Thousand Cranes (2 page)

‘We did have a gentleman earlier, but he left. You are the one bright spot.’

‘Hardly bright.’

‘Oh, certainly, you have all the qualifications. The one spot of scarlet.’

Kikuji waved his hand to indicate that he would prefer a less conspicuous door.

The young lady was wrapping her discarded
tabi
in the thousand-crane kerchief. She stood aside to let him pass.

The anteroom was cluttered with boxes of sweets, tea utensils brought by Chikako, and bundles that belonged to the guests. In the far corner a maid was washing something.

Chikako came in.

‘Well, what do you think of her? A nice girl, isn’t she?’

‘The one with the thousand-crane kerchief?’

‘Kerchief? How would I know about kerchiefs? The one who was standing here, the pretty one. She’s the Inamura girl.’

Kikuji nodded vaguely.

‘Kerchief. What odd things you notice. A person can’t be too careful. I thought you had come together. I was delighted.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You met on the way. It’s a sign of a bond between you. And your father knew Mr Inamura.’

‘Oh?’

‘The family had a raw-silk business in Yokohama. She knows nothing about today. You can look her over at your leisure.’

Chikako’s voice was no small one, and Kikuji was in an agony of apprehension lest she be heard through the paper-paneled door that separated them from the main party. Suddenly she brought her face close to his.

‘But there’s a complication.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Mrs Ota is here, and her daughter with her.’ She studied Kikuji’s expression. ‘I didn’t invite her. But it’s been the rule that anyone who
happens to be in the neighborhood can drop in. The other day I even had some Americans. I’m sorry, but what am I to do when she gets wind of an affair? Of course she doesn’t know about you and the Inamura girl.’

‘About me and the Inamura girl? But I …’ Kikuji wanted to say that he had not come prepared for a
miai,
a meeting the announced purpose of which was to view a prospective bride. Somehow the words would not come. His throat muscles stiffened.

‘But Mrs Ota is the one who should be uncomfortable. You can pretend that nothing is wrong.’

Chikako’s way of dismissing the matter annoyed him.

Her intimacy with his father had evidently been of short duration. For the rest of his father’s life, however, Chikako made herself useful in his house. She would come to help in the kitchen when there was to be a tea ceremony and even when ordinary guests were expected.

The idea that Kikuji’s mother should begin feeling jealous of a sexless Chikako seemed funny, worth only a wry smile. No doubt his mother came to sense that his father had seen the birthmark, but the storm had passed; and Chikako, as if she too had quite forgotten, became his mother’s companion.

In the course of time Kikuji too came to treat her lightly. As he turned his childish tantrums on her, the suffocating revulsion of his younger days seemed to fade.

It was perhaps an appropriate life for Chikako, that she had lapsed into sexlessness and been made a convenient fixture.

With Kikuji’s family her base, she was modestly successful as an instructor in the tea ceremony.

Kikuji even felt a certain faint sympathy for her when, upon his father’s death, it came to him that she had repressed the woman in her after that one brief, fleeting affair.

The hostility of Kikuji’s mother, moreover, was held in check by the question of Mrs Ota.

After the death of Ota, who had been a companion in the pursuit of tea, Kikuji’s father had undertaken to dispose of Ota’s tea utensils, and he had thus been drawn to the widow.

Chikako hastened to inform Kikuji’s mother.

Chikako of course became his mother’s ally – indeed a too hard-working ally. She prowled after his father, she frequently went to threaten Mrs Ota. All her own latent jealousy seemed to explode.

Kikuji’s quiet, introspective mother, taken aback at this flaming intervention, worried rather about what people might think.

Even in front of Kikuji, Chikako would berate Mrs Ota, and when his mother showed signs of displeasure, Chikako would say that it did Kikuji no harm to hear.

‘And the time before, too, when I went to have it out with her, there was the child, listening to everything. I ask you, didn’t I all of a sudden hear sniffling in the next room?’

‘A girl?’ Kikuji’s mother frowned.

‘Yes. Eleven years old, I believe Mrs Ota said. Really, there is something wrong with that woman. I thought she would scold the girl for eavesdropping, and what did she do but get up and bring her in, and sit holding her, right there in front of me. I suppose she needed a supporting actor to help with the sobbing.’

‘But don’t you think it’s a little sad for the child?’

‘That’s exactly why we should use the child to get back at her. The child knows everything. I must say that it’s a pretty child, though. A round little face.’ Chikako looked at Kikuji. ‘Suppose we have Kikuji here speak to his father.’

‘Try not to spread the poison too far, if you don’t mind.’ Even Kikuji’s mother had to protest.

‘You keep the poison dammed up inside you, that’s the whole trouble. Pull yourself together; spit it all out. See how thin you are, and she all plump and glowing. There really is something not right about her – she thinks that if she weeps pathetically
enough, everyone will understand. And right there in the room where she sees Mr Mitani, she has a picture of her own husband on exhibit. I’m surprised Mr Mitani hasn’t spoken to her about it.’

And, after the death of Kikuji’s father, this Mrs Ota came to Chikako’s tea ceremony and even brought her daughter.

Kikuji felt the touch of something cold.

Chikako said that she had not invited Mrs Ota today. Still it was astonishing: the two women had been seeing each other since his father’s death. Perhaps even the daughter was taking tea lessons.

‘If it bothers you, I might ask her to leave.’ Chikako looked into his eyes.

‘It makes no difference to me. Of course, if she wants to go …’

‘If she were a person who thought of such things, she wouldn’t have brought so much unhappiness to your father and mother.’

‘The daughter is with her?’ Kikuji had never seen the daughter.

It seemed wrong to meet the girl of the thousand cranes here before Mrs Ota. And he was even more repelled at the thought of meeting the daughter today.

But Chikako’s voice clawed at his ear and scraped at his nerves. ‘Well, she will know I’m here. I can’t run away now.’ He stood up.

He went in through the door by the alcove, and took his place at the upper end of the room.

Chikako followed close after him. ‘This is Mr Mitani. Old Mr Mitani’s son.’ Her tone was most formal.

Kikuji made his bow, and as he raised his head he had a clear view of the daughter. Somewhat flustered, he had at first not distinguished one lady from another in the bright flood of kimonos. He saw now that Mrs Ota was directly opposite him.

‘Kikuji.’ It was Mrs Ota. Her voice, audible throughout the room, was frankly affectionate. ‘I haven’t written in so long. And it’s been so very long since I last saw you.’ She tugged at the
daughter’s sleeve, urging her to be quick with her greetings. The daughter flushed and looked at the floor.

To Kikuji this was indeed odd. He could not detect the faintest suggestion of hostility in Mrs Ota’s manner. She seemed wholly warm, tender, overcome with pleasure at an unexpected meeting. One could only conclude that she was wholly unaware of her place in the assembly.

The daughter sat stiffly, with bowed head.

At length noticing, Mrs Ota, too, flushed. She still looked at Kikuji, however, as if she wanted to rush to his side, or as if there were things she must say to him. ‘You are studying tea, then, are you?’

‘I know nothing at all about it.’

‘Really? But you have it in your blood.’ Her emotions seemed too much for her. Her eyes were moist.

Kikuji had not seen her since his father’s funeral.

She had hardly changed in four years.

The white neck, rather long, was as it had been, and the full shoulders that strangely matched the slender neck – it was a figure young for her years. The mouth and nose were small in proportion to the eyes. The little nose, if one bothered to notice, was cleanly modeled and most engaging. When she spoke, her lower lip was thrust forward a little, as if in a pout.

The daughter had inherited the long neck and the full shoulders. Her mouth was larger, however, and tightly closed. There was something almost funny about the mother’s tiny lips beside the daughter’s.

Sadness clouded the girl’s eyes, darker than her mother’s.

Chikako poked at the embers in the hearth. ‘Miss Inamura, suppose you make tea for Mr Mitani. I don’t believe you’ve had your turn yet.’

The girl of the thousand cranes stood up.

Kikuji had noticed her beside Mrs Ota.

He had avoided looking at her, however, once he had seen Mrs Ota and the daughter.

Chikako was of course showing the girl off for his inspection.

When she had taken her place at the hearth, she turned to Chikako.

‘And which bowl shall I use?’

‘Let me see. The Oribe
³
should do,’ Chikako answered. ‘It belonged to Mr Mitani’s father. He was very fond of it, and he gave it to me.’

Kikuji remembered the tea bowl Chikako had placed before the girl. It had indeed belonged to his father, and his father had received it from Mrs Ota.

And what of Mrs Ota, seeing at the ceremony today a bowl that had been treasured by her dead husband and passed from Kikuji’s father to Chikako?

Kikuji was astounded at Chikako’s tactlessness.

But one could not avoid concluding that Mrs Ota, too, showed a certain want of tact.

Here, making tea for him, clean against the rankling histories of the middle-aged women, the Inamura girl seemed beautiful to him.

3

Unaware that she was on display, she went through the ceremony without hesitation, and she herself set the tea before Kikuji.

After drinking, Kikuji looked at the bowl. It was black Oribe, splashed with white on one side, and there decorated, also in black, with crook-shaped bracken shoots.

‘You must remember it,’ said Chikako from across the room.

Kikuji gave an evasive answer and put the bowl down.

‘The pattern has the feel of the mountains in it,’ said Chikako. ‘One of the best bowls I know for early spring – your father often used it. We’re just a little out of season, but then I thought that for Kikuji …’

‘But what difference does it make that my father owned it for a little while? It’s four hundred years old, after all – its history goes back to Momoyama and Rikyū
⁴
himself. Tea masters have looked after it and passed it down through the centuries. My father is of very little importance.’ So Kikuji tried to forget the associations the bowl called up.

It had passed from Ota to his wife, from the wife to Kikuji’s father, from Kikuji’s father to Chikako; and the two men, Ota and Kikuji’s father, were dead, and here were the two women. There was something almost weird about the bowl’s career.

Here, again, Ota’s widow and daughter, and Chikako, and the Inamura girl, and other young girls too, were holding the old tea bowl in their hands, and bringing it to their lips.

‘Might I have tea from the Oribe myself?’ asked Mrs Ota suddenly. ‘You gave me a different one last time.’

Kikuji was startled afresh. Was the woman foolish, or shameless?

He was overcome with pity for the daughter, still sitting with bowed head.

For Mrs Ota, the Inamura girl once more went through the ceremony. Everyone was watching her. She probably did not know the history of the black Oribe. She went through the practiced motions.

It was a straightforward performance, quite without personal quirks. Her bearing, from shoulders to knees, suggested breeding and refinement.

The shadow of young leaves fell on the paper-paneled door. One noted a soft reflection from the shoulders and the long sleeves of the gay kimono. The hair seemed luminous.

The light was really too bright for a tea cottage, but it made the girl’s youth glow. The tea napkin, as became a young girl, was red, and it impressed one less with its softness than with its freshness, as if the girl’s hand were bringing a red flower into bloom.

And one saw a thousand cranes, small and white, start up in flight around her.

Mrs Ota took the black Oribe in the palm of her hand. ‘The green tea against the black, like traces of green in early spring.’ But not even she mentioned that the bowl had belonged to her husband.

Afterward there was a perfunctory inspection of the tea utensils. The girls knew little about them, and were for the most part satisfied with Chikako’s explanation.

The water jar and the tea measure had belonged to Kikuji’s father. Neither he nor Chikako mentioned the fact.

As Kikuji sat watching the girls leave, Mrs Ota came toward him.

‘I’m afraid I was very rude. I may have annoyed you, but when I saw you it seemed that the old days came before everything.’

‘Oh?’

‘But see what a gentleman you’ve become.’ She looked as if she might weep. ‘Oh, yes. Your mother. I meant to go to the funeral, and then somehow couldn’t.’

Kikuji looked uncomfortable.

‘Your father and then your mother. You must be very lonely.’

‘Yes, perhaps I am.’

‘You’re not leaving yet?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact …’

‘There are so many things we must talk about, sometime.’

‘Kikuji.’ Chikako called from the next room.

Mrs Ota stood up regretfully. Her daughter had gone out and was waiting in the garden.

The two of them left after nodding their farewell to Kikuji. There was a look of appeal in the girl’s eyes.

Chikako, with a maid and two or three favorite pupils, was cleaning the other room.

‘And what did Mrs Ota have to say?’