation deliberately encouraged—the speculation. Thus, for as long as they were still in school, the image lingered in their minds, as clear as a wedding photograph, of Nobuko and Shunkichi as bride and groom.
Nobuko had scarcely completed her studies when she confounded the expectations of all by marrying a young commercial high school graduate. Within two or three days of the nuptials, they had gone to live Ōsaka, where he had recently joined a trading company. The well-wishers who saw them off at Tōkyō’s central railway station later said that Nobuko was her usual cheerful self, ever with a smile on her face, even as she tried to console her lachrymose sister, Teruko.
In their bewilderment and amazement, Nobuko’s classmates found themselves filled with ambivalent feelings: a strange sense of contentment on the one hand, a new and entirely different sense of envy on the other. Those with full confidence in her attributed the decision to her mother’s wishes; other, less trusting, souls let it be known that she had simply had a change of heart. Yet all of this, as the tongue-waggers themselves were well aware, was mere conjecture.
Why had not Nobuko married Shunkichi? For some time thereafter, such was the inevitable focus of conversation. Then two months went by; Nobuko was quite forgotten, to say nothing of any novel she had been rumored to be writing.
Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Ōsaka, she set about the task of becoming a new and presumably happy homemaker. The couple’s two-story rental house was situated in what even for the locality was a particularly quiet neighborhood, surrounded by a pinewood. Sometimes on lonely afternoons, amidst the smell of resin, the light of the sun, and the overpowering stillness that reigned whenever her husband was out, Nobuko, for no apparent reason, would find her spirits sinking. It was then that she invariably reached into a drawer of her sewing box to take out a letter lying folded up at the bottom. Written on pink stationery, it read:
My Dear Elder Sister,
. . . Even as I write, the thought that after today we shall no longer be together fills my eyes with an endless flood of tears. I beg you for forgiveness. As I contemplate the sacrifice that you have made for me, your unworthy sister, Teruko, words quite fail me.
You have accepted this marriage proposal for my sake, and though you have denied it, I know very well that such is true. The other evening, when we were together at the Imperial Theater, you asked whether I held a special place in my heart for Shun-san, saying that if I did, you would spare no effort on my behalf to see that we were married.
You must have read the letter that I intended to send to him. I confess that at the time of its disappearance, I felt terribly resentful. (Forgive me. Again, I scarcely realize myself just how inexcusable my conduct has been.) When I heard your kind offer of assistance, I could only understand it as ironically intended. You will not, of course, forget that I angrily responded by hardly responding at all. When several days later you suddenly agreed to be married, I should happily have died, so great was my desire to make amends.
As much as you may seek to conceal it, I know that you too care very much for Shun-san. Had you not been concerned for me, you would surely have married him. Now, having told me again and again that you had no such feelings, you have wed a man who is not of your heart.
My beloved elder sister, do you remember that I held the chicken in my arms and told her to bid you farewell? I wanted even that hen to join me in seeking your pardon. Our mother too, though she knows nothing of this, could only weep.
So tomorrow you will depart for Ōsaka. I implore you not to abandon Teruko, who every morning as she feeds her hen, out of sight and hearing of all, will be shedding tears as she thinks of you.
Whenever she read this girlish letter, Nobuko too would weep. Particularly on recalling how Teruko had quietly handed it to her as she was boarding the train at Tōkyō’s central station, she was moved beyond words, even if, at the same time, she also wondered whether her marriage had really been entirely the sacrificial act that Teruko imagined it to be. When her tears had dried, the suspicion weighed heavily upon her. For the most part, to dispel the gloom, she would will herself to bask in pleasant reverie, as she watched the sunlight falling on the pines beyond her window slowly turn to evening gold.
Three months went by. Nobuko and her husband spent their days contentedly, as is the wont of newlyweds. There was a hint of feminine reserve in his taciturn manner. On his return from the office, they would sit together for some time after supper. As she knitted, Nobuko would describe a recent novel or play that had become the talk of the town, her comments sometimes evoking an outlook on life colored by the Christian background of her university. His cheeks red with the sake he had drunk, the evening newspaper he had just begun to read spread out on his lap, he would listen without comment or opinion, a look of bemused curiosity on his face.
On Sundays they would generally go off on a sightseeing jaunt to Ōsaka or the vicinity. Whenever they rode the train or streetcar, Nobuko was struck by the vulgarity of her compatriots in western Japan, eating and drinking even on public conveyances without constraint. In that regard she was pleased at how remarkably refined her husband was. From his hat to his suit to his red-leather lace-ups, his clean-cut appearance, as though he might smell faintly of bathing soap, made for a refreshing contrast. Particularly during the summer holidays, when on a trip to Maiko they encountered his colleagues in a teahouse, she could not help feeling all the more proud of her husband, though she also noted that he seemed to be on oddly intimate terms with his crude companions.
It was during this time that Nobuko returned to the writing she had long since put aside, spending an hour or two in front of her desk when her husband was away. Hearing of this, he remarked with a slight smirk on his lips: “Well now, you’re to be an authoress after all.”
To her surprise, the ink did not flow. She would catch herself, chin in hand, staring out at the wood, ablaze in the sunlight, listening quite unconsciously to the whine of the cicadas.
The lingering heat of late summer gave way to early autumn. One morning as Nobuko’s husband was preparing to leave for work, he sought to change his sweat-stained collar, only to find unhappily that all the others had been sent to the laundry. Fastidious as he was, a look of displeasure clouded his face. As he drew up his suspenders, he said in an unusually biting tone: “We can’t have you spending all your time writing fiction.” Nobuko lowered her eyes and brushed the dust from his jacket.
Several days later, he looked up from reading a newspaper article about current food problems and remarked that Nobuko might think about ways to economize from month to month, adding: “You’re not going to be a college girl forever, you know.”
Nobuko made a halfhearted reply as she embroidered the gauze for her husband’s collar. “Rather than bother with all that needlework,” he nagged at her with uncharacteristic persistence, “it would be less expensive simply to buy ornamented collars.” Nobuko fell silent, eventually picked up a trade journal and, with an air of ennui, began to read it. Later that evening, as she switched off the electric lamp in their bedroom, Nobuko turned her back to him and whispered: “I shan’t be writing anymore.” He did not reply. A few moments later, she repeated the same words, more softly still; soon there was the sound of muffled weeping. Her husband tersely scolded her, but though she went on sobbing, she found that before she knew it she was tightly clinging to him.
The next morning they were again a happy couple. Soon, however, there was another incident when, on returning home from work after midnight, reeking of drink, he was in no condition even to take off his raincoat. Nobuko knitted her eyebrows and diligently set about helping him change his clothes. He nonetheless spoke to her sarcastically, slurring his words: “With my having stayed out so long, you must have made considerable progress with your novel.” Thus, with his womanish mouth, he nagged at her.
As Nobuko lay down to sleep, she again wept in spite of herself: “Ah, if Teruko could only see me, what tears would we shed together! Teruko, Teruko, on you alone can I depend!” With such thoughts, calling out again and again to her sister, she tossed and turned all night, forced to endure the smell of sake on her husband’s breath.
Again the next day harmony had been restored, quite of its own accord. Yet other scenes would follow, even as the autumn deepened.
It was now rare for Nobuko to sit at her desk, pen in hand, and her husband too seemed less inclined to listen to her speak of literature. Sitting across from each other at the long brazier, they began to pass away the evenings talking of mundane household expenses. Moreover, at least after his evening drink, he apparently found this topic of greatest interest. Nobuko would sometimes look sadly into his face, but he seemed to take no notice, chewing on the whiskers he had recently grown and speaking more animatedly than usual. “And what if we were to have children?” he would ask, wondering aloud to himself.
Meanwhile Shunkichi’s name began to appear in a monthly journal. Nobuko had had no contact with her cousin since her marriage, as though she had quite forgotten him. All she knew was what Teruko had written to her—that, for example, he had completed his studies in the literature department and had launched a literary coterie magazine. She had not wished to know more, but now that she was reading his stories, fond memories returned. As she turned the pages, she often smiled and laughed to herself. Even in his fiction, she could see, Shunkichi was a literary Miyamoto Musashi,1 a sword in each hand—a sardonic quip in one, a witticism or pun in the other. Still, it occurred to her, perhaps as no more than a fleeting thought, that behind her cousin’s easygoing irony there was something she had previously not known in him: a sense of lonely desperation. She felt a vague twinge of guilt.
She became more solicitous of her husband. Sitting across from her at the brazier in the chill of the evening, he would constantly stare into her bright and cheerful face, which appeared more youthful than ever, now invariably touched with cosmetics.
As she sat with her sewing work spread out before her, she would recall their wedding day. Her husband seemed both surprised and pleased at the precision of her memory. “So you remember even that, do you!” he would exclaim, whereupon she would fall silent, replying only with an endearing look in her eyes. She too sometimes wondered why indeed she had not forgotten such things.
Not long thereafter she received a letter from her mother informing her that Teruko was betrothed; for his bride-to-be, she noted, Shunkichi had found a new house on the outskirts of Tōkyō. Nobuko immediately wrote a long congratulatory message to both her mother and her younger sister.
“As it happens, I have no domestic help and so must most reluctantly decline to attend the ceremony . . . ,” she wrote. More than once, without knowing why, her hand faltered, as she looked up and turned her gaze ineluctably to the gray-blue thicket of pine trees under the early winter sky.
That evening she discussed the news with her husband. He listened amused, a familiar thin smile passing across his face, as Nobuko imitated her sister’s manner of speaking. Yet somehow she had the feeling that it was to herself that she was making the announcement.
“Well, time for sleep I suppose,” he said several hours later, stroking his soft mustache, as he listlessly stood up from the brazier. Nobuko, who had not decided on a wedding gift, sat with the tongs, idly writing letters in the ashes. Suddenly she raised her head and exclaimed: “How strange to think that now I shall be gaining a brother!”
“Of course,” her husband replied, “just as I have a sister.” In her eyes was the look of one deeply lost in thought, and though she heard his words, she did not reply.
Teruko and Shunkichi were married in the middle of December. Light snow began to fall just before noon of that day. Nobuko finished her solitary lunch, a lingering aftertaste of fish in her mouth. “Perhaps it is also snowing in Tōkyō,” she wondered as she sat ruminating at the brazier in the dark sitting room. The snow fell ever more heavily, and still the taste of fish remained.
In the autumn of the following year, Nobuko accompanied her husband on a business trip that brought her for the first time since her marriage to Tōkyō. With much to accomplish in a short time, he had no opportunity to go out with her, except for a visit to her mother just after their arrival. Thus, it was alone that she rode the streetcar to the terminal stop, drearily typical of the newly developed urban areas, and from there took a rickshaw the rest of the way, swaying back and forth.
Not far from the house, the residential area gave way to spring onion patches. The neighboring buildings were clusters of newly constructed rental dwellings, indistinguishable, one from the other: the door under the eaves, the photinia hedge, and the clothes hanging on the laundry pole. Nobuko was rather disappointed at how commonplace it seemed.
When she called out to announce herself, it was to her surprise that Shunkichi himself appeared. “Aha!” he exclaimed cheerily, welcoming the rare visitor. He looked much the same, though she saw that he had let his once closely cropped hair grow.
“It’s been a long time.”
“Well then, come in, come in. Unfortunately, I happen to be alone.”
“Where is Teruko? Is she out?”
“She went on an errand—along with the maid.”
Nobuko felt strangely uncomfortable as she stepped into the hallway and quietly took off her somewhat flamboyantly lined coat.
He invited her to sit in the eight-mat room that served as both library and drawing room. Everywhere there were heaps of books. The afternoon light that seeped through the sliding paper doors fell conspicuously on a small rosewood desk, about which lay an unmanageable mass of newspapers, magazines, and manuscript paper. The only evidence of a wifely presence was a new koto leaning against the wall of the alcove. Nobuko gazed long and curiously at what she saw before her.
“We knew from your letter that you were coming but not that it would be today.” Shunkichi lit a cigarette, a look of fond reminiscence in his eyes. “How is your life Ōsaka?”
“And how are you, Shun-san? Are you happy?”
As she offered this brief reply, Nobuko was conscious of happy moments from the past returning. The awkward memories of the last two years, with virtually no correspondence between them, now caused her surprisingly little anguish.
Warming their hands at the brazier, they found an inexhaustible variety of matters to discuss: Shunkichi’s novel, news of mutual friends, similarities and contrasts between Tōkyō and Ōsaka . . . Yet, as though by tacit agreement, nothing was said of how each lived from day to day. For Nobuko, this only reinforced her keen sensation that she was indeed talking to him, her cousin of old.
Sometimes there was silence between them. Nobuko would simply smile, looking down into the ashes of the brazier. In those moments, she felt a vague sense of expectation. This was each time dispelled as Shunkichi, whether deliberately or coincidentally, plunged into a new topic of conversation. Little by little she found herself looking irresistibly into his face. For his part, however, he puffed nonchalantly on a cigarette, revealing in his expression nothing the least bit odd.
Teruko returned. She seemed on the verge of rushing to clasp her hands, so happy she was to see her. Nobuko too was smiling, though already there were tears in her eyes. For a while they forgot Shunkichi as they plied each other with questions about their lives since the previous year. Teruko was particularly energetic, her cheeks flushed as she spoke, not neglecting to tell her sister all about the chickens that she continued to raise.
Shunkichi looked contentedly at the two as they talked, a cigarette in his mouth and all the while a smile on his face. When the maid returned, he took from her several postcards she had brought and, immediately turning to his desk, began to busy himself with his pen. Teruko appeared surprised to realize that the maid had been out:
“So no one was home when you arrived?” she asked.
“No, only Shun-san,” her sister replied in a tone that seemed to emphasize that there was nothing in this to trouble her.
With his back still turned, Shunkichi remarked to his wife: “You should thank your master, for it was he who served the tea!” The two women exchanged mischievous glances and giggled, but Teruko intentionally did not reply.
They now gathered around the dining table for supper. Teruko explained that the eggs they saw before them had all come from her own hens, which she kept in the garden.
“Human beings,” said Shunkichi, offering wine to Nobuko as he launched into a discourse of a socialistic hue, “sustain their lives through plunder. The eggs we see here are but one minor example.”
“How strange of you to say so!” Teruko replied with a childlike titter, for it was clearly Shunkichi among the three who had the greatest fondness for eggs. As for Nobuko, the ambience there at the table could only remind her of a lonely sitting room in a distant pinewood at dusk.
The conversation topics were still unexhausted, well after the last of the dessert fruit had been consumed. Shunkichi, now mellow with the wine, sat cross-legged under the electric light of the long autumn evening, delineating with gusto a school of sophistry quite his own. The animated discussion once again brought Nobuko back to more youthful days. Her eyes gleamed as she exclaimed: “I think I might just write a novel myself!”
Shunkichi replied with Gourmont’s aphorism: “The Muses are women, and you must be a man to possess them properly.”2 Nobuko and Teruko joined forces in refusing to accept the authority of such a pronouncement.
“If so,” said Teruko in all seriousness, “must one be a woman to compose music? After all, Apollo is male!”
The hour was already late, and in the end it was agreed that Nobuko would spend the night. Before going to bed, Shunkichi opened one of the shutters on the veranda and, dressed only in his nightclothes, stepped down into the small garden. He called out, as if to no one in particular:
“Come. There’s a fine moon out.”
Nobuko alone followed him. Taking off her split-toed socks and slipping into the clogs that lay on the stepping-stone, she felt the cold dew on her feet.
The moon was shining over the top of a thin and withered cypress in a corner of the garden. Shunkichi stood under it and looked up at the faint light of the night sky.
“My, how high the grass is!” said Nobuko, walking gingerly toward him, as though repelled by the overgrown garden. Shunkichi continued to gaze at the sky.
“Hmm, Thirteenth Night,”3 he murmured simply.
They had stood silently for some time when Shunkichi gave her a quiet look.
“Would you like to go look at the henhouse?”
Nobuko nodded silently. They walked slowly side by side toward the opposite corner of the garden until they reached the straw-mat enclosure. The smell of chickens was in the air. All lay in the faint moonlight or in shadows. Shunkichi looked inside.
“Asleep,” he said softly to her, though as speaking to himself alone.
Hens robbed of their eggs . . . , thought Nobuko involuntarily.
When the two returned to the house, they found Teruko standing in front of her husband’s desk, gazing vaguely at the electric light. Into the lampshade had crawled a green leafhopper.
The next morning Shunkichi put on his best suit and after breakfast made his way hurriedly to the threshold to go out, explaining that he had to visit the grave of a friend to mark the first anniversary of his death.
“All right? Please wait for me. I’ll be back about noon.”
He said this to Nobuko as he threw on his overcoat. She smiled but said nothing, holding out his trilby in her delicate hand.
Teruko saw him off and invited her elder sister to sit across from her at the long brazier as she dutifully busied herself with serving tea. She appeared to have still many a jolly topic to discuss: the housewife next door, the journalists who had come for an interview, the foreign opera troupe Shunkichi had taken her to see . . .
Nobuko’s spirits sank as she listened, and she suddenly realized that she was giving only perfunctory replies to what her sister was saying. At last her state of mind was apparent to Teruko as well. She stared worriedly into her sister’s face.
“What is wrong?” she asked. Nobuko herself did not know.
The wall clock struck ten. Nobuko listlessly looked up.
“It seems Shun-san won’t be returning any time soon.”
“No, not yet.” Her sister’s terse response struck her as somehow typifying that of a still contented bride. Again despite herself, she felt downcast.
“You are happy, aren’t you, Teruko?” She intended to sound lighthearted as she made the remark, burying her chin in her kimono collar, but spontaneously and inevitably a note of genuine envy had crept in.
Seemingly guileless, Teruko merrily laughed with a playful scowl: “You just wait, dear sister. I’ll get even for that!” She then added fawningly: “You say that knowing full well how happy you are!”
Nobuko heard the words as though she had been struck by a whip. She raised her eyelids ever so slightly.
“Do you really think so?” she asked in return, and was immediately sorry for her words. For an instant Teruko bore a strange look, and, as their eyes met, Nobuko saw that in her sister’s face was an irrepressible expression of regret.
“Well, I am happy if you think I am,” she said with a forced smile. The two fell silent, listening to the iron kettle as it simmered beneath the ticking wall clock.
Presently Teruko inquired quietly and ever so timidly: “But is he not kind to you?” Her voice clearly resonated with a sense of compassion, but Nobuko would have none of it. She lowered her eyes to the newspaper spread out across her lap and deliberately offered no reply. As in Ōsaka, the news was all about the price of rice.4
In the still sitting room could soon be heard the faint sound of weeping. Nobuko looked up from her newspaper and across the brazier to her sister, now holding a sleeve to her face.
“You needn’t cry,” she said. But it was no simple task to comfort her, and still her tears flowed. As she gazed wordlessly for some time at the shaking shoulders, Nobuko experienced a cruel sense of joy. Mindful that the maid should not hear the commotion, she looked into Teruko’s face and continued in a low voice.
“If I’ve been wrong, I apologize. If you are happy, Teru-san, then I shall feel gratified. Truly . . . If Shun-san loves you . . .”
As she spoke, her own voice, moved by her very words, gradually took on a mawkish tone. Now Teruko abruptly lowered her sleeve and raised her tear-stained face. In her eyes was kindled a new and strange emotion, not of sadness or anger but rather of irrepressible jealousy.
“Then why, even last night, did you . . .?” Before she could finish the sentence, she had buried her face in her sleeve and was convulsed with weeping . . .
Several hours later, Nobuko was jolting hurriedly toward the streetcar station in a canopied rickshaw. Her only view of the outside provided by a celluloid window in the front, she watched a slow but steady procession of drab suburban houses, together with thickets of brush and trees, their colors turning with the season. Only the cold autumn sky remained motionless, as fleecy clouds drifted by.
Nobuko’s mind was tranquil—the tranquillity of bleak resignation. When Teruko’s tearful paroxysms had subsided, peace between the two, though occasioned by renewed weeping, was easily restored. Yet Nobuko could not separate herself from grim reality. She had not waited for the return of her cousin, and as she stepped into the rickshaw, her heart congealed in spite: her sister was now forever a stranger.
She abruptly looked up and through the celluloid window saw Shunkichi coming along the squalid road, walking stick under his arm. Her heart began to palpitate: should she stop the rickshaw or go on? She tried to calm herself beneath the canopy, even as she vainly wavered. Within moments of meeting, she saw him, bathed in the soft sunlight, cautiously guiding his shoes around the many puddles in his path.
Shun-san! she thought for an instant of calling out. Indeed his familiar figure was just beside her carriage. But again she hesitated, and now, quite unawares, he had passed her by. The faintly overcast sky, the sparse rows of houses, the yellow tops of the tall trees . . . and then, as before, only the thin traffic of pedestrians along the streets of the dismal banlieue . . .
Autumn . . . , came the thought. Beneath the canopy she sat, chilled and pensive, overwhelmed by desolation.