It was the second day, and we had been wandering, without a path, in
snow up to our arm-pits, for more than twenty-four hours. I could see
that Saito was freezing. His face was crusted with ice, and his hair
and beard fringed with icicles. At last he turned to me and said, ‘I
can’t go any farther, Maruki. You must not let them waste any time
looking for me. I will tell my wife, and there is no one else who
cares.’ Then he dropped and gave up. I tried to rub and shake him back
into life, but I knew it was no use when I saw a pale blue flame[20]
hovering over his body. I had seen such a flame once before, when my
father died,”--his voice sank almost to a whisper,--“and I knew that
his spirit had passed. The light moved away across the snow until I
lost it in the thickness of the night. I followed the direction it had
taken as well as I could. Perhaps that is why I am here to-day.”
“The poor little wife is gone, I hear,” said a listening comrade, “and
the old man at the house tells a strange story of the master’s return,
and of a blue flame that vanished through the snow tunnel.”
“Then Saito was right,” said Maruki, with a sigh; “he did go and tell
his wife. Poor little woman! She was not a widow very long!”
FOOTNOTES:
[18] A fire-box in the floor, over which is set a rack, and the whole
covered by a heavy comfortable.
[19] “It is honorably so.”
[20] It is a common belief in Japan that the recently freed soul is
visible in the shape of a luminous ball or blue flame immediately after
death.
IV
THE INDEPENDENCE OF SABURO
It was the month of June, and a great festival of the Sanno Temple was
in full swing. The streets were alive with excitement and brilliant
with lanterns. The whole length of Kojimachi-dori was lined with gay
booths and crowded with sightseers. Here and there the beat of drums,
the clashing of cymbals, and the antics and grimaces of mummers held
the crowd for a moment before some fantastic festival car. Off in the
side streets were to be heard the rhythmic shouts of boys, who rushed
about with square red lanterns, bearing a miniature festival car high
on their shoulders.
To Saburo Nozaki, sitting alone at home, in charge of his father’s
shop, the cheerful sounds carried nothing but misery. He sat at his
little table figuring out the day’s accounts by the light of a small
hanging-lamp. The shop front was wide open to the narrow, dark side
street, and now and then a wandering jinrikisha-man’s lantern flashed
by, but for the most part the street was empty, for it was away from
the centre of the festival, and every one who could leave his work
had gone to the great celebration. Only Saburo seemed left of all the
populous neighborhood, and as he fingered his _soroban_[21] and wrote
out his accounts, the cheerful hum of the festival just around the
corner simply increased his sense of desertion.
Saburo was thoroughly tired of the shop. He had been born in it,
or rather in the room just behind it. His babyhood had been passed
watching its business over his mother’s shoulder; and when he had been
removed from his perch on her back to make room for a baby sister, he
had at once begun to make himself useful. At first he could only run
back and forth between the fireproof storehouse and the salesroom,
carrying rolls of silk and cotton. Later, he had pulled a small
hand-cart about the streets, acting at once as horse and delivery
clerk. And now, since he had learned to count with the _soroban_,
he sat all day on his heels, bowing and smiling and propitiating
customers, measuring and counting and writing out bills, until it
seemed to him that he could bear it no longer. His older brothers, Taro
and Jiro, good, honest, unambitious youths, adapted themselves readily
to the routine of the shop, but Saburo chafed under it and longed for a
change. He was eighteen now, and still his only view of the world was
what he could see of the street from under the heavy black curtains
that draped the front of the salesroom.
How irksome the life was to a proud spirit that felt itself set apart
for better things! And now to-night, when the greatest festival in a
cycle of sixty years was going on close by, and on the great last
night of all the three, his father had taken the rest of the family
to see the sights, and had left poor Saburo alone at home to guard
the shop and wait upon improbable customers. It was too much! Saburo
counted and wrote and counted again, but the bursts of gayety from
Kojimachi confused his reckoning, and he gave up at last and settled
down to listen and wish.
Suddenly the wish became the father of a thought--a great thought--an
audacious thought. It had sometimes come before into Saburo’s head,
though he had never seen the way clear to its accomplishment, but
to-night was the very night for it.
The boy reached out from where he sat to a drawer in the wall, and drew
from thence a heavy, iron-bound box, the till of the establishment.
This he opened with a key from his girdle, counted out fifty yen with
methodical exactness, set down his name in the account-book opposite
to that amount, then closed and locked the box and returned it to its
drawer. The money he tucked away in his belt. Then he rose, carried the
key into the back room and hung it on the wall, slid all the wooden
shutters but one into place across the front of the shop, stepped
out into the street, closed the last shutter, and walked off into
the darkness, away from the lights and noise of the festival. He did
not care where he went. All he wanted was to get away from the close
confinement, the unvarying monotony of the shop.
For an hour or so he wandered about dark and narrow streets, not daring
to show himself in the wider, brightly lighted thoroughfares, lest he
should be recognized by some chance acquaintance and his great plan be
frustrated at its beginning.
It was ten o’clock, and even the business streets were putting up their
shutters for the night, when the youth drifted aimlessly into a broad
avenue, almost deserted at that hour, which he recognized as the one
that led to the northern railway station. Then a new thought struck
him, and he pushed forward with the energy of a definite purpose. When
he reached the station a bell was ringing, and the north-bound train
was puffing on the track. He purchased a third-class ticket, selecting
his destination--Nishi Nasu-no--at random from the time-table hanging
on the wall, rushed through the gate, and curled himself up in the
corner of an empty carriage.
By noon of the following day, Saburo found himself, after a long
morning’s walk, close to the beautiful mountain region that surrounds
the gorge of Shiobara. His morning had not been one of unalloyed
pleasure in his independence. The girls at the tea-house, where he had
stopped and called for breakfast, had met his air of assumed importance
with derisive giggles and mocking obeisances, and had given him, not
the cool, retired upper room that he had demanded, but a place close to
the street, noisy and sunny, where he had eaten his meal in full sight
of the public, and of all the employees of the hotel kitchen. Then the
morning’s walk had been hot and tiresome,--a straight, shadeless road
pointing directly toward the mountains.
Saburo found himself tired and hungry enough when he sat down to rest
and eat his lunch in front of a tea-house that stood just where the
road entered a beautiful mountain gorge.
“Elder sister, where does this road go?” he asked of the bright-eyed,
red-cheeked girl who waited on him.
“To Shiobara,” she said; adding, “It is seven miles to the first
village.”
As Saburo looked at the steep, rocky road ahead, he felt sure that
he needed some stimulus to carry him over those seven miles to the
village, and he ordered from the “elder sister” a gourd full of saké,
which he hung at his belt. Then he pressed on, and the mountains closed
about him.
He seemed to be entering the very bowels of the earth, and the roaring
of the torrent below him, the awful grandeur of the peaks above,
impressed his unsophisticated soul with a strange uneasiness. He
remembered all the weird tales that he had heard from his childhood,
of the mountain gods and goblins, of the spirits of the dead that mow
and gibber by the roadside, of the foxes and badgers that work strange
enchantments on unwary travelers, and as each horrid detail came before
his mind, he took a pull at the saké bottle to brace up his courage.
And so, as the day waned, his steps grew heavier and heavier, and his
brain more and more confused, until, at last, he felt sure that he
could not reach the village for which he was bound before the night
fell.
He sat down by the roadside and wondered what he should do, and how he
should pass the night; and as he sat there, he saw a young girl coming
out of the woods, carrying a bucket of water. She was dressed after the
country fashion, with her kimono tucked up to her knees, showing her
red petticoat below. She wore white silk leggins and straw sandals, and
she walked lightly and gracefully with her load, in the dog-trot of the
mountain peasant.
Saburo rose as she passed, and she stopped and set down her bucket.
“Honorable maiden,” he said, “can you tell me of any house near here
where I can get a meal and a bed?”
She bowed and smiled as she answered, “I have a very humble roadside
booth just beyond the turn of the road where your honor can obtain
refreshment, though of poor quality.”
Saburo started up, his tired, unsteady legs reeling under him, and
followed the girl a few paces, to a spot where the smallest of roadside
eating-shops had been placed, almost overhanging the torrent. How cool
and inviting it looked! Screens of bamboo across the front shut it
off from undue publicity. A small stream of water from a bamboo pipe
plashed pleasantly into a stone tank close by, and over the _hibachi_
the kettle was bubbling. Cups and plates and various comestibles showed
that the small establishment could furnish a meal, and it was with a
sigh of relief that Saburo slipped his tired feet out of his clogs,
bathed them in the cool sparkling water from the tank, and seated
himself on the matted platform that made the guest-room.
“While I am preparing the poor meal, would your honor condescend to
drink a cup of ama-zake?”[22] said the silvery voice of the girl.
“Thank you, I shall be glad to take it,” answered Saburo, holding his
head up with an attempt at dignity, as he felt that now he had found
some one who addressed him with the deference due to his independent
position.
The girl, who to Saburo’s eyes grew more beautiful every minute,
brought a steaming bowl of the thick white liquor and set it down in
front of him. He drank it, sucking-it down with gulps and smacks of
satisfaction.
“That is food and drink both,” he said, as the maiden brought him
another brimming bowl.
Cheered by the gracious glow which the comforting draught diffused
through his entire being, Saburo sat and watched his beautiful friend
while she attended to her lowly tasks. At last he spoke, and his voice
was husky with emotion.
“It is strange and sad, that so beautiful a maiden as you should waste
her life up here in these wild mountains. Why do you stay in such a
place? If you went to Tokyo, you would soon make a good marriage.”
The girl looked at him before she answered, and Saburo felt as if his
soul were on fire.
“Sometimes I have thought I would like to go out and see the world,”
she said, “but I am the only child of my old mother, and she would not
consent to my going,” and she wept, holding her sleeves before her
face.
“And now my mother is dead, and I have no brother, nor any friends.”
She wept quietly behind her sleeves for a space, her body shaking with
the violence of her emotion; then she uncovered her face. Saburo felt
her eyes looking deep into his heart. “If you do not object to my
humble birth,” she continued, “and since you sympathize with my grief,
please take me with you to Tokyo, and teach me how to sweep and wash
floors.” Then she hid her face once more behind her sleeves.
Saburo’s head was fairly turned by such a show of confidence, and he
reached forward and patted the poor girl’s shoulder as she sat with
covered face on the edge of the matted platform.
“Do not feel so sad,” he said; “I will find you a place where you will
be much better off than here.”
The maiden looked with one eye from behind her sleeves. Saburo gently
pulled down her hands until her whole face was visible. “How can I
ever reward you for your kindness?” she whispered.
By the time he had eaten supper it was quite dark, and Saburo began to
wonder where he could spend the night, for the little tea-house was
simply an open booth.
“Where do you live?” he asked of his entertainer.
“Quite near here,” she answered, “and if you can endure my rude and
squalid home, I can give you a bed there for to-night.”
She extinguished the coals in the _hibachi_ by dropping them into a pot
of water, using for the purpose a pair of fire-sticks, one of bamboo
and one of bone. Saburo’s superstitious soul shuddered a little when he
saw her do it, for he knew that in Tokyo such sticks were used only in
collecting the ashes of the dead. But he remembered that she was only a
country girl, and could not be expected to know all the Tokyo customs.
Then she closed the shutters about the little guest-room, and taking
a white lantern[23] in her hand, she led the way into the woods. To
Saburo there was something uncanny about the white lantern. It was like
a funeral procession, he thought, but he said nothing.
There was a muttering of thunder among the hills, and zigzag lightning
flashed from a black cloud overhead. The way seemed longer than Saburo
had expected, but at last his guide stopped, just as a flash of
lightning revealed a miserable dilapidated cottage. The paper of the
sliding screens was flapping like ghostly garments in the wind, the
plaster of the walls had fallen in places, showing the bamboo skeleton
of the house, the roof seemed breaking down under its load of stones,
and the floor gave and creaked dismally as they stepped up on the dirty
mats.
On one side of the room was a broken screen, inverted;[24] two of the
floor mats had been taken up, and a clean new tub, bucket, and dipper
stood on the rotten boards in the place thus left bare.[25] Saburo
shuddered. What did all this mean? His legs, which had been painfully
weak for several hours, nearly gave way beneath him.
“My mother lies there dead,” said the girl in explanation. “I have
not been able to bury her yet, but I will bury her to-morrow before
we start. Wait here a little while, for I must go and find a priest
to attend the funeral,” and the maiden disappeared in the darkness,
leaving Saburo alone with the dead.
He tried to call, but his voice was choked; he tried to move, but his
legs refused to carry him. He could only sit and wait for the return of
his hostess, the horror of the place freezing his blood the while.
It was deadly silent in the woods. He would have been grateful even for
a thunder-clap to break the silence, but the storm had passed. Suddenly
the clouds parted, and the moonlight streamed through a hole in the
roof right into the room.
Saburo found himself filled with a strange desire to look behind the
screen, to see whether the girl had told him the truth. Slowly, on
hands and knees, he crept across the floor. Softly he moved the screen
away. It was too true! There, on the floor, covered with a white quilt,
sat a rigid figure, its knees drawn up to its chin.
Saburo crept closer and removed the covering from the face. Horror
of horrors! It was the face of his beautiful hostess. But even as he
looked at it, the hair became snowy white, the eyes grew hollow, the
parchment-like skin stretched tense across the nose, and the face
changed to that of a demon.
Poor Saburo, not daring to turn his back on the awful object, retreated
backward. The dead, raising her head, hitched forward across the floor.
Saburo backed again. Once more the thing moved toward him, and once
more he backed. It came close,--closer,--then suddenly, opening its
mouth wide, it sneezed, and Saburo, forgetting his fatigue, turned and
ran madly away from that terrible place.
Next morning a peasant, leading his shock-headed pony loaded with grass
along the mountain road, saw, far beneath him, close to the brawling
torrent, what looked like the body of a man. Scrambling down, he found
poor Saburo, not dead, but badly bruised. With much labor and suffering
he was at last dragged up to the road.
How familiar the whole place looked to him when he opened his eyes!
There was the turn in the road near which he had sat down, there the
footpath along which the girl had come with the bucket of water. A
great terror came over him.
“Do not take me to the rest-house beyond the turn,” he begged of his
kind-hearted rescuer.
“What rest-house? There is no rest-house near here,” said the
bewildered peasant.
Then Saburo told him his story, but the man only shook his head. “There
is no rest-house here, nor ever has been,” he said, “but there are
foxes that live in the temple of Inari Sama[26] up in the woods there,”
and he pointed toward the footpath. “They have bewitched you, and you
should thank the gods that you have escaped alive.”
Two days later, Saburo, bruised and tired, stepped out of his clogs and
prostrated himself on his face in his father’s shop. “I have returned,”
he said, as he bowed to his parents. Then he went back to his measuring
stick, his _soroban_, and his account-books.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] The abacus used in the East by all merchants in reckoning.
[22] A thick, sweet, slightly fermented rice-soup.
[23] White lanterns are used only at funerals.
[24] Sign of the presence of a corpse.
[25] Preparations for washing a corpse.
[26] Inari Sama, the god or goddess of rice, whose messenger the fox is
supposed to be. Sometimes known as the Fox-God.
V
KITSUNÉ YASHIKI
_Kitsuné Yashiki_, “The Foxes’ Mansion.”
Minokichi sat on the edge of the little open shop, his feet in his
clogs, his staff in his hand, ready for the afternoon’s work. His face,
bearing the curiously refined expression that belongs to the blind, was
turned toward O Koto San, who, with her baby tied to her back, sat on
her heels behind the minute stock in trade. So small and so cheap was
it that five dollars would probably have bought it all. A few pairs of
straw sandals, a pattern or two of blue-and-white toweling, a pile of
broad-brimmed hats, a small variety of cakes, and some eggs,--these
were the entire contents of the shop. But O Koto San sat at the receipt
of custom, as proud and happy in her new business as if she were
conducting the great Mitsui[27] silk-store on Ginza.[28]
Minokichi was a blind _amma_, or masseur, who earned a certain but
scanty living by his trade. Every afternoon, when the great bell of
the temple tolled out its four slow strokes, Minokichi, staff in hand
and whistle in mouth, walked up and down the streets of Ushigomé,[29]
stopping wherever called, to smooth and rub and soothe and pat any
tired body who, after the hot bath, might feel the need of further
comforting. Some days, when he was fortunate, he earned as much as
twenty cents. Once he had been summoned to a great house, where he had
worked for an hour or two over a man whose silken garment proved that
he was prosperous, and had pocketed for his fee a fifty-cent note; but
such luck had never come to him again. It had taken him a long time to
save enough to marry, and when the wedding was over, the go-between
and the fortune-teller paid, the presents sent to the bride’s family,
the tiny hired house new-papered and fitted up with the very few
articles necessary for Japanese housekeeping, and the wedding feast
paid for, not only was the long-saved hoard all gone, but he had been
obliged to put in pawn every garment he possessed that was not at the
time in actual use.
And so O Koto San, a red-cheeked, curly-haired country girl, whose
round body seemed always trying to work its way out of her garments,
came into the humblest of homes and took up the task of making life for
two cheaper and happier than life for one. A good little wife she had
proved to be,--in every respect exactly as the go-between had said. She
kept the tiny house as neat as her willing hands could make it. She
managed the scanty supply of charcoal so that every piece did some work
for the family, no grain of rice was ever wasted by her in cooking or
in clearing away, and the additional luxuries of the Japanese table,
soups, fish, beans, greens, _mochi_[30] at New Year’s, and vermicelli
at O Bon, made their appearance with due regularity. She took in
cigarettes to roll in her spare time, and added to Minokichi’s earnings
the tidy little sum of a dollar to a dollar and a half a month by her
own labor. Minokichi brought her all his wages, and whenever he wanted
money there was some in her hands for him. He always had wherewith
to pay for a hot bath at the public bath-house; his tobacco pouch
was never empty; he could entertain his friends at an eel-house, or a
macaroni-shop, or in his own home, and O Koto San never told him that
there was no money for such foolishness, as did the thrifty wife of the
carpenter next door when her husband went to her for change to meet
emergencies of like nature.
Surely Minokichi was a lucky man, in spite of his blindness. He had
been married nearly two years now, and a baby boy had come to cement
the union even more closely. O Koto San worked, if such a thing were
possible, more diligently with her baby tied to her shoulders than she
had at the beginning. Her rosy face was perhaps a thought less rosy,
her curly hair a trifle less abundant, but she was just as cheerful and
energetic in her care for two as she had been when her husband was her
only thought. The little shop was her idea, and the stock in trade the
saving from her cigarette work. They lived on the very edge of Tokyo,
just where the city streets turn into narrow lanes and then into the
dyked roadways across the rice-fields. Koto’s shrewd business sense
realized that if she had to offer to passing jinrikisha-men just such
things as they might need when starting out for a long country run or
returning, she might make a profit from her savings. And so the things
had been bought and set in place, and already more than one kurumaya
had discovered the smiling face of the shop-keeper, and had bought from
her, exchanging at the same time a few pleasant words, for the sake of
her bright eyes, her shining teeth, and her low bows.
Minokichi was waiting for the temple bell to strike, and as the first
deep boom sounded he rose to his feet, struck the ground with his
staff, and felt his way out into the narrow road.
“If I am late,” he said, “close the shutters, and I will call you when
I come. I am going to try a new part of the district. Perhaps I can
find that rich man again who gave me so much money once. He was over
near Koishikawa.”[31] He moved cautiously down the street, rapping his
stick on the ground and blowing his whistle, signs to all passers that
a blind _amma_ was on the march.
It was nearly six o’clock, and the sun was low at his back, when
Minokichi, tapping and whistling, reached the northeast corner of
Ushigomé, close to the Koishikawa district. He had spent about an
hour at one of his regular places of call, rubbing and kneading the
head and shoulders of an overworked newspaper-man, preparing him for
his night at the office. For this service he had received, with many
bows and protestations of gratitude, the sum of eight cents, carefully
folded in white paper. Then he had felt his way, by the sun at his
back and the autumn wind on his left cheek, along the narrow, crooked
streets, to the very border of his own district. Here he paused,
wondering whether it would be better to go on to Koishikawa, or to
return by devious routes to O Koto San, trusting to chance for one or
two more calls on the way.
As he stood in hesitation he heard a voice, a sharp, boy’s voice, of
curiously staccato utterance. “Amm’ San!”[32] it said.
Minokichi cocked his head in the direction from which the sound came
and answered “Hai!”
Then he heard the soft pat-pat of bare running feet. They sounded like
a dog’s feet, he thought, as they came near him, and he was almost
surprised when the boy’s voice close by said “Come,” and a small, firm
hand took hold of his and began to lead him, not toward Koishikawa,
nor yet toward his home, but northward across the rice-fields along
the city’s edge. He walked for miles, clutched by the firm little
hand. “The master is ill,” was all the answer that his guide gave to
his inquiries. The sun had long been down; he could feel the chill of
the autumn evening, and hear the shrill piping of the autumn insects,
before they reached their destination.