Otomi's Chastity

I

It was past noon on May 14, the first year of Meiji. An order had gone out that afternoon: “At daybreak tomorrow, the Imperial Army will attack the Shogitai at Toeizan. All residents of the townhouses around Ueno are to evacuate at once, wherever they can.” It was that same afternoon.

In the small dry-goods shop in Shitaya-cho, 2-chome, after Furukawaya Seibei had gone, a large male calico cat sat quietly in the compact loaf posture before an abalone shell in the corner of the kitchen.

Inside the tightly shuttered house, it was pitch-dark even though it was still afternoon. Not a human sound could be heard. The only thing reaching the ears was the sound of the rain, which had fallen day after day without cease. Now and then it would suddenly pour down on the unseen roof, then after a while recede again high into the air. Each time the sound swelled, the cat’s amber eyes opened wide and round. Even in the kitchen, where one could scarcely make out the stove, a sinister phosphorescence seemed to appear at those moments. But once it knew that nothing had changed except the rush of rain, the cat remained motionless and narrowed its eyes again to slits.

After this had happened several times, the cat must finally have fallen asleep; it stopped opening its eyes at all. But the rain still alternated between sudden violence and quiet. Four o’clock, half past four—time slipped gradually toward dusk inside the rain’s monotonous sound.

Then, when it was nearing four-thirty, the cat suddenly opened its eyes wide as if startled by something. Its ears, too, seemed to prick up. Yet the rain had lessened far more than before. There was only the cry of a palanquin bearer hurrying past along the road—and nothing else. But after a few seconds of silence, the pitch-dark kitchen began, before one knew it, to grow faintly light. The stove blocking the narrow wooden floor, the gleam of water in the uncovered water jar, the sacred pine branch on the household gods’ shelf, the cord for the sliding window—one by one such things came into view. Staring at the water-door, now standing open, the cat rose uneasily to its feet.

The one who had opened that little door—indeed, who had not only opened it but in the end slid back the inner paper screen as well—was a beggar, soaked through like a drowned rat. With only his head, wrapped in an old towel, thrust forward, he stood for a while listening intently to the atmosphere of the silent house. But once he had made sure there was no human presence, he showed the fresh wet sheen on the straw rain cape that was the one new thing about him and quietly climbed into the kitchen. Flattening its ears, the cat backed away two or three steps. The beggar, however, was not startled. After shutting the screen behind him, he slowly removed the towel from his face. His face was buried in beard, and in two or three places medicated plasters had been stuck on it. Yet for all the grime, his features were rather ordinary.

“Mike. Mike.”

As he shook the water from his hair and wiped the drops from his face, the beggar called the cat’s name in a low voice. Perhaps the cat recognized the voice; it let its flattened ears return to normal. But it still remained where it was, casting wary glances at his face from time to time. Meanwhile the beggar removed his rain cape and, with mud-caked feet so filthy their color could not be seen, dropped cross-legged in front of the cat.

“Calico old fellow, what’s the matter? From the look of it, everyone left you behind, didn’t they?”

Chuckling to himself, the beggar stroked the cat’s head with his big hand. The cat shrank back a little. But it did not leap away; rather, it stayed there and slowly began to narrow its eyes again. The beggar stopped petting it and this time drew from inside his old summer kimono a greasy pistol. In the uncertain dimness he began to inspect the trigger.

A beggar handling a pistol in the kitchen of a deserted house steeped in the atmosphere of impending battle—that was certainly a scene as novelistic as it was strange. Yet the cat, its eyes half-closed, remained seated with its back rounded, coldly composed, as if it knew every secret.

“Tomorrow, old Mike, bullets will come falling around this neighborhood like rain. If one hits you, you’ll die, so no matter what kind of uproar breaks out tomorrow, hide under the porch all day. …”

Still examining the pistol, the beggar spoke to the cat from time to time.

“You and I have been old acquaintances a long while now. But today’s our farewell. Tomorrow will be a terrible unlucky day for you too. I may die tomorrow myself. And even if I manage not to die, I don’t mean ever again to go rummaging through garbage heaps with you. If that happens, you’ll be delighted, I suppose.”

As he spoke, the rain suddenly began once more to make a noisy racket. The clouds must have pressed so close to the roof that they seemed to smoke around the ridge tiles. The dim light floating in the kitchen grew fainter still. But the beggar, without raising his face, carefully loaded ammunition into the pistol he had just finished inspecting.

“Or will you at least miss me a little? Then again, they say a cat forgets even three years of kindness, so I can’t count on you either. But no matter. The only thing is, if I’m gone too—”

The beggar suddenly broke off. Someone seemed to be approaching outside the water-door. For him, pocketing the pistol and turning around were one and the same movement. No—at that same instant the paper screen by the water entrance was flung open with a rattle. The beggar, instinctively braced, met the intruder’s eyes head-on.

The person who had opened the screen let out a faint cry of “Ah!” as soon as she saw the beggar, as if she herself had been caught off guard. It was a young woman, barefoot, carrying a broad black umbrella. Almost impulsively, she tried to leap back out into the rain from which she had come. But recovering from that first shock, she peered into the beggar’s face through the kitchen’s faint light.

The beggar, perhaps dumbfounded, remained with one knee raised from his old summer kimono, staring fixedly back at her. His eyes no longer showed the same guarded look as before. For a little while the two silently held each other’s gaze.

“Why, aren’t you Shinko?”

A little calmer now, she spoke to him. Grinning, the beggar bowed to her two or three times.

“My apologies. The rain came down so hard I just slipped into your empty house—but no, I haven’t exactly changed professions and taken to burglary.”

“You frightened me, truly. However much you say you’re no burglar, there are limits to shamelessness, aren’t there?”

Shaking the drops from her umbrella, she added irritably,

“Come on, get out over there. I’m going into the house.”

“Yes, I’ll go. Even if you didn’t tell me to, I’d go. But, miss, you still hadn’t evacuated?”

“I did evacuate. I did, but—that doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Then you forgot something, I suppose. Well, come on in this way. The rain’s hitting you there.”

Still looking resentful, the woman gave no answer to his words. She sat down on the wooden floor by the water entrance, stretched her muddy feet toward the sink, and began splashing water over them. Sitting there placidly cross-legged, the beggar stroked his bearded chin and stared at her openly. She was a country-bred servant girl, darkish in complexion, with freckles across her nose, dressed in a plain unlined handwoven cotton kimono with only a Kokura sash around her waist. Yet there was in her lively features and firm, well-fed body a beauty that suggested fresh peaches or pears.

“To come back through all this commotion, you must have forgotten something important. What is it, that thing you forgot? Eh, miss—Otomi?”

Shinko asked again.

“What business is it of yours? Instead of that, hurry up and get out.”

Otomi’s answer was brusque. But suddenly, as if something had occurred to her, she looked up at Shinko’s face and seriously asked,

“Shinko, you haven’t seen the house cat Mike, have you?”

“Mike? Mike’s right here—oh? Where the devil did he get to?”

The beggar looked around. Somehow the cat had already taken up its loaf posture atop the shelf among the mortar bowl and iron pot. Both Shinko and Otomi saw it at once. She threw down the ladle and, as if forgetting the beggar’s very existence, sprang up onto the wooden floor. Smiling brightly, she called to the cat on the shelf.

Shinko shifted his eyes in puzzlement from the cat on the dark shelf to Otomi.

“A cat, miss? That’s the thing you forgot?”

“And if it is? Mike, Mike, come down now.”

Shinko suddenly burst out laughing. In the midst of the roaring rain, the sound echoed almost eerily. At once Otomi’s cheeks flushed hotter with anger, and she shouted at him:

“What’s so funny? The mistress of this house is half mad because she forgot Mike, aren’t you aware of that? She’s crying without stop, saying, ‘What if Mike gets killed?’ I felt sorry for her too, so I came all the way back through the rain. Haven’t I?—”

“All right, all right. I won’t laugh anymore.”

Still laughing, Shinko cut her off.

“I won’t laugh anymore. But think about it. A battle’s to begin tomorrow, and yet over one cat or two—however you look at it, it’s funny, no mistake. And between you and me, there’s no one stingier or more pigheaded than the mistress of this house. To send someone looking for that old Mike of all things—”

“Be quiet! I don’t want to hear you slandering my mistress!”

Otomi almost stamped her foot. But to her fury, the beggar seemed strangely unshaken. On the contrary, he kept his rude, intent gaze fixed on her figure. And in fact, just then she looked the very embodiment of a wild sort of beauty. Her rain-soaked clothes and underskirt clung everywhere to her skin and spoke openly of the body beneath—of a young body that proclaimed at a glance its untouched girlhood. Without taking his eyes from her, Shinko went on talking, laughing as he did.

“In the first place, to send you to look for that cat tells the whole story, doesn’t it? Isn’t that so? By now no houses around Ueno should still be occupied. So even if the townhouses are still standing in rows, it’s the same as an empty field. Wolves may not come out, but there’s no knowing what danger you might run into—that’s what anyone would naturally say, isn’t it?”

“Instead of worrying about useless things, get the cat down for me and be done with it. It isn’t as if a battle has already begun, and what danger is there?”

“Don’t be absurd. If a young woman walking alone isn’t in danger at a time like this, then danger means nothing. Look at it plainly: there’s no one here but you and me. Suppose I happened to get funny ideas, miss—what would you do then?”

Shinko’s tone grew harder and harder to place, half-joking and half-serious. But in Otomi’s clear eyes there was not even a shadow of fear.

Only her cheeks seemed to have grown redder than before.

“What is this, Shinko? Are you trying to frighten me?”

As if threatening him in return, Otomi stepped closer.

“Frighten you? If it were only that, it would be fine, wouldn’t it? Even men with gold braid on their shoulders can be nasty in this world. And I’m only a beggar. It may not stop at frightening. If I really got certain ideas…”

Before he could finish, his head was struck sharply. Otomi had already raised the black umbrella high.

“Don’t get above yourself.”

She brought the umbrella down on his head with all her strength. Shinko tried to dodge in an instant, but the umbrella struck his shoulder through the old summer kimono. Startled by the commotion, the cat kicked an iron pot off the shelf and leapt up onto the household gods’ shelf. At the same time the sacred pine branch there and the oil-shining lamp plate tumbled down onto Shinko. Before he could manage to jump up, Otomi struck him again and again with the umbrella.

“You brute! You brute!”

She kept swinging the umbrella. But while being beaten, Shinko finally snatched it away. And no sooner had he thrown it aside than he lunged savagely at Otomi. For a short while they grappled on the narrow wooden floor. In the midst of the struggle, the rain gathered itself again onto the kitchen roof with a dreadful sound. As the noise swelled, the light at the same time darkened visibly. However much he was beaten or scratched, Shinko threw himself at her recklessly, trying to pin her down. But after several failed attempts, just as he finally managed to seize hold of her, he suddenly sprang back toward the water entrance as if repelled.

“You she-devil! …”

With the screen behind him, Shinko glared at Otomi. Her hair disheveled now, she sat flat on the wooden floor holding in a reverse grip a razor she must have had tucked into her sash. It had a murderous air about it, and yet at the same time something oddly sensual—like the cat on the household gods’ shelf with its back arched high. For a moment the two remained silent, probing one another’s eyes. Then, after an instant, Shinko deliberately showed a cold smile and drew out the pistol from his breast.

“Go on, struggle all you like.”

Slowly the muzzle turned toward Otomi’s breast. Even then she did not speak; she merely stared at his face with a look of bitter frustration. Seeing that she made no outcry, Shinko seemed suddenly to think of something. He raised the muzzle upward. At the end of that line, in the dim light, glimmered the cat’s amber eyes.

“All right then, Otomi—”

As if savoring her torment, Shinko spoke in a voice edged with laughter.

“When this pistol goes bang, that cat drops headfirst from up there. Same with you. Well?”

His finger was already on the point of pulling the trigger.

“Shinko!”

Otomi suddenly cried out.

“Don’t. Don’t shoot.”

Shinko turned his eyes toward her. But the pistol was still aimed at the calico cat.

“Of course I know I shouldn’t.”

“It would be cruel. Spare Mike, please.”

Her whole expression had changed; she looked anxiously at him now, showing fine white teeth between lips that trembled a little. Half mocking, half suspicious, Shinko gazed at her face. At last he lowered the pistol. At the same moment relief spread over Otomi’s features.

“All right, I’ll spare the cat. On one condition.”

Shinko declared arrogantly.

“In exchange, I’ll borrow your body.”

Otomi’s eyes shifted aside for a second. In that instant, hatred, anger, disgust, sorrow, and all manner of feelings seemed to flare together inside her. Watching those changes closely, Shinko sidled behind her and slid open the paper screen to the sitting room. Compared with the kitchen, that room was naturally even darker. Still, since the family had fled, one could plainly make out the teacup cupboard and the long brazier they had left behind. Standing there, Shinko let his eyes drop to the collar of Otomi’s kimono, where a faint sheen of sweat seemed to show. Sensing his gaze, she twisted her body around and looked back up at his face.

Somehow her own face had already regained the same vivid color it had had before. But Shinko, flustered, blinked oddly once and suddenly pointed the pistol back toward the cat.

“Don’t. I said don’t—”

At the same time as she tried to stop him, Otomi let the razor fall to the floor.

“If you don’t want that, then go in there.”

Shinko was smiling faintly.

“Disgusting.”

Otomi muttered bitterly. But abruptly she stood up, and with the air of a woman acting out of sullen resignation, she went quickly into the sitting room. Shinko seemed somewhat surprised at how readily she yielded. By then the rain had quieted considerably. What was more, perhaps because a shaft of evening sun had broken through the clouds, the dark kitchen gradually grew lighter. Standing there, Shinko listened intently to the stillness of the sitting room. The sound of a Kokura sash being untied, the sound of someone lying down on the tatami—and after that, silence.

After hesitating a little, Shinko stepped into the dimly bright room. In the middle of it, Otomi lay alone on her back, her face covered by her sleeve, motionless. The instant he saw her, he turned and fled back into the kitchen. An indescribable expression flooded his face. It looked like disgust, and at the same time like shame. No sooner had he stepped out onto the wooden floor, still with his back toward the sitting room, than he suddenly began to laugh in distress.

“It was a joke, Otomi. Just a joke. Come back out here now. …”

A few minutes later, Otomi, with the cat tucked inside her kimono, was already holding her umbrella in one hand and talking quite casually with Shinko, who sat on a torn straw mat.

“Miss, there’s something I’d like to ask you. …”

Still looking awkward, Shinko avoided meeting her eyes.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing much, only—well, to entrust your body like that is a grave matter in a woman’s life. Yet you, Otomi—you were willing to trade it for that cat’s life. Isn’t that a bit too reckless, even for you?”

Shinko fell silent for a moment. Otomi only smiled and fondled the cat in her bosom.

“Do you really love that cat so much?”

“Well, Mike is dear to me, yes—and…”

Her answer trailed off.

“Or are you perhaps so devoted to your master’s household, famous for it even among the neighbors, that you thought if Mike were killed you’d have no way to answer to your mistress?”

“Yes, Mike is dear to me. And my mistress matters too, of course. But really it was just—”

Tilting her head slightly, Otomi looked off as though gazing into the distance.

“How shall I put it? At that moment, I felt that unless I did that, something would remain unsettled in me.”

Several minutes later still, left alone, Shinko sat in the kitchen blankly hugging his knees inside his old summer kimono. Dusk was pressing steadily inward here too, amid the sparse sound of rain. The cord of the sliding window, the water jar by the sink—one by one such things vanished from sight. Then from Ueno came the bell, each heavy stroke muffled by rain clouds as it spread its ponderous sound. Startled by it, Shinko looked around at the hushed room. Then groping his way down to the sink, he filled a ladle brimming with water.

“Murakami Shinzaburo Minamoto no Shigemitsu—today, at least, you’ve been beaten fair and square.”

Muttering that, he drank the twilight water with obvious relish. …

* * *

On March 26, 1890, Otomi was walking along Hirokoji in Ueno with her husband and their three children.

That day happened to be the opening ceremony of the Third National Industrial Exposition at Takenodai. And the cherry blossoms around the Kuromon Gate were already mostly in bloom. So the crowd along Hirokoji was nearly dense enough to push one back. From the direction of Ueno there streamed without pause lines of carriages and rickshaws, apparently returning from the opening ceremony. In those carriages and rickshaws rode such men as Maeda Masana, Taguchi Ukichi, Shibusawa Eiichi, Tsuji Shinji, Okakura Kakuzo, and Shimojo Masao.

Her husband, carrying their five-year-old second son and letting their eldest cling to his sleeve, picked his way anxiously through the dizzying traffic of people, occasionally glancing back over his shoulder at Otomi. Holding their little daughter by the hand, Otomi answered each glance with a cheerful smile. To be sure, the twenty years that had passed had brought age to her as well. But the clear brightness in her eyes was not much changed from long ago.

Around 1872 or 1873, she had married the man who was now her husband, a nephew of Furukawaya Seibei. At that time he had had a small clock shop in Yokohama; now he ran one somewhere in Ginza. …

Otomi happened to raise her eyes. Just then, in the passing two-horse carriage, Shin-kō sat at his ease. Shin-kō— of course, the Shin-kō of today was all but buried beneath the emblems of honor: an ostrich-plume crest, severe gold aiguillettes, and several decorations large and small. Yet the ruddy face looking her way from between his grizzled whiskers was unmistakably that of the beggar of long ago. Otomi involuntarily slowed her step. But strangely enough, she was not startled. Shin-kō was no ordinary beggar—somehow she had always known that. Whether it was his face, or the way he spoke, or the pistol he carried, she could not have said; at any rate, she had known it. Without even moving her brows, Otomi stared fixedly at Shin-kō’s face. Shin-kō too, whether by design or by chance, kept his eyes on hers. The memory of that rainy day twenty years before rose in Otomi’s heart at that instant with painful vividness. On that day, in her thoughtlessness, she had tried to surrender herself to Shin-kō in order to save a single cat. What had moved her to do so? She did not know. And Shin-kō, placed in such a situation, had refused even to touch with a finger the body she had thrown before him. What had moved him? She did not know that either. Yet, though she did not know, all of it seemed to Otomi perfectly natural—natural beyond question. As she passed the carriage, she felt as if something in her heart were opening and stretching free.

When Shin-kō’s carriage had gone by, her husband turned from the crowd and looked back at Otomi once more. And when she saw his face, she smiled at him as if nothing at all had happened—brightly, happily. ...

(August, 1922)