Rabbits, Crabs, Etc: Stories by Japanese Women by Phyllis Birnbaum

Author:Phyllis Birnbaum [ed] [Birnbaum, Phyllis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Hawai‘i Press
Published: 1982-04-25T17:00:00+00:00

After that they met three or four times within a month. Although he had previously written that she should meet him with his mother, during their walking tours of Musashino they had sometimes passed quite close to his house, but he had not once invited her in, nor introduced her to his mother. She thought that Kikuo had some reason for this and she was in no special rush for a quick meeting with his mother, but one day she asked him casually, “You told me in one of your letters that you would introduce me to your mother.”

Kikuo looked troubled; his face colored. “You wouldn’t meet me on my own, so I was forced to do something underhanded by resorting to a cheap trick like that.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Please, don’t embarrass me by bringing that old thing up now. You’ve always answered questions in the women’s magazines by writing again and again about your son, things like how you educated him, haven’t you? So I remembered that and suddenly, since I was desperate, I had the idea that there was nothing wrong with using my mother as an excuse.”

“You wanted to meet me so badly?”

“You make me feel terrible, talking so much about this.”

Since Kikuo turned redder and redder, she wanted to tease him some more.

“But, for example, what if at that time I had told you to please come see me with your mother. Definitely with your mother. What if I had said that I wouldn’t meet you without your mother, then what would you have done?”

“In that case, my mother and I might have visited you together.”

“And if your mother had asked me about how to educate her child, I would have then taken over the supervision of your education?”

Kikuo gave a long mischievous laugh.

“Why such a loud laugh?”

Kikuo became very serious. “It was not fated to happen that way. I believe that things turn out as they should, that what is appropriate, actually happens.”

“Is it appropriate that you and I have become such good friends like this?”

“Yes, I think so. Because it is you, we have become close. If it had been anyone else, some other mother, not you, who had chased me on the Ginza, I might only have been annoyed, or have started a fight with her.”

“Oh dear, what a naughty boy.”

“You say that even though you chased me like a naughty woman?”

“Well, then it’s appropriate that a naughty woman like me be discovered by a naughty boy. That’s why we get along so well.”

After taking a quick look at the yellow roses blooming in a hollow near the road, Kikuo hastily turned back to look at her seriously.

“Your husband, is he such an understanding person?”

“Yes, he’s understanding.”

“You respect him very much, don’t you?”

“Yes, I respect him.”

“Just looking at him, I get a good feeling about him. If I didn’t like him, I probably” (and here Kikuo blushed) “would not have been able to come to like you in this way.”

“My husband is another part of our very appropriate friendship.

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