Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata Page B

height and glared at him. A handful of chestnuts came at his face.
    “You’re making fun of me.”
    Shimamura had no time to dodge. The chestnuts lashed at his forehead.
    “What possible reason could you have for going to the cemetery?”
    “But there’s no need to lose your temper.”
    “I was completely in earnest. I’m not like people who can do exactly as they want and think of no one else.”
    “And who can do that?” Shimamura muttered weakly.
    “Why do you have to call him my fiancé? Didn’t I tell you very carefully he wasn’t? But you’ve forgotten, of course.”
    Shimamura had not forgotten. Indeed, the memory gave the man Yukio a certain weight in his thoughts.
    Komako seemed to dislike talking about Yukio. She was not his fiancée, perhaps, but she had become a geisha to help pay doctors’ bills. There wasno doubt that she had been “completely in earnest.”
    Shimamura showed no anger even under the barrage of chestnuts. Komako looked curiously at him, and her resistance seemed to collapse. She took his arm. “You’re a simple, honest person at heart, aren’t you? Something must be making you sad.”
    “They’re watching us from the trees.”
    “What of it? Tokyo people are complicated. They live in such noise and confusion that their feelings are broken to little bits.”
    “Everything is broken to little bits.”
    “Even life, before long.… Shall we go to the cemetery?”
    “Well.…”
    “See? You don’t really want to go at all.”
    “But you made such an issue of it.”
    “Because I’ve never once gone to the cemetery. I really haven’t gone once. I feel guilty sometimes, now that the teacher’s buried there too. But I can’t very well start going now. I’d only be pretending.”
    “You’re more complicated than I am.”
    “Why? I’m never able to be completely open with living people, and I want at least to be honest with him now that he’s dead.”
    They came out of the cedar grove, where the quiet seemed to fall in chilly drops. Following the railway along the foot of the ski grounds, they were soon at the cemetery. Some ten weathered old tombstones and a forlorn statue of Jizo, guardian of children, stood on a tiny island of high ground among the paddies. There were no flowers.
    Quite without warning, Yoko’s head and shoulders rose from the bushes behind the Jizo. Her face wore the usual solemn, masklike expression. She darted a burning glance at the two of them, and nodded a quick greeting to Shimamura. She said nothing.
    “Aren’t you early, though, Yoko? I thought of going to the hairdresser’s.…” As Komako spoke, a black squall came upon them and threatened to sweep them from their feet.
    A freight train roared past.
    “Yoko, Yoko.…” A boy was waving his hat in the door of a black freight car.
    “Saichiro, Saichiro,” Yoko called back.
    It was the voice that had called to the station master at the snowy signal stop, a voice so beautiful it was almost lonely, calling out as if to someone who could not hear, on a ship far away.
    The train passed, and the buckwheat across thetracks emerged fresh and clean as the blind was lifted. The field of white flowers on red stems was quietness itself.
    The two of them had been so startled at seeing Yoko that they had not noticed the approach of the freight train; but the first shock was dispelled by the train.
    They seemed still to hear Yoko’s voice, and not the dying rumble of the freight train. It seemed to come back like an echo of distilled love.
    “My brother,” said Yoko, looking after the train. “I wonder if I should go to the station.”
    “But the train won’t wait for you at the station,” Komako laughed.
    “I suppose not.”
    “I didn’t come to see Yukio’s grave.”
    Yoko nodded. She seemed to hesitate a moment, then knelt down before the grave.
    Komako watched stiffly.
    Shimamura looked away, toward the Jizo. It had three long faces, and, besides the hands clasped at its breast, a