“‘I told you I won’t have you finding fault with my hallowed home. Listen, I’m happy now. Everything’s going splendidly.’
“‘And do you still have soup in the morning? With one raw egg? Or two?’
“‘Two. Sometimes three. I have more of everything now than I did with you. I’ll tell you, when I look back, I get the feeling there can’t be many women in this world with a tongue as sharp as yours. Why did you have to yell at me so much? I felt like an unwanted guest in my own home. Dining ill and supping worse. I haven’t forgotten that. I was working on some very important research in those days, you know. You didn’t understand that at all. Nagging me from morning to night about the buttons on my vest, or my cigarette butts... Thanks to you my research, and everything else in my life, was a shambles. As soon as I split up with you, I ripped every button off my vest and started throwing all my cigarette butts into coffee cups. That was a wonderful feeling. Absolutely exhilarating. I laughed so hard, all by myself, that tears came to my eyes. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how I’d suffered at your hands. Afterwards, I just grew angrier and angrier. Even now, I’m plenty angry. You don’t have any idea how to treat a person.’
“‘I’m sorry. I was young. Forgive me. I... I... Now I understand. The dogs were never really the problem, were they?’
“‘There you go, wringing out the tears again. That always was your way. Well, it won’t work anymore. Right now, for me, everything is just as I wish. See? You want to have a cup of tea somewhere?’
“‘I can’t. I...Now I understand perfectly. You and I have become strangers, haven’t we? No, we always were strangers. Our hearts were in different worlds, a thousand miles, a million miles apart. If we were together, we’d only be miserable, both of us. I want to make a clean break with you now. I... You see, I’m going to have a hallowed home of my own soon.’
“‘Oh? You found a good prospect?’
“‘It’ll be fine. He’s... He works in a factory. He’s the foreman. I understand that if it weren’t for him, the machines in the factory wouldn’t run at all. He’s a big man... A mountain of a man. Solid as a rock.’
“‘Not like me, eh?’
“‘No. He’s not a scholar. He doesn’t do research or anything. But he’s awfully good at what he does.’
“‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy. Goodbye, then. I’ll just borrow this handkerchief for now.’
“‘Goodbye. Ah! Your sash is coming undone. Here, I’ll tie it for you. Really, there’s no end to looking after you, is there? Give my regards to your wife.’
“‘Sure. If I think of it.’”
The second brother fell silent, then let out a self-deprecating cackle. If his observations seemed strangely sophisticated for one of his youth, this was nothing new.
“I already know how it ends.” The younger daughter smugly continued. “Here’s what happens, I’m quite sure. After the professor parts with the woman, there’s a sudden downpour. No wonder it’s been so humid. The people walking the streets scatter in every direction, like a batch of newborn spiders. It’s like magic, the way they disappear, and the streets of Shinjuku, which were so crowded only moments before, are now silent and empty of everything but the rain splattering in silver explosions on the pavement. The professor takes refuge under the eaves of a flower shop, hunching his shoulders and shrinking into a crouch. From time to time he pulls out the handkerchief and gazes at it for a moment, then hastily stuffs it back into his sleeve.
“It occurs to him to buy some flowers. If he does that and brings them back to his wife, who’s waiting at home, she’s sure to be delighted. Never before in the professor’s life has he purchased flowers. He’s not quite himself today. The radio, the fortune, the ex-wife, the handkerchief—a lot has transpired. Coming to a momentous resolve, he dashes into the flower shop and, though he’s terribly flustered and embarrassed and sweating profusely, somehow summons the courage to buy three large, long-stemmed roses. He’s shocked at how expensive they are. Outside the flower shop, he grabs a taxi and heads straight for home.
“The lantern glows brightly over the front door of his house on the outskirts of town. Home, sweet home. A refuge of warmth and comfort, the one place where everything goes splendidly. As he opens the door, he calls out in a loud voice: ‘I’m home!’ He’s in high spirits. It’s silent inside, but that doesn’t stop him. Bearing the flowers like a torch, he marches through the house and enters his study.
“‘I’m home. Got caught in the rain—what an ordeal! How do you like these? I’m told everything will turn out just as I wish.’
“He’s speaking to a photograph that sits atop his desk. It’s a photo of the woman with whom he has just made a clean break. But, no, not as she is now. It’s a photo taken a decade ago. She wears a beautiful smile.”
Narcissus struck her affected pose again, chin on hand, forefinger against cheek, and gazed about the room as if to say: “Nothing to it.”
“Yes. Well,” the eldest son began with a pedantic air. “I suppose that more or less wraps things up. However...” As the eldest, he had his dignity to maintain. Compared to the other brothers and sisters, he had not been blessed with a very rich imagination and was incompetent at telling stories. He simply lacked talent in that direction. But to be excluded by the others for such a reason would have been unbearable for him. He therefore tended to add something superfluous to the end of each story. “However, you’ve all left out an essential point in the narrative. I refer to the professor’s physical appearance.” It was the best he could do.
“The description of physical appearance is extremely important in a work of fiction. By describing what a character looks like, you bring him alive and remind people of someone close to them, thereby lending intimacy to the tale and involving the audience, so that they cease to be mere passive observers. The way I see it, the elderly professor is a small man—five feet, two inches tall and less than a hundred and ten pounds. As for his face, it is round, with a high, broad, deeply furrowed forehead, thin eyebrows, a small nose, a wide, firm mouth, a white, bushy beard, and silver-rimmed spectacles.” This was nothing less than a description of the eldest son’s revered Ibsen. Such was the trivial nature of his powers of imagination. He appeared to have succeeded, as usual, in adding something that amounted to almost nothing.
With this, at any rate, the story ended, and no sooner had it done so than boredom returned with a vengeance; the brothers and sisters all fell victim to the oppressive sense of bleakness that comes after a small bit of stimulation. An ugly mood hung over the room, stifling small talk; it was as if a single word from any of them might have resulted in blows.
The mother, who’d sat apart from the others throughout, smiling dreamily as her five children revealed their characters one by one in the way they advanced the story, now got quietly to her feet and went to the paper screen door. She slid it open, then gasped and said: “Goodness! There’s a strange old man in a frock coat standing at the gate, staring in.”
All five of the brothers and sisters jumped to their feet, aghast.
Their mother doubled over laughing.
nce upon a time, in Mukojima in Edo, there lived a man with the rather uninteresting name of Mayama Sainosuke. Sainosuke was very poor and still a bachelor at the age of thirty-two. Chrysanthemums were the great love of his life. If told of an excellent strain of chrysanthemum seedlings being grown in some corner of the land, he would go to the most absurd lengths to search them out and purchase a few for his own garden. It’s said that he’d undertake such a mission though it meant a journey of a thousand leagues, which ought to give you some idea of just how far gone he was.
One year in early autumn Sainosuke received word of an extraordinary variety of mums in the town of Numazu in Izu, and no sooner had he heard the news than he changed into his traveling gear and set out with a strange gleam in his eye. He crossed the mountains of Hakone, swept into Numazu, and tramped through the streets until he located and acquired a couple of truly splendid seedlings. After carefully wrapping these treasures in oil-paper, he smiled smugly to himself and headed for home.
As he was crossing back over the mountains of Hakone, with the city of Odawara just coming into view below, Sainosuke became aware of the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves on the road behind him. Euphoric over the purchase of his precious mums, he thought nothing of this at first, but when the animal continued to follow him at the same distance, neither drawing nearer nor falling behind, clopping along with the same leisurely rhythm for five, eight, ten miles, he began to wonder about it, and finally he turned to look back. Not more than twenty paces behind him was an emaciated old horse, upon which sat a youth with strikingly handsome features. He flashed a smile, and Sainosuke, not wanting to appear impolite, returned the smile and stopped to wait for him. The youth rode up, dismounted, and said: “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“It is a lovely day,” Sainosuke agreed.