snow-viewing, slip and slide,till we all fall down!
That just shows how beautiful the snow at Mukōjima used to be. I admit, though, it was quite a job, keeping the path that led down from the embankment clear. Snow would cover the whole expanse of dead reeds, till from the veranda it looked as though the houses on the other side would soon be buried. Not a single ferry crossed the river, and everything was so quiet that you felt you had been washed clean through and through. It was pretty lonely by yourself, so you’d invite someone to join you, and you’d have a drink together. Young people these days have no idea how delicious saké can be, when you drink it like that with a friend, gazing out at the snow. You’d make it good and hot, and with it of course you’d have a hot stew. Monkfish is especially good when it’s snowing. Saké drunk like that with a man you like, over monkfish stew—why, it used to be heaven on earth! People in the old days enjoyed good food even more when the setting was a pleasure too. ‘Food just tastes better there, the rooms are so pretty,’ people used to say, but no one talks like that anymore. Everything’s crude and obvious now. The tonkatsu breaded pork is thick, tender, and cheap everywhere, and everyone’s happy with deep-fried pork, so it’s no wonder they don’t really understand food at all. Obviously, I have nothing against tonkatsu itself. Young working people are welcome to eat it instead of a bentō box lunch, but I wish they’d make some distinction between bentō meals and real food. The kind of bars where you just sit down and grab a bite are fine if you live in town, but don’t people ever feel like drinking somewhere with a really nice garden? Even at my place—I built it in the Meiji period, after all, so there’s plenty of land around it—you can enjoy clam chazuke in a handsome, elegant room. These days you could never make a profit from setting up a place like this, and once I’m gone, there’ll be no one to carry it on. The days of pleasure in saké and snow will never come again.”
Whenever she got talking like this, Oriku would lose herself in memories of how beautiful Mukōjima had been back in earlier years, and how many fine sights it had offered. And as she talked, she would become intoxicated with the sound of her own voice, until she no longer even saw the person with her and would begin to resemble some mad old woman chasing ghosts from the past. Like the mother of Umewakamaru, who wandered the banks of the Sumida River in search of her son, Oriku would talk on and on as she called to mind visions of the good old days.
She talked well too, and she had a fine voice. Back when she was a kept woman, living at Hashiba, she had worked hard to learn itchūbushi samisen and voice under Miyako Itchū himself; so that her voice still swept her listener along with her, when she got going on old times. From age nineteen to twenty-five she had been someone’s mistress, then till forty a brothel madam. Thereafter, for all her hard work, she had had not a care in the world, and it showed: despite her years she had nothing about her of the old woman. She had just turned sixty when Shinkichi first met her, but her face was as fresh as ever, her back was unbent, and although she never used makeup, she cut a very presentable figure.
Monnosuke’s son grew up strong and healthy. He first appeared onstage at age six, and at sixteen he took the name Monjirō. His real father, Matsushima, soon passed away, and another of his sons—Monjirō’s half-brother—took over the business. The restaurant continued to do well, and Monjirō, as much in favor with the son as he had been with the father, went there often.
There had been no talk when Ohisa became Monnosuke’s wife, but word that Matsushima was Monjirō’s real father got out in the end and became something of an open secret.
Whenever the offering changed at the theater, Monjirō brought the new program out to Mukōjima and spent a leisurely day there. An actor’s son matures fast, drinks, and amuses himself with women; his is not the strict upbringing imposed on the son of a townsman. Still, Monjirō was relatively sober in his behavior. Even at the Shigure Teahouse he drank no more than a glass of beer, and he always addressed Oriku with boyish affection as “auntie.” This naturally endeared him to her. She would take him to her own room, where they would eat their chazuke together. Then they might go out and fish from the dock, stroll off to Chōmeiji Temple for some delicately flavored sweets, and wander on to Hagi no Sono, the Bush Clover Garden, or Hyakkaen, the Garden of a Hundred Flowers. For Oriku, Monjirō was a handy amusement, and when he got back she would give him a bit of pocket money. The more she did for him, the more he played up to her, and he would keep her engaged in conversation until late in the evening. Sometimes he would even spend the night.
Since there was a lot of traffic in the main building, and people started clattering around there early in the morning, Oriku had taken over the Paulownia annex for herself. Even if the others were occupied, the Paulownia was hers. When Monjirō stayed over, he and Oriku would sleep side by side in the annex’s main room, on separate futon, but in summer the mosquitoes were so bad that they slept within the same mosquito net. He even turned up suddenly late at night, drunk. He had taken a rickshaw from Azuma Bridge, and he plopped himself down on the kitchen floor, mumbling, “Please pay the rickshaw man.” This was not the first time this kind of thing had happened. By no means a sturdy drinker, he suffered for it if he was made to drink too much.
“There’s nothing worse for you than drinking more than you can take!” Oriku scolded him.
“I’m angry tonight, so please don’t you be angry with me!” he said. Nice young man that he was, he made up to her just as though she had been his real mother. She had the rickshaw man paid and half-carried him to her private room in the Paulownia. It was early August. She put him to bed in the mosquito net, since the houses along the river were buzzing with mosquitoes, and being so drunk he immediately began snoring loudly. Ten o’clock had come and gone, the other guests spending the night were quiet, and the even the kitchen fire had sunk low. Oriku had changed into her nightclothes and was just about to have a nightcap.
“Give me some, too!” Still sleepy-eyed, he began to get up and move toward her.
“I will not! Basically, drinking isn’t a good idea anyway, and I’m certainly not going to let you drink more than you already have. Just be a good boy and go to sleep.”
“But I can’t sleep when I’m angry! Tonight my friends made a fool of me.”
“In what way?”
Oriku sat there in her nightclothes. It was chilly near the river, toward dawn, and she was wearing a thin silk slip with a pink sash. She may have been in her mid-fifties, but she still had considerable allure.
“A lot of us got together tonight in a bar behind the Kabuki-za, to brag about our conquests.” He still looked sleepy.
“Young men do that, you know. You should have done your bit of bragging too.”
“But I have no conquests to brag about! So they all made fun of me. ‘That moron hasn’t had a woman yet!’ they kept saying. They treated me like an idiot. It made me so angry, I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Well, you weren’t very smart. Why get angry over something like that? All you had to do was pretend!”
“But I’d told them I haven’t!”
“Talk about being naive! What a baby!”
“Yes, I’m a baby, I know. Even if I’d faked it, though, it’s still true, I’ve never experienced a woman. I’ve fallen for women, women have fallen for me, but it’s just that I’ve never gone all the way, and it’s driving me crazy! If I could just once experience the real thing, after that I could tell whatever lies I need.”
He was hanging his head, looking sweet, comical, and pathetic all at once. She readily believed it was driving him crazy.
“You’ve
