Beauty in Disarray - Harumi Setouchi Tuttle Classics

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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 swimming suit. Everyone swam stark-naked. Noe loved diving, but Chiyoko was more like what you'd call an athlete today and swam as far as Nokonoshima. It doesn't seem as if the way we spent our days as children and the way Noe did were very different.

      "Since we didn't have any really interesting things to do, several times a year when plays came to Shusenji village, she would go to see them, since those plays offered the greatest enjoyment she'd be able to have. She'd go to the Festival of the Dead dancing in a red cotton apron, with cutouts of colored paper proudly sewn on it... Well, Noe's love of learning was probably inherited because my mother Sato was so good at reading and writing that she taught the neighborhood children. What's more, my mother had a real taste for songs accompanied by the samisen, and the fondness in Noe's father's blood for dancing and singing was probably inherited from my mother. At village plays and other kinds of entertainment, the first person lively enough to go up on the stage and play the samisen or dance was Noe's father.

      "When we moved from Nagasaki to Tokyo, we sent Noe back to Imajuku for a while, and from there she went to an elementary school in Shusenji. When she graduated from that school and got a job at the post office, Noe sent letters to our home in Tokyo day after day, letters so thick that they fell with a heavy thud. Those letters begged us to grant her wish to come up to Tokyo and attend a girls' high school like Chiyoko was doing. Living right next door to us at the time was the novelist Namiroku Murakami. When my husband showed him Noe's letters, the handwriting and the contents were so good that he advised us she showed some promise and that we ought to let her come up to Tokyo, so my husband felt inclined to do so and we decided to take charge of her again. But when she finally did come, Mr. Murakami was quite surprised to see that Noe was a girl. He was convinced on reading those letters that the writer had to be a young man. My husband was really a person who preferred bringing up someone to saving money, and he took a liking to people of character, be they friend or foe. Later on, even though he belonged to the right-wing Gen'yosha group, he felt inclined to take care of Osugi, more, I believe, from my husband's fondness for human beings than from any sympathy with Osugi's doctrines and principles...

      "Are you asking me about Osugi? Yes, I knew both Osugi and Jun Tsuji real well. I found that while Tsuji was a gentle hesitating person, Osugi was a really fine man. His gentleness, especially toward women and children, was exquisite. Sometimes I wondered why the world feared such a gentle person. Certainly Tsuji was also gentle. All of Noe's men were devoted to her...

      "Oh yes, are you asking me about Noe's first husband? He was a son of the Suematsu family in Shusenji, and since both fathers were friends, it was natural for the subject of marriage to come up. I've heard that the young man's entire family had settled in America and opened up a shoe store. Noe hesitated in giving her answer, but since she'd be able to go to America, she agreed. But when she found out that she couldn't go to America, she said marrying was out of the question and she began to balk. Nevertheless, during the summer vacation when she was in the fifth grade at the girls' high school, the marriage took place. Somehow, though, I've forgotten all the details concerning the marriage at the time...

      "I'm good for nothing, since I'm apt to forget everything. I don't even know how I manage to go on living. You took the trouble to come all this way, and I want to give you some memento of Noe, but I've nothing to offer. Well, at any rate, during my life my husband took me to many places I wanted to go to. Yes, he took me just about everywhere. I've probably been to all the famous hot-spring resorts in our country. He even took me climbing with him to the top of Mount Fuji...

      "Yes? Are you asking me about the time Noe was murdered? I certainly do remember that real well. Before the special edition came out, a newsman let us know about the murder, so my husband

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