Kimono Part 45

"Oh, no, that would not be nice at all. Only tipsy persons would dance like that."

Asako tried, not very successfully, to chat in easy j.a.panese with her cousin; but she fled from the interminable talking parties of her relatives, where she could not understand one word, except the innumerable parentheses--_naruhodo_ (indeed!) and _so des'ka_ (is it so?)--with which the conversation was studded. As the realization of her solitude made her nerves more jumpy, she began to imagine that the women were forever talking about her, criticizing her unfavorably and disposing of her future.

The only man whom she saw during the hot summer months, besides the inevitable Tanaka, was Mr. Ito, the lawyer. He could talk quite good English. He was not so egotistical and bitter as Sadako. He had traveled in America and Europe. He seemed to understand the trouble of Asako's mind, and would offer sympathetic advice.

"It is difficult to go to school when we are no longer children,"

he would say sententiously. "Asa San must be patient. Asa San must forget. Asa San must take j.a.panese husband. I think it is the only way."

"Oh, no," the poor girl s.h.i.+vered; "I wouldn't marry again for anything."

"But," Ito went on relentlessly, "it is hurtful to the body when once it has custom to be married. I think that is reason why so many widow women are unfortunate and become mad."

Every day he would spend an hour or so in conversation with Asako. She thought that this was a sign of friendliness and sympathy. As a matter of fact, his object at first was to improve his English. Later on more ambitious projects developed in his fertile brain.

He would talk about New York and London in his queer stilted way. He had been a fireman on board s.h.i.+p, a teacher of _jiujitsu_, a juggler, a quack dentist, Heaven knows what else. Driven by the conscientious inquisitiveness of his race, he had endured hards.h.i.+ps, contempt and rough treatment with the smiling patience inculcated in the j.a.panese people by their education. "We must chew our gall, and bide our time,"

they say, when the too powerful foreigner insults or abuses them.

He had seen the magnificence of our cities, the vastness of our undertakings and had returned to j.a.pan with great relief to find that life among his own people was less strenuous and fierce, that it was ordered by circ.u.mstances and the family system, that less was left to individual courage and enterprise, that things happened more often than things were done. The impersonality of j.a.pan was as restful to him as it is aggravating to a European.

But it must not be imagined that Ito was an idle man. On the contrary, he was exceedingly hard working and ambitious. His dream was to become a statesman, to enjoy unlimited patronage, to make men and to break men, and to die a peer. When he returned to j.a.pan from his wanderings with exactly two s.h.i.+llings in his pocket, this was his programme. Like Cecil Rhodes, his hero among white men, he made a will distributing millions. Then he attached himself to his rich cousins, the Fujinami; and very soon he became indispensable to them. Fujinami Gentaro, an indolent man, gave him more and more authority over the family fortune. It was dirty business, this buying of girls and hiring of pimps, but it was immensely profitable; and more and more of the profits found their way into Ito's private account. Fujinami Gentaro did not seem to care. Takes.h.i.+, the son and heir, was a nonent.i.ty.

Ito's intention was to continue to serve his cousins until he had ama.s.sed a working capital of a hundred thousand pounds. Then he would go into politics.

But the advent of Asako suggested a short cut to his hopes. If he married her he would gain immediate control of a large interest in the Fujinami estate. Besides she had all the qualifications for the wife of a Cabinet Minister, knowledge of foreign languages, ease in foreign society, experience of foreign dress and customs. Moreover, pa.s.sion was stirring in his heart, the swift stormy pa.s.sion of the j.a.panese male, which, when thwarted, drives him towards murder and suicide.

Like many j.a.panese, he had felt the attractiveness of foreign women when he was traveling abroad. Their independence stimulated him, their savagery and their masterful ways. Ito had found in Asako the physical beauty of his own race together with the character and energy which had pleased him so much in white women. Everything seemed to favor his suit. Asako clearly seemed to prefer his company to that of other members of the family. He had a hold over the Fujinami which would compel them to a.s.sent to anything he might require. True, he had a wife already; but she could easily be divorced.

Asako tolerated him, _faute de mieux_. Cousin Sadako was becoming tired of their system of mutual instruction, as she tired sooner or later of everything.

She had developed a romantic interest in one of the pet students, whom the Fujinami kept as an advertis.e.m.e.nt and a bodyguard. He was a pale youth with long greasy hair, spectacles and more gold in his teeth than he had ever placed in his waist-band. Popriety forbade any actual conversation with Sadako; but there was an interchange of letters almost every day, long subjective letters describing states of mind and high ideals, punctuated with shadowy j.a.panese poems and with quotations from the Bible, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Bergson, Eucken, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Smiles.

Sadako told her cousin that the young man was a genius, and would one day be Professor of Literature at the Imperial University.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE REAL s.h.i.+NTO

_Yo no naka wo Nani ni tatoyemu?

Asa-borake Kogi-yuku fune no Ato no s.h.i.+ra-nami_.

To what shall I compare This world?

To the white wake behind A s.h.i.+p that has rowed away At dawn!

When the autumn came and the maple trees turned scarlet, the men returned from their long summer holidays. After that Asako's lot became heavier than ever.

"What is this talk of tall beds and special cooking?" said Mr.

Fujinami Gentaro. "The girl is a j.a.panese. She must live like a j.a.panese and be proud of it."

So Asako had to sleep on the floor alongside her cousin Sadako in one of the downstairs rooms. Her last possession, her privacy, was taken away from her. The soft mattresses which formed the native bed, were not uncomfortable; but Asako discarded at once the wooden pillow, which every j.a.panese woman fits into the nape of her neck, so as to prevent her elaborate _coiffure_ becoming disarranged. As a result, her head was always untidy, a fact upon which her relatives commented.

"She does not look like a great foreign lady now," said Mrs. s.h.i.+dzuye, the mistress of the house. "She looks like _osandon_ (a rough kitchen maid) from a country inn."

The other women t.i.ttered.

One day the old woman of Akabo arrived. Her hair was quite white like spun gla.s.s, and her waxen face was wrinkled like a relief map. Her body was bent double like a lobster; and her eyes were dim with cataracts. Cousin Sadako said with awe that she was over a hundred years old.

Asako had to submit to the indignity of allowing this dessicated hag to pa.s.s her fumbling hands all over her body, pinching her and prodding her. The old woman smelt horribly of _daikon_ (pickled horse-radish). Furthermore the terrified girl had to answer a battery of questions as to her personal habits and her former marital relations. In return, she learned a number of curious facts about herself, of which she had hitherto no inkling. The lucky coincidence of having been born in the hour of the Bird and the day of the Bird set her apart from the rest of womankind as an exceptionally fortunate individual. But, unhappily, the malignant influence of the Dog Year was against her nativity. When once this disaffected animal had been conquered and cast out, Asako's future should be a very bright one.

The family witch agreed with the Fujinami that the Dog had in all probability departed with the foreign husband. Then the toothless crone breathed three times upon the mouth, b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs of Asako; and when this operation was concluded, she stated her opinion that there was no reason, obstetrical or esoteric, why the ransomed daughter of the house of Fujinami should not become the mother of many children.

But on the psychical condition of the family in general she was far from rea.s.suring. Everything about the mansion, the growth of the garden, the flight of the birds, the noises of the night-time, foreboded dire disaster in the near future. The Fujinami were in the grip of a most alarming _inge_ (chain of cause and effect). Several "rough ghosts" were abroad; and were almost certain to do damage before their wrath could be appeased. What was the remedy? It was indeed difficult to prescribe for such complicated cases. Temple charms, however, were always efficacious. The old woman gave the names of some of the shrines which specialized in exorcism.

Some days later the charms were obtained, strips of rice paper with sacred writings and symbols upon them, and were pasted upon posts and lintels all over the house. This was done in Mr. Fujinami's absence.

When he returned, he commented most unfavourably on this act of faith.

The prayer tickets disfigured his house. They looked like luggage labels. They injured his reputation as an _esprit fort_. He ordered the students to remove them.

After this sacrilegious act, the old woman, who had lingered on in the family mansion for several weeks, returned again to Akabo, shaking her white locks and prophesying dark things to come.

For some reason or other, the witch's visit did not improve Asako's position. She was expected to perform little menial services, to bring in food at meal-times and to serve the gentlemen on bended knee, to clap her hands in summons to the servant girls, to ma.s.sage Mrs.

Fujinami, who suffered from rheumatism in the shoulder, and to scrub her back in the bath.

Her wishes were usually ignored; and she was not encouraged to leave the house and grounds. Sadako no longer took her cousin with her to the theatre or to choose kimono patterns at the Mitsukos.h.i.+ store. She was irritated at Asako's failure to learn j.a.panese. It bored her to have to explain everything. She found this girl from Europe silly and undutiful.

Only at night they would chatter as girls will, even if they are enemies; and it was then that Sadako narrated the history of her romance with the young student.

One night, Asako awoke to find that the bed beside her was empty, and that the paper _shoji_ was pushed aside. Nervous and anxious, she rose and stood in the dark veranda outside the room. A cold wind was blowing in from some aperture in the _amado_. This was unusual, for a j.a.panese house in its night attire is hermetically sealed.

Suddenly Sadako appeared from the direction of the wind. Her hair was disheveled. She wore a dark cloak over her parti-coloured night kimono. By the dim light of the _andon_ (a rushlight in a square paper box), Asako could see that the cloak was spotted with rain.

"I have been to _benjo_," said Sadako nervously.

"You have been out in the rain," contradicted her cousin. "You are wet through. You will catch cold."

"_Sa! Damare!_ (Be quiet!)" whispered Sadako, as she threw her cloak aside, "do not talk so loud. See!" She drew from her breast a short sword in a sheath of s.h.a.green. "If you speak one word, I kill you with this."

"What have you done?" asked Asako, trembling.

"What I wished to do," was the sullen answer.

"You have been with Sekine?" Asako mentioned the student's name.

Sadako nodded in a.s.sent. Then she began to cry, hiding her face in her kimono sleeve.

"Do you love him?" Asako could not help asking.