The Waiting Years Read online

  He wanted to place his daunted spirit in Tomo’s protective arms. The emotion he felt now was one that he could not possibly divulge to Suga or Yumi, whom he petted as one would care for a goldfish or a caged bird. The wound could only be soothed, the blood only staunched, by a woman stronger and more resilient of will than himself. And yet he was merely imposing a maternal image on one in whom the love once sensitive enough to have detected in him such a subtle injury of the soul had long since turned utterly to ashes. The sight of Shirakawa’s ill-tempered face merely made Tomo fold her arms defensively and avoid anything that would aggravate his mood, much as she would have avoided touching an angry boil. The advent of a new concubine in addition to Suga merely made her apprehensive as to how Yumi’s nature would develop in their household, and failed entirely to kindle any keen fires of jealousy.

  So it was that when Tomo that night broached the subject of the letter from Yumi’s home her voice was quiet, with a hesitant tone as though it were she who was making an unreasonable demand, as though she were on her guard lest by giving her husband offense she should complicate things still further.

  ‘Since her family are former samurai, I’m afraid things are likely to be rather awkward.’

  ‘I doubt it. According to Sonoda, the girl called Mitsu who came with her was secretly worrying in case she became a concubine. It seems Yumi’s mother worked as a maid on the private quarters of Lord Toda, so she should be well up in these things. I expect it all comes down to a question of the family’s honor, and ultimately of money.’

  He spoke as though the affair had no direct connection with himself, resting a sharp gaze on Tomo as he spoke. He was irritated not so much by the affair of Yumi in itself as by the fact that Tomo seemed less perturbed than when she had first brought Suga home.

  ‘How much?’ asked Tomo, looking him in the eye. She too felt a sense of distaste at her own moral indifference, at the absence of offended sensibilities with which she had learned of the loss of Yumi’s virginity.

  ‘The same as in Suga’s case, I imagine. If anything,’ he said coldly, with an air of finality, ‘it should be cheaper this time.’ The sneering implication was that Yumi was a less substantial, shallower kind of girl than Suga. For he had loved Suga besides Tomo, and Yumi besides Suga, and what difference had it made to the world in which he lived? He folded his arms with a sense of desolation, fighting against the loneliness that swept through him like a chill, dark wind.

  II

  * * *

  The Moon of the Twenty-sixth Night

  ‘The carriages are coming … The bride! The bride!’

  The cry rang out in a stentorian voice from one of the workmen in traditional livery stationed at the gate as the men pulling the rickshaws came bravely running up the sloping drive between the shrubbery, and suddenly the entrance where they awaited the bride stirred like a flock of birds rising into the air.

  The wet-nurse Maki who had been suckling the baby in the distant wing of the house roused herself at the distant sounds. Softly she withdrew the arm that served as a pillow for the now sleeping Takao’s tiny head and drew her kimono together over her uncovered breast as she rose and went to the veranda. Although the baby normally never left her side, Tomo had today moved Takao together with Maki to the distant wing, lest the young bride whom one day he would learn to call Mother should be disturbed on the very night of her nuptials by an infant’s cries.

  Seen from the second story of this house built on a high, gently sloping stretch of land, the sea off Shinagawa that the eye by day could take in at a glance was veiled in the evening haze of high spring, a haze that turned the green of the garden’s trees to a dark blue and left only the full-blooming cherry trees looming like great, pale mauve parasols here and there on either side of the gently sloping drive. Just now the bride’s rickshaw, preceded by that of the go-between, was winding its way beneath the umbrellas of blossom up the gentle slope. In the carriage, whose flap was drawn back, the bride sat with head deeply bowed. The elaborate hairstyle with the white bridal headdress surmounted by decorative combs and pins swayed heavily, and the scarlet of what must have been the long outer kimono with its embroidered figures stood out clearly in the gathering gloom. The light of the lanterns hanging on poles at the entrance or held in the hands of those waiting to receive her still failed to outshine the remaining daylight and glowed an apricot orange that gave a still more unearthly beauty to the bridal procession. Maki watched entranced, with a sense that she had seen it all in a dream, until a sudden thought occurred to her, the excitement shriveled, and the bride in all her finery seemed suddenly a figure of misfortune.

  She must be coming with no suspicion as yet of the young master’s true nature. Maki, whose own marriage had failed, felt sorry for her. Taken on as wet-nurse for Takao when puerperal fever had claimed his mother soon after his birth more than a year previously, even the placidly unquestioning Maki had by now more or less grasped the extraordinary complexity of the situation within the Shirakawa household.

  Yukitomo Shirakawa had left government service shortly after the promulgation of the new Constitution. The sudden stroke that at the early age of fifty or so had taken the life of Superintendent-General Kawashima, whose friendship he had enjoyed for so many years, had been the direct cause of his retirement. There was in fact no one else among his superiors before whom the stubborn Yukitomo was prepared to bend his own will, nor had he, having succeeded during his years in office in accumulating more than ample wealth to take care of his old age, any mind to serve a second master. More than this, though, having himself been reared on the Confucian learning and martial skills considered appropriate in a lower-ranking samurai of the Hosokawa clan, he felt it beyond his ability to compete with the slowly mounting interest shown by the younger bureaucrats of the Meiji government in new knowledge brought back from the West, or with their insidious tendency to dabble in English and seek to implement Western-style legal theories.

  It was unbearable to his old-fashioned pride that his subordinates should patronize him; and to stay in his present office without the backing of Kawashima might expose him to still direr ignominy. Worse still, if a national assembly were established and government by elected representatives came into force, it would follow that, sooner or later, political go-getters such as the Hanashima whom he had met at the Rokumeikan would come to the fore as representatives of the new regime. To avoid these perils that he saw ahead, Yukitomo had voluntarily withdrawn from official service. His purchase of a large house, once the residence of a foreigner, near Gotenyama in Shinagawa, was likewise aimed to give him a stronghold where he could live out his remaining years as he pleased with no one to impose on him. The mansion on its high eminence was his castle; it was also the burial mound of the ambitions that had been shattered in their prime.

  Within his home, Shirakawa reigned as a despot, like the clan lords of the feudal age just past; neither his wife Tomo nor his concubines Suga and Yumi could have enjoyed a day’s peace of mind in this house had they not adapted themselves to his ostentatious, irascible temperament. Etsuko had been married the year before, to a bachelor of laws newly returned from studying in the West.

  The only person in the household who could not fit in with Yukitomo was his son Michimasa.

  Michimasa, who had been born to the Shirakawas while they were still at their home in the country following an early marriage, had been brought up in the home of an aunt and uncle at Kumamoto in Kyushu while Yukitomo had been moving from one official post to another in northeastern Honshu. By the time they had finally settled in Tokyo and fetched him to live with them again, he must have been already fifteen or sixteen. Yukitomo had tried to educate him: had put him in an English academy, had sent him to the newly founded Tokyo College; but though Michimasa had average powers of retention, his twisted disposition made it utterly impossible for him to strike up a close acquaintance with anybody. At academy and college alike, he was spurned by everyone with whom he might ha
ve made friends, so that in the end there was no alternative but to leave him to lead the life of a young recluse at home.

  In the proud Yukitomo his warped offspring inspired not so much pity as an extreme antipathy. The contempt that such a lack of sympathetic qualities would have inspired in him even in a stranger became an unbearable sense of shame when its object was his own flesh and blood.

  Even at home, he would not take his meals with Michimasa, who lived in the houseboy’s room with a nephew from the country who was staying with them until he got married.

  ‘A boy shouldn’t be treated as a man until he’s independent of his parents,’ Yukitomo said.

  For Tomo, it was a double anguish. Suga and Yumi, half servant though they were, were living openly in the master’s room with him, while the son and heir Michimasa lived in the houseboy’s room with its tatami yellowed with age, where the sight of him sitting opposite their nephew Seizō, shoveling rice greedily into his mouth with chopsticks grasped clumsily in his fist, filled her with such despair that she wanted to cover her eyes. On the other hand, whenever Michimasa came into a room where Yukitomo was present, his father’s eyes would take on a hard glint and dwell as though with unbearable loathing on Michimasa’s clumsy, noisy movements and his face, which with its lumpish forehead and large nose was like one of the grotesque masks used in ancient court dances. Tomo, who at the best of times was forever on the lookout for any change in Yukitomo’s mood, would become still more nervous when Michimasa was there, on tenterhooks lest he should say something stupid that would anger his father yet again.

  If Michimasa had been a normal young man who happened to be rejected by his father, Tomo would naturally have covertly taken his side, and this in turn would have deepened the love between mother and son, but only too often Michimasa’s speech and behavior were such that even his mother was seized by the same loathing as Yukitomo.

  When Tomo considered that it was she herself who had given birth to Michimasa, that the father was unmistakably Yukitomo, it seemed absurd that Michimasa’s heart should harbor no trace of love for any living creature other than himself, that he should be fated not to inspire love in any other person, and she quailed at the hopelessness of doing anything about that absurdity.

  Why should they have had such a child? Could it be a punishment for having let him grow up away from them that he had turned into such a man?

  When Tomo saw the sons of her relatives and acquaintances growing up into young men who, if not outstanding, were at least average, she would compare them with Michimasa and examine once more her own behavior in the past. But apart from the fact that she had let him spend his childhood years with his aunt and uncle in the country she could not believe that she, at least, had created any unfavorable circumstances such as might have fostered such a special nature in him. Unwilling to let the children be influenced by their father’s self-indulgence, she had never once complained of him to Michimasa or Etsuko. The blame for the eternal immaturity of Michimasa’s nature could only, in the long run, be attributed to the immaturity of her own body at fifteen when she had given birth to him. Conceived in a womb imperfectly matured, he had been born with a mind incapable of growth. Could any child, indeed, be more unfortunate?

  In theory, however much everyone else shunned Michimasa, Yukitomo and Tomo, as his mother and father, should have enfolded him in a love given without stint. In fact, though, even his mother could not lavish affection on Michimasa as he wandered aimlessly through life like a lost child, apathetically, with a mind refusing to mature inside the body of a full-grown adult. The idea inspired Tomo with a violent distaste for the unwillingness to suffer fools gladly that was so stubbornly rooted within her own character.

  At the very least, then, she wanted to find him a wife so that he could have children and lead a life like other men. Her secret wish had perhaps conveyed itself tacitly to Yukitomo, for a few years earlier Michimasa had finally taken his first wife – whereupon, partly from consideration of how things would look to the bride, he had at last come to be treated, on the surface at least, as the young master of the Shirakawa household.

  These tales of the past Maki knew only by hearsay, from Seki and the other maids. At first she had tended to wonder at and despise a family that did not give its elder son his due, however wanting his character might be in some respects, but before long she too had changed her mind and begun to consider it natural that even his own parents should shun him. With the autocratic Yukitomo, the morally upright Tomo, and with Suga and Yumi – for all their wilfulness, their straitlaced attitudes, their feminine secretiveness and changeability – she could, as she got used to them, find something in each to which she responded, but with Michimasa the longer she was with him the more she felt what a relief it would be if he were not there. Michimasa was close-fisted, gluttonous, and snappish with the servants. When food was put before him he would wolf it down like a starving child, and whenever he opened his mouth to speak he invariably inspired a sense of disgust as though he gave off some foul odor. His mere presence was enough to cast an ugly pall over those about him.

  Even the affection that Yukitomo and Tomo showed for the infant Takao frequently roused his anger. He would look at Takao in Maki’s arms with the air of an animal that shows no feelings of joy yet has limitless reserves of rage and jealousy, and would say maliciously, ‘God – what’s the point of continually putting fresh clothes on a baby like that? What a waste!’ And he would scowl into the baby’s face with his vacant eyes aglint, as though he might start beating it at any moment. Every time this happened Maki had the uneasy feeling that she herself was included in his hatred, and would reflect that perhaps Takao’s mother was better off dead after all. No woman, she was convinced, be she saint or vilest sinner, could be happy married to a man like that.

  Miya, who had come today as bride, was the eldest daughter of a pawnbroker who lived by the inner gateway of the Zōjōji temple. Tomo had decided that the only arrangement likely to work would be with a tradesman’s family more interested in property or social status than in personal character; for the first wife, too, she had chosen the daughter of a cloth merchant in Nihonbashi. Miya’s family, who had already been told by the go-between about the Shirakawas’ property and Yukitomo’s career, only needed to hear that Takao would be brought up by his grandparents without troubling Miya in any way for both the mother and Miya’s elder brother, now head of the family, to show immediate enthusiasm. For the moment the couple might have to live in rooms in the Shirakawas’ house, but after Yukitomo’s death the larger part of the income from a considerable number of buildings and estates within the city limits would fall to Michimasa, which was quite enough to make Miya’s luxury-loving mother accept everything else – the previous wife, the stepchild, the fact that the bridegroom had no occupation. She was also much taken with the Shirakawas’ suggestion that no trousseau would be necessary. For her bridal outfit, Miya was dressed in a red robe from the pawnshop, which was a good three or four inches shorter in the sleeve than the white silk under-kimono.

  Since for her own daughter Etsuko’s marriage Tomo had carefully chosen everything herself, from neckbands to the last undergarment, lest Etsuko’s mother-in-law and relatives should see them and laugh at her when she went to live with them, she was shocked that a woman so smart in her personal appearance and so sophisticated in her speech as Miya’s mother could show such casualness in providing for her child, and the reflection that it was precisely this outlook that had made it possible for the mother to give her yet unmarried daughter as second wife to a man like Michimasa reinforced the pity she felt for Miya.

  ‘Ma’am …’ said Suga after Miya had gone back to the main room where the wedding guests were waiting. She pointed to the white under-kimono that she had been folding after helping the bride change her costume in the rear room set apart for the purpose. Tomo frowned as she saw the light brown stain still visible on the garment, and said with quiet emphasis as she went out in Miya’s
wake:

  ‘Don’t tell the maids. You and Yumi fold them, please. It would be awful for Miya if she thought we’d noticed.’

  Meekly finishing her folding of the white robe, Suga was startled on glancing round to see Yumi, her hair done in a round bun, standing before the mirror with the red outer kimono discarded by Miya draped about her own shoulders.

  ‘Yumi! Whatever are you up to!’

  Tall, oval-faced, with heavy eyebrows like a youth, the Yumi in the mirror stared back and said:

  ‘I suppose this is how I’d look if I was a bride. The effect’s rather mannish, isn’t it? I look as though I ought to be holding a halberd or something.’

  ‘Like Shizuka, the heroine in the Kabuki play,’ said Suga, taking up the joke with unusual alacrity. ‘But hurry up and take it off. If the mistress comes, you’ll be in real trouble.’

  ‘Don’t worry. The two geishas from Shimbashi have just started dancing the congratulatory dance, so they’ll all be too busy watching. Here Suga – you try it on too. After all, it doesn’t look as if we’ll ever get any other chance to wear wedding clothes.’ As she spoke, she swiftly took off the long-sleeved outer garment and slipped it over Suga’s shoulders. Trembling and fearful though she was, Suga did not remove it immediately but quietly got up and with a glance about her went and stood before the mirror as Yumi had done.

  ‘It’s so heavy! I don’t have your look of breeding, so it doesn’t suit me so well.’

  ‘Oh, but it does! You look pretty. It looks much better on you than it did just now on the young mistress.’

  ‘Really…?’ The tone was doubtful, but Suga did not seem displeased as she adjusted the neck of the garment and stared hard at her own face to which the crimson of the embroidered robe gave an added vividness. In both Suga and Yumi – the girl who had been bought for money and come as a concubine and the girl who had started as a maid and been elevated to concubinage – there smouldered an unbearable envy of the showy trimmings of the wedding ceremony whereby a woman, amidst universal congratulation, became a lawful wife in the eyes of society; the envy was all the stronger in that they knew nothing of the world, having come as innocent girls, been initiated into womanhood by Shirakawa, and done their growing up all within the confines of this house.