Genkaku's Retreat

I

…It was a modest, tastefully appointed house with a quietly distinguished entrance. Such houses were not uncommon in this neighborhood, of course. Yet the plaque reading “Genkaku’s Retreat,” and the garden trees visible above the wall, displayed a more elaborate refinement than those of any other house.

The owner, Horikoshi Genkaku, was somewhat known as a painter. His fortune, however, had come from obtaining a patent for rubber stamps—or perhaps from dealing in land after securing the patent. One suburban plot he owned had apparently been too poor to grow even ginger properly. But by now it had become one of those so-called “modern villages,” lined with houses roofed in red and blue tiles.…

At any rate, Genkaku’s Retreat was a modest, tastefully appointed house with a quietly distinguished entrance. Lately it looked more picturesque than ever: ropes protecting the pine tree above the wall from the snow, dead pine needles spread before the entry, and the red berries of ardisia among them. Moreover, the side street on which it stood saw almost no traffic. Even the tofu seller, when passing that way, would leave his load on the main road and merely walk through blowing his horn.

“Genkaku’s Retreat—what do you suppose ‘Genkaku’ means?”

A long-haired art student who happened to be passing the house would say this to another art student in the same brass-buttoned uniform, a long, narrow paint box tucked beneath his arm.

“Who knows? Surely it isn’t a pun on ‘strictness.’”

Both laughing, they would stroll casually past. Afterward, all that remained on the frozen road was a Golden Bat cigarette butt discarded by one of them, sending up a faint, slender thread of blue smoke.…

II

Even before becoming Genkaku’s son-in-law, Jūkichi had worked at a bank. Consequently, it was always around the time the electric lights came on that he returned home. For the past several days, the moment he stepped inside the gate he had detected a peculiar odor. It was the smell of Genkaku’s breath as he lay ill with pulmonary tuberculosis—an unusual disease in an old man. Naturally, such a smell could not possibly have reached outside the house. Walking over the stepping-stones before the entrance with his briefcase tucked beneath the arm of his winter coat, Jūkichi could not help wondering at the state of his nerves.

Genkaku had taken to his bed in the detached room, and whenever he was not lying down, he sat propped against a mound of quilts. After removing his coat and hat, Jūkichi invariably showed his face at the detached room and offered some brief greeting—“I’m home,” or “How are you today?” Yet he rarely set foot beyond its threshold. This was partly because he feared catching his father-in-law’s tuberculosis and partly because he found the smell of his breath unpleasant. Whenever Genkaku saw him, he merely answered, “Ah,” or “Welcome home.” His voice was feeble, closer to breath than speech. Hearing it sometimes made Jūkichi feel guilty about his own coldness. Nevertheless, entering the detached room was somehow too uncanny for him.

Next Jūkichi would look in on his mother-in-law, Otori, who was also confined to bed in the room beside the sitting room. She had lost the use of her lower body seven or eight years earlier, before Genkaku himself became bedridden, and could not even go to the toilet. It was said that Genkaku had married her not only because she was the daughter of a chief retainer from a great feudal domain, but also because of her beauty. Even in old age, her eyes and certain other features remained beautiful. Yet when she sat upon her bedding painstakingly mending white tabi socks, she looked little different from a mummy. To her as well, Jūkichi would leave only the brief words, “How are you today, Mother?” before entering the six-mat sitting room.

If his wife, Osuzu, was not there, she would be working in the narrow kitchen with Omatsu, their maid from Shinshū. The neatly kept sitting room—and even the kitchen with its modern cooking range—felt far more congenial to Jūkichi than either of his parents-in-law’s rooms. He was the second son of a politician who had once risen as high as governor. Yet he was a gifted man who took after his mother, formerly a poet, rather than his rough, heroic father. This was evident in his warm, approachable eyes and slender jaw. Once inside the sitting room, Jūkichi changed from Western clothes into a kimono, settled comfortably before the long brazier, smoked cheap cigars, and teased Takeo, his only son, who had at last entered elementary school that year.

Jūkichi always ate around the low table with Osuzu and Takeo. Their meals were lively. Lately, however, even that liveliness had been somehow constrained. This was simply because a nurse named Kōno had come to attend Genkaku. Takeo’s clowning did not diminish in the least when “Miss Kōno” was present; if anything, her presence made him clown even more. Osuzu would sometimes knit her brows and glare at him. But Takeo would merely stare back innocently and deliberately shovel rice into his mouth with exaggerated vigor. Perhaps because he read novels, Jūkichi sometimes detected something aggressively “male” in Takeo’s high spirits and found it disagreeable. Usually, however, he only smiled and continued eating in silence.

The nights at Genkaku’s Retreat were quiet. Takeo, who left early for school, naturally went to bed early, and Jūkichi and Osuzu also generally retired by ten. After that, only Kōno remained awake, keeping watch from around nine o’clock. Beside Genkaku’s pillow she sat with a brazier glowing brightly, never even dozing. Genkaku, too, woke from time to time. But apart from saying that his hot-water bottle had gone cold or his compress had dried, he scarcely spoke. The only sound reaching even this detached room was the rustling of bamboo in the shrubbery. In the faintly chilly stillness, Kōno watched Genkaku and thought about many things: the feelings of the people in this household, and what might become of her own life.…

III

One afternoon after the snow had cleared, a woman of twenty-four or twenty-five appeared in the Horikoshi kitchen, leading a frail little boy by the hand. Blue sky showed through the raised skylight. Jūkichi, of course, was not home. Osuzu, who had been sewing at the machine, had expected the visit to some extent, yet she felt something close to embarrassment. Still, she rose from the long brazier to receive her guest. After stepping up into the kitchen, the woman carefully straightened both her own footwear and the boy’s shoes. The boy wore a white sweater. Even this small action revealed her sense of inferiority. And understandably so: she was Oyoshi, a former maid whom Genkaku had openly maintained as his mistress in a suburb of Tokyo for the past five or six years.

When Osuzu saw Oyoshi’s face, she was surprised by how much she had aged. Nor was it only her face. Four or five years earlier, Oyoshi’s hands had been plump and round. Time had thinned even those hands until the veins showed. Then there were the things she wore: in her cheap ring Osuzu sensed the melancholy drabness of domestic life.

“My brother asked me to give this to the master.”

Growing still more timid, Oyoshi placed a parcel wrapped in old newspaper unobtrusively in a corner of the kitchen before putting even one knee into the sitting room. Omatsu, who happened to be washing dishes, kept her hands busily at work while occasionally glancing sideways at Oyoshi’s glossy hair, arranged in a gingko-leaf style. On seeing the newspaper parcel, however, her expression grew positively malicious. Indeed, it gave off a foul odor wholly out of harmony with the modern range and the delicate plates and bowls.

Oyoshi did not look at Omatsu, but she evidently detected something odd in Osuzu’s expression, for she explained, “It is—well—garlic.” Then she spoke to the child, who was biting his finger. “Come now, young master. Make your bow.”

The boy was, of course, Buntarō, Genkaku’s child by Oyoshi. Osuzu found it painfully touching that Oyoshi called her own son “young master.” Yet her common sense immediately told her that a woman in Oyoshi’s position could hardly do otherwise. Keeping her face composed, Osuzu offered the mother and child, seated in a corner of the sitting room, whatever tea and cakes were at hand. She began telling Oyoshi about Genkaku’s condition and trying to entertain Buntarō.…

After setting Oyoshi up as his mistress, Genkaku had never minded changing trains on the suburban line and had unfailingly visited her house once or twice each week. At first Osuzu had felt disgusted by her father’s behavior. “He might at least consider Mother’s feelings,” she often thought. Otori, admittedly, seemed to have resigned herself completely to everything. But that only made Osuzu pity her more. Even after her father left for his mistress’s house, she would tell her mother some transparent lie such as, “He says he has a poetry gathering today.” Osuzu knew perfectly well that these lies were useless. Yet whenever she saw something resembling a sneer on her mother’s face, she regretted having lied—or rather, she tended to feel bitterly disappointed in her helpless mother for failing to appreciate her intentions.

After seeing her father out, Osuzu would often stop her sewing to think about the family. Even before taking Oyoshi as his mistress, Genkaku had never been what she could call “a fine father.” But gentle-hearted Osuzu did not particularly care about that. What concerned her was that he kept carrying paintings, calligraphy, and antiques off to the mistress’s house. She had never regarded Oyoshi as a bad person, even when Oyoshi was still their maid. On the contrary, she had thought her more timid than most women. But there was no telling what Oyoshi’s brother, who ran a fish shop on the outskirts of Tokyo, might be plotting. In Osuzu’s eyes, he did indeed seem peculiarly cunning. Sometimes she cornered Jūkichi and confided her worries to him. But he refused to become involved.

“I can hardly be the one to say anything to Father.”

When he told her that, Osuzu had no choice but to fall silent.

“Surely Father can’t imagine that Oyoshi understands a painting by Lo Ping.”

Jūkichi, too, would occasionally make some such indirect remark to Otori. But Otori would look up at him, give her usual wry smile, and say only:

“That is simply your father’s nature. After all, he is the kind of man who asks even me, ‘Well, what do you think of this inkstone?’”

Now, however, all such anxieties seemed foolish to everyone. Since the beginning of that winter, Genkaku’s illness had suddenly worsened and made further visits to his mistress impossible. He had then accepted with unexpected meekness Jūkichi’s proposal that the relationship be ended—although, in practice, the terms had been devised more by Otori and Osuzu than by Jūkichi. To Osuzu’s surprise, Oyoshi’s brother had been equally accommodating. Oyoshi would receive one thousand yen in settlement, return to her parents’ home on the coast of Kazusa, and thereafter be sent a certain sum each month for Buntarō’s support. Her brother raised no objection whatever. Moreover, before anyone even asked, he returned Genkaku’s prized utensils for sencha and the other things that had been kept at the mistress’s house. Because Osuzu had previously suspected him, this made her feel all the more favorably toward him.

“In that connection, my sister says that, if you should happen to be short of help, she would like to come and assist with the nursing.”

Before agreeing to this request, Osuzu consulted her paralyzed mother. That could undoubtedly be called a mistake. As soon as Otori heard about it, she urged Osuzu to have Oyoshi bring Buntarō the very next day. Osuzu feared not only for her mother’s feelings but also that the atmosphere of the household would be disturbed, and repeatedly tried to make her reconsider. At the same time, because she stood between Genkaku and Oyoshi’s brother, she had somehow come to feel that she could not coldly reject his request. But Otori refused to listen straightforwardly to anything she said.

“It would be different if I had never heard of the offer. But now that I have, it would be shameful before Oyoshi to refuse.”

Osuzu had no choice but to tell Oyoshi’s brother that Oyoshi could come. Perhaps that, too, was a mistake born of her ignorance of the world. When Jūkichi returned from the bank and heard about it, his gentle, almost feminine brows briefly drew together in displeasure.

“It will certainly be helpful to have another pair of hands.… Still, you ought at least to have spoken to Father. If Father himself refused, then you wouldn’t bear any responsibility.”

Osuzu, unusually depressed, answered only, “Yes, I suppose so.” But consulting Genkaku—consulting her dying father, who naturally still longed for Oyoshi—was something she could not have done even now.

…As she sat with Oyoshi and her son, Osuzu remembered all these twists and turns. Without even holding her hands over the long brazier, Oyoshi spoke in fits and starts about her brother and Buntarō. Her speech retained the same country accent as four or five years before, pronouncing sore wa as sorya. Osuzu found that this rustic accent had somehow begun to put her at ease. At the same time, she felt a vague anxiety about her mother, Otori, who lay without so much as a cough on the other side of a single sliding partition.

“Then you can stay about a week?”

“Yes, if it causes no inconvenience to your household.”

“But won’t you need at least a change of clothes?”

“My brother said he would bring them this evening.”

As she answered, Oyoshi took a caramel from inside her kimono and gave it to the bored-looking Buntarō.

“Then I’ll go tell Father. He has grown terribly weak, you know. Even the ear facing the paper screen has become chilblained.”

Before leaving the brazier, Osuzu needlessly adjusted the iron kettle.

“Mother.”

Otori answered something. Her voice was thick and sticky, as if Osuzu’s call had only just awakened her.

“Mother, Oyoshi is here.”

Feeling relieved, and avoiding Oyoshi’s face, Osuzu promptly rose from the brazier. As she passed through the adjoining room, she called once more, “Oyoshi is here.” Otori lay with her mouth buried in the collar of her quilt. But she looked up at Osuzu, her eyes showing something close to a smile, and answered, “Oh, my—how quickly you came.” Keenly conscious of Oyoshi’s presence behind her, Osuzu hurried restlessly down the corridor facing the snowy garden toward the detached room.

Coming suddenly from the bright corridor, Osuzu found the detached room darker than it really was. Genkaku had just raised himself and was having Kōno read the newspaper to him. But the instant he saw Osuzu, he demanded, “Is it Oyoshi?” His hoarse voice sounded strangely urgent, almost accusatory. Standing beside the sliding partition, Osuzu reflexively answered, “Yes.” Then—no one spoke.

“I’ll send her in at once.”

“Mm.… Is Oyoshi alone?”

“No.…”

Genkaku nodded silently.

“Miss Kōno, would you come with me for a moment?”

Osuzu hurried down the corridor at a half run, one step ahead of Kōno. A wagtail was flicking its tail on the snow-dusted leaves of a palm. But Osuzu could think of nothing except the feeling that something sinister was following her out of the sickroom-smelling detached chamber.

IV

After Oyoshi moved into the house, the family atmosphere grew visibly more hostile by the day. It began with Takeo’s bullying of Buntarō. Buntarō resembled his mother, Oyoshi, more than his father, Genkaku. He resembled her even in his timidity. Osuzu naturally seemed to feel sympathy for such a child. Yet at times she also seemed to think him spineless.

By professional habit, Nurse Kōno observed this commonplace domestic tragedy coolly—or rather, she took pleasure in it. Her past had been dark. Owing to affairs with the masters of houses where she nursed and with doctors at hospitals, she had more than once thought of swallowing a lump of potassium cyanide. In time, this past had planted in her a morbid interest in enjoying the pain of others. When she entered the Horikoshi household, she discovered that the paralyzed Otori did not wash her hands after relieving herself. “The daughter-in-law in this house is considerate. She must bring her water in such a way that even we don’t notice.” For a while, this thought cast a shadow over Kōno’s suspicious mind. But after four or five days, she discovered that it was entirely an oversight on the part of the sheltered Osuzu. The discovery gave her something close to satisfaction, and whenever Otori relieved herself, Kōno carried her a basin of water.

“Thanks to you, Miss Kōno, I can wash my hands like a human being.”

Otori pressed her palms together and shed tears. Her happiness did not move Kōno in the least. But thereafter Kōno enjoyed watching Osuzu being obliged, one time in three, to carry in the water herself. For a woman like Kōno, therefore, the children’s quarrels were not unpleasant either. Before Genkaku she behaved as though she sympathized with Oyoshi and her son. Before Otori, at the same time, she behaved as though she bore them ill will. Slowly perhaps, but surely, this produced its effect.

About a week after Oyoshi began staying there, Takeo quarreled with Buntarō again. It started merely over whether a pig’s tail resembled the calyx of a persimmon. In a corner of his study—the four-and-a-half-mat room beside the entrance—Takeo pinned the frail Buntarō against the wall and beat and kicked him mercilessly. Oyoshi happened to arrive just then. She picked up Buntarō, who could not even cry aloud, and began to rebuke Takeo.

“Young master, you must not bully someone weaker than yourself.”

For the timid Oyoshi, the words were unusually sharp. Startled by her vehemence, Takeo began crying himself and fled into the sitting room where Osuzu was. Osuzu, apparently losing her temper, left her sewing unfinished at the hand-operated machine and forcibly dragged him back to where Oyoshi and Buntarō were.

“You are far too spoiled. Now apologize to Oyoshi. Put your hands properly on the floor and apologize.”

Before Osuzu, Oyoshi could do nothing but weep beside Buntarō and apologize abjectly herself. The person who invariably acted as mediator was Nurse Kōno. Struggling to push the flushed Osuzu back, Kōno imagined the feelings of yet another person—Genkaku, listening silently to the entire commotion—and inwardly sneered. Naturally, she never allowed the slightest sign of this to appear on her face.

Yet it was not only the children’s quarrels that disturbed the household. Before anyone realized it, Oyoshi had also rekindled the jealousy of Otori, who had seemed resigned to everything. Otori never once voiced any resentment to Oyoshi herself. The same had been true five or six years earlier, when Oyoshi was still living in the maid’s room. Instead, she tended to vent her anger on Jūkichi, who had nothing whatever to do with the matter. Jūkichi naturally paid no attention. Osuzu felt sorry for him and sometimes apologized on her mother’s behalf. But he would merely smile wryly and change the subject, saying, “It would be troublesome if you became hysterical too.”

Kōno was equally interested in Otori’s jealousy. She understood not only the jealousy itself but also perfectly understood why Otori took it out on Jūkichi. Moreover, before long, she herself began to feel something resembling jealousy toward Jūkichi and Osuzu. To her, Osuzu was a pampered young lady. Jūkichi, too—Jūkichi was certainly a man who had turned out respectably enough by ordinary social standards. Yet he was also merely one male animal, a creature she despised. Their happiness seemed to her almost an injustice. In order to correct this injustice (!), she adopted an overly familiar manner toward Jūkichi. Perhaps it meant nothing at all to him. But it gave her the perfect means of irritating Otori. With her knees exposed, Otori would spit venomously, “Jūkichi, isn’t my daughter—the cripple’s daughter—good enough for you?”

But Osuzu, at least, apparently did not suspect Shigekichi on that account. Indeed, she even seemed to feel sorry for Kōno. Kōno not only resented this, but could not help despising the good-natured Osuzu anew. Still, she was pleased when Shigekichi began avoiding her. She was even more pleased when, in the course of avoiding her, he perversely began to show a manly curiosity about her. Previously, even when Kōno was present, he had not minded stripping naked to enter the bath beside the kitchen. Lately, however, he had stopped letting her see him that way. No doubt he was ashamed of his body, which resembled a plucked rooster. Watching him—his face, too, was covered in freckles—Kōno would privately mock him, wondering just who, other than Osuzu, he imagined might fall in love with him.

One frost-clouded morning, Kōno set up a mirror in the three-mat entrance room that had become hers and began arranging her hair in the all-back style she always wore. It was the day before Oyoshi was finally due to return to the country. Shigekichi and his wife seemed glad that Oyoshi was leaving the house. Otori, on the contrary, appeared more irritated than ever. As she did her hair, Kōno listened to Otori’s shrill voice and remembered a woman whom one of her friends had once told her about. While living in Paris, the woman had gradually succumbed to severe homesickness. When one of her husband’s friends happened to be returning to Japan, she decided to take the same ship. The long voyage seemed unexpectedly easy for her. Yet when they reached the waters off Kii Province, she suddenly became agitated for no apparent reason and finally threw herself into the sea. The closer she came to Japan, the more violently her homesickness flared up instead—Kōno calmly wiped the oil from her hands and reflected that the same mysterious force must be at work not only in cowardly Otori’s jealousy, but in her own as well.

“Goodness, Mother, what’s the matter? Crawling all the way out here like this! Honestly, Mother—Miss Kōno, please come here a moment.”

Osuzu’s voice seemed to come from the veranda near the annex. On hearing it, Kōno remained facing the spotless mirror and, for the first time, let a sneering smile escape her lips. Then, sounding suitably startled, she answered, “Yes, coming!”

V

Genkaku grew steadily weaker. Besides the illness from which he had suffered for years, he was tormented by the severe pain of bedsores extending from his back to his waist. At times he groaned aloud, finding a little relief from his suffering. Yet physical pain was not the only thing that tormented him. While Oyoshi was staying there, her presence brought him some comfort, but Otori’s jealousy and the children’s incessant quarrels caused him no end of misery. Even that, however, had still been bearable. After Oyoshi left, Genkaku felt a terrible loneliness and could no longer avoid confronting the long life he had lived.

To him now, his life seemed utterly sordid. It was true that the period immediately after he patented his rubber stamp had been comparatively bright. Yet even then he had been continually tormented by the jealousy of his peers and by his own anxiety not to lose his profits. And after he installed Oyoshi as his mistress—besides the turmoil within his household, he had always carried the burden of financial difficulties unknown to any of them. More sordid still, although he had been attracted to the young Oyoshi, during the past year or two he had wished in his heart more times than he could count that she and her son would both die.

“Sordid? But when you think about it, I’m hardly the only one.”

At night he would think this way and recall, one by one and in minute detail, his relatives and acquaintances. His son-in-law’s father, solely “to defend constitutional government,” had socially destroyed numerous opponents less capable than himself. An elderly antique dealer who was Genkaku’s closest friend had been sleeping with his daughter by his first wife. A certain lawyer had embezzled money placed in trust. A certain seal engraver had—but strangely, the sins they had committed did nothing to ease Genkaku’s suffering. On the contrary, they merely spread a dark shadow over life itself.

“Well, this suffering won’t last much longer. Once I’ve happily passed away...”

This was the sole consolation left to Genkaku. To distract himself from the various torments eating into his mind and body, he tried to summon pleasant memories. Yet, as already stated, his life had been sordid. If it possessed any brightness at all, it lay only in his memories of a childhood when he had known nothing. Again and again, while hovering between sleep and waking, he recalled the mountain village in Shinano where his parents had lived—especially its shingled roofs weighted with stones and its mulberry sheds reeking of silkworms. But even these memories never lasted. Sometimes, between groans, he tried reciting the Kannon Sutra or singing popular songs from long ago. Yet after chanting, “Voice of wondrous beauty, voice of the World-Honored One, Brahma voice, voice of the tide, voice surpassing every sound in this world,” it seemed both ridiculous and irreverent to launch into “Kappore, kappore.”

“Sleep is paradise. Sleep is paradise...”

To forget everything, Genkaku wanted only to sleep soundly. Kōno did in fact give him sleeping medicine and even injections of heroin. But sleep itself was not always peaceful. At times he encountered Oyoshi or Buntarō in his dreams. To him—to the man he was within the dream—these encounters felt cheerful. (One night he dreamed that he was talking to the “Twenty-Point Cherry Blossom” card from a brand-new deck of hanafuda. The card, moreover, wore Oyoshi’s face as it had looked four or five years earlier.) But for that very reason, waking only made him more miserable. Before long, Genkaku began to feel an anxiety almost like terror at the prospect of sleep itself.

One afternoon, as New Year’s Eve drew near, Genkaku lay on his back and spoke to Kōno, who sat beside his pillow.

“Miss Kōno, you see, I haven’t worn a loincloth for a long time. Please have six feet of bleached cotton bought for me.”

There was no need to send Omatsu specially to the neighborhood dry-goods shop to obtain it.

“I’ll put it on myself. Just fold it and leave it here for me.”

Relying on this loincloth—relying on the prospect of hanging himself with it—Genkaku managed to endure half a short day. Yet a man who needed help even to sit upright in bed could not easily find an opportunity. Besides, when the moment came, death frightened Genkaku too. Gazing in the dim electric light at a single-line calligraphic scroll by Ōbaku, he mocked himself for still being unable to stop clinging to life.

“Miss Kōno, please help me sit up for a moment.”

It was already around ten at night.

“I’m going to sleep now. Please don’t stand on ceremony—go and get some rest yourself.”

Kōno stared at Genkaku in a peculiar way and replied curtly:

“No, I shall remain awake. That is my duty.”

Genkaku felt that Kōno had seen through his plan. But he merely nodded, said nothing, and pretended to sleep. Beside his pillow, Kōno opened the New Year’s issue of a women’s magazine and appeared to become absorbed in it. Still thinking about the loincloth beside his bedding, Genkaku watched her through half-closed eyes. Then, all at once, he found the situation funny.

“Miss Kōno.”

Even Kōno appeared startled when she saw his face. Propped against his padded bed robe, Genkaku had somehow begun laughing uncontrollably.

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing. There’s nothing funny at all—”

Still laughing, Genkaku waved his thin right hand.

“This time...for some reason, it all seems so funny... Now please lay me down again.”

About an hour later, Genkaku had fallen asleep. That night his dream, too, was terrifying. He stood among thickly growing trees, peering through a gap in high-silled shōji into a room resembling a tea chamber. Inside, a completely naked child lay facing him. Though it was a child, it was wrinkled like an old man. Genkaku tried to cry out and awoke drenched in sweat...

No one had come to the annex. It was still dim as well. Still?—But Genkaku looked at the clock and realized that it was already nearly noon. For an instant, relief made his heart feel light. Yet, as always, it immediately sank back into gloom. Lying on his back, he counted his own breaths. He felt as though something were urging him, “Now—do it now.” Genkaku quietly drew the loincloth toward him, wrapped it around his head, and pulled hard on both ends.

At that precise moment, plump little Takeo, bundled in layers of clothing, poked his head into the room.

“Hey! Grandpa’s doing something funny!”

Taunting him with these words, Takeo dashed off toward the sitting room.

VI

About a week later, surrounded by his family, Genkaku died of pulmonary tuberculosis. His funeral was a grand affair (!). (Only cowardly Otori was unable to attend even that ceremony.) The people gathered at his house offered Shigekichi and Osuzu their condolences, then burned incense before his coffin, which was covered in white figured silk. But by the time they passed through the gate, most of them had forgotten all about him. His former associates, of course, must have been the exception. “The old man must have died content. He had a young mistress and a little money put away.” They all said much the same thing to one another.

The funeral carriage bearing his coffin, followed by one other carriage, traveled through the still sunlit streets of the year’s final month toward a crematorium. Shigekichi and Genkaku’s cousin rode in the dingy carriage behind it. The cousin, a university student, read a small book intently, hardly speaking to Shigekichi and only occasionally distracted by the jolting of the carriage. It was an English translation of Liebknecht’s memoirs. Shigekichi, meanwhile, when he was not dozing from exhaustion after the wake, gazed through the window at the newly developed district and listlessly muttered to himself, “This whole neighborhood has changed.”

The two carriages finally reached the crematorium over a road muddy with thawing frost. Despite their having telephoned in advance to make arrangements, they were told that all the first-class furnaces were occupied and only second class remained. It made no difference to either of them. But Shigekichi thought less of his father-in-law than of what Osuzu might say, and earnestly negotiated with the clerk through a semicircular window.

“The truth is, he was a patient whose illness was already beyond treatment, so I’d at least like to give him first class when he’s cremated.” He even tried telling that sort of lie. It apparently proved more effective than he had expected.

“Then let us do this. First class is already full, so as a special arrangement we’ll cremate him in the deluxe furnace for the first-class fee.”

Feeling somewhat embarrassed, Shigekichi thanked the clerk repeatedly. The clerk was a kindly-looking old man in brass-rimmed spectacles.

“No, no, there’s no need to thank me.”

After sealing the furnace, they climbed into the dingy carriage and were about to pass through the crematorium gate. Unexpectedly, they saw Oyoshi standing alone before the brick wall, bowing her head to their carriage. Shigekichi was momentarily flustered and tried to raise his hat. But by then the carriage carrying them was already swaying along the road lined with bare poplars.

“That was her, wasn’t it?”

“Yes... I wonder if she was standing there when we arrived too.”

“I don’t know. I thought there were only beggars there... What do you suppose will happen to that woman now?”

Shigekichi lit a Shikishima cigarette and replied as indifferently as he could.

“Who knows what will become of her...”

His cousin fell silent. But in his imagination he pictured a fishing town somewhere on the coast of Kazusa Province. Then he pictured Oyoshi and her son, who would have to live in that fishing town. His face suddenly hardened, and in the sunlight that had begun to slant into the carriage, he resumed reading Liebknecht.