Mandarins by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa Page B

From the looks of it, the friend had expended much time and trouble, but only to help dig a deeper hole for my brother . . . I’m by nature the fighting sort, but with someone like that, I’m quite at a loss.”
    As we were talking, we were suddenly surprised by cries of “ T-kun banzai! ” 2 I parted the curtains with one hand and looked through the window down to the street. The narrow pavement was crowded with people, some carrying lanterns with the name of the local youth association written on them. I looked at my cousin and remembered that her husband was serving as a leader.
    â€œI suppose we should go out to thank them.”
    My cousin, looking quite as though she had finally reached the limits of endurance, gave us alternating glances.
    â€œWell, I’ll be right back,” he said.
    He left the room nonchalantly. I felt envious of his combativeness, even as I avoided my cousin’s face by turning to look at the paintings on the wall above me. Though painfully aware of my taciturn behavior, I thought that any perfunctory remark of mine would only reduce us both to sentimental insincerity. I silently lit a cigarette and looked at the portrait of my imprisoned cousin on the wall, studying the distorted perspective in it.
    His wife finally spoke to me in a strangely hollow tone of her own:
    â€œThis is hardly a time for us to be greeted with banzai , though I suppose it’s useless to say so . . .”
    â€œThe neighborhood doesn’t know yet?”
    â€œNo . . . But what on earth has happened?”
    â€œHappened?”
    â€œI mean, concerning T, Ot ō san . . .”
    â€œAnyone who looks at T-san’s side of things will see that there were various factors and circumstances.”
    â€œSo it is, is it then?”
    I was beginning to feel nervous and annoyed. I turned my back to her and walked to the window. The cheers from below continued, coming in waves of three: Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! ” The younger brother was standing at the entrance, bowing individually to each of the many people holding lanterns. His elder brother’s two small daughters stood next to him on each side, their hands in his, giving their pigtailed heads an occasional, oddly forced nod . . .
    The years passed. One bitterly cold night I found myself in the living room of my cousin’s house, sitting across from her and drawing on the peppermint pipe to which I had recently taken. We had justobserved the seventh-day ceremony, the house eerily still. In front of her husband’s plain memorial tablet, a single lantern wick was burning; in front of the table on which the tablet had been placed, the two daughters were buried under quilts in the bedding on the floor. My cousin had noticeably aged, and as I looked at her, I suddenly remembered the events of that long-ago day of torment. Yet my only remark was quite humdrum:
    â€œSucking on a peppermint pipe somehow makes it seem all the colder.”
    â€œOh? I can feel the chill in my hands and feet.”
    Somewhat halfheartedly, it seemed, she poked at the charcoal in the long brazier.

FORTUNE
    From inside the workshop, he could see the pilgrims through the roughly woven screen that hung down from the doorway. Indeed, he could see them quite clearly: an endless stream flowing to and from Kiyomizu. A priest passed, wearing a small metal gong round his neck; next came a suitably attired married woman in a broad-brimmed hat, and then a wickerwork palanquin drawn by a golden ox—a most unusual sight. He watched them through the thin cattail screen, abruptly appearing from his left and his right and just as quickly moving on. All was ceaseless change but for the narrow earthen-brown street baking in the sun of a spring afternoon.
    Casually observing this scene was a young attendant to a lord. 1 As though struck by a sudden thought, he called out to the master potter:
    â€œLady Kannon has as many visitors as ever, has she