Kimono Part 25

"Hm! A good thing, and the husband?"

"He is a soldier, an honourable man. He seemed foolish, or else he is very cunning. The English people are like that. They say a thing. Of course, you think it is a lie. But no, it is the truth; and so they deceive."

"_Ma, mendo-kusai_ (indeed, smelly-troublesome!) And why has this foreigner come to j.a.pan?"

"Ito says he has come to learn about the money. That means, when he knows he will want more."

"How much do we pay to Asa San?"

"Ten per cent."

"And the profits last year on all our business came to thirty seven and a half per cent. Ah! A fine gain. We could not borrow from the banks at ten per cent. They would want at least fifteen, and many gifts for silence. It is better to fool the husband, and to let them go back to England. After all, ten per cent is a good rate. And we want all our money now for the new brothels in Osaka. If we make much money there, then afterwards we can give them more."

"Ito says that if the Englishman knows that the money is made in brothels, he will throw it all away and finish. Ito thinks it would be not impossible to send the Englishman back to England, and to keep Asa here in j.a.pan."

The old man looked up suddenly, and for once his jaw stopped chewing.

"That would be best of all," he exclaimed. "Then indeed he is honourable and a great fool. Being an Englishman, it is possible. Let him go back to England. We will keep Asa. She too is a Fujinami; and, even though she is a woman, she can be useful to the family. She will stay with us. She would not like to be poor. She has not borne a baby to this foreigner, and she is young. I think also our Sada can teach her many things."

"It is of Sada that I came to speak to father," said Mr. Gentaro. "The marriage of our Sada is a great question for the Fujinami family. Here is a letter from Mr. Osumi, a friend of the Governor of Osaka. The Governor has been of much help to us in getting the concession for the new brothels. He is a widower with no children. He is a man with a future. He is protected by the military clan. He is wishful to marry a woman who can a.s.sist his career, and who would be able to take the place of a Minister's wife. Mr. Osumi, who writes, had heard of the accomplishments of our Sada. He mentioned her name to the Governor; and His Excellency was quite willing that Mr. Osumi should write something in a letter to Ito."

"Hm!" grunted the old gentleman, squinting sidelong at his son; "this Governor, has he a private fortune?"

"No, he is a self-made man."

"Then it will not be with him, as it was with that Viscount Kamimura.

He will not be too proud to take our money."

The truth of the allusion to Viscount Kamimura was that the name of Sadako Fujinami had figured on the list of possible brides submitted to that young aristocrat on his return from England. At first, it seemed likely that the choice would fall upon her, because of her undisputed cleverness; and the Fujinami family were radiant at the prospect of so brilliant a match. For although nothing had been formally mentioned between the two families, yet Sadako and her mother had learned from their hairdresser that there was talk of such a possibility in the servants' quarter of the Kamimura mansion, and that old Dowager Viscountess Kamimura was undoubtedly making inquiries which could only point to that one object.

The young Viscount, however, on ascertaining the origin of the family wealth, eliminated poor Sadako from the compet.i.tion for his hand.

It was a great disappointment to the Fujinami, and most of all to the ambitious Sadako. For a moment she had seen opening the doorway into that marvellous world of high diplomacy, of European capitals, of diamonds, d.u.c.h.esses and intrigue, of which she had read in foreign novels, where everybody is rich, brilliant, immoral and distinguished, and where to women are given the roles to play even more important than those of the men. This was the only world, she felt, worthy of her talents; but few, very few, just one in a million j.a.panese women, ever gets the remotest chance of entering it. This chance presented itself to Sadako--but for a moment only. The doorway shut to again; and Sadako was left feeling more acutely than before the emptiness of life, and the bitterness of woman's lot in a land where men are supreme.

Her cousin, Asako, by the mere luck of having had an eccentric parent and a European upbringing, possessed all the advantages and all the experience which the j.a.panese girl knew only through the glamorous medium of books. But this Asa San was a fool. Sadako had found that out at once in the course of a few minutes talk at the Maple Club dinner. She was sweet, gentle and innocent; far more j.a.panese, indeed, than her sophisticated cousin. Her obvious respect and affection for her big rough husband, her pathetic solicitude for the father whose face she could hardly remember and for the mother who was nothing but a name; these traits of character belong to the meek j.a.panese girl of _Onna Daigaku_ (Woman's Great Learning), that famous cla.s.sic of j.a.panese girlhood which teaches the submission of women and the superiority of men. It was a type which was becoming rare in her own country. Little Asako had nothing in common with the argumentative heroines of Bernard Shaw or with the desperate viragos of Ibsen, to whom Sadako felt herself spiritually akin. Asako must be a fool. She exasperated her j.a.panese cousin, who at the same time was envious of her, envious above all of her independent wealth. As she observed to her own mother, it was most improper that a woman, and a young woman too, should have so much money of her own. It would be sure to spoil her character.

Meanwhile Asako was a way of access to first-hand knowledge of that world of European womanhood which so strongly attracted Sadako's intelligence, that almost incredible world in which men and women were equal, had equal rights to property, and equal rights to love. Asako must have seen enough to explain something about it; if only she were not a fool. But it appeared that she had never heard of Strindberg, Sudermann, or d'Annunzio; and even Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde were unfamiliar names.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FAMILY ALTAR

_Yume no ai wa Kurus.h.i.+kari keri?

Odorokite Kaki-saguredomo Te ni mo fureneba._

(These) meetings in dreams How sad they are!

When, waking up startled One gropes about-- And there is no contact to the hand.

Miss Fujinami made up her mind to cultivate Asako's friends.h.i.+p, and to learn all that she could from her. So she at once invited her cousin to the mysterious house in Akasaka, and Asako at once accepted.

The doors seemed to fly open at the magic of the wanderer's return.

Behind each part.i.tion were family retainers, bowing and smiling.

Three maids a.s.sisted her to remove her boots. There was a sense of expectation and hospitality, which calmed Asako's fluttering shyness.

"Welcome! Welcome!" chanted the chorus of maids, "_O agari nasaimas.h.i.+!_ (pray step up into the house!)"

The visitor was shown into a beautiful airy room overlooking the landscape garden. She could not repress an Ah! of wonder, when first this fairy pleasance came in sight. It was all so green, so tiny, and so perfect,--the undulating lawn, the sheet of silver water, the pigmy forests which clothed its sh.o.r.es, its disappearance round a shoulder of rock into that hinterland of high trees which closed the vista and shut out the intrusion of the squalid city.

The j.a.panese understand better than we do the mesmeric effects of sights and sounds. It was to give her time to a.s.similate her surroundings that Asako was left alone for half an hour or so, while Sadako and her mother were combing their hair and putting their kimonos straight. Tea and biscuits were brought for her, but her fancy was astray in the garden. Already to her imagination a little town had sprung up along the s.h.i.+ngles of the tiny bay which faced her; the sails of white s.h.i.+ps were glimpsing where the sunlight struck the water; and from round the rock promontory she could catch the s.h.i.+mmer of the Prince's galleon with its high p.o.o.p and stern covered with solid gold. He was on his way to rescue the lady who was immured in the top of the red paG.o.da on the opposite hill.

Asako's legs were getting numb. She had been sitting on them in correct j.a.panese fas.h.i.+on all this time. She was proud of the accomplishment, which she considered must be hereditary, but she could not keep it up for much longer than half an hour. Sadako's mother entered.

"Asa San is welcome."

Much bowing began, in which Asako felt her disadvantage. The long lines of the kimono, with the big sash tied behind, lend themselves with peculiar grace to the squatting bow of j.a.panese intercourse. But Asako, in the short blue jacket of her tailor-made serge, felt that her att.i.tude was that of the naughty little boys in English picture books, bending over for castigation.

Mrs. Fujinami wore a perfectly plain kimono, blackish-brown in colour, with a plain gold sash. It is considered correct for middle-aged ladies in j.a.pan to dress with modesty and reserve. She was tall for a j.a.panese woman and big-boned, with a long lantern-face, and an almost Jewish nose. The daughter was of her mother's build. But her face was a perfect oval, the melon-seed shape which is so highly esteemed in her country. The severity of her appearance was increased, by her blue-tinted spectacles; and like so many j.a.panese women, her teeth were full of gold stopping. She was resplendent in blue, the blue of the Mediterranean, with fronds of cherry-blossom and floating pink petals designed round her skirts and at the bottom of the long exaggerated sleeves. The sash of broad stiff brocade shone with light blue and silver in a kind of conventional wave pattern. This was tied at the back with a huge bow, which seemed perched upon its wearer like a gigantic b.u.t.terfly alighting on a cornflower. Her straight black hair was parted on one side in "foreign" style. But her mother wore the helmet-like _marumage_, the edifice of conservative taste in married women, which looks more like a wig than like natural hair.

Rings sparkled on Sadako's fingers, and she wore a diamond ornament across her sash; but neither their taste nor their quality impressed her cousin. Her face was of the same ivory tint as Asako's, but it was hidden under a lavish coating of liquid powder. This hideous embellishment covers not only the Mongolian yellow, which every j.a.panese woman seems anxious to hide, but also the natural and charming nuances of young skin, under a white monotonous surface like a mask of clay. Painted roses bloomed on the girl's cheeks. The eyebrows were artificially darkened as well as the lines round the eyes. The face and its expression, in fact, were quite obscured by cosmetics; and Miss Fujinami was wrapped in a cloud of cheap scent like a servant-girl on her evening out.

She spoke English well. In fact, at school she had achieved a really brilliant career, and she had even attended a University for a time with the intention of reading for a degree, an attainment rare among j.a.panese girls. But overwork brought on its inevitable result. Books had to be banished, and gla.s.ses interposed to save the tired eyes from the light. It was a bitter disappointment for Sadako, who was a proud and ambitious girl, and it had not improved her disposition.

After the first formalities Asako was shown round the house. The sameness of the rooms surprised her. There was nothing to distinguish them except the different woods used in their ceilings and walls, a distinction which betrayed its costliness and its taste only to the practised eye. Each room was spotless and absolutely bare, with golden _tatami_, rice-straw mats with edgings of black braid, fixed into the flooring, by whose number the size of a j.a.panese room is measured.

Asako admired the pale white _shoji_, the sliding windows of opaque glowing paper along the side of the room open to the outdoor light, the _fusuma_ or sliding part.i.tions between room and room, set in the framework of the house, some of them charmingly painted with sketches of scenery, flowers, or people, some of them plain cream-coloured boards flecked with tiny specks of gold.

Nothing broke the sameness of these rooms except the double alcove, or _tokonoma_ with its inevitable hanging picture, its inevitable ornament, and its spray of blossom. Between the double niche stood that pillar of wood which Sadako explained as being the soul of the room, the leading feature from which its character was taken, being either plain and firm, or twisted and ornate, or else still unshaped, with the bosses of amputated branches seared and black protesting against confinement. The _tokonoma_, as the word suggests, must originally have been the sleeping-place of the owner of the room, for it certainly is the only corner in a j.a.panese house which is secured from draughts. But perhaps it was respect for invisible spirits which drove the sleeper eventually to abandon his coign of vantage to the service of aesthetic beauty, and to stretch himself on the open floor.

To Asako the rooms seemed all the same. Each gave the same impression of spotlessness and nudity. Each was stiffly rectangular like the honey squares fitted into a hive. Above all, there was nothing about any of them to indicate their individual use, or the character of the person to whom they were specially a.s.signed. No dining-room, or drawing-room, or library.

"Where is your bedroom?" asked Asako, with a frank demand for that sign of sisterhood among Western girls; "I should so like to see it."

"I generally sleep," answered the j.a.panese girl, "in that room at the corner where we have been already, where the bamboo pictures are. This is the room where father and mother sleep."

They were standing on the balcony outside the apartment where Asako had first been received.

"But where are the beds?" she asked.

Sadako went to the end of the balcony, and threw open a big cupboard concealed in the outside of the house. It was full of layers of rugs, thick, dark and wadded.

"These are the beds," smiled the j.a.panese cousin. "My brother Takes.h.i.+ has a foreign bed in his room; but my father does not like them, or foreign clothes, or foreign food, or anything foreign. He says the j.a.panese things are best for the j.a.panese. But he is very old-fas.h.i.+oned."

"j.a.panese style looks nicer," said Asako, thinking how big and vulgar a bedstead would appear in that clean emptiness and how awkwardly its iron legs would trample on the straw matting; "but isn't it draughty and uncomfortable?"

"I like the foreign beds best," said Sadako; "my brother has let me try his. It is very soft."