Pathway to Japanese Literature

Pomegranate

1

Masa did not dislike her husband from the beginning.
Nor could it be said that the marriage’s failure was her husband’s fault.
One might say the misfortune lay in Shōzō’s melancholic disposition and Masa’s youth, which could not comprehend that nature.

During Nagazaemon’s generation, the Matsumuro family had been demoted from middle elder to bangashira rank, and then during his son Itayu’s generation, they fell to lower-ranking samurai.
Nagazaemon had committed a sword assault due to his volatile temper, and Itayu had ruined himself through heavy drinking.
It would be rare indeed for a family to fall from middle elder to lower-ranking samurai in just two generations.
Shōzō was born at the Yagura-shita residence when his grandfather still held the position of middle elder, spent his early childhood in the Kukenmachi quarters, and from the age of eleven was raised within the Omaya-machi compound.
In an era of rigid class consciousness, one need hardly explain what effects such an environment of decline would have on a boy’s nature.
Moreover, it must have been rooted in a lineage inherently fragile to the emotions of his grandfather and father, and one could sense that their misfortune was already predestined.

The Inuma of her birth family had held the monogashira upper rank for generations, and her father Genba had served as spear magistrate.
Masa had two older brothers, Shin’ichirō and Genjirō, and though she was the youngest daughter, her father’s exceptionally strict upbringing seemed to have molded her into someone remarkably naive and inflexible.
The marriage proposal with Matsumuro began with a middle elder named Tozawa Kazuemon, and though her father seemed to have reservations, it was apparently settled with Tozawa’s assurance: “I’ll take responsibility for Matsumuro’s future.”
It appears the matter was settled with this sort of assurance from Middle Elder Tozawa.
Of course, this was something she learned only after her marriage had ended in misfortune—not that one could fault Middle Elder Tozawa for it.
――Masa was so young that her heart was captivated less by the reality of marriage than by the beauty of the garments being made for her, the hair ornaments and furnishings.
“Seventeen years old already, and this girl—”
She was so young that her mother had told her this many times.
The wedding took place in August, and only about thirty days had passed since the proposal.
The sorrow of parting from her parents and brothers and leaving the home where she was born weighed heavier on her than the prospect of marrying into another household. Just before departing, she slipped into the garden and wept bitterly by the celosias beginning to show their color, but wiped her tears and returned to her room before anyone could notice.
……How dearly Masa would cherish the color of those celosias and the unadulterated taste of the tears she shed while gazing at them—no one could ever know.

The new life came as a shock to Masa.
She, far more ignorant than her years, became shockingly haggard within days through terror, pain, and sleeplessness.
The Matsumuro household had an ailing mother-in-law.
A woman of few words who had remained secluded for nearly two years, she appeared to notice Masa's condition and began speaking to her of various matters under casual pretexts.
Thus her incomprehensible fear vanished at least, but the phrase within those words—"because it is a woman's duty"—remained lodged stubbornly in her mind.
No matter how delicious something may be, when its consumption becomes an obligation, appetite dwindles.
For Masa—too young both mentally and physically—the notion of duty that had replaced terror became fresh pain, transforming into irrepressible revulsion.
……Had Shōzō's nature differed slightly more, even then there might have been opportunity to avert collapse.
Yet he himself, for a man of twenty-four years, remained woefully ignorant of worldly matters.
It seemed his sense of inferiority toward his family's decline had led him to overvalue this marriage excessively—and that very intensity had made his love for Masa grow violently single-minded.

“Do you hate me, Masa?”
He would often say this and grab Masa’s hands.
“Can’t you understand how deeply I love you?
“Tell me honestly.
“Is it that you can’t bring yourself to love me no matter what?”

“I won’t remain a lower-ranking samurai forever,” he would say while slightly intoxicated, raising his shoulders. “I will restore the Matsumuro house. It’s nothing too difficult. Just wait and see, Masa. I’ll make you a middle elder’s wife for sure. I swear I’ll make sure you live a life that won’t shame us in society.”

As long as he was at home, Shōzō did not leave Masa’s side for a moment. When near her, he would either constantly hold her hand or embrace her shoulder. He would stare intently at her, then suddenly turn pale or sigh, “How beautiful…” Every few days he brought home new purchases—kimonos and obi too gaudy and seductive in their proliferation, followed by hairpins, ornamental combs, cases, writing boxes, hand mirrors, and such.

Masa tried to force herself to appear pleased—after all, some items did bring genuine happiness. But emotions conflicting in her deepest depths prevented any expression of unfeigned joy. Even disregarding this, Shōzō’s manner of expressing affection sat ill with Masa’s strictly disciplined upbringing. Compared to the daily affairs befitting a samurai household as she had always been taught, there were many shameful things here that made her shrink inwardly.

This increasingly drove her heart away from her husband.

It was not long after her marriage.
Shōzō had been splitting open a ripe pomegranate and gazing at its contents when suddenly—with feverish eyes—he turned to look at Masa. While showing her the ruby-like seeds within the divided fruit, he spoke these words.

“Look at this beautiful fruit.”
“To me, this looks just like your body.”

II

“From within the split rind, partitioned by white membranes, these clear, vivid grains emerge.”
“When I gaze at this beautiful crimson—as if it had sucked a maiden’s pure blood—I feel as though I’m seeing inside your body.”

At that moment, Masa shuddered violently, assaulted by shameful terror as if her own flesh had been cleaved open and examined.
This inexpressible revulsion and humiliation left her chilled whenever Shōzō looked at her afterward. He grew nervous and irritable.
At times he would become dreadfully sullen, neither speaking nor approaching.
He would call out sharply from the parlor, hurry over, then dismiss her with a snapped “Enough. It’s done.”
Yet this never lasted.
He would pull Masa close again at once, apologize through clenched teeth, and repeat his fervent caresses while steeped in regret.

“Just a little more patience.”
“I’ll surely rise in status—you’ll see.”
While embracing his wife’s stiffened shoulders, he vowed in a desperate tone.
“We’ll soon be rid of this miserable life.”
“As long as you remain my wife, I will do anything.”
“There’s nothing I won’t do.”
“I’ve already found the path.”

In October, the mother-in-law died of illness. It was a quiet death, like frost fading away. At her final moment, she gazed intently at Shōzō sitting at her bedside. Then shifting her eyes toward Masa, she stared this way for a time before closing her eyelids as they were. To Masa, this carried the meaning that her mother-in-law had something she wished to say but had resigned herself to its futility—that even if spoken, it would ultimately prove useless. Shōzō wept so piteously it was unbearable to witness. Yet rather than demonstrating deep affection, it seemed to prove emotional fragility and nervous weakness—to Masa, it was a sight she wished to turn her eyes away from.

In early February of the new year, the matchmaker Tozawa Kazuemon suddenly came to visit. Appearing to be on his way back from castle duties in his patched kamishimo, he stood at the entrance and asked, "Has Matsumuro returned?" After a moment's thought, he added, "Then tell him to come to my house immediately upon returning," and left through the gateway as he was.

Shōzō did not return.
Masa waited without even taking her evening meal.
At midnight she had the maid go to bed, and after wavering time and again, when she heard the two o’clock bell, she slipped into her bedding still in her everyday clothes.

――The sound of the maid opening the kitchen roused her, and she found dawn had already broken without her realizing it.
She immediately rose and quietly went to check her husband’s room, but of course he was nowhere to be seen, nor was there any sign he had returned.

“What could have happened?”

Growing genuinely uneasy, she stepped out into the corridor while muttering this to herself—and there, her eyes caught on a sealed letter left behind.
Masa started as though she had stumbled upon something perilous and stared at it with eyes wide in momentary fear, but soon snatched it up and retreated to her room as if wary of prying eyes, where she sat down.
……It was a letter of confession and apology from Shōzō to her.

What I have done will soon become clear, so I shall not record it here.
It began in such a manner.
I strove to restore the Matsumuro family to its former position.
However, that was not so much for the sake of the family name or my own advancement as it was because through those efforts I wanted to make you the wife of a middle elder and grant you a life blessed both materially and spiritually.
I had no ambition other than to make Masa happy.
Please believe this one thing—that I only ever wanted to make Masa happy.
――But I failed spectacularly.
In my excessive haste, my vision blurred, and I made an irreparable mistake.
I think this was probably the fate that the Matsumuro family was meant to follow.
I will leave the province and settle my affairs.
To Masa, this was beyond apology.
Therefore I will leave without asking your forgiveness, but I only ask that you permit me to pray for your future happiness.

For Masa, it was truly an ill-fated circumstance.
I pray that you may recover from this misfortune at the earliest possible moment.

The letter contained words to this general effect.

Masa burned that letter immediately.
For her at that moment, caught between fury at those feeble, sentimental words—a samurai ruining himself to make his wife happy—and the relief of feeling herself liberated, the plaintive tone imbuing those brief lines completely escaped her notice.
……As soon as she finished breakfast, Masa changed her clothes and visited Middle Elder Tozawa’s residence.
Tozawa Kazuemon had only half-listened to her account before brusquely summoning his retainers and commanding them to organize a pursuit party.

“Send horsemen to both highways.”
“He might use the snow to cross the mountains.”
“Also send a pursuit party to Needleleaf Valley.”
Kazuemon said these words vehemently.
“We absolutely cannot let that bastard escape.”
“Take every possible measure.”

Masa remained there as she was, and Tozawa’s retainers went to the vacant house with the maid.
……Shōzō was not caught.
It was later learned that he had been hiding at the family temple, waiting for the pursuit to slacken before crossing the provincial border.
The exact circumstances remained unclear, but the charge was embezzlement of a large sum of public funds.
――Masa remained there at the Tozawa residence, where she was looked after for about half a year.

III

For Shōzō, the sentence of death by decapitation had been imposed while he remained a fugitive, and the Matsumuro family name was extinguished.
Under normal circumstances, his wife too would naturally have had to face punishment.
However, likely due to efforts by Tozawa—acting out of his responsibility as matchmaker—under the pretext of an “official pardon from the domain,” she was discreetly relocated to the Edo estate that September.

In Edo, she settled at the home of her maternal uncle Onoji Shōzaemon and eventually rose to service in the inner palace.
Initially assigned to attend upon Shōin-in, the lord’s birth mother, after five years she was promoted to middle lady-in-waiting and served as a scribe.
At this time, her stipend comprised fifteen ryō in rice funds and seven ryō two bu in supplementary allowances, along with monthly provisions of six kan four hundred monme of firewood, two bales eight to of charcoal, eight gō of lamp oil, two shō eight gō of rice bran, and thirty monme for vegetables—enough to employ three children. After six more years, at age twenty-eight, she assumed gatekeeper duties, becoming a senior lady-in-waiting by thirty-five.

Up to this point, a tranquil and hopeful life had continued.

Her days were spent solely among women, and at times she was troubled by petty slander, jealousy, and backbiting.
Among them were those who took pleasure in indulging in indecent topics or had vile habits, and Masa experienced moments when the lewdness and wretchedness of women as a whole made her shrink in horror.
However, excepting the younger ones, many of those over twenty had resolved to remain unmarried for life due to various circumstances, and since there was a pride and self-awareness among those living independently, compared to life at Matsumuro, it was far more carefree, allowing them to feel liberated and at ease.

“When I think of the hardships of being a bride, this life truly is a woman’s paradise, isn’t it?”

“Having to cater to a difficult husband’s whims, tiptoe around parents-in-law’s nitpicking, or be chased by endless housework year-round—just imagining it makes me shudder.”

"For a woman to marry means—in other words—to surrender both herself and her entire life to another person."

They would often have such conversations.

However, around the time she turned thirty-five, a gradual change began to occur in Masa’s heart.
It began when her eldest brother’s daughter came to the Edo estate as a bride from their provincial domain.
―—This niece was called Sanae and had turned eighteen; her match was a steward named Watanabe Daishichi.
Masa, having been invited to the couple’s wedding as an opportunity, began frequently visiting relatives from three families residing within the same household.
This was likely due to her status as a senior lady-in-waiting, having gained leisure from her duties, and her being thirty-five years of age.
With the Sugiharas—maternal relatives who had been quite distant—she began an especially close association, growing so familiar that at times she even came to be consulted on household matters.

At the Sugihara residence, there came a time when the wife fell ill and took to her bed.
When Masa went to visit, she would often see her husband Ihei rise from the bedside.
Whenever he had free time, he would come to her side, reading to her or engaging her in conversation.
He was a man who usually wore a stern, austere expression, but at that time he appeared anxious—restless and unsettled—as he personally attended to her medicines and meals.

“Men truly are like children, aren’t they?”
The wife furrowed her brows.
“He’s become completely flustered over the idea that I might die.”
“Even while declaring he doesn’t trust a word doctors say, he rushes to summon one at the slightest pallor in my complexion.”
“It makes me feel so embarrassed.”

That was no way to speak.
Was that not proof of how deeply your husband loved you?
Masa meant to say this but suddenly closed her mouth.
Though she couldn’t explain why, something seemed lodged in her throat, rendering speech impossible.

That night, Masa recalled her married life for the first time.
Her way of thinking about married life was no longer what it had been when she was seventeen.
In those nearly twenty years, she had learned many things.
The facades and truths that sustain life; the surface and depths of people’s hearts in society; the ugliness lurking beneath beautiful things.
……What women come to understand at thirty-five—she too could now comprehend.
"I was too young—"
Masa murmured with a heartrending pang.
For the first time, it seemed Masa had come to understand how deeply Shōzō’s actions had sprung from love—and how she herself had responded to them.

From that moment on, a new world opened within her heart. When visiting others, she found herself unconsciously observing the dynamics between those couples. And each time, she would recall her own life with her husband. Though their incomes, social standing, and ages were nearly identical, five households meant five entirely different marital existences. Some maintained chilly distance, others shared tender closeness—there were ostentatious pairs and modest ones. No couple resembled any other. Yet all remained tightly bound together, living in mutual aid and support. To an outside eye, neither husband nor wife was without flaws, yet to the couples themselves, such imperfections seemed insignificant. This was the truth. Masa thought so. When a man becomes a husband and a woman becomes a wife, they learn to embrace what others deem flaws. From an understanding unique to them alone—resembling none and known to none—marital love takes root.

Masa now tried to recall each expression of love Shōzō had shown.
Those were all true in his own way.
What made it seem extraordinary was that his love belonged solely to him—unlike that of any other person.
The more genuine he was, the more he could not have expressed it any other way.

“What have I done?”
Masa covered her face with both hands.
“What have I done—”

Four

The letter of confession and apology that Shōzō had left behind when he fled also came to mind.
——I wanted to make Masa happy.
He had no other ambitions.
Just believe this one thing.
Fragments resembling cries of this nature lingered hazily in her memory.
For a samurai to write such sentimental things... At the time, she had thought only that before burning it immediately, but now she saw with painful clarity that what had seemed pitifully maudlin was in fact a profound, unwavering love.

I shouldn’t have burned it.
I should never have burned it.
If only I had read it now—I would have understood so much more of the truth.

Masa became a "senior lady-in-waiting" at forty.
It was the highest rank among the inner palace attendants serving the shogunate and the Three Houses, with a stipend of thirty koku of rice and twenty-five ryō in combined allowances.
From that time onward, her mindset underwent another transformation.
Regarding the failure of her marriage to Shōzō, Masa had come to understand that while her own culpability went without saying, factors like the Matsumuro family’s ill-fated lineage, Shōzō’s personality shaped by that influence, and the complexly intertwined circumstances surrounding them had made their misfortune nearly unavoidable. ……Yet the more she thought of it as inescapable fate, the more one regret persisted: had she herself possessed just a little more wisdom and affection, she might have saved Shōzō alone from ruin.

Masa was granted retirement and returned to her hometown at the age of fifty-two.
She was granted a residence in Momoyama within the castle town, awarded a lifelong stipend for five retainers, and would receive ten ryō annually from her ladyship.……

Momoyama was a hill located about twenty chō north of the castle town, and the house stood on its southern slope, where through a grove of red pines one could glimpse parts of the castle and samurai district. It was said a retired senior official had once lived there; though the house had few rooms, its garden spanned about a thousand tsubo with pines, cedars, maples, and cherry trees growing thickly around the building. It seemed someone exquisitely attuned to the seasons had designed it—maples and cherries arranged to contrast subtly with pines and cedars, while moss-covered stone lanterns nestled unexpectedly among shrub thickets.

In Inuma back home, her parents had passed away long before, her eldest brother had died five years prior, and his child Zenzaemon had inherited the household.
There was little familiarity between them, and their temperaments clashed, so their interactions remained purely ceremonial. Other relatives had similarly seen generational shifts, leaving almost no one with whom she could maintain close visits.……Her household staff consisted of an elderly manservant named Kinzō, a maid, and a servant girl—four people in total.
After about thirty days, Ine, the maid, must have been the first to find the loneliness unbearable.
“They say foxes come out around here in winter—” she said with a glance over her shoulder.
That sort of thing might happen.
To the north rose another tier of elevation where samurai villas stood scattered here and there; beyond the hill toward Hashima Valley stretched many pine and oak forests interspersed with fields.
In Masa’s childhood, it was even said that wolves roamed here; she had been too frightened to come gather pine and beech mushrooms.

“Then perhaps I’ll call it the Listening Fox Hermitage.”

Though she had laughed this way at the maid, even she could not escape a chilling sense settling in her shoulders.

Having lived over thirty years in a bustling household, at first she felt a loneliness akin to that of an exile. When night came, she would light two or even three lamps, have Ine sleep in her bedroom with her, and—since she couldn’t sleep at all—would often sip wine late into the night. Once, at the onset of winter, a deer wandered in. At that moment, Masa was gathering manglietia berries in the pine grove when she heard the crashing sound of trampled leaves. Turning around, she found herself face-to-face with a stag standing there—its height reaching nine shaku (she truly thought), antlers towering. The chestnut-dappled fur, the terrifying antlers, and those glaring eyes all rushed into her vision at once. She had no memory of it, but they said she had screamed with a terrible voice. By the time Kinzō rushed over with a stick, the deer had fled toward what was called Tano-kubo, its antlers catching and catching on the lower branches of the forest. “You should have bought a gun.” “What a waste that was.” The old servant went to look beyond the property boundary with evident reluctance, but Masa, now thoroughly unsettled, had a bamboo fence constructed around the garden before the snow arrived.

As the year drew to a close, an elderly woman suddenly came to visit.

“You must have realized—”
The woman laughed as she said this in the entranceway.
“You don’t understand—do you?”

“Oh! Lady Kikue of the Tozawa family!”
Masa exclaimed like a girl.
“It must be Lady Kikue. Oh my, what a surprise!
Welcome—please, do come in.”

The visitor was the youngest daughter of Tozawa Kazuemon.
She was one year younger than Masa and had grown close to her during the half-year period when Masa had once been under the care of the Tozawa family.
At that time, her marriage had already been arranged elsewhere, and Masa had heard she married after Masa left for Edo, but due to changes in their respective circumstances, she had not thought of her at all since then.
Her marital home was with a senior official named Ōkura Tonomo, and she was now living in retirement with her husband.
Masa was as delighted as if she had met a friend from a hundred years ago; she sent Kinzō to that household as a messenger and insisted on having her stay over that night.

V

Life in Momoyama naturally settled into rhythm.
Following Kikue's visit as catalyst, guests began coming occasionally, and she started hosting haikai gatherings and tea ceremonies while holding small banquets celebrating moon, snow and blossoms.
...Ine took her leave after three years, and the maidservant never properly settled into service.
Kinzō served diligently but developed gout in his foot; in his fifth year he was replaced by a man named Isuke and departed.
In roughly two years that followed—beginning with Kikue's death among regular visitors who either transferred to Edo or succumbed illness—several acquaintances were lost, and she herself fell ill and lay bedridden three months.

——It was during that time.

It was a season nearing the end of autumn, but when she awoke suddenly around what she thought was midnight, the sound of a transverse flute was coming from the garden.
During her time in the Edo palace, Masa had studied music to a reasonable extent and could discern flute melodies fairly well—yet the rhythm and melody she heard that time were entirely unfamiliar to her ear.
It might not even be called a melody.
Perhaps they were simply improvising and testing out tones they favored.
It flowed plainly and monotonously, lacking any element that appealed to human emotions.
The flute soon stopped.

When she was able to get up, she invited guests for a token celebration.
Some time later, at the front garden where she had seen off her guests, she suddenly called Isuke to a halt,

“Did you play the flute?” she asked.
The old servant fumbled in a flustered manner, kowtowed, and mumbled evasively, “It was just a trifle.”
It had been over two years since he had replaced Kinzō, but she had rarely exchanged words with him, having only ever seen him working silently.
He must have been sixty-seven or sixty-eight by now.
Though thin, he had a sturdy-boned frame with an air of desiccation about his shoulders.
He spoke very little and was calm and quiet in all he did……
He must have been someone who had fallen from status due to some past circumstances.
Having thought this, she said nothing at the time, but a few days later when he was sweeping the garden, she had tea brought to the veranda and called for him to rest a while.
Isuke sat on the shoe-removing platform and, while quietly savoring his tea, answered Masa’s questions little by little.

“Yes, that is correct.”
“I was not born in this land.”
With eyes that seemed to gaze beyond the pine grove, he spoke in measured fragments.
“For every word I speak, a word of my shame it is.”
“The household was managing quite well.”
“We had about three storehouses and such, but I suppose that was just our fate. Now when I return, not a single foundation stone remains.”
“Yes, that is correct—much further south.”

From that time on, Masa often called Isuke to converse.
He would answer any question put to him with candor, yet everything remained restrained—his manner being to express matters through tangential details rather than addressing them directly.
Even regarding the flute, he would say, “My playing is haphazard.
“However, I lived with a village kagura troupe for about three years, and among those companions were those you could call true masters.”
This was how he phrased things.
He had taken a wife once, but it hadn’t worked out and they had parted ways.
Of course, he had no children either.
Since fleeing his hometown, he had wandered from town to town and made a living through means too unspeakable to name.
He had lived like a dead leaf fallen upon water, drifting wherever the current took him.

“That dead leaf was blown by a gust of wind into a stagnant pool—and I suppose ending up in your care here must have been just such a happenstance.”
Isuke said this and laughed quietly.
“Thanks to you, I’ve found peace for the first time in my life.
I never even dreamed I could live such a quiet, carefree life—”

Even after they began speaking intimately, Isuke’s attitude did not change in the slightest.
He showed not the slightest hint of familiarity or indolence.
Unless called upon by her, he would silently devote himself to his work.
If she offered him sake, he would drink it, but he would never touch it on his own.

One autumn, while walking through the woods, she came upon akebia vines bearing fruit.
She tried to pick them, but they were too high, so she went back to call Isuke.
He must have been splitting firewood—seated on a stump in front of the shed with his back turned to her, gazing intently at something held in his hand.
The acrid smell of split wood drifted all around the area.
What was he so intently gazing at?
Masa suddenly approached from the side and peered over.—Resting on the old man’s palm was a ripe pomegranate.
Masa, wondering what it was, gave a wry smile and—

“Our pomegranates are too sour to eat, you know.”

she said this.
How startled she must have been!
Isuke nearly leapt from the stump, and the pomegranate tumbled from his hand, rolling across the ground.

“Oh, you gave me such a fright!”
Isuke sighed several times while picking akebi.
“I have never been so startled.
I must have been half-asleep—”

In all the eight years he had been there, this was the first time he had revealed himself so openly.
Masa laughed heartily for the first time in years, and even afterward, whenever she remembered, she found it so amusing that her cheeks would soften into a smile.

Six

The decision to cut down the garden oak was made around ten days before Later Moon’s tenth day.
The treetops and branches had grown too thick, obstructing the view of the moon.
She had thought the same last year but kept postponing it, her resolve never quite firm enough.
When she mentioned this, he said, “If agreeable, I shall cut it.”
Having said this, Isuke immediately went to the castle town to buy an axe.

The oak had a root circumference of about five shaku.
Isuke swung the axe all day with periodic rests, but by the afternoon of the second day he had only managed to cut about halfway through.
...After going to see that, Masa returned to the living room and sat at the desk to write a letter.
A friend of the deceased Kikue—the wife of a large merchant family called Honden in the castle town—now visited most frequently.
She had intended to send that person an invitation for Later Moon.—As she ground ink, spread paper, and held her brush while pondering how to begin the letter, a strange suspicion suddenly welled up in Masa’s mind—though from what association, she could not say.
That Isuke might be her husband Shōzō.
This strange doubt—though she could not say what had given rise to it—suddenly seized Masa’s mind with overwhelming certainty the moment she thought it.
It could be said that fragments of impressions she had unconsciously accumulated over eight years had, upon finding a natural opportunity, taken a single form.

“Ah.”

Masa groaned low and set down the brush.

The oak tree must have been felled, for a tremendous crashing sound erupted, and the ground shook.

Masa shuddered.
Pomegranate—back when she first married into the Matsumuro family, Shōzō had split open a pomegranate and likened its beautiful seeds to his wife’s body.
Isuke had rested the same object on his palm in front of the shed, gazing at it so intently that he failed to notice someone approaching.

Could that extraordinary shock he displayed then have been mere surprise from being lost in thought?
...From the depths of Masa’s subconscious, eight years’ worth of memories came surging back.
His gestures, the edges of his words, the shape of his smile, the corners of his eyes when looking at things—and again, the pomegranate.

“But what could have happened?”
Masa suddenly looked toward the garden.
“—I can’t hear anything.”
“There was only the sound of the oak falling—and then nothing.”

Indeed, after the tremendous sound of the oak falling and the ground shaking, everything suddenly became hushed, and nothing could be heard.
……Masa stood up and stepped out onto the veranda.
The garden’s far side suddenly brightened as if in a lie, revealing the castle’s southeast turret—previously unseen—now visible straight ahead.
The oak tree had fallen toward the lower part of the slope, its vivid fresh cut surface displayed toward her.
There was no sound, nor any sign of people.
The eerie silence made Masa shudder.
Something happened.
Something terrible happened.
The moment this intuition struck, she dashed barefoot into the garden.

Isuke had been pinned under the oak tree.
His hipbone had been crushed…
His lips had turned paper-white, and he was clenching his teeth.
Masa let out a scream and, calling the names of the chambermaid and housemaid, knelt beside Isuke.—She scolded the housemaid and chambermaid who had rushed over for their panicked commotion, ordered one to fetch a doctor, and instructed the housemaid to bring four or five people.

“Stay with me.
“They’ll be here soon.
“The doctor will be here soon.
“Do you recognize me?”

“Leave me be—”
Isuke whispered this in a nearly voiceless rasp, his brow furrowed.
“I’ve grown old, you see.
“I slipped… A foolish mistake.”

Masa placed her hand on Isuke’s shoulder.
And, staring fixedly into his eyes, she said.

“Please tell me the truth.—Aren’t you Lord Shōzō? Aren’t you Lord Matsumuro Shōzō?”

Isuke gaped, his eyes widening.
In those wide-open eyes, something darted like light—she could feel it.
Masa grasped his shoulders with both hands and called out, bringing her face close to his.

“Please tell me.
“The wound is grave.
“This may be the end.
“Please let me hear the truth in just one word.
“You are Masa’s husband, are you not—”

Isuke stared fixedly at her.
Silently, for a long while, he looked up into Masa’s eyes, then finally shook his head slowly from side to side.
And in a voice so faint it was almost inaudible, he whispered, “I was allowed to live a good afterlife.”

The Moon-Viewing Banquet was canceled.
In the sunlit corner of the garden where Isuke’s remains were buried, surrounded by shrubs, bulbuls would often come and sing; but soon snow arrived, cloaking everything in white.

Even after snow fell again upon the frozen old snow, piled up and froze over once more, Masa did not abandon her habit of visiting Isuke’s grave marker and losing herself in thought.

Isuke denied that he was Shōzō.
It could be taken at face value, or interpreted as an affirmation disguised as denial.
Masa had already turned sixty-three.
She had reached the age of understanding things beyond what could be expressed through words or forms—deeper truths, the secrets buried deep within human hearts.

During the eight years he had been there, he must have come to know that Masa had remained single ever since then.
Isuke had also once said, “I took a wife once, but we parted ways when things didn’t work out. I’ve had neither wife nor child since then.”—And whether Isuke had been Shōzō or not, the words he whispered at the end were enough to comfort Masa.

——I was allowed to live a good afterlife.