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Updated: June 8, 2025
In that gray cemetery on the further slope Kano's wife, the young mother who died so long ago that Umè-ko could not remember her at all, slept beneath a granite shaft which said, "A Flower having blossomed in the Night, the Halls of the Gods are fragrant." This was the Buddhist kaimyo, or priestly invocation to the spirit of the dead.
For hours she remained away from home, hidden in a neighbor's house or in the temple on the hill, it being Kano's thought that perhaps, in this temporary loss of his idol, Tatsu might seek solace in the paint room.
Try as he would he shivered and grew faint, even yet, at the sound of Kano's voice breaking abruptly in upon a silence.
A last, wild hope had flashed to Kano's mind. "Come nearer, Tatsu San," he whispered, forcing his face into the distortion of a smile. "Lean nearer. The real motive of my summons has not been spoken." Compelled by the strange look and manner of his host, Tatsu retraced a few steps. The old voice wheedled through the dusk.
Why, even in the annals of Kano's own family more than one faithful brush had acquired a soul of its own, and after the master's death had gone on lamenting in his written name. But the foreigners' brushes, and their little tubes of ill-smelling gum colored with dead hues! Kano shuddered anew at the thought. Naturally he hated all new forms of government.
Kano's rapture in these tidings was assailed, at once, by a swarm of black conjectures. Might the boy not lose himself by the way? If he attempted to ride upon the hideous foreign trains he was certain to be injured; if on the other hand, he did not come by train, weeks, even months, might be consumed in the journey. Again, should he essay to come by boat!
He then drew from his kimono sleeve a pink-bordered foreign pocket-handkerchief, and began to mop his damp forehead. Kano's politeness could not hide, entirely, a shudder of antipathy. He hurried into new speech. "And where, if it is not rude to ask, has my friend Ando sojourned during the long absence?" "Chiefly among the mountains of Kiu Shiu," answered the other.
She was on her feet now, pushing with shaking fingers at the sliding walls. She peered at first into Umè's room for there, indeed, lay the core of old Mata's heart. A slender figure on the floor stirred slightly and a sound of soft breathing filled the silence. All was well in Umè's room. She knocked then on Kano's fusuma. There was no response.
He was thinking of those hours of October sunlight, when the whole earth reeled with joy, for Umè-ko was of it! Where was she now? And what had there been in Kano's look and voice to rouse those sleeping demons of despair? Could any new sorrow await him at the temple? No, his present condition had at least the negative value of absolute void.
Kano's eyelids, too, had dew of tears upon them. He crouched close to the flowers. Something in him, too, some new ecstacy was to unfurl. His lean body began to tremble. He seated himself at the edge of the narrow, railless veranda along which the growing plants were ranged. One trembling bud reached out as if it wished to touch him. The old man shook with the beating of his own heart.
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