“Is that so, O-Nami-san? Where did he come from?”
“From the town.”
“From so far away? Where is he going, now, O-Nami-san?”
“He told me he was going to Manchuria.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know, I am sure. He may be going there to make money, or he may be going there to die, for all I know.”
I raised my eyes at this point, and looked into my companion’s face and there I saw a smile dying away, the meaning of which I did not comprehend.
“He is my husband.”
The woman said it with the swiftness of lightning, catching me entirely unguarded. I had not had the faintest idea of trying to get such information out of her. Nor did I expect that she would go the length of telling me all that. She continued:
“Well, Sensei, has it shocked you?”
“Yes, you astonished me somewhat.”
“He is not my husband at present. He is my husband from whom I have been divorced.”
“Is that so? Well?”
“That is all.”
“Well, well. By the by, I saw a fine white house by an orange orchard, which I saw on coming up here. Do you know whose residence that is?”
“It is my brother’s. We will stop there on our way home.”
“You have some business there?”
“Yes. I must do some errand there.”
We came to the craggy path; but instead of going down it, my fair guide led me by turning to the right. After a slow climb of about one hundred yards, we came to a gate. Nami-san waiving the etiquette of knocking at the front door, took me straight into the inner court, which was laid out into a fine garden fronting the main hall of the house. The garden was fenced by a mud walk beyond which extended an orange orchard sloping downward.
“Look, Sensei, isn’t this a fine view?”
“Yes, it is fine.”
As we sat on the verandah, I espied no sign of anything living in the hall behind us, which was closed from view by paper screens. Nami-san made no attempt to make our presence known to the people of the house, but sat on the verandah, looking down on the orchard with perfect unconcern. This struck me as very strange, and I could not help wondering if she really had any business here. We found no subject to talk about, and sat in silence with our eyes wandering over the orange trees. The sun had almost reached the meridian and the warm sunshine was bathing the whole mountain, while the dark green of the innumerable orange trees below glowed intensely. Presently a loud cock-a-doodle-doo came from the direction of the barn.
“Why, it is noon! I have quite forgotten my errand. Kyuichi-san! Kyuichi-san!”
Nami-san stood up, and, bending forward over the verandah, reached out her hand and slid open a screen. The ten-mat room was empty of any living soul and a pair of hanging pictures by an artist of Kano school lonesomely occupied the tokonoma niche.
“Kyuichi-san!”
A voice coming from somewhere near the barn answered the call, at last, and presently footsteps were heard. They stopped just behind the inner screen. The fusuma opened and at the same moment a plain sheathed dagger went rolling across the matted floor. Nami-san did it so quickly that I did not even see her put her hand in between the folds of her obi and take out the warlike thing. As it was, the dagger stopped just at the foot of Kyuichi-san who had come out of the opening.
“There, that is for you from your uncle as a present for your going to Manchuria.”
XIII
We went downstream in a river boat, with Kyuichi-san, to see him off at Yoshida railway station. There were in the boat, beside Kyuichi-san, the old man, Shiota, his erratic daughter, Nami-san, her brother, myself, and also Gembey, who took care of Kyuichi’s luggage. I joined the party only to make up the company. I did not quite understand why I should be invited to do so, but being out on an unhuman wandering, there was no need to be scrupulous and so I also went. The boat had a flat bottom, as if built on a raft. The old man sat in the centre, Nami-san and I in front of him, Kyuichi and Nami-san’s brother behind him, and Gembey by himself with the luggage in the stern.
“Are you fond of War?” asked Nami-san.
“I shan’t be able to tell until I am in it. There may be times I may find it very hard; but at others I may be jolly about it,” answered Kyuichi, who had never before been to war.
“However hard, you must know that it is for the state and your country,” commented the old man.
“With such a warlike thing as a dagger given you, don’t you wish to begin fighting?” asked Nami-san in her cynical way.
“That may be, but. …”
The light response made the old man laugh shaking his beard, while his son looked as if he heard nothing.
“Do you mean to say that you can go and fight in battle with such an indifferent mind?” pressed Nami-san, holding her pretty face before Kyuichi, whose eyes met those of Nami-san’s brother at the same instant.
“I am sure Nami-san would make a grand warrior, if she became one,” came from the woman’s brother, as the very first word spoken to her in the boat. Judging from the tone in which it was said, one might have suspected that it was not meant to be merely a joke.
“I? I become a soldier? If I could, I would have become one long ago. I would have been dead by this time. Kyuichi-san you had better make up your mind to be killed. You would gain nothing by coming home alive.”
“Come, now, no more of your raving. … You must come home in triumph, nephew, dying is not the only way to serve
