Thousand Cranes Read Free

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