Swaddling Clothes by Yukio
employment agency, and the very first
Mishima, translated by Ivan Morris
HE WAS ALWAYS busy, Toshiko’s
husband. Even tonight he had to dash
off to an appointment, leaving her to go
home alone by taxi. But what else could
a woman expect when she married an
actor—an attractive one? No doubt she
had been foolish to hope that he would
spend the evening with her. And yet he
must have known how she dreaded
going back to their house, unhomely
with its Western-style furniture and with
the bloodstains still showing on the
floor.
Toshiko had been oversensitive since
girlhood: that was her nature. As the
result of constant worrying she never
put on weight, and now, an adult
woman, she looked more like a
transparent picture than a creature of
flesh and blood. Her delicacy of spirit
was evident to her most casual
acquaintance.
Earlier that evening, when she had
joined her husband at a night club, she
had been shocked to find him
entertaining friends with an account of
“the incident.” Sitting there in his
American-style suit, puffing at a
cigarette, he had seemed to her almost
a stranger.
“It’s a fantastic story,” he was saying,
gesturing flamboyantly as if in an
attempt to outweigh the attractions of
the dance band. “Here this new nurse
for our baby arrives from the
thing I notice about her is her stomach.
It’s enormous—as if she had a pillow
stuck under her kimono! No wonder, I
thought, for I soon saw that she could
eat more than the rest of us put
together. She polished off the contents
of our rice bin like that....” He snapped
his fingers. “ ‘Gastric dilation’—that’s
how she explained her girth and her
appetite. Well, the day before yesterday
we heard
1
groans and moans coming from the
nursery. We rushed in and found her
squatting on the floor, holding her
stomach in her two hands, and moaning
like a cow. Next to her our baby lay in
his cot, scared out of his wits and crying
at the top of his lungs. A pretty scene, I
can tell you!”
“So the cat was out of the bag?”
suggested one of their friends, a film
actor like Toshiko’s husband.
“Indeed it was! And it gave me the
shock of my life. You see, I’d completely
swallowed that story about ‘gastric
dilation.’ Well, I didn’t waste any time. I
rescued our good rug from the floor and
spread a blanket for her to lie on. The
whole time the girl was yelling like a
stuck pig. By the time the doctor from
the maternity clinic arrived, the baby
had already been born. But our sitting
room was a pretty shambles!”
“Oh, that I’m sure of!” said another of
their friends, and the whole company
burst into laughter.
Toshiko was dumbfounded to hear her
husband discussing the horrifying
happening as though it were no more
than an amusing incident which they
chanced to have witnessed. She shut
her eyes for a moment and all at once
she saw the newborn baby lying before
her: on the parquet floor the infant lay,
and his frail body was wrapped in
bloodstained newspapers.
Toshiko was sure that the doctor had
done the whole thing out of spite. As if
to emphasize his scorn for this mother
who had given birth to a bastard under
such sordid conditions, he had told his
assistant to wrap the baby in some
loose newspapers, rather than proper
swaddling. This callous treatment of the
newborn child had offended Toshiko.
Overcoming her disgust at the entire
scene, she had fetched a brand-new
piece of flannel from her cupboard and,
having swaddled the baby in it, had laid
him carefully in an armchair.
This all had taken place in the evening
after her husband
had left the house. Toshiko had told him
nothing of it, fearing that he would think
her oversoft, oversentimental; yet the
scene had engraved itself deeply in her
mind. Tonight she sat silently thinking
back on it, while the jazz orchestra
brayed and her husband chatted
cheerfully with his friends. She knew
that she would never forget the sight of
the baby, wrapped in stained
newspapers and lying on the floor—it
was a scene fit for a butchershop.
Toshiko, whose own life had been spent
in solid comfort, poignantly felt the
wretchedness of the illegitimate baby.
I am the only person to have witnessed
its shame, the thought occurred to her.
The mother never saw her child lying
there in its newspaper wrappings, and
the baby itself of course didn’t know. I
alone shall have to preserve that terrible
scene in my memory. When the baby
grows up and wants to find out about
his birth, there will be no one to tell him,
so long as I preserve silence. How
strange that I should have this feeling of
guilt! After all, it was I who took him up
from the floor, swathed him properly in
flannel, and laid him down to sleep in
the armchair.
They left the night club and Toshiko
stepped into the taxi that her husband
had called for her. “Take this lady to
Ushigome,” he told the driver and shut
the door from the outside. Toshiko
gazed through the window at her
husband’s smiling face and noticed his
strong, white teeth. Then she leaned
back in the seat, oppressed by the
knowledge that their life together was in
some way too easy, too painless. It
would have been difficult for her to put
her thoughts into words. Through the
rear window of the taxi she took a last
look at her husband. He was striding
along the street toward his Nash car,
and soon the back of his rather garish
tweed coat had blended with the figures
of the passers-by.
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The taxi drove off, passed down a street
dotted with bars and then by a theatre,
in front of which the throngs of people
jostled each other on the pavement.
Although the performance had only just
ended, the lights had already been
turned out and in the half dark outside it
was depressingly obvious that the
cherry blossoms decorating the front of
the theatre were merely scraps of white
paper.
Even if that baby should grow up in
ignorance of the secret of his birth, he
can never become a respectable
citizen, reflected Toshiko, pursuing the
same train of thoughts. Those soiled
newspaper swaddling clothes will be the
symbol of his entire life. But why should
I keep worrying about him so much? Is
it because I feel uneasy about the future
of my own child? Say twenty years from
now, when our boy will have grown up
into a fine, carefully educated young
man, one day by a quirk of fate he
meets that other boy, who then will also
have turned twenty. And say that the
other boy, who has been sinned
against, savagely stabs him with a
knife....
It was a warm, overcast April night, but
thoughts of the future made Toshiko feel
cold and miserable. She shivered on
the back seat of the car.
No, when the time comes I shall take
my son’s place, she told herself
suddenly. Twenty years from now I shall
be forty- three. I shall go to that young
man and tell him straight out about
everything—about his newspaper
swaddling clothes, and about how I
went and wrapped him in flannel.
The taxi ran along the dark wide road
that was bordered by the park and by
the Imperial Palace moat. In the
distance Toshiko noticed the pinpricks
of light which came from the blocks of
tall office buildings.
Twenty years from now that wretched
child will be in utter misery. He will be
living a desolate, hopeless,
poverty-stricken
existence—a lonely rat. What else could
happen to a baby who has had such a
birth? He’ll be wandering through the
streets by himself, cursing his father,
loathing his mother.
No doubt Toshiko derived a certain
satisfaction from her somber thoughts:
she tortured herself with them without
cease. The taxi approached Hanzomon
and drove past the compound of the
British Embassy. At that point the
famous rows of cherry trees were
spread out before Toshiko in all their
purity. On the spur of the moment she
decided to go and view the blossoms by
herself in the dark night. It was a
strange decision for a timid and
unadventurous young woman, but then
she was in a strange state of mind and
she dreaded the return home. That
evening all sorts of unsettling fancies
had burst open in her mind.
She crossed the wide street—a slim,
solitary figure in the darkness. As a rule
when she walked in the traffic Toshiko
used to cling fearfully to her companion,
but tonight she darted alone between
the cars and a moment later had
reached the long narrow park that
borders the Palace moat.
Chidorigafuchi, it is called—the Abyss
of the Thousand Birds.
Tonight the whole park had become a
grove of blossoming cherry trees. Under
the calm cloudy sky the blossoms
formed a mass of solid whiteness. The
paper lanterns that hung from wires
between the trees had been put out; in
their place electric light bulbs, red,
yellow, and green, shone dully beneath
the blossoms. It was well past ten
o’clock and most of the flower- viewers
had gone home. As the occasional
passers-by strolled through the park,
they would automatically kick aside the
empty bottles or crush the waste paper
beneath their feet.
Newspapers, thought Toshiko, her mind
going back once again to those
happenings. Bloodstained newspapers.
If a man were ever to hear of that
piteous birth and know that it was he
3 It was a man in a brown jersey who lay
who had lain there, it would ruin his
entire life. To think that I, a perfect
stranger, should from now on have to
keep such a secret—the secret of a
man’s whole existence....
Lost in these thoughts, Toshiko walked
on through the park. Most of the people
still remaining there were quiet couples;
no one paid her any attention. She
noticed two people sitting on a stone
bench beside the moat, not looking at
the blossoms, but gazing silently at the
water. Pitch black it was, and swathed
in heavy shadows. Beyond the moat the
somber forest of the Imperial Palace
blocked her view. The trees reached up,
to form a solid dark mass against the
night sky. Toshiko walked slowly along
the path beneath the blossoms hanging
heavily overhead. On a stone bench,
slightly apart from the others, she
noticed a pale object—not, as she had
at first imagined, a pile of cherry
blossoms, nor a garment forgotten by
one of the visitors to the park. Only
when she came closer did she see that
it was a human form lying on the bench.
Was it, she wondered, one of those
miserable drunks often to be seen
sleeping in public places? Obviously
not, for the body had been
systematically covered with
newspapers, and it was the whiteness
of those papers that had attracted
Toshiko’s attention. Standing by the
bench, she gazed down at the sleeping
figure.
there, curled up on layers of
newspapers, other newspapers
covering him. No doubt this had
become his normal night residence now
that spring had arrived. Toshiko gazed
down at the man’s dirty, unkempt hair,
which in places had become hopelessly
matted. As she observed the sleeping swaddling clothes. The shoulder of the
figure wrapped in its newspapers, she man’s jersey rose and fell in the
was inevitably reminded of the baby darkness in time with his heavy
who had lain on the floor in its wretched breathing.
It seemed to Toshiko that all her fears and premonitions had suddenly taken concrete
form. In the darkness the man’s pale forehead stood out, and it was a young forehead,
though carved with the wrinkles of long poverty and hardship. His khaki trousers had
been slightly pulled up; on his sockless feet he wore a pair of battered gym shoes. She
could not see his face and suddenly had an overmastering desire to get one glimpse of
it.
She walked to the head of the bench and looked down. The man’s head was half buried
in his arms, but Toshiko could see that he was surprisingly young. She noticed the thick
eyebrows and the fine bridge of his nose. His slightly open mouth was alive with youth.
But Toshiko had approached too close. In the silent night the newspaper bedding
rustled, and abruptly the man opened his eyes. Seeing the young woman standing
directly beside him, he raised himself with a jerk, and his eyes lit up. A second later a
powerful hand reached out and seized Toshiko by her slender wrist.
She did not feel in the least afraid and made no effort to free herself. In a flash the
thought had struck her, Ah, so the twenty years have already gone by! The forest of the
Imperial Palace was pitch dark and utterly silent.