“It is very kind of you to accept me. I do not deserve it,” he replied.
“Hah — your father is my friend, and all we have is yours,” Mr. Muraki said. He was still clinging to the branch. “You see,” he said, “the cherry trees are about to bloom. You have come at just the moment. In six days all Japan will be in blossom.”
“My father lives for this each spring,” Bunji said to I-wan, “and then he lives for the chrysanthemums in the autumn.”
They stood a moment, half awkwardly. Mr. Muraki was smiling a little at his son.
“Hah,” he said with his soft, indrawing breath, “you had better allow him to go in and refresh himself, Bunji.”
He nodded and turned to the tree, dismissing them.
“My father is retired,” Bunji said. He was leading the way again. “My two brothers are heads now of his business.”
“And you?” I-wan asked.
“Oh, I am a clerk there, only,” Bunji laughed. “I see to packing and billing. It is import and export business.”
They were at a wide door, and two pretty servant girls fluttered out in brightly flowered cotton kimonos. Bunji stopped and thrust out one foot. One of the girls dropped to her knees and began unlacing his leather shoe. I-wan had heard of this, and when the other knelt at his foot, he, too, tried not to feel it strange to have women there serving him. He felt his shoes drawn off and his feet slipped into soft straw slippers. Then he followed Bunji up the steps into the house. He had never seen one like it. There were many rooms, only partly shut off from each other by the white-papered lattices, which were screens. It was like stepping into a huge clean honeycomb. There was the smell of the clean matting on which they walked, the fragrance of un-painted woods. And through all the open rooms floated the airy fragrance of the garden coming into spring.
“My father likes to live entirely in the old-fashioned Japanese way,” Bunji said. “So — you see — but in your room we have put a chair. In my room, too. My married brother, Shio, however, has chairs in each room in his house in Yokohama. He is quite modern!”
Bunji laughed loudly and I-wan smiled. Within himself he still felt complete quiet. Moment by moment, that was how he wanted to live now. He found this moment amusing, but nothing could excite him, however strange.
“Here is your room,” Bunji said. “It is next to mine — see, it opens on the garden!”
He drew a latticed screen aside, and I-wan saw a small square room. There was no bed, nothing but a bamboo armchair and table and in a recess a scroll upon which was written a poem, and beneath it a branch of budding hawthorn in a green vase. There was no other decoration, until Bunji slid another screen away, and there was a corner of the garden. The wall was only a few feet away, but a dwarfed maple tree grew against it, its buds scarlet, and beneath was a small pool scarcely two feet square, and beside it a rock.
“No one will come here except the gardeners,” Bunji said. “It is quite your own. And when you are ready to sleep, clap your hands and a maidservant will spread your quilts on the mats. Our midday meal will be ready in half an hour and a maidservant will bring you water to wash yourself. I will come back.” He put out his hand in a quick foreign fashion and I-wan put out his and they shook hands.
He sat down when Bunji was gone and looked about him. The house was still. Everything was so still. He could hear the soft sibilance of distant sliding screens, and a low murmuring voice somewhere not near. The house was ordered, like the garden. There was no dust anywhere. The bit of garden seemed a part of the house. The few feet of grass were green and clipped, lying like a carpet where the polished floor of the room stopped. He felt wrapped about in peace. Life here was planned. There were lightness and clarity and absolute cleanliness, and in spite of fragility a feeling of long-settled stability. Precisely this life had been lived here for generations.
He was glad he had come. He had no plans now of his own. Perhaps he never would have again. Why plan, when hopes and plans could disappear in a night, as if they were mists? He felt very tired and he sat down on the edge of the floor, his feet upon the grass, and sat gazing at the water, his mind empty and his heart still.
At last he heard someone cough beyond the screen, and he called “Come!” and then Bunji came in wearing a soft dark silk kimono. He looked entirely another person, gentler and somehow more the son of Mr. Muraki. On his arm he carried a dark purple length of silk.
“I thought you might like to put this on,” he said.
He held up the garment and I-wan saw it was another kimono. But he did not want to put it on.
“If you will not count it rudeness,” he said, “I will put on one of my own robes.”
“Do,” Bunji replied. “I thought only to rid you of the stiff western clothes. Good for business but not for pleasure!” He laughed. Then he turned to look into the garden while I-wan put on the robe of blue silk he had brought with him. The last time he had worn a robe had been in his own home.
“Now,” he said, “I am ready.”
Bunji turned. They stood, two young men, looking alike in their darkness of hair and eyes, and yet so different. I-wan was taller by half a head than Bunji, and his body was more slender, his face more oval, his hands and feet more delicate. But Bunji’s body was the more powerful and strong.
“In reality,” Bunji said, “our clothing is not so different. What I wear is the ancient dress of your people. You wear their modern dress. Ah, I have not seen it! Is it comfortable? Yes, I see it is. It fits you closely, and the sleeves are not so wide. That is what I dislike — our wide sleeves. But of course our dress is very pretty on the girls. Wait until you see my sister. She is a moga — that is, a modern girl — at heart, but at home my father will not allow it. I, too, think she is not so pretty in western dress. Come on — you’re hungry. I’m always hungry!”
He ended everything with a laugh, this Bunji. Now he led the way to a large square room, facing the main garden. At the door he paused and bowed to his parents who were already there.
“Mother, this is I-wan,” he said.
I-wan bowed to Madame Muraki. He thought, “I have never seen anyone so beautiful.” She did not look at all like his own plump mother. She was very slight and her face was sad and her eyes were full of a strange dead patience. Yet although she was more than fifty and her pompadoured hair was gray, her face was smooth and she wore a faintly purple robe of plain heavy silk. When she bowed her little body seemed to crumple at the waist over the wide sash of deeper purple satin. Then she straightened herself like a flower after wind.
“Hah,” she breathed, “I am so glad you are come! Will you sit down? And forgive my poor English, since I shamefully never learned Chinese.”
“I hope I can learn Japanese quickly,” I-wan said. “Then I may speak in your language, Madame.”
“Hah!” she answered softly, smiling. It was assent and echo.
They sat down upon the silvery mats about a low table, facing the garden. There was no decoration in this room either, except for latticed screens and a scroll in a recess and a long low dish of narcissus in flower beneath it. The air was cool and fresh and the whole atmosphere light and quietly gay. A rosy young girl came in with a tray of bowls. No one spoke to her. She set a bowl before each of them and went away. As soon as she had gone Bunji burst into such laughter that his parents smiled.
“That is my sister,” he cried. “She is shy and she won’t eat with us today. But she will get over it.”
“Shall I speak to your sister?” I-wan asked, smiling. “Is it your custom?” To be courteous, he had not looked at the young girl.