The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi

Author:Fumiko Enchi [Enchi, Fumiko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448191093
Publisher: Random House

Purple Ribbon

The tradesmen and others who came to the house all said that the family Buddhist shrine was pitifully small for such a large establishment.

It may have been a relic from the unsettled days of their younger years, when Shirakawa was a government official obliged to move about the provinces from assignment to assignment and they had had to carry about with them the urn containing the ashes of his mother, who had died in the snow country where he was working at the time. Whatever the case, the sliding doors next to the cupboard containing the small shrine concealed a black lacquer safe emblazoned with the family crest in gold, and it was Tomo’s custom to carry out all business and calculations relating to rents on houses and land in this Buddhist retreat tucked away at the back of the house. They had an acre or so each of land in Shiba, Nihonbashi, and Shitaya, of which some seventy percent was built on. The land rents and other dues came to quite a large figure, but defaulters were correspondingly common, and sometimes it was necessary to have recourse to the courts in order to reach a settlement. Supervision was no easy task. Each estate had its agent, but to leave everything to them invariably meant oversights, so once a month without fail Tomo would herself go to hear from the agents a detailed account of the state of the leased land and houses.

The man who now sat facing Tomo across the writing table in front of the safe was not an agent but Tomeji Iwamoto, who functioned as a kind of secretary for her. The son of Tomo’s elder sister by a different mother, he had come to Tokyo from Kumamoto a few years earlier, counting on Shirakawa to find him a job.

He could handle correspondence and calculations, and his earnest, unassuming character had earned him the confidence of both Shirakawa and Tomo, who as the necessity arose would ask Iwamoto to undertake troublesome negotiations and legal business that could not be left to the agents.

Finishing a letter to a tenant who had left his rent unpaid for more than a year and in addition was demanding compensation for removal, Iwamoto handed a copy to Tomo. Carefully she read through the letter in the fine, well-written characters that contrasted so oddly with his short, thickset appearance, then said:

‘Thank you. Things are much easier for me nowadays, now that I have you to write these for me. This kind of letter is too much for a woman, and your uncle can’t be bothered with such matters.’

One side of her mouth lifted in a smile, and she took up her pipe for the first time since the interview had started.

‘How is your business? Does it look as though you’ll get more customers?’

‘Yes – one mustn’t complain, I suppose. Only the other day we had an order from the supplies office of the Finance Ministry for quite a large number of wicker

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