Free Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata

displeasure.
    When Chikako put herself into an argument, she threw her shoulders back. ‘I’m telling you the truth. I’m different from Mrs Ota. As things went with your father, I was a very light case. I see no reason to hide the truth – I was unfortunately not his favoritegame. Just when it started, it was over.’ She looked down. ‘But I have no regrets. He was good enough to use me afterward, when it was convenient for him. Like most men, he found it easier to use a woman he had had an affair with. And so, thanks to him, I developed a good, healthy strain of common sense.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘You should make use of my healthy common sense.’
    Kikuji was almost tempted to feel safe with her. There was something in what she said.
    She took a fan from her obi.
    ‘When a person is too much of a man or too much of a woman, the common sense generally isn’t there.’
    ‘Oh? Common sense goes with neuters, then?’
    ‘Don’t be sarcastic. But neuters, as you call them, have no trouble understanding men and women too. Have you thought how remarkable it is that Mrs Ota was able to die and leave an only daughter? It seems just possible that she had something to fall back on. If she died, mightn’t Kikuji look after the daughter?’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘I thought and thought, and all of a sudden I came up against a suspicion: she died to interfere with your marriage. She didn’t just die. There was more to it.’
    ‘Your inventions can be monstrous sometimes.’ But even as he spoke, he had to gasp at the force of the invention.
    It came like a flash of lightning.
    ‘You told Mrs Ota about the Inamura girl, didn’t you?’
    Kikuji remembered, but feigned ignorance. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, who told her that everything was arranged?’
    ‘I did. I told her not to interfere. It was the night she died.’
    Kikuji was silent.
    ‘How did you know I telephoned? Did she come weeping to you?’
    She had trapped him.
    ‘Of course she did. I can guess from the way she screamed at me over the telephone.’
    ‘Then it’s very much as if you killed her, isn’t it?’
    ‘I suppose that conclusion makes things easier for you. Well, I’m used to being the villain. When your father needed a villain, he found me quite ideal. It’s not exactly that I’m returning an old favor, but I’m here to play the villain today.’
    Kikuji knew that she was giving vent to the old, deep jealousy.
    ‘But we won’t worry about what goes on backstage.’ She looked down her nose. ‘I don’t care in the least if you sit there glowering at the nasty old woman who comes meddling. Before long I’ll have gotten rid of the witch and made a good marriage for you.’
    ‘I must ask you to stop talking about this good marriage you’re making for me.’
    ‘Certainly. I don’t want to talk about Mrs Ota any more than you do.’ Her voice softened. ‘I don’t mean that she was bad. She was only hoping that when she died the daughter would naturally go to you.’
    ‘The nonsense begins again.’
    ‘But isn’t it the truth? Do you really think that while she was alive she didn’t once think of marrying the daughter off to you? That’s very absent-minded of you. Waking and sleeping, brooding over your father, almost bewitched, I used to think – if you want to call her emotions pure I suppose they were. She was half out of her mind, and she managed to involve the daughter too, and finally she gave her life. Pure she may have been, but to the rest of us it all sounds like some terrible curse, some witch’s net she was laying for us.’
    Kikuji’s eyes met hers.
    Her small eyes rolled up at him.
    Unable to shake them off, Kikuji looked away.
    He withdrew into himself and let her talk on. His position hadbeen weak from the start, and that strange remark had shaken him.
    Had the dead woman really thought of marrying her daughter to him? Kikuji did not want to linger over the possibility. It was unreal, a product of