Sore eye‑lids (Tadare) : written by Shusei Tokuda
著者（英） Kenshiro Homma
journal or
publication title
Doshisha literature
number 23
page range 11‑100
year 1964‑05‑15
権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000016467
SORE EYE-LIDS
(TADARE)-WRITTEN By SHUSEI TOKUDA-
KENSHIRO HOMMA
Shusei Tokuda (1871-1943) was born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture.
After leaving the Fourth High School in Kanazawa halfway, he obtained a job in Hakubun-kan Publishing Co., in Tokyo, which caused him to lead a literary life. In 1895, he became a disciple of Koyo Ozaki (1867-1903), a literary doyen then. With A Spear Flower (Yabukojz) (1896) as his first successful work, his 1iterary career started. His collections of short stories, Childbirth (Shussan) (1908) and A New Couple (Arajotm) (1908) won him recognition as a natural- IStIc writer. Thereafter he produced a voluminous body of novels, which in- cluded such masterpieces as Footsteps (Ashiato) (1910), j1,1old (Kabi) (1911), Sore Eye-lids (Tadare), A Rough One (Arakure) (1915), A Rapid stream (Honryu) (1915) and An Epitome of life (Shukuzu) (1941).
Tokuda's description was so terse and unpretentious that it was perfectly suited to the realistic and non-sentimental approach to the life of common peo- ple he developed in his novels. His many short stories which dealt chiefly with trivial things in daily life did not end in describing them as they were but in pursuing their inner aspects, which established him as a writer of psy-
·chological novels. When he was 66 years old, he was chosen a member of the Art Academy of Japan. With his long novel Shukuzu unfinished, he died at the age of 72.
The present story Tadare was published in 1913. The writer visualized the vicissitudes of life, while sketching a passionate life centering on a geisha and her redeemer. One would realize how skillfully and delicately women's sex and psychology prevailed in the atmosphere of amorousness and decadence.
The author wanted to give an interpretation of life in his work through the agonies women suffer. in life.
Many women were described in detail in Tokuda's novels. Typical of his novels was his realistic representation of the women who lived between the 1910's and 1920's. They were not ideal women but those one usually meets on the streets even today. They were really flesh and blood. They were conceived neither by conception nor by ideas. They hoped for a better life although their dreams are never realized. They were uneducated and miserable.
They grew older before they knew it under their merciless fate.
My translation is taken from the book Tadare published in 1955 by Chi- ell)
kuma-shobo publishing Co., in Tokyo.
I am very grateful to the author's eldest son Kazuho Tokuda for his kind.
permission to publish this novel in English.
I
In the autumn of that year O-masu moved to Koji-machi from the house at Shitaya where she had been living.
She spent the three hot summer months from the end of spring- in the house where she felt relaxed for the first time.
The house was small and one-storied. It stood along a sidestreet at the back of the crowded Hirokoji-dori. Asai's friend's house was·
nearby.
O-masu had few clothes of her own. Her way of speaking and behavior lacked refinement because she had lived in prostitute quar- ters for a long time. Her new home had a small and mossy garden which was partitioned off by a black wood fence, but she could see the bald head of her next-door neighbor and a windbell. The house also had a kitchen where she could clearly hear what was being- talked about in the living room of the house just across the way, so- she felt quite cramped.
At that time during the day when she sat alone before the brazier (hibachi) in the living room of the house she missed her lover.
She had nothing else to do after mopping the rough veranda, polish- ing the hibachi and taking a bath. She often recalled the pleasant memories of the quarters she had long become accustomed to living:
in. Her man now and then came to see her on his way home from the office. He also came from his house after dark. He had a wife.
O-masu would prepare sake in the kitchen after doing up her hair in a chignon. Some dried fish eggs and crackers shaped like a fish, favorites of her lover, were arranged on the table they had bought at Hirokoji. They sometimes ordered two bowls of eel and rice from a nearby eating house.
Her man looked better off than when he had come to see her with a worn-out business suit on. There remained no vestige of his former self when he was wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a figured sash (obi) over heavy kimono with mottled designs done in the Yone-
zasa-Ryukyu fashion.1
He scarcely stayed long even when he got drunk. He only thought about business and moneymaking. In the morning he got out of bed and lost no time in opening the wooden front door and left her home looking at his wrist-watch.
After her man left O-masu missed him acutely again. She felt sorry about living with a married man.
"How wicked you are to deceive me by telling me you don't have a wife!"
She blamed him in earnest after she had been told by an old woman from the house opposite soon after she moved in.
""\Vho told you that?"
He did not seem surprised although he opened his amorous and gentle eyes wider.
"That's a lie."
"I've heard everything about you: a woman from Kyoto came to see you; and you also were friends with a widow."
" He! he!" the man laughed derisively.
"I've also been told that the woman from Kyoto sends you gifts now and then."
"vVhat a stupid thing to say!"
"I was nicely taken in."
The man sat up in bed and put on his undershirt. She sat on the mat (tatami) with her knee drawn up smoking. Her thick-lashed, tired eyes were bloodshot. She twitched his bare knee and pressed her lighted cigarette against him. He jumped in surprise.
II
He could not pretend that he did not know: his wife was two years older than he was when they were married three or four years .ago; she had helped him a long time when he was a student. She lived with her mother and had a small sum of money on hand.
" You deceive me by saying that you and I must live apart for decency's sake!"
1. Y onezawa: a city in Yamagata Prefecture, a weaving center. The Ryu- kyu Islands are also well-known weaving districts. Yonezawa-Ryukyu fashion is a synonym for Yonezawa fashion.
14
They drank tea beside the long hibachi. Her sharply outlined face looked pale under the light of the lamp on the table. Biting her thin lower lip, she was absorbed in deep thought.
"It'll all be settled soon because my wife has asthma so we won't be able to live together long."
He mumbled while putting away his tobacco pipe into a pipe case.
" Asthma? Vi/hat's asthma?"
"It's a disease characterized by wheezing."
"Oh, I see. This reminds me of one of my customers who had the asthma."
She suddenly began to laugh.
"I would have thought that asthma is caused by overdrinking or something like that. That's bad. Shame on you! To live with a sick woman!"
She frowned and looked into his face. He smiled vvryly.
"I don't believe you can part with her because she was kind enough to take care of you. What a cruel man you are!
"IVloney is everything."
"No, I don't agree with you. A sick woman like your wife will find it difficult to get married again."
O-masu looked at him with wondering eyes but gave up trying to criticize him.
"I would like to see your wife just once."
She said it to satisfy her inner desire.
" Nonsense! "
He laughed sardonically.
"It'll be awkward to divorce her if she knows that you and I live together."
" You're afraid of her."
"No, that's not the point. She is just a bother."
"Is that so? I'm sure your wife is jealous."
"How about you?"
"I'm not jealous. I'll be happy if I take in the sights of Tokyo and then go into the country after living the way I have."
She said this laughing but did feel humiliated by her past life.
She could not bear being alone after her neighbors had gone :to bed. She had many sleepless nights because her loneliness kept "her
awake during the night. She visualized the faces of her friends and the pimps. Their voices still lingered in her ears. She was tortur- ed with laziness when she lay in her own bed. She also remember- ed the sounds of drum and samisen.
His wife's face and the room they were sitting together in were visible.
HI
"Come and play cards, O-masu-san.""
vVhen she felt lonely, an old woman whose name was O-chiyo called to O-masu in the entrance hall. The woman lived opposite.
O-masu used to see her almost every day.
O-chiyo's eldest son was working in a mme which was far from Tokyo. He and Asai had been friends since boyhood. While taking care of her son, O-chiyo lived comfortably with a maid.
O-chiyo had done everything she could for O-masu shopping and taking care of the kitchen. She often took her to the hairdresser,.
public bathhouse and variety theater.
"I beg you to teach her because she knows nothing about house- keeping." When Asai took her to her present house, he asked this of O-chiyo.
" Are you sure that this is all right? What would you do if your wife knew about your mistress? I'm afraid I'd be criticized."
O-chiyo said this in a harsh tone. She had lived alone with her children for a long time as her husband had died young. She as- sumed a stern attitude while talking with Asai. She was irritated with him when O-masu was brought into the conversation.
She was playing cards beside the long hibachi with a sad face.
She was more fond of cards than anything else. She would often sit up late at night playing cards.
"How about playing cards with me?" She said to O-masu with a nervous look.
2. Friends and acquaintances very often call each other by the first name or the first part of the first name with san added. This makes it a diminutive and in some cases an honorific. C7wn, however, is preferred among children, brothers and sisters. San is more formal than chan. It corresponds to Mrs., Mrs., or Miss in English.
16
"I've just been trYIng to teach him a lesson about his wife."
O-masu sat down and then began to speak.
"What did Mr. Asai say?"
"He said he wanted to divorce her."
"I'm afraid not. His wife worked hard for him when he was a student. And now she is legally his wife."
" And yet, he doesn't like asthma. He wants to get a separa- tion."
"I don't agree with him. It'll bring remorse upon you if you force your way into his home."
"I don't care a bit if he'll let me stay with him."
She said it in desperation and shuffled cards with her big-knuckled thin hands.
"You're dealer."
O-chiyo handed the cards to her.
"I'd like to treat you if I win." She dealt the cards as dex- terously as she could. She was not enthusiastic about the game, however, because she felt dizzy and things were fuzzy. She was also upset when she sensed that O-chiyo had made a fool of her.
" Are you still playing?"
Recognizing the sound of shuffling cards, O-chiyo's son came down from upstairs. He was a middle-school graduate. He watched them after sitting down beside his mother.
O-masu was lucky enough.
"You're stupid, mom. It's bad to play cards the way you do."
O-masu played on in silence but went home soon. And she cried alone for some unknown reason.
IV
O-masu had dozed off to sleep, when she was suddenly awaken- ed by the loud voice of the old woman who lived next door. She had been dreaming a fantastic dream probably because of her tired- ness. The dream was comprised of intangible fragments. She could see in the dream Asai's foreign clothes when he came to see her for the first time after a couple of days' absence. A clerk, who worked for a wholesale hat dealer in Nihonbashi, passed by and pretended
that he didn't know her who had been sitting with the other courte- sans in the dim front of the prostitute house. She tried to call him
back but couldn't do it because she felt someone's hands pressing .against her chest.
At first she thought that the loud voice was that of a young wife who had been quarreling with someone in the hall of the woman's house, but later found out it was the old woman. The wo- man was, she was told, a second wife. She had been quieting her husband - the old man with a bald head.
"They're quarreling again."
She slowly began to understand that she was lying in bed alone 'under a mosquito net in the house where she had taken shelter. She found the morning sun streaming into her bedroom. The sunshine 'seemed to be scorching outside today, too. There was the splashing 'sound of water near the water pipes in the alley. The noise of a
well-bucket also could be heard.
The old woman seemed to be going back and forth between the ,drawing room and the kitchen screaming. Her voice sounded close but in a moment died away. The old husband said something. It was not unusual that they quarreled even during the night. O-masu knew why. His wife often escaped from her husband who looked 'pale and sullen.
"No woman wants to live with him because he's ·stingy."
O-chiyo said this but this was not all that could be imagined.
"No, I'm afraid the old husband is also amorous during the
·night."
O-masu told her this but she only looked embarrassed.
O-masu felt drugged because she could not sleep welL While 'smoking in bed, she heard the clock in the next house strike six.
'She always got up late and O-chiyo said something to hurt her feel- ings. O-masu took the words in good part. She had a feeling that -she had returned to her younger days when she worked in earnest
<lnd had little thought of living a slovenly life again. She was care- ful about spending her money.
"How much is your income these days?"
O-masu asked Asai about this now and then.
His income was not regular every month, however.
"How much do you spend a month?"
She was also worried about this.
"vVell, let me see. It depends on family circumstances. I hope the costs are not high but sometimes my wife drinks sake. Also she likes to play cards somewhere. It's her hobby."
"I can't stand it. I'm sure your wife must be a loose woman.""
Asai was disgusted with his wife.
"If I were your wife, I believe I would be more economical."
O-masu said this with confidence and used to count his expendi- tures. She found this was more interesting than anything else.
"How stupid I am! It has nothing to do with me. Let me give it up."
She began to laugh fatuously.
v
O-masu remembered a friend she had once visited after she set- tled here. The friend's name was O-yuki and she had worked in the same house as O-masu although at a different time. She was a mis- tress and had given birth to a child. She was much older than 0- masu. O-masu liked her better than anybody else because of her nice temperament.
O-yuki's lover was once a well-known actor. He had also been interested in politics. O-masu knew him well. He had a determined mouth and handsome eyes.
"Aoyanagi returned home again."
Aoyanagi, O-yuki's man, often quarreled and left her. After traveling from town to town, he'd suddenly come home. The news, reached O-masu earlier than anybody else.
Aoyanagi would be as haggard as a beggar and would have little money each time he'd return home from his tour. O-yuki looked forward to seeing him although she told O-masu that they were quite through vvith each other. O-yuki was more popular than any other girl but abandoned herself to despair because her mother lived off"
her daughter's income. She drank sake from a bowl; she even thrust her customers away when in a bad mood. They grew so wild that if they had been a little younger, they would have com- mitted double suicide. At times O-masu was frightened because they
,yere so serious.
O-yuki had no clothes when she left the prostitute house. Her wardrobe contained nothing. All of her customers had neglected her. She ran away to live with Aoyanagi, with nothing to carry but herself.
O-masu had no idea of how Aoyanagi was getting along when she paid the first visit to his house which stood at the back of a theater in Asakusa.
"My husband has something queer to· do."
O·yuki began to talk when she let O-masu sit across a long hibachi. She looked rosy and had her hair wound around a comb ..
She was tall. She wore a heavy kimono of double-stranded threads, She was a middle-aged woman of about 30.
"Oh, my! What's he doing?"
O-masu asked this while offering her a box of bean-jam cakes (monaka) as a gift. She could clearly hear the sounds of the musical instruments and wooden clappers used when the curtain rises in a theater.
"Guess what's happened."
" Speculation? "
"Not such a very stylish thing."
" Working in a company?"
"I wonder if Aoyanagi is capable of doing honest work."
So saying, O-yuki took out of the sooty closet a slender box and a dirty incense burner covered with a yellow cloth.
"Your husband is, I'm told, well off, so I beg you to ask him to buy this scroll. It's a good one but a little old."
On the discolored scroll were painted bamboo trees among rocks.
VI
O-masu went to see O-yuki in the heat of the day.
She was very tired because she couldn't sleep the night before for the excitement. When she walked into the street out ot the dim alley, she was dizzied by the blazing sunshine striking her bloodshot eyes. While riding in the jinrikisha she had hired on the way, she set herself to thinking about Asai.
O-yuki and Aoyanagi were taking a nap when she arrived. He
-was lying on his back, with his knees drawn up. He wore colored .glasses over his sore eyes. He was dressed in a tight-sleeved summer
"kimono (yukata) with a dappled waistband. O-yuki was sleeping over io one side with her head on a vermilion pillow and looked as if -she were dead with a fan over her face. It was airy in the room .and everything was quiet in the neighborhood. The sound of tin- -plates and the cry of a child somewhere in the slum quarters could be heard now and then.
" You had a good sleep, didn't you? How carefree you are!"
She entered the room and looked at their disheveled sleeping 'bodies without sitting down.
Thinking "I would never live with a man like him even if I was fond of him. I wonder what O-yuki will do with him in the :future," she went over to the hibachi and smoked.
" Oh, dear! You're here, aren't you?"
O-yuki woke.
"I ought to be ashamed of myself for having been asleep. When
·did you come?"
Adjusting her dress and hair, she sat down in front of the .hibachi.
O-masu laughed maliciously.
"How nice of you to come to see me in the heat of the day!"
"I just dropped in to see you because I felt miserable."
"Oh, my! That's the first time I've heard that from you."
O-yuki began to wake up Aoyanagi while poking at the fire in the hibachi. He moved an inch but turning over, fell back asleep.
It was three o'clock before they finished eating the flaked ice O-yuki had ordered from a nearby eating house. The bright sun- -shine put a part of the zinc roof of the house behind O-yuki's in :shade. The neighborhood seemed to be alive again although it was .quiet just a few minutes ago.
O-masu began to tell O-yuki about Asai. O-yuki, however, did 'not appear to be interested in what she said.
"Oh, dear! He's got a wife, hasn't he? That's good because it shows that he must be a man of ability."
"No matter how able he is, I don't like a man who is capricious.
I would rather be in love with a single man even if he was a rickshaw-
man.
Aoyanagi suddenly woke.
" You really slept like a log."
O-yuki laughed disgusted. He sat up after rubbing his chest and armpits with his thick and pliant hands. He stared at O-masu as if she were a stranger.
"I've not seen you for some time," said O-masu ceremoni·ously.
He looked nervous and bowed.
" As you see, this is a humble house - I'm quite badly off."
" And yet you enjoy the business."
"It's my hobby and only going so so. I'm afraid O-yuki will' soon be driven by poverty into white slavery."
"No, I'm too old."
Later he took a towel and went to the public bathhouse.
VII
"I wonder why he's changed so much: the hair on top of the- head has gotten thin." said O-masu, laughing.
"Yes, he has changed completely. He's worried about getting old. I'd think he'd have been more influential in that world of curios where seniority dominates. As it is, however, those he helped' before have neglected him."
" And yet, he seems happy because of his ingenuity."
"No, because he's superficial everything goes wrong for him.
As long as he's engaged in this business, chances are that he'll find a job through the influence of his customers. I'm afraid it does more harm than good."
O-yuki grinned.
"You're happier than we. Be more patient."
O-yuki began to say she was the daughter of a well-ta-do family' but became the mistress of a man in her home town when he ,vas a student. He was now a diplomat. She also looked forward to- becoming his wife soon becausti they had had a pretty girl.
"Why don't you see him now?"
"It's no use. He hates me. Our marriage wasn't approved of even then."
Her eyes glistened as she recalled the days when she was in her
22
,early 20's. O-masu visualized her when she looked like a woman from high society with fair complexion and a slender figure.
"The guy, whose name is Kuroda, is a great man even though he looks like a Pekingese spaniel. He is a minister of state and isn't -in Tokyo now. There was a.man who often came to see Kuroda to play gobang (go) and drink sake. He was handsome. He often 'Said ugly things to me when Kuroda was out. I refused to go to bed with him. He got angry and said bad things about me to Kuroda, that a man had bought me in my home town; and that I had lived with another man. Kuroda was fond of me and intended to make me his wife. His father would not approve of our marriage, nowever. On top of that, my mother was a heavy drinker and de- pended on my income. He finally lost interest in me.
"Don't you want to see your daughter?"
"I'd like to. Twice I asked the ice man's wife, who has been taking care of my daughter, to bring her to the house where I was working. I went to see her once. I had no idea of telling her I was her mother."
"That's nonsense."
"I can't help it. It's my bad luck."
"Don't you think you should ask for more money?"
"No, I can't because his wife is stingy."
VIII
"You're quite a philosopher."
O-masu remembered that she had had the same expenence as 0- yuki; she had had relations with the young owner of a restaurant in the country town where she had lived for some time before com- ing to Tokyo. She was young then. In her photos, she had spar- kling black eyes, and her cheeks and mouth were rosy and well-fieshed.
Her rather small stature indicated that she also had an indomi- table spirit. They showed her a determined face in an overcoat which was turned up to her nose with a neck band.
As was the custom in her home town, O-masu had also been ap- prenticed to a restaurant where a girl, if she was good-looking, work- ed. She was a farmer's daughter and had done many things like babysitting.
The young owner of the restaurant, who had recently complet- -ed the middle-school course, now and then invited her to come to the prostitution house so he could see her secretly. There were scores of old, big brothels in the port town where one could hear the sound of waves and see a light blue cloth (noren) hanging above the aim dirt floor of the entrance hall. A fashionable sushi shop in the Kansai-District style and a neat bathhouse with a tiled entrance also could be seen. She stayed in the house, from the snow-thawing sea- son when the willow tree in the middle of the quarters began to bud until November when the sleet drizzled on the dark wooden eaves.
A rumor got around so she went to Tokyo where she set herself to thinking about the restaurant owner. She even thought she might be able to become his wife, too. Letters came from him now and then.
"I must accept my miserable fate because the restaurant oVvner is dead."
She was much disappointed when she heard that the owner had -died three years before. She had to pick a man from among her customers and this was hard to do. The man she thought was nice was indifferent to her and another she didn't like was kind to her.
A third was very different in age and the work of a fourth didn't interest her. A man who lived with his parents and served his
master was most desirable.
In the meantime, O-masu grew older.
ed for her to quit the house, Asai and a shop were the only two she was fond of.
'When the time approach- young faithful clerk of a She compared herself with O-yuki who had had no end of ble at the hands of men.
trou-
"How silly you are! Y QU can't have a good time of it for ever, I'm sure."
O-masu often said this when they worked together. O-yuki was thankful for her kindness but would do nothing but let things go by. O-yuki's mother was selfish and had an eye on the position of Kuroda's mother and would not let her daughter think of herself .only, and O-yuki was by nature faithful to her.
They had a quiet talk before dark.
"vVhy are you fond of him?"
O-masu made fun of her.
24
"Right or wrong, I'm resigned to the situation."
O-yuki smiled mechanically after she said good-bye.
Lamplights flickered coolly on the streets and the smell of soil rose from. the wet earth.
IX
There was not a breath of wind after dark. O-masu got out of the jinrikisha and walked into the sultry alley. Her heart suddenly pulsed with excitement because she expected Asai to be at her home.
The alley was just as quiet and comfortable as usual. She could not but feel composed and serene after the rambling talk with O-yuki.
O-yuki was quite carefree. She keenly realized that Asai was the only man she could depend on for the enjoyment of his masculinity.
"Here I am."
She opened the latticed door of O-chiyo's house to get her key.
The oil lamp was burning low in the living room. A maid seem- ed to be taking a bath. As she expected, Asai's wooden sandals(geta) were on the dirt floor.
"Oh, they're playing cards upstairs again."
She went there in a hurry to let him know how sorry and sulky she was feeling. She was really excited.
There was some air in the room. In the corner of the room where a paper sliding door (shoji) was shut Asai, O-chiyo and a doctor, who used to come to see him, were playing in earnest. The doctor often told O-masu that he would examine her every time he saw her. He squatted, his knee drawn up, and the sleeves of his gaudy yukata were rolled up. His strong-willed looks made her feel unpleasant because they suggested part of Aoyanagi's temperament.
" Welcome home."
The doctor greeted her.
"Where have you been? Mr. Asai has been losing because you ,yere out."
Asai giggled.
She drew an ash tray smouldering in the fire pan with tobacoo ashes and smoked with an indifferent air. She looked Asai in the face now and then to try to find out what he had been doing the last couple of days, only to find that he looked a little more sunburn-·
ed than usual.
"Does your wife suspect anything?"
Two years had passed since O-masu had begun to live with him.
The two returned home, the one following on the heels of the other.
She spoke to him while opening some of the shoji to drive out sul- triness. O-chiyo's maid brought live charcoal to make a fire.
He grinned.
"I wonder how you can walk the streets of Tokyo without be- ing diffident of others."
"I've just been to O-yuki's in Asakusa because I felt so miser- able," she said taking off her long undergarment and white crepe underclothes, and then began to spread them on the veranda.
H I'm wet with sweat, you see."
She stood naked there for a while.
"Do you want to eat?"
" Well, how about going out to eat?"
" Hum! You'd better stay home because you'd find it dull."
After wiping her body in the kitchen, she fastened a slender Hakata waistband on her yukata and went and got flaked ice and ice cakes from a corner shop. She entered the house after closing the wooden door tightly.
She was bent on making up for the loneliness of the last couple·
of days while she folded his coat (haori) and put ~way his belongings.
She used a fan to cool him and served him warm sake which he drank in sips. She felt something lacking, however, because he seem-·
ed worried about the time.
x
Asai woke late the next morning after staying all night. It was another very hot day today. Late on the previous night in bed she had heard the insects singing in the grass or under stones and had thought that autumn was already just around the corner. It seemed to her that the shadow of the lamp was reflected cooly on the wall at daybreak and the glass and pitcher by her pillow looked refresh- ing. She also felt the tatami cool. The lingering heat of the day caused her to feel ill, hO'wever, because she hadn't slept well the night before.
26
After Asai left, she got into bed again where the smell of night still hung. Whil~ dreaming a fantastic dream, she lay there for some time feeling tired all over. The morning sun through the shoji and the sounds in the neighborhood - O-chiyo's talking voice - surprised
her.
"I'm afraid we'll not be able to expect good fortune, as things stand."
Asai had said this to her last night when he was in bed.
"That's true. I'm guilty."
While smoking she mumbled, with her chest over the pillow.
She could see vividly the image of his wife keeping house alone in Koji-machi and was moved by her feelings.
"We'll surely be found out, That's terrible."
She looked worried like a person who has awakened from a bad dream.
"Hm!" Asai laughed ironically.
"How long do you think we will be able to live like this? I've had sleepless nights. I'm ashamed of myself. You're supporting two women at the same time. How wasteful!"
"She has something to find fault with. If she were a good house-keeper and good-tempered, I wouldn't act foolishly. As it is, I'm really worried about her."
"People say she has done all she could, though."
" All she can do for me is to go to the pawn shop and back. I -don't think I've given her too much financial trouble. I, on my part,
have done all I could.
He complained that, while he was out, his wife often played cards at her friends' houses, drank sake and spent money on candy. When she had a tit during the night, he had to get up and take care of her, He had good reason to feel dissatisfied with her. His wife's mother lived with him. She was not kind to him, however. The rooms were always untidy and no attention was given t6 the cooking,
O-masu felt sorry for Asai as well as for his wife. She also had a feeling that it would be cold-hearted to force him to divorce his wife. This, she thought, was as contemptible as a geisha.
She couldn't stay in bed any longer. As soon as she dozed off,
,she woke.
Asai stayed with her for three or four days after that. He often went out on business and came back. He had already extended his business.
XI
"I would like to go and see my home today," said Asai one morning when he got out of bed looking up at the sky through the shoji which were ajar. The sky was perfectly clean and flecks of white floating clouds were moving like living things. He was tired out because he had worried about his dilapidated house where the Master was always out and his wife in despair slept little at night.
He also was worried about a four-year-old girl he had adopted from ,an acquaintance and let his wife bring up. His wife still haunted his eyes - he visualized her visiting acquaintances and friends to look for him, with her hair unkempt.
"She will surely come to see us before I know it," said O-masu, sitting on her bed.
Later he went to a public bathhouse nearby with a toothpick in his mouth. Putting things in order, she hurriedly swept the dirt out 'of the room. And she brought a mirror stand, fixed her hair and made her toilet arranging her side- and fore-locks. She saw her blood- shot eyes and flushed cheeks reflected in the mirror and thought that she was still beautiful, although there was a faint sense of sadness because of her prominent cheekbones and peaked nose. She felt ,acutely sorry like a flower which is doomed to be thrown away when the color fades.
"It's too late to complain. You are a woman who was once in
;a geisha house."
She remembered what Asai said.
"I've got to live independently sooner - "
She was more concerned about her future than usual because 'she was poor in health. She could not but think that men are usual- ly constantly in love. She also realized that as they were grasping, a decent living would enable her to take a mean advantage of their weak points. At the moment she felt something cold-hearted in the
depths of her heart.
28
"If I'm allowed to say any more, your wife must be a fool," she thought, and was elated with a victory.
Asai returned with a broad smile. After breakfast of the leav- ings of last night, he went to work. She tried to beguile the un- pleasantness she felt every time she saw him off in the entrance hall~
and then went to see O·chiyo.
"Oh, my! Do you say that you've done nothing except sleep for three or four successive days, do you? I guess you've had enouglL of it."
So saying, O-chiyo looked sharply into O-masu's face.
O-masu showed her a roll of meisen fabrics she and Asai hacl bought the day before.
"I would like to get this one made into a lined haori.
Picking it up, O-chiyo looked at it and began to measure it witlL a ruler after cutting thread.
"What do you think of the design?" said O-masu, to please her humor.
"Sober, I'm afraid. A little."
"I like them because I'm not so young," said O-masu, as if she were confident of her good housekeeping.
XII A woman came up.
"Excuse me, but may I see O-chiyo-san?"
O-masu knew right away that she was.Asai's wife when she saw a woman with her hair done in foreign style, who spoke in a coarse voice and opened the lattice door. She looked negligent because she wore an obi on her soft summer clothes in a disorderly manner ..
She was a woman of imposing appearance with a tall stature and an oval face, but looked pale and lonely.
Entering the entrance hall, she looked at O-masu and O-chiyo>
one after another, and stood hesitating with an umbrella.
O-masu bent her head sideways.
"Goodness me! You're Mr. Asai's wife, aren't you?"
O-chiyo greeted her.
"Come in, please, ma'am."
"I'm much obliged."
Asai's wife entered the room after wlpmg the sweat from her forehead and exchanged greetings. Now and then she stared at 0- masu.
"This woman is my neighbor."
So saying, O-chiyo tried to speak up for O-masu.
"Is that so?"
O-masu still was strained and looked sideways, smiling lonely be- -cause she was at a loss for an answer. She constantly gave the wife :a piercing glance, however, and waited for her opening words.
"I'm glad to say that Mr. Asai is better off."
O·chiyo made tea while making herself agreeable.
"I'm afraid not," the wife laughed fatuously.
"I don't know how he is getting along out-of-doors but he is very peevish at home. Do you know that we've had an adopted girl of late? What a lot of trouble she gives me!"
"I know that."
"I hear that she was a child of a waitress and her lover. My husband told me that he brought her home because he had no child- ren. I wonder if this is true. Does he come to see you often?"
"He comes here once in a while."
O-masu listened to their conversation, smoking. She felt al"lk- ward because she sat there as if she were quite another woman.
"I'll come later."
So saying, she left them after putting the woven materials in the ,corner. And she silently entered her house at the front door of the kitchen which had been left ajar.
She passed about half an hour in restlessness. Asai's wife re- turned home soon.
"She seems to be looking for him here and there."
O-chiyo hurriedly came to see O·masu in geta after seeing her guest off.
"How foolish you are to have had him stay long!"
"I wonder who she thinks I am," O·masu frowned.
"I've no idea about this because I'm afraid of breaking the ice."
XIII
After moving to Koji-machi, O-masu casually saw Asai's wife
doing some shopping.
O-masu had changed considerably since the summer: her rough way of speaking and eccentric behavior had been eased; her fancy for combs and neckbands had become refined as seen in downtown decent wives; her features with a sharp look had been surprisingly softened.
"I quite envy you your way of wearing clothes."
O-yuki said this while touching O-masu's obi and undergarment when O-masu visited her in her new dress.
" You'd better be more loudly dressed while still young."
"No, loud-colored clothes do not fit me and I'm afraid there will be something wrong with them when I get old."
In those days Asai had business with a well-established wholesale dealer of woolen cloth in Nihonbashi although the merchant retired to live in a detached residence in Negishi. The bankrupt merchant left everything to him because he was clever. Asai had attempted some other business activities. He also was skillful in making preliminary preparations for a new company and, in due time, selling its interest to a wealthy person.
Asai found a house four or five blocks away from his home to- suit his convenience and had a new wardrobe and fanciful buffet car- ried to her new home.
"I hope we will be safe here, as the proverb says that a beacon does not shine on its own base."
He laughed while letting O-masu serve him a drink when she settled in her new home for the first time. It was the time when one was inclined to wear a lined haori on serge kimono. The first name J\!lasu was written on the new gatepost. She moved there with a dog given by her neighbor when she lived in Hirokoji. The soft and comfortable silk cushions on the new tatami smelled of reed.
Asai seemed to be rich because the personal effects which had been brought were well expressive of good quality.
He, stripped to his shirt and wearing gold-rimmed glasses, sat facing her and looked fresh and vivid. She could not think of any other time in the world when she expected much from him there and then.
She hardly recognized any change in his way of speaking as com- pared with when he had faded foreign clothes on. His modest and gentle way of speaking and sober appearance were well in harmony with his frame of mind cultivated for a long time among professional women.
She had been pestered since then with the vision of Asai's wife as she came across her at O-chiyo's house.
"I studied your wife."
She often talked to him about his wife.
" Indeed! My wife said nothing about that although you seemed a little suspicious."
"Ignorance is bliss, as the proverb says."
With these words, she felt sorry for the wife.
"I can easily reminisce about you when you were with your wife."
She got excited and looked hard at him with a steady chin and gentle eyes.
XIV
O-masu lived in the area where everything quieted down after dark and the entrance and way out was difficult to find like a laby- rinth. No sound was heard except occasional doorbells and footsteps on the cinder road.
Tired of sitting face to face with her, Asai often took her to the illuminated mainstreet which was quite a long way off and en- joyed himself on a pleasant walk. They even went as far as Hibiya and Ginza by streetcar.
On one occasion, she was walking with him on a quiet street where houses with a neat gate and two-stories stood. They were on their way back from making a purchase of a bathtub which was big enough for them to take a bath at the same time. Before they could buy it, she had complained that it was uneconomical to have a bath in the house of a small family but he insisted by saying that he was fond of seeing her in the bathroom.
Getting to a street where the electric light of the house was scarcely seen, he stopped short and brought her up in front of the bow window of a house then walked a little way off along the drain.
The light of the round electric bulb on the lattice door was shining ,on the shoji with close frames and the clog box of the dirt floor of the entrance hall. She sensed at once whose house it was.
"No kidding!"
She made a gesture of distaste but he did not leave there for a time. Everything was quiet in the house.
"Dear me! Is this your house?" she said after walking past it for some distance and turning back.
He only giggled.
"That's a nice house," she said to herself.
"You surely feel guilty when you pass there, though. You also feel pity or something like that for your wife."
A smile escaped his lips.
When they returned home, she asked many questions of him about his wife.
"She is a stout-hearted woman; she is sociable; she can do any- thing promptly when I am out, I assure you," he began to speak.
"She is really a dependable 'wife but - "
"Why, don't you take good care of her?"
"No, I don't. Good wives are not necessarily good women. I would rather prefer bad wives.
So saying, he began to laugh.
In the daytime O-masu went past his wife's house. Now and then she saw her standing in front of a greengrocer's. She was there with a chubby and lovely daughter on her back. O-masu hastened past.
vVhen winter came, Asai seldom went to see his wife.
He could not stay with his wife even for a single night when he returned home to see his wife and child. On seeing him, how- ever, his wife, who was troubled with hysteria, jumped to her feet and seized him by the breast of his coat. She threw earthenware on the tatami. He turned pale and ran away to see O-masu, with a briefcase which contained his valuable papers.
"Look here! "
He took off the haori, a band of which had been torn off, and sat miserable in front of the hibachi.
One afternoon Asai showed up at his home after he had neglect.
<ed to return for more than a week. He wanted to see some letters which were to be delivered there. He was no longer in a refractory mood and began to sympathize with his wife who had sunk into the ,depths of despair. He could not but think that she was very friend- 1y to him for a long time when he was badly off.
"I'm troubled with her because she has done nothing Vi/rong ,enough for a divorce."
So saying, he frowned from time to time and O-masu always felt ill at ease.
"You must really be capricious," she began to doubt him.
"It's too late for you to try to be impartial to her and me."
She could have said so but always kept silent because of future trouble which would be brought about after she let him divorce his wife.
vVhen he returned home, his wife was just sleeping with her ,daughter. She suddenly sat up on her bed, ho,vever, when she heard .her husband saying something to a maid, and went to the wardrobe ,and stood in front of the mirror on it. And then she arranged her
hair and went to see him after making her toilet quickly.
"You're here at last."
There was a hysterical and sad smile playing about her parched lips. The powder was off in places on her shapely nose, which struck him with melancholy.
"She looks the same as when a woman, whose name ,vas Aiko, ,came to see me from Kyoto."
He remembered the time at once when he and his wife lived bappily together. She did not look poorly, or her oval face and slim 1imbs had not become dismal or stiff, either.
vVhen he lived in Kyoto to study law, he had intimate relations with the woman. She was a mistress and had a large sum of money.
On hearing that Asai had gotten married and settled down in a new home in Tokyo, she came with her mother who had a relative here.
He asked O-chiyo to take care of Aiko and then told her about his wife. She felt sorry for his wife. She was satisfied and returned bome after taking in the sights of Tokyo with him. O-chiyo spoke about her long after she was gone. She was really lovely and ,charming.
34
"I wonder that Mr. Asai was good enough to let her return home."
O-chiyo praised her to the skies.
Asai, after talking with his wife, bought many things and sent them as gifts to her in Kyoto. On the other hand, she sent them Kiyomizu3 green teacups and a neckband.
"I wonder what has become of Ai-chan.4
His wife was worried from time to time about her when nothing had been heard of her.
"I hope she's gotten married."
A parcel came just when they were talking about her. She was still working as a waitress at an inn or a restaurant and seemed re- luctant to get married.
He thought about her now and then. He began to forget her, however, as the time went on, along with the impressions he receiv- ed from other women he had intimate relations with in his fast life.
XVI
Asai felt embarrassed when he noticed that his wife sat beside him looking at him. His wife could not sit beside him long, either, because he had no interest in her story.
" vVell, Shii-chan - "
He was taking out old papers from a chest of drawers in the closet, when she approached him again with a tender voice while ar- ranging her kimono, through which one could see her lonely and lean.
"Shii-chan has had a slight fever since yesterday."
Cross-legged in front of the closet, he was doing work. He was.
breathing hard and soundly through the nostrils under which his.
moustache was cut short.
"Does she have a fever?"
He looked sharply toward his wife through gold-rimmed glasses.
He was not worried about his daughter, however. He turned his.
3. Located in the eastern part of Kyoto, a well-known pottery workshop.
4. Cf. 2.
unsteady eyes to the papers soon.
" - vVhere on earth are you going to take these papers after arranging them ? "
His wife sat down with a flop to keep him from going out.
"She is miserably ill. How about staying in for the time being to take care of her?".
He went to the hibachi with a satisfied look after working and began to smoke. The house in which he and his wife had lived since last winter at the request of an acquaintance of the proprietor was pretty large. It had a storehouse. The sun was shedding soft beams of light on the sanzanque twigs in the garden and one could see the moving shadows of small birds through the windows of the shoji.
Later he went to the room where his child was sleeping.
touched her on the forehead and examined the pulse. The looked full at her father with curious eyes.
He child
"Shii-chan, here is your father," his wife spoke to her from be- side him.
"Nothing serious, I hope. She'll probably get well soon if she takes medicine," he said in a low tone.
"I'm helpless. I'll be really embarrassed if you don't tell me where you are when you are out.
He laughed.
"Nothing wrong, if you are of a pliable disposition. I'll be to blame if I let our house get out of order and I'm infatuated with women."
When they sat across the long hibachi that night, he began to·
speak with a little serious look.
She got a little drunk after three or four cups of sake.
"I'm afraid you are not a good housekeeper although I've said nothing about this," he reproached her in his usual low and gentle
VOIce.
"Don't find fault with me. What are you about while I'm out?"
" You're keeping a secret very closely to yourself so I go out to·
play cards from time to time when I feel dull."
"I'm saying you are wrong because you indulge gambling after selling your clothes," he began to speak.
yourself in He found
that a ring he had bought for his wife recently and her everyday garment of wadded silk were gone from the wardrobe. He did not torture her severely, however.
"Now we're quits," he laughed it away.
XVII
One evening O-masu and Asai went to a downtown year-end -fair, when his wife showed up.
She had much difficulty in locating the house where O-masu liv-
·ed. Every time he left home, she gave some money to a rickshaw- TIlan, or a young man to have him follow secretly when he did not take a jinrikisha. He never went directly to O-masu's house, how- ,ever, because he was carefuL
"Don't worry about him, ma'am."
So saying, the young man reported back.
"You're a fool. You must have been fairly taken in."
She could no longer sit idle. It happened often that she miss-
·ed her securities and bonds. She got so angry that she went out to call on his acquaintances in her Sunday clothes. She also wandered with a child around her neighborhood with her everyday wear on.
Dr she stayed indoors to lie in bed for a few days running, her hair unkempt.
When she saw her husband who came home to check on some letters or something like that, she caught him by the breast of his
·coat and ran amuck around the room.
"Can't you agree without using violence like this?"
He succeeded in pacifying her and sat down. She kept crying -like a child, with a face downward, while her hair was all disheveled.
He ran a few blocks away from her by some means or other but had to return home because she had chased him barefooted.
The neighborhood was quiet in the early evening when one could
·see lamplights through the windows here and there and hear people talking.
"I'll follow you as far as you go."
She walked with him side by side panting. Her face looked tired .and her lips as pale as the dead. The cold winds were blowing the :hair hanging on the face and neck.
After this incident she was ill and stayed in bed for a few days ...
"I'm quite sick of her."
He returned to O-masu and sighed a deep sigh. He looked pale ..
"Crazy, I guess."
"There is no help for it."
She knitted her eyebrows.
"Let's leave her alone for some time."
His wife recognized a dog loitering around Omasu's home. She remembered the dog had light brown shaggy hair and a spotted end on its nose. The dog now and then came to her house, follo,ved by her husband.
"I found the dog on the street ,vith a streetcar line."
She also recalled the words of a maid who was out shopping.
She followed the dog which led her to the quarter where O-masu lived. And there she did some shopping.
It was some hours later that the dog who had gone through the back gate of a new house was called again and again from within the house.
"Oh, dear! How dirty you look!"
Meanwhile, she stood at the alley entrance where a few garbage, boxes could be seen.
At night she went to the house after tidying herself up.
XVIII
O-masu and Asai returned home with a battledore and dolls for·
their daughter, as well as fried fish (tempura) packed in a chip box.
they had ordered at an eating place on their way home. A young·
woman, a distant relative of O-masu, recognized their brisk steps and.
went to the entrance hall to welcome them.
"O-ima-chan, here we are now."
Caressing the dog which played with them, and stroking their·
chilly cheeks, they entered the living room which was filled with steam from an iron kettle.
"Soon after you went out, a woman came to see you."
Putting away her needlework in a hurry, she began to speak Ill.
detail about the woman.
"What did she look like?" O-masu asked her impatiently ·while
taking off her new overcoat ..
"I cannot tell you exactly, but she looked rather old. She was tall. When I told her that you were out, she left soon without mentioning her name."
"I'm sure it's O-ryu-san," said O-masu without sitting down.
"I agree with you," said O-ima, too, turning her lovely eyes to- ward them. Her face was all aglow.
"I wonder how she has come to know this house is mine" he said quietly putting his head on one side.
"She followed you, I assure you." O-masu took a thoughtful look.
There was an indefinable smile about his eyes.
"No, but she'll find out where we live, no matter how hard we try to escape from her. She is quite serious."
"I believe she'll come around again. It may be that she's hang- ing around here," she said restlessly.
"If she shows up here in this room at this moment, things will get complicated. I don't want to see her face to face under any
~ircumstances."
They thought it most advisable to move somewhere to save the 'situation.
"Shall I go to stay with O·yuki for the time being?" she began to speak.
" Let's leave here. If this is found out, we'll be in much trouble."
They left home furtivt'ly and hastened to take a street car. The streetcar was empty and ran at full speed through the dim streets
·at midnight. They tried to find a house which could possibly pass unnoticed by O-ryu although they were tired after the ride late at night.
They could not but think, however, that the pale O-ryu would follow them, no matter where they went.
"Now is the time when you should be through with her once and for all," she told him with a dejected look.
Carrying a present, they knocked at the door of their friend's 'house in Hongo. It was past 12 o'clock. The friend was working for a magazine company. They had made friends with each other recently at O-chiyo's house.
"Oh, my! Is it you? So late!" The wife dressed in night- clothes opened the door and found O-masu standing with a smile.
Asai was standing behind her. He seemed to drink sake probably because he wanted to stand the cold.
XIX
After staying overnight at the house where there were few household things for their own use, he went out in the afternoon to look for a house to rent for O-masu to live in for the time being.
"You've finally been found out, haven't you? That's terrible."
While nursing her three-year-old child, her friend's wife looked wor- ried about O-masu.
" You'll probably get the matter settled, I hope"
"God knows!"
They then talked for hours in the living room where everything was damp and nasty.
After moving to the house Asai had chosen as a temporary shelter, she often took some candy and went to see the jolly wife in the living room whenever she felt cramped when he went out.
She also had her hair done up there.
"I feel like having a child," said O-masu, letting her cheeks touch those of the baby she held nonchalantly on her knees.
"Take home one of my children, will you? We're going to have many more cnildren."
"I'm jiggered if you - You should take care of your children."
In a few days her personal effects were brought into the lodg- ing house which had been quite empty of furniture. O-masu began to feel anxious about her former house and went stealthily to find
Qut if there was anything wrong there. A stout-hearted woman, her acquaintance, kept the house with O-ima who went every day to school to learn sewing and cooking.
"Oh, you're good. Only you - to serve me like this!"
Her dog jumped at its keeper's knees and breast. Patting it on the head, she gave him pieces of crackers she had bought for the house.
"Nobody comes to see me?" walking around the rooms one after .another, she said to O-ima from behind who was writing a letter to
her parents at home under the bright window.
"I don't know why."
Nothing unusual happened. She felt uneasy,. though. She had a feeling that something awful must be waiting for her.
"Don't you think it's foolish to live like this?" O-ima said to her as she was taking her kimono out of the wardrobe.
"What's the use of living in obscurity like a kept mistress even though you're proud of having many clothes?"
O-ima felt keenly that O-masu looked wretched because O-ima had recently come to town from her decent home in the country.
"Yes, you're right."
O-masu laughed.
O-masu began to fix a bath soon because she seldom went to a public bathhouse. And then she polished the long hibachi with a cloth. . This was the first time in several days.
Toward evening she was in the transparent hot water of the bathtub and remained there absent-minded and felt comfortable as if she were hiding in an unknown hot-spring resort.
XX
It was toward the end of the year that O-masu finally settled dovm in the two-storied house Asai had rented for her in Akasaka.
She had often gone back and forth between the lodging house and her former house. She felt the bustling air of the streets during the year-end all the more because she hung in the balance.
" As things stand, I'm afraid I'll not be able to celebrate the New Year. I feel like I am on a journey now."
She and O-ima sat in the living room of the house they did not know when they had to quit and ate together her favorite cooked food which was rarely prepared in the lodging house.
Just at that time Asai dropped in on his way home from the office and his private business.
"I've just been to your new house."
He edged toward the hibachi with his nervous eyes.
"vVell, your madam has sent me a message that you are good enough to return home even for a short time after you come here."
Yesterday morning a message came from O-ryu. After receiv-
ing it, he returned home to see his wife.
"How do things stand?" she asked. Whether he would be able to divorce his wife formally or not gave O-masu and Asai a dull im- petus. Asai, whose affection had been quite turned from his wife, still seemed to be troubled with his final decision.
"Nothing unusual, I guess."
Visualizing his deserted house and his vYife who was dying tOe cling to him, although in despair, he laughed miserably.
" You advanced your opinion, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did but we failed because she went crazy."
"That's it. I understand her. What's her opinion?"
"In short, she insists on my kicking you out."
He began to recall that his wife was very eager to know about O-masu.
"It'll be impossible to come to terms between the people con- cerned. Ask someone to act as a mediator."
"I see, but I find it difficult to do my business because you live near my wife. I've got to find another house very soon."
Some household furniture was later brought into a new house secretly. The house had two clean upstairs rooms and with its good surroundings, seemed more comfortable. All day long she was busy putting in order the belongings which had recently accumulated be- fore she knew. She was happy doing her household work.
Looking out over from the veranda of one of the two upstairs rooms where an electric shade with some fanciful flower patterns hung, she could see the red bricks of the military barracks of the Third Regiment nearby. cShe could also see the row of bamboo and pine decorations in front of the houses alone the street and knew that New Year's days were just around the corner. A band's music was heard from the crowded street.
"I wish I were able to live here in this house for a long time,"
looking around, she said in good humor to Asai who was arranging the alcove.
XXI
People's minds were in a festive mood from the year-end to the New Year's days. O-masu often took O-ima to do some shopping,
