Mandarins (22 page)

Yet J
Å«
kichi himself would make an occasional remark to his mother-in-law: “I hardly think that even Father regards O-yoshi as capable of appreciating a painting by Lu
ó
Pìn.” But O-tori would merely look up at her son-in-law and say with wry smile: “Such is Father's nature. He is the sort of person who even asks me: ‘What do you think of this inkstone?' ”

Such concerns appeared in retrospect to be absurd. That winter Genkaku's illness suddenly took a turn for the worse, so that he was no longer able to visit O-yoshi. With unexpected docility he accepted J
Å«
kichi's proposal to end the arrangement—though, to be more precise, it was O-tori and O-suzu who, in fact, spelled out the conditions.

O-suzu's fears regarding O-yoshi's elder brother likewise proved to be groundless, for he expressed not the least objection to those conditions: She would receive one thousand yen in terminal compensation and a small monthly allowance for the education of Buntar
ō
after she had returned to her parents' house on a beach in Kazusa. He even returned, unbidden, the treasured tea utensils that Genkaku had left with her. O-suzu's favorable feelings toward him now more than overcame her former suspicions.

“Incidentally,” he had said, “my sister would be more than happy to assist you in the care of the master, should you find yourselves shorthanded.”

Before responding to the proposal, O-suzu had gone for advice to her paralytic mother. There can be no doubt that in this she committed a strategic error, for O-tori's response was to urge her daughter to summon O-yoshi and Buntar
ō
as soon as the very next day. O-suzu tried repeatedly to persuade her mother to change her mind, for she feared that such would throw the entire household into turmoil, to say
nothing of the effect on O-tori. But she refused to listen. (Moreover, having acted as an intermediary between her father and O-yoshi's brother, O-suzu found it impossible to issue a blunt rejection.)

“If you had dealt with the matter before telling me, it would be one thing, but I mustn't feel shame in front of O-yoshi.”

O-suzu thus resigned herself to accepting the brother's offer. Perhaps this mistake too was a consequence of her ignorance regarding the ways of the world. As it was, when J
Å«
kichi returned from the bank and heard the story from his wife, there appeared between his womanishly gentle eyebrows an expression of displeasure. “The extra help is certainly to be appreciated,” he remarked, “but you should have consulted with Father. If he had refused, you would have been freed of any responsibility.”

O-suzu, more downhearted than she had ever been, concurred in this opinion. Yet now to consult with the dying Genkaku, who naturally still had a lingering affection for O-yoshi, would clearly have been more impossible . . .

Even as she attended to O-yoshi and her son, O-suzu was recalling all of this regarding the woman, who, without presuming to warm her hands over the long brazier, was now talking, with occasional lulls, of her brother and of Buntar
ō
. She had reverted to the provincial accent with which she had spoken four or five years earlier. On O-suzu it worked a soothing effect, even as she felt a vague uneasiness at the presence of her mother behind the single-layered paper door, whose silence was not broken by so much as a cough.

“So you can stay with us for about a week?”

“Yes, if my lady has no objection.”

“But you will need at least a change of clothes, won't you?”

“My brother assures me that he will have such items sent by this evening.”

This she said as she reached into the bosom of her kimono for a caramel to give to the bored Buntar
ō
.

“Well then, let us inform my father. He is now much weaker, you know. The ear he has directed toward the draft is chilblained.”

Before getting up from the long brazier, O-suzu absentmindedly reset the kettle.

“Mother . . .”

O-tori responded in the viscous voice of one just awakened from sleep.

“Mother, O-yoshi-san is here.”

With a sense of relief, O-suzu quickly got up, without looking at O-yoshi's face. Passing through the next room, she again announced the arrival of “O-yoshi-san.”

Her mother was lying in bed, her mouth buried in her night-clothes, but she nonetheless looked up and with a twinkle in her eyes exclaimed: “Oh, already here?” O-suzu was palpably aware of O-yoshi's presence behind her, as she made her harried and hurried way to Genkaku's room, moving along the veranda that looked out on the snow-covered garden.

Entering his secluded chamber from the brightness outside, she was struck by how dark it seemed. Genkaku was sitting up, listening as K
ō
no read to him from the newspaper, but when he saw O-suzu, he immediately called out, “O-yoshi?” It was an intense, hoarse, almost needling voice.

“Yes, she's here, Father,” said O-suzu reflexively, standing next to the sliding door. This was followed by a strained silence, before she continued:

“I shall bring her here immediately.”

“Mmm . . . Is she alone?”

“No.”

Genkaku nodded a wordless acknowledgment.

“K
ō
no-san, come this way,” said O-suzu. Without waiting for the nurse to respond, she left the room, passing with short, rapid steps down the corridor. A wagtail was at that moment perched on a hemp-palm leaf still covered with snow, moving its tail up and down, but O-suzu was preoccupied with a sense of foreboding, as though it had emerged from that isolated, foul-smelling room and were now pursuing her.

Now that O-yoshi had come to stay, the ambience of the household became visibly strained. It began with Takeo's bullying of Buntar
ō
. The boy resembled his mother more than his father, sharing with her not only facial features but also timidity. O-suzu was, of course, not without sympathy but nonetheless seemed at times to find him much too submissive.

K
ō
no took a coldly professional look at this banal domestic drama—or perhaps rather found amusement in it. She had her own dark past with which to contend, having attempted on numerous occasions to ingest cyanide in the aftermath of relations with the head of the household where she was employed or with hospital physicians. As a result, she had developed a morbid pleasure in the sufferings of others.

Since having come to work for the Horikoshis, she had discovered that the paralytic O-tori did not wash her hands after having relieved herself. For a time, being the deeply suspicious woman she was, she thought that O-suzu must be a very clever person indeed: “She somehow brings water to her mother without our knowing it.” Within four or five days, however, she realized that the fault lay with the daughter of the house. This gave her a feeling close to satisfaction,
and now whenever the occasion called for it, K
ō
no would provide a washbowl.

“K
ō
no-san,” O-tori exclaimed tearfully, pressing her palms together in gratitude, “it is thanks to you that I can now wash my hands as any normal person does!”

K
ō
no was nonetheless unmoved by O-tori's joy. Her amusement lay in seeing O-suzu obliged to bring the water herself at least every third time. Again being the kind of person she was, she hardly felt displeased or disturbed by the children's quarrels. When with Genkaku, she feigned sympathy for O-yoshi and her son; in the presence of O-tori, her attitude toward the two was full of spite. It was a slow but effective strategy.

O-yoshi had been in the house for about a week when Takeo and Buntar
ō
quarreled once more. The disagreement had begun over nothing more than the question of which is longer, the tail of a pig or the tail of a cow. The two had been in Takeo's 4.5-mat study room, next to the entrance. Takeo had pushed his slender opponent into a corner, where he pummeled him with kicks and punches. O-yoshi, who had happened to pass by at that moment, held Buntar
ō
in her arms, the boy still too stunned for tears.

“Now Master Takeo,” she remonstrated, “you musn't be pickin' on the weak.”

These were unusually barbed words for the usually withdrawn O-yoshi. Takeo was taken aback by her severity and fled crying to the sitting room, whereupon O-suzu left whatever work she was doing at her sewing machine and dragged Takeo back to O-yoshi and her son.

“How dare you behave so selfishly! Now tell O-yoshi-san that you are sorry. Get down on the mats and make a proper bow!”

Finding herself in front of the exasperated O-suzu, O-yoshi could only add her own tears to Buntar
ō
's and offer the most abject of
apologies. Again it was K
ō
no the nurse who invariably assumed the role of arbitrator. She physically restrained O-suzu, whose face was red with anger, while imagining with inner contempt the feelings of someone else: Genkaku, who was listening intently to the commotion. Needless to say, she did not betray such thoughts in either her face or her comportment.

Yet it was not only the children's quarrels that caused family unrest. O-tori, who had once seemed to have quite resigned herself to the existence of her husband's mistress, now found the flames of her jealousy rekindled. Of course, she had never once uttered a bitter word to her. (It had been the same five or six years before, when O-yoshi was still living in the maid's room.) Instead, O-tori was inclined to unleash her resentment on the innocent J
Å«
kichi, who naturally refused to take it in the least seriously. O-suzu felt sympathy for him and would sometimes make excuses on behalf of her mother. But he would always rebuff her with a wry smile, saying: “We can't very well have you behaving hysterically as well.”

K
ō
no also took an interest in O-tori's jealousy, which she thoroughly understood, together with the old woman's desire to punish J
Å«
kichi for it. At the same time, she had come to nurture her own feelings of envy toward the married couple. O-suzu was in her eyes the spoiled daughter of the house. As for J
Å«
kichi, he was clearly a man who stood above the crowd, but he was also precisely the sort of male she despised.

Their happiness struck her as undeserved, and so to “remedy” the injustice, her manner toward him took on an air of familiarity. Though such may have been quite meaningless to him, it provided a fine opportunity to annoy O-tori, who, leaving her knees fully exposed, would spitefully taunt him: “J
Å«
kichi, is the daughter of an invalid not enough for you?”

Yet O-suzu did not cast the least suspicion on J
Å«
kichi. Indeed, she
seemed to feel a measure of pity for K
ō
no. This, however, only added to K
ō
no's resentment and even increased her contempt for the kindhearted O-suzu. She was pleased to see J
Å«
kichi begin to avoid her and at the same time to show signs of male interest. He had previously been quite unperturbed about undressing in K
ō
no's presence when he entered the bath located next to the kitchen. Recently, however, he had not allowed himself even once to appear to her in such a state. He was now undoubtedly ashamed of his body, which resembled that of a plucked rooster. Seeing him in this way (his face was also covered with freckles), she secretly sneered at him, asking herself how anyone except O-suzu could possibly fall in love with him.

On a frosty, overcast morning, K
ō
no was sitting in front of the mirror in her three-mat room at the house entrance, arranging her hair into the straight-back style in which she always wore it. Now at last O-yoshi was to leave the next day for her home in the countryside. While J
Å«
kichi and O-suzu were happy to see her go, O-tori appeared to be all the more irritated.

As she occupied herself with her hair, K
ō
no could hear O-tori's shrill voice and somehow remembered a story she had once heard from a friend. It seems that a certain woman had, while living in Paris, become acutely homesick. Fortunately, a friend of her husband was about to return to Japan, and so she accompanied him on the same ship. The long ocean voyage did not appear to cause her any particular distress, but as they were approaching the province of Kii, she suddenly became so agitated that she threw herself into the water. The closer she had come to Japan, the more intensely homesick she had become . . . As K
ō
no slowly wiped her oily hands, she thought about a similar sort of mysterious force that acted on the jealousy of the invalid O-tori—and on her own.

“Mother! What have you done, crawling all the way out here? Mother! K
ō
no-san, could you please come?”

The voice of O-suzu appeared to come from the outside corridor near Genkaku's room. Hearing it, K
ō
no looked into the clear mirror and for the first time permitted herself a cold snigger. Then with an air of surprise, she called out in reply: “Yes, I'll be right there!”

Genkaku's condition steadily deteriorated. He also suffered from excruciating sores running from his back to his hips, the consequence of having been bedridden for so many years. To ease his misery, if only slightly, he would occasionally groan. Moreover, his suffering was not only physical. Though O-yoshi's presence provided some consolation, he was also constantly tormented by O-tori's jealousy and the children's quarrels. Yet that was still preferable to the terrifying loneliness he felt in the wake of O-yoshi's departure, forcing him to come to terms with the long years he had lived.