Natsume Soseki - To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

When the ceremony was over, Matsumoto and Sunaga accompanied the coffin to the crematory with a few of the others. Chiyoko returned to Yarai with the rest of the relatives. In the rickshaw she thought that the painful sorrow she had felt during the past two days seemed to her to contain in it more of the pure and beautiful than the less anguished mood she was now in, and she experienced rather a longing for that acute grief undergone then.

Four persons went to gather Yoiko's ashes: Osen, Sunaga, Chiyoko, and the maid Kiyo, the one who had actually looked after the infant. The crematory was only a few hundred yards from the Kashiwagi train station, but since they had not realized this, they had hired rickshaws all the way from Yarai. It had thus required considerably more time to get there than it would have if they had taken the train.

It was Chiyoko's first experience at a crematory. The suburban sights, which she had not seen for a long while, provided her with the kind of pleasure that one has in being reminded of something long forgotten. Green wheat fields came into view as did radish gardens and forests of evergreen in which were mingled various reds, yellows, and browns. From time to time Sunaga looked back from his rickshaw, which was running ahead of Chiyoko's, to inform her they were passing such sights as Ana-Hachiman Shrine or the Suwa Woods. As the rickshaws went down a gentle shadowy slope, he pointed out a tall, lean pagoda standing amidst a clump of high cedars. Carved characters noted that the pagoda had been erected for the repose of Saint Kobo's soul on his one thousand fiftieth anniversary. Down the slope at the foot of a bridge was a tea stall, behind which was an artesian well surrounded by a thick growth of bamboo, all lending picturesqueness to the country lane. Small leaves of various colors fell occasionally from the nearly bare branches of tall trees. Spinning rapidly round and round in the air, they offered a vivid impression to Chiyoko's eyes; that they did not fall to the ground at once but remained whirling in the air for a long while was also a novel sight for her.

The crematory, its front facing south, stood on sunny, level ground, so when the rickshaws were drawn through the gate, the light beamed down on Chiyoko more brightly than she expected. When Osen gave her family name at the reception window, which looked like a counter at a post office, the man sitting there asked if she had the furnace key with her. She looked puzzled and began groping for it in her kimono bosom and the folds of her old sash.

"Now I've done it! I've left the key on the cabinet in the living room and. ."

"You didn't bring it with you? How awful! You'd better ask Ichi-san to go back and get it. We still have plenty of time."

Sunaga, who had been listening apathetically behind them said, "If it's the key you're worried about, I have it." He took from his kimono sleeve the cold, heavy object and handed it to his aunt.

When Osen went back to the counter with the key, Chiyoko rebuked Sunaga. "You're really nasty, Ichi-san! If you had the key on you, why didn't you take it out sooner and hand it over? Aunt Osen is so upset about Yoiko, you know, so it's quite natural she'd be forgetful."

Sunaga merely stood there smiling.

"A callous person like you shouldn't have come at all on an occasion of this sort. Yoiko is dead, yet you haven't shed a single tear for her."

"It's not that I'm callous. I've never had a child, so I don't know much about the affection between parents and kids."

"What! How can you say such a thoughtless thing right in front of Aunt Osen? And what about my own feelings? When on earth did I ever have a child?"

"Whether you've had one or not, I wouldn't know. But you're a woman, Chiyo-chan, so in all probability you've got a more tender heart than a man has."

As soon as she finished her business at the office, Osen, pretending that she had not heard their bickering, walked over toward the waiting room. She sat down and beckoned to Chiyoko, who had remained standing and who now came and sat beside her. Sunaga also followed Chiyoko into the room and sat opposite them on what looked like the kind of bench people use for cooling off on a summer evening. He called Kiyo and made room for her.

While they waited drinking tea, a few people arrived to gather the ashes of their deceased relatives. The first of these was a rustic-looking woman who spoke little, apparently out of consideration for the clothing Osen and Chiyoko were wearing. Next came a father and son who both had their kimono hems tucked up into their waistbands. In a lively voice one asked for an urn, bought the cheapest for sixteen sen, and then went off. The third party consisted of a girl in a violet hakama leading a blind person — whether a man or woman it was difficult to tell — whose hair was disheveled and who was wearing a stiff sash. Having ascertained that they had enough time, the blind person took a cigarette from a kimono sleeve and began smoking. As soon as Sunaga saw the blind person's face, he abruptly rose and went outside and for a long time failed to return. When a clerk came to inform Osen that it was time for the ash-gathering, Chiyoko went to the rear of the building to call Sunaga.

After she passed through the back part of the building, where lined on both sides were dismal-looking furnaces of ordinary grade, each with a brass plate on which the name of the cremated was written, she came out into a spacious yard in one corner of which she noticed a huge pile of pine for firewood. The yard was surrounded by a luxuriant growth of thick-stemmed bamboo. The view to the north — a series of high undulating hills beyond a wheat field below the bamboo grove — was especially clear and bright. Standing at the end of this open yard, Sunaga was looking out in a kind of abstracted gaze at the panorama.

"Ichi-san, they say it's ready."

Hearing Chiyoko's voice, Sunaga returned without a word, but then said, "That bamboo grove over there is quite fine. Somehow it seems, doesn't it, that the plants have grown this vigorously because they've been fertilized by the remains of the dead. The bamboo shoots they harvest here must taste excellent."

"How horrible!" Chiyoko said over her shoulder, hurrying past the lower-grade furnaces again.

Since the furnace in which Yoiko was cremated was among those of the first grade, a violet curtain hung over its folding doors. On a table in front of those doors was the garland of flowers brought the previous day, lying quietly, slightly withered. To Chiyoko, these seemed a memento of the heat that had burned Yoiko's flesh the previous evening. She suddenly felt as though she were suffocating.

Three fire-tenders appeared. The oldest requested the dead child's family to break the seal, but Sunaga replied that it would be all right if the man himself did it. Obediently, he tore the sealing paper and drew off the latch with a clang. The black iron doors opened on both sides, and at the dim farther end of the cavity something gray and round was visible, something black and white, all in an amorphous mass. The cremator said they would have it out shortly and, attaching two rails, put what looked like two iron rings at the ends of the coffin rack. Then, with a sudden rattle, out under the very noses of the four bystanders came the shapeless mass of what remained of the burned corpse. Chiyoko recognized in the remains Yoiko's skull, all puffed out and round, just as it had been in life with its resemblance to a ricecake offering. She immediately bit down hard on her handkerchief. The cremators left the skull and cheekbones and a few of the other larger bones on the rack, saying they would sift the rest neatly and bring them soon.