Beauty in Disarray. Harumi Setouchi

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      On the day they died, Osugi and Noe had departed from their house in clothing so European in style that Uchida mistook them for a European couple working at the Seisho Gakuin Mission School. But even then Mako, who was playing at Uchida's, said, "Oh, Papa and Mama!" and she jumped up and ran out, only to turn back immediately.

      "Papa and Mama are going to my uncle's in Tsurumi, and they may be staying there tonight," Mako said, and all through the afternoon she played on at Uchida's. But her parents never returned.

      Though practically everyone at home was almost convinced that Osugi and Noe had been assassinated, Mako was still playing cheerfully. Even in the morning, when the coldblooded murders of Osugi and his wife and nephew were finally announced, Mako came over to Uchida's house. He describes it thus:

      The members of my family, who already knew about the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Osugi, finished their breakfast in silence. Since I felt Mako would probably come over to play today too, I warned my children, "Don't say anything about Mako's papa!" Even though they were too young to understand, they nodded wordlessly with an expression on their faces that something terrible had happened.

      After a while, just as we expected, Mako came in through the back door as usual. When she saw us, she said immediately, "My papa and mama are both dead. My uncle and grandfather went to get them, so they'll bring them back by car today." The person she mentioned as her grandfather was Noe's uncle, who had rushed up to Tokyo after hearing in his distant hometown in Kyushu about the Osugi tragedy, news of which had spread faster in the districts than it had in the capital.

      Coming into the parlor and seeing my wife there, Mako once again said, "Mrs. Uchida, my papa and mama were murdered. It's probably in today's paper."

      I had strictly bidden my children, "Don't say anything about Mako's papa!" thinking I didn't want to bruise her poor young heart even a trifle, but clever little Mako already knew everything. Yet she was only an unthinking child of six. Even though she knew about the miserable fate of her father and mother, she was playing innocently as usual. Sensing that Mako was miserable, my child who was the same age gave her all her treasured dolls and stacks of colored paper decorated with lively designs.

      Laughing, I asked Mako if she disliked her strange name, as I noticed that although she had retained the name she had changed the way of writing it from "Demon Child" to "True Child." In similar fashion, Ema had become Emiko ("Laughing Child"), and Louise, Ruiko ("Mindful Child").

      "Well, my parents' old friends in Tokyo still call me Mako when they see me. It's not a bad name," she said, a bright smile on her face.

      While we were carrying on this kind of conversation inside the automobile, we found ourselves at Tsunehiko Dai's house in Chiyomachi. Kichi Dai, the younger sister of Noe's father Yokichi, had married Tsunehiko's son Junsuke. She had taken charge of Noe in her primary school days, and even in those Tokyo days when Noe went to a girls' high school, Kichi Dai had let Noe commute from the Dai house. During her maturing period Noe had been more intimately connected to Kichi than even to her own parents. Now Kichi's home was managed by her grandchild.

      We found no one else at home that day due to her greatgrandchild's having gone to take a school entrance examination. Kichi was resting quietly in bed in her room at the back of the house. Neat and pretty, her skin white, the elderly Kichi informed us that she was in bed because of a slight cold. Usually so strong that she was seldom laid up, Kichi had, even on her sickbed, fixed her white hair, which was still thick enough to run a comb through, into a prim little bun.

      She had classic features. Even at her age her nose was shapely, and she had a lively expression in her eyes, which slanted down slightly. Her wrinkles and freckles were hardly noticeable on her white parchment-like cheeks, and it startled me to find traces of youth and charm on her slender delicate hands, which rested on her chest.

      Smiling by my side as I continued to be impressed by the freshness of this elderly woman, Mako said, in a tone she thought Kichi could not hear, "She's quite a foppish old lady. They say she still rubs the slightest bit of leftover warmed sake or egg white into her face and hands. Her grandson's wife laughs at being no match for her youthfulness. Even her hair has to be done each day or she isn't satisfied."

      While smiling and looking up at us as we were talking, Kichi occasionally nodded her head in agreement over some point. Nevertheless, she could catch our words if we raised our voices a little, all her responses clear even when she slipped on some expression, her powers of recall amazing, her mind as sharp as ever.

      "Oh, I see... Yes, is that so?... Did you say you came all the way from Tokyo?... I see. Oh yes, certainly I have become senile, as you see, and nowadays I am completely useless. I wonder why I am living like this at all... What?... My age? Well, let me see. I don't know how old I am. Anyway, I've been living a long time already, and I've become useless, and now I'm wondering what I should do. Still, death hasn't come to get me yet. I was born in 1876, so I guess that I'm about ninety. Well, I may even be almost a hundred. I have not counted for a long while...

      "Are you asking me about Noe? I've already forgotten everything about her. Forgotten everything so that it is all vague and hazy. What I am now remembering in this sort of drowsy way are mostly those memories of Noe in her childhood, and in addition to those memories, though I don't know why, it looks as if I cannot forget those things that touched me to the quick, whether they were happy memories or sad ones...

      "Are you asking me about Noe? The reason she was living with us in Nagasaki was that her family was poor and they had many children. She was a strong-willed unyielding girl, but she was also a crybaby. My husband Junsuke sold lumber to the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki. Later he went up to Tokyo, but I've completely forgotten what he did for a living during those Tokyo days. Yes, I guess he was treated kindly by Mitsuru Toyama, and maybe he did some work for a group with a name something like Gen'yosha, some right-wing nationalist society. Yes, that's right. I was his second wife, so his daughter Chiyoko was not my own child. Noe was my relative, so it was quite natural for her not to feel reserved with me, wasn't it?...

      "Are you asking me about Noe's mother? She was called O-ume, and she was a very wise person. She was perfect from whatever angle and gentle, and no matter from whose point of view, a wonderful person. Our family at Imajuku was called Yorozuya and came of fairly old stock. They say that our family had a prosperous shipping agency in the old days. We made a fine living when I was a little girl. I guess it was about the time Noe was born that our fortune started to decline. Her father Yokichi cared only for music and dancing, so his family was about to go bankrupt. Oh yes, Noe's father was also quite the dandy. Generally, all the Yorozuyas were well known for their faces, and everyone talked about the 'Yorozuya eyebrows' and the 'Yorozuya eyes.' I wasn't the least bit like the Yorozuyas, but all my brothers and sisters were good-looking and popular. And even Mako, when she was brought back to us from Tokyo, when she went to have some fun around Imazu, the Imazu villagers could guess at a glance, 'Ah, she's a granddaughter of the Yorozuya at Imajuku.' I dare say she was really born with Yorozuya eyes and eyebrows...

      "Are you asking me about Noe's looks? Yes, yes, certainly she was pretty. She was a girl with nice clear-cut features. She liked to read books, and apparently she was not fond of the things that girls usually do, like cleaning and sewing. Still, I told her what a woman's duties were, and I forced her to take turns with Chiyoko in doing the cleaning...

      "Are you asking me if Noe could swim? Oh yes, if you were raised by the seashore, you'd be able to swim as well as a water sprite. She was good at the crawl... When I was a child, I would also slip away from school and swim all day. Then I would lie in the sun on some piece of lumber and dry my wet hair, and when it was half dry, I would put my hair up as if I were quite innocent, thinking I would never be suspected... Oh no, I never wore any СКАЧАТЬ