its greatest notoriety within my family just about then. My oldest sister, who had gone to live with her husband’s household, supposedly said that no woman would come to our own house as my bride. Informed of this, I applied even more ointment.
My younger brother worried about my pimples too. Time after time he went to buy medicine in my stead. As children my brother and I had never gotten along; when he took the entrance exam for high school, I prayed that he would fail. After we began living together away from home, though, I gradually came to appreciate my brother’s even temper. As he grew up, he turned quiet and shy. Occasionally he submitted an essay to the magazine, but his writing was flat. His grades didn’t look good next to mine either, and this troubled him. I would be sympathetic, and then he’d get even more discouraged. His hair came down in a widow’s peak over his forehead, something he detested as effeminate. He sincerely believed that his narrow forehead had made him a dunce.
When I was with someone during this period of my life, I would either reveal everything about myself or else conceal it. To be honest, the only one I really confided in was this brother of mine. He told me everything about himself and I did the same.
One dark night in early autumn we went out to the harbor wharf. A breeze was blowing in from the strait as we talked about the red string my Japanese-language teacher had once described. The teacher had said that each boy in the class had such a string tied to the baby toe of his right foot, but no one could see it. The other end was always attached to a girl’s baby toe. The string was very long, and it wouldn’t break even when the boy and girl were far apart. It wouldn’t tangle either, even if the two of them met right on the street. And, our teacher said, this string meant that the boy and girl were destined to marry each other.
When I first heard this story, I was so excited that I rushed home to tell my younger brother. And that evening on the wharf, listening to the waves and the cry of the sea gulls, we spoke of the red string once again.
What’s your wife-to-be doing right now? I asked.
My brother shook the wharf railing two or three times with both hands. Then, somewhat awkwardly, he said, She’s walking in a garden.
That was just like my brother. Yes, a young girl in large wooden clogs, walking in a garden with her fan and gazing at the primroses—how perfect for him.
Now it was my turn. Gazing out at the dark sea, I said, Mine’s wearing a red sash. And then I closed my mouth tight. A ferry boat heading across the strait seemed to roll on the horizon, its windows entirely lit up as though the boat were actually a large inn.
One thing I had kept from my brother. When I came back for the vacation that summer, a new maid was Working in the house. Wearing a red sash over her yukata, this petite girl had been very abrupt in helping me out of my shirt and trousers. Her name, I had learned, was Miyo.
Whenever I went to bed, I would secretly light up a cigarette and think of various ways to begin a story. At some point Miyo must have detected this habit. One evening, after laying out the bedding, she placed a tobacco tray right beside my pillow. When she came in the next morning to straighten up, I told her that I smoked on the sly and she should not bring me the tray. All right, she said, a sullen look on her face.
When a troupe of storytellers and musicians came to our village that summer, the household servants were allowed to see a performance. You go too, my brother and I were told. But at that period of our lives, we only made fun of such provincial amusements. Instead of the theater, we headed for the rice paddies to catch fireflies. We had gone almost as far as the woods of the neighboring village, but the dew was so heavy we came back with only twenty or so fireflies in our cage.
Presently the servants came wandering in from the theater. I had Miyo spread the bedding and hang up the mosquito net. Then my brother and I turned out the light and released the fireflies inside the net. As they glided back and forth, Miyo stood outside the net watching. I sprawled out on the bedding alongside my brother, more aware of Miyo’s dim figure than of the faint glowing of the fireflies.
“Was the performance interesting?” I asked, a little awkwardly. Until then, I had never talked to a maid about anything other than her household chores.
“No,” Miyo answered softly.
I burst out laughing. But my younger brother remained silent as he waved his fan at a firefly caught on the edge of the net. Somehow or other I felt very odd.
After that, I became quite conscious of Miyo. Whenever the red string was mentioned, it was her image that came to mind.
III
I was in the fourth year of high school now, and several classmates came over to visit almost every day. I would serve cuttlefish and wine, then tell them all sorts of nonsense. A book’s just come out, I once said. It tells how to light charcoal. Another time I showed them my copy of The Brute Machine, a novel by an up-and-coming writer. I had smeared oil over the cover, so that I could exclaim, Here’s how they’re selling things nowadays. A queer binding job, isn’t it? I astonished them again with a work entitled My Lovely Friend. I had cut out certain parts and arranged for a printer I knew to insert some outrageous paragraphs of my own. This book, I told my friends, was truly a rare specimen.
Miyo began to fade from memory. Anyway, I had this odd feeling of guilt over two people falling in love in the same household. Besides, I never had anything good to say about girls. I’d think of Miyo for only a moment, but still I’d get angry with myself. So I didn’t say anything about her to my friends, let alone to my brother.
Then I read a well-known novel11 by a Russian author that gave me pause. The work tells of a woman who gets sent to prison. Her downfall begins when her employer’s nephew, a university student from the nobility, manages to seduce her. I lost track of the general sense of the novel, but I did put a bookmark of pressed leaves at the page where they kiss for the first time beneath a wildly blooming lilac. For me, a great novel wasn’t about other people; I couldn’t avoid seeing myself and Miyo in this couple. If only I were bolder, I’d act like that student. Just thinking about these things plunged me into despair. Timid and provincial, I had led a totally dull life. I would prefer instead to be a glorious martyr.
I told my younger brother these thoughts one evening after we went to bed. I had meant to be serious, but the pose I assumed got in the way. I ended up acting flippant—patting my neck, rubbing my hands together, and speaking without any elegance whatever. How pathetic that habit forced me to act this way.
My younger brother listened in bed, his tongue flicking across his thin lower lip. He did not turn toward me.
Will you marry her? he asked. It seemed a difficult question to ask.
For some reason or other I was taken aback. Who knows, I shrugged, if that’s even possible? I tried to sound disheartened.
My brother suggested that such a marriage wasn’t very likely. He sounded surprisingly circumspect and grown-up.
Listening to him, I realized how I truly felt. I was offended and angry. Sitting up on the bedding, I lowered my voice and insisted, That’s why I’m going to carry on this fight.
My younger brother twisted about under his calico blanket, as if he were going to say something. He glanced at me and smiled slightly. I too broke out laughing and said, Well then, since I’ll be leaving . . . Then I extended my hand toward him.
My brother stuck his right hand out from the blanket. I shook his limp fingers several times, laughing softly.
It was
