The Wild Geese (8 page)

Suddenly the younger child turned and spoke in his sleep, and Suezo's wife was forced to lower her voice. “After all,” she said, pressing her face against her husband's chest and weeping silently, “what can I do?”

“You don't have to do a thing. Someone's got you all excited. Who told you I had a mistress or some secret woman or such nonsense?” As he spoke, he noticed her tangled hair against his body, and he speculated on a question one usually considers at a more leisurely moment: Why does an ugly woman insist on arranging her hair in a way that fits only a beautiful one? As the movement of her hair against him became less, he could at the same time feel the pressure from her heavy breasts, which had supplied ample nourishment for each of their children. “Who told you?” he asked again.

“Forget about that so long as it's true.” The pressure of her breasts increased.

“But it's not true, so I do mind who's misinformed you. Tell me.”

“All right. The wife of the fish dealer—Uwokin.”

“What? What? I can't understand you chattering away like a monkey! Who's that? Who?”

Otsune pulled herself away from him and smiled in spite of herself.

“Uwokin's wife.”

“That woman! Just as I thought.” He took another cigarette and gazed tenderly at his wife's frantic face. “A newspaper is said to form the public's opinion against a
particular person, but I've never seen it done. Maybe that gossip has done just that. She meddles with everything in the neighborhood. Who'd believe her words? Listen to me. I'll tell you the truth.”

His wife felt as though she were stumbling in a fog, yet she wondered if she weren't being duped by his words, and she remained alert. Watching him closely, she tried to follow him carefully. But when her husband used the difficult words of a newspaper as he had done in speaking about public opinion, she was overwhelmed and submitted without comprehension.

He fixed his sympathetic face close to his wife's and, occasionally drawing on his cigarette, went on: “Well, do you remember that student Yoshida who used to visit us so often? Wears glasses with gold rims and silk clothes? He's working at Chiba now—in a hospital. But he still owes me more than he can pay in two or three years. He's become intimate with a woman he met while he was still a student at the dormitory. Up to a short while ago he kept her in a rented house in Nanamagari. Well, at the beginning he sent her a monthly allowance. But since the first of the year, she hasn't received even a note. So she came to me and asked me to get in touch with him for her. You might well wonder I know her! Yoshida told me to come over to Nanamagari to renew our agreement. He's afraid that if he comes here too often some of his friends will recognize him. And that's how she got to know me. I was embarrassed enough by what she asked me to do, but I took the trouble to look into this along with my own business. And it's still not settled. And the woman keeps begging me for things. Now I'm sorry to
have gotten into this mess. It's getting to be more than I can handle. There was the question of money, and besides that, she asked me to find her a comfortable house—not too much rent—so I took the time to move her to a house that used to belong to the parents of a pawnbroker at Kiridoshi. What with this and that, I've stopped in at her new place several times for a smoke or two. And I guess that gave the neighbors something to talk about. A sewing teacher lives next door, and several young girls meet there. Naturally they like to gossip. Who'd be fool enough to hide a mistress in such a place?” He laughed contemptuously.

Suezo's wife had listened carefully, and a glow came into her small eyes. “Well,” she said coquettishly, “maybe what you say's true, but you can't tell about visiting that kind of woman so often. I'm sure she'll give herself to any man for money.”

“Don't talk as though you were stupid! Am I the kind of man who would make love to another woman when I have
you
for my wife? Can you point to a single time when I had anything to do with anyone else? We're too old to be jealous of each other. Isn't that so? Listen here! You'd better not go too far with this!”

Suezo sang a song of triumph in his heart, for his explanation had been more effective than he had hoped.

“But I can't help worrying. Women like your type.”

“Nonsense! That's what people call adoring one's own idol.”

“What?”

“I mean—you're the only one who likes me. Why! It's already past one. Come on, let's go to bed.”

S
UEZO
'
S
explanation, a mixture of truth and fiction, reduced his wife's jealousy temporarily, but since its effect was naturally only palliative, the gossip and grumbling never stopped as long as the woman lived at Muenzaka. Even the maid told Suezo's wife about the scandal, saying among other things at different times: “Today, so-and-so saw our master go there.” But Suezo was never at a loss for an excuse.

“Do you have to work at night?” his wife often asked him doubtfully.

“Who'd want to talk about loans in the early hours of the morning?” he retorted.

“But why,” she continued, “didn't that kind of thing go on at night before this?”

“Because now my business is bigger.”

Formerly Suezo had managed all the transactions by himself. Now, however, in addition to an office near his home, he had set up a kind of branch office at Ryusenjimachi in order to save the students time by letting them borrow money there instead of taking the long walk to his home. If a student wanted some money for a licensed prostitute at Nezu, he ran to Suezo's main office, but if he desired a Yoshiwara woman, he went to the branch office. And later on, by contacting this office, a student who wished to spend a night of rioting at the Nishinomiya, a restaurant in the Yoshiwara, could do
so without paying if he had Suezo's permission. It was, so to speak, a commissariat organized at the frontier of debauchery.

About a month had passed without Suezo and his wife colliding into any battles. Until then his sophistry had been effective, but it was broken through from an unexpected quarter.

One cool morning when Suezo remained at home, Otsune and her maid went shopping. But as they were returning, the maid, who had been following her mistress, suddenly pulled at Otsune's sleeve.

“What are you up to?” Otsune demanded, her tone sharp and her eyes turning on the maid. But the servant stood silently and pointed to a young woman loitering in front of a shop on the left side of the street. Annoyed, Otsune looked in the direction indicated, but unconsciously she stopped short. At the some time the other woman turned around. She and Otsune stared at each other.

At first Otsune thought she was a geisha. “If she is,” she said to herself as a first impression, “then no single geisha in Sukiya-machi can match her in beauty!” But a moment later Otsune noticed that this woman lacked something that every geisha has—something that she was unable to define herself. If it could be described, I might explain it as exaggerated behavior. A geisha may dress herself in excellent taste, but it is more or less excessive. And this added quality deprives her of a certain degree of moderation, of gentility. Otsune felt that the other woman lacked this element of exaggerated behavior.

The woman in front of the shop, faintly conscious of some passerby stopping, had looked around. But not noticing anything special about the stranger, she had once more turned, and with her parasol propped between her knees, which were pulled inward, she looked for some small silver coins in the purse she had withdrawn from her sash.

The shop, on the southern side of Naka-cho, was called Tashigaraya, an unusual name that was parodied in an anonymous and satiric poem, for when it was read backwards it referred to an indecent act. Among the shop's goods was a kind of tooth-powder packaged in a red paper bag with characters printed in gold. At that time toothpaste had not yet been imported, and this product was known for its smooth quality. After her early morning visit to her father, Otama had stopped to purchase some of it on the way home.

When Otsune had passed Otama by some several steps, her maid whispered: “Okusan! That's the woman of Muenzaka!” Otsune nodded silently, but the maid seemed disappointed, as though her words had no effect.

When Otsune had concluded that the woman was not a geisha, she had instinctively said: “Ah, the Muenzaka woman!” This intuition was aided by her recognition that the maid would not have tugged at her sleeve merely for the sake of calling her attention to a beautiful woman, but another unexpected item had influenced her: the parasol between Otama's knees.

A little more than a month ago, Otsune's husband had brought her a parasol as a gift on his return from
Yokohama, one with a long handle out of proportion to the spread of the cloth. It would have been all right for a tall foreigner to toy with, but when the squat Otsune carried it, it resembled, to make an extreme comparison, a swaddling cloth attached to the top of a clothesrod. So Otsune had never used it. Its cloth was of white ground with a fine checkered pattern dyed in indigo. And Otsune had immediately recognized that the woman standing in front of the Tashigaraya owned the same kind of parasol.

Otsune and her maid turned toward the pond at the corner of a saké dealer's shop, and the maid said propitiatingly: “You see, Okusan, she's not a very pretty woman. Her face is flat and she's too tall!”

“You shouldn't speak ill of a person.” This, said in a reprimanding tone, was the sole answer the maid got from her mistress, who walked on quickly. The maid followed with an injured expression on her face.

Otsune was inwardly raging. She was unable to think clearly. As she walked toward her house, she didn't know how to approach her husband or what to say to him, yet she felt compelled to attack him somehow, to speak, to say something. How delighted she had been when he had bought her that parasol, when he had actually given it to her! “I always had to ask for something from him,” she thought. And when he had said: “For you. Take it,” she couldn't help asking herself: “What's this for? Why's he turned kind so suddenly?” Now she knew that he had given it to her as an afterthought. That woman had asked him for one—she was certain of that now. And knowing nothing, she had thanked him, thanked him for a parasol
she couldn't even use! “And not only that,” she said to herself, “but he gave her that kimono and those ornaments in her hair. He gave them to her!”

Otsune glanced at her own sateen parasol. How different it was from that other one of foreign make! “Everything I'm wearing is different from hers!”

Nor did Otsune merely worry about herself. “A tight-sleeved kimono will do for the boy,” Suezo had said. “As for the girl, don't waste money by dressing her up now. She's too young.”

Were ever the wife and children of a man worth thousands and thousands of yen so poorly dressed as she and her children? And she thought that if Suezo had neglected them, that woman was to blame. Of course everything he had told her about Yoshida was a lie. And when Suezo had said: “She used to live at Nanamagari,” he had been keeping her even then. Yes, that was the truth. He had made excuses for his own clothing and personal items, saying: “I have my position to think of,” and Otsune thought how she might have said: “Yes, you have your woman to think of!”

He had taken that woman all over, but he had taken his own wife nowhere. “How unfair! And cruel!” she whispered.

Otsune was lost in these thoughts when she suddenly heard her maid cry out: “Why! Where are you going, Okusan?”

Otsune stopped, startled. She had been walking with her head down and was about to pass her own house.

The maid laughed rudely.

S
UEZO
had been at home reading his newspaper and smoking when Otsune went out shopping after clearing away the breakfast things, but when she returned, he was no longer there. This disappointed her, for on entering the house she had thought feverishly that if he were there, she would rush against him, and even though she couldn't speak to him, she would hold him somehow or other and strike with whatever words came into her mind.

But she had lunch to prepare and autumn kimonos to finish for the children. She mechanically went about these daily tasks, and eventually her wish to attack her husband subsided. How often she had challenged him violently! She was even prepared to crack her head against a stone wall if necessary, but when she attacked him, instead of the stone wall of resistance she expected, she found, to her surprise, a curtain that destroyed her energy. She would listen to her husband's sly reasoning stated with confidence, and then she would lose her resolution in spite of feeling that she hadn't been persuaded by him in the least. If she attacked him at such a time, she couldn't be certain that her first try would be successful.

She ate lunch with her children, settled a quarrel between them, sewed their clothes, prepared supper, gave them a bath, took one herself, and ate her dinner next to the burning mosquito smudge. After they had eaten, the
children played themselves into tiredness outdoors. The maid finished her duties in the kitchen, laid out the beds, each in its appointed place, and hung the mosquito net. Otsune sent the children in to wash their hands and then to bed, spread a fly net over her husband's supper on his small table, and put a kettle on the fire in the charcoal brazier in the room next to the bedroom. This was the procedure she followed when Suezo did not return at night.