Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata Read Free Book Online

to the surface.
    Kikuji stood up and laid a hand on her shoulder.
    She clutched at the hand.
    ‘I’m frightened, frightened.’ She looked around the room and shrank away, and suddenly her strength left her.
    ‘In this cottage?’
    Confused, Kikuji wondered what she might mean. ‘Yes,’ he answered vaguely.
    ‘It’s a very nice cottage.’
    Did she remember that her dead husband had occasionally had tea here? Or was she remembering Kikuji’s father?
    ‘This is the first time you’ve been in the cottage?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What are you looking at?’
    ‘Nothing. Not at anything.’
    ‘The painting there is a Sōtatsu.’
    She nodded, and her head remained bowed in the act.
    ‘And you’ve never been in the main house?’
    ‘Never.’
    ‘Can that be true, I wonder.’
    ‘I was there once. Your father’s funeral.’ Her voice trailed off.
    ‘The water is boiling. Suppose we have tea. You’ll feel better afterwards, and as a matter of fact I’d like a bowl myself.’
    ‘Is it all right?’ She started to get up, and reeled slightly.
    Kikuji took tea bowls and other utensils from the boxes in the corner. He remembered that the Inamura girl had used them the evening before, but he took them out all the same.
    Mrs Ota’s hand was trembling. The lid clinked against the kettle.
    She bent over to take up the bamboo tea-measure, and a tear wet the shoulder of the kettle.
    ‘Your father was good enough to buy this kettle from me.’
    ‘Really? I hadn’t known.’
    Kikuji found nothing displeasing in the fact that the kettle had belonged to the woman’s husband. And he did not think her words strange, so simply had she said them.
    ‘I can’t bring it to you.’ She had finished making tea. ‘Come for it.’
    Kikuji went to the hearth, and drank the tea there.
    The woman fell across his lap as if in a faint.
    He put his arm around her shoulder. The shoulder quivered, and her breathing grew fainter. In his arms, she was soft as a small child.
3
    He shook her roughly.
    As if to strangle her, he grasped her with both hands between throat and collarbone. The collarbone stood out sharply.
    ‘Can’t you see the difference between my father and me?’
    ‘You mustn’t say that.’
    Her eyes were closed, and her voice was soft.
    She was not yet ready to return from the other world.
    Kikuji had spoken less to her than to his own disquieted heart.
    He had been led easily into the other world. He could only think of it as another world, in which there was no distinction between his father and himself. So strong was the sense of the other world that afterward this disquietude came over him.
    He could ask himself if she was human. If she was pre-human, or again if she was the last woman in the human race.
    He could imagine her in this other world, making no distinction between her dead husband and Kikuji’s father and Kikuji.
    ‘You think of my father, don’t you, and my father and I become one person?’
    ‘Forgive me. The things I’ve done. The things I’ve been guilty of.’ A tear spilled over from the corner of her eye. ‘I want to die. It would be so pleasant to die now. You were about to strangle me. Why didn’t you?’
    ‘You aren’t to joke about it. But I do feel a little like strangling someone.’
    ‘Oh? Thank you.’ She arched her long throat. ‘It’s thin. You should have no trouble.’
    ‘Could you die and leave your daughter behind?’
    ‘It makes no difference. I’ll wear out and die soon in any case. Take care of Fumiko.’
    ‘If she is like you.’
    Suddenly she opened her eyes.
    Kikuji was astonished at his own words. They had been quite involuntary.
    How had they sounded to the woman?
    ‘See? See how my heart is beating? It won’t be long now.’ She took Kikuji’s hand and held it to her breast.
    Perhaps her heart had started in surprise at Kikuji’s words.
    ‘How old are you?’
    Kikuji did not answer.
    ‘Still in your twenties? It’s wrong. I’m very unhappy. I