Beauty and Sadness Read Online Free PDF Page B

meet Otoko. The baby was saved.
    The next year, when Otoko had her premature baby, Fumiko learned about it by coming across a letter from Otoko’s mother. That so young a girl should have a baby was not in itself surprising, but Fumiko had never dreamed of such a thing. Railing at him, she flew into a passion and bit her tongue. When he saw blood trickling between her lips, Oki hastily forced her mouth open and stuck in his hand, until she began to choke and retch, and then go limp. His fingers were bleeding when he drew them out. At that Fumiko calmed down and set about bandaging his hand.
    Before the novel was finished Fumiko had also found out that Otoko had broken off from him and gone to Kyoto. Having her type the manuscript would reopen the wounds of her jealousy and pain, but otherwise he would seem to be treating it as a secret. Oki was perplexed, but finally decided to give her the manuscript. For one thing, he wanted to make a full confession to her. She immediately read it through from beginning to end.
    “I ought to have let you go,” she said, paling. “I wonderwhy I didn’t. Everybody who reads it will sympathize with Otoko.”
    “I didn’t want to write about you.”
    “I know I can’t be compared with your ideal woman.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    “I was hideously jealous.”
    “Otoko is gone. You and I will be living together for a long, long time. But a lot of the Otoko in that book is pure fiction. For instance, I have no idea what she was like while she was in the hospital.”
    “That kind of fiction comes from love.”
    “I couldn’t have written without it,” said Oki abruptly. “Will you type this one for me too? I hate to ask you.”
    “I’ll type it. A typewriter is just a machine, after all. I’ll be part of the machine.”
    Of course Fumiko could not simply function mechanically. She seemed to make frequent mistakes—he often heard her tear up a sheet of paper. Sometimes she paused, and he could hear her weeping quietly. Since the house was so small, and the typewriter was in a corner of the cramped dining room next to his shabby study, he was very well aware of his wife’s presence. It was hard to sit calmly at his desk.
    Nevertheless, Fumiko said not a word about
A Girl of Sixteen.
She seemed to think a “machine” ought not to talk. The manuscript ran to some three hundred and fifty pages, and for all her experience would obviously take many days to complete. Soon she had become quite sallow and hollow-cheeked. She would sit staring nowhere,clinging to her typewriter as if possessed, her brows knitted grimly. Then one day before dinner she threw up a yellowish substance and slumped over. Oki went to stroke her back.
    Gasping, she asked for water. There were tears in her red-rimmed eyes.
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had you type it,” he said. “Though to try to keep this one book away from you …” Even if it had not destroyed their marriage, that wound too would have been slow to heal.
    “I’m glad you did, anyway.” Fumiko tried to smile. “I’m really exhausted. It’s the first time I’ve typed anything this long all at once.”
    “The longer it is, the longer you’re tortured. Maybe that’s the fate of a novelist’s wife.”
    “Thanks to your novel I’ve come to understand Otoko very well. As much as I’ve suffered from it, I can see that meeting her was a good thing for you.”
    “Didn’t I tell you she’s idealized?”
    “I know. There aren’t any lovely girls exactly like that. But I wish you’d written more about me! I wouldn’t care if I’d come out a horrible, jealous shrew.”
    Oki found it hard to reply. “You were never that.”
    “You didn’t know what was in my heart.”
    “I wasn’t willing to expose all our family secrets.”
    “No, you were so wrapped up in that little Otoko you only wanted to write about her! I suppose you thought I would soil her beauty and dirty up your novel. But does a novel have to be