The Waiting Years Read online

  ‘Well!’ said Kin, drawing herself up exaggeratedly as a mark of her astonishment. ‘Even so, I suppose … she’s still … just a …?’ She opened her eyes wider after each phrase, and Seki nodded in time with them.

  ‘Not yet … no, so far … but sooner or later …’ At this point she suddenly put a hand on Kin’s skinny shoulder almost as though pouncing, and breathed hotly in her ear, ‘Then does the mistress know all about it then?’

  ‘I suppose so … But listen – she’s clapping for you.’

  Shoulders and hips swaying exaggeratedly as she went, Seki set off running with great strides along the corridor in the direction of the call.

  At the entrance to the big room, in a Western dress embroidered with a fine pattern in yellowish brown and flared out below the waist by means of a whalebone corset, stood Tomo. Her old-fashioned face with its smooth, slightly sallow skin and its heavy eyelids emerged uncomfortably from the confines of the high, tight collar, which with her rather full, firmly compressed lips gave her in Kin’s eyes the look of a Chinese woman. Tomo’s gaze was directed to where her daughter Etsuko stood in front of a fringed, Western-style mirror in the center of the room, being helped into a Western-style dress by an English seamstress. Kin went and sat next to Suga, who kneeled at Etsuko’s side, and watched in fascination.

  Tall for thirteen though she was, Etsuko seemed like a small fawn as she stood beside the flaxen-haired seamstress with her long, giraffe-like neck. The heavily pleated velvet dress in lapis lazuli with heavy touches of indigo suited her face with its aquiline nose, cheeks of palest pink, and the crimson splash of the lips, giving her the unaccustomed dignity of some young woman of noble birth.

  ‘The young lady’s quite the little princess. So pretty,’ said the seamstress with a beaming smile as she finished the fitting, placing her hands on Etsuko’s shoulders and turning her round for Tomo to see. Satisfaction seemed to gleam momentarily in Tomo’s eyes too, but her mouth did not soften. Etsuko, who seemed tense beneath Tomo’s gaze, stood fidgeting, with frequent side-glances into the mirror.

  ‘There’s a Red Cross charity bazaar today, and the Superintendent-General’s wife said she wanted Etsuko to sell at a stall. I must say, I feel awkward got up like this, but …’

  Tomo clearly disliked the whole business but was making the best of things. To strut to and fro in the Rokumeikan in the company of wives of distinguished persons was too ostentatious for a woman of Tomo’s disposition, but the feeling that this was another of the duties of a high official’s wife checked any desire in her to absent herself.

  ‘The Empress is going to be there,’ put in Suga as she folded up the kimono that Etsuko had discarded. ‘And our young lady has the job of serving her tea.’

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Kin. ‘Be sure you’re on your best behavior, Etsuko. I’m sure they’ve chosen you because you’re so charming.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind,’ said Tomo. ‘Well, we must be going now. But we’ll be back before dark, so take your time, Kin.’ And with Etsuko following, lifting the sides of her long skirt as she went, she set off walking toward the entrance hall.

  After she had seen off the rickshaws bearing mother and child in their unfamiliar Western dress, Kin talked for a while with Seki in the hall, then went into Suga’s room.

  Suga’s was a small room facing the back garden where pale pink sasanqua flowers were in bloom. With a band of rosy pink spotted silk over her triple bun, Suga was busily sewing a lined sash of Yūzen silk on the stitching stand, with a red needle holder resting on her lap. Seeing Kin, she laid aside her needle as though she had been expecting the visit and drew up a cushion by the side of the brazier for her.

  ‘Have you seen my mother since you last came? I haven’t heard from her lately.’

  Her home in Kokuchō was a mere stone’s throw from the Shirakawa’s official residence, but a girl in Suga’s position could not come and go as she pleased. Whatever she might feel privately, Suga was officially registered as the Shirakawas’ daughter, which meant that where society was concerned she had severed all connections with her own family. Although, having gained possession of Suga, Shirakawa lavished affection and advice on this girl young enough to be his daughter in such a way as to convince her that he was a paragon among men, all the while behind the scenes his cruel nature made him careful to tie her down with official restraints lest she run away. Used as she was to Shirakawa’s affection Suga had no understanding of such forbidding aspects of the masculine mind, yet the realization that the mere mention of her parents or brothers and sisters would put Shirakawa into a vaguely bad temper made her too nervous ever to speak of them. Apart from the seasons of the Bon Festival and the New Year, when her mother came to offer greetings to the Shirakawas, her normal means of obtaining news of her own family was through Kin, who had first arranged for her to go into service.

  ‘She came at the end of last month. She’d been to the temple at Hashiba, she said … She was very well. She said the beriberi in her legs has been much better this year, even since autumn set in.’

  ‘What about the shop? I heard something about them changing the type of business they do …’

  ‘Oh that – it’s hardly what you could call a change of business. It’s just that besides bamboo skin they’re going to take bamboo boxes and the like from the wholesalers.’

  ‘I wonder if they know what they’re doing?’ said Suga in a worried tone. ‘My brother’s so good-natured he’s always being taken advantage of.’ When the eyelids that shaded her gem-like eyes opened and she gazed before her with moist, jet-black eyes her whole body seemed to be suffused with the somber pathos of a beautiful cat.

  ‘They’re all right,’ said Kin who disliked intensity and wanted to remove herself as quickly as possible from the shadows. ‘You don’t have to worry.’ She waved a hand airily and, taking out a slender pipe from the tobacco case that hung from her sash, lit herself a pipeful of tobacco.

  ‘What I really wanted to say, though, was that your mother was asking after you, Suga. She was worried about you.’

  ‘About me? I wonder why?’ Her eyes blurred and she shook her head as though puzzled. For all her adult air there was still something childishly innocent in her face as she struggled to divine her mother’s feelings.

  ‘Well, I never! Here’s your mother fretting herself, miles away from everything, and you on the spot not turning a hair.’

  At the time of her visit to Kin’s house Suga’s mother had really looked sick with worry. She had apparently thought of going to the Shirakawas’ residence and inquiring directly of the mistress, but since that seemed rather tactless she had had the idea of asking Mrs. Kusumi to inquire indirectly how things really stood; and she started to relate her business with an expression so serious that from time to time she even forgot the ingratiating little smile that Kin had never before seen her without.

  It had apparently begun with something said by the foreman of the men who tended the Shirakawas’ garden. According to him, two maids from Honjo had come to the Shirakawas’ for an interview that September. They were cousins, it seemed, and the interview had been arranged by a couple called Sonoda who came from the same district of Kyushu as the Shirakawas and were now in the antique business. One of the girls, whom the wife had brought in response to a direct request from Shirakawa for a good-looking maid, had stayed on in the house, while the other had gone home again.

  According to what the maids had told the gardener, there were three maids living in at present, while it was Miss Suga who attended to the master’s personal needs. When he gave parties or otherwise entertained at home, geishas and waitresses were summoned from the Shimbashi and Yanagibashi districts to wait on the guests, and there was no real need to bring in yet another maid. The mistress, being a long-suffering woman, kept everything to herself of course, and Etsuko was only too glad to have someone else to play with, but it was most unlikely that the girl would remain simply a maid. Almost certainly she would be sed
uced and installed before long as a concubine. Granted all this, what could Miss Suga be feeling about it? From the mistress’ point of view, with Suga in the house it made little difference whether there was one concubine or two. But if the master was getting tired of Suga and thinking of installing a new girl in her place, how much longer would Suga be permitted to live a life of ease as though she were a daughter of the house?

  After all, the master was fond of women – even though promotion had in fact taken him no farther than a reasonably influential position in the Metropolitan Police Agency, was he not used to summoning geishas from the best houses in Shimbashi like some younger member of the aristocracy? – and he could probably twist an unsophisticated girl like Suga around his little finger with no trouble at all.

  Timid and naïvely trusting though she was, Suga’s mother could not help bridling at the malice that lurked in the latter part of this report. She felt an intense anguish at this further proof of the envious slander directed at Suga from behind the scenes.

  Suga might be negative and lacking in vitality in some ways, but, even as a child, she could never have been called stupid; she was a straightforward, unspoiled, tradesman’s daughter who loved her mother and was quick to learn at dancing school. If only her parents had managed their affairs properly, who could tell what an advantageous match she might have made? To have put her into service with the Shirakawas in Fukushima in the summer of her fifteenth year, before she was even a real woman, was the act of a mother so heartless as hardly to deserve the name. Nevertheless, Suga seemed to feel sorry for the wretched parent thus obliged to sell her daughter, and though she never came to the house herself, she was sufficiently mindful of her family to send them, via others, presents of money and things to eat.

  After they moved to the capital in the wake of Governor Kawashima, newly promoted to Superintendent-General of the Metropolitan Police, Shirakawa had become an important official at the Metropolitan Police Agency and was rumored to be living in high style on the taxes privately collected from the Yoshiwara gay quarters. Suga’s mother would flush with gratification at stories that showed Suga cherished as a daughter in the home of this government official now at the height of his influence, but tales such as that brought by the gardener would set her anxiously listing to herself the family members other than Shirakawa. His wife, his daughter, the maids, the houseboy – suddenly she would see them all as hostile to Suga, and would long to fold in her arms the daughter thus trapped amid the thorns.

  Whatever would happen to Suga if a new concubine came and the master’s affections were diverted to her? At the time when she had first plunged her only daughter into such a situation, the mother had turned to Tomo as her only hope, beseeching her before she took her away to take a personal interest in the girl’s welfare.

  ‘If it should ever happen that the master’s affections strayed and he got tired of her … The very thought of what would happen to her keeps me awake at night.’

  As she sat listening, so correct with her hands clasped in her lap and not a seam of her kimono out of place, Tomo felt a profound sympathy for this woman whose very self-preoccupation and forgetfulness of all but her maternal love struck forcefully to her heart. It was all part of the strange role she had undertaken in coming, at her husband’s command, to select a mistress for him that she should thus have encountered the devotion of a woman forced to sell her daughter and have thereby acquired another painful fetter on her heart.

  ‘Try not to worry. However my husband’s feelings may change I’ll see to it that Suga doesn’t go in need. How could I do otherwise when I’m taking home such a respectable girl? Come, now – you must have faith in me.’

  At this, the mother’s last shreds of self-control had vanished and she had prostrated herself before Tomo. Hearing the clumsy, halting words with which she sobbed out her thanks, Tomo had had to fight back the bitter tears that came welling up.

  Suga’s mother remembered all this now. She felt an urgent desire to meet Tomo and have her confirm once more what she had said then, but when it came to the test she had lost her nerve and come to see Kin instead.

  ‘You mean Miss Yumi, don’t you?’ said Suga when Kin had finished, blinking her eyes as though the light was too strong for them. ‘If that’s it, then there’s nothing worth speaking to the mistress about. Just tell Mother, please, that there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Really ….? No, I suppose there isn’t.’ Kin rested the mouthpiece of her pipe against her cheek and nodded with an equivocal expression.

  ‘Then, so far as you can tell there’s no sign that the same thing’s going to happen to Yumi?’ Kin added.

  ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean that.’ An unintended smile appeared on the cheeks that were like cream-colored handmade paper. The smile was devastatingly innocent but Kin shivered as though an icy hand had brushed the back of her neck.

  ‘It’s already happened,’ Suga continued. ‘Before long the master will have settled things with her parents and she’ll be coming to live with me in this room.’

  She spoke smilingly and without hesitation but Kin listened with rounded eyes, the mouthpiece of her pipe still resting forgotten against her cheek.

  ‘I see … Then surely, your mother’s justified in worrying, isn’t she?’

  ‘But there’s nothing at all to worry about. Yumi’s a straightforward girl, more like a boy in her outlook, so she and I seem to be well matched.’

  ‘That’s all very nice, I suppose, but if the master should turn his affections to Miss Yumi it would be no laughing matter, you know.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said with the same innocent smile as before. It was a smile without substance, as if she were being drawn uncomprehendingly down into some unknown darkness.

  Again a creeping horror down Kin’s back made her look at Suga intently. Suddenly she felt a surge of curiosity to peer behind the concealing curtain and discover just how Shirakawa was bending Suga to his purpose.

  ‘ “All right”? You mean, the master talks about everything like that to you?’

  ‘Well, not exactly everything …’

  She broke off, her cheeks aflame, her expression embarrassed. She seemed ashamed at having said something she shouldn’t.

  ‘But, I mean to say, your mother’s not going to be satisfied with your words alone. If you want to stop her worrying, you’ll have to do it properly … I can see your mother will have to come and talk to the mistress.’

  ‘Oh, really!’ Suga frowned and shrugged slightly as though in irritation. Just then a tortoiseshell kitten that had been curled up in a ball on a cushion of Y¯uzen silk came over to her with a tinkling of its bell, so Suga picked it up and put it on her lap. Stroking its soft fur she began talking slowly, without looking Kin in the eye, almost as though to herself.

  ‘The master takes great care of me. He says I’m not as strong as most women and I shall die young if I overdo things … That’s why that happened to Yumi. The master’s used to geishas and courtesans, so he knows a lot about how women work. Right from the start, I’ve looked on myself almost as a daughter, so I’ve never felt jealous or anything. Perhaps it’s the difference in our ages. But even the mistress doesn’t know that, so you mustn’t tell anybody.’

  As she finished speaking, Suga’s face looked suddenly grown-up and her eyelids veiled her gaze. Without her realizing it, an immense vacancy had spread itself across her bewitching features, draining them mysteriously of all expression.

  After Kin had left with the dissatisfied look still on her face, Suga sat for a while prey to some inexplicable sadness, rubbing the kitten’s throat and gazing out with tear-filled eyes at the rabbit’s-ear pink of the sasanqua blooms in the garden. Despite herself she felt ashamed that she should feel no jealousy toward her rival Yumi, when her mother and Kin were both so obviously distressed.

  Although she had been reared in the plebeian districts of Tokyo, her parents had been decent people, and she knew nothing of relationshi
ps between men and women. At dancing lessons she had always taken the male role and, in her character as this or that popular romantic hero, was used to being clung to by the heroine; at such times the dancing teacher had often told her to put more ‘sensuality’ into her dance, and sensual desire and love had become inseparably associated for her with the brilliant costumes of the dance and with the music for voice and samisen that accompanied it.

  Even since her arrival in the Shirakawa household and her discovery of men’s nature – a discovery made through her body and in the dark, far from bright colors and music – Suga had cherished in her heart, quite untouched by her direct relationship with Shirakawa, a shining world of enchantment where the heartrending strains of the old ballads came drifting in forlorn snatches, and the brilliant colors of trailing sleeves and skirts wove in and out with tantalizing deliberation. For some strange reason, this fantasy in no way negated the actuality of Shirakawa.

  Shirakawa was a man who even in his own home sat aloof and rarely allowed himself to smile. When he drank, he was not one to lose his dignity on a mere two or three cups of saké. Nor was this solely a desire not to show himself at a disadvantage before Tomo, for at all times his air was chaste and aloof, as though he were quite indifferent to the other sex. He was more fastidious about his appearance than the average woman; often he would complain of this and that to the man who came from the draper’s to see to their clothes, and the white socks he wore with Japanese dress had never been known to show a wrinkle.

  When Suga got out his clothes and helped him on with them, or stood by him adjusting the mirror to a convenient angle as he shaved, or attended to any other of his personal needs, the cool neatness and youthfulness of his person gave a lift to Suga’s spirits that made her body move with a lightness it never had when she waited upon the mistress. Yet if asked if this meant that she loved Shirakawa, she would still have been unable to reply. For all the appreciation that Shirakawa lavished on her person as though on some rare jewel, a sense of having being robbed, of being captive, still lay heavy in Suga’s heart, so that her beauty, although she was not aware of it, was a shadowed beauty as of cherry blossoms on a cloudy day.