“I thought they might be viper eggs, but they were from an ordinary snake. Anyway, I gave them a regular burial. There’s nothing to be upset about.” I realized how unfortunate it was that Mother should have seen me.
Mother is by no means superstitious, but she has had a mortal dread of snakes ever since ten years ago, when Father died in our house in Nishikata Street. Just before Father passed away, Mother, seeing what she thought was a thin black cord lying near Father’s bed, casually went to pick it up, only to discover that it was a snake. It glided off
into the corridor, where it disappeared. Only Mother and my uncle Wada noticed it. They looked at each other but did not say anything, for fear of disturbing the peace of Father’s last moments. That is why even Naoji and I (who happened to be in the room) knew nothing about the snake.
But I know for a fact from having seen it that on the evening of my Father’s death, there were snakes twisted around all the trees by the garden pond. I am twenty-nine now, which means that when my father died ten years ago I was already nineteen, and no longer a child. Ten years have gone by, but my memories of what happened then are still perfectly fresh, and I am not likely to be mistaken. I was walking by the pond intending to cut flowers for the service. I stopped by a bank of azaleas and suddenly noticed a little snake twined around the tip of an azalea branch. This startled me a little. Then when I went to cut off a bough of kerria roses from the next bush, I saw a snake there too. On the rose of Sharon next to it, on the maple, the broom, the wisteria, the cherry tree—on every bush and tree—there was a snake. This didn’t especially frighten me. I only felt somehow that the snakes, like myself, were mourning my father’s death and had crawled out from their holes to pay his spirit homage. Later, when I whispered to Mother about the snakes in the garden, she took it calmly, and merely inclined her head a little to the side, as if she were thinking of something. She did not make any comment.
And yet it is true that these two incidents involving snakes made Mother detest them ever after. Or it might be more correct to say that she held them in fear and awe, that she came to dread them.
When Mother discovered that I had burned the snake eggs, she certainly must have felt that there was something ill-omened in the act. This realization brought home to me the feeling that I had done a terrible thing in burning the eggs. I was so tormented by the fear that I might have caused an evil curse to fall on Mother that I could not put the event out of my mind, not that day, or the next, or the next. And yet this morning in the dining-room, I had blurted out that idiotic remark about the beautiful dying young, which I could not cover up afterwards, no matter what I said, and had ended up in tears. Later, when I was clearing up the breakfast dishes, I had the unbearable sensation that some horrible little snake which would shorten Mother’s life had crawled into my breast.
That same day I saw a snake in the garden. It was a beautiful, serene morning, and after finishing my work in the kitchen, I thought I would take a wicker chair out onto the lawn and do some knitting. As I stepped down into the garden with the chair in my arms, I saw the snake by the iris stalks. My only reaction was one of mild revulsion. I carried the chair back to the porch, sat down, and began to knit. In the afternoon, when I went into the garden intending to get from our library (which is in a storehouse at the bottom of the garden) a volume of Marie Laurencin’s paintings, a snake was crawling slowly, slowly over the lawn. It was the same snake that I had seen in the morning, a delicate, graceful snake. It was peacefully crossing the lawn. It stopped when it reached the shade of a wild rose, lifted its head, and quivered its flame-like tongue. It appeared to be searching for something, but after a few moments dropped its head and fell to the ground, as though overcome with weariness. I said to myself, “It must be a female.” Then too the strongest impression I received was one of the beauty of the snake. I went to the storehouse and took out the volume of paintings. On the way back I stole a glance at where I had seen the snake, but it had already vanished.
Toward evening, while I was drinking tea with Mother, I happened to look out at the garden just as the snake again slowly crawled into view, by the third step of the stone staircase.
Mother also noticed it. “Is that the snake?” She rushed over to me with these words and stood cowering beside me, clutching my hands. It flashed into my mind what she was thinking.
“You mean the mother of the eggs?” I came out with the words.
“Yes, yes.” Mother’s voice was strained.
We held each other’s hands and stood in silence, watching the snake with bated breath. The snake, languidly coiled on the stone, began to stir again. With a faltering motion it weakly traversed the step and slithered off toward the irises.
“It has been wandering around the garden ever since this morning,” I whispered. Mother sighed and sat heavily on a chair.
“That’s what it is, I’m sure. She’s looking for her eggs. The poor thing.” Mother spoke in a voice of dejection.
I giggled nervously, not knowing what else to do.
The evening sun striking Mother’s face made her eyes shine almost blue. Her face, which seemed to wear about it a faint suggestion of anger, was so lovely that I felt like flying to her. It occurred to me then that Mother’s face rather resembled that of the unfortunate snake we had just seen, and I had the feeling, for whatever reason, that the ugly snake dwelling in my breast might one day end by devouring this beautiful, grief-stricken mother snake.
I placed my hand on Mother’s soft, delicate shoulder and felt a physical agitation which I could not explain.
It was at the beginning of December of the year of Japan’s unconditional surrender that we left our house in Nishikata Street in Tokyo and moved to this rather Chinese-style house in Izu. After my father died, it was Uncle Wada—Mother’s younger brother and now her only surviving blood relation—who had taken care of our household expenses. But with the end of the war everything changed, and Uncle Wada informed Mother that we couldn’t go on as we were, that we had no choice but to sell the house and dismiss all the servants, and that the best thing for us would be to buy a nice little place somewhere in the country where the two of us could live as we pleased. Mother understands less of money matters than a child, and when Uncle Wada described to her our situation, her only reaction apparently was to ask him to do whatever he thought best.
At the end of November a special-delivery letter arrived from my uncle, informing us that Viscount Kawata’s villa was for sale. The house stood on high ground with a good view and included about half an acre of cultivated land. The neighborhood, we were told, was famous for its plum blossoms and was warm in winter and cool in summer. Uncle Wada’s letter concluded, “I believe that you will enjoy living there. It is apparently necessary, however, for you to have a personal interview with the other party, so would you please come tomorrow to my office?”
“Are you going, Mother?” I asked.
“I must,” she said, smiling in an almost unbearably pathetic way. “He asked me to.”
Mother left the next day a little after noon. She was accompanied by our former chauffeur, who escorted her back at about eight the same evening.
She came into my room and sat down with her hand against my desk, as if she might collapse on the spot. “It’s all decided,” were her only words.
“What has been decided?”
“Everything.”
“But,” I said in surprise, “before you have even seen what kind of house it is?”
Mother raised one elbow to the desk, touched her hand to her forehead, and let out a little sigh. “Uncle Wada says that it’s a nice place. I feel as if I would just as soon move there as I am, without even opening my eyes.” She lifted her head and smiled faintly. Her face seemed a little thin and very beautiful.
“Yes, that’s so,” I chimed in, vanquished by the purity of Mother’s trust in Uncle Wada.
“Then you shut your eyes, too.”
We both laughed, but after our laughter had died away, we felt terribly depressed.