Free Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata

challenge him. Oki became a little annoyed. “After half a year of pregnancy you can feel the baby move in your womb,” he went on, trying to embarrass her. She did not respond. “Anyway, we’ve come from winter to summer, though it’s still this miserable rainy season.… Even philosophers don’t seem to have any satisfactory explanation of time. People say time will solve everything, but I have my doubts about that, too. What do you think, Miss Sakami? Is death the end of it all?”
    “I’m not such a pessimist.”
    “I wouldn’t call it pessimism,” said Oki, to be contradictory. “Of course the same half year for me and for a young woman like you would be very different. Or suppose someone had cancer with only half a year to live. Then again, some people have their lives cut off suddenly in a traffic accident, or in war. Some are murdered.”
    “But you
are
an artist, Mr. Oki, aren’t you?”
    “I’m afraid I’ll leave behind only things I’m ashamed of.”
    “You needn’t be ashamed of any of your works.”
    “I wish that were true. But maybe everything I’ve done will disappear. I’d like that.”
    “How can you say such a thing? You must realize your novel about my teacher is going to last.”
    “That novel again!” Oki frowned. “Even you bring it up, knowing her as you do.”
    “It’s because I do know her. I can’t help it.”
    “Well, perhaps not.”
    Her expression livened. “Mr. Oki, did you ever fall in love again?”
    “Yes, I suppose so. But not the way it was with Otoko.”
    “Why haven’t you written about it?”
    “Well …” He hesitated. “She made it clear she didn’t want me to put her in a book.”
    “Really?”
    “Maybe it indicates a kind of weakness on my part, as a writer. But I don’t imagine I could have poured out that much emotion a second time.”
    “I wouldn’t care what you wrote about me.”
    “Oh?” This was only his third meeting with her—indeed, you could hardly call them “meetings.” How could he possibly write about her, except to borrow her beauty for one of his characters? She did say she went down to the shore with his son. Had anything happened then?
    “So I’ve found a good model,” said Oki, laughing to hide his suspicions. But as he looked at her, the strange, seductive charm of her eyes stilled his laughter. Her eyes were so moist that she almost seemed to be in tears.
    “Miss Ueno has promised to do a portrait of me,” Keiko said.
    “Has she?”
    “And I brought another picture to show you.”
    “I can’t say I know much about abstract paintings, but I’d like to see it. Let’s look at it in the next room, where it’s not so cramped. My son has the two you brought last time hanging in his study.”
    “He isn’t home today?”
    “No, this is one of his days at the university. My wife went to the theater.”
    “I’m glad you’re alone,” Keiko murmured, and went to the entryway to get her painting. She brought it in to the Japanese-style sitting room. The picture was in a simple frame of unpainted wood. Its dominant tone was green, but she had boldly dashed on a variety of colors to suit her whim. The whole surface was seething and undulating.
    “Mr. Oki, this is realistic for me. It’s a tea field at Uji.”
    He crouched to peer at it. “It’s a tea field that looks like surging waves—a tea field swelling with youth. At first I wondered if it symbolized a heart bursting into flames.”
    “That makes me so happy! To have you see it that way …” Keiko knelt behind him, her chin almost on his shoulder, as he studied the picture. Her sweet breath warmed his hair. “I’m so happy,” she repeated. “Happy you could see my heart in it! Though it’s not much as a picture of a tea field.”
    “It’s really youthful.”
    “Of course I went out to the tea field to sketch, but itwas only for the first hour or so that I saw it as rows of tea bushes.”
    “Oh?”
    “The plantation was very quiet. Then