Seven Japanese Tales Read online

  “What are you talking about, Mother?” I would object. “You mustn't say foolish things like that!” But somehow Father seemed to agree with her.

  The doctor who examined her said that Mother's heart was rather weak, but that it was not bad enough to be a cause for concern — on the whole, she had a strong constitution. And in May of that year she gave birth to a baby boy. Her delivery took place at our house: the little six-mat room that I had been using was given over to her. The baby was a healthy one, and in due time Father gave it the name Takeshi. But when I came home from school one day — I believe it was about two weeks later — I was startled to find that Takeshi wasn't there.

  “Father, where is Takeshi?” I asked.

  “We've sent him out to Shizuichino for adoption,” he told me. “Someday I think you'll understand, but for the present, please don't ask too many questions. I didn't plan this by myself — from the time we knew the child was coming your mother and I discussed it together every night. She wanted to do it even more than I did. Maybe we shouldn't have gone ahead without a word to you, but I was afraid that talking to you about it might do more harm than good.”

  For a moment I looked at him incredulously. Mother, who had left her bed only the day before, seemed to have deliberately slipped off somewhere, to leave us alone, “Where's Mother?” I asked.

  “I think she may have gone out to the garden,” he said, as if he didn't know.

  I went out to look for her at once. She was in the middle of the bridge, clapping her hands and calling the fish, and scattering food to them. When she saw me, she went over to the other side of the pond, sat down on a celadon porcelain drum beside one of those sinister-looking stone saints, and beckoned me to come and sit on the other drum, facing her.

  “I was just talking to Father,” I said. “What on earth is the meaning of this?”

  “Were you surprised, Tadasu?” Her soft, round face dimpled in a smile. The expression in her eyes was far too serene for a mother struggling to hold back her grief at having just been robbed of her beloved newborn infant.

  “Of course I was.”

  “But haven't I always said that Tadasu is the only child I need?” Her calm expression remained unchanged. “Your father and I both thought it was for the best. Let's talk about it another time.”

  That night the room I had given up to Mother and her baby was once again my bedroom. The more I thought about what had happened, the more puzzled I became. It was dawn before I fell asleep.

  Here I should like to say a little about Shizuichino, the place to which Takeshi had been sent.

  Shizuichino is the modern name for the Ichiharano district, where the legendary hero Raiko is supposed to have killed the two robber chiefs. Even now one of its villages is called Ichihara, and that is also the name of the local station on the electric-car line to Mount Kurama. However, it was only in recent years that the car line opened; before that, you had to make the six- or seven-mile trip from Kyoto to Shizuichino by ricksha, or go by carriage as far as Miyake-Hachiman and then walk about three and a half miles. For several generations we had had close ties with a family named Nosé who were prosperous farmers in this district — I suppose one of my ancestors had been sent out to nurse at their house. Even in Father's rime, the head of the Nosé family and his wife would come to pay their respects to us at the Bon Festival and at New Year's, bringing with them a cartload of fresh vegetables. Their Kamo eggplants and green soybeans were unobtainable at the market; we were always delighted to see them coming with their little handcart. Since we often went to stay overnight with them in the fall, to go mushroom hunting, I had been familiar with that region since childhood.

  The road from the Nosé house to the mushroom hill led along the Kurama River, one of the sources of the Kamo. We were already well above Kyoto: as we climbed still higher we could see the city lying below us. They say that the great scholar Fujiwara Seika retired here, after declining the invitation of the Shogun Ieyasu to come to Edo. The mountain villa Seika lived in has long since disappeared, but its site was in a wide bend of the meandering Kurama River. Not far away were the places he chose as the “Eight Scenic Beauties,” to which he gave such names as Pillow-Stream Grotto and Flying-Bird Pool.

  Another nearby point of interest was the Fudaraku Temple, popularly known as the Komachi Temple, where Ono no Komachi and her tormented suitor are said to lie buried. According to the Illustrated Guide to the Capital, this is also the temple which the Emperor Go-Shirakawa visited during his journey to Ohara, as related in The Tale of the Heike. There is a passage in one of the No plays about Komachi saying that many years ago a man who happened to be passing Ichiharano heard a voice from a clump of tall susuki grass recite this poem:

  When the autumn wind blows,

  Eyeless Komachi wails in pain.

  But where is her lovely face

  In this wilderness of susuki?

  Whereupon the priest who recalls the poem decides to go to Ichiharano and pray for the repose of Komachi's soul. I have seen an old painting which shows susuki growing out of the eye sockets of what is presumably Komachi's skull; and in the Komachi Temple there was a “wailing stone” on which was carved the poem I have quoted. In my childhood, that whole area was a lonely waste covered with a rank growth of susuki grass.

  A few days after I learned the astonishing news about Takeshi I decided that I had to make a secret visit to the Nosé family in Shizuichino. Not that I was determined to steal Takeshi away from them and bring him home again. I am not the sort of person to do a thing like that on my own initiative. It was simply that I felt an overpowering rush of pity for my poor little brother, taken from his mother's arms to a house far away in the country. At least I could make sure that he was well, I thought, and then go home and urge Father and Mother to reconsider. If they didn't listen to me at first, I meant to go on visiting Takeshi regularly, keeping our link with him intact. Sooner or later they would understand how I felt.

  I set out early in the morning and reached the house a little before noon. Fortunately, Nosé and his wife had just returned from the fields, but when I asked to see Takeshi they seemed embarrassed.

  “Takeshi isn't here,” they told me.

  “He isn't? Then where is he?”

  “Well, now. . .” they began, exchanging worried glances as if they were at a loss for an answer.

  But after I repeated my question several times, Nosé's wife broke down and said: “We left him with some people a little farther out.” Then they explained that because there wasn't anyone in the house just then to nurse a baby, and because my parents wanted Takeshi further away, they took him out to live with some old friends of theirs, people you could trust.

  When I asked where “a little farther out” was, Nosé seemed even more embarrassed. “Your parents know where it is,” he said; “so please ask them. It wouldn't do for me to tell you myself.”

  His wife chimed in: “They said if you ever happened to ask us we shouldn't tell you!” But I was finally able to worm it out of them that the place in question was a village called Seriu.

  There is a folk song with the line “Out beyond Kyoto, by Ohara and Seriu”; and the Kabuki play The Village School has a passage about “hiding their lord's child in the village of Seriu, nestled in the hills.” But this Seriu is over the Ebumi Pass on the road from Shizuichino to Ohara, and now has a different name. The Seriu that Nosé and his wife were talking about is a mountain village in Tamba, even more remote and isolated. To go there, you take the electric car to Kibune, the second stop after Shizuichino, and cross the Seriu Pass into Tamba. The pass is a difficult one, more than twice as high as the Ebumi Pass, and there is not a single house in the five miles from Kibune to Seriu.

  Why would my parents have sent my little brother to such a place? Even the Seriu in the play — the village “nestled in the hills” where a lord's child was kept in hiding — wasn't that far from Kyoto. Why had Takeshi been hidden away deep in the mountains of Tamba?
I felt that I should try to find him that very day, but since all I knew was the name of the village I would have had to look for him from house to house. Anyway, there was hardly time for me to go on to Kibune and cross that steep mountain pass. Giving up for the time being, I went back home, thoroughly dejected, along the same road I had come that morning.

  For the next two or three days my relations with my parents were strained; even at supper we seldom talked. Whether or not they had heard from the Nosé family, they never said a word about my trip to Shizuichino, nor did I mention having gone. Mother was bothered by the swelling of her breasts and often secluded herself in the teahouse to use a milking device to relieve the pressure, or call one of the maids to massage her. Around this time my father seemed to be in poor health, and began taking afternoon naps in the veranda room, his head on a Chinese pillow of crimson papier-mâché. He seemed feverish too; I often saw him with a thermometer in his mouth.

  I intended to go to Seriu as soon as possible, and was trying to think of an excuse to be away from home overnight. But one afternoon — it must have been late spring, since the silk tree my grandfather had been so proud of was in blossom — I decided to spend a little time reading in the pavilion. Taking along a novel, I went through the garden, past the flowering tree, and up the pavilion steps. Suddenly I noticed that Mother was sitting there on a cushion before me, busily milking her breasts. That was something she did in the teahouse, I thought. I had never imagined I'd find her on the pavilion veranda in that state: leaning over in a languid pose, her kimono open so that her naked breasts were bared to my view. Startled, I turned to leave, but she called after me in her usual calm voice: “Don't go away, Tadasu.”

  “I'll come again later,” I said. “I didn't mean to disturb you.”

  “It's stifling in the teahouse, so I thought I'd sit out here. Did you want to read?”

  “I'll come later,” I repeated, feeling very uncomfortable. But again she stopped me from leaving.

  “You needn't go — I'll be done in a moment. Just stay where you are.” And then: “Look! My breasts are so full they hurt!”

  I said nothing, and she continued: “You must remember how you tried to nurse at them till you were twelve or thirteen. You used to fret because nothing would come out, no matter how hard you sucked.”

  Mother removed the milking device from her left nipple and placed it over the right one. Her breast swelled up inside the glass receptacle, almost filling it, and a number of tiny streams of milk spurted from her nipple. She emptied the milk into a drinking glass and held it up to show me.

  “I told you I'd have a baby someday and there'd be lots of milk for you too, didn't I?” I had somewhat recovered from my initial shock and was watching her fixedly, though I hardly knew what to say.

  “Do you remember how it tastes?” she asked. I lowered my gaze and shook my head.

  “Then try a little,” she said, holding the glass out to me. “Go on and try it!”

  The next moment, before I realized what I was doing, my hand reached out for the glass, and I took a sip of the sweet white liquid.

  “How is it? Does it remind you of how it used to taste? Your mother nursed you till you were four, I think.” It was extraordinary for my stepmother to say “your mother” to me, distinguishing between herself and my father's first wife.

  “I wonder if you remember how to nurse,” she went on. “You can try, if you like.” Mother held one of her breasts in her hand and offered me the nipple. “Just try it and see!”

  I sat down before her so close that our knees were touching, bent my head toward her, and took one of her nipples between my lips. At first it was hard for me to get any milk, but as I kept on suckling, my tongue began to recover its old skill. I was several inches taller than she was, but I leaned down and buried my face in her bosom, greedily sucking up the milk that came gushing out. “Mama,” I began murmuring instinctively, in a spoiled, childish voice.

  I suppose Mother and I were in each other's embrace for about half an hour. At last she said: “That's enough for today, isn't it?” and drew her breast away from my mouth. I thrust her aside without a word, jumped down from the veranda, and ran off into the garden.

  But what was the meaning of her behavior that afternoon? I knew she hadn't deliberately planned it, since we met in the pavilion by accident. Did our sudden encounter give her the impulse to embarrass and upset me? If our meeting was as much a surprise to her as it was to me, perhaps she merely yielded to a passing whim. Yet she had seemed far too cool to be playing such a mischievous trick: she had acted as if this were nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe she would have been just as calm even if someone had come upon us. Maybe, in spite of my having grown up, she still thought of me as a child. Mother's state of mind was a mystery to me, but my own actions had been equally abnormal. The moment I saw her breasts there before me, so unexpectedly revealed, I was back in the dream world that I had longed for, back in the power of the old memories that had haunted me for so many years. Then, because she lured me into it by having me drink her milk, I ended by doing the crazy thing I did. In an agony of shame, wondering how I could have harbored such insane feelings, I paced back and forth around the pond alone. But at the same time that I regretted my behavior, and tortured myself for it, I felt that I wanted to do it again — not once, but over and over. I knew that if I were placed in those circumstances again — if I were lured by her that way — I would not have the will power to resist.

  After that I stayed away from the pavilion; and Mother, possibly aware of how I felt, seemed to be using only the teahouse. Somehow the desire that had occupied such a large place in my heart — the desire to go to Seriu to see Takeshi — was no longer quite so strong. First of all, I wanted to find out why my parents had disposed of him in that way. Was it Father's idea or Mother's? As far as I could judge, it seemed likely that my stepmother — out of deference to my own mother — had decided that she ought not to keep her child here with us. And perhaps Father shared her scruples. Undoubtedly his love for his former wife was still intense, and he may well have thought it wrong for him to have any other child than the one she left him. Perhaps that is why my stepmother gave up her baby. For her, such an act would have shown self-sacrificing devotion to my father — and wasn't she more attached to me than to her own son? I could only suppose that they had come to their decision for reasons of this sort. But why hadn't they confided in me, or at least given me some hint of their intentions? Why had they kept Takeshi's whereabouts such a dark secret?

  I have mentioned that Father's health seemed to be failing, and it occurred to me that that might have influenced his decision. Since about the end of the last year he had begun to look pale, and had become noticeably thinner. Although he seldom coughed or cleared his throat, he seemed to have a low fever, which made me suspect that he was suffering from some kind of chest trouble. Our family doctor was a man named Kato, whose office was on Teramachi at Imadegawa. During the early stages of his illness Father never had him come to the house. “I'm going for a walk,” he would say, and then take the streetcar to visit Dr. Kato. It was not until after the episode in the pavilion that I managed to find out where he was going.

  “Father,” I asked, “is anything wrong with you?”

  “No, not in particular,” he answered vaguely.

  “But why do you have a prescription from Dr. Kato?”

  “It isn't serious. I'm just having a little trouble passing water.”

  “Then it's inflammation of the bladder?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Something like that.”

  At last it became obvious to everyone that Father had to urinate frequently. You could see that he was always going to relieve himself. Also, his coloring was worse than ever, and he had lost his appetite completely. That summer, after the rainy season, he began to spend most of the day resting, as if he felt exhausted; in the evening he sometimes came out to have dinner with us beside the pond, but even then he was listless a
nd seemed to be making the effort out of consideration for Mother and me.

  I felt suspicious because he was so evasive about his illness, even concealing his regular visits to his doctor. One day I made a visit of my own to Dr. Kato's office and asked him about it.

  “Father tells me he has inflammation of the bladder,” I said. “I wonder if that's really all it is.”

  “It's true that he has an inflamed bladder,” said Dr. Kato, who had known me all my life. “But hasn't he told you any more than that?” He looked a little surprised.

  “You know how retiring and secretive Father is. He doesn't like to talk about his illness.”

  “That puts me in a difficult position,” Dr. Kato said. “Of course I haven't been too blunt with your father about it, but I've let him know his condition is serious. So I suppose that he and your mother are pretty well prepared for the worst — I can't understand why they've kept it from you. Probably they want to spare you any unnecessary grief. To my own way of thinking, I'm not sure it's wise to hide the truth from you, since you're already so worried. I've known your family for a good many years — your grandfather was a patient of mine — and so I don't think there should be any objection if I take it on myself to inform you.” He paused a moment, and went on: “I'm sorry to have to say this, but as you must have gathered by now your father's condition is not at all hopeful.” Then he told me the whole story.

  It was last autumn that Father noticed a change in the state of his health and went to be examined by Dr. Kato. He complained of various symptoms — fever, blood in his urine, pain after urinating, a sensation of pressure in his lower abdomen — and Dr. Kato found immediately, by touch, that both of his kidneys were swollen. He also discovered tuberculous bacilli in the urine. This is very serious, he thought; and he urged Father to go to the urology department at the university hospital for a special examination, with X-rays. Father seems to have been reluctant. However, he finally went, after Dr. Kato urged him repeatedly and gave him a letter of introduction to a friend of his at the hospital.