Natsume Soseki - To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

This first opportunity for him to come in contact with Taguchi's family led to frequent visits on business and other matters. Sometimes he even entered the houseboy's room beside the entrance to gossip with the one he had once bickered with over the phone. There were even occasions in which he had to go into the back part of the house, sometimes to talk with Taguchi's wife about something connected with the running of the household. He was frequently at a loss about questions concerning English put to him by the Taguchis' only son, a middle school student.

As the frequency of his visits increased, it was natural that he had more opportunities to come in contact with the two daughters. However, his slow response on the one hand and the comparatively vivacious behavior of the two girls — which seemed to be a family trait — on the other, as well as the very few chances they had to sit down face to face left them under conditions whose reserve was not easily broken through. The words they exchanged were of course not limited to rigid formal pronouncements, but most were taken up with mere day-to-day matters that required less than five minutes to dispose of. There was thus not enough time for any degree of intimacy to develop. Only at a New Year's poetry-card party given a little after the middle of January did he have the chance to sit knee-to-knee with them for an unusually long time. They were up late into the night engaged in unreserved conversation. Chiyoko had said to him, "You're really slow at this game!" And Momoyoko had scolded, "If you're my partner, we're bound to lose."

One Sunday about a month later, when news of blossoming plum trees began appearing in the newspapers, Keitaro was spending the afternoon with Sunaga in his upstairs study after a long interval in which he had not visited him. Chiyoko had also come for a visit, and as the three chatted over one thing and another, she happened to mention something about her uncle.

"He's quite cranky," she said. "For a while he refused to see visitors on rainy days. I wonder if he still does that?"

"Actually, I was one of the ones he wouldn't let in on one of those rainy days."

As soon as Keitaro began his confession, both Sunaga and Chiyoko, as though it had been prearranged, burst out laughing. "Well, well, isn't that too bad," Sunaga said. "Perhaps it was because you didn't take that cane of yours with you."

"You can't expect someone to carry a cane in the rain. Right, Tagawa-san?"

At this reasonable defense from Chiyoko, Keitaro too could not but smile.

"This cane of yours — really, what's it like?" Chiyoko asked. "I'd like to have a look at it. Show it to me please, Tagawa-san. May I go downstairs to see it?"

"I don't have it with me today."

"Why not? When it's such a fine day."

"Because it's a very precious stick," said Sunaga. "I hear Tagawa doesn't take it out on ordinary days."

"Really?"

"Yes, I guess so," said Keitaro.

"Then do you carry it only on holidays?"

Keitaro found it somewhat difficult to fight the two of them, so he warded off Chiyoko's persistence by promising to show it to her on his next visit to Uchisai-waicho. In return he got Chiyoko to tell him the reason Matsumoto refused visitors on rainy days.

One cloudy November afternoon after a spell of fine weather, Chiyoko had gone to Yarai at her mother's request to bring Matsumoto one of his favorite foods, seasoned sea-urchin eggs. Chiyoko wanted to spend the day with his family, since she had not been there for some time, so she sent back the rickshaw she had come in and decided to stay on.

Matsumoto's children included a girl of twelve, the eldest, followed alternately by a boy, a girl, and a boy at two-year intervals, all growing up quite normally. In addition to these lively adornments that added such a bright aura to their home, the Matsumotos had a two-year-old girl named Yoiko, whom they held in as tight an embrace as a jewel set in a ring. On the eve of the Doll's Festival the preceding year, they had been blessed with this daughter, whose skin was as lucid as pearl and whose large pupils were dark as lacquer.

Of the five Matsumoto children, Chiyoko was most fond of this infant. Whenever she came to visit, she always brought her a plaything of some sort or another. Once, scolded by her aunt for giving Yoiko too many sweets, Chiyoko took the precious child in her arms and went out to the veranda. "My dear, dear Yoiko," she said, as if to purposely show her aunt how intimate the two were. Laughing, her aunt said, "Why, you'd think I'd been quarreling with my own baby." And Matsumoto teased Chiyoko, saying, "If you're so fond of her, we'll give her to you as a wedding gift to take to your husband."

On that day in late autumn as well, Chiyoko, the minute she sat down in the Matsumoto home, began playing with the child. Yoiko had never had her hair cut in front, so that it was soft, long, and curly, and when shone on by the sun, it had a dark violet tint, perhaps from the reflection against the pale scalp beneath. "Yoiko, I'll do up your hair," said Chiyoko, carefully combing the child's curls. Separating a tuft of the scanty sidelocks, Chiyoko tied at its roots a red ribbon. Yoiko's skull was broadly flat on top yet round like a piece of layered ricecake offering. With an effort, the infant lifted her short arm to touch a corner of the "offering" and, putting her tiny hand at the ribbon's edge, tottered over to her mother and lisped, "Ibbon, ibbon!"

"Oh, you've done it up quite nicely," her mother said, and Chiyoko, quite pleased as she looked at Yoiko from behind, instructed the child, "Now go to your father and show it to him."

Yoiko tottered to the entrance of Matsumoto's study and got down on all fours. Whenever she went in to see her father, she would greet him in this way. She raised her hips as high as she could, and lowering her ricecake-offering-like head a few inches from the threshold, again said, "Ibbon! Ibbon!"

Matsumoto turned his eyes from the book he was reading. "Ah, your head is very pretty," he said. "Who made you up?" With her head still bowed, Yoiko replied, "Chii, Chii." The lisping child usually called Chiyoko by this name. Standing behind the girl, Chiyoko heard her name coming from the tiny lips and laughed aloud in delight.

Meanwhile, the other children returned from school, suddenly adding their own varied colors to the scene hitherto centered solely on the red ribbon. The six-year-old came back from kindergarten with what looked like a war drum with a crest of three commas shaped into a circle painted on it. He led Yoiko away, promising to let her beat on it. Chiyoko gazed at the shadow of Yoiko's red woolen socks, which looked like two money pouches moving along the corridor. The round tassel at the end of the string binding each sock skipped with every jumping step of her tiny feet.

"I believe that's the pair you knitted for her."

"Yes, they do look cute on her, don't they?"

For a while Chiyoko sat talking with her uncle. A dreary rain, suddenly falling from clouded skies, splattered down and rapidly drenched the bare paulownia trees. Matsumoto and Chiyoko turned their eyes simultaneously toward the dreary color of the rain beyond the glass doors of the veranda, their hands held over the small brazier.

"The plantain really makes the rain sound noisy," Chiyoko said.

"It certainly holds on. I've been watching it every day, thinking it would wither this day or the next, but it's still fresh. The flowers of the sasanqua are gone, and the paulownia are bare, yet the plantain still has its green leaves, as you can see."

"You do wonder about funny things, Uncle. That's why a certain somebody says that Tsunezo's an idler."