Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Miyamoto Yuriko

On Christmas morning, he flew into a rage.
And he ended up sending the elderly maid who had been helping with the housework back home.

He had been ill since the previous Wednesday.
It wasn’t a severe illness.
He couldn’t get out of bed and move about freely, yet being confined to lying still on his sickbed left him in a state where a restless anxiety seemed to seep relentlessly from somewhere near his unweakened spine.

It wasn’t that the old helper had made such a mistake.
However, her voice had always been too piercing.
And she had a peculiar habit of always repeating her reply three times when once would have sufficed.

“Ren,”

He would probably give her an errand.

“Go fetch my medicine for me.”

“Yes.”

First, from an unseen place, her shrill first reply rang out.
Immediately, she appeared at the edge of the sliding door in quick steps, hips bobbing, her honest, flushed face shaking as she peered up at his face from below with her black eyes.

“Yes, yes.”

Unfailingly, she repeated the remaining two.――

The pitiable old woman could not bring herself to stop at a single reply even on Christmas morning.
Moreover, that must be precisely what they mean by poor timing.

He had noticed his wife appeared more quiet and distinctly downcast than usual that morning.
He knew two invitations she had declined due to his discomfort lay on her dressing table, their gilded edges shining brightly.

When styling her hair that morning, she must have involuntarily found herself staring at those ornate letters again.
Who could claim she wasn’t gazing out the window with lonely eyes, her elbow never lowering from its half-raised position as she fixed her hair?

Since waking up, she had not said a word about the declined invitations.
But he had thoroughly discerned the emotions suppressed beneath her reticence.
As even clearer proof of this, the woman who usually sparkled with lively eyes and wore a face that seemed to crave mischief the moment she saw him now acted peculiarly mature this morning—instead doting on him with a motherly air, her expression practically declaring, “There are things even you don’t understand.”

While he lay looking at the cyclamen pot on the windowsill at the foot of his sickbed, pondering such matters, the telephone bell rang violently in the distant corridor.

Ren’s voice relaying the call could be heard intermittently.
Before long, she, clinging to the shadow of the inward-opening door as if stuck there, turned only her head toward him.

“There is a call from Mr. Yoritaka.”
“Um…”

For some reason, Ren grinned at that moment, baring her dentures.

“Master Yoritaka inquires after your health,” she said.
“And if it would be acceptable, as it’s such a special occasion today, please do have Madam come, even if only her.”
“It’s only once a year—”

“Just once a year—Christmas!”
That single phrase pierced his nerves with abnormal intensity.
It was as if it contained an implicit accusation: “Are you truly her husband if you’d stop your wife from going out even on this one day?”
Would Yoritaka’s maid dare say something like “only once a year—Christmas”? This old hag!

He said, lying on his back atop two pure white stacked pillows.

“Tell them we cannot attend today—not even once or twice a year! Madam has no intention of going either.”

While gripping the door handle, Ren hurriedly bowed two or three times.

“Yes.”
“Yes yes.”

As she closed the door, she added one more.

“Yes.—”

He stared at the ceiling and involuntarily let out a wry smile.
But before that smile had completely faded, a strange resentment began to smolder in his chest.

He frowned and shifted his position within the bedding.
He adjusted the pillow’s position.

He was irritated that Ren had not properly reported back after declining.
Moreover, she—Chatterbox—who would normally pull a chair to his bedside and chatter and laugh incessantly, now remained shut in her room without making a sound, which left him unsettled.

The room was hollowly spacious and bright, evoking the sensation of a deserted island.
For a while, he fixed both eyes on the corner and intently observed the state of the neighboring room partitioned by a thick wall.
He felt an increasingly strong urge to secretly stand up and peer beyond the cream-colored wall.
――The doctor has forbidden me to move.――

He pressed the bell firmly with his fingertips.

The sound of footsteps echoed, and the door opened with Ren pressed against its inner side; she, once again keeping her left hand on the handle, stretched only her neck to look toward her master.

Her face was tense with expectation.
She even appeared resolved and prepared in her heart—ready to bend her knees in a bow the very instant she was told something, her “Yes” reply leaving her lips without delay.

He felt an irritating restlessness.
He said bluntly.

“Where’s that reply from earlier?”

“Yes?”

“What about the reply to that phone call earlier?”

“Oh dear… Well, you see, the tofu vendor happened to come by just then.”

“What did you say to Yoritaka?”

“You instructed me to convey your regards to Mr. Yoritaka.”
“Once the New Year arrives and you have fully recovered, Master, he said you both should come visit.”

“Hmm…—”

He lay on his back and looked at Ren from the corner of his eye resting against the pillow.
The sight of Ren—still unable to decide whether she ought to leave or stay, her knees bundled in thick cotton fidgeting even more restlessly as she stared this way—stirred in him a savage impulse to roar at her.

“First of all, that gaping mouth of hers is unbearable.”
He felt nauseated inwardly.
“Aren’t those unnervingly black, gleaming eyes? Utterly ignorant yet so pushy.”
“Leave her be and she’ll impose; say one word and she’ll panic with a barrage of ‘yes yes.’ An incorrigible wretch!”

“You’re truly something.”

Eventually, he spoke as though reciting grievances from the white ceiling.

“You may go.
Go to your son’s place and rest there at your leisure.—…Until spring.”

“Yes?”

“Since you’re old and winter must be harsh for you, I’m saying you should take a break until spring.
We’ll manage on our own.”

“Yes.”

Ren, taken aback by the unexpected turn of events, answered haltingly as she processed the situation.

“Yes—yes.”

However, when she soon understood the full meaning of what had been said, a light of indescribable joy burst forth and flowed from the tip of her salt-and-pepper head down to her toes.

Ren raised eyes overflowing with gratitude and, still gripping the door handle, bent at the waist repeatedly.

“Thank you ever so much.”
“When one grows old, everything starts creaking here and there.”
“My goodness me!”

She offered a formal bow of farewell.

“Thank you ever so much.”

With her head still lowered, she stepped back to close the door, clacked the handle into place, and departed.

The room fell silent once more.

He felt unburdened for the first time.
“Ahh… Well now—for the time being, whether I should be angry or laugh—at least I won’t have to see that old woman who irritates me every time I lay eyes on her.”
The surrounding silence felt sweet as a hot spring to him for the first time in four months.

Through the polished glass, his entranced eyes beheld the elegant slender branches of a winter zelkova that had shed all its leaves, sharply outlined as they floated against the blue sky.
A mere wisp of white cloud drifted faintly, grazing the outermost branch, slipped into the shadow of the next, then passed through the dense central mesh like delicate black lace before vanishing into the distance.

In a corner of the garden, there was a rustling sound—perhaps the yatsude plant or something similar stirring.

Cheep-cheep!
Chee... Chuck... Chee....

The warm sunlight drifted across a section of the floor by the window, casting a dazzling five-inch glow that made the hem of the white bedspread shimmer.

He was filled with peaceful, joyful emotions due to the brightness, quietness, and warmth.
The fact that today was Christmas, that he had declined the banquet invitation, even that he himself was ill—all these things had ceased to trouble him.
He noticed the partition door was slightly ajar and called out to his wife in the adjacent room, who hadn’t made a sound since earlier.

“Saho, Saho.”

Yet his hope of calling his wife to share this bright tete-a-tête moment ended in failure.

Today she looked particularly wilted, resembling a kitten with damp fur somewhere, and upon hearing from her husband about his dismissal of Ren, began in a pitiful voice:

“This is such trouble for me.”

she began.

"Why didn't you discuss it with me first?"

He was perplexed by her legitimate attack and kept running his palm over his hair.
And he earnestly gave an explanatory defense.

"I'll admit I should've discussed it with you."
"But she really was an insufferably irritating, worry-inducing old woman, wasn't she?"

He recalled even now the tone in which Ren had said "the one and only Christmas of the year" earlier and felt a renewed surge of irritation.

"She thinks we're young and treats us like children."
"There are plenty of replacements out there. I didn't even intend to do it until just now—"

She sat on the edge of the bed and stared fixedly at her husband’s face with an indignant, mocking gaze, her eyes drilling into him with spiteful intensity.

“You say you didn’t mean to say it, yet the words just leaped out on their own?”

“What I’d been thinking all along came spilling out in the heat of it.”
“I’d truly been enduring it this whole time.”
“When just seeing someone’s face makes you flinch first thing, then getting pelted with those ‘Yes, yes’ replies—it breaks a man.”

Saho gradually began to laugh.
And agreeing with her husband’s opinion, they amused themselves by depicting the pitiful figure of the old woman until they’d had their fill of laughter.
However, once they had laughed their fill, she stopped swinging her legs and sank into a troubled silence.

“And yet New Year’s Eve is almost here... What do you plan to do?”

She appealed with a sigh.

“There’s no maid there now.”
“You’re a man, so I’m sure you can do as you please—but this is a problem for me. Even if she gave one too many replies, you could’ve just kept Ren.”
“……That woman is… well, that woman.”
“You didn’t tell me because you knew I’d stop you—how utterly underhanded of you.”
“She just said ‘I’ll be going,’ you know.”

As Saho’s voice grew oddly nasal and her half-hearted soothing became harder to sustain, he began to regret his actions.

No—truly, no matter how many times she said yeses galore, having her gone must have been worse than keeping her here.
Maybe I should recall her by postcard.
But then again—having that one assail me anew would prove unbearable.

They ate their belated lunch with meticulously crafted cheerfulness.—Confined to immobility yet determined to devise remedies in good humor, he sought to amuse her with every comical topic he could muster.
His mannerisms grated on her nerves—she wanted to cling to indignation—but his absurd remarks proved so ludicrous that despite her resolve against laughter, involuntary chuckles kept escaping her lips.

Lunchtime had gone well enough.
But when it came to dinner—which, with its greater number of dishes, ought to have been even more enjoyable—he felt almost mentally fatigued; worse still, this was none other than Christmas Eve.
As he watched her—wearing a small striped apron and carrying a large tray piled with dishes—head reluctantly toward the kitchen, he involuntarily furrowed his brows and shook his head.

What made matters worse was that this morning alone, the brightly lit nighttime kitchen scene became vividly clear to him as he lay in his bedroom—as if he could reach out and grasp it.

Right now, she was probably pouring hot water into the wash basin in the sink.
With a dish brush, she’d scrub the plates with apparent reluctance, humming a soft tune as she went—he could vividly picture her placing them on the nearby counter.
Whether a door somewhere was open or had been intentionally left unclosed, to his ears came her voice at times, mingled with the clinking of porcelain.

Until that evening, he had never paid particular attention to his young wife’s voice.
He had never thought her voice particularly cheerful or beautiful, but hearing it drift from the kitchen like that, he found a certain delicate charm in it now.
It sounded as though it could draw out that speck of sentimentality that resides within the depths of every heart.

Moreover, he had been born with no small measure of that very tendency.
He wore a melancholic expression.
And then, looking up and blinking repeatedly, he began to ponder something.

Before long, he took out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil from the drawer of the small side table nearby.

When Saho returned from the kitchen about an hour later, wiping her hands, he silently showed her the piece of paper.
She looked through it without even a smile.
It was the draft of an advertisement he had intended to place in the newspaper.

“Wish to hire a maid.”
Family of two.
Leisure time available.
Eighteen years or older.
Salary.
Interview.

The advertisement was answered successfully.

Two days later, when the advertisement was published, that morning Saho—with a serious expression concealing her awkwardness—guided a young woman into the dining room.

The girl who had come in response to the advertisement was around twenty years old and had a slender build.
She had applied meticulous makeup and wore a Meirin silk Yuzen-patterned haori overcoat; whenever she spoke, she would tilt her head slightly to the left while somehow furrowing her sweetly fragrant brows with a pained expression to utter her words.

When she saw the slightly chapped small red lips and heard the muffled voice say “That is correct,” Saho was tormented over whether to address this girl with the familiar *you* or the polite *you*.

“Where is your hometown?”

She gently tilted her bangs and answered.

“Echigo.”

“Then, do you have any relatives in Tokyo?”

The girl pursed her lips and gave a slight, troubled shrug of her shoulders.

“I have no relatives, but…”

Stared at by those large, dark eyes fixed on her face, Saho instantly deduced the girl’s circumstances.

“So you’re staying with friends?”

“Ah…”

Once the salary matter had been easily settled, she left the girl waiting and went to her husband.

With flushed excitement, she whispered to him:

“She’s exactly like a young lady. Strangely adorable.”

He fluttered his eyes as if dazzled.

“Do you think she can work?”

“She’ll be fine. She says she’s been handling household tasks since she was a child. Her hands have clearly done work before—she’ll do, won’t she?”

“Well… We won’t know unless she stays and works.”

“In any case, even for a little while should be fine. Besides, if no one else comes after this, it would be a problem, right?”

Once her stay was settled, Chiyo went to Ushigome Inn to fetch her luggage. A single furoshiki bundle, not even large, seemed to be all that beautiful girl’s possessions. After putting it away in the three-tatami room, she stood up and came to the kitchen.

Saho noticed that Chiyo was wearing the same showy Meirin silk haori she had arrived in as she kneaded flour.

“Normally, you don’t need to dress so beautifully—it’s better to have someone neat and efficient at work.”

Chiyo placed her hands one atop the other on the apron that revealed a pink collar, lowered her eyes, and said:

“Yes. But… well, this is the only one I have.”

Saho lowered her face with a pitiful expression and diligently stirred the contents of the bowl.

“I do have one slightly nicer one… but when I left home, I entrusted it to a friend to borrow travel expenses.”

After a period of silence, Saho said to Chiyo, who was watching nearby.

“At home, you see...”
“The cooking is simple.”
“So please try to learn quickly and manage it yourself.”
“What I’m preparing now, you see—”

She explained the cooking.
As she moved her hands, she explained the locations of the seasonings, taste preferences, and other details.
Chiyo responded with obedient grace each and every time, answering “Yes.”
It was not like Ren’s hurried, nearly collision-prone, breathless repetitions of “Yes, yes.”
With glossy eyes, she cast a gaze—neither quite a sidelong glance nor a fixed stare—gracefully toward Saho’s round, red-cheeked face, then slowly answered, “Yes.”
However, both hands remained neatly stacked atop her apron, showing no intention of moving.

“Could you pass me that ladle, please?”

When she took the requested item and passed it over, her two hands—not as beautiful as her face—swiftly came to rest atop her apron once more, like a sleepy cat.

Saho looked on with a troubled expression, occasionally glancing toward those hands.

“Well, it can’t be helped.”
“Once she gets used to things, she’ll start doing it herself.”

However, that peculiar sensation—troubled and unsettled—spread even more strongly through Saho’s chest when she and Chiyo ate together.

There was a different kind of discomfort between them—not merely that of two strangers.
Within Chiyo’s graceful demeanor lay an underlying strength that pressed upon Saho.
While Chiyo remained utterly composed, Saho grew increasingly nervous.

While cleaning up with Chiyo remaining a bystander, the husband asked Saho.

“How is it?”

Having been noticed, she slumped into the armchair, smoothing her hair as she murmured flatly.

“Well— It’s a bit doubtful.”

After finishing the second day’s breakfast, still somewhat troubled by Chiyo’s equally listless hands, Saho went to see her three-tatami room.

Chiyo sat demurely before the desk, her face—made up with makeup no less elaborate than when she had arrived yesterday—directed toward the window.

On the desk were a small bookstand and a doll.
A doll—a doll.

Saho felt a strange sense of awkwardness.
She recalled the story of her great-grandmother, who had carried a doll in a basket when she went to marry at sixteen, before the Meiji Restoration.

Could one imagine a nineteen-year-old girl in this day and age, having run away from her hometown, bringing along such a large doll?
Feelings of tender pity and a distaste for affectation alternately welled up in Saho’s heart.

Chiyo showed her the doll and told her about her hometown.

According to Chiyo’s story, her father was a notorious drunkard in town.
Her mother had fled with her younger sister ten years prior and was now in Nagoya.
The doll, she said, was one her mother had bought for her several years earlier when she had gone to Nagoya without her father’s permission in her longing to see her.
This time, even when she ultimately couldn’t bear it and fled, she had been unable to part with that doll alone, wrapping it in cloth and bringing it along—or so she claimed.

It must indeed be old.

The cheap Western doll had both eyes missing.
The doll, with its thick flaxen hair hanging down and clad in a red habutai-silk robe, bore an eternal smile on its exaggeratedly pink lips. Both hands outstretched as if to embrace or welcome something, it stared fixedly forward with dark, hollow eyes.

Chiyo pitifully recounted how she had wandered here and there on a snowy night in Echigo, searching for her drunken father who never returned.

To Saho, those stories felt both plausible and fabricated.
Her voice perfectly suited such tales, yet her demeanor remained utterly unyielding, for she seemed all too aware of her own beauty.

Saho left Chiyo’s room in a somber mood.
She disliked stories whose truth she couldn’t discern yet which still managed to evoke sympathy.

Within three or four days, he began to walk only inside the house.

Consequently, he had more opportunities to see Chiyo.

After returning from trips to places like the bathhouse, he would often exchange glances with his wife, then make a strained face and shake his head.

In response to that, Saho let slip an exceedingly ambiguous smile.

He found Chiyo in front of the bathroom mirror, earnestly fixing her makeup, unaware that he had come in after her.
He cleared his throat awkwardly.
Chiyo suddenly shifted her gaze within the mirror, flashed a brilliant smile at his face—which appeared overlapped in the reflection—and then spoke slowly and deliberately.

“Oh dear, do forgive me.”

And then she smoothly slipped out through the sliding door.

Moreover, she adhered to the principle of never leaving her room except around mealtimes, no matter how much clattering noise arose from the dining room.

From the window of her room, she remained aloof as if belonging to another world, the voluminous back of her gaudy haori—worn only since arriving here—slightly elevated.

When Saho realized that the only thing Chiyo prepared without being ordered was nothing but her own favorite miso porridge, she threw herself face down on her husband’s sickbed and laughed herself out in stifled silence.

Chiyo, her beautiful brows furrowed, curled her little finger stiffly as she stirred the pot and cooked an astonishing amount of porridge.
And then she sat properly and, with a serious expression, neatly ate up all of it.

“There’s just no helping it with her like that, is there?”

Finally, he put it into words.
“We can’t keep her, can we?”
“But… it’s already the thirtieth.”

Saho looked at her husband’s face.
He averted his eyes and scratched behind his ear in apparent bewilderment.

"But—if it’s no good, we’d better settle it quickly."
"How long can we keep this up?"

From the corner chair, she said resentfully.

"You be the one to say it."
"Since it’s been your responsibility from the start."

"You mean ‘Get out’?"

Saho nodded in understanding.

“If I do it, it’ll cause friction.”
“You should be the one to tell her—explain the reason honestly.”
“It can’t be helped, can it?”

“……”

Saho began wandering aimlessly about the room at night.
He followed her movements with anxious eyes.

“I find it painful to say ‘Get out.’”
“Besides, she’s so happy to have finally found a place to stay.”

After some time had passed, he said as if remembering.

“There was a postcard this morning, right?”
“To that place.”

“It had come—from Ushigome.”
“...The name was a woman’s, but it’s a man.”

“What could it be?”

“That’s right, I’m sure.”

“Then—there is a place she can return to, isn’t there?”

The two fell silent again.

The lamp on the desk cast a soft yet profound shadow, illuminating half of his face.
Saho’s face was not visible as she walked on the far side; only her white tabi flickered and moved in the dim light.

After about ten minutes had passed, Saho finally broke the silence.

“In that case, I’ll handle it this way. Now—you’ll be relocating somewhere for your health.”

“Huh?
“Who is?”

“You’re the one who’s going to relocate.”

Saho declared gravely, as though extracting each thought from the depths of her mind.

“We’ll say it’s what the doctor told us to do.
“Since I must go with you, we’ll need someone to look after the house, won’t we?
“That one can’t be left alone—right?
“So, we’ll call Ren back and have her take over.”

“Hmm.”

He crossed his legs and lit a cigarette.

“You don’t need to explain all that.”
“If it’s no good, it’s simply no good.”

“But...”
“Then what should I say?”
“Even if we abruptly declare her unfit, we can’t cite frailty or pitifulness as reasons—correct?”
“That person just doesn’t quite... harmonize with things here.”

They fell silent again.

The rapid tick-tock of the mantel clock measured the night's silence.

The next morning, Saho went out alone immediately after finishing breakfast with a look that suggested a major incident.

She mailed a postcard to recall Ren at the town postbox and returned home carrying one paper package.

The husband wore an expression that was strangely hesitant yet filled with expectation, glancing occasionally in Saho’s direction.
She remained silent in return, unsettled, and with a bitter, heavy-hearted air, kept dawdling persistently over trivial matters.

After finishing lunch without meeting Chiyo’s gaze, Saho finally appeared resolved,

“Chiyo.”

Saho called the girl.

“Yes.”

Leaning on the desk in a daze, he stood up leisurely and retreated into the parlor.

Saho, left by her husband, saw Chiyo’s strikingly beautiful pale face appear from one side and took on an increasingly cornered expression.
She fixed her eyes straight ahead and, in a flushed, hurried voice, brought up the relocation plan she had discussed with her husband the previous night without any preamble.

Her blunt tone carried an urgency that verged on tearful.
Whether they had to depart with such haste, or whether this relocation constituted a monumental event for the couple—in any case, an agitation and anguish that suggested this was no ordinary matter permeated her entire being.

Chiyo assumed a wilted expression, painfully twisting her hands as
“Ah… After all my efforts to join your gracious household.”
“But… if such are your circumstances, then nothing remains to be done.”
“I…”

Chiyo sighed.

Saho made an indescribable face—a mix of relief at having her request accepted and anguish over expelling someone she had lived with, however briefly.

She encouraged Chiyo, who was on the verge of tears, as if apologizing. And then, finally taking out the paper package she had bought this morning, she spoke, flusteredly mixing up her words and stumbling over them.

“Well, this really isn’t anything special—just some material suitable for everyday wear. No matter where you go, you won’t be able to work in that.”
“…Sew it and wear it.”
“—I feel truly terrible about how things have turned out. —And as for this…”

She looked slightly awkward as she took out a folded olive-colored cloth.

“Since it’ll end up as the lining, I’ll give it to you if you don’t mind.”
“Since it was used for curtains before, one side has some worn spots though.”

Chiyo looked at the blue cloth with the same sorrowful gaze.
And then she politely bent at the waist and expressed her thanks.

“Thank you very much.”
“Even though it’s been such a short time, to go this far…”

Saho said in an urgent voice,

“No, no.”
“That’s not necessary at all.”

She denied.

And while looking down painfully at the nape of Chiyo’s neck with its beautiful hairline, she restlessly brushed back her own hair—which wasn’t even out of place—over and over again.

Chiyo left their house that very afternoon, carrying only the single lavender bundle she had arrived with.
After closing the door behind Chiyo’s departure and watching her figure recede among the trees for a while, Saho came to her husband with moist eyes that seemed ready to spill tears at any moment.
He, who had been sunbathing in the rocking chair,

“Thank you, thank you.”

he said, taking one of her hands and patting it.

“Thank you for your hard work. With Ren coming back now, there’ll be nothing left to desire—let’s welcome a proper New Year, hmm?”

“No!”

She let tears that glistened up to her eyelashes overflow and released her husband’s hand.

“You are a true egoist.”
“Do you realize?”
“Now I even have to explain myself to Ren…”
“That’s enough already.”
“Such a thing.”

He glanced up at Saho and shook his head as if to say “Good grief.” And then he rewrapped his legs in the blanket.

Saho shifted her feet from time to time, transferring her weight from one side to the other as she stood by her husband’s chair indefinitely.

December’s clear sunlight slanted brightly across their feet, while the faint scent of new house paint and the delicate breath of flowers drifted along the broad veranda overlooking the winter-browned outdoors.

[May 1925]