Snow Country (11 page)

“You’re early.”

“But the maid has already brought charcoal.”

A morninglike steam was rising from the teakettle.

“It’s time to get up.” She sat beside his pillow, the picture of the proper housewife. Shimamura stretched and yawned. He took the hand on her knee and caressed the small fingers, callused from playing the samisen.

“But it’s barely sunrise.”

“Did you sleep well by yourself?”

“Very well.”

“You didn’t grow a mustache after all.”

“You did tell me to grow a mustache, didn’t you?”

“It’s all right. I knew you wouldn’t. You always shave yourself nice and blue.”

“And you always look as if you’d just shaved when you wash away that powder.”

“Isn’t your face a little fatter, though? You were very funny asleep, all round and plump with your white skin and no mustache.”

“Sweet and gentle?”

“But unreliable.”

“You were staring at me, then? I’m not sure I
like having people stare at me when I’m asleep.”

Komako smiled and nodded. Then, like a glow that breaks into a flame, the smile became a laugh. There was strength in the fingers that took his.

“I hid in the closet. The maid didn’t suspect a thing.”

“When? How long were you hidden?”

“Just now, of course. When the maid came to bring charcoal.” She laughed happily at the prank, and suddenly she was red to the ears. As if to hide her confusion, she began fanning herself with the edge of his quilt. “Get up. Get up, please.”

“It’s cold.” Shimamura pulled the quilt away from her. “Are the inn people up yet?”

“I have no idea. I came in from the back.”

“The back?”

“I fought my way up from the cedar grove.”

“Is there a path in back?”

“No. But it’s shorter.”

Shimamura looked at her in surprise.

“No one knows I’m here. I heard someone in the kitchen, but the front door must still be locked.”

“You seem to be an early riser.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Did you hear the rain?”

“It rained? That’s why the underbrush was wet, then. I’m going home. Go on back to sleep.”

But Shimamura jumped vigorously out of bed, the woman’s hand still in his. He went over to the window and looked down at the hill she said she had come up. Below the shrubbery, halfway down toward the cedar grove, dwarf bamboo was growing in a wild tangle. Directly below the window were rows of taro and sweet potatoes, onions and radishes. It was a most ordinary garden patch, and yet the varied colors of the leaves in the morning sun made him feel that he was seeing them for the first time.

The porter was throwing feed to the carp from the corridor that led to the bath.

“It’s colder, and they aren’t eating well,” he said as Shimamura passed. Shimamura stood for a moment looking at the feed on the water, dried and crumbled silkworms.

Komako was waiting for him, clean and prim as before, when he came back from the bath.

“It would be good to work on my sewing in a quiet place like this,” she said.

The room had evidently been cleaned, and the sun poured in on the deepest corners of the slightly worn matting.

“You sew, do you?”

“What an insulting question. I had to work harder than anyone else in the family. I see now, looking back, that the years when I was growing
up were the worst ones of all.” She spoke almost to herself, but her voice was tense as she continued: “The maid saw me. She gave me a strange look and asked when I had come. It was very embarrassing—but I couldn’t go on hiding in the closet forever. I’m going home. I’m very busy. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I’d wash my hair. I have to wait for it to dry, and then go to the hairdresser’s, and if I don’t wash it early in the morning I’m never ready for an afternoon party. There’s a party here too, but they only told me about it last night. I won’t come. I’ve made other promises. And I won’t be able to see you tonight—it’s Saturday and I’ll be very busy.”

She showed no sign of leaving, however.

She decided not to wash her hair after all. She took Shimamura down to the back garden. Her damp sandals and stockings were hidden under the veranda where she had come in.

The dwarf bamboo she said she had fought her way through seemed impassible. Starting down along the garden path toward the sound of the water, they came out on the high river bank. There were children’s voices in the chestnut trees. A number of burrs lay in the grass at their feet. Komako stamped them open and took out the fruit. The kernels were small.

Kaya
plumes waved on the steep slope of the
mountain opposite, a dazzling silver in the morning sun. Dazzling, and yet rather like the fleeting translucence that moved across the autumn sky.

“Shall we cross over? We can see your fiancé’s grave.”

Komako brought herself to her full height and glared at him. A handful of chestnuts came at his face.

“You’re making fun of me.”

Shimamura had no time to dodge. The chestnuts lashed at his forehead.

“What possible reason could you have for going to the cemetery?”

“But there’s no need to lose your temper.”

“I was completely in earnest. I’m not like people who can do exactly as they want and think of no one else.”

“And who can do that?” Shimamura muttered weakly.

“Why do you have to call him my fiancé? Didn’t I tell you very carefully he wasn’t? But you’ve forgotten, of course.”

Shimamura had not forgotten. Indeed, the memory gave the man Yukio a certain weight in his thoughts.

Komako seemed to dislike talking about Yukio. She was not his fiancée, perhaps, but she had become a geisha to help pay doctors’ bills. There was
no doubt that she had been “completely in earnest.”

Shimamura showed no anger even under the barrage of chestnuts. Komako looked curiously at him, and her resistance seemed to collapse. She took his arm. “You’re a simple, honest person at heart, aren’t you? Something must be making you sad.”

“They’re watching us from the trees.”

“What of it? Tokyo people are complicated. They live in such noise and confusion that their feelings are broken to little bits.”

“Everything is broken to little bits.”

“Even life, before long.… Shall we go to the cemetery?”

“Well.…”

“See? You don’t really want to go at all.”

“But you made such an issue of it.”

“Because I’ve never once gone to the cemetery. I really haven’t gone once. I feel guilty sometimes, now that the teacher’s buried there too. But I can’t very well start going now. I’d only be pretending.”

“You’re more complicated than I am.”

“Why? I’m never able to be completely open with living people, and I want at least to be honest with him now that he’s dead.”

They came out of the cedar grove, where the quiet seemed to fall in chilly drops. Following the railway along the foot of the ski grounds, they were soon at the cemetery. Some ten weathered old tombstones and a forlorn statue of Jizo, guardian of children, stood on a tiny island of high ground among the paddies. There were no flowers.

Quite without warning, Yoko’s head and shoulders rose from the bushes behind the Jizo. Her face wore the usual solemn, masklike expression. She darted a burning glance at the two of them, and nodded a quick greeting to Shimamura. She said nothing.

“Aren’t you early, though, Yoko? I thought of going to the hairdresser’s.…” As Komako spoke, a black squall came upon them and threatened to sweep them from their feet.

A freight train roared past.

“Yoko, Yoko.…” A boy was waving his hat in the door of a black freight car.

“Saichiro, Saichiro,” Yoko called back.

It was the voice that had called to the station master at the snowy signal stop, a voice so beautiful it was almost lonely, calling out as if to someone who could not hear, on a ship far away.

The train passed, and the buckwheat across the
tracks emerged fresh and clean as the blind was lifted. The field of white flowers on red stems was quietness itself.

The two of them had been so startled at seeing Yoko that they had not noticed the approach of the freight train; but the first shock was dispelled by the train.

They seemed still to hear Yoko’s voice, and not the dying rumble of the freight train. It seemed to come back like an echo of distilled love.

“My brother,” said Yoko, looking after the train. “I wonder if I should go to the station.”

“But the train won’t wait for you at the station,” Komako laughed.

“I suppose not.”

“I didn’t come to see Yukio’s grave.”

Yoko nodded. She seemed to hesitate a moment, then knelt down before the grave.

Komako watched stiffly.

Shimamura looked away, toward the Jizo. It had three long faces, and, besides the hands clasped at its breast, a pair each to the left and the right.

“I’m going to wash my hair,” Komako said to Yoko. She turned and started back along a ridge between the paddies.

It was the practice in the snow country to string wooden or bamboo poles on a number of levels from tree trunk to tree trunk, and to hang rice
sheaves head down from them to dry. At the height of the harvest the frames presented a solid screen of rice. Farmers were hanging out rice along the path Shimamura and Komako took back to the village.

A farm girl threw up a sheaf of rice with a twist of her trousered hips, and a man high above her caught it expertly and in one deft sweep of his hand spread it to hang from the frame. The unconscious, practiced motions were repeated over and over.

Komako took one of the dangling sheaves in her hand and shook it gently up and down, as though she were feeling the weight of a jewel.

“See how it’s headed. And how nice it is to the touch. Entirely different from last year’s rice.” She half-closed her eyes from the pleasure. A disorderly flock of sparrows flew low over her head.

An old notice was pasted to a wall beside the road: “Pay for field hands. Ninety sen a day, meals included. Women forty per cent less.”

There were rice frames in front of Yoko’s house too, beyond the slightly depressed field that separated the house from the road. One set of frames was strung up high in a row of persimmon trees, along the white wall between the garden and the house next door, while another, at right angles to it, followed the line between the field and the garden.
With an opening for a doorway at one end, the frames suggested a makeshift little theater covered not with the usual straw mats but with un-threshed rice. The taro in the field still sent out powerful stems and leaves, but the dahlias and roses beyond were withered. The lotus pond with its red carp was hidden behind the screen of rice, as was the window of the silkworm room, where Komako had lived.

Bowing her head sharply, almost angrily, Yoko went in through the opening in the headed rice.

“Does she live alone?” Shimamura asked, looking after the bowed figure.

“I imagine not.” Komako’s answer was a little tart. “But what a nuisance. I’ll not go to the hairdresser’s after all. You say things you have no business saying, and we ruin her visit to the cemetery.”

“You’re only being difficult—is it really so terrible to run into her at the cemetery?”

“You have no idea how I feel.… If I have time later, I’ll stop by to wash my hair. I may be late, but I’ll stop by.”

It was three in the morning.

Shimamura was awakened by a slamming as though someone were knocking the doors loose. Komako lay stretched out on top of him.

“I said I would come and I’ve come. Haven’t I? I said I’d come and I’ve come, haven’t I?” Her chest, even her abdomen, rose and fell violently.

“You’re dead-drunk.”

“Haven’t I? I said I’d come and I’ve come, haven’t I?”

“You have indeed.”

“Couldn’t see a thing on the way. Not a thing. My head aches.”

“How did you manage to get up the hill?”

“I have no idea. Not the slightest.” She lay heavily across his chest. He found it a little oppressive, especially when she turned over and arched her back; but, too suddenly awakened, he fell back as he tried to get up. It was an astonishingly hot object that his head came to rest on.

“You’re on fire.”

“Oh? Fire for a pillow. See that you don’t burn yourself.”

“I might very well.” He closed his eyes and the warmth sank into his head, bringing an immediate sense of life. Reality came through the violent breathing, and with it a sort of nostalgic remorse. He felt as though he were waiting tranquilly for some undefined revenge.

“I said I’d come, and I’ve come.” She spoke with the utmost concentration. “I’ve come, and now I’m going home. I’m going to wash my hair.”

She got to her knees and took a drink of water in great swallows.

“I can’t let you go home like this.”

“I’m going home. I have some people waiting. Where did I leave my towel?”

Shimamura got up and turned on the light. “Don’t!” She hid her face in her hands, then buried it, hands and all, in the quilt.

She had on a bold informal kimono with a narrow undress
obi
, and under it a nightgown. Her under-kimono had slipped down out of sight. She was flushed from drink even to the soles of her bare feet, and there was something very engaging about the way she tried to tuck them out of sight.

Evidently she had thrown down her towel and bath utensils when she came in. Soap and combs were scattered over the floor.

“Cut. I brought scissors.”

“What do you want me to cut?”

“This.” She pointed at the strings that held her Japanese coiffure in place. “I tried to do it myself, but my hands wouldn’t work. I thought maybe I could ask you.”

Shimamura separated the hair and cut at the strings, and as he cut she shook the long hair loose. She was somewhat calmer.

“What time is it?”

“Three o’clock.”

“Not really! You’ll be careful not to cut the hair, won’t you?”

“I’ve never seen so many strings.”

The false hair that filled out the coiffure was hot where it touched her head.

“Is it really three o’clock? I must have fallen asleep when I got home. I promised to come for a bath with some people, and they stopped by to call me. They’ll be wondering what’s happened.”