Read Online The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker - Free Book Online Page B

somewhat brusque way of putting the matter; but for Shingo and his family it was just so: suddenly, there was a litter under the veranda.
    ‘We didn’t see Teru yesterday, Mother,’ Kikuko had remarked in the kitchen a week or so before, ‘and she isn’t here today either. Do you suppose she’s having puppies?’
    ‘She hasn’t been around, now that you mention it,’ said Yasuko, with no great show of interest.
    Shingo was in the kotatsu * making tea. He had since autumn been in the habit of having the most expensive of teas in the morning, and he made it for himself.
    Kikuko had mentioned Teru while she was getting breakfast. Nothing more had been said.
    ‘Have a cup,’ said Shingo, pouring tea, as Kikuko brought him his breakfast.
    ‘Thank you very much.’ This had not happened before. Kikuko’s manner was most ceremonious.
    There were chrysanthemums on her obi and cloak. ‘And the season for chrysanthemums is past. With all the stir over Fusako, we forgot about your birthday.’
    ‘The pattern on the obi is “The Four Princes”. You can wear it the year round.’
    ‘“The Four Princes”?’
    ‘Orchid and bamboo and plum and chrysanthemum,’ said Kikuko briskly. ‘You must have seen it somewhere. It’s always being used in paintings and on kimonos.’
    ‘A greedy sort of pattern.’
    ‘It was delicious,’ said Kikuko, putting down the tea bowl.
    ‘Who was it that gave us the gyokuro ? * In return for a funeral offering, I think. That was when we started drinking it again. We used to drink it all the time, and never bancha .’
    Shuichi had already left for the office.
    As he put on his shoes in the doorway, Shingo was still trying to remember the name of the friend because of whom they had had the gyokuro. He could have asked Kikuko, but did not. The friend had taken a young girl to a hot-spring resort and died there suddenly.
    ‘It’s true that we don’t see Teru,’ said Shingo.
    ‘Not yesterday, and not today either,’ said Kikuko.
    Sometimes Teru, hearing Shingo prepare for his departure, would come around to the doorway and follow him out the gate.
    He had recently seen Kikuko in the doorway feeling Teru’s belly.
    ‘All puffy and bloated,’ said Kikuko, frowning. But she went on feeling for the puppies all the same.
    ‘How many are there?’
    Teru looked up quizzically at Kikuko, showing the whites of her eyes. Then she rolled over, belly up.
    It was not so swollen as to be repulsive. Toward the tail, where the skin seemed thinner, it was a faint pink. There was dirt around the nipples.
    ‘Ten of them?’ said Kikuko. Shingo counted with his eyes. The pair farthest forward was small, as if withered.
    Teru had a master and a license, but it appeared that the master did not often feed her. She had become a stray. She made the rounds of the kitchens in the neighborhood. She had been spending more time at Shingo’s since Kikuko had taken to giving her leftovers morning and evening, with something special added for Teru herself. Frequently, at night, they heard her barking in the garden. It seemed that she had attached herself to them, but not even Kikuko had come to think her their own.
    Teru always went home to have puppies.
    Her absence yesterday and today, Kikuko had intended to say, meant that she had again gone home to have puppies.
    It seemed sad that she should go home for that purpose.
    But this time the puppies had been born under the floor of Shingo’s house. It was ten days or so before anyone noticed.
    ‘Teru has had her puppies here, Father,’ said Kikuko when Shingo and Shuichi came home from the office.
    ‘Oh? Where?’
    ‘Under the maid’s room.’
    ‘Oh?’
    Since they had no maid, the maid’s room, small and narrow, was used as a storeroom.
    ‘Teru is always going in under the maid’s room. So I looked, and there do seem to be puppies.’
    ‘How many?’
    ‘It’s too dark to tell. They’re back in under.’
    ‘So she had them here.’
    ‘Mother said