Oritsu and the Children

I

On a rainy afternoon, Yoichi, who had graduated from middle school that year, sat at his desk upstairs with his back rounded, composing a song in the manner of Kitahara Hakushu. Just then his father’s voice, calling, “Hey,” suddenly startled his ears. Even before he had time to turn around in alarm, he did remember to hide the draft beneath the dictionary that happened to be there. Fortunately, however, his father, Kenzo, still wearing his summer overcoat, was only peering in as far as his chest from the dim foot of the stairs.

“Oritsu’s condition doesn’t seem very good. Send a telegram to Shintaro.”

“Is it that bad?”

Yoichi raised his voice without thinking.

“Well, she’s usually so robust that I doubt anything sudden will happen, but... it would be better to let Shintaro know at least...”

Yoichi cut his father off.

“What does Mr. Tozawa say?”

“He says it’s a duodenal ulcer after all. He says there’s probably nothing to worry about, but...”

Kenzo seemed strangely anxious to avoid meeting Yoichi’s eyes.

“Still, I’ve already asked Dr. Tanimura to come tomorrow. Mr. Tozawa said the same. Well then, I’m counting on you to notify Shintaro. You know where he’s lodging, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know. Are you going somewhere, Father?”

“I’m just going to the bank. Oh, and Aunt Asakawa is downstairs.”

When Kenzo disappeared, it seemed to Yoichi that the sound of the rain outside suddenly grew louder. This was no time to dawdle—he felt that distinctly enough. He got to his feet at once and, running one hand along the brass rail, clattered down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs was a spacious shop, with cardboard boxes of knitted goods packed tightly on shelves to the right and left. In the rainy daylight at the front of the shop, Kenzo, wearing a Panama hat, stood with his back turned this way, already lowering one foot into the wooden clogs that had been set neatly at the entrance.

“Sir. There’s a call from the factory. They ask whether you’ll be coming over there today...”

Just as Yoichi came into the shop, a clerk speaking into the telephone called this out to Kenzo. There were four or five other clerks as well, by the safe and beneath the household shrine, looking less like they were seeing their employer off than like they were waiting for him to leave.

“Tell them I can’t come today. Tell them I’ll come tomorrow.”

As if that had been the signal for it, Kenzo opened his large Western umbrella and strode quickly out into the street. For a brief moment Yoichi saw him cast a faint shadow across the asphalt, lightly brushed with mud.

“Is Kamiyama not here?”

Sitting down at the bookkeeping desk, Yoichi looked up at one of the clerks.

“He just went to run some errand in the back. Ryo—do you know where?”

“Kamiyama? I don’t know,” answered the clerk, still squatting on the step up to the floor; then he began whistling.

Meanwhile Yoichi was busily moving his fountain pen over a telegram form lying there. His older brother, who had entered a higher school in a provincial city the previous autumn—darker-skinned than Yoichi, stouter than Yoichi—seemed even now to float vividly somewhere in his mind. “MOTHER WORSE, COME AT ONCE”—he wrote that at first, but immediately tore it up and rewrote it as “MOTHER ILL, COME AT ONCE.” Even so, the fact that he had first written “worse” clung in his mind like some ominous portent.

“Hey, would you go and send this for me?”

After handing the completed telegram to one of the clerks, Yoichi chewed on the spoiled draft, slipped through the kitchen behind the shop, and went into the sitting room, dim even on sunny days. On the pillar above the brazier hung a large calendar that also advertised a yarn shop. Beneath it sat Aunt Asakawa, with her cropped hair, as if forgotten there, constantly using an ear pick. Hearing Yoichi’s footsteps, she raised her eyes—always inflamed—without taking the pick from her ear.

“Good day. Has your father gone out already?”

“Yes, just now. Mother’s given us all a scare.”

“A scare indeed. I never thought it was anything that could properly be called an illness.”

Yoichi settled his restless knees, reluctantly, on the far side of the brazier. Beyond a single sliding door, his gravely ill mother lay in the next room. That awareness made it all the more irritating than usual to keep company with this old-fashioned old woman. Aunt Asakawa was silent for a while, then, looking at him with her forehead tilted toward him, said:

“Okin says she’s coming now.”

“Is my sister still sick?”

“She says she’s fine today. It was just the usual touch of a cold in the nose.”

There was a faintly contemptuous note in Aunt Asakawa’s words, yet somehow it also sounded affectionate. Of the three siblings, Okin—the one Oritsu had not borne herself—seemed to be the aunt’s favorite. There was a reason for that too: Kenzo’s first wife had been a relative of hers. Yoichi, recalling something to that effect he had once overheard, spent some time unwillingly gossiping with her about his delicate older sister, who had married into a draper’s family the year before last.

“What about Shin-chan? Your father said it would be best to notify him.”

When that topic had run its course, the aunt stopped moving the ear pick and said this as though only just remembering.

“I’ve already had a telegram sent. It ought to arrive sometime today, surely.”

“Yes, surely. It’s not as though it’s Kyoto or Osaka...”

The aunt, who knew little geography, replied so vaguely that it made one uneasy. For some reason that vagueness abruptly stirred up a fear hidden inside Yoichi. Would his brother come back? The moment he thought that, he began to feel he ought to have written something even more urgent in the telegram. His mother wanted to see his brother. But his brother would not return. And before he did, his mother would die. Then his sister and Aunt Asakawa would reproach him as an unfilial son. For an instant Yoichi felt he could see that scene distinctly before his eyes.

“If it gets there today, he’ll come back tomorrow.”

Before he knew it, Yoichi was saying this less to reassure his aunt than to reassure himself.

Just then Kamiyama from the shop slipped in, his sweaty forehead shining. It was plain that he had indeed gone somewhere, since rain stains still showed on the striped summer gauze haori he wore.

“I’ve been and returned. It took longer than I expected.”

After bowing once to Aunt Asakawa, Kamiyama took an envelope from inside his robe.

“They said there is absolutely no cause for concern about the patient. They said the details are written in there.”

Before opening the letter, the aunt first put on a pair of strong-looking spectacles. Inside the envelope, besides the letter, there was also a folded sheet of thin paper with a single horizontal line drawn across it.

“Where is this Taikyokudo, Kamiyama?”

Even so, Yoichi leaned over curiously to peer at the letter she was reading.

“At the corner of Second Street—there’s a Western-style restaurant there, isn’t there? Down the alley beside it, on the left.”

“Then that’s near your Kiyomoto music teacher’s house, isn’t it?”

“Yes, somewhere around there.”

Kamiyama, grinning, fiddled with the agate seal hanging from his watch cord.

“Was there really a fortune-teller in such a place? ‘The patient should be laid with her head to the south’...”

“Which way is Mother’s pillow now?”

Half chiding him, the aunt lifted her old-spectacled eyes toward Yoichi.

“East, I suppose. Since that direction is south.”

Feeling a little brighter, Yoichi kept his face turned toward the aunt while one hand fished in the sleeve pocket of his robe for the box of rolled cigarettes.

“Look—it says here that east is acceptable too. Kamiyama, want one? I’ll toss it to you. Pardon me.”

“Why, thank you. E.C.C., I see. Then I’ll take one. Is there anything else you need? If so, please don’t hesitate...”

Kamiyama tucked the cigarette behind his ear, hitched up the waist of his summer haori, and was about to retreat quickly back to the shop. At that moment the shoji opened, and his sister Okin came in with a damp compress wrapped around her neck, still wearing her serge coat and carrying a basket of fruit.

“Oh, there you are.”

“To come out in this rain too...”

Those words came almost simultaneously from the aunt and from Kamiyama. Bowing to both of them, Okin slipped off her coat quickly and sat down sideways, looking exhausted. Meanwhile Kamiyama, after taking the fruit basket from her and leaving it there, went bustling out of the sitting room. In the basket, green apples and bananas gleamed neatly.

“How is Mother? Excuse me—the tram was so crowded.”

Still sitting sideways, Okin deftly pulled off her mud-spattered white tabi socks. Looking at them, Yoichi felt as though the spray of the rainy street still clung about his sister, with her hair done in a round topknot.

“She still has the stomach pain. And her fever’s still over a hundred and two.”

Aunt Asakawa, with the fortune-teller’s letter spread open, was busy with Mitsu, the maid who had come in just after Kamiyama left, preparing tea.

“But the message on the telephone said she seemed much better than yesterday, didn’t it? I didn’t answer it myself, though. Who was it that called today? Yo-chan?”

“No, not me. Wasn’t it Kamiyama?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That was Mitsu, quietly adding the answer as she offered tea.

“Kamiyama?”

Okin frowned slightly and moved closer to the brazier.

“What is it? Making a face like that. Is everyone at your house well?”

“Yes, thanks to you. Is everyone at your place well too, Auntie?”

Listening to their exchange, Yoichi, cigarette in mouth, stared vaguely at the calendar on the pillar. Ever since graduating from middle school, he might remember the date but never what day of the week it was. For some reason that suddenly gave him a lonely feeling. And on top of that, in another month there would come the entrance examination he had scarcely any desire to take. If he failed it...

“Mitsu has become quite pretty lately, hasn’t she?”

His sister’s words came suddenly clear to his ears. But Yoichi said nothing, only smoked his cigarette. Mitsu, in any case, had already gone back down to the kitchen.

“And whatever else may be true, she has the sort of face men like...”

At last the aunt put away the letter and spectacles on her lap and gave a smile that seemed contemptuous. Okin cast her a curious glance, then immediately changed the subject.

“What’s that, Auntie?” she said.

“I had Kamiyama go and check the ink color.” Then, looking at Yoichi: “Yo-chan, go have a look at your mother, will you? She was resting nicely a little while ago, but...”

He had already been feeling thoroughly miserable. No sooner had he stabbed his cigarette into the ashes than he sprang up from the brazier, as though fleeing the gaze of both aunt and sister. Then, making an effort to seem lighthearted, he went into the parlor beyond the single sliding door.

At the far end, beyond glass sliding doors, one could see a narrow inner garden. In it stood a single thick holly tree beside a stone washbasin. Oritsu lay there turned away from him, covered with a hemp quilted wrap, an ice bag on her head. At her pillow sat a nurse, pressing her nearsighted face close to the sickbed chart spread across her knees, busily writing with a fountain pen.

When she saw Yoichi, the nurse gave him a slight, ingratiating bow. Yoichi, though he felt distinctly that she was a woman, returned it awkwardly and without warmth. Then he went around to the foot of the bedding and sat where he could see his mother’s face clearly.

Oritsu’s eyes were closed. Her naturally delicate features looked even more wasted today. But when she opened feverish eyes slightly toward the face peering down at her, she smiled faintly, as usual. Yoichi felt somehow ashamed that he had stayed chatting so long with his aunt and sister in the sitting room. After a while Oritsu said, in a voice that sounded as though it cost her a great effort:

“Listen...”

Yoichi only nodded. Even now the heat-sour smell of his mother sickened him. But after saying that, Oritsu did not continue. Yoichi began to grow uneasy. A last message—that thought came into his head.

“Aunt Asakawa is still there, isn’t she?”

At last his mother spoke again.

“Auntie is there, and Sister just came too.”

“To Auntie...”

“Do you want Auntie?”

“No. Have them get some eel from Umekawa for Auntie.”

This time Yoichi smiled.

“Tell Mitsu that, all right? That’s all.”

Having said this, Oritsu tried to shift her head. The ice bag slipped off. Without calling for the nurse’s help, Yoichi put it back in place. And then, for no reason he could explain, he felt the backs of his eyelids suddenly grow hot.

“Don’t cry,” he thought at once. But by then he could already feel tears gathering on the bridge of his nose.

“What a fool,”

his mother murmured faintly, and then, looking worn out, closed her eyes again.

His face reddened, Yoichi shuffled back to the sitting room, ashamed that the nurse had seen him. When he returned, Aunt Asakawa looked up over her shoulder and called out:

“Well? How is your mother?”

“She’s awake.”

“Awake, yes, but...”

The aunt and Okin seemed to exchange glances over the brazier. His sister, scratching at the base of her hairpin-stuck coiffure with a hairpin, finally stretched her hand toward the brazier and said:

“You didn’t tell her Kamiyama had come back?”

“No. You go tell her, Sister.”

Standing by the sliding door, Yoichi retied the loosened sash of his robe. Whatever happened, his mother must not die. Whatever happened... he kept thinking that with all his heart.

II

The next morning Yoichi sat facing his father at the low dining table in the sitting room. On the table, there was also the tea bowl of the aunt, who had stayed the night, set upside down. She herself, however, had gone to sit by Oritsu’s side while the nurse finished dressing.

Father and son moved their chopsticks, occasionally exchanging a few short words. For the past week they had eaten like this every day, the two of them alone, in desolate meals. But this morning both of them were even more silent than usual. Mitsu, serving them, also said nothing, merely offering dishes on a tray.

“Do you think Shintaro will come home today?”

Kenzo glanced at Yoichi’s face as though expecting an answer. But Yoichi remained silent. More than whether his brother would return today or not, he still could not feel sure whether his brother would return at all.

“Or perhaps tomorrow morning?”

This time Yoichi could hardly fail to answer.

“But I think they must be in the middle of exams at school just now.”

“I see.”

Kenzo paused a moment, as though reflecting on something, then, having Mitsu pour him tea, said:

“You have to study too, you know. Shintaro will be a university student this autumn.”

Changing from one bowl of rice to the next, Yoichi said nothing. All at once he resented his father bitterly—this father who these days would not let him pursue the literature he wanted, but did nothing except press study on him. And besides, the fact that his brother would become a university student had no connection whatever with whether the younger brother studied or not. He could not help mocking the contradiction in his father’s logic.

“Is Okin not coming today?”

Kenzo changed the subject at once.

“She says she is. But in any case, when Mr. Tozawa comes, she said to telephone her.”

“It must be hard on Okin’s household too. They bought on credit as well this time.”

“They probably took some losses too.”

Yoichi too was already drinking tea. Since April the market had fallen into a panic said to be unprecedented. In fact, one Osaka dealer in the same line of business, who had been operating on a fairly large scale, had suddenly gone bankrupt, and that alone had recently forced Kenzo’s shop to cover a default. If all the other various blows were added up as well, there could be no doubt they had lost at least thirty thousand yen. Yoichi had picked up such things in fragments.

“If it’s only a little, that would be one thing, but in times like these... there’s no knowing what may happen to a house like ours either...”

Half joking, yet speaking of grim matters, Kenzo rose wearily from the table. Then he slid open the dividing door and went into the sickroom next door.

“So the soup and milk stayed down? That’s excellent for today. But you really must make yourself eat as much as you can.”

“If only the medicine would stay down too, but she vomits it up at once.”

That exchange also reached Yoichi’s ears. When he had gone in before breakfast that morning, his mother’s fever had been much lower than the day before or the day before that. She spoke more clearly, and even turning over in bed seemed easier for her. “My stomach still hurts, but I feel ever so much better,” she herself had said. On top of that, for her appetite to have come back so much—perhaps her recovery would prove far easier than they had feared. Such hope buoyed Yoichi up as he peered into the next room. Yet if he let himself indulge in such hopeful thoughts too much, he half superstitiously feared that for that very reason his mother’s condition might worsen.

“Young master, there’s a telephone call for you.”

Yoichi, still with one hand on the floor, turned around toward the voice. Mitsu was biting the edge of her sleeve as she spread a cloth over the dining table. The one who had actually announced the telephone was another, older maid called Matsu. With wet hands hanging at her sides, Matsu stood in the kitchen doorway, with the copper kettle visible behind her, sleeves tied back with a sash.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know who it is, sir...”

“Hopeless—you’re always saying you don’t know who it is.”

Muttering in annoyance, Yoichi immediately left the sitting room. At the same time, there was something faintly satisfying to him in letting Matsu’s faults be heard by gentle Mitsu, whom Matsu was always jealous of.

When he took the call in the shop, it was Tamura, the son of a druggist, who had graduated from middle school with him.

“Say, want to go peek in at the Meijiza today? Inoue’s going. If Inoue goes, you’ll go too, won’t you?”

“I can’t. My mother’s ill...”

“I see. Sorry about that. Still, what a pity. Yesterday Hori and some others went to see it...”

After talking like that for a while and hanging up, Yoichi climbed the stairs at once and went to his upstairs study as usual. But even when he sat at his desk, he had no desire to prepare for the exams, let alone read a novel. In front of the desk was a latticed window, and when he looked outside he saw a man in a short work coat pumping air into a bicycle tire in front of the toy wholesaler across the way. For some reason the sight struck Yoichi as fussy and unpleasant. Yet he did not feel like going back downstairs either. In the end he lay down flat on the tatami, using the Chinese-character dictionary under the desk as a pillow.

Then into his mind came the thought of his older brother, whom he had not seen since spring, and whose father was not the same as his own. His father was different from Yoichi's; yet because of that, Yoichi had never once felt that the affection he bore his brother was in any way different from that of ordinary brothers. Indeed, it was only comparatively recently that he had come to know that his mother had remarried, bringing his brother with her. Still, when it was said that his brother had a different father, one memory remained with him with particular clarity.

It was back when his brother and he were still in elementary school. One day Yoichi got into an argument with Shintaro over the outcome of a card game. Even then his brother, calm by nature, scarcely raised even his tone no matter how heated Yoichi became. But every now and then, while staring at him with a look of contempt, he would pronounce judgment on him point by point. At last Yoichi lost his temper; the moment he snatched up the cards lying there, he flung them straight at his brother's face. The cards struck the side of his brother's face and scattered everywhere. And then his brother's hand came down sharply across his cheek.

"Don't get smart with me."

At the sound of his brother's voice saying this, Yoichi launched himself at him. Compared with Yoichi, his brother was far bigger in build. But Yoichi had the advantage of sheer recklessness. For a while the two of them, like animals, went on hitting and being hit.

Hearing the commotion, their mother rushed into the room.

"What are you doing? What do you boys think you're doing?"

Before Yoichi had even fully heard her voice, he had already burst into tears. But his brother, eyes lowered, only stood there in sullen silence.

"Shintaro. Aren't you the older brother? What pleasure can there be in quarreling with your little brother?"

Scolded like this by their mother, his brother's voice shook in spite of himself, but he still answered in a defiant tone.

"Yoichi's the one at fault. He threw the cards at my face first."

"Liar. You hit me first."

Yoichi protested at the top of his sobbing voice.

"And you're the one who cheated, too."

"What?"

His brother made as if to come at him again and took a step toward him.

"And that's exactly why it turns into a fight, isn't it? You're the older one; it's your fault for not letting it go."

Shielding Yoichi, their mother pulled his brother away with a sharp shove. At once the look in his brother's eyes turned frighteningly fierce.

"Fine, then."

No sooner had he said that than he started, like a madman, to strike their mother. But before that hand had even come down, he burst into tears louder than Yoichi had.

Yoichi could not remember what kind of expression his mother had worn then. But the chagrined look in his brother's eyes still seemed vivid to him even now. Perhaps he had merely been enraged at being scolded by their mother. There was part of Yoichi that felt it would be wrong to push speculation any further. But ever since his brother had gone away to the provinces, whenever that look came back to him, Yoichi could not help feeling that the mother his brother saw was somehow not the same mother that he himself saw. And there was another memory as well that had helped give rise to that feeling.

It was the day before his brother was to leave for a higher school in the provinces, in September three years before. Yoichi had gone all the way to Ginza with him to do some shopping.

"I guess I won't be seeing the big clock for quite a while."

When they came to the corner at Owaricho, his brother said this half to himself.

"That's why you should've gotten into First Higher School."

"I don't want to go to First Higher School in the least."

"You're just being stubborn. Out in the country it's inconvenient. No ice cream, no movies..."

Yoichi, his face damp with sweat, went on speaking in a tone that was still half joking.

"And if somebody got sick, you couldn't come home right away, either..."

"That's only natural."

"Then what would you do if Mother died?"

His brother, who had been walking along the edge of the sidewalk, reached out and plucked a willow leaf before answering.

"I wouldn't be sad if Mother died."

"Liar."

Yoichi said it with a trace of excitement.

"If you weren't sad, there'd be something wrong with you."

"I'm not lying."

There was an unexpectedly strong emotional intensity in his brother's voice.

"You're always reading novels, aren't you? If so, it seems like you'd be able to understand right away that there are people like me. Funny fellow."

Yoichi gave an inward start. At the same moment, that look of his brother's came back to him vividly--the look his brother had worn when he had tried to strike their mother. But when he glanced at his brother's face, his brother was walking on as though nothing at all had happened, gazing off into the distance.

When he thought of such things, it seemed more doubtful than ever whether his brother would come home at once. If examinations had already begun, he might not think anything of being two or three days late. It would be all right if he came back sooner or later even if he was late, but--just as Yoichi's thoughts reached that point, he heard the creak, creak of someone climbing the ladder. He jumped up at once.

At the top of the ladder there already appeared the bent upper body of Aunt Asakawa, whose eyesight was poor.

"Why, taking a nap?"

In her words Yoichi sensed a faint irony. He straightened his cushion and pushed it toward her, but instead of sitting on it, his aunt settled down by the desk and began speaking in a small voice, as though some major incident had occurred.

"I've got something I want to consult you about."

Yoichi felt his heart give a start.

"Has something happened to Mother?"

"No, it's not about your mother. It's that nurse, you see. There's no helping it."

Then she began at length to tell him the following story. Yesterday, when Dr. Tozawa had come to examine the patient, that nurse had deliberately called him into the sitting room and said, "Doctor, how much longer do you think this patient is likely to last? If she seems likely to live on for some time, I'd like to take my leave." Of course the nurse must have thought there was no one there but the doctor. But unfortunately Matsu, who was in the kitchen, heard every word. She then came and told Aunt Asakawa all about it, bristling with anger. And more than that: when the aunt paid careful attention, she found all sorts of other signs of the nurse's lack of kindness afterward. Just this morning, for example, without any regard for the sick woman, she had spent a full hour putting on her makeup...

"No matter that it's her profession, that's going too far, don't you think? So in my view, we'd better replace her."

"Yes, I think that would be best too. If we tell Father that, and--"

The thought that such a nurse had coolly counted down the time of his mother's death made Yoichi not so much angry as deeply depressed.

"That's just it. Your father went off to the factory a little while ago. Before I knew it, I'd forgotten to tell him."

His aunt opened her inflamed eyes wide in vexation.

"If we're going to replace her anyway, I think the sooner the better..."

"Then let's tell Kamiyama and have him telephone the nursing association right away. We can tell Father when he gets back--that's all."

"Yes... all right, let's do that."

Yoichi went ahead of his aunt and dashed energetically down the ladder.

"Kamiyama, would you telephone the nursing association for us?"

At the sound of his voice, five or six clerks among the goods scattered about the shopfront all turned startled eyes on him. At the same time, Kamiyama, still with bits of wool lint clinging to his bright striped apron, jumped out from behind the accounting desk at once.

"What number was the nursing association?"

"I thought you'd know."

Standing at the foot of the ladder, Yoichi looked through the telephone directory with Kamiyama, and he could not help feeling a slight resentment toward the everyday atmosphere of the shop--unchanged from any normal day, as though it had nothing to do with him or with his aunt.

Three

When, sometime after two o'clock, Yoichi happened to come into the sitting room, his father Kenzo was there, apparently just returned, seated in front of the long brazier in a summer haori. In front of him, too, was his older sister O-Kinu, leaning on the edge of the brazier, the neat nape beneath her fine round coiffure fully exposed, with no poultice wrapped around it today.

"It's not as if I'd forget."

"Then please do it."

O-Kinu, lifting a face even paler than the day before, answered Yoichi's greeting with a slight nod. Then, in a tone that seemed somewhat constrained in his presence and tinged with a thin smile, she timidly resumed what she had been saying.

"If that matter doesn't somehow get settled, I feel awkward too. The stocks I did buy at that time have all gone down now as well..."

"All right, all right, I understand everything."

His father, looking gloomy, said this in a tone almost joking. When his sister had married the year before, part of what their father was supposed to allot to her had apparently remained no more than a promise and had in fact come to nothing. Knowing that much of the family's circumstances, Yoichi deliberately sat at a distance from the brazier and silently spread open the newspaper, looking at an advertisement for the Meijiza Theater to which Tamura had invited him earlier.

"That's why Father gets so exasperating."

"I'm more exasperated than you are. Your mother's lying there like that, and all I get from you is complaint after complaint..."

As soon as Yoichi heard his father's words, he found himself involuntarily straining his ears toward the sickroom just beyond a single sliding door. There Oritsu, unlike her usual self, seemed every now and then to let out painful groans.

"Mother doesn't seem comfortable today."

These words, spoken almost like a soliloquy, had enough force to interrupt the conversation between father and daughter for an instant. But O-Kinu at once straightened her posture and, casting a quick glare at Kenzo,

"Isn't Mother's illness the same story? When I said so before, if only you'd changed doctors then, surely it would never have come to this. But Father couldn't make up his mind, and..." she began reproaching him in a sentimental tone.

"And that's why I'm saying today we'll have Dr. Tanimura come, isn't it?"

At last Kenzo, with a bitter look on his face, said this almost as if throwing the words away. Even Yoichi found his sister's stubbornness a little irritating.

"About what time is Dr. Tanimura coming?"

"He said around three. I had them telephone from the factory a little while ago too, but..."

"It's already past three--five minutes to four, in fact."

Drawing up one knee, Yoichi glanced at the large pillar clock hanging above the calendar.

"Shall we have them telephone once more?"

"Your aunt said she already called once a little while ago."

"A little while ago when?"

"As soon as Dr. Tozawa left, apparently."

While they were talking, O-Kinu, still with a clouded face, suddenly rose from before the brazier and quickly went into the next room.

"Looks like Sister's finally dismissed me."

Letting out a wry smile, Kenzo at last took the tobacco pouch from his waist. But Yoichi only looked once more at the clock and gave no answer.

From the sickroom Oritsu's groans could still be heard. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but they seemed to be gradually growing louder than before. What had become of Dr. Tanimura? Then again, from the doctor's point of view, his mother was hardly his only patient; perhaps even now he was still going idly about making his rounds somewhere. No--it was nearly four o'clock now, so no matter how late he was, he ought already to have left the hospital. Perhaps at any moment now he would appear in front of the shop--

"How is she?"

Yoichi was released from his gloomy imaginings by his father's voice. Looking up, he saw Aunt Asakawa's anxious face peering in at the opened sliding door.

"She seems very uncomfortable indeed... Has the doctor still not come?"

Before opening his mouth, Kenzo exhaled a stream of cut tobacco smoke with a look of distaste.

"This is bad. Shall we have them telephone again?"

"Yes... if only we could have him do something to tide her over for the moment, Dr. Tozawa would do as well."

"I'll go call."

Yoichi stood up at once.

"All right. Then ask whether the doctor has already left. The number is Koishikawa such-and-such..."

Before Kenzo had finished speaking, Yoichi had already leapt out of the sitting room into the wooden-floored kitchen. In the kitchen Matsu, with her sleeves tied back, was shaving dried bonito. Pushing roughly past her side, he was just heading for the shop when he nearly collided head-on with Mitsu, who was hurrying toward him from the other side. Barely, they managed to dodge apart.

"Excuse me."

Mitsu, her freshly dressed hair coming loose a little, said this awkwardly and then clattered off toward the sitting room.

Feeling oddly embarrassed, Yoichi lifted the telephone receiver to his ear. Before the operator had even answered, Kamiyama, who was at the accounting desk, called out to him from behind.

"Yoichi, is that Tanimura Hospital?"

"Yes, Tanimura Hospital."

Still holding the receiver, he turned around toward Kamiyama. Without looking at him, Kamiyama was putting a large ledger back into the bookcase enclosed with brass latticework.

"They've already called from there just now. Miss O-Mitsu should have gone to tell them in the back."

"What did they say?"

"I think they said the doctor had just left... just left, wasn't it, Ryo?"

The clerk he called to had just climbed onto a step stool and was taking down a box of goods piled high on a shelf.

"Not just left. They said he ought to be getting there about now."

"I see. Then that Mitsu should've said so."

After hanging up, Yoichi started back once more toward the sitting room. But glancing suddenly at the shop clock, he stopped there with a puzzled look.

"Why, this clock says twenty past."

"Oh, this one's about ten minutes fast. It must be just a little past ten after four now."

Kamiyama turned halfway around and peered at the gold watch tucked in his sash.

"That's right. Just ten past."

"Then the clock in back really is slow. Even so, Tanimura's too late..."

After hesitating a moment, Yoichi strode out to the front of the shop and looked over the quiet street, where not even the faint sunlight was falling anymore.

"He doesn't seem likely to come. Though it's not as if he wouldn't know the house... Kamiyama, I'm going to look around a bit nearby."

Throwing these words over his shoulder to Kamiyama, he jumped down into a pair of wooden clogs some clerk had kicked off and walked quickly, almost at a run, toward the main street where motorbuses and streetcars passed.

The main street lay less than half a block from the front of their shop. On the corner there was a storehouse, half of it occupied by a small post office, the other half by a shop dealing in imported goods. In that shop's display window, between a straw hat and a rattan cane arranged in an odd combination, a gaudy bathing suit was already standing upright like a human figure.

When Yoichi came as far as the front of the imported-goods shop, he stopped with the display window behind him and began casting irritable glances at the people and vehicles going by on the main street. But even after waiting there some time, not a single rickshaw turned into this side street lined with wholesalers' shops. When a car did occasionally appear, it was only a mud-spattered taxi carrying a sign that said vacant.

At length one of the shopboys, still only fourteen or fifteen, came riding toward him from the direction of the shop on a bicycle. Catching sight of Yoichi, he braked skillfully beside him with one hand on a telegraph pole. Keeping one foot on the pedal, he said,

"Mr. Tamura just called on the telephone."

"Did he want something?"

Even as he spoke, Yoichi did not forget to keep his eyes on the busy main street.

"He said it wasn't anything in particular..."

"You came just to tell me that?"

"No, I'm on my way to the factory. Oh yes, and the master said he wanted you."

"Father did?"

Yoichi had only just said this when he glanced suddenly ahead and, as though forgetting the boy entirely, darted out in front of the display window. On the sparsely trafficked street a single rickshaw was just now about to turn in from the main road. No sooner had he run to the tips of its shafts than he called out to the young man riding in it, almost lifting both hands.

"Brother!"

The rickshaw man leaned back and brought the vehicle to an abrupt stop. In the seat Shintaro sat in his summer school uniform and white-striped cap, holding down the trunk wedged between his knees with his broad-boned hands.

"Ah."

Without moving so much as an eyebrow, his brother looked down at Yoichi.

"How is Mother?"

Looking up at him, Yoichi felt the blood in his whole body suddenly rise warm and vivid into both cheeks.

"She's been worse these past two or three days. They say it's a duodenal ulcer."

"I see. Then..."

Shintaro remained just as cool and said nothing more. But in those eyes of his--eyes inherited from their mother--there flashed an expression that Yoichi had not expected, though unconsciously he had been hoping for it. Feeling a strangely pleasant bewilderment at that expression, Yoichi hurried on in a rapid, broken rush of words.

"She seems in the most pain today--but I'm glad you came back, Brother. Anyway, you'd better go on quickly."

At the rickshaw man's signal the vehicle started off briskly again. At that moment Shintaro felt with startling vividness that he could somehow see within his own mind the self who had settled into a third-class railway carriage that very morning--a self who, while feeling on his shoulder the shoulder of the healthy-looking country girl seated beside him, had been musing that perhaps it would be less painful to arrive after his mother had died than to be present at her deathbed. And all the while his eyes had remained absentmindedly lowered to a Reclam edition of Goethe's poems.

"Brother, haven't the examinations started yet?"

Turning his body sideways, Shintaro threw a startled glance toward the voice. There was Yoichi, his wooden clogs slapping on the dirt as he ran close alongside the rickshaw.

"They start tomorrow. And you--what were you doing over there?"

"Dr. Tanimura was supposed to come today, and since he was so late, I was standing there waiting for him..."

As Yoichi answered this, his breath came a little fast. Shintaro wanted to show some concern for his brother. But by the time the feeling came out in words, it had turned into something commonplace.

"Have you been waiting long?"

"Ten minutes, maybe?"

"Wasn't there somebody from the shop standing over there too?--Hey, here it is."

After going five or six paces too far, the rickshaw man swung the shafts around in a broad arc and set them down in front of the shop. There it was, the thick glass-fronted shop that even to Shintaro still seemed familiar.

Four

An hour later, on the second floor of the shop, Dr. Tanimura sat at the center, with Kenzo, Shintaro, and O-Kinu's husband beside him, all three wearing gloomy expressions. After examining Oritsu, the doctor had been invited upstairs so that they could hear the results of the examination. Dr. Tanimura, a strongly built man, sipped the tea set before him; then for a while he wound the gold chain of his waistcoat around his thick fingers. At last, looking around at the three faces under the electric light, he said,

"You have sent for the attending physician--someone named Dr. Tozawa, I believe?"

"We just had them telephone him. He said he would come up at once--that's what they said, wasn't it?"

Kenzo turned toward Shintaro as if seeking confirmation. Shintaro, still wearing his uniform, sat stiffly with his knees drawn together beside his father facing the doctor.

"Yes, they said he would come right away."

"Then let us wait until he arrives. The weather has been quite unsettled, hasn't it?"

As he said this, Dr. Tanimura took out a Morocco-leather cigarette case.

"This year the rainy season does seem a long one."

"The skies are forever threatening these days; it's hard on a man. And with the weather and the state of business both as they are nowadays..."

Okinu's husband chimed in from the side, adding a few smooth words of his own. This young draper, who had happened to come on a sick visit, looked less like a merchant than like a lawyer or a company employee, with his short mustache and rimless glasses. Shintaro sat there stubbornly silent, feeling a strange irritation at the conversation they were having.

But it was not long after that before the family doctor, Tozawa, joined them. Draped in a black gauze haori and apparently a little flushed with drink, he finished exchanging very polite first greetings with Doctor Tanimura, then turned to Kenzo, who was sitting diagonally across from him, and said in a strong northeastern accent,

"Have you already heard the doctor's diagnosis?"

"No, I was thinking of explaining it after you arrived, but—"

Doctor Tanimura, holding a short cigarette between his fingers, answered in Kenzo's place.

"I also need to hear what you have to say."

As the doctor asked, Tozawa gave a fairly detailed account of Oritsu's condition over the past week. Shintaro was troubled to notice that Doctor Tanimura's thin eyebrows moved ever so slightly when he heard what Tozawa had prescribed.

But when that account was finished, Doctor Tanimura nodded to himself two or three times with an air of composure.

"Yes, I understand. It is certainly a duodenal ulcer. However, from what I have just seen, she has developed peritonitis. After all, if the pain is such that it feels as though the lower abdomen is being pushed upward—"

"I see. It feels as though the lower abdomen is being pushed upward?"

Tozawa tilted his head a little, spreading his imposing elbows over his serge hakama.

For a while no one opened his mouth; it was as if they had all stopped breathing.

"And yet her fever seems much lower than yesterday—"

At last Kenzo managed to break in with a hesitant question. But Doctor Tanimura tossed away his cigarette and cut him off carelessly.

"That is exactly the trouble. The fever keeps falling, while the pulse, on the contrary, keeps rising. That is the way this disease behaves."

"I see, so that is how it is. This is something useful even for younger doctors like us to know."

Okinu's husband, his arms folded, kept tugging at his mustache from time to time. In his brother-in-law's words Shintaro felt the cold indifference of an outsider.

"And yet when I examined her, there did not seem to be any signs of peritonitis at all—"

When Tozawa began to say this, Doctor Tanimura at once gave him a professionally gracious reply.

"Quite so. It probably developed after you saw her. In any case, the illness does not yet seem to have advanced that far. Still, whatever the case, it is certainly peritonitis now."

"Then shouldn't she be admitted to the hospital at once?"

Keeping his grim expression, Shintaro spoke for the first time. The doctor seemed surprised; from beneath his heavy lids he shot a quick glance at Shintaro's face.

"She cannot be moved now, not at all. For the present, all that can be done is to keep the abdomen as warm as possible. If the pain grows too severe, perhaps we can ask Dr. Tozawa to give her an injection. Tonight the pain will probably still be very bad. No illness is easy, of course, but this one is especially cruel."

Having said that, Doctor Tanimura let his gloomy eyes fall to the tatami. Then, as though suddenly remembering something, he took out the watch from his vest and said,

"Well then, I must be going," and immediately rose, hitching up the waist of his suit coat.

Together with his father and brother-in-law, Shintaro thanked the doctor for coming. Even as he did so, he was conscious that his own face plainly showed his disappointment.

"I would be most grateful if the doctor might examine her once more within the next two or three days—"

After the formalities were over, Tozawa bowed again as he said this.

"Yes, I can come whenever you wish, but—"

Those were the doctor's last words. Long after the others, as he went down the dark stairs, Shintaro could not help feeling deeply that everything was hopeless. ...

5

After Tozawa and Okinu's husband had left, Shintaro changed into Japanese clothes and sat with Aunt Asakawa and Yoichi around the long hibachi in the sitting room. From beyond the sliding doors Oritsu's groans could still be heard, just as before. Beneath the electric light the three of them kept up a listless conversation, and every so often found themselves, as if by prior agreement, listening intently to those groans.

"This is terrible. If she's in pain all the time like that—"

Still gripping the fire tongs, the aunt stared vaguely into space.

"Did Dr. Tozawa say she'd be all right?"

Ignoring the aunt, Yoichi addressed his brother, who had an E.C.C. cigarette between his lips.

"He said there shouldn't be any mistake for the next two or three days."

"That sounds suspicious. Coming from Dr. Tozawa—"

This time Shintaro did not answer, only knocked the ash from his cigarette into the brazier.

"Shin-chan. When you came back a little while ago, did Mother say anything?"

"She didn't say anything."

"But she smiled, didn't she?"

From the side, Yoichi peered at his brother's quiet face.

"Yes—and besides, when you go near Mother, doesn't it smell absurdly nice?"

As if urging him to answer, the aunt turned smiling eyes toward Yoichi.

"Okinu sprinkled some perfume there earlier. Yo-chan, what did she call it? That perfume?"

"What was it? Probably something like perfume for bedding, or something of the sort."

Just then Okinu quietly showed her pale, sickroom face from behind the sliding door.

"Is Father not here?"

"He's at the shop. Do you need him for something?"

"Yes. Mother wants him for a moment—"

The instant Okinu said that, Yoichi at once got up from in front of the brazier.

"I'll go tell him."

When he had left the room, Okinu, with a headache plaster stuck to her temple, came in on tiptoe, hugging her chest inside her sleeves. Then she sat down properly in the place Yoichi had vacated, looking chilled.

"How is she?"

"She still can't keep the medicine down. But ever since we got this new nurse, at least I feel a little steadier knowing she's older and more experienced."

"Her temperature?"

Breaking in, Shintaro exhaled cigarette smoke unhappily.

"I just took it. Ninety-nine point two—"

With her chin buried in her collar, Okinu looked pensively at Shintaro.

"So it's gone down another tenth since Dr. Tozawa was here."

The three of them were silent for a while. Then, in the hush, they heard footsteps on the wooden floor, and a moment later Kenzo came back from the shop ahead of Yoichi, looking unsettled.

"There was a telephone call from your house. They said they'd like you to call your husband later."

Having said only that to Okinu, Kenzo immediately went into the next room.

"Really, it's hopeless. Even with two maids at home, they're not the least bit useful."

Clicking her tongue lightly, Okinu exchanged a look with Aunt Asakawa.

"Servants these days—my own maids are so much trouble that I'd almost be better off without them."

While the two women talked like that, Shintaro, with a cigarette holder between his lips, was keeping lonely Yoichi company.

"Are you preparing for the entrance exams?"

"I am. But I've practically given up on this year."

"You've just been writing poems all the time again, haven't you?"

With an annoyed face, Yoichi lit his own cigarette from his brother's.

"I'm not the kind of person cut out for entrance exams the way you are. I hate mathematics, for one thing—"

"Hate it or not, if you don't study—"

Just as Shintaro began to say this, the aunt, who had been whispering with the nurse now standing by the sliding door, called across the brazier,

"Shin-chan, your mother is calling for you."

He threw away his half-smoked cigarette and rose without a word. Then, almost brushing the nurse aside, he strode into the next room.

"Come over here. Your mother says she needs something from you."

Their father, sitting alone at the bedside, indicated with his chin where he should go. Obeying, Shintaro at once sat down right in front of his mother's face.

"What is it?"

His mother's head, wrapped in a rolled towel pillow, lay turned to one side. In the light of the lamp shaded with cloth, her face looked even more wasted than before.

"It's about Yoichi. He doesn't seem to study properly, so I'd like you to talk to him too. He listens to what you say."

"Yes, I'll speak to him. In fact we were just talking about that."

Shintaro answered in a louder voice than usual.

"Is that so? Then don't forget. Until about yesterday I thought I might die, but perhaps because I received a talisman from Lord Taishaku, today my fever has come down, and if things go on like this I think I may recover. They say that some uncle of Mitsu's also had a duodenal ulcer, and he got well in about half a month, so perhaps it isn't such a terrible disease after all."

Even now, Shintaro could not help feeling there was something pitiful about the way his mother still clung to such hopes.

"Of course you'll recover. You'll be all right. Just make sure you take your medicine."

His mother nodded faintly.

"Then please try a little more right now."

The nurse, who had come to the bedside, skillfully placed the glass tube of the liquid medicine to Oritsu's lips. Keeping her eyes closed, his mother took two small draughts through the tube. For that brief instant it brightened Shintaro's heart.

"That's good."

"This time it seems to have stayed down," said the nurse.

The nurse and Shintaro exchanged a familiar glance.

"Once she can keep the medicine down, that's the main thing. It may drag on a little, though, and by the time she's up and about again it will probably be hot weather. Instead of serving red rice, maybe we should hand out shaved ice with sweet beans."

Prompted by Kenzo's joke, Shintaro, still on his knees, quietly tried to draw back from his mother's side. But then his mother suddenly fixed him with a puzzled look and said,

"A speech? Where is there a speech tonight?"

He started in spite of himself and looked toward his father as if asking to be rescued.

"There's no speech anywhere. Nothing of the kind at all. You'd better sleep quietly tonight."

At the same time as he soothed Oritsu, Kenzo shot a quick glance toward Shintaro. Shintaro promptly rose from his knees and returned to the bright sitting room next door.

There his sister and Yoichi were still whispering with the aunt. When they saw him, they all raised their faces at once, wearing expressions that seemed to ask for news from the sickroom. But Shintaro kept his mouth shut, and with the same cold look as ever sat cross-legged again on his cushion.

"What did she want?"

It was Okinu, still sitting with her chin tucked into her collar and her complexion poor, who first broke the silence.

"Nothing much."

"Then I suppose Mother simply wanted to see your face, Shin-chan."

In his sister's words Shintaro detected a malicious note. But after a faint bitter smile, he gave no answer.

"Yo-chan, are you taking the night watch tonight?"

After another stretch of silence, Aunt Asakawa asked Yoichi this through a yawn.

"Yes. My sister says she'll stay up tonight too."

"What about Shin-chan?"

Raising her thin brows, Okinu gave Shintaro a hard stare.

"I don't care either way."

"You're still as indecisive as ever, Shin-chan. I thought maybe once you got into higher school you'd become a little more clear-cut."

"He's tired, isn't he?"

Half scolding Okinu, the aunt checked her shrill remark.

"He ought to be the first one sent to bed tonight. Even if someone has to keep watch, it doesn't have to be tonight in particular—"

"Then I'll go to bed first."

Shintaro lit another of Yoichi's E.C.C. cigarettes. Even while hating the shallowness in himself that was already almost exhilarated, despite having just seen his mother near death, ...

6

Even so, it was close to midnight before Shintaro finally stretched himself out on the quilt upstairs over the shop. He really did feel worn out from the journey, just as his aunt had said. But when at last he put out the light, he still lay turning over again and again, unable to fall asleep.

Beside him, his father Kenzo breathed quietly in his sleep. It was the first time in at least three or four years that Shintaro had slept in the same room with his father. Did his father never snore? From time to time Shintaro opened his eyes and peered at his father's sleeping figure, finding himself wondering even about that.

Yet behind his eyelids, all kinds of memories of his mother drifted back in disorder. Some were happy memories; others, rather hateful ones. But now every one of them seemed equally lonely. Everything was already over. Whether good or bad, nothing could be done about it. Thinking this, Shintaro let his close-cropped head sink vaguely into the stiff-pasted rolled pillow.

When he was still in elementary school, one day his father had bought him a new cap. It was a Daikoku cap with a long visor, one he had wanted for a long time. When her sister Okinu saw it, she said that since she was going to have a nagauta recital next month, she wanted a kimono made for her too. Their father only grinned and paid no attention whatever. At once his sister became angry. Turning her back on him, she spoke in a resentful, spiteful tone.

"Go on, spoil Shin-chan all you like."

His father, somewhat at a loss, still would not wipe the smile from his face.

"A kimono and a cap are hardly the same thing."

"Then what about Mother? Didn't Mother have a haori made just the other day?"

Turning back toward him, his sister suddenly fixed him with a fierce look.

"But that time you got hairpins and combs too, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did. Was I not supposed to?"

Clapping a hand to her hair, she suddenly tore out the white chrysanthemum hairpin and hurled it onto the tatami.

"What is a hairpin like this worth anyway?"

Even their father looked bitter now.

"Don't be foolish."

"Yes, I'm a fool. Not clever like Shin-chan. My mother was a fool too, that's why—"

Shintaro sat there, pale-faced, watching the quarrel. But when his sister raised her voice almost to a sob, he silently snatched up the flowered hairpin from the mat and at once began tearing the petals from it one by one.

"What are you doing, Shin-chan?"

Almost like someone deranged, his sister threw herself at his hands.

"Didn't you say you didn't want a thing like this? If you don't want it, then what does it matter what happens to it? Come on then—if you want to fight, fight me anytime. What are you making such a fuss for? You're only a girl—"

Shintaro himself was crying by then, yet stubbornly he and his sister fought over that one hairpin until every chrysanthemum petal had been stripped away. And all the while he felt, strangely vividly, that he could see into the heart of his sister, who had no real mother. ...

Shintaro suddenly listened hard. Someone was coming up the dark stairs as quietly as possible. Then Mitsu called softly from the head of the stairs.

"Master—"

Kenzo, whom he had thought asleep, immediately lifted his head from the pillow.

"What is it?"

"Madam says she needs something."

Mitsu's voice was trembling.

"All right. I'm coming."

After his father went downstairs, Shintaro lay there with his eyes wide open, body rigid, listening as if to every sound in the house. For some reason, meanwhile, a peaceful memory, far removed from his present state of mind, rose clearly before him.

This too had been when he was still in elementary school. His mother once took him alone to visit a grave in Yanaka cemetery. It was a fine Sunday afternoon, with white magnolia blossoms showing among the pines and hedges. When they came before a small grave, his mother told him it was his father's grave. But standing before it, he only made a brief bow.

"Is that all?"

While pouring water over the grave, his mother turned a smile toward him.

"Yes."

He had felt a vague closeness toward the father whose face he did not know. But this pitiful little stone monument stirred no feeling in him at all.

His mother then stood with her hands pressed together for a while before the grave. At that moment they heard what seemed to be an air gun being fired somewhere nearby. Leaving his mother behind, Shintaro set off in the direction of the sound. After making a wide turn around one of the hedges, he came out onto a narrow path. There stood a boy older than he was, with two younger boys who must have been his brothers, holding an air gun in one hand and gazing regretfully up into the treetop of some budding tree gone hazy with new growth. ...

Then once more he heard the creaking sound of someone climbing the stairs. Suddenly anxious, he raised himself halfway from the bedding and called toward the stairway,

"Who is it?"

"You're awake?"

It was his father, Kenzo.

"Has something happened?"

"Your mother said she wanted something, so I just went downstairs for a moment."

Speaking in a subdued voice, his father lay back down on his own quilt.

"Wanted something? Isn't she worse?"

"No, all she meant was that if I'm going to the factory tomorrow, there's a summer kimono in the drawer on top of the chest."

Shintaro pitied his mother. Or rather, it was not his mother exactly, but the wife within his mother whom he pitied.

"Still, it looks bad. When I saw her just now she seemed to be suffering quite a lot after all. And on top of that she says her head aches too, and she keeps moving her neck all the time."

"Shouldn't Dr. Tozawa be asked to give her another injection?"

"They say injections can't be given that often. Even if the worst is unavoidable, I wish at least I could make her suffering a little easier."

It seemed that Kenzo was staring at Shintaro's face in the darkness.

"Your mother has always been a good woman, too. Why should she suffer like this?"

For a while the two were silent.

"Is everyone else still up?"

Facing his father like that, Shintaro found the silence unbearable.

"Your aunt is in bed. Though whether she'll actually sleep or not—"

His father broke off and suddenly lifted his head from the pillow again, as though listening carefully.

"Father, Mother says—just for a moment—"

This time it was Okinu, softly calling from midway up the stairs.

"I'm coming."

"I'll get up too."

Shintaro flung off his quilt.

"You don't have to get up. If anything happens, I'll call you right away."

And without more, his father went back down the stairs after Okinu.

Shintaro sat cross-legged on the bedding for a while. Then he got up and turned on the light. Sitting down again, he stared blankly around him in the glaring light. Perhaps when his mother sent for his father, whether she had any actual errand or not, what she really wanted was simply to have him beside her. That thought occurred to him suddenly.

Then by chance his eye fell on a sheet of ruled paper covered in writing, lying beneath the desk. He picked it up absentmindedly.

"Dedicated to M. ..."

The rest was one of Yoichi's poems.

Throwing the paper aside, Shintaro stretched out on his back on the quilt with his hands folded behind his head. For one instant the face of Mitsu, with its cool, clear eyes, rose vividly before him. ...

7

When Shintaro suddenly woke, dawn had already begun to whiten the gaps in the shutters upstairs, and his sister Okinu and Kenzo were talking in low voices. He sprang up at once.

"All right, all right. Then you had better get some sleep."

Having said this to Okinu, Kenzo hurriedly went down the stairs.

Outside the window, the roof tiles roared as if a waterfall were crashing down on them.

What a downpour, Shintaro thought, and immediately set about changing out of his sleeping clothes. Just then Okenu, who was untying her sash, spoke to him with a faint touch of irony.

"Shin-chan. Good morning."

"Morning. How is Mother?"

"She suffered all through the night."

"Couldn't she sleep?"

"She says she slept well enough, but watching beside her, it didn't seem as if she ever really slept for even five minutes. And then she started saying strange things... I ended up feeling frightened in the middle of the night."

Already changed, Shintaro stood at the head of the ladder-stairs. Beyond the kitchen, visible from there, Mitsu had hitched up her skirt and was wiping something down with a rag. But the moment she heard them talking, she abruptly let her skirt fall again. With one hand on the brass railing, he felt somehow reluctant to go down.

"What kind of strange things?"

"Like, 'Half a dozen? Isn't half a dozen six sheets?'"

"Her mind's a little affected, then. How is she now?"

"Mr. Tozawa is here now."

"He's early."

Only after Mitsu had gone did Shintaro slowly make his way down the ladder-stairs.

Five minutes later, when he entered the sickroom, Tozawa had just finished giving an injection of digitalin. Their mother, while having the rest of the treatment attended to by the nurse at her pillow, kept moving her combed-up head restlessly over the white bolster, just as Father had said the night before.

"Shintaro's come."

Father, seated beside Tozawa, said this loudly to Mother, then gave Shintaro a slight glance.

Instead of sitting beside Father, Shintaro sat down on the other side of Tozawa. There Yoichi sat with his arms folded, staring blankly at their mother's face.

"Hold her hand."

As Father instructed, Shintaro enclosed his mother's hand in both of his. Her hand was clammy with cold, greasy sweat.

When Mother saw his face, her eyes gave a little sign of recognition, as if nodding. But at once she turned those eyes to Tozawa and said,

"Doctor, this is the end for me, isn't it? My hands seem to be going numb."

"No, nothing of the kind. You need only endure two or three more days."

Tozawa was washing his hands.

"You'll feel easier soon. Ah, I see all sorts of things laid out here."

On the tray by Mother's pillow were more charms and talismans than could be set in a row: sacred slips from the Great Shrine and the local tutelary shrine, together with an image from the Taishaku temple at Shibamata. Looking up at the tray, Mother answered in broken phrases, gasping between them.

"Last night... it hurt so much... but this morning... at least the pain in my belly... is much easier."

Father said quietly to the nurse,

"Her tongue seems to be growing thick."

"Her mouth must be getting sticky. Please moisten it with this."

Shintaro took from the nurse a writing brush dipped in water and dampened his mother's mouth two or three times. She wound her tongue around the brush and seemed to suck at the scant moisture.

"Well then, I'll come up again later. There's really nothing at all to worry about."

After packing his bag, Tozawa said this loudly in Mother's direction. Then, turning to the nurse, he added,

"Around ten o'clock, please give her the rest of the injection."

The nurse merely murmured an answer under her breath, looking faintly dissatisfied.

Shintaro and Father stepped out of the sickroom to see Tozawa off. In the next room Aunt was there again that morning, sitting by herself as though drained of all spirit. As he passed in front of her, Tozawa returned her courteous greeting with a casual nod and said to Shintaro, who followed behind,

"Well? How is your preparation for the entrance exams going?"

But he immediately realized his mistake and burst into a jarringly cheerful laugh.

"Dear me... I took you for your younger brother."

Shintaro smiled wryly too.

"Lately whenever I see your younger brother, all he ever talks about is examinations. Probably because my own boy is preparing for them too."

Even as he went through the kitchen, Tozawa kept grinning to himself.

After the doctor had gone back out into the rain, Shintaro left Father at the shop and hurried back to the sitting room. This time Yoichi was there beside Aunt, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

"You're sleepy, aren't you?"

Half crouching, Shintaro set a knee against the rim of the brazier.

"Sis is asleep now. You should go upstairs while you can and get some sleep too."

"Yeah... I was smoking all night long, so my tongue's completely raw."

With a gloomy look on his face, Yoichi irritably flung the still long cigarette butt into the brazier.

"But it's better now that Mother has stopped groaning."

"Looks like she's feeling a little easier."

Aunt was heating the warming ash for the little hand-warmer to be placed at Mother's side.

"She seemed to be suffering until four o'clock."

Just then Matsu poked her frayed ginkgo-leaf coiffure out from the kitchen.

"Madam, the master says would you please come to the shop for a moment."

"Yes, yes, I'm coming now."

Aunt handed the hand-warmer to Shintaro.

"Then, Shin-chan, take care of your mother for me."

When Aunt said this and went out, Yoichi too, stifling a yawn, finally heaved himself to his feet.

"Maybe I'll get a little sleep too."

Once he was alone, Shintaro sat with the hand-warmer on his knees and tried to think about something. But even he himself did not know clearly what he was trying to think about. There was only the dreadful sound of the rain, filling the invisible expanse above the roof, and that alone spread through his mind.

Then suddenly the nurse came rushing in from the next room.

"Someone, please come! Someone..."

Shintaro sprang to his feet at once, and in the very next instant flew into the adjoining room. Then, with his strong arms, he lifted Oritsu firmly up.

"Mother. Mother."

Held in his arms, Mother trembled two or three times. Then she vomited a bluish-black liquid.

"Mother."

For the few seconds before anyone else came in, Shintaro kept calling her name aloud, his eyes fixed with desperate intensity on his mother's face, now already bereft of breath.

(October 23, 1920)