“Nothing of the sort. I’ve already taught you everything I know. The rest is in the fingertips, but that’s where it gets a bit mysterious. I simply seem to have a certain touch, and since it’s something I’m not really conscious of, I can’t very well teach it to you in words. It’s a genius of sorts, I suppose.”
“Oh, I get it. So you’re a genius and I’m a nincompoop. Right? Not much hope of teaching anything to a nincompoop, right?”
“You needn’t put it like that. Let’s just say that my life depends on getting the best blossoms I can. If they don’t sell, I don’t eat. Perhaps that’s why the flowers grow so large—because I’m driven by necessity. People like you, on the other hand, who grow mums as a hobby, are motivated more by simple curiosity, or the desire to satisfy their pride.”
“Oh, I see. You’re telling me I should sell my mums too, is that it? Do you really think I’d stoop so low? How dare you say such a thing!”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Why must you be this way?”
The relationship, in short, lacked a certain harmony.
As time went by, the Tomotos’ fortune only increased. When the new year came along they hired a team of carpenters and, without so much as consulting Sainosuke, began construction of a sizable mansion that extended from the rear of the garden to within an inch or so of his cottage. Sainosuke had just begun to consider severing relations again when, one day, Saburo came calling with a pensive and serious expression on his face.
“Please accept my sister as your bride,” he said somberly.
Sainosuke could feel his cheeks burning. From the first time he’d laid eyes on the sister he’d been unable to dispel that image of tenderness and purity from his mind. But, true to form, his manly pride now forced him to launch into a queer sort of argument.
“I can’t afford a betrothal gift, and I’m not qualified to take a bride like her anyway. You’re rich people now, you know,” he said, hiding his true feelings behind the sarcasm.
“Not at all. Everything we have is yours. That was how my sister intended it to be from the beginning. And there’s no need to worry about a betrothal gift. All you have to do is move in with us, just as you are. My sister is in love with you.”
Sainosuke shook his head, trying his best to feign composure. “Not interested. I have my own house. You won’t catch me marrying into money. Not that I have anything against your sister, mind you,” he said, and laughed in a way that he hoped sounded cavalier. “But to marry for money is the greatest shame a man can bring upon himself. I refuse. Go back and tell your sister that. And tell her that if she doesn’t mind living in honest poverty, she can come move in with me.”
Thus they parted once again on less than amicable terms. That night, however, along with a gentle breeze, a delicate white butterfly came fluttering into Sainosuke’s room.
“I don’t mind living in honest poverty,” she said with a giggle. Her name was Kié.
For a while the two of them passed their days and nights within the confines of Sainosuke’s ramshackle cottage, but eventually Kié opened a hole in the rear wall and another in the adjoining wall of the Tomoto mansion, allowing her to go freely from one to the other. And, to Sainosuke’s great dismay, she also began to bring along whatever furnishings or utensils she needed.
“This won’t do. That brazier, that vase... all these things are from your house. Don’t you realize how it sullies a man’s honor to use his wife’s possessions? I want you to stop carting this junk over here.”
Kié would only smile when he scolded her like this and continue to bring the things she needed. Sainosuke, who fancied himself a man of incorruptible integrity, finally resorted to purchasing a large ledger in which he wrote: “This is to acknowledge receipt of the following items, to be temporarily retained by the undersigned.” He started trying to list every article Kié had brought from the mansion, but found to his chagrin that there was now nothing in the cottage that didn’t fit that description. Realizing that he might fill any number of ledgers without completing the task, he gave up all hope. He continued to resent what was happening, however, and one night he turned to Kié and said: “Thanks to you I’ve ended up being a kept man. To acquire wealth through marriage is the greatest disgrace a man can suffer. For thirty years I’ve lived in noble, honest poverty, and now it’s all been for nothing, thanks to you and that brother of yours.”
The bitterness in his voice stung Kié’s heart, and she looked at him sadly and said: “It’s all my fault, I suppose. It’s just that I wanted to do everything I could to fi
nd some way to repay you for your kindness. I’m afraid I didn’t realize how committed you were to that honest poverty of yours. Let’s do this: We’ll sell all my things, and the new house as well. Then you can take the money and use it any way you like.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped at her. “You think a man like myself would accept your filthy money?”
“Well, then, what is to be done?” There was a sob in Kié’s voice. “Saburo, too, feels a great debt of gratitude to you. That’s why he works so hard to get money by growing the mums and delivering them all over town. What are we to do? We just don’t see eye to eye on this at all, do we?”
“There’s only one thing we can do: separate.” Sainosuke’s own high-minded pronouncements had backed him into a corner, and now he found himself having to utter these painful words, which were nowhere in his heart. “Let the pure live in moral purity and the corrupt in corruption. There’s no other way. I’m not qualified to order anyone else about; I’ll leave this place to you, build a little hut in the corner of the garden, and pass my days enjoying the solitary pleasures of honest poverty.”
It was all quite ridiculous, but once a man has spoken there’s no turning back. First thing the following morning Sainosuke slapped together a little lean-to in the corner of the garden. He moved into this tiny space that night and sat there on his knees, shivering in the cold. After he’d spent a mere two nights enjoying his honest poverty, however, the freezing temperatures began to take their toll, and on the third night he stole back to his cottage and tapped lightly on the rain shutter. It opened a crack and Kié’s fair, smiling face appeared.
“So much for moral purity,” she said with a giggle.
Sainosuke was deeply ashamed. From that night on, not a single obstinate demand would ever again escape his lips.
By the time the cherry trees along the Sumida River began to bloom, construction of the Tomoto mansion was complete. It was now connected to the cottage in such a way that there was no distinction between the two. Sainosuke, however, offered not a word of complaint. He left the household affairs entirely up to Kié and Saburo, and spent his days playing Chinese chess with friends from the neighborhood.
One day the three members of the household set out for the Sumida to view the cherry blossoms. They settled down with their lunch at a suitable spot on the riverbank, and Sainosuke lost no time in breaking out the saké he’d brought and urging Saburo to join him. Kié shot a forbidding glance at her brother, but he calmly accepted a cup.
“Sis,” he said, “it’s all right if I have a drink or two today. We’ve saved up enough now so that you and Sainosuke can take it easy for the rest of your lives, even if I’m not around. I’m tired of growing chrysanthemums.”
And with this mysterious declaration Saburo began guzzling saké at an alarming rate. He was soon thoroughly drunk, and finally he lay down and stretched out on the grass. And then, right before their eyes, his body melted away and disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving nothing behind but his kimono and sandals. Flabbergasted, Sainosuke snatched up the kimono, only to find, growing out of the earth beneath it, a fresh, bright green chrysanthemum seedling. Now, for the first time, he realized that Saburo and Kié were not mere human beings. But Sainosuke, who by this time had come to truly appreciate the young pair’s wisdom and affection, felt not in the least horrified at the realization. He only grew to love Kié, his poor chrysanthemum fairy, all the more deeply.
When autumn came, Saburo’s seedling, which Sainosuke had replanted in his garden, produced a single blossom. The flower was faintly rouge, like a drinker’s blush, and gave off a light scent of saké. As for Kié, tradition tells us that there was “no change forever.” In other words, she lived as a human being to the end of her days.