Kimono by John Paris

J >> John Paris >> Kimono

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

Ito muttered under his breath. That was a contingency which he had
greatly dreaded. He turned to Sadako Fujinami and spoke to her in
voluble Japanese. Sadako whispered in her cousin's ear. Then she rose
and withdrew with Ito.

Geoffrey was left alone with Asako. But was she really the same Asako?
Geoffrey had often seen upper class Japanese ladies at receptions in
the hotel at Tokyo. He had thought how picturesque they were, how well
mannered, how excellent their taste in dress. But they had seemed
to him quite unreal, denizens of a shadow world of bowing, gliding
figures.

He now realised that his former wife had become entirely a Japanese,
a person absolutely different from himself, a visitant from another
sphere. He was English she was Japanese. They were divorced already.

The big man rose from his chair, and held out his hand to his wife.

"I'm sorry, little Asako!" he said, very gently. "You are quite right.
It was a mistake. Good-bye, and--God bless you always!"

With immense relief and gratitude she took the giant's paw in her
own tiny hand. It seemed to have lost its grip, to have become like a
Japanese hand.

He opened the door for her. Once again, as on the altar-steps of St.
George's, the tall shoulders bent over the tiny figure with a movement
of instinctive protection and tenderness. He closed the door behind
her, recrossed the room and stared into the empty fireplace.

After a time, Ito returned. The two men went together to the district
office of the Akasaka Ward. There Geoffrey signed a declaration
in Japanese and English to the effect that his marriage with Asako
Fujinami was cancelled, and that she was free to return to her
father's family.

Next morning, at daylight his ship left Yokohama.

Before he reached Liverpool, war had been declared.

CHAPTER XXII

FUJINAMI ASAKO

_Okite mitsu
Nete mitsu kaya no
Hirosa kana_.

When I rise, I look--
When I lie down, I look--
Alas, how vast is the mosquito-curtain.

Asako Barrington was restored to the name and home of the Fujinami.
Her action had been the result of hereditary instinct, of the
natural current of circumstances, and of the adroit diplomacy of her
relatives. She had been hunted and caught like a wild animal; and
she was soon to find that the walls of her enclosure, which at first
seemed so wide that she perceived them not, were closing in upon her
day by day as in a mediaeval torture chamber, forcing her step by step
towards the unfathomable pit of Japanese matrimony.

The Fujinami had not adopted their foreign cousin out of pure
altruism. Far from it. Like Japanese in general, they resented the
intrusion of a "_tanin_" (outside person) into their intimacy. They
took her for what she was worth to them.

Since Asako was now a member of the family, custom allowed Mr.
Fujinami Gentaro to control her money. But Mr. Ito warned his patron
that, legally, the money was still hers, and hers alone, and that in
case of her marrying a second time it might again slip away. It was
imperative, therefore, to the policy of the Fujinami house that Asako
should marry a Fujinami, and that as soon as possible.

A difficulty here arose, not that Asako might object to her new
husband--it never occurred to the Fujinami that this stranger from
Europe might have opinions quite opposed to Japanese conventions--but
that there were very few adequately qualified suitors. Indeed, in the
direct line of succession there was only young Mr. Fujinami Takeshi,
the youth with the purple blotches, who had distinguished himself
by his wit and his _savoir vivre_ on the night of the first family
banquet.

True, he had a wife already; but she could easily be divorced, as
her family were nobodies. If he married Asako, however, was he still
capable of breeding healthy children? Of course, he might adopt the
children whom he already possessed by his first wife, but the
elder boy showed signs of being mentally deficient, the younger was
certainly deaf and dumb, and the two others were girls and did not
count.

Grandfather Fujinami Gennosuke, who hated and despised his grandson,
was for sweeping him and his brood out of the way altogether, and for
adopting a carefully selected and creditable _yoshi_ (adopted son) by
marriage with either Sadako or Asako.

"But if this Asa is barren?" said Mrs. Fujinami Shidzuye, who
naturally desired that her daughter Sadako's husband should be the
heir of the Fujinami. "That Englishman was strong and healthy. There
was living together for more than a year, and still no child."

"If she is barren, then a son must be adopted," said the old
gentleman.

"To adopt twice in succession is unlucky," objected Mr. Fujinami
Gentaro.

"Then," said Mrs. Shidzuye, "the old woman of Akabo shall come
for consultation. She shall tell if it is possible for her to have
babies."

Akabo was the up-country village, whence the first Fujinami had come
to Tokyo to seek his fortune. The Japanese never completely loses
touch with his ancestral village; and for over a hundred years the
Tokyo Fujinami had paid their annual visit to the mountains of the
North to render tribute to the graves of their forefathers. They still
preserved an inherited faith in the "wise woman" of the district,
who from time to time was summoned to the capital to give her advice.
Their other medical counselor was Professor Kashio, who held degrees
from Munich and Vienna.

* * * * *

During the first days of her self-chosen widowhood Asako was little
better than a convalescent. She had never looked at sorrow before; and
the shock of what she had seen had paralyzed her vitality without as
yet opening her understanding. Like a dog, who in the midst of
his faithful affection has been struck for a fault of which he is
unconscious, she took refuge in darkness, solitude and despair.

The Japanese, who are as a rule intuitively aware of others' emotions,
recognized her case. A room was prepared for her in a distant wing of
the straggling house, a "foreign-style" room in an upper story with
glass in the windows--stained glass too--with white muslin blinds, a
colored lithograph of Napoleon and a real bed, recently purchased on
Sadako's pleading that everything must be done to make life happy for
their guest.

"But she is a Japanese," Mr. Fujinami Gentaro had objected. "It is not
right that a Japanese should sleep upon a tall bed. She must learn to
give up luxurious ways."

Sadako protested that her cousin's health was not yet assured; and so
discipline was relaxed for a time.

Asako spent most of her days in the tall bed, gazing through the open
doorway, across the polished wood veranda like the toffee veranda of
a confectioner's model, past the wandering branch of an old twisted
pine-tree which crouched by the side of the mansion like a faithful
beast, over the pigmy landscape of the garden, to the scale-like roofs
of the distant city, and to the pagoda on the opposite hill.

It rested her to lie thus and look at her country. From time to time
Sadako would steal into the room. Her cousin would leave the invalid
in silence, but she always smiled; and she would bring some offering
with her, a dish of food--Asako's favorite dishes, of which Tanaka had
already compiled a complete list--or sometimes a flower. At the open
door she would pause to shuffle off her pale blue _zori_ (sandals);
and she would glide across the clean rice-straw matting shod in her
snow-white _tabi_ only.

Asako gradually accustomed herself to the noises of the house. First,
there was the clattering of the _amado_, the wooden shutters whose
removal announced the beginning of the day, then the gurgling and the
expectorations which accompanied the family ablutions, then the harsh
sound of the men's voices and their rattling laughter, the sound
of their _geta_ on the gravel paths of the garden like the tedious
dropping of heavy rain on an iron roof, then the flicking and dusting
of the maids as they went about their daily _soji_ (house-cleaning),
their shrill mouselike chirps and their silly giggle; then the
afternoon stillness when every one was absent or sleeping; and then,
the revival of life and bustle at about six o'clock, when the clogs
were shuffled off at the front door, when the teacups began to jingle,
and when sounds of swishing water came up from the bath-house, the
crackle of the wood-fire under the bathtub, the smell of the burning
logs, and the distant odours of the kitchen.

Outside, the twilight was beginning to gather. A big black crow
flopped lazily on to the branch of the neighbouring pine-tree. His
harsh croak disturbed Asako's mind like a threat. High overhead passed
a flight of wild geese in military formation on their way to the
continent of Asia. Lights began to peep among the trees. Behind the
squat pagoda a sky of raspberry pink closed the background.

The twilight is brief in Japan. The night is velvety; and the
moonlight and the starlight transfigure the dolls' house architecture,
the warped pine-trees, the feathery bamboo clumps and the pagoda
spires.

From a downstair room there came the twang of cousin Sadako's _koto_,
a kind of zither instrument, upon which she played interminable
melancholy sonatas of liquid, detached notes, like desultory thoughts
against a background of silence. There was no accompaniment to this
music and no song to chime with it; for, as the Japanese say, the
accompaniment for _koto_ music is the summer night-time and its heavy
fragrance, and the voice with which it harmonizes is the whisper of
the breeze in the pine-branches.

Long after Sadako had finished her practice, came borne upon the
distance the still more melancholy pipe of a student's flute. This was
the last human sound. After that the night was left to the orchestra
of the insects--the grasshoppers, the crickets and the _semi_
(cicadas). Asako soon was able to distinguish at least ten or twelve
different songs, all metallic in character, like clock springs being
slowly wound up and then let down with a run. The night and the house
vibrated with these infinitesimal chromatics. Sometimes Asako
thought the creatures must have got into her room, and feared for
entanglements in her hair. Then she remembered that her mother's
nickname had been "the _Semi_" and that she had been so called because
she was always happy and singing in her little house by the river.

This memory roused Asako one day with a wish to see how her own house
was progressing. This wish was the first positive thought which had
stirred her mind since her husband had left her; and it marked a stage
in her convalescence.

"If the house is ready," she thought "I will go there soon. The
Fujinamis will not want me to live here permanently."

This showed how little she understood as yet the Japanese family
system, whereby relatives remain as permanent guests for years on end.

"Tanaka" she said one morning, in what was almost her old manner, "I
think I will have the motor car to-day."

Tanaka had become her body servant as in the old days. At first
she had resented the man's reappearance, which awakened such cruel
memories. She had protested against him to Sadako, who had smiled and
promised. But Tanaka continued his ministrations; and Asako had
not the strength to go on protesting. As a matter of fact, he
was specially employed by Mr. Fujinami Gentaro to spy on Asako's
movements, an easy task hitherto, since she had not moved from her
room.

"Where is the motor car, Tanaka?" she asked again.

He grinned, as Japanese always do when embarrassed.

"Very sorry for you," he answered; "motor car has gone away."

"Has Captain Barrington--?" Asako began instinctively; then,
remembering that Geoffrey was now many thousands of miles from Japan,
she turned her face to the wall and began to cry.

"Young Fujinami San," said Tanaka, "has taken motor car. He go away
to mountains with _geisha_ girl. Very bad, young Fujinami San, very
_roue_."

Asako thought that it was rather impertinent to borrow her own motor
car without asking permission, even if she was their guest. She did
not yet understand that she and all her possessions belonged from
henceforth to her family--to her male relatives, that is to say; for
she was only a woman.

"Old Mr. Fujinami San," Tanaka went on, happy to find his mistress, to
whom he was attached in a queer Japanese sort of way, interested and
responsive at last, "old Mr. Fujinami San, he also go to mountain
with _geisha_ girl, but different mountain. Japanese people all very
_roue_. All Japanese people like to go away in summer season with
_geisha_ girl. Very bad custom. Old Mr. Fujinami San, not so very
bad, keep same _geisha_ girl very long time. Perhaps Ladyship see one
little girl, very nice little girl, come sometimes with Miss Sadako
and bring meal-time things. That little girl is _geisha_ girl's
daughter. Perhaps old Mr. Fujinami San's daughter also, I think: very
bastard: I don't know!"

So he rambled on in the fashion of servants all the world over, until
Asako knew all the ramifications of her relatives, legitimate and
illegitimate.

She gathered that the men had all left Tokyo during the hot season,
and that only the women were left in the house. This encouraged her
to descend from her eyrie, and to endeavour to take up her position in
her family, which was beginning to appear the less reassuring the more
she learned about its history.

The life of a Japanese lady of quality is peculiarly tedious. She is
relieved from the domestic cares which give occupation to her humbler
sisters. But she is not treated as an equal or as a companion by her
menfolk, who are taught that marriage is for business and not for
pleasure, and consequently that home-life is a bore. She is supposed
to find her own amusements, such as flower-arrangement, tea-ceremony,
music, kimono-making and the composition of poetry. More often, this
refined and innocent ideal degenerates into a poor trickle of an
existence, enlivened only by scrappy magazine reading, servants'
gossip, empty chatter about clothes, neighbours and children,
backbiting, envying and malice.

Once Sadako took her cousin to a charity entertainment given for the
Red Cross at the house of a rich nobleman. A hundred or more ladies
were present; but stiff civility prevailed. None of the guests seemed
to know each other. There was no friendly talking. There were no
men guests. There was three hours' agony of squatting, a careful
adjustment of expensive kimonos, weak tea and tasteless cakes, a blank
staring at a dull conjuring performance, and deadly silence.

"Do you ever have dances?" Asako asked her cousin.

"The _geisha_ dance, because they are paid," said Sadako primly. Her
pose was no longer cordial and sympathetic. She set herself up as
mentor to this young savage, who did not know the usages of civilized
society.

"No, not like that," said the girl from England; "but dancing among
yourselves with your men friends."

"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 Japanese 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 Japanese husband. I think it is the only
way."

"Oh, no," the poor girl shivered; "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 ship, a teacher of _jiujitsu_, a juggler,
a quack dentist, Heaven knows what else. Driven by the conscientious
inquisitiveness of his race, he had endured hardships, contempt and
rough treatment with the smiling patience inculcated in the Japanese
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 Japan with great relief to find that
life among his own people was less strenuous and fierce, that it was
ordered by circumstances 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 Japan 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 Japan from his wanderings
with exactly two shillings 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. Takeshi, the son and heir, was a nonentity.
Ito's intention was to continue to serve his cousins until he had
amassed 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, passion
was stirring in his heart, the swift stormy passion of the Japanese
male, which, when thwarted, drives him towards murder and suicide.

Like many Japanese, 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 assent 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 advertisement 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 Japanese 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 SHINTO

_Yo no naka wo
Nani ni tatoyemu?
Asa-borake
Kogi-yuku fune no
Ato no shira-nami_.

To what shall I compare
This world?
To the white wake behind
A ship 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 Japanese. She must live like a
Japanese 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 Japanese 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. Shidzuye,
the mistress of the house. "She looks like _osandon_ (a rough kitchen
maid) from a country inn."

The other women tittered.

One day the old woman of Akabo arrived. Her hair was quite white like
spun glass, 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 pass 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, breasts 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 reassuring. 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 massage 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 Mitsukoshi store. She
was irritated at Asako's failure to learn Japanese. It bored her to
have to explain everything. She found this girl from Europe silly and
undutiful.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23