Kimiko and Other Japanese Sketches Part 2

[7] _Migawari_, "subst.i.tute," is the religious term.

"O mother, never weep for me! It is not kindness to mourn for the dead.

Over the River of Tears[8] their silent road is; and when mothers weep, the flood of that river rises, and the soul cannot pa.s.s, but must wander to and fro.

[8] "Namida-no-Kawa."

"Therefore, I pray you, do not grieve, O mother mine! Only give me a little water sometimes."

III

From that hour she was not seen to weep. She performed, lightly and silently, as in former days, the gentle duties of a daughter.

Seasons pa.s.sed; and her father thought to find another husband for her.

To the mother, he said:

"If our daughter again have a son, it will be great joy for her, and for all of us."

But the wiser mother made answer:

"Unhappy she is not. It is impossible that she marry again. She has become as a little child, knowing nothing of trouble or sin."

It was true that she had ceased to know real pain. She had begun to show a strange fondness for very small things. At first she had found her bed too large--perhaps through the sense of emptiness left by the loss of her child; then, day by day, other things seemed to grow too large--the dwelling itself, the familiar rooms, the alcove and its great flower-vases--even the household utensils. She wished to eat her rice with miniature chopsticks out of a very small bowl such as children use.

In these things she was lovingly humored; and in other matters she was not fantastic. The old people consulted together about her constantly.

At last the father said:

"For our daughter to live with strangers might be painful. But as we are aged, we may soon have to leave her. Perhaps we could provide for her by making her a nun. We might build a little temple for her."

Next day the mother asked O-Toyo:

"Would you not like to become a holy nun, and to live in a very, very small temple, with a very small altar, and little images of the Buddhas? We should be always near you. If you wish this, we shall get a priest to teach you the sutras."

O-Toyo wished it, and asked that an extremely small nun's dress be got for her. But the mother said:

"Everything except the dress a good nun may have made small. But she must wear a large dress--that is the law of Buddha."

So she was persuaded to wear the same dress as other nuns.

IV

They built for her a small An-dera, or Nun's-Temple, in an empty court where another and larger temple, called Amida-ji, had once stood. The An-dera was also called Amida-ji, and was dedicated to Amida-Nyorai and to other Buddhas. It was fitted up with a very small altar and with miniature altar furniture. There was a tiny copy of the sutras on a tiny reading-desk, and tiny screens and bells and kakemono. And she dwelt there long after her parents had pa.s.sed away. People called her the Amida-ji no Bikuni--which means The Nun of the Temple of Amida.

A little outside the gate there was a statue of Jizo. This Jizo was a special Jizo--the friend of sick children. There were nearly always offerings of small rice-cakes to be seen before him. These signified that some sick child was being prayed for; and the number of the rice-cakes signified the number of the years of the child. Most often there were but two or three cakes; rarely there were seven or ten. The Amida-ji no Bikuni took care of the statue, and supplied it with incense-offerings, and flowers from the temple garden; for there was a small garden behind the An-dera.

After making her morning round with her alms-bowl, she would usually seat herself before a very small loom, to weave cloth much too narrow for serious use. But her webs were bought always by certain shopkeepers who knew her story; and they made her presents of very small cups, tiny flower-vases, and queer dwarf-trees for her garden.

Her greatest pleasure was the companionship of children; and this she never lacked. j.a.panese child-life is mostly pa.s.sed in temple courts; and many happy childhoods were spent in the court of the Amida-ji. All the mothers in that street liked to have their little ones play there, but cautioned them never to laugh at the Bikuni-San. "Sometimes her ways are strange," they would say; "but that is because she once had a little son, who died, and the pain became too great for her mother's heart. So you must be very good and respectful to her."

Good they were, but not quite respectful in the reverential sense. They knew better than to be that. They called her "Bikuni-San" always, and saluted her nicely; but otherwise they treated her like one of themselves. They played games with her; and she gave them tea in extremely small cups, and made for them heaps of rice-cakes not much bigger than peas, and wove upon her loom cloth of cotton and cloth of silk for the robes of their dolls. So she became to them as a blood-sister.

They played with her daily till they grew too big to play, and left the court of the temple of Amida to begin the bitter work of life, and to become the fathers and mothers of children whom they sent to play in their stead. These learned to love the Bikuni-San like their parents had done. And the Bikuni-San lived to play with the children of the children of the children of those who remembered when her temple was built.

The people took good heed that she should not know want. There was always given to her more than she needed for herself. So she was able to be nearly as kind to the children as she wished, and to feed extravagantly certain small animals. Birds nested in her temple, and ate from her hand, and learned not to perch upon the heads of the Buddhas.

Some days after her funeral, a crowd of children visited my house. A little girl of nine years spoke for them all:

"Sir, we are asking for the sake of the Bikuni-San who is dead. A very large _haka_[9] has been set up for her. It is a nice haka. But we want to give her also a very, very small haka, because in the time she was with us she often said that she would like a very little haka. And the stone-cutter has promised to cut it for us, and to make it very pretty, if we can bring the money. Therefore perhaps you will honorably give something."

[9] Tombstone.

"a.s.suredly," I said. "But now you will have nowhere to play."

She answered, smiling:

"We shall still play in the court of the temple of Amida. She is buried there. She will hear our playing, and be glad."

HARU

Haru was brought up, chiefly at home, in that old-fashioned way which produced one of the sweetest types of woman the world has ever seen.

This domestic education cultivated simplicity of heart, natural grace of manner, obedience, and love of duty as they were never cultivated but in j.a.pan. Its moral product was something too gentle and beautiful for any other than the old j.a.panese society: it was not the most judicious preparation for the much harsher life of the new--in which it still survives. The refined girl was trained for the condition of being theoretically at the mercy of her husband. She was taught never to show jealousy, or grief, or anger--even under circ.u.mstances compelling all three; she was expected to conquer the faults of her lord by pure sweetness. In short, she was required to be almost superhuman--to realize, at least in outward seeming, the ideal of perfect unselfishness. And this she could do with a husband of her own rank, delicate in discernment--able to divine her feelings, and never to wound them.

Haru came of a much better family than her husband; and she was a little too good for him, because he could not really understand her.

They had been married very young, had been poor at first, and then had gradually become well-off, because Haru's husband was a clever man of business. Sometimes she thought he had loved her most when they were less well-off; and a woman is seldom mistaken about such matters.

She still made all his clothes; and he commended her needle-work. She waited upon his wants; aided him to dress and undress; made everything comfortable for him in their pretty home, bade him a charming farewell as he went to business in the morning, and welcomed him upon his return; received his friends exquisitely; managed his household matters with wonderful economy; and seldom asked any favors that cost money.

Indeed she scarcely needed such favors; for he was never ungenerous, and liked to see her daintily dressed--looking like some beautiful silver moth robed in the folding of its own wings--and to take her to theatres and other places of amus.e.m.e.nt. She accompanied him to pleasure-resorts famed for the blossoming of cherry-trees in spring, or the shimmering of fireflies on summer nights, or the crimsoning of maples in autumn. And sometimes they would pa.s.s a day together at Maiko, by the sea, where the pines seem to sway like dancing girls; or an afternoon at Kiyomidzu, in the old, old summer-house, where everything is like a dream of five hundred years ago--and where there is a great shadowing of high woods, and a song of water leaping cold and clear from caverns, and always the plaint of flutes unseen, blown softly in the antique way--a tone-caress of peace and sadness blending, just as the gold light glooms into blue over a dying sun.

Except for such small pleasures and excursions, Haru went out seldom.

Her only living relatives, and also those of her husband, were far away in other provinces; and she had few visits to make. She liked to be at home, arranging flowers for the alcoves or for the G.o.ds, decorating the rooms, and feeding the tame gold-fish of the garden-pond, which would lift up their heads when they saw her coming.

No child had yet brought new joy or sorrow into her life. She looked, in spite of her wife's coiffure, like a very young girl; and she was still simple as a child--notwithstanding that business capacity in small things which her husband so admired that he often condescended to ask her counsel in big things. Perhaps the heart then judged for him better than the pretty head; but, whether intuitive or not, her advice never proved wrong. She was happy enough with him for five years--during which time he showed himself as considerate as any young j.a.panese merchant could well be towards a wife of finer character than his own.

Then his manner suddenly became cold--so suddenly that she felt a.s.sured the reason was not that which a childless wife might have reason to fear. Unable to discover the real cause, she tried to persuade herself that she had been remiss in her duties; examined her innocent conscience to no purpose; and tried very, very hard to please. But he remained unmoved. He spoke no unkind words--though she felt behind his silence the repressed tendency to utter them. A j.a.panese of the better cla.s.s is not very apt to be unkind to his wife in words. It is thought to be vulgar and brutal. The educated man of normal disposition will even answer a wife's reproaches with gentle phrases. Common politeness, by the j.a.panese code, exacts this att.i.tude from every manly man; moreover, it is the only safe one. A refined and sensitive woman will not long submit to coa.r.s.e treatment; a spirited one may even kill herself because of something said in a moment of pa.s.sion, and such a suicide disgraces the husband for the rest of his life. But there are slow cruelties worse than words, and safer--neglect or indifference, for example, of a sort to arouse jealousy. A j.a.panese wife has indeed been trained never to show jealousy; but the feeling is older than all training--old as love, and likely to live as long. Beneath her pa.s.sionless mask the j.a.panese wife feels like her Western sister--just like that sister who prays and prays, even while delighting some evening a.s.sembly of beauty and fashion, for the coming of the hour which will set her free to relieve her pain alone.

Haru had cause for jealousy; but she was too much of a child to guess the cause at once; and her servants too fond of her to suggest it. Her husband had been accustomed to pa.s.s his evenings in her company, either at home or elsewhere. But now, evening after evening, he went out by himself. The first time he had given her some business pretexts; afterwards he gave none, and did not even tell her when he expected to return. Latterly, also, he had been treating her with silent rudeness.

He had become changed--"as if there was a goblin in his heart"--the servants said. As a matter of fact he had been deftly caught in a snare set for him. One whisper from a geisha had numbed his will; one smile blinded his eyes. She was far less pretty than his wife; but she was very skillful in the craft of spinning webs--webs of sensual delusion which entangle weak men, and always tighten more and more about them until the final hour of mockery and ruin. Haru did not know. She suspected no wrong till after her husband's strange conduct had become habitual--and even then only because she found that his money was pa.s.sing into unknown hands. He had never told her where he pa.s.sed his evenings. And she was afraid to ask, lest he should think her jealous.

Instead of exposing her feelings in words, she treated him with such sweetness that a more intelligent husband would have divined all. But, except in business, he was dull. He continued to pa.s.s his evenings away; and as his conscience grew feebler, his absences lengthened. Haru had been taught that a good wife should always sit up and wait for her lord's return at night; and by so doing she suffered from nervousness, and from the feverish conditions that follow sleeplessness, and from the lonesomeness of her waiting after the servants, kindly dismissed at the usual hour, had left her with her thoughts. Once only, returning very late, her husband said to her: "I am sorry you should have sat up so late for me; do not wait like that again!" Then, fearing he might really have been pained on her account, she laughed pleasantly, and said: "I was not sleepy, and I am not tired; honorably please not to think about me." So he ceased to think about her--glad to take her at her word; and not long after that he stayed away for one whole night.

The next night he did likewise, and a third night. After that third night's absence he failed even to return for the morning meal; and Haru knew the time had come when her duty as a wife obliged her to speak.

She waited through all the morning hours, fearing for him, fearing for herself also; conscious at last of the wrong by which a woman's heart can be most deeply wounded. Her faithful servants had told her something; the rest she could guess. She was very ill, and did not know it. She knew only that she was angry--selfishly angry, because of the pain given her--cruel, probing, sickening pain. Midday came as she sat thinking how she could say least selfishly what it was now her duty to say,--the first words of reproach that would ever have pa.s.sed her lips.

Then her heart leaped with a shock that made everything blur and swim before her sight in a whirl of dizziness--because there was a sound of kuruma-wheels and the voice of a servant calling: "Honorable-return-is!"