Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Mizuno Senshi

I Having remained face down on the kotatsu, when she suddenly came to her senses, O-Yoshi realized the sun had risen so high that the skylight looked pale. Startled, she jumped up and scanned her surroundings. Though the main thoroughfare outside already buzzed with children’s voices and cartwheel clatter, the shop workers still slept obliviously. After calling twice for Seiji—the young servant boy—she untangled her disheveled obi and briskly straightened her kimono’s front. The doctors’ lanterns had passed through the mountain gap one after another; nearly an hour after they diverged at dawn—one southbound, the other north—the household had finally retired. When the midwife finished tidying up and removed her work sash to take temporary leave, both Mother and O-Yoshi felt unease tighten their chests. Yet they couldn’t keep someone who’d nursed through two sleepless nights indefinitely—they pleaded she return after resting until daybreak. Mother urged O-Yoshi—pacing restlessly between rooms without sleeping—to get proper rest herself, then wrapped in a quilted robe to stand vigil at her daughter’s bedside. Recalling the horrific commotion hours earlier, O-Yoshi still heard phantom moans echoing in her ears. Entering the kitchen, she found last night’s supper eggshells untouched on their plate. The Masamune bottle brought from the shop shelves as tea substitute—its neck roughly cut open—sat pushed into a corner, amber dregs clinging to its base. O-Yoshi alone would have to manage the kitchen today.

Mother worried terribly about the postpartum period—thinking that without an infant her recovery would falter and they had strained themselves beyond measure. That was only natural—about a year earlier she had suffered similar birthing pains and remained bedridden for nearly two months.

Seiji went to meet him, and Chizō—an old man from Echigo who frequented their household—arrived. While the patient slept, someone quietly placed a small whitewood box on the veranda; after tying a rope around it, the old man shouldered it. Mother laid a kimono with crimson lining over its surface. To conceal it from view, he covered everything with a straw raincoat, while Sōsaburō—his haori draped carelessly over his shoulders—took the lead with a bundle of red incense sticks tucked into his sleeve. In the afternoon, the midwife came and applied the thermometer after completing her treatments.

“How about it—does her fever seem quite high?” **the mother** asked**,** tapping her pipe and edging closer on her knees**.** “Well**,** it’s normal for it to be a bit high… but it’s about thirty-eight point five degrees**,**” said **the midwife**, tilting her head**.**

The next day, the patient complained that her breasts were engorged. Mother worked out the naturally small nipples with her fingertips as if expressing them, then sucked at them herself like a child and spat the contents into a bowl. At first it was a thin watery liquid, but as she kept doing this whenever she had time, what came out gradually grew whiter and thicker. Deeming it too wasteful to discard in the toilet, she diluted it with water and poured it down the kitchen drain.

After the lamp was lit, thinking her face looked too red, Mother and O-Yoshi together searched through the chest of drawers for the thermometer that should have been there.

As O-Yoshi sat before the hibachi moving her knitting needles, “Yoshi, what’s the temperature?” she asked, coming out from the parlor and holding out the thermometer before her. Holding up to the lamplight what appeared through its thin glass as a slender column of mercury—as if startled by what she saw—

“Thirty-nine point two degrees!” O-Yoshi said. “Thirty-nine point two degrees!” Mother parroted back.

“Thirty-nine point two degrees!” The elderly father at the kotatsu pricked up his ears to listen. Layer by layer like silk being stretched taut, the elderly father—who had completely lost his sight about two years prior—had pored over medical books in his youth and gained some familiarity with that field. When it came to matters of illness, he was the sort to fret and fuss over even the slightest thing.

Sōsaburō, who was at the sales counter, was summoned. While the three were gathered around the hibachi, whispering as they deliberated over the doctor selection,

“Mother… Mother,” the patient called out in a low voice from behind the folding screen.

II

The rickshaw of Dr. Seto—a bespectacled man with lightly tinted lenses—came to a stop. The midwife, having been trained as a nurse, would come daily for disinfection and mark the temperature chart with a pencil, her face clouding over at its rises and falls. O-Yoshi, having taken over for Mother—who had decided to get some rest early in the evening—was reading a magazine by the bedside when suddenly the patient, who had been thought asleep, began to say something in a flat tone. “Huh?” O-Yoshi placed the magazine on the hibachi where her hands had been resting, peered at [O-Katsu’s] face, and [she], turning to look back, repeated the same words. Her eyes were looking at a person, yet somewhere they seemed vacant. O-Yoshi jolted upright and stood to call her mother.

“Katsu… O-Katsu… Are you in pain?” Mother gently touched her forehead and muttered, “No wonder your face was so red this evening!”

Sōsaburō also rushed in looking startled and promptly sent Seiji to the doctor’s house. When they measured her temperature, the mercury rose just past forty-one degrees. As if bracing for an impending storm, the people gathered closely around her bedside. It seemed the doctor made his daytime house calls by hired rickshaw; he arrived in kimono carrying a horseback lantern. Through the sleet, Seiji followed behind the rickshaw’s snake-eye pattern, continuing on with a handbag in tow. He took her pulse again exactly as before and measured her temperature once more, but at that moment she drew back slightly, appearing even more feverish as she fussed over the futon that lay heavily over her chin, puffing with each breath. After the doctor left, Seiji was sent out again to get a dose of medicine.

Through word of mouth, various visitors came from time to time. The wife of the konjac flour wholesaler—who greatly trusted the elderly father’s steadfastness—and Aunt Kanōya along with her husband, a couple who had amassed their fortune through penny-pinching ways, were particularly frequent visitors, each time teaching O-Yoshi various things. They taught her there was no need to serve tea each time to midwives and others during their busy moments—appropriate thanks later would suffice—along with things like how to make simple pickles.

There was also O-Take Obasan from Shin-Yoshida—the woman from the dry goods store connected by marriage—whom Yamasa’s entire family disliked uniformly. She was the sort who spoke enviously of thriving households and discussed declining ones with relish, spending every year hunting for flaws in people’s homes. Disliking how she smacked her lips while talking, the patient would always pretend to sleep whenever hearing this woman’s voice, avoiding her entry into the sickroom. The wife of a man who doubled as conversation partner for the elderly father and tea ceremony instructor from O-Katsu’s youth—a man who had practiced divination and moxibustion since childhood—also came. A woman known for kindness yet rumored to be somewhat deficient had arrived just as the doctor and midwife—dressed in white gowns, scrubbing their hands with brushes in preparation for disinfection—lingered in the sickroom rather than leaving, creating considerable awkwardness.

Some people would pop in briefly to offer their sympathies and leave, while housewives from both neighboring houses and across the street also came, saying, “The baby can’t be helped, you know—but above all, the mother’s health is what matters.” “Oh, she’s still young.” With that, they all said similar things and left. Merchants they did business with also sent get-well gifts. Eggs were gathered in especially large numbers.

Not only did the fever persist at nearly forty degrees, but at times it would plummet far below normal, leaving the blue line on the temperature chart to trace erratic peaks and valleys.

They were increasingly uneasy about leaving her in the care of that doctor with his lightly clouded glasses. A theory emerged that since this was no longer an obstetrician’s case but rather an ordinary illness, they turned to a medical scholar who had opened his practice just a week prior—and whether due to people’s usual preference for novelty, this man’s reputation in town was extraordinary. When it was decided they would engage this medical scholar, fortunately having a slight connection, Kanōya’s uncle went out one night with a lantern, making a special effort to go and make the request through the kitchen entrance.

That night, the patient was suddenly seized by a violent shudder. Due to the urgency of the situation, both Mother and O-Yoshi panicked and raised their voices to call for Sōsaburō. When Tetsuo—who had been sent rushing to fetch the doctor—returned saying he was unfortunately away attending to an emergency patient nearby, her shivering had subsided; instead, her fever suddenly flared up this time, and she thrashed about kicking off the futon uncontrollably. The following day when the exceptionally tall medical scholar made his rounds, the same shuddering as the previous night seized her again. “It’s cold! So cold!” she cried out wildly, prompting Mother and O-Yoshi to pile every zabuton cushion within reach atop her and press down with all their strength from either side. After some time passed—even as she began moaning “Hot! Hot!”—they left her be while the scholar calmly listened to Sōsaburō recount the course of events before gently taking her pulse.

The bespectacled doctor with lightly tinted lenses began avoiding the patient from that day onward, taking with him all the accumulated fees for medicine along with a half-dozen bottles of beer added as a token of gratitude.

III

After the winter solstice arrived, the cold grew markedly harsher, and snowy days persisted. Day [ ]. 25°C.

Cold, cold morning. Freezing, freezing day.

The rice in the god’s bowl froze. Such entries had grown frequent in O-Yoshi’s diary. I struck the ice in the water bucket with all my strength and snapped the dipper’s handle. There were mornings like this. The frozen earth lay lightly dusted white again, before the storehouse where pigeon footprints traced maple-leaf shapes. Water clinging to the well had frozen solid—the placed bucket’s bottom slid smooth. The well rope burned more with pain than cold.

The upper and lower parts of the house—at this time, most had fallen to O-Yoshi’s hands. She had never imagined herself capable of managing things like this, nor had she ever conceived such a time might come.

She helped her sister and mother with morning and evening tasks while attending sewing classes like other town girls. She would leave at a reasonable hour each morning, sometimes returning after sunset. Though she performed these routine duties, her mind never dwelled on them. She had lived without thinking deeply about anything. Back when her bangs still hung cropped short, a stolen glance at works like Genryūsai’s *Blood Tears* and *Kitten*—hidden beneath sewing projects by her elder sister—took root like a fever. From then on, whether poetry or prose, she devoured written words with saucer-wide eyes. Until witnessing her body’s changes at seventeen, O-Yoshi hadn’t understood how men and women differed. Weeping from violent shock when her mother explained womanhood, that astonishment—and its accompanying wonder—faded quickly.

“Yoshi has auspiciously turned nineteen,” she had announced this New Year when visiting her teacher’s house with fellow disciples—a greeting that made everyone laugh, as eccentric remarks were her custom. Yet even while speaking those words, she found herself unable to believe she had truly become nineteen. The age of nineteen rang strange and curious in her ears.

When greeted with phrases like "Good morning" or "What dreary weather," she would only respond with "Yeah" or "Right." Though Mother often scolded her for being unable to greet people properly, O-Yoshi took pride in being called childish—even relished it.

Mother was usually at the bedside. Having to handle talkative female visitors coming to offer sympathies, O-Yoshi could no longer remain as listless as before. Naturally, she no longer felt ashamed when speaking to her elders and could chime in appropriately. When she found herself sitting beside the long hibachi, serving tobacco and tea, she began to contemplate notions of womanhood—bride—family homemaker.

She carried tea to business clients at the shop; lit a fire for the rickshaw driver who had brought the doctor; prepared washing water and more tea; noticed dust gathering on the nandina leaves at the Buddhist altar; even felt compelled to right the overturned wooden clogs she passed by. When she thought she had to do them, she noticed various things around the house. After her hands could no longer keep up and dusk had fallen—under sparse snowflakes that drifted like cotton wisps, melting into her clothes before vanishing—she covered her head with a hand towel, placed a bucket on the frozen well frame, and rinsed the rice. From her sickbed came the patient’s trembling voice upon hearing the well pulley creak: “Yoshi...”

I want to get better soon—somehow! Time after time I had gotten pregnant, yet only painful, bitter mementos of longing remained—this loneliness of being twenty-nine and still childless. I’d even resented God for it, but now I mustn’t think of that! My blind father; my mother, whose white hair now shocked me as I lay there staring; my two younger sisters—all of them leaned heavily, ever so heavily, upon my shoulders. My husband, who had consulted me about everything without fail, was surely overwhelmed by the year-end rush—he hadn’t even prepared the shop workers’ uniforms yet. From the tabi socks of Seiji, who’d just crawled in carrying the medicine jar, the tip of his big toe protruded red... Ah, damn it all! I have to live!…

Given that the house was not spacious, the voices of carters unloading goods, customers haggling, and footsteps rushing to the back storehouse to retrieve items all resounded in her sharpened mind as vividly as if she could grasp them. A single glove she’d believed unseen, unseen appeared from behind the shelf, tattered and gnawed by rats; a cart left at the neighboring haberdashery’s shop with its shaft broken and jutting out—all manner of such things came into the patient’s view.

IV “Yoshi, though it pains me to ask—go pray to Inari-sama as Mother’s proxy… Beg for your sister’s life… If she recovers, we’ll pledge to raise a banner…”

O-Yoshi was still too young to mock the old man’s stubborn foolishness. Ridiculous—though such feelings arose, she still vaguely placed her hopes in something called God, changed her clothes with quick efficiency, and left the house. At dusk, a small flurry of snow began to melt, and spray clung to the eaves of every house. Mud-smeared snow scraped against the geta’s teeth, and her tabi socks got soaked.

Mother, convinced Sister wouldn't recover—wouldn't recover—had turned pale all on her own. But could human beings really die so easily? Would Sister die? That Sister would die?... Even when she heard that people had died, she didn't find it particularly strange, but as for death coming to her own home now—she simply couldn't fathom it. No way she'd die! Sister—that Sister of hers—no way she'd die! But what if she died... What if the Yamazaki family's precious Sister died... Imagining that moment—and all that would follow—O-Yoshi gave a start.

Brother Sōsaburō was someone who had married into the family. Once the chain binding them through their own flesh-and-blood daughter snapped, a rift was bound to emerge between parents-in-law and son-in-law. Even were they to fetch some new bride from outside and foist her upon him, that rift would only grow wider—it was inevitable. That wretched thing everyone does—if they tried forcing even me into it... I’d loathe it, loathe it enough to make my skin crawl! At that point—no, precisely then—I’d just die... No, dying wouldn’t even be worth it. Precisely then might come my chance to escape to Tokyo—the Tokyo I’ve yearned for……

O-Yoshi knew how to write, learned to submit her work to magazines, and had come to yearn ceaselessly for that path. Bound by the name of woman and a wish that could never be granted—if there truly was something called God—please kill me and save Sister.

Devoured by emotions, O-Yoshi slumped dejectedly. And before she knew it, she had passed through the torii gate, yet could not bring herself to clasp her hands earnestly in prayer to convey Mother’s wish.

V

A nurse from the medical scholar’s clinic came daily to perform the cleansing. She often gossiped with the midwife about matters like the scholar’s wife, and one day too, the two were conversing on the engawa. “Hey Sawada-san—you know Osumi-san from Ishii’s? Her. She’s been hospitalized again.” “Huh… Again?” “They say her menstruation stopped for three months…” Absentmindedly, O-Yoshi stepped outside and flushed bright red. She had never imagined that even professionals like them would exchange such talk.

When Kanōya Obasan offered to send a maid to help, O-Yoshi declined with, “No, in the end it’s better to do it alone patiently,” and even laundered Sōsaburō’s undergarments. Coming back from the snow-melt path with her tabi soiled, she would take them off; when there were no replacements, she simply went about with her feet red. Unable to bear the sight, Mother would scold her while diligently washing them under the eaves where icicles shattered. Returning from elementary school or sewing class, she would find Mother with her rounded back bent over the hibachi, mending the tabi. From among them she selected the whitest and least conspicuous ones, cutting the thread—all while washing and dressing men’s garments, wondering if this was a woman’s fate.

Though there was a bathhouse at home, they had lately taken to going to the public bath whenever they pleased. When she thought of the knife-edged cold outside—the kind that might slice off ears—she grew reluctant and stayed in for three or four days. Because of this, O-Yoshi stepped out still wearing her work kimono tonight, a hand towel clutched in her reddened fingers. Just as she was about to turn into the side street with the public bathhouse, she encountered an elementary school classmate holding a lantern. “Well now, Yoshi—wearing that?” her friend laughed.

“But I need this for work.” “Work? You… Yoshi?…”

“If you’re going to say that, then look—even with these hands, I’ve earned my keep.” O-Yoshi thrust her clenched fist before her friend’s eyes. The backs of her hands were parched and rough, crisscrossed with chapped cracks. “Well…” Her friend stared at O-Yoshi’s face—the face of one who had once been vivacious and guileless, skilled at composition, cherished by her teachers—and wore an expression that seemed to say…

Moreover, the boy named Seiji was such a playful child that he grew close with the pharmacy student who went daily to collect medicine. Sometimes he would play too long and return late, earning scoldings from Sōsaburō; at other times, he brought back ointments for chapped skin and chilblains to give to O-Yoshi.

“Miss Yoshi, Miss Yoshi! Mr. Kimijima sent this!” One day, Seiji handed her a medicine jar along with a letter. “Mr. Kimijima?…” “Hmm? The pharmacy guy—the student,” he said briskly.

O-Yoshi opened it, looked, laughed, and threw it away. There were two or three poem-like imitations written down—as usual praising O-Yoshi’s literary talent. Letters of this coyly suggestive nature kept arriving from other quarters. O-Yoshi’s chilblains had festered into suppurating sores.

“Since it’s quite a burden for one person, how about calling Tami to help?” Sōsaburō’s sister would often come and say this. “My, really… how hard you work, Yoshi…”

Kanōya Obasan was impressed every time she came. This person had a second son who had reached the age to take a bride.

VI

Oranges, herring roe, cotton, freeze-dried tofu, sugar bags with narrow paper tags, and salted salmon with tails bound in ceremonial cords had come to be exchanged as year-end gifts.

The patient still hadn’t rid herself of the hardened lump that had formed on her left abdomen some time ago. Her fever had subsided somewhat, yet persisted at similar levels. The medical scholar wanted to try applying leeches there, so one day, O-Yoshi went to a farmhouse in the back of town to buy leeches. In the hollows between fields and around tree stumps where thin vines had withered and tangled, only scattered patches of snow remained. In the mouse-gray twilight, the wind remained cold against cheeks, as low thatched houses dotted the lonely outskirts one or two at a time.

The elderly man with a face reddened by the hearth flames, “Ain’t no helpin’ what can’t be caught, no matter the price. Winter’s got ’em all curled up like beans—hardly a one to be found.” “Even if they offered one ryō per leech—ain’t no helpin’ it if they can’t be caught.” He didn’t budge.

They had asked a business contact in × City to send a package from there, but by the time it arrived, it was no longer needed; inside the jar, black insects merely stretched and contracted. "Oh come up, c-come on," said O-Yoshi, surprised yet pleased by her friend's unexpected visit, forcibly pulling up the companion who had appeared at the doorway—having come to deliver year-end gifts after returning from her sewing class. "Who's been seeing whom lately?" "What about O-Taka-chan?" "O-Taka-chan's been resting these days—everyone's busy with year-end gifts... I'm only free today myself. And O-Hide-san caught a cold... she hasn't come around at all lately."

“I see.”

O-Yoshi found that when she paused to watch—the sight of everyone sitting in a circle, bowing their heads or stretching, sometimes exchanging glances and bursting into loud laughter—it seemed somehow nostalgic to her.

“Sister, what would you like? Is a little bit alright?” “I seem a little better, but still not really… The fever hasn’t gone down…” “It’s so hectic—just me alone… and now my skin’s cracking like this…”

Then she took O-Yoshi’s hand that had been held over the hibachi and frowned.

“They’re so rough and dry—they don’t even feel like my own hands… Look!” O-Yoshi laughed as she tugged at the torn sleeve of her red underrobe from beneath her kimono cuff. “Our Teacher sends regards and says they must come visit, but they’re a bit tied up with work right now.” “You know those betrothal gifts from Iseya… They’re splendid—once everything’s prepared, the obi looks the finest. We should go see them when they’re finished. Once even the black one’s done, that’ll complete the set…”

“When is Iseya’s wedding celebration?” “February 1st.” “Is that boy finally becoming a groom, I wonder.”

O-Yoshi and her friend both burst out laughing at the mention of that “boy” nickname. “What are you sewing?” O-Yoshi lifted the edge of her friend’s wrapping cloth as she tried to leave. “What a lovely pattern! Who’s it for—yours?”

The friend laughed happily and bowed her head abruptly. "It's already New Year's... but this year we can't even play *karuta*."

O-Yoshi smiled a lonely smile and sent her off. That evening, O-Yoshi prepared a package to send to her sister at the medical school in Tokyo. Some time ago, her sister had mentioned wanting a komon-patterned kimono, so she’d commissioned one from cheap silk fabric; today it had finally been completed and arrived. Because she tried to pack whatever was on hand—yokan confections and ice mochi—the parcel’s shape simply refused to come together properly. Just as she was growing somewhat disheartened, Mother’s brief interjection grated on her nerves, and O-Yoshi—

“Huh!” she said with a flushed face, crumpling it up.

“Oh! Oh! Talking back to your parents—how selfish! I can’t imagine what’s so objectionable about it, but I only told you to send it quickly because you were waiting without knowing the uproar here… And because I thought if she knew about the illness, she’d worry even with exams approaching…” “I said enough!” O-Yoshi twisted her body. Though she found it wretched, she alone nursed a resentment that nothing bent to her will—a spiteful envy toward others—wanting to sulk endlessly and put on a show of petulance.

After a while, the patient called out in a faint voice from behind the folding screen, “Yoshi… Yoshi…” she called, and O-Yoshi suddenly felt so sorrowful that she clenched her teeth and covered her face.

VII

The rice cakes had been made at Sōsaburō’s sister’s house, and they managed at least to put up the decorations.

Around the time of the New Year, the patient’s condition began gradually improving, with her temperature occasionally stabilizing at normal levels for a full day. Yet weakened by prolonged illness, what little vigor she retained made her frown at every disturbance—the endless chatter of guests in back rooms, doors sliding open and shut. They pasted paper over the creaking doorframe. Clumsy Seiji inevitably earned himself scoldings two or three times daily—his heavy footsteps and careless door-handling grating on frayed nerves.

Frequently, karuta invitations came to O-Yoshi from her friends’ homes. O-Yoshi wrote out refusal phrases one by one on scraps of paper. Both Mother and the patient seemed to pity her, but in return, O-Yoshi had them buy her things she’d long wanted—*Ichiyō’s Complete Works* and such popular titles of the time as *That Face*.

One evening, when she went out to buy a New Year’s magazine, she suddenly felt like stopping by a friend’s house she happened to be passing by. “Oh, Yoshi!” greeted the aunt there, then called her friend over. Just as they were about to play karuta, four or five people had gathered in the bright tatami room. She ended up feeling like joining in.

“Good evening,” she said as she entered. Gathering the faces of the people all turned toward her in unison, O-Yoshi suddenly realized she was still wearing her everyday clothes. “A rare guest! A rare guest!” exclaimed a middle school student.

Because the futon felt too heavy against her exhausted body, they hung it from the ceiling with hemp thread. And then, if she remained facing the same direction for an hour, her body would ache, she said. Suffering from neuralgia, she would startle and thrash when they touched her legs, so they would slip their hands into the gap near her waist and gently help her turn over. To prevent bedsores, they also placed cotton padding for her.

Until around ten or eleven o’clock, O-Yoshi was on duty; after that, either Mother or Sōsaburō would take over according to their arrangement. Having placed a small quilt over the foot warmer beside the steaming hibachi, O-Yoshi listened to the pillow clock’s ticking while reading magazines or reciting passages from “I Am a Cat” to the patient.

At times, she wrote letters to friends in the capital and rural areas. There were also many unseen friends who kept urging her toward the capital. In those replies, she always wrote about her elderly parents and family circumstances. When they retorted, "How much must one efface oneself?" she wrote something resembling a vague argument, holding her chilled pen near the fire.

In letters that men sent to women, there were inevitably passages that would someday make one tilt their head in puzzlement. Reading the traces of erased characters through the paper, there were times when O-Yoshi involuntarily smiled. Even after the nurse came and waited for half an hour, Midwife Sawada-san, who was supposed to work alongside her, still had not appeared. Since Seiji had unfortunately been sent out on an errand, O-Yoshi went to fetch the midwife named Oki from her house. That house too was one that had taken in many sewing apprentices, and from beyond the wooden fence drifted the sounds of *karuta* and boisterous laughter. Sawada-san had been called to a house where someone had gone into labor at dawn and still hadn’t returned, it was said. As she was about to leave, someone slid open the shoji with a clatter,

“Yoshi-chan,” a woman greeted her with a smile. “Oh!” That was her sister’s friend—someone who had often doted on O-Yoshi when she was little. She appeared to have been invited for karuta. “Is your sister at fault?” “How has she been lately?” “Yes… she seems slightly better now…”

“Yes… do take care…”

Since she was the daughter of a wealthy family, her attire was smartly put together.

When evening came, Sawada-san hurriedly entered through the back door. “I must apologize for today.” “I was attending the delivery at Okano-san’s daughter-in-law’s place.” “Well, for a first time it went relatively smoothly I’d say—they say the pains started around two this morning. Oh, the master made such a commotion—my, my—and yes, it was a baby girl.” Though claiming she’d been dragged through it all, her cheeks stayed faintly flushed as she patted them with both hands, muttering “Hot—so hot!”

VIII

“Sōsaburō isn’t one to notice a thing… Here he is beside such a gravely ill patient—you’d think he’d have some awareness—yet he goes clinking his pipe against the bronze hibachi like that. It leaves me on edge just sitting there.” “Well, he ought to be more mindful… A good man’s still a good man, mind you—but it’s precisely because he’s so harmless that it’s a problem,” said the Elderly Father, resting his fire-warmed arm along the hibachi’s edge and nodding in agreement.

“Exactly—he’s the type who never notices anything.”

At this moment, Sōsaburō hurried in from the shop and cast a fleeting glance. “Have some tea once you’re done with your work,” said Mother, then picked up her long pipe as if remembering.

“Yes.”

Sōsaburō went out to the shop again.

“This time I absolutely want you to obtain your certification.” “And even for Sо̄saburо̄, having to keep up appearances like that must be pitiable after all…”

Over tea, their conversation had suddenly turned to such matters, and as the two whispered together, Sōsaburō—who had once more descended from the second floor at that very moment—pulled an unpleasant face and went out to the shop.

A few uneventful days passed, but then one day Sōsaburō brought pork wrapped in bamboo sheaths from wherever he had gone out, tucking it inside his kimono. O-Yoshi carried the charcoal brazier to the evening meal space and placed a pot on it. The smell of simmering fat drifted through the house for the first time in ages, and white steam grazed past the Western-style lamp as it rose. “Father, the pork’s done,” said Sōsaburō, serving the meat onto a plate himself and offering it to the elderly father. “Ugh, pork! I won’t eat that today.”

“I see.”

O-Yoshi stealthily stole a glance at Sōsaburō’s face. Of course, neither the blind elderly father nor Mother noticed such things, but O-Yoshi kept watch over every detail, anxiously on edge alone. Even a feigned cough loomed large in the hearts of those mutually probing one another. While Sōsaburō strained to make his complexion appear unremarkable to Mother, O-Yoshi invariably interjected with unrelated remarks whenever the elderly couple whispered together. Even a single piece of simmered fish—whenever circumstances turned awkward—found its way onto Sōsaburō’s tray as the choicer portion.

There was a day when Sōsaburō left the house that morning. Usually he would inform them at the bedside of his destination before leaving, but on that day alone he had said nothing at all. “Hey Osen—you don’t think Sōsaburō’s grown tired of his wife’s illness, do you?” The elderly father, who had been huddled by the kotatsu all day, lifted his worried face at the sound of passing footsteps—still hadn’t heard Sōsaburō’s voice even after nightfall. It was whispered. “Surely… Surely it couldn’t be that way, but…”

Mother didn’t believe that either. Sōsaburō returned nonchalantly after some time had passed. He had stopped by his sister’s house on his way back from his errand and had dinner there before returning, it was said. Since his complexion wasn’t particularly flushed, the family felt relieved. Unusually, Sōsaburō cut open the mouth of the Masamune sake and placed it on the tray. That day, he did not speak a word all day. He pulled the iron hibachi close by his side and, between cups, exhaled smoke in thick puffs. The sound of his pipe being struck against it was fierce, with no respite between clashes. Sōsaburō harshly scolded Seiji—who, being a lightweight by nature, had immediately turned crimson and was making a puzzled face at this unusual occurrence. Then without eating his meal, he abruptly left for nearby Shin-Yoshida. When someone quietly followed Seiji from behind, it was said he was drinking with Master Mine-san.

It seemed the patient had also noticed the situation,

“What in the world’s going on? Did you do something, Mother?” she pressed anxiously.

“I simply can’t make heads or tails of any of it—I haven’t said a thing to provoke him! He’s just sitting there fuming all by himself.”

At that moment, O-Yoshi entered and— “That’s not what I meant—it’s just that you keep going on about all sorts of things again, Mother…”

Complaints inevitably turned toward those closest to her.

“What are you trying to say?” Mother widened her eyes. “Even if you don’t say anything today, you’ve done nothing but whisper with Father since earlier.” “It’s not as if I spoke ill of Sōsaburō…” “But that’s exactly what’s wrong! Anyone would find it strange—then when Brother-in-law Sōsaburō enters, you stop abruptly! He must think something’s amiss—anyone would!”

O-Yoshi spilled tears and rounded on Mother. The anxieties in her young breast and everything else made her grow agitated despite herself, her words turning fierce. Twisted over and over, their emotions rebounded against each other.

“There, there—oh, of course! Everything’s Mother’s fault! Let’s all gang up and bully Mother—she’s the only wicked villain here… In the end… In the end… God’ll take Katsu’s body away instead.” “You can spend your whole life worrying about children and then drop dead for all I care…”

Mother also cried. Faced with this twisted resentment now turned against her, O-Yoshi couldn't bear it—startled, she pressed her sleeve to her face in a fluster. "What have I done... Because of my illness, everyone..."

Tears trickled softly from the patient’s face. “Katsu, Katsu—you have nothing to worry about. No, really, it’s nothing at all… It’ll harm your body.” Mother fretted again. Sōsaburō returned home around ten o'clock, his face bright red. Seeing O-Yoshi’s swollen eyes as she said, “Should I… make some grilled mochi?” he gently replied, “Nah… Don’t bother,” then flopped onto his back under the kotatsu.

IX

Day by day, signs of the patient’s improvement became noticeable. Even so, her body still showed no signs of regaining mobility, so they needed constant assistance to turn her over in bed. Having had tears shed upon him by the patient, Sōsaburō regained his composure from that point onward and began offering morning greetings of his own accord. The nurses and Sawada-san still came by every day, and after finishing the washing, they would gather around the hibachi and engage in idle talk. O-Yoshi made sure there was always something to serve with tea—preparing stewed dishes or occasionally grilling mochi. Sometimes, when Sawada-san was leaving, she would twist oranges and dried persimmons in paper for the children.

Dust had accumulated on the shoulders of the wine bottles and medicine jars arranged on the small bedside table. On the folding screen that was perpetually propped up, there now clung what looked like traces of blood mingled with scattered remnants of characters. Staring fixedly, O-Yoshi recalled the terrifying, terrifying events of that night. The notion of womanhood came to mind; the notion of children came to mind; following these came thoughts of various households. Taking a husband might look fine to outsiders, but it’s twice as hard—she recalled someone saying this, and now her sister’s position up till then seemed laid bare with crystalline clarity. Eventually, as a woman—she thought—was even she herself fated to be drawn into such a maelstrom?

She thought of her friends who kept urging her again and again to come to the capital. “Mother, I’m sorry… but could you turn me over again?” O-Katsu urged apologetically.

Wrapped in her padded sleeping robe, Mother had been dozing aimlessly when she suddenly lifted her head. “Again… What a nuisance. I just turned you over moments ago.” Reluctantly, she stood up. “I’m sorry,” O-Katsu said mournfully, lowering her voice.

“Honestly, Mother! And here you were the one who worried so much and made such a fuss!”

And O-Yoshi found herself looking at Mother’s face. From some trivial trigger, the patient had blurted out, “I’m sick of Mother!” the other day—O-Yoshi thought it too harsh a thing to say, but…

Disheveled white hair looked unkempt. The round back that stealthily lay upon the foot warmer, as if greedily devouring sleep, cast its shadow across the entire wall. The nandina in the tokonoma alcove, having absorbed all moisture, lay coated in dust and cast a listless shadow upon the hanging scroll.

O-Yoshi keenly felt the room’s air pressing down on her head like a weight.

“Ah, at last I can breathe easy.” “Why, even you must realize—through those forty-some days, Yoshi and I never once untied our sashes. Taking turns collapsing into the kotatsu... Oh, we worried ourselves half to death,” Mother reminisced to Kanōya Obasan one day.

O-Katsu had said earlier that once she was able to get out of bed, she would invite all the nurses and Sawada-san and friends over for a day of karuta, so O-Yoshi was already looking forward to it.