The Wild Geese (3 page)

Even though a long interval had passed since Okada started bowing to the woman of the window, he would not investigate her personal history. From the appearance of the house and the way she dressed, he guessed that she might be someone's mistress. But this did not disturb
him. He did not even know her name, and he made no effort to learn it. All he had to do was look at the name plate, but he couldn't bring himself to do this in her presence. At other times, when she wasn't there, he hesitated because of the neighbors and the passersby. As a result, he never looked at the characters written on the small wooden sign shadowed by the eaves.

A
LTHOUGH
the events of this story that have Okada for their hero took place before I learned the earlier history of the woman of the window, it will be convenient to give an outline of that history here.

The narrative goes back to the days when the medical school of the university was located at Shitaya and the old guardhouse of Lord Todo's estate was turned into a student dormitory. Its windows, of vertical wooden bars as thick as a man's arms, were set at wide intervals in a wall of gray tiles plastered in checkerboard fashion. If I may phrase it this way, the students lived there like so many beasts, though I'm sorry to make such a comparison. Of course you can't see windows like those now except in the castle turrets of the emperor's palace, and even the bars of the lion and tiger cages in the Ueno Zoo are more slenderly made than those were.

The dormitory had servants whom the students could use for errands. They usually sent out to buy something cheap to eat, like baked beans or roasted sweet potatoes. For each trip the servant received two sen. One of these workers was called Suezo. The other men had loud mouths buried in bur-like beards, but this man kept his mouth shut and always shaved. The others wore dirty clothes of rough cotton; Suezo's were always neat, and sometimes he came to work wearing silk.

I don't know who told me or when, but I heard that Suezo lent money to needy students. Of course it only amounted to fifty sen or one yen at a time. But when the debt gradually grew to five or ten yen, Suezo would make the borrower draw up a note, and if it wasn't yet paid at the end of the term, a new one was written. Suezo became what can really be called a professional money-lender. I haven't any idea how he obtained such capital. Certainly not from picking up two sen for each student errand. But perhaps nothing is impossible if a man concentrates all of his energies on what he wants.

At any rate, when the medical school moved from Shitaya to Hongo, Suezo no longer remained a servant, but his house, newly located no Ike-no-hata, was continually visited by a great number of indiscreet students. When he began working for the university, he was already over thirty, was poor, and had a wife and child to support. But since he had made quite a fortune through moneylending and had moved to his new house, he began to feel dissatisfied with his wife, who was ugly and quarrel-some.

At that time he remembered a certain woman he had seen every so often while he was still going to the university through a narrow alley from his house at the back of Neribei-cho. There was a dark house whose ditchboards in that alley were always partly broken and half of whose sliding shutters were closed all year round. At night, when anyone passed, he had to go sideways because of a wheeled stall drawn up under the eaves.

What first attracted Suezo's attention to this house was the music of the samisen inside. And then he learned
that the person playing the instrument was a lovely girl about sixteen or seventeen years old. The neat kimono she wore was quite different from the shabby appearance of her house.

If the girl happened to be in the doorway, as soon as she saw a man approaching she went back into the dark interior. Suezo, with his characteristic alertness, though without particularly investigating the matter, found out that the girl's name was Otama, that her mother was dead, and that she lived alone with her father, who sold sugary, sticky candies molded into figures in his stall.

But eventually a change took place in this back-street house. The wheeled stall vanished from its set place under the eaves. And the house and its surroundings, which were always modest, seemed suddenly attacked by what was then fashionably called “civilization,” for new boards over the ditch replaced the broken and warped ones, and a new lattice door had been installed at the entrance.

Once Suezo noticed a pair of Western shoes in the doorway. Soon after, a new name plate bearing a policeman's title was put up. Suezo also made certain, while shopping on the neighboring streets and yet without seeming to pry, that the old candy dealer had acquired a son-in-law.

To the old man, who loved his daughter more than sight itself, the loss of Otama to a policeman with terrifying looks was like having her carried off by a monster with a long nose and a red face. Otama's father had feared the discomfort he would incur by the intrusion of such a formidable son-in-law, and after meeting the suitor, had
consulted with several confidants, but none of them had told him to reject the offer.

Someone said: “You see, I told you so, didn't I? When I took the trouble to arrange a good match, you were too particular, saying you couldn't part with your only child, so that finally a son-in-law you couldn't say no to is going to move in on you!”

And another said threateningly: “If you can't stand the man, the only other solution is to move far away, but since he's a policeman, he'll be able to catch up with you and make his offer again. There's no escaping him.”

A wife who had a reputation for using her head was believed to have told the old man: “Didn't I advise you to sell her off to a geisha house since her looks were good and her samisen master praised her skill? A policeman without a wife can go from door to door, and when he finds a pretty face, he takes her off whether you like it or not. You can't do anything but make the best of the bad luck that such a man took a fancy to your daughter.”

No more than three months after Suezo had heard these rumors, he discovered one morning that the doors of the old candy dealer's house were locked and that an attached piece of paper gave notice that the house was for rent. Then, on inquiring further into the neighbors' talk while shopping, Suezo heard that the policeman had in his own native place a wife and children who had turned up on a surprise visit, whereupon a fight followed, and Otama ran from the house. A neighbor who overheard the quarrel stopped the girl from doing something rash. Not one of the old man's friends had enough knowledge about legal matters, so the old man had been quite indifferent about seeing if the marriage had been legally registered, and when the son-in-law told him he would completely handle the legal end of the marriage, the old man had had no suspicions or fears.

A girl at Kitazumi's grocery said to Suezo: “I really feel sorry for Taa-chan—she's honest and she had no doubt about the policeman, but he said he was only looking for a place to live.”

And with his hand circling his cropped head of hair, the storekeeper interrupted her: “It's a pity about the old man too. He moved away because he couldn't stand meeting his neighbors and he couldn't stay here as before. But he still sells candy where he used to, saying he can't do business in places where there are no little customers. A while back he sold his stall, but now he has it again from the second-hand dealer, after telling him the situation. I think he's got financial troubles because of the moving and such. It's as though the old man lived for only a short time in a world of dreams, freeing himself into easy retirement and keeping company with the policeman, who drank saké, acting like a god, while, in fact, he starved his wife and children in the country.”

After that, the candy dealer's daughter slipped from Suezo's mind, but when he became financially well off and could do more of what he wanted, he happened to remember the girl.

Suezo, now with a wide circle of acquaintances to do his bidding, had them look for the old candy dealer and finally located his mean quarters next to a rickshaw
garage behind a theater. He learned also that the daughter wasn't married. So Suezo sent a woman to make overtures with an offer from a wealthy merchant disposed to have the girl for his mistress. In spite of Otama's objections at first, the old woman kept reminding the meek and reluctant girl of the advantages her father would get from the arrangement, and the negotiations reached the point where the parties agreed to meet at the Matsugen restaurant.

B
EFORE
this new interest in Suezo's life, his only thoughts had centered on the students, their loans, and his returns, but he had no sooner located Otama and her father than he began to search his neighborhood for a house to establish his mistress in. He did not know whether or not he would succeed with his plan, but he was so eager to advance the scheme that he began to put it into operation. Two of the many houses he investigated pleased him. One of them was on his own street, halfway between his house, which was right next to the famous writer Fukuchi's, and the Rengyokuan, which sold the best bowl of noodles in the area. A short distance from the Shinobazu pond was the house that had first appealed to him, for it stood somewhat back from the road, was fenced about with bamboo canes, and had a thick-needled parasol pine and a few cypresses.

The other house, in the middle of Muenzaka, was smaller. He did not find any notice on the door when he arrived, but he had heard that the house was for sale. Almost immediately upon entering, he discovered the noise from the neighboring house and the group of young ladies at work. “I don't like that,” he said to himself, but on inspecting the interior with more care, he could not help appreciating the high quality of the timber. He knew that the former occupant, a wealthy merchant who had just died, had built the house with care in order
to spend his retirement there. The place, with its front garden and granite doorway, was comfortable, neat, and superior in taste.

One night, as Suezo lay in bed, he thought about the two houses. His wife, who had tried to put her child to sleep, had herself dozed off while the infant suckled at her breast. Suezo turned away from her, her mouth open, snoring, the child pulling at the exposed breast.

Usually Suezo would lie awake in bed while devising new schemes for increasing the interest on his loans. His wife never complained about this habit, and she was usually asleep long before her husband.

Once more he glanced at her, thinking to himself: “Is that a woman's face? I doubt it. Take Otama's face. That's a woman's face, but I haven't seen her for a long time. You couldn't even call her a woman then. I wouldn't think she was more than a child. Yet even then—what a face! Gentle—yes. But with something smart in it too. It couldn't be worse now—better, I should think. How I'd love to see her now instead of that thing!”

Once more he looked down at the snoring woman. “Poor devil!” he thought. “Sleeping there and not knowing a thing. She believes I'm adding up sums, but how wrong! How stupid and wrong! If you only knew—”

He suddenly slapped at his leg. “What! Mosquitoes out already! That's what's wrong with this section. Too many pests. We'll have to put up the net soon. Let the old she-devil get eaten alive, but I've got to think about the children.”

His mind returned again to the question of the houses, and only after one o'clock in the morning had he made a
decision. He had reasoned that he would prefer the Ikeno-hata place for its view, but what was the need of that when all he had to do was look out the window in the house he was now living in? One point in its favor was the cheap rent. That was true, but he remembered that a rented house has too many other expenses. Besides, it was not hidden enough. It would attract attention. What if one day he happened to leave the window open by mistake? He could just see the old devil on her way to market with the boy and girl. He could see them looking in and finding him there with Otama. There'd be more than that devil to pay!

When he thought about the Muenzaka house, he felt that it was somewhat gloomy, but the key point in its favor was its out-of-the-way location on a slope that only students seemed to stroll along at odd hours. But he didn't like the idea of putting up so much money for it. Still, with its timber. . . . And when he had it insured, he could at least get back what he paid at the beginning. “All right, then. That's it!” he told himself. “I'll take it. Take it and her.”

Now he was especially pleased with it all. The future suddenly seemed real, and he saw himself on his evening of triumph. He had bathed carefully, had dressed smartly, had concocted an excuse to dodge his wife for the night. He saw himself rushing out of the house. He was free. He was almost to Muenzaka. He saw the light and wondered what it would be like when he went up the walk and opened the door. How radiantly beautiful her face would be! Poor Otama! There she was waiting for him, a kitten or some pet on her lap—ready to welcome him,
of course—her face made-up, of course. He would dress her in a gorgeous kimono, would give her whatever she had demanded for the occasion. But he checked himself a moment. He wouldn't play the fool. He wouldn't spend his money unwisely. He had his connections at the pawn shops. How stupid to squander money like some men, like Fukuchi for example. Suezo suddenly saw his famous neighbor Fukuchi strutting openly on the streets and followed by his expensive geishas The students would see the writer and be envious, but Suezo knew that the dandy was actually ill off. He was supposedly an intelligent man, a writer. But was he? If a clerk did the same kinds of nasty tricks with his pen as Fukuchi did, he would be discharged.