Some Prefer Nettles Read online

  "Jiiya and I were walking along the Bund, and a drunk—I think he must have been drunk—came after us watching Lindy. 'An amazing dog,' he kept saying. 'Exactly like a conger eel.' "

  They all laughed.

  "He has a point, you know," said Takanatsu. "The dog does remind you a little of a conger eel. Lindy, you old conger eel!"

  "Maybe we can call him Conger Eel," said Kaname, as if debating the matter with himself. "And so, by grace of the conger eel, Uncle Hideo will be spared."

  "They have the same sort of longish face, don't they, Peony and Lindy," said Misako.

  "Collies and greyhounds have the same faces and the same bodies too," Takanatsu answered. "Only one has long hair and the other short—I add this for the benefit of those who do not know as much about dogs as I do."

  "And their throats?"

  "Let's drop the throats. That doesn't seem to have been a happy discovery."

  "Lined up side by side at the foot of the stairs, they remind you a little of the main Mitsukoshi store, don't they?"

  "The Mitsukoshi? Does the Mitsukoshi have two dogs, Mother?"

  "Shocking. Your son is a Tokyo man and he doesn't even know about the lions at the Mitsukoshi. That, I suppose, explains why his Osaka accent is so good."

  "But I was only six when I left Tokyo."

  "I almost think you're right. Time does fly. And you haven't been back since?"

  "I always want to go, but Father runs off and leaves me here with Mother."

  "Why don't you go with me? You're having a vacation.... I'll show you the Mitsukoshi."

  "When?"

  "Tomorrow. The day after, maybe."

  "I wonder if I should." Hiroshi had been chattering along happily, but a shadow passed over his face.

  "Why don't you go with him, Hiroshi?" Kaname suggested.

  "I'd like to, I suppose. But there's my homework."

  "And haven't I been telling you to get your homework done early?" Misako reminded him. "Work hard at it all day today and you'll have it finished. Then you can ask your uncle to take you to Tokyo with him. Doesn't that seem a fine idea?"

  "We won't worry about homework. We can get that done on the train. I'll even help."

  "How long will you be in Tokyo?"

  "I'll get you back in time for school."

  "Where are you going to stay?"

  "At the Imperial Hotel."

  "But won't you have all sorts of work to do?"

  "Imagine the child arguing about it when his uncle offers to take him to Tokyo. Do take him along, Hideo, even if he's a nuisance. It will be so peaceful without him for a few days."

  Hiroshi looked into his mother's eyes as she spoke. He was still smiling, but his face seemed a little pale. The thought of taking him along to Tokyo had come to Takanatsu quite on the spur of the moment, but Hiroshi found another explanation: they had planned it in advance. If they really wanted only to give him pleasure, then of course he had no objection to being taken to Tokyo. But he dreaded what Takanatsu might say to him on the train back. "Hiroshi, you will find your mother gone. Your father asked me to talk to you about it"—might he not have to hear something like that? The boy stood before them in a torment of uncertainty, trying to guess what was going on in their grown-up minds, frightened and at the same time vaguely aware that he was perhaps being childish.

  "You do have to go to Tokyo? You have business there?"

  "Why?"

  "If you don't, you can stay here. I'd like that better. It would be more fun for all of us. Mother and Father too."

  "Can't they be satisfied with Lindy? They can feel his throat every day."

  "But Lindy can't talk to them the way you can. Can you, Lindy? You can't take the place of Uncle Hideo, can you, Lindy?" Hiroshi squatted beside the dog, stroking its throat and rubbing his cheek against its side to cover his confusion. Something about his voice and manner made them suspect that he was crying.

  But whatever sorrows and dangers they faced, it seemed to be the rule that Misako and Kaname could laugh and joke when Takanatsu was with them as they could not by themselves. That may have been partly the result of his efforts to put them at ease, but what really seemed to lift the weight from their spirits was the fact that Takanatsu alone knew everything, that there was no need to act in front of him. How long had it been, Misako wondered, since she had last heard Kaname really laugh. The peace and calm of being able to sit on a sunny south veranda, chair opposite chair, watching the boy and the dogs at play in the garden below—the contentment of receiving this visitor from afar, Kaname speaking, Misako answering, the reserve between them broken down—showed unexpectedly how much there still was about them of the husband and wife when for the moment they were free not to play at being husband and wife. It would not last, they knew, but they could enjoy breathing freely for one short moment.

  "How's the literature? You seem carried away."

  "It's very, very interesting." Kaname was lost again in the book that had lain face down on the table before him. He held it high in front of his face, but even so the others caught a glimpse of a full-page copperplate teeming with naked harem ladies.

  "I don't know how many trips I had to make to Kelly and Walsh to get that for you. I heard they finally had it in from England and ran around to buy it. But the rascal probably saw how much I wanted it and asked two hundred dollars. Wouldn't come down a cent. He had the cheek to tell me I couldn't find another set even in London and I was a fool to expect a discount. I know nothing about the book market, but I pushed away at him, and finally he came down ten per cent and made me pay cash on the spot."

  "It's as expensive as that?" asked Misako.

  "But it's not just one volume," Kaname explained. "Seventeen all together."

  "And those seventeen volumes were a problem too. It's classed as obscene, and it's full of illustrations that give it away. I thought customs might be embarrassing if I got caught with seventeen obscene volumes, so I put all seventeen in my trunk. Which was all right, except then my trunk was practically immovable. You've no idea how I labored for those books. Most people would expect a fat commission." Takanatsu used English for words like "obscene" and "illustrations."

  "It's different from my Arabian Nights?" Hiroshi had not entirely understood what Takanatsu was talking about, but his curiosity was aroused. He cast an eager eye at the book, trying to get a glimpse of the illustration under his father's hand.

  "In places it's the same and in places different. The Arabian Nights is for grown-ups, but there are some stories that are all right for you. Those are the ones in the Arabian Nights you have."

  "Is Ali Baba in it?"

  "He is."

  "And Aladdin's lamp?"

  "It is."

  "And 'Open Sesame'?"

  "It is—all the ones you know are there."

  "Is it hard to read in English? How many days will it take you, Father?"

  "I've no intention of reading the whole thing. I pick out the interesting spots and read them."

  "Even so, I'm filled with admiration. I've forgotten practically all the English I ever knew. No occasion to use it except sometimes in business," said Takanatsu.

  "But this sort of book is different. You want to read it even if you have to have a dictionary in one hand."

  "That's for men of leisure. Poor men like me can never find the time."

  "Strange," Misako put in. "I heard somewhere that you were nouveau riche."

  "I made some money just in time to lose it again."

  "A pity. How did you lose it?"

  "On the dollar market."

  "Speaking of dollars, let me pay you before I forget. How much does a hundred and eighty dollars come to?" Kaname asked.

  "But you don't have to pay, do you? Isn't it a present?"

  "A present!" Takanatsu was outraged. "The woman is talking nonsense. Do people bring presents that cost a hundred and eighty dollars? I brought this because I was ordered to."

  "And what about my pres
ent?"

  "Oh, your present. I forgot about that. Let's go in and have a look. You can pick out one you like."

  Misako and Takanatsu went up to Takanatsu's room on the second floor of the foreign wing.

  "WHAT a dreadful smell!"

  As they came into the room, Misako began fanning the air with her kimono sleeve. Her face buried in her arm, she hurried around to open the windows.

  "A dreadful smell, really—you still eat the stuff?"

  "I do. And then I smoke expensive cigars to cover up."

  "But it's even worse all mixed up with tobacco smoke. The room is a horror. If you must go about making smells like this, I shall have to ask you to return the nightgown I lent you."

  "It'll wash right out. No trouble at all. Besides, if I were to take it off and return it now, the damage would already be done."

  It had not been so noticeable outside in the garden, but here in the tight Western-style room the combined smell of garlic and tobacco, stagnant through the night and morning, assaulted the nose with a strangling intensity.

  "You have to follow the Chinese and eat lots of garlic. Then you don't catch Chinese diseases." That was one of Takanatsu's favorite theories, and he never passed a day in Shanghai without his garlic-loaded Chinese food. "It doesn't seem like Chinese food," he was fond of adding, "unless it smells of garlic." Always when he came back to Japan he had a supply of dried garlic with him, and he took slivers of it like a habitual tonic. Besides strengthening his stomach's defenses, he said, it gave him energy, and he was quite unable to do without it. "His wife ran away because he reeked of garlic," Kaname liked to say.

  "I should be forever grateful if you would stand just a bit farther off."

  "Hold your nose if you don't like it." Takanatsu puffed away at a cigar he held in one hand while with the other he opened his suitcase out flat on the bed. The suitcase was battered to a point where one could have given it to a ragpicker with few regrets.

  "What a supply! You look like a clothes-peddler."

  "I have to give some presents in Tokyo this time. Do you see any you like? But I suppose I'll be sneered at again."

  "How many can I have?"

  "Two, possibly three.... How would this one be?" Takanatsu took out one of the strips of brocaded sash cloth.

  "It's much too drab."

  "Too drab is it? How old are you? The man said it would suit a girl or a married woman of maybe twenty-two or three."

  "But you can't trust a Chinese salesman on things like that."

  "It's a store where a great many Japanese go, and he should be well up on Japanese tastes. My woman, as a matter of fact, always asks his advice."

  "Well, it's not the sort of thing I would buy. And the material's not as good as it might be. Mohair, isn't it?"

  "You have your eye on the other, I see. Well, if you have to have the satin, I can only let you have two. You can have three of the mohair."

  "I'll take the satin, thank you. Two satin are better than three mohair. How about this one, for instance?"

  "That one?"

  "What do you mean, 'That one'? Do you have other plans for it?"

  "I was saving that one for the youngest of the girls in Tokyo."

  "Oh, no! Poor Suzuko could never wear this. You amaze me."

  "On the contrary, you amaze me. Put on these gay robes and you'll look like a loose woman."

  "Oh, but I am a loose woman."

  Takanatsu regretted his remark as soon as he had made it, but Misako's show of candor turned it off smoothly.

  "A lamentable slip of the tongue. This member was in error and would like to retract his statement. He requests that it be stricken from the verbatim record."

  "Too late. It's already in the record."

  "This member had no malicious intent. He apologizes most humbly for having sullied the reputation of a pure woman and for having disturbed the order of the session."

  "She's not such a pure woman, you know," Misako laughed.

  "It's all right then not to retract?"

  "It doesn't make much difference—it's a reputation that rather tends to get itself sullied anyway."

  "Come, now. I thought special pains were being taken to see that it did not."

  "So Kaname says, but it seems useless to me. Did you talk about it yesterday?"

  "Yes."

  "What does he think?"

  "It was all as usual very vague and not much to the point."

  They sat one at each end of the bed, the suitcase and its overflow of bright cloth between them.

  "And what do you think yourself?" Takanatsu asked.

  "What do I think? I can't really tell you in a word."

  "Take two or three words."

  "Do you have anything to do today?"

  "I'm quite free. I purposely took care of all my business in Osaka yesterday so that today would be open."

  "What does Kaname have planned?"

  "He said he thought he would take Hiroshi to maybe an amusement park this afternoon."

  "Let's get Hiroshi's homework done. You will take him to Tokyo, won't you?"

  "I'd just as soon, but he seemed so upset. Wasn't he crying?"

  "He certainly was. He's that way.... To tell you the truth, what I want to do is see how I get along without him. Two or three days even would be enough for a trial."

  "That seems like not a bad idea. And in the meantime you could have things out with Kaname."

  "I'm afraid not. I'll have to ask you to tell me what Kaname thinks. When the two of us are alone face to face, we simply are not able to say what we would like to. We go on well enough to a point, but beyond that one or the other of us is sure to break down in tears."

  "It's fairly definite, is it, that you can go to Aso's?"

  "Quite definite. The only problem is making up our minds to it."

  "Do you suppose his family knows?"

  "In a vague sort of way they seem to."

  "How much?"

  "That I am seeing Aso now and then with Kaname's permission. That much they probably know."

  "And pretend they don't?"

  "Very probably. There's not much else they could do."

  "And if matters were to go further?"

  "I don't think there would be any difficulty once Kaname and I were cleanly separated. Aso says his mother understands perfectly how he feels."

  The barking began again in the garden below. The dogs had resumed their feud.

  "More of that!" Misako threw down the cloth she had been fingering in her lap and went over to the window. "Hiroshi, suppose you take the dogs over there. We can't talk for the noise."

  "I was just going to."

  "Where's your father?"

  "On the veranda. He's still reading."

  "How would it be if you stopped playing and began your homework?"

  "Where's Uncle Hideo?"

  "You needn't wait for him. Uncle Hideo, you say, as though he had come specially to see you."

  "But he said he'd help me with my homework."

  "He will not. What is homework for if you're not to do it yourself?"

  "I see." They could hear Hiroshi clattering off with the dogs.

  "He seems more afraid of you than of his father," said Takanatsu.

  "Kaname never says anything to him. I wonder if it won't be harder for him to leave me than it would be to leave Kaname, though."

  "When the divorce comes? But you'll be going out into the world stripped and alone, and his sympathies naturally will be with you."

  "Do you really think so?... I think myself that most of the sympathy is going to collect around Kaname. On the surface at least it will be as though I am abandoning him, and people will blame me for it. I wonder if Hiroshi won't be bitter against me too when he starts hearing rumors."

  "But later on he'll understand. Children retain a great deal, and when they grow up they start going over things and rejudging them from a grownup's point of view. This must have been this way, and that was that way, th
ey say. That's why you have to be careful with children—some day they grow up."

  Misako did not answer. She was still by the window, absently looking out. A small bird flitted from one branch to another of the plum trees. A thrush, she wondered. Or a lark? She followed it with her eye for a time. Beyond the plum trees Jiiya had the lid off a nursery frame and seemed to be transplanting shoots in the vegetable garden. The sea was not visible, but as she looked off into the clear sky over the harbor, she heaved an involuntary sigh.

  "You don't have to go to Suma today?"

  Misako laughed, shortly and a little bitterly, her head still averted.

  "But you go almost every day now, don't you?"

  "That's right."

  "If you want to see him, why not go?"

  "Am I so obviously the hussy?"

  "I wonder if she wants to be told she is or she isn't."

  "Tell me the truth."

  "Well, we did agree yesterday that you had become a woman of the world and we could expect you to go even farther."

  "I quite admit it—but, really, you needn't worry about today. I told him you would be here and I ought to stay at home—and it would hardly be polite to run off and leave you after all these presents."

  "—she says. And yet she was away all day yesterday."

  "But I thought Kaname would want to talk to you yesterday."

  "And today is lady's day?"

  "Anyway, let's go downstairs. I'm hungry. You can watch even if you don't want anything to eat."

  "Which of these are you taking?"

  "I haven't made up my mind. Leave your shop open and I'll look them over at my leisure. You may have had your breakfast, but I'm almost faint from hunger myself."

  From the foot of the stairs they glanced into the room below. Kaname had come in from the veranda and lay face-up on a sofa, still immersed in his book.

  "Did you find anything good?" he asked mechanically as he heard them pass.

  "It was most disappointing. He sends off elaborate notices on the presents he's bringing, and then when he gets here we find he's as closefisted as ever."

  "Your wife is hopelessly greedy."

  "But you said three of the cheap ones or two of the good ones."

  "Please don't feel I'm forcing them on you. Think what I save if you don't take any at all."