Kimono Part 26

So in this country of Asako's fathers, a bedstead was lent for trial as though it had been some fascinating novelty, a bicycle or a piano.

The kitchen appealed most to the visitor. It was the only room to her mind which had any individuality of its own. It was large, dark and high, full of servant-girls scuttering about like little mice, who bowed and then fled when the two ladies came in. The stoves for boiling the rice interested Asako, round iron receptacles like coppers, each resting on a brick fireplace. Everything was explained to her: the high dressers hung with unfamiliar implements in white metal and white wood: the brightly labelled casks of _sake_ and _shoyu_ (sauce) waiting in the darkness like the deputation of a friendly society in its insignia of office: the silent jars of tea, greenish in colour and ticketed with strange characters, the names of the respective tea-gardens: the iron kettle hanging on gibbet chains from the top of the ceiling over a charcoal fire sunk in the floor; the tasteful design of the commonest earthenware bowl: the little board and chopper for slicing the raw fish: the clean white rice-tubs with their bra.s.s bindings polished and s.h.i.+ning: the odd shape and entirely j.a.panese character which distinguished the most ordinary things, and gave to the short squat knives a romantic air and to the broad wooden spoons a suggestion of witchcraft: finally, the little shrine to the Kitchen G.o.d, perched on a shelf close to the ceiling, looking like the facade of a doll's temple, and decorated with bra.s.s vases, dry gra.s.ses, and strips of white paper. The wide kitchen was impregnated with a smell already familiar to Asako's nose, one of the most typical odours of j.a.pan, the smell of native cooking, humid, acrid and heavy like the smell of wood smoke from damp logs, with a sour and rotten flavour to it contributed by a kind of pickled horse-radish called _Daikon_ or the Great Root, dear to the j.a.panese palate.

The central ceremony of Asako's visit was her introduction to the memory of her dead parents. She was taken to a small room, where the alcove, the place of honour, was occupied by a closed cabinet, the _butsudan_ (Buddha shelf), a beautiful piece of joiner's work in a kind of lattice pattern covered with red lacquer and gold. Sadako, approaching, reverently opened this shrine. The interior was all gilt with a dazzling gold like that used an old ma.n.u.scripts. In the centre of this glory sat a golden-faced Buddha with dark blue hair and cloak, and an aureole of golden rays. Below him were arranged the _ihai_, the Tablets of the Dead, miniature grave-stones about one foot high, with a black surface edged with gold upon which were inscribed the names of the dead persons, the new names given by the priests.

Sadako stepped back and clapped her hands together three times, repeating the formula of the Nichiren Sect of Buddhists.

"_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]!_ (Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)"

She instructed Asako to do the same.

"For," she said, "we believe that the spirits of the dead people are here; and we must be very good to them."

Asako did as she was told, wondering whether her confessor would give her penance for idolatry. Sadako then motioned her to sit on the floor. She took one of the tablets from its place and placed it in front of her cousin.

"That is your father's _ihai_," she said; and then removing another and placing it beside the first, she added,--

"This is your mother."

Asako was deeply moved. In England we love our dead; but we consign them to the care of nature, to the change of the seasons, and the cold promiscuity of the graveyard. The j.a.panese dead never seem to leave the shelter of their home or the circle of their family. We bring to our dear ones flowers and prayers; but the j.a.panese give them food and wine, and surround them with every-day talk. The companions.h.i.+p is closer. We chatter much about immortality. We believe, many of us, in some undying particle. We even think that in some other world the dead may meet the dead whom they have known in life. But the actual communion of the dead and the living is for us a beautiful and inspiring metaphor rather than a concrete belief. Now the j.a.panese, although their religion is so much vaguer than ours, hardly question this survival of the ancestors in the close proximity of their children and grandchildren. The little funeral tablets are for them clothed with an invisible personality.

"This is your mother."

Asako felt influences floating around her. Her mind was in pain, straining to remember something which seemed to be not wholly forgotten.

Just at this moment Mrs. Fujinami arrived, carrying an old photograph alb.u.m and a roll of silk. Her appearance was so opportune that any one less innocent than Asako might have suspected that the scene had been rehea.r.s.ed. In the hush and charm of that little chamber of the spirits, the face of the elder woman looked soft and sweet. She opened the volume at the middle, and pushed it in front of Asako.

She saw the photograph of a j.a.panese girl seated in a chair with a man standing at her side, with one hand resting on the chair back. Her father's photograph she recognised at once, the broad forehead, the deep eyes, the aquiline nose, the high cheek bones, and the thin, angry sarcastic lips; not a typically j.a.panese face, but a type recurrent throughout our over-educated world, cultured, desperate and stricken. Asako had very little in common with her father; for his character had been moulded or warped by two powerful agencies, his intellect and his disease; and it was well for his daughter that she had escaped this dire inheritance. But never before had she seen her mother's face. Sometimes she had wondered who and what her mother had been; what she had thought of as her baby grew within her; and with what regrets she had exchanged her life for her child's. More often she had considered herself as a being without a mother, a fairy's child, brought into this world on a sunbeam or born from a flower.

Now she saw the face which had reflected pain and death for her. It was impa.s.sive, doll-like and very young, pure oval in outline, but lacking in expression. The smallness of the mouth was the most characteristic feature, but it was not alive with smiles like her daughter's. It was pinched and constrained, with the lower lips drawn in.

The photograph was clearly a wedding souvenir. She wore the black kimono of a bride, and the multiple skirts. A kind of little pocket-book with silver charms dangling from it, an ancient marriage symbol, was thrust into the opening at her breast. Her head was covered with a curious white cap like the "luggage" of Christmas crackers. She was seated rigidly at the edge of her uncomfortable chair; and her personality seemed to be overpowered by the solemnity of the occasion.

"Did she love him," her daughter wondered, "as I love Geoffrey?"

Through Sadako's interpretation Mrs. Fujinami explained that Asako's mother's name had been Yamagata Haruko (Spring child). Her father had been a _samurai_ in the old two-sworded days. The photograph was not very like her. It was too serious.

"Like you," said the elder woman, "she was always laughing and happy.

My husband's father used to call her the _Semi_ (the cicada), because she was always singing her little song. She was chosen for your father because he was so sad and wrathful. They thought that she would make him more gentle. But she died; and then he became more sad than before."

Asako was crying very gently. She felt the touch of her cousin's hand on her arm. The intellectual Miss Sadako also was weeping, the tears furrowing her whitened complexion. The j.a.panese are a very emotional race. The women love tears; and even the men are not averse from this very natural expression of feeling, which our Anglo-Saxon schooling has condemned as babyish. Mrs. Fujinami continued,--

"I saw her a few days before you were born. They lived in a little house on the bank of the river. One could see the boats pa.s.sing. It was very damp and cold. She talked all the time of her baby. 'If it is a boy,' she said, 'everybody will be happy; if it is a girl, Fujinami San will be very anxious for the family's sake; and the fortune-tellers say that it will surely be a little girl. But,' she used to say, 'I could play better with a little girl; I know what makes them laugh!' When you were born she became very ill. She never spoke again, and in a few days she died. Your father became like a madman, he locked the house, and would not see any of us; and as soon as you were strong enough, he took you away in a s.h.i.+p."

Sadako placed in front of her cousin the roll of silk, and said,--

"This is j.a.panese _obi_ (sash). It belonged to your mother. She gave it to my mother a short time before you were born; for she said, 'It is too bright for me now; when I have my baby, I shall give up society, and I shall spend all my time with my children.' My mother gives it to you for your mother's sake."

It was a wonderful work of art, a heavy golden brocade, embroidered with fans, and on each fan a j.a.panese poem and a little scene from the olden days.

"She was very fond of this _obi_, she chose the poems herself."

But Asako was not admiring the beautiful workmans.h.i.+p. She was thinking of the mother's heart which had beat for her under that long strip of silk, the little j.a.panese mother who "would have known how to make her laugh." Tears were falling very quietly on to the old sash.

The two j.a.panese women saw this; and with the instinctive tact of their race, they left her alone face to face with this strange introduction to her mother's personality.

There is a peculiar pathos about the clothes of the dead. They are so nearly a part of our bodies that it seems unnatural almost that they should survive with the persistence of inanimate things, when we who gave them the semblance of life are far more dead than they. It would be more seemly, perhaps, if all these things which have belonged to us so intimately were to perish with us in a general _suttee_. But the mania for relics would never tolerate so complete a disappearance of one whom we had loved; and our treasuring of hair and ornaments and letters is a desperate--and perhaps not an entirely vain--attempt to check the liberated spirit in its leap for eternity.

Asako found in that old garment of her mother's a much more faithful reflection of the life which had been transmitted to her, than the stiff photograph could ever realise. She had chosen the poems herself.

Asako must get them transcribed and translated; for they would be a sure indication of her mother's character. Already the daughter could see that her mother too must have loved rich and beautiful things, happiness and laughter.

Old Mr. Fujinami had called her "the _Semi_." Asako did not yet know the voice of the little insects which are the summer and autumn orchestra of j.a.pan. But she knew that it must be something happy and sweet; or they would not have told her.

She rose from her knees, and found her cousin waiting for her on the veranda. Whatever real expression she may have had was effectively hidden behind the tinted gla.s.ses, and the false white complexion, now renovated from the ravages of emotion. But Asako's heart was won by the power of the dead, of whom Sadako and her family were, she felt, the living representatives.

Asako took both of her cousin's hands in her own.

"It was sweet of you and your mother to give me that," she said--and her eyes were full of tears--"you could not have thought of anything which would please me more."

The j.a.panese girl was on the point of starting to bow and smile the conventional apologies for the worthlessness of the gift, when she felt herself caught by a power unfamiliar to her, the power of the emotions of the West.

The pressure on her wrists increased, her face was drawn down towards her cousin's, and she felt against the corner of her mouth the warm touch of Asako's lips.

She started back with a cry of "_Iya_! (don't!)," the cry of outraged j.a.panese femininity. Then she remembered from her readings that such kissings were common among European girls, that they were a compliment and a sign of affection. But she hoped that it had not disarranged her complexion again; and that none of the servants had seen.

Her cousin's surprise shook Asako out of her dream; and the kiss left a bitter powdery taste upon her lips which disillusioned her.

"Shall we go into the garden?" said Sadako, who felt that fresh air was advisable.

They joined hands; so much familiarity was permitted by j.a.panese etiquette. They went along the gravel path to the summit of the little hillock where the cherry-trees had lately been in bloom, Sadako in her bright kimono, Asako in her dark suit. She looked like a mere mortal being introduced to the wonders of t.i.tania's country by an authentic fairy.

The sun was setting in the clear sky, one half of which was a tempest of orange, gold and red, and the other half warm and calm with roseate reflections. Over the spot where the focus point of all this glory was sinking into darkness, a purple cloud hovered like a shred of the monarch's glory caught and torn away on the jag of some invisible obstruction. Its edges were white flame, as though part of the sun's fire were hidden behind it.

Even from this high position little could be seen beyond the Fujinami enclosure except tree-tops. Away down the valley appeared the grey scaly roofs of huddled houses, and on a hill opposite more trees with the bizarre pinnacle of a paG.o.da forcing its way through the midst of them. It looked like a series of hats perched one on the top of the other by a merchant of Petticoat Lane.

Lights were glimpsing from the Fujinami mansion; more lights were visible among the shrubberies below. This soft light, filtered through the paper walls, shone like a luminous pearl. This is the home light of the j.a.panese, and is as typical of their domesticity as the blazing log-fire is of ours. It is greenish, still and pure, like a glow-worm's beacon.

Out of the deep silence a bell tolled. It was as though an unseen hand had struck the splendour of that metallic firmament; or as though a voice had spoken out of the sunset cloud.

The two girls descended to the brink of the lake. Here at the farther end the water was broader; and it was hidden from view of the houses.

Green reeds grew along the margin, and green iris leaves, like sword blades, black now in the failing light. There was a studied roughness in the tiny landscape, and in the midst of the wilderness a little hut.

"What a sweet little summer-house!" cried Asako.

It looked like a settler's shack, built of rough, unshapen logs and thatched with rushes.

"It is the room for the _chanoyu_, the tea-ceremony," said her cousin.