A Cat, a Man, and Two Women by Junichiro Tanizaki

Author:Junichiro Tanizaki [Junichiro Tanizaki]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781911547044
Publisher: Daunt Books
Published: 2017-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

The night Lily ran away, and the next night, and the next, Shinako, far from enjoying a good night’s rest, was unable to sleep at all. Perhaps because she was a temperamental woman, she often found it hard to sleep, despite being only twenty-six. When she was working as a maid, if something unpleasant happened, she just couldn’t get to sleep; and for a long time after moving to her sister’s house, she’d been getting no more than three or four hours’ rest each night, probably because the room was new to her. At last, about ten days ago, she had begun to be able to sleep a little better. Why, then, had insomnia set in again, ever since that night? Was it because she was concentrating too much on her sewing, trying to catch up on the work she’d neglected on account of Lily? The long hours she was putting in left her shoulders stiff and her nerves on edge.

On top of everything else, Shinako was beginning to suffer from the cold, even though it was still only the beginning of October. She had always been sensitive to cold weather, and now her feet particularly bothered her; even after she got under the quilts, the chilly feeling hung on. She suddenly remembered how her husband’s coolness towards her had begun. It was entirely due to her problem with the cold. Shozo, who slept disgustingly well, would be asleep within five minutes of getting into bed, only to be abruptly woken by the icy touch of Shinako’s feet. It infuriated him, and he would order her to ‘sleep over there’. Eventually, they got into the habit of sleeping separately, and in this their quarrels over the use of a hot-water bottle in cold weather also played a part. The reason was that Shozo’s constitution was just the opposite of his wife’s – he always felt twice as warm as the average person. His feet especially felt hot, and he claimed he couldn’t sleep if they didn’t protrude a bit from the bottom of the quilts, even in wintertime. So he hated getting into a bed that had been warmed with a hot-water bottle, and wouldn’t stay put for even five minutes. Of course this wasn’t the fundamental reason for the disharmony between the two; but, all the same, the undeniable differences in their physical makeup provided a good excuse for husband and wife to sleep apart.

Shinako was now suffering from a terrible stiffness that spread from the right side of her neck down to her shoulder. She tried massaging the sore area, switching from sleeping on her right side to her left, and changing the position of her pillow. Every year during the change of seasons from summer to fall she was bothered by pain from a bad tooth in her lower right jaw, and beginning last night she had felt a few twinges. Indeed, she had heard that Rokko was far colder than Ashiya in winter, with the winds blowing straight down from the mountains.

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