Read Online Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata - Free Book Online Page B

seemed a trifle silly. The slope was a gentle one, and the wallsbetween the fields were not yet covered with snow.
    “They look like students. Is today Sunday? Do you suppose that’s fun?”
    “They’re good, though,” Komako said, as if to herself. “Guests are always surprised when a geisha says hello to them on the ski grounds. They don’t recognize her for the snow-burn. At night the powder hides it.”
    “You wear ski clothes?”
    She wore “mountain trousers,” she said. “But what a nuisance the ski season is. It’s all coming again. You see them in the evening at the inn, and they say they’ll see you again the next day skiing. Maybe I should give up skiing this year. Good-by. Come along, Kimi. We’ll have snow this evening. It’s always cold the night before it snows.”
    Shimamura went out to the veranda. Komako was leading Kimi down the steep road below the ski grounds.
    The sky was clouding over. Mountains still in the sunlight stood out against shadowed mountains. The play of light and shade changed from moment to moment, sketching a chilly landscape. Presently the ski grounds too were in shadow. Below the window Shimamura could see little needles of frost like ising-glass among the withered chrysanthemums, though water was still dripping from the snow on the roof.
    It did not snow that evening. A hailstorm turned to rain.
    Shimamura called Komako again the night before he was to leave. It was a clear, moonlit night. At eleven o’clock the air was bitterly cold, but Komako insisted on going for a walk. She pulled him roughly from the kotatsu .
    The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi . The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.
    “We’ll go to the station,” said Komako.
    “You’re insane. It’s more than a mile each way.”
    “You’ll be going back to Tokyo soon. We’ll go look at the station.”
    Shimamura was numb from his shoulders to his thighs.
    Back in his room, Komako sank disconsolately to the floor. Her head was bowed and her arms were deep in the kotatsu . Strangely, she refused to go with him to the bath.
    Bedding had been laid out with the foot of the mattress inside the kotatsu . Komako was sitting forlornly beside it when Shimamura came back from the bath. She said nothing.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I’m going home.”
    “Don’t be foolish.”
    “Go on to bed. Just let me sit here for a little while.”
    “Why do you want to go home?”
    “I’m not going home. I’ll sit here till morning.”
    “Don’t be difficult.”
    “I’m not being difficult. I’m not being difficult.”
    “Then …?”
    “I … don’t feel well.”
    “Is that all?” Shimamura laughed. “I’ll leave you quite to yourself.”
    “No.”
    “And why did you have to go out and run all over town?”
    “I’m going home.”
    “There’s no need to go home.”
    “But it’s not easy for me. Go on back to Tokyo. It’s no easy for me.” Her face was low over the kotatsu .
    Was it sorrow at finding herself about to sink into too deep a relationship with a traveler? Or at having to keep herself under control at so dear a moment? She has come that far, then, Shimamura said to himself. He too was silent for a time.
    “Please go back to Tokyo.”
    “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of going back tomorrow.”
    “No! Why are you going back?” She looked up, startled, as though aroused from sleep.
    “What can I do for you, no matter how long I stay?”
    She gazed at him for a moment, then burst out violently: “You don’t have to say that. What reason have you to say that?” She stood up irritably, and threw herself at his neck. “It’s wrong of you to say such things. Get up. Get up, I tell you.” The words poured out deliriously, and she fell down beside him, quite forgetting in her derangement the physical difficulty she had spoken of earlier.
    Some time later, she opened