Читать книгу Autumn Wind & Other Stories - Lane Dunlop - Страница 12

The two Sugi brothers were brought up almost in the same cradle as the supervisor's daughter Utatsuko. When they saw the breasts of Utatsuko's mother, they felt a faint, sweet thrill as if she were their mother. Utatsuko, when she was crowned by their father's big hand with a crimson hat, went into a trance of pride and pleasure. The skeins of subtly colored thread that circled from hand to hand among the three children had many times woven beautiful dreams in time to their songs. The younger brother's hand, stealing around from behind, had covered Utatsuko's girlish eyebrows. The older brother, holding her about the waist, had spun Utatsuko round and round in the sunlight as if twirling a bright paper pinwheel.

But then, one day, in their sunny, lively world of fantasy, a decisive incident occurred. On that day the younger brother was "it" in their game of hide-and-seek. While his older brother and the girl ran off hand in hand, the younger brother withdrew behind a shed. Leaning against its wooden side, he began to count to fifty in a voice that flew up into the clear, pale-blue sky. Meanwhile, his brother and Utatsuko, quickly stepping through the weeds at the back of the garden, scrambled up the trunk of a fig tree that grew there.

When he'd counted to fifty, the younger brother came running out from behind the shed. Then passing his eyes over the tops of the weeds and tall grasses that swayed and shone in the breeze, he stood still awhile.

Suddenly a green fig came flying through the air and landed at his feet. When he looked up, a shout of joy broke out from high up in the tree across from him. His older brother and the girl, perched on the same branch, the pure white corners of their mouths stained with fig juice, were laughing. The younger brother ran up under the tree.

"Welcome. Have a fig on us," his brother said.

"Yes. Have one of our figs," the girl chimed in.

Putting his hand to the tree trunk, the younger brother raised his eyes to the pair and glared at them. It was then that he saw that there was something on his brother's cheek. The sunlight, filtered through the leaves, shed many different-shaped spots and patches across their fair skin so that it was difficult to be sure, but when he took a long, hard look, wasn't that a big spider, its legs stretched out, that clung to his brother's cheek like an exotic tattoo? Falling back two or three steps, the younger brother, paling and without a word, pointed up at his brother's cheek.

"Oh, oh, oh," the girl called out, the bole shuddering with her agitation. The weird, nervous spider must have sensed the atmosphere of fear. It began to move from the older brother's cheek to his slender neck. When the older brother casually put up his hand, the spider bunched itself on the back of the hand and wagged its abdomen. Hastily the older brother brushed it away with the other hand. In that instant he lost his balance and fell to the ground.

The younger brother and the girl tensed and their eyes grew wide. Lying face down, a hand cupped over one eye, the older brother wept and sobbed. From the clefts of his fingers, dark blood oozed out. In the air above him, the spider's ugly body, its legs drawn up, bobbed about and jerked on its thread as the upper branches trembled.

The girl, as if something inside her had burst, abruptly started to wail up in the tree. The younger brother also wept, with big teardrops. Then running toward the house as fast as he could, he cried along with the girl's voice in the distance. From that day on, his brother's left eye was always shaded by a black lens in his glasses.

The older brother could no longer be bothered to search for dragonflies in their dragonfly hunts or to find the place where a kite had landed. He did not even take part in the brilliant games of catch, of running wild in the trampled weeds and grasses. After he'd begun to wear the glasses with the black lens in them, he had grown pale and put on weight, becoming a child in whom a quiet purity was all the more felt. Words of pity for him were often spoken by adults in the presence of his younger brother and others. Utatsuko was always giving him finely knitted woolens and pinning glass-bead jewelry on him.

The younger brother was a high-spirited, healthy boy. But at some time or other he had begun to feel a melancholy

One evening, with the older brother between them, Utatsuko and the younger brother went to the village shrine festival. Coming back, they excitedly talked about everything they'd seen—the colored, folding paperwork and the popguns, the magician who had calmly held his hands over the fire. When they came to a deserted part of the road, the older brother went on ahead whistling to himself. The younger brother sang a marching song at the top of his voice. Utatsuko walked along looking up at the sky or smilingly listening to their songs or fondling the Kyoto doll she'd bought at the fair. After they'd gone on a while, she suddenly ran forward and grabbed the older brother, pulling him back. Out of the dusky air a large horse's head appeared.

"I didn't see him at all," the older brother said. Clutching his hand, the girl was breathing fast.

When he saw this, the younger brother at once fell silent. Leaving them behind, he walked on quickly. Discontent and loneliness welled up in his heart.

That evening after they'd gone to bed, the younger brother lay wide awake until the small hours. Then making sure of his brother's quiet breathing in sleep beside him, he stealthily got up and, taking his brother's glasses from his bedside, went out onto the veranda. Opening the rain shutter of the privy, he threw them as hard as he could at the sky where stars glittered. Afterward, coming back to bed, he murmured over and over the name of God, which he had heard at church. Without his knowing it, his eyes filled with tears. When he closed his eyelids and slept, he dreamt that he was standing by Utatsuko's side, looking on as his brother was devoured by a horse.