The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker Read Free Book Online

navy blue. It was somewhat worn.
    When she was so dressed, the smallness of her breasts did not matter.
    ‘Has Shuichi asked you out again?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What a pity. The young man keeps his distance because you go dancing with his father.’
    ‘I’ll have to ask him to go out.’
    ‘And so I needn’t worry?’
    ‘If you insist on making fun of me, I’ll have to refuse to go dancing with you.’
    ‘I’m not making fun of you. But I haven’t been able to look you in the eye since you began noticing him.’
    She reacted with silence.
    ‘I suppose you know Shuichi’s woman.’
    This time she registered confusion.
    ‘A dancer?’
    There was no reply.
    ‘Is she older?’
    ‘Older? She’s older than his wife.’
    ‘And good-looking?’
    ‘Yes, very good-looking.’ She stumbled over the words, but continued: ‘She has a husky voice. No, not so much husky as broken, you might say. In two parts. He finds it very erotic.’
    ‘Well!’
    She seemed about to go on. He did not want to listen.
    He felt ashamed for himself, and he felt a revulsion, as if the true nature of Shuichi’s woman and of Eiko herself were about to emerge.
    He was taken aback by this initial observation, about the eroticism in the woman’s voice. There had been bad taste on Shuichi’s part, of course, but what about Eiko herself?
    Noting the displeasure on his face, Eiko fell silent.
    That night too Shuichi went home with Shingo. When they had closed the shutters the four of them went out to see a movie version of the Kabuki play Kanjincho .
    As Shuichi took off his undershirt, changing to go to the movie, Shingo saw red marks high on his chest and shoulder. Had Kikuko left them there during the storm?
    The principal actors in the film, Koshiro and Uzaemon and Kikugoro, were all dead.
    Shingo’s feelings were different from those of Kikuko and Shuichi.
    ‘I wonder how many times we saw Koshiro do Benkei,’ said Yasuko.
    ‘I forget.’
    ‘Yes, you always forget.’
    The town was bright in the moonlight. Shingo looked up at the sky.
    The moon was in a blaze. Or so, just then, it seemed to Shingo.
    The clouds around the moon made him think of the flames behind Acala in a painting, or a painting of a fox-spirit. They were coiling, twisted clouds.
    But the clouds, and the moon too, were cold and faintly white. Shingo felt autumn come over him.
    The moon, high in the east, was almost full. It lay in a blaze of clouds, it was dimmed by them.
    There were no other clouds near the blaze in which the moon lay. In a single night after the storm the sky had turned a deep black.
    The shops were shuttered. The town too had taken on a melancholy aspect in the course of the night. People were on their way home from the movie through silent, deserted streets.
    ‘I couldn’t sleep last night. I’m going to bed early.’ Shingo felt a lonely chill pass over him, and a yearning for human warmth.
    And it was as if a crucial moment had come, as if a decision were forcing itself upon him.

The Chestnuts

1
    ‘The gingko is sending out shoots again,’ said Kikuko.
    ‘You’ve only just noticed?’ said Shingo. ‘I’ve been watching it for some time now.’
    ‘But you always sit facing it, Father.’
    Kikuko, who sat so that Shingo saw her in profile, was looking at the gingko behind her.
    The places of the four as they took their meals had in the course of time become fixed.
    Shingo sat facing east. On his left was Yasuko, facing south, and on his right Shuichi, who faced north. Kikuko, facing west, sat opposite Shingo.
    Since the garden was to the south and east, it might be said that the old people occupied the better places. And the women’s places were the convenient ones for serving.
    At times other than meals, they had come to occupy the same fixed places.
    So it was that Kikuko always had the gingko behind her.
    Yet Shingo was troubled: that she had not noticed unseasonal buds on the great tree suggested a certain emptiness.
    ‘But you ought