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Authors: Yasunari Kawabata

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BOOK: The House of the Sleeping Beauties
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"It's nine o'clock, sir."

"I'm getting up. I imagine it's cold out there."

"I lit the stove early.'

"What about the sleet?"

"It's cloudy, but the sleet has stopped."

"Oh!"

"I've had your breakfast ready for some time."

"I see." With this indifferent answer, he closed his eyes again. "A devil will be coming for you…" he said. He brought himself against the remarkable skin of the girl.

In no more than ten minutes the woman come again.

"Sir!" This time she rapped sharply. "Are you back in bed?" Her voice too was sharp.

"The door isn't locked." he said. The woman came in. Sluggishly, he pulled himself up. She helped him into his clothes. She even put on his socks, but her touch was unpleasant. In the next room the tea was, as always, good. As he sipped at it, she turned a cold, suspicious eye on him.

"And how was she? Did you like her?"

"Well enough, I suppose."

"That's good. And did you have pleasant dreams?"

"Dreams? None at all. I just slept. It's been a long time since I slept so well." He yawned openly. "I'm still not wide awake."

"I imagine you were tired last night."

"It was her fault. Does she come here often?"

The woman looked down, her expression severe.

"I have a special request." he said. His manner was serious. "When I've finished breakfast, will you let me have some more sleeping medicine? I'll pay extra. Not that I know when the girl will awake up."

"Completely out of question." The woman's face had taken on a muddy pallor, and her shoulders were rigid. "You're really going too far."

"Too far?" He tried to laugh, but the laugh refused to come.

Perhaps suspecting that Eguchi had done something to the girl, she went hastily into the room.

5

The new year came, the wild sea was of dead winter. On land there was little wind.

"It was good of you to come on such a cold night." At the house of the sleeping beauties, the woman opened the door.

"That's why I've come…" said Old Eguchi. "To die on a night like this, with a young girl's skin to warm him, that would be paradise for an old man."

"You say such unpleasant things."

"An old man lives next door to death."

A stove was burning in the usual upstairs room. And as usual the tea was good.

"I feel a draft."

"Oh!" She looked around. "There shouldn't be any."

"Do you have a ghost with us?"

She started and looked at him. Her face was white.

"Give me another cup. A full one. Don't cool it. Let me have it off the fire."

She did as ordered. "Have you heard something?" she asked in a cold voice.

"Maybe."

"Oh! You heard and still you've come?" Sensing that Eguchi had heard, she had evidently decided not to hide the secret. But her expression was forbidding. "I shouldn't, I know, after having brought you all this distance… But may I ask you to leave?"

"I came with my eyes open."

She laughed. One could hear something diabolical in the laugh.

"It was bound to happen. Winter is a dangerous time for old men. Maybe you should close down in winter."

She did not answer.

"I don't know what sort of old men come here, but another dies and then another, you'll be in trouble."

"Tell it to the man who owns the place. What have I done wrong?" Her face was ashen.

"Oh, but you did do something wrong. It was still dark, and they took the body to an inn. O imagine you helped."

She clutched at her knees. "It was for his sake. For his good name."

"Good name? The dead have good names? But you're right. It's stupid, but I imagine things do have to be patched over. More for the sake of the family. Does the owner of this place have the inn too?"

The woman did not answer.

"I doubt if the newspapers would have had much to say, even if he did die beside a naked girl. If I'd been that old man, I think I'd have been happier left as I was."

"There would have been investigations, and the room itself is a little strange, you know, and the other gentlemen who are good enough to come here might have had questions asked. And then there are the girls."

"I imagine the girl would sleep on without knowing the old man had died. He might toss about a little, but I doubt if that would be enough to wake her up."

But if we had left him here, then we'd have had to carry the girl out and hide her. And even then they'd have known that a woman had been with him.

"You'd take her away?"

"And that would be to clear a crime."

"I suppose not."

"So she didn't even know he was dead." How long after the old man died had the girl, put to sleep, lain warming the corpse? She had not know when the body was carried away.

"My blood pressure is good and my heart is strong and you have nothing to worry about. But if it should happen to me, I must ask you not to carry me away. Leave me here beside her."

"Quite out of the question." said the woman hastily. "I must ask you to leave if you insist upon saying such things."

"I'm joking." He could not think that sudden death might be near.

The newspaper notice of the funeral had but mentioned 'sudden death'. The details had been whispered to Eguchi at the funeral by old Kiga. The cause of death had been heart failure.

"it wasn't the sort of inn for a company director to be found in… " said Kiga "… and there was another he often stayed at. And so people said that old Fukura must have died a happy death. Not of course that they know what really happened."

"Oh!"

"A kind of euthanasia, you might say. But not the real thing. More painful. We were very close, and I guessed immediately, and went to investigate. But I haven't told anyone. Not even the family knows. Do those notices in the newspapers amuse you."

There was two notices side by side, the first over the names of his wife and son, the other over that of his company.

"Fukura was like this, you know." Kiga's gesture indicated a thick neck, a thick chest, and especially a large paunch. "You'd better be careful yourself."

"You needn't worry about me."

"And they carried that huge body away in the night."

Who had carried him away? Someone in an automobile, no doubt. The picture was not a pleasant one.

"They seem to have gotten away with it." Whispered old Kiga at the funeral. "But with this sort of thing going on, I doubt if that house will last long."

"Probably not."

Tonight, sensing that Eguchi knew of old Fukura's death, the woman of the house made no attempt to hide the secret. But she was being careful.

"And the girl really knew nothing about it?" Eguchi was unnecessarily persistent.

"There would be no way for her to know. But he seems to have been in pain. There was a scratch from her neck over her breasts. She of course did not know what had happened. 'What a nasty old man', she said when she woke up the next morning."

"A nasty old man. Even in his last struggles."

"It was nothing you could call a wound, really. Just a welt with blood oozing out in places."

She now seemed prepared to tell him everything. He no longer wanted to hear. The victim was but an old man who had been meant to drop dead somewhere some day. Perhaps it had been a happy death. Eguchi's imagination played with the picture of that huge body being carried to the hot spring inn.

"The death of an old man is an ugly thing. I suppose you might think of it as rebirth in heaven… but I'm sure he went the other way."

She didn't comment.

"Do I know the girl who was with him?"

"That I cannot tell you."

"I see."

"She will be on holiday till the welt goes away."

"Another cup of tea, please. I'm thirsty."

"Certainly. I'll change the leaves."

"You managed to keep it quiet. But don't you suppose you'll be closing down before long?"

"Do you think so?" Her manner was calm. She didn't not look up from the tea. "The ghost should be coming out one of these nights."

"I'd like to have a good talk with it."

"And what about?"

"About sad old man."

"I was joking."

He took a sip of tea.

"Yes of course. You were joking. But I have a ghost here inside me. You have one too." He pointed at the woman with his right hand. "How did you know he was dead?"

"I heard a strange groaning and came upstairs. His breathing and his pulse had stopped."

"And the girl didn't know." he said again.

"We arrange things so nothing as minor as that will wake her."

"As minor as that? And she didn't know when you carried the body out?"

"No."

"So the girl is the awful one."

"Awful? What is awful about her? Stop this talk and go on into the other room. Have any of the other girls seemed awful?"

"Maybe youth us awful for an old man."

"And what does that mean?" Smiling faintly, she got up, went to the cedar door, opened it a crack, and looked in. "Fast asleep. Here. Here." She took the key from her obi. "I meant to tell you. There are two of them."

"Two?" Eguchi was startled. Perhaps the girls knew if the death of old Fukura.

"You may go in whenever you're ready." The woman left.

The curiosity and the shyness of his first visit had left him. Yet he pulled back as he opened the door.

Was this also an apprentice? But she seemed wild and rough, quite unlike the 'small girl' of the other night. The wildness made him almost forget about the death of Fukura. It was the girl who had been put to sleep nearer the door. Perhaps because she was not used to such devises for the aged as electric blankets, or perhaps because her warmth kept the winter cold at a distance, she had pushed the bedding down to the pit of her stomach. She seemed to be lying with her legs spread wide. She lay face up, her arms flung out. The nipples were large and dark, and had a purplish cast. It was not a beautiful color in the light from the crimson velvet curtains. Nor could the skin of the neck and breasts have been called beautiful. Still it had a dark glow. There seemed to be a faint odor at the armpits.

"Life itself." muttered Eguchi. A girl like this breathed life into a sixty seven years old man. Eguchi had doubts as to whether the girl was Japanese. She could not yet be twenty, for the nipples were flat despite the width of the breasts. The body was firm.

He took her hand. The fingers and the nails were long. She would be tall, in the modern fashion. What sort of voice would she have, what would be her way of speaking? There where numbers of women on radio and television whose voices he liked. He would close his eyes and listen to them. He wanted to hear this girl's voice. There was of course no way of really talking to a girl who was asleep. How could he made her speak? A voice was different when it came from a sleeping person. Most women have several voices, but this girl would probably have only one. Even from the sleeping form he could see that she was untutored and without affectation.

He sat toying with the long fingernails. Were fingernails so hard? Were these healthy young fingernails? The color of blood was vivid beneath them. He noticed for the first time that she had on a golden necklace thin as a thread. He wanted to smile. Although she had pushed the bedding down below her breasts on so cold a night, there seemed to be a touch of perspiration at her forehead. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it away. The scent was strong on the handkerchief. He also wiped her armpits. Since he would not be able to take the handkerchief home, he wadded it and threw it into a corner of the room.

"She has on lipstick." It was most natural that she should, but with this girl the lipstick too made him want to smile. He gazed at it for a time. "Has she had an operation for a harelip?"

He retrieved his handkerchief and wiped at her lipstick. There was no trace of surgery. The center of the upper lip was raised, to cut a clean pointed line. It was strangely appealing.

He remembered a kiss from more than forty years before. With his hands very lightly on the shoulders of the girl before him, he had brought his lips to her. She shook her head left and right.

"No, no. I don't."

"You have."

"No, no. I don't."

Eguchi wiped his lips, and showed her the handkerchief stained with pink.

"But you have. Look at this."

The girl took the handkerchief and stared at it, and then stuffed it into her handbag.

"I don't.' she said, hanging her head silently, choked with tears.

They had not met again. And what might she have done with the handkerchief? But more than the handkerchief, what of the girl herself? Was she still living, now more than forty years later?

How many years had he forgotten her, until she was brought back by the peaked upper lip of the girl who had been put to sleep? There was lipstick on the handkerchief, and the girl's had been wiped away. And would she think, if he left it by her pillow, that he had stolen a kiss? The guests here were of course free to kiss. Kissing was not among the forbidden acts. A man could kiss, however senile he was. The sleeping lips might be cold and wet. Do not the dead lips of a woman one has loved give the greater thrill of emotion? The urge was not strong with Eguchi, as he thought of the bleak senility of the old men who frequented the house.

Yet the unusual shape of these lips did arouse him. So there are such lips, he thought, lightly touching the center of the upper lip with his little finger. It was dry. And the skin seemed thick. The girl began licking her lip, and did not stop until it was well moistened. He took his finger away.

"Does she kiss even when she's asleep?"

He stopped, however, at briefly stroking the hair at her ear. It was coarse and stiff. He got up and undressed.

"You'll catch a cold. I don't care how healthy you are." He put her arms under the bedding and covered her breasts, He lay down beside her. She turned over. Then, with a groan, she thrust her arms abruptly out. The old man was pushed cleanly away. He laughed on and on. A most valiant sort of apprentice, he said to himself.

Because she had been put into a sleep from which she would not awaken, and because her body was probably numbed, he could do as he wished. But the vigour to take such a girl by force was no longer in Eguchi… or he had forgotten it. He approached her with a soft passion, a gentle affirmation, a feeling of nearness to woman. The adventure, the fight that set one to breathing harder, had gone.

"I'm old." he muttered, thinking such thoughts even while smiling at his rejection by the sleeping girl.

He was not really qualified to come to this house as the other old men came. But it was probably the girl with the darkly glowing skin who made him feel more keenly than usual that he too had left before him not a great deal of life as a man.

It seemed to him that to force himself upon the girl would be the tonic to bring stirrings of youth. He was growing a little tired of the 'house of the sleeping beauties'. And even as he wearied of it the number of his visits increased. He felt a sudden urging of the blood: he wanted to use force on her, break the rule of the house, destroy the ugly nostrum, and so take his leave. But force would not be necessary. There would be no resistance from the body of the girl put to sleep. He could probably even strangle her with no difficulty. The impulse let him, and an emptiness, dark in its depths, spread over him. The high waves were near and seemed a great distance away, partly because here on the land there was no wind. He saw the dark floor of the night if the dark sea. Raising himself on an elbow, he brought his face to the girl's. She was breathing heavily. He decided not to kiss her, and fell back again.

He lay as she had thrust him away, his chest exposed. He went to the other girl, She had been facing away, but she rolled over toward him. There was a gentle voluptuousness in this greeting, even as she lay asleep. One hand fell at the old man's hip.

BOOK: The House of the Sleeping Beauties
9.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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