Pathway to Japanese Literature

“So, Grandma—”

In a half-wheedling tone, he intruded into his grandmother’s kotatsu while mumbling.

“Don’t! It gets cold when YOU get in—there’s no helping it!”

Grandmother said this, yet still neatly adjusted the gaps in the kotatsu covering around his knees.

“So, Grandma... Is Father angry?”

“Well, of course he’s angry.”

“What’s he saying he’s angry about?”

“There’s nothing particular he’s saying.”

“But still—
“Really—”
“Is he truly that furious?”

“This time especially—it’s only natural for Father to be angry.”

“Of course it’s natural—I understand perfectly.”

“Then there’s nothing left to ask.”
“That’s precisely what impertinence means.”
“So...”

“I don’t want to hear any of that.”

He placed his cheek on the kotatsu frame and turned sideways.

“Father said this—‘That boy won’t be cured till he gets a wife; not till then will he settle into his prime as a man…’” Grandmother began—

“Though Father’s way of putting it is rather harsh—” he said with a faint smile.

He felt his face flush for no reason.

“If that’s how it is, didn’t I just say I don’t want to hear it?”
“Stop it—I don’t want to hear another thing.”
“Get angry or do whatever you want—like I care!”

“That’s it! What a schemer!”

He leapt out of the kotatsu and stood on the engawa.
He was gazing at the pond’s herring carp.
When he saw only Grandmother was there, he blurted out such selfish words—but would Father scold him later?
As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he flinched.
But such cowardly feelings vanished immediately. Treating people like fools, handling them like animals—how disrespectful! He felt unbearably furious for no reason.
He thought about flying off somewhere and not coming back for a while.
On top of that, the shame was unbearable.
He had been too thoroughly indoctrinated by familial conventions that deemed anything even remotely related to sexual desire a sin.

Suddenly, he recalled being taken by his mother to visit graves when he was young.
It was a cold, fine day.
Since taking the backstreets was a shortcut, his mother naturally chose that route.
He said he wanted to take the main street, but she did not agree.
He couldn’t bear the rickshaw passing by without stopping, so he wildly shouted and thrashed about on his mother’s lap.
His mother was taken by Atsuke.

In the backstreets there was a long white wall.
He knew that on that wall there was graffiti of an extraordinarily large stylized depiction of genitalia.
Passing before that wall with his mothers was unbearably repulsive and mortifying.
When the rickshaw neared the wall he resignedly stopped crying and suddenly asked an absurd question while pointing in the opposite direction in desperation to prevent his mothers from noticing it.

He gazed at the pond water while thinking about such things.

However, he could no longer meet that lovely apprentice geisha Chiyoko.
"Am I really not allowed to go out at night even a single step for the time being..." Recalling the decisive words Father had pronounced earlier, he suddenly felt inexplicably sullen and muttered, "What the hell—being so damn stingy over such a small thing. I'll just sleep every day then."
From behind him came Grandmother’s commotion—when he turned to look, there she was again (though how many times a day, one couldn’t say), chasing chickens off the engawa.

“This is truly unbearable. Father started this hobby too, and even that he got bored with after just the beginning—really, we should just get rid of these things anywhere—I’ll end up dead because of these chickens.”

Grandmother was holding onto a pillar and stretching.
Five or six chickens were clucking softly as they pecked for feed around the pond.

Was it thanks to the chickens and the grandchild?

He entertained such suspicions and silently entered his own room.

“Oh, stop it! No matter how much ‘Crooked Beak’ is pitiful, you should stop already!”

His sister's scream reached his ears.
He raised his eyes from the magazine they had been resting on and, while still propping his cheek on the desk, looked through the shoji's glass pane in that direction.
Three neighborhood children had gathered and, hissing all the while, were circling round and round the pond as they chased a single chicken.
From behind the fleeing hen, a rooster was running with its body angled sideways.

“We did it! We did it!”
“Hahaha…”

The children let out loud voices and laughed while clutching their stomachs.

“Let’s chase her down even harder—we’ll keep at it as long as it takes!”

Forming a spinning circle like a revolving lantern, the children began chasing even more relentlessly.

“Crooked Beak” was the moniker for that hen.
The two parts of her beak did not align properly—the upper part deformed and bent sideways.
Before anyone knew who had started it, she had come to be called “Crooked Beak.”
Crooked Beak proved the most mischievous and hardest to feed.
Perhaps her deformed body made her stand out so easily.
A truly detestable hen—everyone said so.
Sneaking into kitchens or entering rooms—such acts were seen as Crooked Beak leading the way.
So whenever they chased chickens away, they all came to target Crooked Beak.—When did it start? Who first discovered it?
No one ever boasted of it as an achievement, but a comical fact about her became widely known.
That fact was this: whenever someone chased Crooked Beak, a rooster would inevitably rush from behind to mate with her.
The strange thing was how this became a habit—chase her even once, and he would invariably do so.—

“It’s like being forced into jealousy, isn’t it?”
He had once told this to a friend who had come to visit.

“I’ll tell Father.”

Sister got worked up and lashed out at the boys.

“What exactly are you going to tattle about?”
“Yeah, right!”

“Can’t you see her feathers are all falling out like that?”
“She’s already sick.”

“It’s not like it matters if she dies, right? A chicken like this.”

“How very kind of you to care!”

For some reason, Sister burst out laughing.

“She’s damn well laughing.”
“You’re the one who actually finds it funny—who wants to see it happen.”

He violently slid open the shoji and stepped out onto the engawa.
The children scrambled away in panic.

"They really are such stupid kids."

Sister's cheeks were flushed.

“It’s your fault,” he shouted.

Sister did not seem to think he was angry.
He too thought there was no reason he should be angry.
He thought getting angry would only make it more absurd.
Sister hunched her shoulders suddenly, stuck out her tongue a little, and laughed while looking at his face.

“If you tease the chickens, Father will really scold you—”

“Naturally.”
“Idiot!”

He slapped his sister’s cheek hard.
Sister rushed into Grandmother’s room.
She did not seem to be crying.

Crooked Beak walked around the pond, clucking rhythmically.
The area around her throat had reddened and swollen, exposing raw flesh.
Feathers lay scattered across the water's surface.

When he entered the room, he laid out his bedding and went to bed.
He thought that no matter what it took, he wanted to see Chiyoko.

He did not go to the living room even during the evening meal.
The mother had taken the younger brother on an overnight visit to a relative’s house and was away.

“What’s with Shintarō?” Father asked his sister.

“I’ll go call him. He’s sleeping.”

“No need.”
“Leave him be.”

“I’ve had enough for today.”
Father turned toward Grandmother and began to speak.
“If you go to town and check, you’ll find nothing but debts from one end to the other, don’t you think?”
“He’s so disgraceful he can’t even walk properly.”
“He’s a hopeless idiot.”
“If I stay silent, he gets cocky and takes it lightly.”

“Since he’s in his twenties now, he must have his own thoughts. Well, you shouldn’t just come at him so harshly from the start.”

“Since he might tell some kind of lie, make sure to never let him out at night again.”

“I can’t keep watch over him either.”
“He’s not a child anymore.”
“If we tied his legs, that would work.”

“It’s because you’ve spoiled him too much.”
“I’ve had enough of this—Chiyo, you damn idiot!”

Considering that Father too couldn’t speak openly at home in front of everyone—just like him—he came to fully understand that irritating frustration simmering inside Father, and instead felt a sense of closeness toward him.

“If he wants to say something, he should make a proper case and explain it logically. Just flying into a senseless rage and yelling—it only damages his reputation.”
“……And Father’s no better—putting on airs like his opinions always matter, when he comes home drunk every night.”
“Aren’t I his own flesh and blood?”

“Call Shintarō!”

Father commanded Sister.
Sister ran off toward the bathhouse, her meal half-eaten, while wiping her tears.

“Since there are outsiders in the house, you shouldn’t say things that sound so bad.”

Because Father was scolding him vehemently, Grandmother also stood up.
Father didn’t say anything beyond “Call him,” and just kept sulking and fuming.

After two days without going out，he had already grown unbearably bored.
His mother had not yet returned.

The pond was teeming with shrimp fry. When scooped up and given to them, the chickens ate gleefully. Father squatted at the pond's edge, scooping shrimp.

A commotion erupted in the kitchen. When he peered in, his sister was chasing chickens.

"Grandmother! Look how much rice you've spilled!"

"What a racket these damn creatures make."

"If you mean Crooked Beak, she's plopped herself right in the rice bin!"

"Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck."

By the pond, Father was calling the chickens.
He used a sieve to scoop up shrimp, scattered them on the ground, and fed them to the chickens.
Because the shrimp were flipping and flopping about, the chickens’ beaks couldn’t find their mark at all.
Father stood with his arms crossed, intently watching them.

“Oh, how funny! Crooked Beak just can’t catch them—serves her right!”

Sister called out from the veranda.
Father killed two or three shrimp and gave them to Crooked Beak.

“Stop giving them to Crooked Beak.”
“She eats twice as much as the others yet stays skinny—doesn’t lay eggs either.”

“No chicken’s laid any yet, have they?”

“But this one never will—no matter how long you wait.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Even if she did lay one—it’d just be Crooked Beak’s egg, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re an idiot!”

Father killed the shrimp one by one and fed them to Crooked Beak.

“It’d be far better if this chicken weren’t here at all.”

Sister went,“Shh!”
With that she stomped on the veranda.
The chickens startled fluttered away in an instant.
Crooked Beak was first approach sieve.

“There!”
“Hit head once! That detestable creature!”

Father simply kept laughing.

Before long, Father went out somewhere.
Sister was scattering rice grains from the veranda by herself.
She was throwing them as much as possible away from Crooked Beak.
He went over to his sister’s side.

“Where did Father go?”

“I don’t know where.”

“Shall I twist this one up and eat her?” he said, referring to Crooked Beak.

“I’ll pass on eating that,” said Sister, wrinkling her nose and brow exaggeratedly before spitting with a sharp “Ptui.”
While the two were talking about such things, before they knew it, the feed had been eaten up, and one of the chickens flew up to the edge of the veranda and began peering around.

“Damn it! Again!”

Sister stomped over.

He picked up the orange his sister had left there and threw it with all his might at Crooked Beak.
The orange seemed to have hit the chicken’s leg.
Then Crooked Beak, startled into a frenzy, dashed around half the pond.
The moment he felt a pang of concern, the rooster was already rushing toward Crooked Beak.
"No good, no good," he thought to himself, but there was nothing he could do.
The more she fled, the faster the pursuit grew—before she could even circle the pond once, she was caught.

He said, "Hopeless creature," but feeling uncomfortable, he couldn't look at his sister.
Sister ate the orange with feigned nonchalance, without even a laugh.

"I wish Crooked Beak would die already; then we could just quietly dispose of her."
"But she'll never grow properly like that."

After a while, Sister said.

“You shouldn’t say things like that. Even if you keep her around, she’s somewhat cute—but look at her now with all her feathers plucked out and everything. It’s downright pitiful. If those children really come to torment her this time, I’ll give them a proper scolding—so make sure you tell them yourself too.”

He muttered such things while walking about as casually as he could manage, trying not to startle the chickens.

"Oh, you're just copying Father."

While leaning on the desk, he had dozed off before he knew it.
When he awoke from a bitter dream, a pounding pain began at the base of his skull.
He thought about going out for a haircut, but when he stepped into the hallway and saw Father’s retreating figure, he stopped.

Father was sitting cross-legged on the sunny edge of the veranda, holding Crooked Beak down.

“How about it? Has she weakened considerably, I wonder?”

Father asked the man in a suit (the veterinarian).
The veterinarian was examining the thermometer he had pulled out from the chicken’s anus.

“It’s difficult.”

“Won’t she recover, I wonder?”

“Depending on how she’s cared for, there might still be some hope—but then again, this one has suffered terrible injuries.”

Crooked Beak began thrashing violently against her restraints.
Each time she struggled，feathers burst free in scattered bursts.
Her misshapen beak worked open and shut repeatedly.
Yet through it all，only her eyes remained unchanged，blinking steadily through the chaos.

What a charmless chicken she was.

He watched from afar，letting these thoughts churn quietly.

“Shall I take her into my care for the time being?”

“That would hardly be necessary…” Father answered with a light laugh.

“Left like this, there’s ultimately no hope.”
“But if we absolutely prevent the rooster from mounting her—though that’s rather a difficult task, you understand.”
While wiping the thermometer, the veterinarian laughed too.

Father went out together with the veterinarian, holding Crooked Beak.

“What’s so important about something like that?” said Sister.

“Really, that thing—”

He bitterly spat out the words in a mood to vent his groundless resentment that had been building since earlier.
While the two were exchanging such words, Father came running back, gasping for breath.

“That damn thing got away from me.”
“It must’ve come back by now.”

When he was told that and looked toward the pond, indeed, Crooked Beak was properly searching for feed on the opposite side.
He avoided meeting his father’s gaze and hurriedly retreated into his room.

“Let’s catch that thing together and keep her boxed up for now.”
“Still, since chasing that one’s such a pain, let’s just herd all the other chickens into the coop while we grab her.”

Father conferred with Sister, and the two of them raced around the pond six or seven times before finally catching Crooked Beak and stuffing her into the box.

“For now, as long as we don’t let her out of here, it’ll be fine. Dr. Sayama will bring medicine for us from time to time, so she’ll recover.”

After placing the box under the veranda, Father said that.

The next morning too, Father, with his back rounded and arms folded, gazed for a long time at the chicken under the veranda. Putting water into a bucket, preparing separate feed and giving it to her—Father took care of everything by himself.

“It might be my imagination, but she seems somewhat livelier now.”

Father muttered as if to himself while washing his hands at the pond.
Grandmother remained silent, looking at an old book in the sunlight.
Before long, Father went out somewhere.

When he returned through the gate after his haircut, towel dangling at his side, the shrieking voices of children making a commotion could be heard from the direction of the garden.
He hurriedly ran to the garden to look.

“They’re here!
“They’re here!”

When one of the children shouted that, the children began to flee through the gaps in the hedge, scattering in all directions.
Because there was no hole, he caught the last child who had been fleeing in confusion.

“What?!” he said.

“I was just watching, that’s all.”

“Why are you running away?”

“Run away? Not a chance!”

“……”

He kept his grip tight on the child’s collar.—The box opening under the veranda gaped wide.
Crooked Beak scavenged for feed across the pond.
The main room lay empty of family.
With fair weather likely, Grandmother and the rest had probably gone to inspect the half-dug well out back.

“Catch that chicken and put it back in the box exactly as it was,” he said.

“I didn’t let her out!”
The child also complained sullenly that there was no way he could catch her alone.

“I’ll help.”

“Fine, I’ll do it then,” the child said.

Around and around the pond they went, the two of them chasing wildly, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t catch her.
The rooster too became fixated on pursuing Crooked Beak.
But just as the rooster was about to seize her, he hurled a stone, sending both fleeing endlessly.

He and the child, exhausted, sat down on the edge of the veranda.

“Shall we try a pincer move?” said the child.

“Let’s rest a bit more,” he answered.

“Well then, I’m headin’ home since it’s past noon.”

“Ah, just wait a little longer.”

“Nope.”

“If you go home, it’ll be bad for you,” he said. When he glared at the child, the child fled without a word.

He changed into sandals and rushed off.
He tucked up his sagging knit leggings.

He muffled his footsteps and approached Crooked Beak.
Crooked Beak noticed immediately and leapt up wildly.
He clenched his lips and flew into a rage.
The rooster had already come near.

Suddenly, he sprang forward and dashed toward her.

Around the pond, Crooked Beak, the rooster, and he raced about like horses at a track.

When the rooster caught Crooked Beak, he abruptly halted.
He scanned the area—finding no observers—and purposefully let the rooster proceed unchecked while watching.

Then he gave chase again.
The identical sequence repeated itself countless times.

Perfect for staving off boredom—and decent exercise too, he thought.

Finally, the rooster seemed to have grown weary—no matter how much he chased Crooked Beak, it paid no attention.

Crooked Beak finally collapsed.
When he picked her up to look, she opened her eyes once but immediately closed them.
Her entire body was heaving in great waves.

Surely she wouldn’t die…?
Muttering this, he gently placed her into the box and returned it to its place under the veranda.

If no one’s around tomorrow either, I’ll torment that thing again.

He was gathering the scattered feathers around the pond while thinking such thoughts.
Feeling a fleeting yet strange fascination, he experienced a refreshingly clear feeling in his chest for the first time in a while.

The next morning, Father discovered Crooked Beak dead in the box.

He, despite having no such courage at all,

“Why don’t we just eat ’er up?” he said.
Of course, no one paid him any heed.

Father carried away the box from under the veranda to the storage shed as if devoid of any emotion.

Sister was sweeping the edge of the veranda while,

“It almost makes me feel sorry for that thing now that it’s dead,” she said. “Putting her in that box might’ve actually made things worse.”

“Surely that couldn’t be…”

He started to say something more but stopped, then began strolling around the pond with an air of nonchalance, whistling all the while.

(November of the Tenth Year)