Beauty and Sadness (10 page)

“I think I’d be disillusioned.”

“If I painted it, I’d use any shape and color I liked, and show those stones as if they had just been planted.”

“Perhaps you
could
paint it.”

“Otoko, that stone garden will last far, far longer than you or I!”

“Of course.” As she spoke, Otoko felt a sudden chill. “Still, it won’t last forever.”

“If I’m with you I don’t care if my pictures are shortlived, or even destroyed right away.”

“That’s because you’re young.”

“In fact, I’d be delighted if Mrs. Oki tore up my tea-field painting. I’d know she felt overwhelmed by emotion.” She paused. “My pictures aren’t worth taking seriously.”

“That’s not true.”

“I have no real talent, and I don’t want to leave anything to posterity. All I want is to be with you. I’d have been happy just to do your housework—and yet you’ve been willing to teach me to paint.”

Otoko was taken aback. “Is that how you felt?”

“Deep down.”

“But you do have talent! Sometimes it astonishes me.”

“Like children’s drawings? Mine were always being put up on the classroom wall.”

“You’re much more creative than I am. I often envy you. So please don’t talk such nonsense.”

“Very well.” Keiko nodded gracefully. “As long as I can stay with you, I’ll do my best. Let’s change the subject.”

“You do understand?”

Again Keiko nodded. “If you won’t abandon me.”

“How could I?” said Otoko. “But still …”

“But still what?”

“A woman has marriage, and children.”

“Oh, that!” Keiko laughed. “
I
don’t have them!”

“That’s my fault. I’m sorry.” Otoko turned away, her head drooping, and plucked a leaf from a tree. She walked on in silence.

“Otoko, women are pitiful creatures, aren’t they? A young man would never love a sixty-year-old woman, but sometimes even teen-age girls fall in love with a man in his fifties or sixties. Not just because they want to get something out of it.… Isn’t that right?” There was no reply. “Really, a man like Mr. Oki is a hopeless case. He thought I was just a slut.”

Otoko paled.

“And then at the critical moment I heard myself calling your name—and he couldn’t do another thing!… It was as if I’d been insulted as a woman because of you.”

Otoko felt weak in the knees. Finally she asked: “At Enoshima?”

“Yes.”

Somehow Otoko was unable to protest.

The taxi arrived at their temple. They went to sit in the studio together.

“I suppose you might say I was saved by that.” Keiko could not help blushing. “Shall I have his baby for you?”

Suddenly she felt a stinging slap on the cheek. It brought tears to her eyes.

“Ah, that’s good,” she said. “Do it again!”

Otoko was trembling.

“Do it again!” Keiko repeated.

“Keiko!”

“It wouldn’t be my baby. I want it to be yours. I’d bear it, and present it to you. I want to steal your baby from Mr. Oki—–”

Again Otoko’s slap stung her cheek. Keiko began sobbing. “Otoko, no matter how much you love him, you can’t have his child anymore. You can’t! I could have one without any feelings. It’d be as if you bore it yourself.”

“Keiko—–” Otoko went out on the veranda and kicked a cage of fireflies into the garden with her bare foot.

All the fireflies seemed to glow at once. A greenish-white light was streaming out as the cage landed on a patch of moss. The sky was clouding at the end of a long summer day, and an evening haze had begun to hover faintly over the garden, but it was still daylight. It seemed unlikely that the fireflies could have glowed so brilliantly;
perhaps she had only imagined the light streaming out of the cage, perhaps it had been conjured up by her own feelings. She stood there rigidly as if paralyzed and stared unblinking at the firefly cage lying on its side on the moss.

Keiko’s sobbing stopped. Still half-reclining on the matted floor, propped up by her right arm, she watched Otoko from behind. For a time Otoko’s rigidity seemed to be making her own body rigid.

But then Omiyo came in, and announced that the bath was ready.

“Thank you,” said Otoko, her voice catching in her throat. She felt the moist chill of perspiration on her breast and the unpleasant dampness of her kimono under its wide obi. “Sticky, isn’t it?” she went on, without turning. “Maybe the rainy season isn’t over yet.… I’m glad you drew a bath.”

Omiyo had been a maid at the temple for the past six years, and she also took care of Otoko’s quarters. A hard worker, she did everything from housecleaning and laundry to washing dishes, even preparing occasional meals. Although Otoko liked to cook and was good at it, she would become too engrossed in painting. Keiko herself had a surprising knack for creating the subtle flavors of Kyoto cuisine, but she was inclined to be unreliable. Thus they often made do with simple dishes turned out by Omiyo. Since there were two other women at the temple—the master’s young bride and his mother—Omiyo was free to spend most of her time taking care of
Otoko’s needs. She was in her early fifties, small and pudgy, her wrists and ankles so plump the deep folds of flesh looked as if they had been tied with a string.

Buxom and cheerful as ever, Omiyo looked out at the firefly cage. “Miss Ueno, were you letting them drink the evening dew?” She went along the steppingstones to the cage and bent over to set it upright. She seemed to think it had been put in the garden intentionally.

By the time Omiyo stood up and looked toward the veranda Otoko had disappeared into the bathroom, and she found herself facing Keiko. There was a piercing gleam in Keiko’s moist eyes, and in spite of her pallor one of her cheeks was red. Omiyo lowered her gaze again and asked if anything was wrong.

Keiko did not answer. She got up, her expression unchanged. She could hear water running in the bathroom. Otoko must be cooling down the hot bath water.

Standing before the mirror on the studio wall Keiko touched up her makeup with cosmetics from her handbag and then combed her hair with a little silver comb. A full-length mirror and a vanity with a winged mirror were in the dressing room next to the bathroom, but she hesitated to go in, since Otoko had undressed there. Keiko took the first unlined kimono she found from the top drawer of a chest, changed into fresh undergarments, and put on the kimono, slipping her long under-sleeves through its sleeves and trying to adjust the front. But her hands were clumsy. Just then Otoko’s name came to her lips. Glancing down at the kimono, Keiko saw Otoko in the dyed pattern of its sleeves and skirt.
Otoko had designed it for her. Its pattern of summer flowers seemed too boldly abstract to be one of Otoko’s paintings; you could tell they were morning glories, but they were dreamlike flowers, their colors shaded in the latest fashion. It seemed very cool and youthful. Probably Otoko had designed it about the time she and Keiko became inseparable.

“Miss Sakami, are you going out?” Omiyo called to her from the next room.

“What are you looking at?” said Keiko, without turning. “Maybe you ought to come in and do it for me!” It had occurred to her that Omiyo might be suspicious of her awkwardness in tying her undersash.

“Are you going out?” Omiyo repeated, after a moment.

“No, I’m not!” Taking up her kimono skirt in her right hand, with the obi over the other arm, Keiko went toward the dressing room. “Bring me a pair of stockings, please,” she said brusquely to Omiyo.

Otoko heard her footsteps and thought Keiko had come to join her in the tub. “The water’s just right!” she called. But Keiko was standing in front of the full-length mirror, still tying her undersash. She jerked it so tight it almost cut into her flesh.

Omiyo brought in the stockings, put them down, and left.

“Come on in!” Otoko called again. As she sat soaking in water up to her breasts she watched the cedar door to the dressing room. But Keiko did not open it. There was not even the sound of rustling clothes.

Struck by a sudden fear that Keiko might be reluctant to bathe with her, Otoko grasped the edge of the tub, pulled herself out of the water, and stepped down on the bathroom floor.

Was Keiko hesitant to let Otoko see her body, after having spent a night with Oki?

It was over two weeks ago that she had returned from Tokyo. Since then, she had often bathed with Otoko, and had never betrayed any shame at being seen naked. Yet it was only today, at the stone garden, that Keiko had unexpectedly confessed. What she said had seemed extraordinary.

For years Otoko had been discovering almost daily what a strange young girl Keiko was. No doubt she herself had helped to intensify that strangeness. It could not be said that Otoko was entirely responsible, but certainly she had fanned the flames within her.

As Otoko waited in the bathroom, drops of cold sweat gathered on her forehead. “Keiko, aren’t you coming in?” she asked.

“No.”

“You’re not taking a bath?”

“No.”

“Not even to sponge off?”

“I don’t need to.” After a pause, Keiko’s voice rang out clearly. “Otoko, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Forgive
me
 …” Otoko echoed. “I’m the one to blame. I apologize.”

Keiko said nothing.

“What are you doing? Are you just standing there?”

“I’m tying my obi.”

“Did you say you’re tying your obi?” Suspicious, Otoko hastily dried herself and went into the dressing room. Keiko was immaculate in a fresh kimono.

“My, are you going somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“But where?”

“I don’t know,” said Keiko, a tinge of sadness in her shining eyes.

Otoko slipped a light bath robe over her shoulders, as if embarrassed by her own nakedness. “I’ll go with you.”

“All right.”

“Do you mind?”

“Of course not.” Keiko turned away. Her face was reflected in the full-length mirror. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

“I won’t be long. Just let me in there, please.” Otoko went past Keiko and sat down at the dressing table. She looked at her in the mirror. “How about Kiyamachi? Ofusa’s place. Call and ask for a table on the balcony, or a little room on the second floor—anything, really, as long as it looks out on the river.… If you can’t get that, let’s go somewhere else.”

Keiko nodded. “First I’ll bring you a glass of ice water.”

“Do I look hot?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t get violent.…” Otoko shook
some lotion from a bottle onto the palm of her left hand.

The ice water Keiko brought sent a chill all the way down her throat.

Keiko had to go to the main residence of the temple to make her telephone call. When she came back Otoko was still hurrying to get dressed.

“Ofusa says we can have a balcony table until eight-thirty.”

“Eight-thirty?” Otoko frowned. “Well, that will do. If we go right away we can have a leisurely dinner.” Drawing the side mirrors of the vanity closer together, she leaned forward and looked at her hair. “I suppose I needn’t redo it.”

Keiko reached behind Otoko’s obi and gently straightened the back seam of her kimono.

T
here is a celebrated passage in the
Illustrated Sights of the Capital
about people enjoying summer evenings along the Kamo River: “Benches line the wide strand, and balconies stretch out over the river banks from the houses of pleasure on both east and west, their lamps like stars reflected in the water. The dark purple kerchiefs of young Kabuki actors flutter in the river breeze—these beautiful youths are shy in the bright moonlight, and seductively shade themselves with their fans, so gracefully that those who see them are too entranced to avert their gaze. Now the courtesans are at their most exquisite, promenading to north and to south, lovelier than the hibiscus and fragrant with rich perfumes.…” And then there were the comic story tellers, mimics, and other entertainers—“monkeys, wrestling dogs, trained horses, pillow jugglers, rope walkers who prance like fabulous beasts. You hear the boisterous piping of a
street vendor’s flute, the rush of a cooling waterfall in a jelly shop, the echo of tinkling glass wind chimes to invite the evening breeze. Rare birds of Japan and China, and wild beasts from the mountains, are gathered and put on show, and people of all kinds crowd together to feast and drink by the river.”

In 1690 the poet Basho also came here, and wrote: “What is called enjoying a summer evening by the river goes on from sunset till the last glimmer of the moon at dawn. Balconies line the river banks for drinking and feasting. Women knot their obi in splendid bows, men come turned out in long cloaks, priests and old gentlemen mingle with the crowd, even young apprentices of coopers and blacksmiths sing and make merry as carefree as can be. Truly a scene of the Capital!

After the Meiji era the river bottom was deepened, and electric trains to Osaka began running along the east bank. It was the end of the evenings by the river “on a strand dotted with booths for a variety of shows, acrobatics, rarities and curiosities, and the like, all lighted up by lanterns, lamps, and bonfires, as bright as day”—the end, too, of the merry-go-rounds and tightwire performances added toward the close of Meiji. Only the balconies along Kiyamachi and Ponto-cho were reminiscent of the old summer evenings by the river. Of all she had read about those evenings, what particularly lingered in Otoko’s memory was the passage about the young Kabuki
actors who joined the throngs on the moonlit strand, their dark purple kerchiefs fluttering in the river breeze. “These beautiful youths are shy in the bright moonlight, and seductively shade themselves with their fans …” Alluring images would drift into Otoko’s mind.

The first time she saw Keiko she was reminded of those beautiful youths.

Again Otoko recalled it, sitting there on the balcony of Ofusa’s tea house. Probably the young Kabuki actors were more feminine, more seductive, than the boyish Keiko of their first meeting. As usual, it occurred to her that she herself had made that girl into the young woman she was today. “Keiko,” she said, “do you remember when you first called on me?”