Chieko’s sadness – extract from The Old Capital

Takichiro was drinking festival sake with a guest in the back room. He was not so much drinking as keeping him company. Shige was up and down waiting on them.

“I’m home,” Chieko said.

“You’re early.” Shige looked at her daughter. Chieko greeted her father’s guest.

“Mother, I’m sorry I was too late to help out here.”

“That’s all right.” Shige signalled to her daughter with her eye, and the two of them went into the kitchen, ostensibly to get a bottle of sake. “Chieko, those boys brought you home because you looked so helpless, didn’t they?”

“Yes, Shin’ichi and his older brother…”

“Well, I thought so. Your colour looks bad, and you seem unsteady on your feet.” Shige put her palm to Chieko’s forehead. “You don’t seem to have a fever, but you look so sad. Tonight we have a guest, so you can sleep with me.” She hugged Chieko’s shoulders.

Chieko held back a tear that threatened to fall.

“You go on upstairs in the back to sleep.”

“I will, thank you.” Her heart softened at her mother’s kindness.

“Your father’s a bit lonely, since he doesn’t have many guests… though we did have five or six here for dinner.”

Chieko carried the sake bottle to the parlour.

“I’ve had plenty, thank you. Just this one more will be enough.”

The container shook as she poured the sake, so she used her left hand as well. Still, her hands trembled.

Tonight a light had been put in the Christian lantern. She could faintly see the violets growing in the two hollows of the great maple.

There were no flowers on them now, but the two small violets on the upper and lower hollows – were they Chieko and Naeko? It looked as though the violets could never meet, but they had met tonight? Looking at the violets in the dim light, Chieko was again moved to tears.

Takichiro too noticed something about Chieko. He kept glancing at her.

Chieko stood quietly and went upstairs. The guest bedding had been laid out in Chieko’s room. Taking a pillow from a closet, Chieko crawled into bed.

She buried her face in the pillow and held the edges so no one would hear her sobbing.

Shige came upstairs and noticed that Chieko’s pillow was wet. “You can tell me about it later,” she said as she took out a new pillow for Chieko and immediately started back down. Pausing at the head of the stairs, she looked back but said nothing.

*

It was not that three futons would not fit in the room, but only two had been taken out. One was Chieko’s; it seemed that her mother had already been planning to sleep with her. Two linen summer top sheets, Chieko’s and her mother’s, lay folded at the foot. Shige had prepared her daughter’s bed for her. It was a small act, but Chieko was moved once again by her mother’s kindness.

With that, her tears stopped and her heart was calmed.

“This is my home.”

It was only natural that Chieko should not be able to control the confusion in her heart on meeting Naeko so suddenly.

Chieko stood in front of the mirror stand, looking at her own face. She considered putting on some make-up but decided against it. She simply took a bottle of perfume and sprinkled the tiniest bit on the bedding. Then she adjusted her under sash.

Of course, sleep did not come easily.

“I wonder if I was cold to Naeko.”

When she closed her eyes she could see the beautiful cedar mountains of Nakagawa Village.

Chieko had learned the facts about her real parents from what Naeko had told her.

“I wonder if I should tell my father and mother.”

Most likely, Chieko’s parents here at the shop knew nothing of the place where Chieko was born or her real father and mother.

Even the thought that they were no longer in this world did not bring tears to Chieko’s eyes.

The sound of a Gion band drifted in from the town.

The guest downstairs seemed to be a crepe dealer from somewhere near Nagahma in Omi. The sake had made several rounds, so their voices were rather loud. Snatches of the conversation reached Chieko where she lay in the rear of the second floor.

From The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata. Translated by J. Martin Holman.

Related posts:

1. The sea at Kamakura – Extract from No Longer Human
2. The Transformation of Io – extract from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
3. Double five – Extract from The Autumn of the Patriarch