The Makioka Sisters Read online

  Taeko thought of the possibility of taking refuge outside, and she might have broken a window (because of the rain, the windows had been closed except for two or three inches at the top), but, while the water inside was settling into a stagnant, muddy pool, beyond that one thin layer of glass, it was surging by in a torrent. Aside from a wisteria arbor some five or six feet from the window, the garden offered no trees or buildings to which they might flee. It was only too clear, moreover, that they would be swept away if they tried to reach the arbor. Hiroshi, standing on the piano, rubbed his hand over the ceiling. He was quite right— if they could break their way out through the ceiling their problem would be solved, but what could a small boy and two women do?

  “Where is Kane, Mother?”—Hiroshi thought of the maid. “I think she was in her room a little while ago,” said Mrs. Tamaki. “What do you suppose could have happened to her? Can you hear her voice, Mother?” But this time Mrs. Tamaki was silent. The three of them stared into the water that lay between them; soon it was within three or four feet of the ceiling. Taeko stood the table upright (she found that it was heavy with mud and pulled at her foot), and clutched the curtain rod. Only her head was above water. Mrs. Tamaki was in much the same predicament, but fortunately an aluminum chandelier for indirect lighting hung from three sturdy chains above her head, and she could reach for it when she was in danger of losing her balance. “Will we drown,

  Mother? Will we, Mother?” Mrs. Tamaki did not answer. “We will drown, Mother.” “What nonsense!” For the rest, Mrs. Ta-maki’s lips moved ineffectually, and it was clear that she could not think of a reassuring answer. Taeko glanced at Mrs. Tamaki, up to the throat in water, and thought she saw the face of one who was looking at death. She knew that she wore much the same expression herself. And she knew too that when a person is finally convinced that nothing can save him, he becomes strangely calm and relaxed.

  She was sure she had been standing there a very long time, three or four hours at least. As a matter of fact it was less than an hour. Water was beginning to pour in through the opening at the top of the window. While she was struggling to close it (indeed from a little before), one hand still fast to the curtain rod, she sensed that someone was walking about on the roof. A man jumped to the wisteria arbor, worked his way to the edge nearest Taeko’s window, and, lowering himself into the water, sank out of sight for a moment. Then, careful not to release his hold on the arbor, he turned to face Taeko. One glance at her and he went to work. At first Taeko could not guess what he was about, but in a moment she saw that he was trying to hold fast to the arbor and at the same time reach across to the window. He wore a leather jacket and a leather aviator’s helmet, under which only the eyes seemed alive. Taeko saw that it was the photographer Itakura.

  She had not recognized him at first: she had never seen him in that jacket, which he was said to have worn a great deal in America, and his face was hidden by the helmet; she had not expected to see anyone here, least of all him; her vision was obscured by the downpour and the spray; and, most important, she was much too distraught to recognize him. “Itakura, Itakura,” she called out, less to Itakura himself than to Mrs. Tamaki and Hiroshi. She concentrated on the window, this time to lower it, and, tight though it was from the pressure of the water, she managed to lower it until she could lean out. As she stretched to take Itakura’s hand in her own right hand, the torrent hit her with all its fury. She was afraid the curtain rod would be torn from her grasp. “Let go with your other hand.” Itakura spoke for the first time. “I have this one. Let go with the other.” Taeko gave herself up and did as she was told. Their two arms snapped taut, and a moment later Itakura had pulled her to him. (Afterwards he said he had not known himself that he had such strength). “Take hold, like this,” he said. Taeko clutched at the arbor with both hands; but she was in far more danger than inside the house. “No, no—I am finished.” “Hold on for just a minute—hold on tight—for just a minute.”—as he spoke, Itakura fought his way to the top of the arbor. Opening a hole in the vines, he pulled her up after him.

  Well, I at least am safe—that was Taeko’s first thought. It was possible that the water would rise above the arbor too, but then they could flee to the roof—Itakura would think of something. Shut up in that narrow room, she had not suspected the changes that had taken place outside. She saw now what the last hour or two had brought. She saw what Teinosuke had seen from the railroad bridge in Tanaka. There was this difference, however: Teinosuke looked out over “the sea” from the eastern shore, whereas Taeko, in the middle of it, saw those mighty waves all around her. She had but a moment before thought she was saved. Now, looking at nature gone mad, she wondered if she and Itakura could possibly escape. But the immediate problem was what to do about the others. “Mrs. Tamaki and Hiroshi are still inside—can you do something?” As she was urging Itakura on, a dull, heavy blow shook the arbor. A log had come down in the torrent. “Just what we need,” he said. Lowering himself into the water, he proceeded to lay a bridge across to the window. He pushed one end of the log inside, and, with Taeko’s help, made the other fast with wisteria vines. When he had crossed over, he disappeared inside for rather a long time. Taeko heard afterwards that he had torn up the lace curtains to make a rope. He threw one end to Mrs. Tamaki, who was fairly near, and she threw it on to young Hiroshi. After he had brought the two of them to the window, Itakura helped Hiroshi across the bridge and followed with Mrs. Tamaki.

  It seemed as if Itakura’s activities had taken a fairly long time, and again as if they had taken almost no time. Even afterwards, no one could really be sure. The self-winding watch Itakura had brought back from America—that, too, he was very proud of— was said to be water-proof, but in the course of the morning it had stopped. The downpour continued, the water rose, and they had to flee from the wisteria arbor to the roof, again using the log for a bridge (two or three very helpful pieces of wood had meanwhile floated down to reinforce it). On the roof Taeko for the first time composed herself to wonder what could have brought Itakura down from the skies in the crisis. He had had a feeling that morning, he said, that there would be a flood. As early as spring, he had heard an old man remark that there was a flood in this part of the country every six or seven years, and that this was a flood year. He had therefore been greatly disturbed at the succession of rainy days, and when, that morning, the Home Defense Corps was out with its flood warnings and there were excited rumors that the Sumiyoshi embankments would give way, he felt that he had to go see for himself what was happening. He walked along the banks for a time and noted that there was considerable danger of a flood. Near the sewing school he ran into the water.

  But it was strange, even with these forebodings, that he should have gotten himself up especially in that leather jacket, and come precisely to the sewing school. He knew that this was one of Taeko’s days at the school. Had he then meant from the beginning to be where he could run to her rescue if by some chance she should be in danger? That was the question, perhaps too touchy a question to dwell on for very long. In any case, Taeko was told that as he fled from the water he had suddenly remembered where she was, and had plunged in again at the thought that she might be in danger. Afterwards she heard at great length of his fight with the water. Like Teinosuke, Itakura approached along the tracks and through the Kōnan Girls’ Academy. Since he was some two or three hours earlier than Teinosuke, he still found it possible to make his way beyond. No doubt he was not lying when he said that three times he was swept away and barely escaped drowning, and that he was quite alone in the torrent. It was after he reached the sewing school that the waves were at their highest. He finally had to climb to the roof, and while he was staring absently at the flood he noticed that someone was waving insistently from the roof of Mrs. Tamaki’s house. It was Kane, the maid. When she knew he had seen her, Kane pointed in the direction of the parlor window and, raising three fingers, wrote the name “Taeko” in the air. Itakura plunged into the water again.
Half swimming, half sinking, he fought his way to the arbor. It was clear that he had truly risked his life in this last, most perilous bout with the water.

  9

  THESE RESCUE OPERATIONS were talcing place at about the time Teinosuke was stranded in the train. After making his way to the Kōnan Academy, he rested until about three o’clock in the second-floor room that had been set aside for flood refugees. When the rain stopped and the water began to recede, he decided to go on to the sewing school. The way was of course not as easy as it would ordinarily have been. The water had left behind mounds of sand in some places as high as the eaves of houses, so that the scene resembled nothing so much as a north-country town in the snowbound winter months. The worst problem was the quicksand. He had lost one shoe in the earlier quicksand, and he now threw the other away and went on in his stockings. A walk that would usually have taken no more than two or three minutes now took twenty or thirty.

  The land about the sewing school had been completely transformed. The school gate was almost buried in sand and mud, only the tips of the gate posts showing, and the building itself was buried except for the slate roof. Teinosuke had imagined crowds of students awaiting rescue on the roof, but for some reason— had they escaped, had they been swept away in the water, had they been buried under the sand?—there was not a student in sight. Almost despairing, he crossed to Mrs. Tamaki’s house over what had once been the lawn and the flower beds south of the school. The top of the arbor, along which trailed wisteria vines, was barely above the ground, and beside it rested two or three logs. And on the red roof were Taeko, Itakura, Mrs. Tamaki, Hiroshi, and one other, the maid Kane, who had joined them.

  When he had finished telling Teinosuke his story, Itakura explained that although he had been wanting to see Koi-san home, she was much too exhausted, and Mrs. Tamaki and the boy did not know what would happen to them if he left. He was wondering what to do next.

  It is hard for one who has not had a similar experience to imagine the terror that still gripped Taeko and Mrs. Tamaki and Hiroshi, so intense a terror that afterwards it seemed almost funny. Even when the sky had cleared and the water receded, they could not believe they were safe, and they sat trembling violently. Itakura tried to rouse Taeko. Mr. and Mrs. Makioka would be worried, he said, and he would see her home, but Taeko, though admitting he was right, felt somehow that further perils awaited her. She could not bring herself to leave the roof for the mud and sand, now within easy stepping distance from the eaves. And Mrs. Tamaki worried about what she would do when Itakura and Taeko were gone. Her husband would no doubt be along soon, but in the meantime the sun might go down, leaving them to spend the night on the roof. Hiroshi and the maid Kane joined their laments with hers. Teinosuke found them pleading with Itakura to stay just a little longer.

  Falling exhausted on the roof, Teinosuke himself had little desire to move. At perhaps four-thirty (his watch, too, had stopped), when he had been lying there for upwards of an hour watching the sky clear and the sun come out, several emissaries arrived from Mrs. Tamaki’s family. Teinosuke and Itakura saw their chance to leave. In places they had to carry Taeko, still weak and dazed. Even without her they would have had trouble crossing the Sumi-yoshi River, which had left its old bed and was pouring over the National Highway between the Kōnan Academies and Tanaka. Halfway across, they met Shōkichi and became a party of four. At Tanaka, Itakura suggested that they rest for a time at his house, which was very near—as a matter of fact he was rather worried about it. Eager though Teinosuke was to get home, it seemed best to let Taeko rest a little. They spent about an hour at Ita-kura’s. The downstairs rooms, living quarters for the unmarried Itakura and his sister, had been considerably damaged, the water having risen about a foot above the floor. Teinosuke and the rest were invited to the studio upstairs, where they drank ginger ale rescued from the water. Taeko took off her voile dress and changed to a kimono Itakura had his sister bring out for her. Teinosuke, who had returned barefoot, borrowed a pair of wooden pattens.

  Itakura insisted on seeing them part of the way home, even though Teinosuke pointed out that Shōkichi was there to take his place. In the outskirts of Tanaka, he finally turned back.

  Sachiko expected Okubata to come again. He did not appear that evening, however, and the next day Itakura came to make inquiries in his place. Okubata had arrived at Itakura’s house the night before, some time after Itakura returned from seeing Teinosuke and the rest off. Okubata reported that he had been waiting at the Makioka house for Taeko to come back, but had gone out, worried that she should be so late, to see what he could see, and that, walking along the National Highway, he had found himself in Itakura’s neighborhood. Although he had hoped to go on as far as the sewing school, it was now pitch dark, and the road to the west had turned into a river. Fearing that it would be impossible to push his way across, he thought he might be able to learn something from Itakura. He need not worry, said Itakura, telling him in a general way what had happened since that morning. Okubata left immediately for Osaka—he really should stop by the Makioka house again, he knew, but he wanted Itakura to call the following morning and tell them he had gone home only after hearing that Taeko had come through safely. And, added Itakura, he had also been asked by Okubata to inquire after Taeko—to make sure that even if she was uninjured she had not caught cold.

  Taeko had quite recovered. She came down with Sachiko to thank Itakura and to reconstruct the hours of peril. It did seem strange that, after sitting through a two-hour downpour in only a summer dress, she had not caught cold. But at such times, remarked Itakura, extra strength comes from somewhere. Soon he took his leave.

  The fight against the water had been a very great strain after all. The next morning Taeko was sore in every joint, and especially worried about a soreness under the arm that might well turn into pleurisy. Fortunately it passed in a few days. Two or three days later there was a light shower, and she started up in terror at the sound of the rain on the roof. She had never before thought much about rain, but a new fear had taken root in her heart. When it began raining one night, she lay waiting for the flood until morning.

  10

  RESIDENTS OF Kobe and Osaka were astonished when they opened their newspapers the next morning and read of the flood damage. For several days a steady procession of callers, coming partly to inquire after the safety of the family, partly to view the damage, kept Sachiko busy; but as the utilities returned to normal, the excitement subsided. There was a shortage of labor and equipment to clear away the mud and sand. The streets, a cloud of dust in the hot sun, made Teinosuke think of Tokyo and Yokohama after the great earthquake. At the Ashiya River station a new platform was built over the debris that covered the old platform, and trains crossed the river on a new bridge above the old one. Since the bed of the river was, in places, almost as high as the banks, there was danger of floods from even a light shower, and something had to be done immediately, but the army of workmen, like a swarm of ants in a mountain of sugar, made little headway. The pines along the embankment were buried under a solid layer of dust. Unfortunately the blazing hot weather continued day after day and the cloud of dust only became more suffocating. There was little this year to bespeak the elegant suburb Ashiya.

  It was on a summer day, in the cloud of dust, that Yukiko returned after two and a half months in Tokyo.

  News of the flood had come out in the Tokyo morning newspapers. Not knowing the details, the people in the main house were most uneasy. It was clear that the worst damage had been along the banks of the Sumiyoshi River and the Ashiya River, and what most concerned Yukiko, as she read of drowned students in the Kōnan Elementary School, was Etsuko’s safety. The next day Teinosuke called from his office in Osaka and answered questions as Tsuruko and Yukiko came to the telephone in turns. Yukiko— it was as if she wanted his advice—said she was so worried that she was thinking of leaving for Osaka the next day, but Teinosuke answered that although he would be pleased to see her there was no
need for her to make a special trip. The situation was as he had described it, and the Government lines were not yet running west from Osaka. That evening, as he told Sachiko of the conversation, he said he suspected that they would be seeing Yukiko soon; this was the pretext she had been waiting for. A letter arrived for Sachiko some days later. Yukiko yearned to see Taeko and could not rest until she had inspected the damage to the city she was so fond of. She might be calling on them without warning one day very soon.