Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata Read Free Book Online Page A

objected he was specializing in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. His ability to read English, French, and German was unusual in his field. He was talented enough, but so quiet he seemed rather glum, the very opposite of his aimlessly cheerful sister Kumiko, with her smattering of flower arrangement, dressmaking, knitting, and all kinds of arts and crafts. Kumiko had always regarded her older brother as eccentric: even when she asked him to go skating or to play tennis he never gave her a decent answer. He would have nothing to do with her girl friends. He invited his students to the house, but he scarcely introduced themto her. Kumiko was not the sort to bear a grudge, but sometimes she used to pout because her mother was so solicitous toward her brother’s students.
    “When Taichiro has guests all we do is serve tea,” her mother would respond. “But you make a great fuss, rummaging around in the refrigerator and the cupboards, or going ahead and having food brought in.”
    “Yes, but he has only his students!” she would reply, sniffing.
    Kumiko had married and gone to London with her husband; they only heard from her two or three times a year. Taichiro was not yet financially independent and had never talked about marriage.
    Oki himself began to worry at how long Taichiro had been gone.
    He looked out the small French window of his study. At the base of the hill behind the house a high mound of earth, dug out during the war in making an air raid shelter, was already hidden by weeds so modest one barely noticed them. Among the weeds bloomed a mass of flowers the color of lapis lazuli. The flowers too were extremely small, but they were a bright, strong blue. Except for the sweet daphne, these flowers bloomed earlier than any in their garden. And they stayed in bloom a long time. Whatever they were, they could hardly be familiar harbingers of spring, but they were so close to his window that he often thought he would like to take one in his hand and study it. He had never yet gone to pick one, but that only seemed to increase his love for these tiny lapis-blue flowers.
    Soon after them, dandelions also came to bloom in the thicket of weeds. They were long-lived too. Even now in the fading evening light you could see the yellow of dandelions and the blue of all the little flowers. For a long time Oki looked out the window.
    Taichiro still had not come home.

THE FESTIVAL OF THE FULL MOON
    O toko was planning to take Keiko to the temple on Mt. Kurama for the Festival of the Full Moon. The festival was always held in May, but on a different date from that of the old lunar calendar. Early in the evening before the festival, the moon was rising in the clear sky over the Eastern Hills.
    Otoko watched it from the veranda. “I think we’ll have a fine moon tomorrow,” she called in to Keiko. Visitors to the festival were supposed to drink from a sake bowl reflecting the full moon, so a cloudy, moonless night would have been disappointing.
    Keiko came out on the veranda and put her hand lightly on Otoko’s back.
    “The moon of May,” said Otoko.
    Finally Keiko spoke. “Shall we go for a drive along the Eastern Hills? Or out toward Otsu, to see the moon in Lake Biwa?”
    “The moon in Lake Biwa? There’s nothing special about that.”
    “Does it look better in a sake bowl?” Keiko asked, sitting down at Otoko’s feet. “Anyway, I like the colors in the garden tonight.”
    “Really?” Otoko looked down at the garden. “Bring a cushion, won’t you? And turn off the light in there.”
    From the studio veranda one could see only the inner garden—the view was cut off by the temple’s main residence. It was a rather artless oblong garden, but about half of it was bathed in moonlight, so that even the steppingstones took on different colors in the light and shadow. A white azalea blooming in the shadow seemed to be floating. The scarlet maple near the veranda still had fresh young leaves, though they were darkened