Beauty in Disarray. Harumi Setouchi

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СКАЧАТЬ little by little my husband got in financially beyond his depth and in less than six months found himself quite penniless. The swindler made off with all my husband's money, and I was turned into a prisoner by being forced to stay by myself at the mine while my husband went down the mountain to raise some cash. The money he sent me was seized on the way by his associates, and all of them absconded. The time kept passing and I still couldn't come down from that mine. All the villagers around me kept watching me because everyone connected with my husband had bought everything on credit and had avoided paying their bills at the inns and eating houses and grocery stores. Finally even I ran out of food, and all my clothes were taken away one by one so that I was left only in my kimono undergarment and the long cloth around my loins. For three days, from morning to night, I spent my time in bed. The children who occasionally came to peek in at me soon found me in bed whenever they came and once, thinking I was dead, raised a great outcry.

      "Someone advised me there was no other course than to run away at night, so I escaped by the skin of my teeth, but when looking like a beggar I finally found my way to my husband's house, I was told it was no longer ours. My husband had received such a severe shock he had become deranged and entered a mental hospital. While I was nursing my husband, who immediately after enjoying the very heights of luxury had been thrust into the very depths of poverty and who had gone berserk without understanding what was what, my aunt Dai, who had married me off to him, came to see me and suddenly made me go back with her. I was still young and unable to make heads or tails of what it was all about, but in only one year I had been raised to the summit of life and flung to its very abyss, and that was how it ended for us. It was then that I met Tsuji. If my disposition had been like my elder sister's, I probably would have ventured up to Tokyo regardless of my father's opposition and would have let Tsuji make me into an actress. There's no knowing about one's destiny. I had learned a costly lesson by my marriage, and I felt no man deserved to be called such unless he could overcome adversity when put to the test. My next marriage was to a person twenty-seven years older than me. My sister said at that time as if treating me with contempt, 'Why on earth marry a man whose age is so different from yours! Will it satisfy you?' And since I couldn't forget her words, I also said to her when she married Osugi, 'Why on earth do you want to marry a man who has so many women around him? Will it satisfy you?'

      "She said quite calmly, 'As for those women, I don't care how many there are. Because I'll be the one to monopolize him before long!' Well, it absolutely turned out the way she said. That was really strange. And even about her death she told me, 'After all, we won't die normally on straw mats. In all probability we'll be murdered when we least expect it. So if that time should come, never be confused or grieve over me. Even if we should be killed, we ourselves will be happy because we have always done what we felt was worth doing.' Even those words turned out to be true. Yes, at that time we were informed by the Dentsu news agency even before the special edition of the newspapers came out. Perhaps because we had often been told of such a possibility by my sister, we merely thought, 'Well, at last it's so,' and we were neither too surprised nor too suddenly saddened. Even our parents told me they felt the same way.

      "My second husband ran a house in a red-light district in Osaka and later in Shimonoseki. Although my sister had principles, she never criticized our business. Nor did Osugi. Instead, though, their taking money from us seemed like the most natural thing in the world. They often came to our house in Shimonoseki. At first my husband, his age being what it was, couldn't understand them in the least and didn't like to associate with them, and so after receiving my sister's letter, I always went to the station to meet them and handed them some money there, and that was how I met them to talk over many things. But gradually my husband was able to understand them, and my sister and Osugi came to see us at home. Yet what troubles we had after they arrived! Without fail, we would be summoned by the police and even asked what time they woke up and when they ate. The questioning took all day, and it disgusted us! During their stay with us, two or three detectives would be standing around our house watching. It was an absolute torment! So finally when my sister reached the station, she herself telephoned the police and told them they had just arrived. In the end there was the spectacle of the police carrying her luggage and riding the children on their backs and sending all of them up to our house.

      "Speaking about misery and happiness, I have never been as miserable as the time my sister and her husband were killed and my father and uncle Dai came back from Tokyo with the children. Because my sister was killed twenty days after the birth of her last child Nestor, this last baby couldn't even hold its head properly. The older children were two-year-old Louise, three-year-old Ema, and Mako, who was seven. Yes, I'm counting their ages in the Japanese way so they were even younger. My father was carrying the baby in one arm while holding Louise's hand with the other, and my uncle was leading Ema and Mako with both his hands.

      "Each time they arrived at one of the stations between Tokyo and Shimonoseki, many newspaper reporters suddenly crowded onto the train, taking pictures and interviewing them, so it must have been unbearable. When I went to Shimonoseki Station to meet them, it was so jammed I couldn't even get near. It wasn't only the reporters, for the place was crawling with busybodies trying to catch a glimpse of the children, and the entire station was in great confusion. When I finally reached them after pushing my way through the crowds, I found my father totally exhausted and the baby, who hadn't received enough milk, almost senseless.

      "Mako was stomping her feet on the ground screaming, 'I hate having my picture taken!' Attracted by her cries, Ema and Louise started bawling frantically. We couldn't do anything to make them stop. There wasn't even any water to mix the condensed milk with. But just then across from us a woman also with a baby held out her thermos of hot water. I too began crying, thinking we had really found a friend just when we needed one. After finally dissolving the condensed milk in hot water and giving it to the baby and pacifying the other children, we once more boarded the train and at long last started off. I cannot forget the misery I felt at that time. For the first time I was really enraged by the cruelty of my sister's death, forcing her to leave behind such lovely children.

      "Already in those days my husband was in complete sympathy with my sister and her husband, so all the articles in the newspapers and magazines that came out at the time on Osugi and her he clipped out, no matter what was covered, and he put them neatly away. He never wanted the children to see them as long as they were alive. But saying these articles might be of some use, he kept diligently cutting them out and accumulating them. Yes, the pile of clippings was handed over to Ema after she grew up—she had been raised in our home. The child who looked most like my sister is Ema, who now lives in Shimonoseki. Clearly she most resembles Noe in her younger years.

      "In those days we were troubled by the fact that many people wanted to do something for these children. We were surprised that even in that era so many people still wanted to raise the children of Osugi and Noe. All of them were decent, the offers coming only from rich men and scholars and other respectable persons. There were ever so many proposals to which they appended explanatory notes and inventories, like lists of their property and rough sketches of their homes. But confronted by these wild schemes, my father firmly held out against letting even one of the children go anywhere, and he was determined to raise them himself. Even though my elder sister had put my father through terrible troubles while she was alive, she was his favorite daughter, and in the long run he had unconsciously been influenced by her, so I believe he couldn't bring himself to hand her children over to others.

      "Though I was Noe's only sister, the life I lived was quite different from hers. After I married a second time, I was never in need of money, and because of our difference in age my husband overlooked everything I did and let me do as I wished with all the luxuries he gave me. Nevertheless, my way of thinking was different because of our difference in age, so without really being able to understand him, I was not that satisfied somehow.

      "I tried to compensate for the loneliness and emptiness I felt by making use of luxury and diversion, so matters became worse. The only thing I didn't do was take a lover, but as for other possibilities, I drained the cup of pleasure with everything and anything that men do. Every day I went to the theatre and I went to teahouses СКАЧАТЬ