She hid her tears with her sleeve. The beauty of the samurai's young wife, who h been so happy just two or three years before, had faded like a flower beaten by the rain. Hiyoshi, still holding the kitten, thought about his hunger and the bed that was beyond his reach. As he looked at his aunt, he suddenly noticed there was something different her appearance.
"Auntie! Your belly is big. Are you pregnant?"
Oetsu raised her head with a start as though her cheek had been slapped. The sudden question was completely out of place.
"Just like a little boy!" she said. "You shouldn't ask such forward questions. You're disgusting!" Exasperated, she added, "Go home quickly while there's still some light. Go to Nakamura or anywhere! Right now I don't care what you do." Swallowing her own choked voice, she disappeared into the house.
"I'll go," Hiyoshi muttered, and stood up to go, but the cat was not willing to surrenderr the warmth of his chest. At that moment a maidservant brought out a little bowl cold rice in bean paste soup, showed it to the cat, and called it outside. It promptly abandoned Hiyoshi to follow after the food. Hiyoshi watched the cat and its food with mouth watering, but it seemed no one was going to offer him anything to eat. He made up his mind to go home. But when he got to the entrance of the garden, he was challenged by someone with a keen sense of hearing.
"Who's out there?" asked a voice from the sickroom.
Rooted to the spot, Hiyoshi knew it was Danjo and promptly answered. Then, thinking the time had come, he told Danjo that he had been dismissed from the pottery shop.
"Oetsu, open the door!"
Oetsu tried to change his mind, arguing that the evening wind would make him cold and that his wounds would ache. She made no move to open the sliding door, until Danjo lost his temper.
"Fool!" he shouted. "What difference does it make if I live another ten or twenty days? Open it!"
Weeping, Oetsu did as she was told and said to Hiyoshi, "You'll only make him worse. Pay your respects and then leave."
Hiyoshi stood facing the sickroom and bowed. Danjo was leaning against some piled-up bedding.
"Hiyoshi, you've been dismissed from the pottery shop?"
"Yes, sir."
"Hm. That's all right."
"What?" Hiyoshi said, puzzled.
"There isn't the least bit of shame in being dismissed, as long as you haven't been disloyal or unjust."
"I see."
"Your house, too, was formerly a samurai house. Samurai, Hiyoshi."
"Yes, sir."
"A samurai does not work just for the sake of a meal. He is not a slave to food. He lives for his calling, for duty and service. Food is something extra, a blessing from heaven. Don't become the kind of man who, in pursuit of his next meal, spends his life in confusion."
* * *
It was already close to midnight.
Kochiku, who was a sickly baby, was suffering from some childhood illness and had been crying almost incessantly. He was lying on bed of straw and had finally stopped nursing.
"If you get up, you'll freeze, it's so cold," Otsumi said to her mother. "Go to sleep."
"How can I, when your father isn't home yet?"
Onaka got up, and she and Otsumi sat by the hearth, working diligently on handiwork left unfinished that evening.
"What's he doing? Isn't he coming back again tonight?"
"Well, it is New Year's."
"But no one in this house—and especially you—has celebrated it with so much as a single millet cake. And all the time we have to work in the cold like this."
"Well, men have their own pastimes."
"Although we go on calling him master, he doesn't work. He only drinks sake. When he does come home, he abuses you all the time. It makes me mad."
Otsumi was of an age when a woman would ordinarily go off to get married, but she would not leave her mother's side. She knew about their money problems, and not even in her dreams did she think of rouge and powder, much less of a New Year's dress.
"Please don't talk like that," Onaka said in tears. "Your father isn't reliable, but Hiyoshi will become respectable someday. We'll get you married to a good man, although you can't say your mother has picked her own husbands well."
"Mother, I don't want to get married. I want to stay with you forever."
"A woman shouldn't have to live like that. Chikuami doesn't know it, but when Yaemon was crippled, we put aside a string of coins from the money we received from his lord, thinking that it would be enough for your marriage. And I've collected more than seven bales of waste silk to weave a kimono for you."
"Mother, I think someone's coming."
"Your father?"
Otsumi stretched her neck to see who it was. "No."
"Who then?"
"I don't know. Be quiet." Otsumi swallowed hard, suddenly feeling uneasy.
"Mother, are you there?" Hiyoshi called out of the darkness. He stood stock-still, making no move to step up into the other room.
"Hiyoshi?"
"Uh-huh."
"At this time of night?"
"I was dismissed from the pottery shop."
"Dismissed?"
"Forgive me. Please, Mother, forgive me," he sobbed.
Onaka and Otsumi nearly tripped over their feet in their haste to greet him.
"What will you do now?" Onaka asked. "Don't just stand there like that, come inside." She took Hiyoshi's hand, but he shook his head.
"No, I have to go soon. If I spend even a single night in this house, I won't want leave you again."
Although Onaka did not want Hiyoshi to come back to this poverty-stricken house, she could not bear to think of him going right back out into the night. Her eyes opened wide. "Where are you going?" she asked.
"I don't know, but this time I'll serve a samurai. Then I'll be able to set both of your minds at rest."
"Serve a samurai?" Onaka whispered.
"You said you didn't want me to become a samurai, but that's what I really want to do. My uncle at Yabuyama said the same thing. He said now's the time."
"Well, you should talk this over with your stepfather too."
"I don't want to see him," Hiyoshi said, shaking his head. "You should forget about me for the next ten years. Sis, it's no good for you not to get married. But be patient, all right? When I become a great man, I'll clothe our mother in silk, and buy you a sash of patterned satin for your wedding."
Both women were weeping because Hiyoshi had grown up enough to say such things. Their hearts were like lakes of tears in which their bodies would drown.
"Mother, here are the two measures of salt the pottery shop paid me. I earned it working for two years. Sis, put it in the kitchen." Hiyoshi put down the bag of salt.
"Thank you," said his mother, bowing to the bag. "This is salt you've earned by going out into the world for the first time."
Hiyoshi was satisfied. Looking at the happy face of his mother, he was so happy himself that he felt as if he were floating. He swore he would make her even happier in the future. So that's it! This is my family's salt, Hiyoshi thought. No, not just my family's, but the village's. No, better yet, it's the salt of the realm.
"I guess it'll be quite a while before I'm back," Hiyoshi said, backing toward the outer door, but his eyes did not move from Onaka and Otsumi. He already had one foot out the door when Otsumi suddenly leaned forward and said, "Wait, Hiyoshi! Wait." She then turned to her mother. "The string of money you just told me about. I don't need it. I don't want to get married, so please give it to Hiyoshi."
Stifling a sob in her sleeve, Onaka fetched the string of coins and handed them to Hiyoshi, who looked at them and said, "No, I don't need them." He held the coins out to his mother.