Beauty and Sadness Read Free

with milk—against his arm.
    Her mother came in and called to Otoko. Perhaps she had been just outside.
    Oki kept his arms around her.
    “I can’t breathe,” she said. “Let me go.”
    “Will you lie still? You won’t move?”
    “I’ll lie still.”
    He released her, and her shoulders sagged. New tears began to seep through her closed eyelids.
    “Mother, are you going to cremate it?”
    There was no answer.
    “Such a tiny baby?”
    Again her mother did not answer.
    “Didn’t you say I had jet-black hair when I was born?”
    “Yes, jet black.”
    “Was my baby’s hair like that? Mother, could you save some for me?”
    “I don’t know, Otoko.” Her mother hesitated, and then blurted out: “You can have another one!” She turned away frowning, as if she wanted to swallow her own words.
    Had not Otoko’s mother, and even Oki himself, secretly hoped the child would never see the light of day? Otoko had given birth in a dingy little clinic on the outskirts of Tokyo. Oki felt a sharp pang at the thought that the baby’s life might have been saved if it had been cared for in a good hospital. He had taken her to the clinic alone. Her mother could not endure it. The doctor was a middle-aged man with the reddened face of an alcoholic. The young nurse looked accusingly at Oki. Otoko was wearing a kimono—still of a childish cut—with a matching cloak of cheap, dark-blue silk.
    The image of a premature baby with jet-black hair appeared before Oki, there at Mt. Arashi over twenty years later. It flickered in the wintry groves of trees, and in the depths of the green pool. He clapped his hands tosummon the waitress. Clearly no guests had been expected, and it would take a long time to prepare his meal. A waitress brought tea and stayed chatting on and on, as if to keep him entertained.
    One of her stories was about a man bewitched by a badger. They had found him splashing along in the river at dawn, screaming for help. He was floundering in the shallows under the Togetsu Bridge, where you could easily climb up on the bank. It seems that after he was rescued and came to his senses, he told them he had been wandering around the mountain like a sleepwalker from about ten o’clock the night before—and the next thing he knew he was in the river.
    Finally the kitchen had the first course ready: slices of fresh silver carp. Oki sipped a little sake with it.
    As he left he looked up again at the heavy thatched roof. Its mossy, decaying charm appealed to him, but the mistress of the restaurant explained that, being under the trees, it never really got a chance to dry out. It was not very old, less than ten years ago they had put on new thatching. A half moon gleamed in the sky just beyond the roof. It was three-thirty. As Oki went down the river road he watched kingfishers skimming low over the water. He could see the colors of their wings.
    Near Togetsu Bridge he got into the car again, intending to go to the Adashino graveyard. In the gathering winter twilight the forest of tombstones and Jizo figures would soothe his feelings. But when he saw how dusky it was in the bamboo grove at the entrance to the Gio Temple he had the driver turn back. He decided to stopin at the Moss Temple and then go to the hotel. The temple garden was empty except for a couple who looked like honeymooners. Dry pine needles lay scattered over the moss, and reflections of trees in the pond shifted as he walked along. On the way back to the hotel, the Eastern Hills ahead glowed in the orange light of the setting sun.
    After warming himself with a bath, he looked for Ueno Otoko’s number in the phone book. A young woman answered, no doubt her protégée, and immediately turned the telephone over to Otoko.
    “Hello.”
    “This is Oki.” He waited. “It’s Oki. Oki Toshio.”
    “Yes. It’s been such a long time.” She spoke with the soft Kyoto drawl.
    He was not sure how to begin, so he went on quickly to avoid embarrassing her, as if he