Read Online The Wild Geese by Ōgai Mori - Free Book Online Page A

whole world? You've made a lot of money, but is there anyone else who dresses up like a gentleman and leaves his wife with nothing? Without even a kimono? Letting her take care of the children! Yet—yet so conceited that he takes up with a whore!”
    â€œQuit that crying! Do you hear?” Once more he brushed her hand away. “You'll wake the children. And your voice is carrying to the maid's room!” His wife could feel the force behind these whispered words.
    Suddenly the younger child turned and spoke in his sleep, and Suezo's wife was forced to lower her voice. “After all,” she said, pressing her face against her husband's chest and weeping silently, “what can I do?”
    â€œYou don't have to do a thing. Someone's got you all excited. Who told you I had a mistress or some secret woman or such nonsense?” As he spoke, he noticed her tangled hair against his body, and he speculated on a question one usually considers at a more leisurely moment: Why does an ugly woman insist on arranging her hair in a way that fits only a beautiful one? As the movement of her hair against him became less, he could at the same time feel the pressure from her heavy breasts, which had supplied ample nourishment for each of their children. “Who told you?” he asked again.
    â€œForget about that so long as it's true.” The pressure of her breasts increased.
    â€œBut it's not true, so I do mind who's misinformed you. Tell me.”
    â€œAll right. The wife of the fish dealer—Uwokin.”
    â€œWhat? What? I can't understand you chattering away like a monkey! Who's that? Who?”
    Otsune pulled herself away from him and smiled in spite of herself.
    â€œUwokin's wife.”
    â€œThat woman! Just as I thought.” He took another cigarette and gazed tenderly at his wife's frantic face. “A newspaper is said to form the public's opinion against a particular person, but I've never seen it done. Maybe that gossip has done just that. She meddles with everything in the neighborhood. Who'd believe her words? Listen to me. I'll tell you the truth.”
    His wife felt as though she were stumbling in a fog, yet she wondered if she weren't being duped by his words, and she remained alert. Watching him closely, she tried to follow him carefully. But when her husband used the difficult words of a newspaper as he had done in speaking about public opinion, she was overwhelmed and submitted without comprehension.
    He fixed his sympathetic face close to his wife's and, occasionally drawing on his cigarette, went on: “Well, do you remember that student Yoshida who used to visit us so often? Wears glasses with gold rims and silk clothes? He's working at Chiba now—in a hospital. But he still owes me more than he can pay in two or three years. He's become intimate with a woman he met while he was still a student at the dormitory. Up to a short while ago he kept her in a rented house in Nanamagari. Well, at the beginning he sent her a monthly allowance. But since the first of the year, she hasn't received even a note. So she came to me and asked me to get in touch with him for her. You might well wonder I know her! Yoshida told me to come over to Nanamagari to renew our agreement. He's afraid that if he comes here too often some of his friends will recognize him. And that's how she got to know me. I was embarrassed enough by what she asked me to do, but I took the trouble to look into this along with my own business. And it's still not settled. And the woman keeps begging me for things. Now I'm sorry to have gotten into this mess. It's getting to be more than I can handle. There was the question of money, and besides that, she asked me to find her a comfortable house—not too much rent—so I took the time to move her to a house that used to belong to the parents of a pawnbroker at Kiridoshi. What with this and that, I've stopped in at her new place several times for a smoke or