Thousand Cranes (7 page)

The faint blood color only made the pallor more striking.

A dull pain ran through his chest. ‘I thought how you must hate me.’

‘Hate you? Do you think Mother hated you?’

‘No. But wasn’t it I who made her die?’

‘She died because of herself. That is what I think. I worried over it for a whole week.’

‘You’ve been here alone all the time?’

‘Yes. But that is the way we were, Mother and I.’

‘I made her die.’

‘She died because of herself. If you say it was you who made her die, then it was I even more. If I have to blame anyone, it should be myself. But it only makes her death seem dirty, when we start feeling responsible and having regrets. Regrets and second thoughts only make the burden heavier for the one who has died.’

‘That may be true. But if I hadn’t met her …’ Kikuji could say no more.

‘I think it’s enough if the dead person can be forgiven. Maybe Mother died asking to be forgiven. Can you forgive her?’ Fumiko stood up.

At Fumiko’s words, a curtain in Kikuji’s mind seemed to disappear.

Was there also a lightening of the burden for the dead? he wondered.

Worrying oneself over the dead – was it in most cases a mistake, not unlike berating them? The dead did not press moral considerations upon the living.

Kikuji looked again at Mrs Ota’s photograph.

2

Fumiko brought in two bowls on a tray.

They were cylindrical, a red Raku and a black Raku.

She set the black before Kikuji. In it was ordinary coarse tea.

Kikuji lifted the bowl and looked at the potter’s mark. ‘Who is it?’ he asked bluntly.

‘Ryōnyū,
²
I believe.’

‘And the red?’

‘Ryōnyū too.’

‘They seem to be a pair.’ Kikuji looked at the red bowl, which lay untouched at her knee.

Though they were ceremonial bowls, they did not seem out of place as ordinary teacups; but a displeasing picture flashed into Kikuji’s mind.

Fumiko’s father had died and Kikuji’s father had lived on; and might not this pair of Raku bowls have served as teacups when Kikuji’s father came to see Fumiko’s mother? Had they not been used as ‘man-wife’ teacups, the black for Kikuji’s father, the red for Fumiko’s mother?

If they were by Ryōnyū, one could be a little careless with them. Might they not also have been taken along on trips?

Fumiko, who knew, was perhaps playing a cruel joke on him.

But he saw no malice, indeed no calculation, in her bringing out the two bowls.

He saw only a girlish sentimentality, which also came to him.

He and Fumiko, haunted by the death of her mother, were unable to hold back this grotesque sentimentality. The pair of Raku bowls deepened the sorrow they had in common.

Fumiko too knew everything: Kikuji’s father and her mother, her mother and Kikuji, her mother’s death.

And they had shared the crime of hiding the suicide.

Fumiko had evidently wept as she made tea. Her eyes were a little red.

‘I’m glad I came today,’ said Kikuji. ‘I could take what you said a few minutes ago to mean that between the living and the dead there can be no forgiving and not forgiving; but I may think instead that I’ve been forgiven by your mother?’

Fumiko nodded. ‘Otherwise Mother can’t be forgiven. Not that she could forgive herself.’

‘But in a way it’s rather terrible that I’m here with you.’

‘Why?’ She looked up at him. ‘You mean it was wrong of her to die? I was very bitter myself – I thought that no matter how she had been misunderstood, death could not be her answer. Death only cuts off understanding. No one can possibly forgive that.’

Kikuji was silent. He wondered if Fumiko too had pushed her way to a final confrontation with the secret of death.

It was strange to be told that death cut off understanding.

The Mrs Ota whom Kikuji knew now was rather different from the mother Fumiko knew.

Fumiko had no way of knowing her mother as a woman.

To forgive or to be forgiven was for Kikuji a matter of being rocked in that wave, the dreaminess of the woman’s body.

It seemed that the dreaminess was here too in the pair of Raku bowls.

Fumiko did not know her mother thus.

It was strange and subtle, the fact that the child should not know the body from which she had come; and, subtly, the body itself had been passed on to the daughter.

From the moment she had greeted him in the doorway, Kikuji had felt something soft and gentle. In Fumiko’s round, soft face he saw her mother.

If Mrs Ota had made her mistake when she saw Kikuji’s father in Kikuji, then there was something frightening, a bond like a curse, in the fact that, to Kikuji, Fumiko resembled her mother; but Kikuji, unprotesting, gave himself to the drift.

Looking at the uncared-for little mouth, the lower lip thrust forward as if in a pout, he felt that there was no fighting the girl.

What could one do to make her resist?

That question would have to be asked about Kikuji himself. ‘Your mother was too gentle to live,’ he said. ‘I was cruel to her, and I suspect that I was hitting at her with my own moral weakness. I’m a coward.’

‘Mother was wrong. Mother was so wrong. Your father, then you – but I have to think that Mother’s real nature was different.’ She spoke hesitantly, and flushed. The blood color was warmer than before.

Avoiding Kikuji’s eyes, she bowed and turned slightly away.

‘But from the day after Mother died, she began to seem more beautiful. Is it just in my mind, or is she really more beautiful?’

‘The two are the same, I suppose, with the dead.’

‘Maybe Mother died from not being able to stand her own ugliness.’

‘That doesn’t seem likely.’

‘It was too much – she couldn’t bear it.’ Tears came to Fumiko’s eyes. Perhaps she wanted to speak of her mother’s love for Kikuji.

‘The dead are our property, in a way. We must take care of them,’ said Kikuji. ‘But they all died in such a hurry.’

She seemed to understand: he meant her parents and his own.

‘You’re an orphan now, and so am I.’ His own words made him aware that if Mrs Ota had not had this daughter, Fumiko, he would have had darker, more perverse thoughts about her.

‘You were very good to my father. Your mother told me so.’ He had said it, and he hoped it had seemed unaffected.

He saw nothing wrong in talking of the days when his father had come to this house as the lover of Fumiko’s mother.

Suddenly, Fumiko make a deep bow.

‘Forgive her. Mother was really too sad. After that, I hardly knew from one minute to the next when she might die.’ Her head was still bowed. Motionless, she began to weep, and the strength left her shoulders.

Because she had not expected visitors, she was barefoot. Her feet were curled beneath her, half hidden by her skirt, and she presented a thoroughly shrunken, helpless figure.

The red Raku bowl was almost against her hair, so long that it fell to the floor matting.

She left the room with both hands pressed to her face.

Moments passed, and she did not come back. ‘I believe I’ll be leaving, then,’ said Kikuji.

She came to the door with a bundle.

‘I’m afraid it will be heavy, but try not to mind too much.’

‘Oh?’

‘The Shino.’

He was astonished at her quickness: she had emptied the jar, dried it, found a box for it, and wrapped it in a kerchief.

‘I’m to take it already? But it had flowers in it.’

‘Please do take it.’

‘If I may, then,’ said Kikuji. The quickness, he sensed, had come from an excess of grief.

‘But I won’t come to see how you use it.’

‘Why not?’

Fumiko did not answer.

‘Well, take care of yourself.’ He started out.

‘Thank you. It was good of you to come. And – don’t worry about Mother. Hurry and get married.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

He turned back toward her, but she did not look up.

3

Kikuji tried putting white roses and pale carnations in the Shino jar.

He was haunted by the thought that he was falling in love with Mrs Ota, now that she was dead.

And he felt that the love was made known through the daughter, Fumiko.

On Sunday, he telephoned her.

‘You’re at home by yourself?’

‘Yes. It’s a little lonely, of course.’

‘You shouldn’t be alone.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘I can almost hear the quiet.’

Fumiko laughed softly.

‘Suppose we have a friend look in on you.’

‘But I keep thinking that whoever comes will find out about Mother.’

Kikuji could think of no answer. ‘It must be inconvenient. You have no one to watch the house when you want to go out.’

‘Oh, I can always lock it.’

‘Suppose you come and see me, then.’

‘Thank you. One of these days.’

‘Have you been well?’

‘I’ve lost weight.’

‘And are you able to sleep?’

‘Hardly at all.’

‘That will never do.’

‘I’m thinking of closing the house soon and taking a room in a friend’s house.’

‘Soon – when will that be?’

‘As soon as I can sell the house.’

‘The house?’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean to sell it?’

‘Don’t you think I should?’

‘I wonder. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of selling my own.’

Fumiko did not answer.

‘Hello? There’s no use talking about these things over the telephone. It’s Sunday and I’m at home. Can you come over?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have flowers in the Shino, but if you come I can try putting it to the use it was meant for.’

‘A tea ceremony?’

‘Not a real ceremony. But it’s a great waste not to use Shino for tea. You can’t bring out the real beauty of a tea piece unless you set it off against its own kind.’

‘But I look even worse than when you were here. I can’t see you.’

‘There will be no other guests.’

‘Even so.’

‘You won’t reconsider?’

‘Good-by.’

‘Take care of yourself. Excuse me – there seems to be someone at the door. I’ll call again.’

It was Kurimoto Chikako.

A grim look came over Kikuji’s face. Had she heard?

‘It’s been so gloomy. Rain, rain. The first good day in such a long time, and I’m taking advantage of it.’ She was already looking at the Shino. ‘From now into the summer, I’ll have more time from lessons, and I thought I’d like to come and sit in your cottage for a while.’

She brought out her offerings, sweets and a folding fan. ‘I suppose the cottage will be all mildewed again.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Mrs Ota’s Shino? May I look at it?’ She spoke casually, and turned to examine the Shino.

As she bent toward it, the heavy-boned shoulders fell back. She seemed to exude venom.

‘Did you buy it?’

‘It was a present.’

‘Quite a present. A keepsake?’ She raised her head and turned back to him. ‘Really, shouldn’t you have paid for a piece like this? I’m a bit shocked that you took it from the girl.’

‘I’ll give the question some thought.’

‘Do. You have all sorts of tea pieces that belonged to Mr Ota, but your father paid for every one of them. Even after he was taking care of Mrs Ota.’

‘That’s not a matter I want to discuss with you.’

‘I see, I see,’ said Chikako airily, and stood up. He heard her talking to the maid, and she emerged in an apron.

‘So Mrs Ota committed suicide.’ The show of unconcern was no doubt designed to catch him off guard.

‘She did not.’

‘Oh? But I knew immediately. There was always something weird about that woman.’ She looked at him. ‘Your father used to say that he would never understand her. To another woman, of course, the problem was a little different, but there was something childish about her, no matter how old she got. Well, she wasn’t my sort. Sticky and clinging, somehow.’

‘May we ask you to stop slandering the dead?’

‘Oh, please do. But isn’t this particular dead person still trying to ruin your marriage? Your father suffered a great deal at the hands of that woman.’

It was Chikako who had suffered, thought Kikuji.

Chikako was his father’s plaything for a very short time. She had no cause to indict Mrs Ota. Still, one could imagine how she had hated the woman who was with his father to the end.

‘You’re too young to understand such people. For your sake, it was good of her to die. That’s the truth.’

Kikuji turned aside.

‘Were we to stand for it, having her interfere with your marriage plans? She died because she couldn’t keep down the devil in her even when she knew she was doing wrong. That’s the truth too. And then being the woman she was, she thought she would die and go meet your father.’

Kikuji felt cold.

Chikako stepped down into the garden. ‘I’m going out to the cottage and quiet my nerves.’

He sat for a time looking at the flowers.

The white and the pale pink seemed to melt into a mist with the Shino.

The figure of Fumiko, weeping alone in her house, came to him.

Her Mother’s Lipstick

Back in his bedroom after brushing his teeth, Kikuji saw that the maid had hung a gourd in the alcove. It contained a single morning glory.

‘I’ll be getting up today,’ he said, though he got into bed again. Throwing his head back, he looked up at the flower.

‘There was a morning glory in bloom,’ said the maid from the next room. ‘You’ll be at home again today, then, sir?’

‘One more day. But I’ll be getting up.’ Kikuji had been away from work for several days with a headache and cold. ‘Where was the morning glory?’

‘It had climbed the ginger at the far side of the garden.’

It was a plain indigo morning glory, probably wild, and most ordinary. The vine was thin, and the leaves and blossom were small.

But the green and the deep blue were cool, falling over a red-lacquered gourd dark with age.

The maid, who had been with the family from his father’s time, was imaginative in her way.