He sighed a little as he sat down. When the second child came, Tama would have to twist her wits to make the money stretch over him, too. His own father had not sent him any money for a long time, and he did not like to ask unless he were in need. Why, he wondered, did the Emperor want more defenses now that Japan definitely possessed Manchuria? The military party, probably, growing in power — but he cared nothing for Japanese politics, or indeed any politics since the League of Nations had let Japan do as she liked. Politics he had put behind him as a waste even to think about.
He had worked nearly the morning through on classifying the inventory of goods held still unsold, when the maidservant who had come running in to call him to Jiro’s birth now appeared, serene and demure, having stopped to brush her hair and put on a fresh kimono and clean white cotton socks.
“Well, what is it?” he said, looking up at her, surprised.
“Honorable, I am to tell you Ganjiro’s come.”
“What do you say?” He leaped up and seized his hat.
“He is here, very fat and so healthy,” she beamed on him. It was lucky to be the bearer of such good news. The two clerks were bowing and hissing softly through their teeth with pleasure.
“Just before the Festival of Sons!” the maid said, laughing.
He went off at once, stopping only to put his head in at Bunji’s door and say, “My second son is come and I am going home.” He took pride in saying it coolly as though every day he had a son. “What?” Bunji roared. But he went on, only nodding to affirm it.
He did not let himself hurry along the street, and he listened to the maid’s chatter as she clacked along behind him. “It was as sudden as today’s sun and rain. One moment Oku-san was as well as you are, sir. The next, she said, ‘I feel changed — it’s beginning.’ I ran for the midwife, and soon as she came the child arrived, sound and so handsome. And Oku-san said, ‘If this is all the trouble of having a son, I can do it any time.’” She laughed heartily at her mistress and was very proud of her.
And indeed there was nothing unusual in the house. The smell of the food which Tama had been cooking before she lay down was fragrant, and he was hungry when he smelled it.
“I’ll have your dinner when you want it, sir,” the servant said, and knelt to take off his shoes.
“In half an hour,” he replied.
Behind screens he found Tama on her bed holding Ganjiro in her arms and Jiro, now able to run, much astonished beside her. I-wan could not believe she had done with the birth. She was not even pale. She lay on the soft mattress spread on the mats and looked up at him mischievously as though it had all been a trick. In a corner of the darkened enclosure the midwife was hastily putting away something.
“Tama!” he whispered.
“Here we all are,” she answered. “It is a boy, as I said.”
“So!” he answered. He scarcely knew what to say. Jiro’s birth had been a tremendous event. But this boy had come tranquilly into the world. At this rate, he thought, in a few years the house would be full.
“I wanted it all over before the Festival of Sons,” Tama said proudly.
“So you arranged it,” he replied.
And she laughed.
“Go on and have your dinner — it is carp, too, today. That’s another lucky omen.”
“Shall I not stay home this afternoon?” he inquired.
“What would I do with you?” she asked. “I shall sleep and Jiro will play in the garden with the maid. That is all.”
So he had eaten his excellent dinner and gone back to work. Tama was one of those fortunate women, he thought, who breathe out health with every act. Nothing was too hard for her to do. And with all else she found time, too, to be free of everything when he came home. Long ago he had ceased to wonder at anything she knew. He expected her to know everything. He had come to take for granted that his house was always neat and the flowers fresh every day, and the food delicately prepared and Jiro’s face always clean and happy. Whatever came, he could never be sorry he had married Tama. If sometimes he felt himself yearning beyond her for some sort of spiritual stir which had nothing to do with her, he put his discontent away. He wanted nothing to do with dreams if Tama were the reality.
On the Festival of Sons they went nowhere, since Tama’s days of uncleanness after birth were not yet over. Ganjiro was less than a month old. But she made great preparation for the day. Over the house that morning he had helped her to raise the two paper carps, which were the symbol of the day, a big black and white one with gold eyes for Jiro and a small red one for Ganjiro.
It was a fair day on the fifth day of the fifth month of the sun year, and Jiro was shouting as the wind blew the carp. There was an extraordinary wind blowing in from the sea that day. Tama had taken Jiro up in her arms, and then I-wan took him, saying, “He is too heavy for you yet, Tama.”
“Hold him up, then, so he can see,” she had replied. They had stood looking at the carp, the wind tearing at their garments.
“A home with sons,” Tama said proudly.
He did not answer her. It occurred to him at this moment that his sons were growing up with festivals he had never known as a child. Tama loved festivals and made the most of every one. He remembered his own joy over the new year and over the Dragon Festival and the Festival of Spring — all days Jiro and the little one would never know. After all it was the woman who shaped the life of the house.
“So, Jiro,” Tama was saying to the child, “remember, the carp means boy — because it swims upstream against the current, in the cold mountain streams.”
It was at that moment he saw, or imagined he saw the pole from which the carp flew, sway. At the same instant the wind, which had all morning been growing higher, fell utterly quiet. He and Tama with one movement looked out to sea. It looked strange and dark and swollen. There was a low deep roar, whether from the sea or from inside the earth they could not tell.
“Tama!” he cried, frightened.
“Earthquake,” she said. Her voice was small and quiet and her face went white.
He had learned to take tremors of the earth as nothing, an earthquake as a matter of constant possibility, and yet he had never seen a great one. Sometimes in the night he and Tama had awakened to feel a shudder beneath their mattress and dust falling on their faces from the ceiling, and to hear the crack of beams and wood. Tama always got up and dressed and waited in watchful silence. He knew that all over the city in every house people waited like that, helpless and yet prepared. But each time the earth had subsided. Today, though, there had been this fierce wind.
Now she ran toward the house, but the maid was already running out with Ganjiro in her arms. From the house behind her came sudden creaks and then loud cracks. There was no doubt that the pole bearing the carp was now swaying with something that was not wind.
The maid, without a word, thrust the baby into his arms also and ran back into the house. Tama came out with the drawers and boxes into which their clothing was folded, and in a moment the maidservant followed, her arms full.
“Where shall I put these children?” I-wan gasped. “I must help.”
“Please — stay with them,” Tama replied, quietly.
He wondered at these two women, they were both so quiet. It was as though they had rehearsed many times the thing which they now did. Back and forth they went until in a very few minutes in the open space about them were all their chief possessions. There were not many. Their most precious things, the best of their scrolls, some fine pottery Mr. Muraki had given them, jewelry that I-wan had given Tama when they were married, the silks his mother had sent, she had put into a warehouse in the city, built for safety in earthquakes.