The Wild Geese (10 page)

He had forced her to work like an animal without giving her enough food, and, with her feminine qualities held back, she had been transformed into a kind of beast. But since she had moved into a new house and had acquired a servant to help her and to call her
okusan
, she had been raised to a human level and had actually become an ordinary woman. And now she wanted to be beaten like that geisha Oshun.

But what about him? He had pushed his own way through the world with a determination to make a fortune, and cared nothing about what others said of him. He had bowed before fledglings and called them master. It had been his principle that being kicked and trampled didn't matter as long as he made money. And for most of his life, no matter what place he was in or what person came to him, he had prostrated himself as flat as a spider. From what he had seen and learned of the men he had associated with, those who were very considerate of their superiors bullied the people below them and, when they were drunk, even struck their wives and children. But with him no one was higher or lower. He would have
thrown himself at any man's feet if it had made him wealthier. Otherwise he had no use for such a person. He would have nothing to do with him, would ignore him. He wouldn't even take the trouble to lift his hand against him. He would rather think about his interest than waste his energies that way. He had treated his wife similarly.

Otsune wanted him to attack her. “Too bad for her, but she won't get that from me.” If his debtors had been lemons, he would have squeezed them to the last drop of bitter juice, but he would fight no one.

These were Suezo's latest thoughts on the subject.

M
ORE
AND
more people passed along Muenzaka. It was September, and the beginning of the term at the university saw the students returning from their homes to their lodgings.

The mornings were as cool as the nights, but the days were still hot. In Otama's house the bamboo blinds were still drawn, their unfaded green covering the window from top to bottom. Otama sat inside with nothing to do. She leaned against a post hung with fans and vacantly looked into the street. After three o'clock the students would pass in small groups. And she knew that whenever they came, the voices of the girls next door would rise like the sounds of so many young sparrows. And attracted by the noise, she would also glance out.

At that time most of the university students were of the type who were later to be called “henchmen.” If there were a few gentlemen among them, they were about to graduate. Those who were fair and handsome were mostly unattractive to her, for they seemed shallow and conceited. And those who were not superficial and vain, even the bright students amount them, were not preferable because from a woman's point of view they appeared too rough-mannered. Nevertheless, every afternoon Otama, without any particular interest, would look at the students walking past her window.

But one day she was startled by an awareness of something sprouting inside her. This embryo within her imagination had been conceived under the threshold of consciousness and, suddenly taking definite shape, had sprung out.

Her aim in life had been her father's happiness, so she had become a mistress, almost forcibly persuading the old man to accept. She knew she had degraded herself to the lowest limits, yet she had still sought a kind of spiritual comfort in the unselfishness of her choice. But when the person who supported her turned out to be a usurer, she did not know how to cope with this new source of misfortune. The thought tormented her, and she was unable to remove it. She had gone to her father to tell him about it and to ask him to share her pain. But when she had visited him and had seen him living comfortably for the first time, she didn't want to pour a drop of poison into the saké cup he held in his hand. Whatever pain the decision might cost her, she was determined to keep her sadness to herself. And when she had made this decision, the girl, who had always depended on others, had felt for the first time her own independence.

After that, she secretly began to watch what she said and did, and when Suezo came, she started to serve him self-consciously instead of accepting him frankly and sincerely as she had previously done. She would be with him in the room, but her real self was detached, watching the scene from the side. And there it would deride first Suezo and then the other Otama for being under his control. When she first became aware of this condition,
she was shocked. But in time she accepted it, and she said
to herself: “That's the way you should feel.”

Her treatment of Suezo became more cordial but her heart more remote. She came to feel that he did not deserve her gratitude for the protection he gave her, nor could she feel obligated to him for what he did. She did not even feel sorry for him because of her indifference. Conversely, in spite of the fact that she had no accomplishment she could boast of, she couldn't help thinking: “Ah, to be only a usurer's possession all my life.”

And watching the students in their walks along the street, she began to speculate: “Isn't there a hero out there? I'll be rescued!”

But when she suddenly found herself indulging in such fancies, she was startled.

It was at this point that Okada got to know her. She saw him as just another student who walked past her window, yet when she realized that even though he was eminently handsome, he didn't seem to be conceited, she suspected that there was something about him that made her feel tender toward him. She began to watch for him to pass in the street.

She didn't even know his name or address, but since they exchanged glances so often, she began to have a natural and familiar feeling toward the young man. Once, before she had realized what she was doing, she had even smiled at him, an act of the sort that eludes suppression at the moment when thought is relaxed and restraint paralyzed. She was not the kind of person who
had any conscious intention of making him her lover.

When Okada took off his cap and greeted her for the first time, her heart seemed to lift, and she felt herself blushing. A woman has a keen intuition. And Otama clearly knew that Okada's action was done on impulse and not deliberately. She was pleased by this new phase of their friendship, which was casual and quiet and had the window as a sort of boundary. And she pictured to herself again and again the image of Okada at the moment he had bowed.

A mistress who resides in her keeper's home can have the usual protections, but one who lives by herself has troubles she alone knows about.

One day a man in a
happi
coat—a fellow about thirty years old—came to Otama's house and said: “I need some money. I've got to travel, but I can't walk with this wound on my foot.”

Otama sent Ume out with a ten-sen piece wrapped in paper. The man opened the wrapper on the spot. “Ten sen? Is that all? It's a mistake!” And he tossed the coin back to her.

Ume was embarrassed, but picked it up and went back in, only to find the man rudely following her and taking a seat opposite Otama, who had been putting some charcoal into the fire. He talked incoherently at great length, bragging at first about having been in prison and then making sentimental complaints. Otama could smell saké on his breath.

She was afraid, yet she held back her tears. Under his
eyes, she wrapped in a piece of paper two fifty-sen card-like green-notes current at that time and gave them to him. She found that he was more easily satisfied than she had hoped.

“They're halves, but two'll do. You're pretty clever. And you'll do all right in your life—you will.” And with these words he swaggered out with faltering steps.

The incident made Otama feel helpless, and she learned to “buy” her neighbors. She would prepare a special dish and send it over to the sewing teacher, who lived alone.

Her name was Otei, and she was a matron over forty with a fair complexion. She still looked young, though it was difficult to say just why.

“Until I was thirty,” she had told Otama, “I was a high-class servant at a marquis'. But I married and then lost my husband soon after.” She spoke elegantly and boasted of her ability to write characters.

“Can you teach me how to write?” Otama had asked. So the woman lent her some copybooks.

One morning Otei came to the back door to thank Otama for what she had sent over the day before. In the course of their talk while Otei stood at the door, the woman said to Otama: “I believe you know Okada-san, isn't that so?”

Otama had never heard the name before, yet it flashed through her mind that the sewing teacher had referred to the student, that she had seen Okada greeting her, and that the situation compelled her to pretend she knew him. After a brief hesitation that was not perceptible to
the other woman, Otama readily answered: “Yes, I do.”

“He's handsome all right,” said Otei, “and yet, I hear there's not a flaw in his conduct.”

“You seem to know him well,” said Otama boldly.

“Madame Kamijo tells me that none of the students at her lodging can match him.” And with these words Otei returned to her house.

Otama felt as though she herself had been praised and repeated to herself: “Kamijo! Okada!”

W
ITH
THE
passing of time Suezo's visits to Otama grew even more frequent, for not only did he come without fail at night as he had previously done, but he began to visit at irregular periods during the day as well. These were moments of escape from his wife, who followed him abut with the annoying demand: “You've got to do something for me!”

When he tried to persuade her that nothing had to be done and that it was all right to live as they had been living, she insisted: “I can't go on like this! I can't return to my parents' home! I can't give up my children! I'm getting old!” These were the objections she listed to any possible change in her life.

Suezo often repeated: “There's no need to make any change. We'll stay as we are.”

And as they argued about these matters, Otsune would lose her temper and get so wrought up that Suezo would rush out of the house. He had always been able to reason logically and mathematically, so his wife's words were ridiculous and unintelligible to him. She seemed to him like a person struggling to find his way out of a room that has three walls and a door wide open behind him. All one could possibly say to such a creature was “Turn around!”

Her life was more comfortable than it had ever been, and she was neither oppressed nor restrained. True, the
Muenzaka woman was a new factor for her, hut Suezo had grown neither more cold nor more cruel because of the woman—examples to the contrary can certainly be found among other men—and he told himself: “I'm even kinder, more generous.” Why, he wondered, didn't she see the door, still left wide open?

Of course there was a certain amount of selfishness in Suezo's thought, for even though Otsune was receiving more material comfort than she had in the past and her husband's words and attitude had not altered, it was unreasonable for him to expect his wife to think in the same way she had thought when Otama hadn't existed. Wasn't the woman a splinter in Otsune's eye? And didn't he have the slightest intention of pulling it out and giving his wife relief? Otsune was unable to think rationally and couldn't follow an argument; thus the door Suezo thought open was not so to her. In fact, a heavy shadow fell across the doorway where she had hoped to get a glimpse of ease for the present and hope for the future.

One morning after a quarrel Suezo rushed out of the house. It was probably a few minutes past ten-thirty. He thought he would go directly to Muenzaka, but when he saw the maid and his children heading that way, he turned in another direction and hurried ahead aimlessly. Occasionally he muttered some foul words to himself.

As he reached Shohei-bashi, he saw a geisha coming from the opposite direction. He first imagined that she looked like Otama, but as he passed her he saw that her face was freckled. “My Otama's more beautiful,” he thought. He was aware of an immediate sense of satisfaction, and stopping on the bridge, he watched the geisha's departure. Speculating that she was out shopping, he saw her disappear into an alley.

The Megane-bashi was a new bridge at that time, and Suezo walked along towards Yanagihara after crossing it. Suddenly he saw a man and a girl of twelve or thirteen at their customary places under a large parasol that had been planted in the soil by a willow tree near the river. The girl was doing a folk dance, and, as usual, a number of spectators were there. When Suezo stopped for a few minutes to watch, a man almost ran into him. Suezo's eyes detected the stranger quickly, and as Suezo turned back and met his gaze, the pickpocket hurried away. “What professional stupidity!” Suezo muttered to himself, at the same time feeling under his kimono to see if his wallet were still safe. The thief must have been an ignorant fellow, for when Suezo had had a quarrel with his wife, his nerves were so tense that he noticed things he wouldn't usually have seen. His natural sensitiveness was made the keener, so that a pickpocket could hardly conceive of robbing him before Suezo sensed his intention. But on such occasions his power of controlling himself—in which he took great pride—was lax to a slight degree, though so slight that ordinary people would not have noticed. A very sensitive observer might have discovered that Suezo was a little more talkative than usual and that there was something restless and unnatural about him as he spoke and behaved in an officiously kind manner.