The Setting Sun Read online

  I have sometimes myself thought things would taste better if we ate with our fingers, but I refrain from doing so, for fear that if a high-class beggar like myself imitates Mother badly, it might make me look a beggar plain and simple.

  My brother Naoji says that we are no match for Mother, and I have at times felt something akin to despair at the difficulty of imitating her. Once, in the back garden of our house in Nishikata Street—it was a beautiful moonlight evening in the beginning of autumn—Mother and I were sitting in the summer-house by the edge of the pond admiring the moon, when she got up and went into a nearby clump of flowering shrubs. She called to me from among the white blossoms with a little laugh, “Kazuko, guess what Mother is doing now.”

  “Picking flowers.”

  She raised her little voice in a laugh. “Wee-wee!”

  I felt there was something truly adorable in her which I could not possibly have imitated.

  This has been quite a digression from this morning’s soup, but I recently learned from a book I was reading how in the days of the French monarchy the court ladies thought nothing of relieving themselves in the palace gardens or in a corner of the corridors. Such innocence really charms me, and I wondered if Mother might not be one of the last of that kind of lady.

  At any rate, this morning she let out a little cry—ah—as she sipped the soup, and I asked if it were a hair, only to be informed that it was not.

  “Perhaps it was too salty.”

  The soup this morning was green pea, from an American can I got on the ration and made into a kind of potage. I haven’t any confidence in my abilities as a cook, though it is one of the few confidences a girl should have, and couldn’t help worrying about the soup, even after Mother said that nothing was wrong.

  “You made it very well,” Mother said in a serious tone. After she had finished the soup, she ate some rice-balls wrapped in seaweed.

  I have never liked breakfast and am not hungry before ten o’clock. This morning I managed to get through the soup, but it was an effort to eat anything. I put some rice-balls on a plate and poked at them with my chopsticks, mashing them down. I picked up a piece with my chopsticks, which I held at right angles to my mouth, the way Mother holds a spoon while eating soup, and pushed it into my mouth, as if I were feeding a little bird. While I dawdled over my food, Mother, who had already finished her meal, quietly rose and stood with her back against a wall warmed by the morning sun. She watched me eating for a while in silence.

  “Kazuko, you mustn’t eat that way. You should try to make breakfast the meal you enjoy most.”

  “Do you enjoy it, Mother?”

  “It doesn’t matter about me—I’m not sick anymore.”

  “But I’m the one who’s not sick.”

  “No, no.” Mother, with a sad smile, shook her head.

  Five years ago I was laid up with what was called lung trouble, although I was perfectly well aware that I had willed the sickness on myself. Mother’s recent illness, on the other hand, had really been nerve-racking and depressing. And yet, Mother’s only concern was for me.

  “Ah,” I murmured.

  “What’s the matter?” This time it was Mother’s turn to ask.

  We exchanged glances and experienced something like a moment of absolute understanding. I giggled and Mother’s face lighted into a smile.

  Whenever I am assailed by some painfully embarrassing thought, that strange faint cry comes from my lips. This time I had suddenly recalled, all too vividly, the events surrounding my divorce six years ago, and before I knew it, my little cry had come out. Why, I wondered, had Mother uttered it too? It couldn’t possibly be that she had recalled something embarrassing from her past as I had. No, and yet there was something.

  “What was it you remembered just now, Mother?”

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  “About me?”

  “No.”

  “About Naoji?”

  “Yes.” Then, checking her words, Mother leaned her head to one side and added, “Perhaps.”

  My brother Naoji was called up while still at the University and was sent off to some island in the South Pacific. We have had no news of him, and he is still missing, even after the end of the war. Mother has resigned herself to never seeing Naoji again. At least that is what she says, but I have never once “resigned” myself. All I can think, is that we certainly will see him again.

  “I thought I had given up all hope, but when I ate your delicious soup I thought of Naoji, and it was too much for me. I wish I had been better to him.”

  Along about the time that Naoji first entered high school he became fanatically absorbed in literature, and started to lead a life almost like a delinquent, causing Heaven only knows how much grief to Mother. And in spite of his dreadful behavior, Mother thought of Naoji as she ate her soup and uttered that cry. I angrily pushed the food into my mouth and my eyes grew hot.

  “He’s all right. Naoji’s all right. Scoundrels like Naoji simply don’t die. The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people. Naoji wouldn’t die even if you clubbed him with a stick.”

  Mother smiled. “Then I suppose that you’ll die an early death.” She was teasing me.

  “Why should I? I’m bad and ugly both! I’m good for eighty years!”

  “Really? In that case, your mother is good for ninety!”

  “Yes,” I said, a little perplexed. Scoundrels live a long time. The beautiful die young. Mother is beautiful. But I want her to live a long time. I was at a loss what to say. “You are being difficult,” I protested. My lower lip began to tremble, and tears brimmed over.

  I wonder if I should tell about the snake. One afternoon, four or five days ago, the children of the neighborhood found a dozen or so snake eggs concealed in the stakes of the garden fence. They insisted that they were viper eggs. It occurred to me that if we were to have a dozen vipers crawling about our bamboo thicket we would never be able to go into the garden without taking special precautions. I said to the children, “Let’s burn the eggs,” and the children followed me, dancing with joy.

  I made a pile of leaves and brushwood near the thicket and set it afire, throwing the eggs into the flames one after another. They did not catch fire for the longest time. The children put more leaves and twigs on the flames and made them blaze more vigorously, but the eggs still did not look as if they would ever burn.

  The girl from the farmhouse down the road called from the other side of the fence to ask what we were doing.

  “We are burning viper eggs. I’m terrified that the vipers might get hatched.”

  “About how big are the eggs?”

  “About the size of a quail’s egg and pure white.”

  “Then they’re just ordinary harmless snake’s eggs and not viper eggs. Raw eggs don’t burn very well, you know.”

  The girl went off laughing as if it were all very funny.

  The fire had been blazing for about half an hour, but the eggs simply would not burn. I had the children retrieve them from the flames and bury them under the plum tree. I gathered together some pebbles to serve as a grave-marker.

  “Let’s pray, everybody.” I knelt down and joined my hands. The children obediently knelt behind me and joined their hands in prayer. This done, I left the children and slowly climbed the stone steps. Mother was standing at the top, in the shade of the wisteria trellis.

  “You’ve done a very cruel thing,” she said.

  “I thought they might be viper eggs, but they were from an ordinary snake. Anyway, I gave them a regular burial. There’s nothing to be upset about.” I realized how unfortunate it was that Mother should have seen me.

  Mother is by no means superstitious, but she has had a mortal dread of snakes ever since ten years ago, when Father died in our house in Nishikata Street. Just before Father passed away, Mother, seeing what she thought was a thin black cord lying near Father’s bed, casually went to pick it up, only to discover that it was a snake. It glided off
into the corridor, where it disappeared. Only Mother and my uncle Wada noticed it. They looked at each other but did not say anything, for fear of disturbing the peace of Father’s last moments. That is why even Naoji and I (who happened to be in the room) knew nothing about the snake.

  But I know for a fact from having seen it that on the evening of my Father’s death, there were snakes twisted around all the trees by the garden pond. I am twenty-nine now, which means that when my father died ten years ago I was already nineteen, and no longer a child. Ten years have gone by, but my memories of what happened then are still perfectly fresh, and I am not likely to be mistaken. I was walking by the pond intending to cut flowers for the service. I stopped by a bank of azaleas and suddenly noticed a little snake twined around the tip of an azalea branch. This startled me a little. Then when I went to cut off a bough of kerria roses from the next bush, I saw a snake there too. On the rose of Sharon next to it, on the maple, the broom, the wisteria, the cherry tree—on every bush and tree—there was a snake. This didn’t especially frighten me. I only felt somehow that the snakes, like myself, were mourning my father’s death and had crawled out from their holes to pay his spirit homage. Later, when I whispered to Mother about the snakes in the garden, she took it calmly, and merely inclined her head a little to the side, as if she were thinking of something. She did not make any comment.

  And yet it is true that these two incidents involving snakes made Mother detest them ever after. Or it might be more correct to say that she held them in fear and awe, that she came to dread them.

  When Mother discovered that I had burned the snake eggs, she certainly must have felt that there was something ill-omened in the act. This realization brought home to me the feeling that I had done a terrible thing in burning the eggs. I was so tormented by the fear that I might have caused an evil curse to fall on Mother that I could not put the event out of my mind, not that day, or the next, or the next. And yet this morning in the dining-room, I had blurted out that idiotic remark about the beautiful dying young, which I could not cover up afterwards, no matter what I said, and had ended up in tears. Later, when I was clearing up the breakfast dishes, I had the unbearable sensation that some horrible little snake which would shorten Mother’s life had crawled into my breast.

  That same day I saw a snake in the garden. It was a beautiful, serene morning, and after finishing my work in the kitchen, I thought I would take a wicker chair out onto the lawn and do some knitting. As I stepped down into the garden with the chair in my arms, I saw the snake by the iris stalks. My only reaction was one of mild revulsion. I carried the chair back to the porch, sat down, and began to knit. In the afternoon, when I went into the garden intending to get from our library (which is in a storehouse at the bottom of the garden) a volume of Marie Laurencin’s paintings, a snake was crawling slowly, slowly over the lawn. It was the same snake that I had seen in the morning, a delicate, graceful snake. It was peacefully crossing the lawn. It stopped when it reached the shade of a wild rose, lifted its head, and quivered its flame-like tongue. It appeared to be searching for something, but after a few moments dropped its head and fell to the ground, as though overcome with weariness. I said to myself, “It must be a female.” Then too the strongest impression I received was one of the beauty of the snake. I went to the storehouse and took out the volume of paintings. On the way back I stole a glance at where I had seen the snake, but it had already vanished.

  Toward evening, while I was drinking tea with Mother, I happened to look out at the garden just as the snake again slowly crawled into view, by the third step of the stone staircase.

  Mother also noticed it. “Is that the snake?” She rushed over to me with these words and stood cowering beside me, clutching my hands. It flashed into my mind what she was thinking.

  “You mean the mother of the eggs?” I came out with the words.

  “Yes, yes.” Mother’s voice was strained.

  We held each other’s hands and stood in silence, watching the snake with bated breath. The snake, languidly coiled on the stone, began to stir again. With a faltering motion it weakly traversed the step and slithered off toward the irises.

  “It has been wandering around the garden ever since this morning,” I whispered. Mother sighed and sat heavily on a chair.

  “That’s what it is, I’m sure. She’s looking for her eggs. The poor thing.” Mother spoke in a voice of dejection.

  I giggled nervously, not knowing what else to do.

  The evening sun striking Mother’s face made her eyes shine almost blue. Her face, which seemed to wear about it a faint suggestion of anger, was so lovely that I felt like flying to her. It occurred to me then that Mother’s face rather resembled that of the unfortunate snake we had just seen, and I had the feeling, for whatever reason, that the ugly snake dwelling in my breast might one day end by devouring this beautiful, grief-stricken mother snake.

  I placed my hand on Mother’s soft, delicate shoulder and felt a physical agitation which I could not explain.

  It was at the beginning of December of the year of Japan’s unconditional surrender that we left our house in Nishikata Street in Tokyo and moved to this rather Chinese-style house in Izu. After my father died, it was Uncle Wada—Mother’s younger brother and now her only surviving blood relation—who had taken care of our household expenses. But with the end of the war everything changed, and Uncle Wada informed Mother that we couldn’t go on as we were, that we had no choice but to sell the house and dismiss all the servants, and that the best thing for us would be to buy a nice little place somewhere in the country where the two of us could live as we pleased. Mother understands less of money matters than a child, and when Uncle Wada described to her our situation, her only reaction apparently was to ask him to do whatever he thought best.

  At the end of November a special-delivery letter arrived from my uncle, informing us that Viscount Kawata’s villa was for sale. The house stood on high ground with a good view and included about half an acre of cultivated land. The neighborhood, we were told, was famous for its plum blossoms and was warm in winter and cool in summer. Uncle Wada’s letter concluded, “I believe that you will enjoy living there. It is apparently necessary, however, for you to have a personal interview with the other party, so would you please come tomorrow to my office?”

  “Are you going, Mother?” I asked.

  “I must,” she said, smiling in an almost unbearably pathetic way. “He asked me to.”

  Mother left the next day a little after noon. She was accompanied by our former chauffeur, who escorted her back at about eight the same evening.

  She came into my room and sat down with her hand against my desk, as if she might collapse on the spot. “It’s all decided,” were her only words.

  “What has been decided?”

  “Everything.”

  “But,” I said in surprise, “before you have even seen what kind of house it is?”

  Mother raised one elbow to the desk, touched her hand to her forehead, and let out a little sigh. “Uncle Wada says that it’s a nice place. I feel as if I would just as soon move there as I am, without even opening my eyes.” She lifted her head and smiled faintly. Her face seemed a little thin and very beautiful.

  “Yes, that’s so,” I chimed in, vanquished by the purity of Mother’s trust in Uncle Wada.

  “Then you shut your eyes, too.”

  We both laughed, but after our laughter had died away, we felt terribly depressed.

  The workmen came every day to our house from then on, and packing for the move began. Uncle Wada also paid us a visit and made the necessary arrangements so that everything which was to be sold could be disposed of. Okimi, the maid, and I were busy with such tasks as putting the clothes in order and burning rubbish in the garden, but Mother gave us not the slightest assistance. She spent every day in ber room dilly-dallying over something.

  Once I screwed up the courage to ask her, a little sharply, “What’s the matter? Don’t you
feel at all like going to Izu?”

  “No,” was all she answered, a vague look on her face.

  It took about ten days to complete the removal preparations. One evening when I was out in the garden with Okimi burning some waste-paper and straw, Mother emerged from her room and stood on the porch, silently watching the blazing fire. A cold greyish wind from the west was blowing, and the smoke crawled over the ground. I happened to look up at Mother’s face and was startled to see how poor her coloring was, worse than I had ever seen it before.

  “Mother, you don’t look well!” I cried. Mother answered with a wan smile, “It’s nothing.” She moved soundlessly back to her room.

  That night, because our bedding had already been packed, Okimi slept on a sofa while Mother and I slept together in her room on bedding borrowed from a neighbor.

  Mother said in a voice which sounded so old and weak that it frightened me, “I am going to Izu because you are with me, because I have you.”

  I was taken aback by this unexpected remark. “And what if you didn’t have me?” I asked in spite of myself.

  Mother suddenly burst into tears. “The best thing for me would be to die. I wish I could die in this house where your father died.” She spoke in broken accents, weeping more and more convulsively.

  Never had Mother spoken to me in such a feeble voice, and never before had she let me see her weeping with such abandon. Not even when my father died, or when I was married, or when I came back to Mother pregnant, or when the baby was stillborn in the hospital, or when later I was sick and confined to my bed, or, for that matter, when Naoji had done something bad—never had she shown such weakness. During the ten years since Father’s death, Mother had been just as easy-going and gentle as while he was alive. Naoji and I had taken advantage of her to grow up without concerning ourselves about anything. Now Mother no longer had any money. She had spent it all on us, on Naoji and myself, without begrudging us a penny, and she was being forced to leave the house where she had passed so many years to enter on a life of misery in a cottage without a single servant. If Mother had been mean and stingy and scolded us, or had been the kind of person who secretly devises ways to increase her fortune, she would never have wished for death that way, no matter how much times had changed. For the first time in my life I realized what a horrible, miserable, salvationless hell it is to be without money. My heart filled with emotion, but I was in such anguish that the tears would not come. I wondered if the feeling I experienced then was what people mean by the well-worn phrase “dignity of human life.” I lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling incapable of the slightest motion, my body stiff as a stone.