The wind was chill, so Riyo decided to walk on the sunny side of the street. She went along, her eye out for the smaller houses. It was noontime, and she was looking for someplace where she could settle down with a cup of tea. She skirted the front of a row of houses, then made her way around a wooden fence of what appeared to be a construction site, peering inside to see piles of rusting iron. There was a small shack, and on the other side of its glass door a fire crackled. A man came up behind her on a bicycle.

"Where's the Katsushika ward office?" he asked, one foot on the ground. Riyo didn't know.

"I don't know. I'm just passing through myself."

The man on the bicycle went over to the shack and shouted his question. Another man with a sweat cloth tied around his head, apparently a laborer, opened the glass door and stuck his head out.

"Go to the main street that passes through Yotsugi," he told him, "and straight along the new road toward the station. You can't miss it."

The man with the sweat cloth struck Riyo as probably a decent sort, so she let the bicycle go by, then approached him tentatively.

"Perhaps you'd like some tea from Shizuoka?" she hazarded softly. The man was burning firewood in a small stove on the dirt floor in the dimness inside. A large teakettle sat on a grate made of rebar.

"Tea?"

"Yes, it's Shizuoka tea," she said with a smile as she immediately began to set down her rucksack. The man said nothing and went over to a stool on the dirt floor. Riyo hoped the man would let her warm herself in front of the warm, briskly burning fire, if only for a little while.

"I've walked quite a way, and it's very cold. Do you suppose I could warm myself a bit?" she asked nervously.

"Yeah, sure you can. Close the door and warm yourself for a while." He took the stool he was about to slip between his legs and gave it to Riyo, then sat down on a rickety packing crate. Riyo put her rucksack down in a corner on the dirt floor, squatted down diffidently, and held her hands up to the fire.

"Sit on the stool," he said, thrusting his chin at it. He then looked back at Riyo, who was feeling herself growing warm on the other side of the fire.

She had the air of one who paid no heed to her appearance, but she was more attractive, more fair-skinned than he would have expected. "You're goin' round sellin' things?"

The kettle began to boil noisily. An absurdly large family altar with a vivid green branch from a sakaki tree as an offering was attached to the besooted ceiling. Beneath the window hung a chalkboard and a pair of rubber boots, full of holes, stood against the wall.

"I'd heard that business would be good around here, so I came early this morning, but I've only made a sale at one house, and I was thinking of going back home, but I thought I might eat my lunch at someone's place and was walking around looking for a likely house."

"You can eat your lunch here. There're lucky days and unlucky days when you sell. You might do right well if you went someplace where there's a few more houses."

The man took something wrapped in a newspaper sticky with grease from a shelf that looked like a misshapen bookcase. It was a piece of salmon. He removed the kettle from the iron grating and put the fish on it. A delicious aroma filled the shack.

"Well now, why don't you sit on the stool and enjoy your lunch." Riyo stood up, took a kerchief-bundled lunch box out of her rucksack, and sat down.

"No business is easy, right? This Shizuoka tea, about whadya get for a pound?" The man turned the salmon over with his fingers.

"I sell it for a hundred twenty or thirty yen, but there're also some leavings, and if your price is too high you have a hard time selling anything."

"I'll bet. A family with old people'll buy, but a young family's got to be a tough sell."

Riyo opened her lunch box. In the brownish barley-white rice was a luxury—two small fish on a skewer and some pickled vegetables.

"So where d'ya live?"

"Inari-cho in the Shitaya district, but I've just come to Tokyo, so I don't know one side of town from the other."

"You mean you're rentin' a room?"

"No, someone's putting me up."

The man withdrew a large alumnite lunch box from a soiled knit bag and took off the lid. It was filled to bursting with rice and sweet potatoes, more mashed than packed. He grabbed the broiled salmon and set it on the lid, put the kettle on the grate again, and thrust scraps of wood into the stove. Riyo put down her half-eaten lunch on the stool and pulled out a bag of her tea from the rucksack and measured off a portion on a sheet of tissue paper.

"Do you mind if I put this in the kettle?" she asked.

The man waved his hand from side to side in embarrassment; he didn't want to impose upon her.

"You don't mind usin' your good stuff?" he grinned. His large white teeth had a youthful brightness. Riyo plucked the lid off the kettle and quickly dropped the tea inside. The water came to a vigorous boil. The man took a tea mug and a dirty water glass from a shelf and set them on a new packing crate next to the wall.

"Tell me, what's your husband do?" He broke the salmon in two and put half on Riyo's food. Taken aback by his question, she was nonetheless delighted to receive the salmon.

"My husband is in Siberia. He's not come back yet, so here I am having to do this to put food on the table."

The man looked up, surprise in his face. "Where in Siberia is he?"

She had received a letter from him last year from Suchin in the Baikal region, autumn had come and gone, and she somehow made it through another winter. It had become routine for Riyo to awake every morning to melancholy. Since her husband was so far away from her, his absence somehow didn't register, but she had also gotten used to this lack of feeling. The song "The Hills of a Foreign Land" was popular now, and she would have her son Tomekichi sing it for her. As she listened to him sing, a feeling of utter sadness would come over her. She felt as though the war was still hovering over her, over her alone. It was as though only she had been left behind in the mists of fading memories, set apart from the peaceful tenor of today's Japan. You can bet there's no such thing as God, Riyo was in the habit of telling herself. Every day in the broiling summer was intolerable as she waited anxiously and irritably, and as the hot weather gradually eased she found herself depressed by the oppressive approach of winter. She was angry in her solitude: There are limits to how much a person can endure. The image she had in her mind of Ryuji, who had now spent four winters in Siberia, little by little began to lose substance, like a ghost that was fading away.

Not once in the six years since Ryúji had gone off to war had Riyo experienced joy, the soaring of her spirits. The flow of time bypassed the ken of her life, and nothing stirred her. Nobody talked about the war anymore, and on those occasions when she told someone her husband was being held in Siberia, the sympathy extended to her was merely casual, as though he had gone there on a trip and hadn't come back. Riyo didn't know what sort of place Siberia was; she could only envision it as a vast desert of snow.

"He says he's at a place called Suchin, not far from Lake Baikal. He's not able to return yet."

"I was repatriated from Siberia myself. I was put to work cuttin down trees for two years at Mulchi, near the Amur River. It's all a matter of luck. Your husband's got it rough, but you've got to wait for him, so it's rough for you, too." He took off his cloth headband, wiped the tea mug and water glass with it, and poured the boiling tea into them.

"Really!? You're a returnee too? How lucky you've come back in such good shape!"

"I managed to go to Siberia an' live to tell about it."

She looked carefully at the man's face as she put away her lunch box. He struck her as unextraordinary, which was precisely why she was able to talk with him comfortably, to feel at ease with him.

"You have children, I'd guess."

"Yes, I have a boy, eight," Riyo began, "but I've been having problems with his school, transferring him into it. The problem is the processing of his ration papers has been delayed, and everything depends on that, the upshot of which is he can't go to school either. Just when I'm at my busiest selling, I've got to drop it and go around to the ward office every day for the paperwork. I'll tell you, it's wearing me to a frazzle."

The man took the water glass in hand and, blowing vigorously to cool the hot tea, began drinking.

"This is great tea."

"Do you really think so? I've got better tea. These are second pickings. It wholesales for about 100 yen a pound. But my customers tell me it tastes better than you'd expect."

Riyo took the tea mug in both hands and drank, blowing on it as she did so.

The wind direction had changed at some point; a strong west wind was now blowing hard against the iron roof, and set it to rattling. Riyo had no stomach for going out, wanting only to remain by the fire, if only for a little longer.

"I better take a coupla pounds," the man said, taking 300 yen from a pocket in his work clothes.

Riyo quickly took two one-pound bags from her rucksack and set them on top of the packing crate.

"Don't be silly! Business is business. You can't expect me to just take it..." He paused. "If you're around here again, drop by."

"Yes, I'll certainly take you up on that. I don't suppose this is where you live?"

Riyo looked about the tiny shack. After he had put away his lunch box, the man split off a sliver of wood from the splintered end of a piece of kindling and used it as a toothpick.

"I do live here. I'm watchman for the iron there and I do the shippin'. My older sister lives nearby and brings me my meals, but that's all." He opened the doors beneath the Shinto altar. Riyo could see a bed in a closet-like enclosure. A picture postcard with the actress Yamada Isuzu on it was tacked to the wall.

"My goodness! All the comforts of home. It's really cozy, isn't it." Riyo wondered how old the man was.

From then on Riyo came to Yotsugi every day to sell, and would drop by the shack in the iron yard. The man's name was Tsuruishi Yoshio. Yoshio was delighted with Riyo's visits and would buy candy and the like in anticipation of her coming. Riyo now had the pleasure of being able to drop by Yoshio's, and, at the same time, she was gradually building a clientele for her tea business, which made her peddling in the area easier. On the fifth day she took Tomekichi with her to Yoshio's shack in Yotsugi. Yoshio was delighted to see the boy, and immediately took him off somewhere. When they returned a little later, Tomekichi was carrying two large caramel puffs that were still hot.

"The lad cooked them himself," Yoshio told her. Sitting Tomekichi down on a stool, he patted the boy's head.

Riyo had begun to wonder whether Yoshio had a wife or not. This was not an especially crucial concern, but as she watched Yoshio, so obviously fond of Tomekichi, the question suddenly presented itself to her. Riyo, who was thirty years old, had never thought about a man other than her husband, but as she became aware of Yoshio's easygoing disposition she was somewhat bewildered to sense her feelings toward him gradually changing.

Little by little Riyo began to pay more attention to her appearance, and put more effort into selling as she made her rounds. She had her family in Shizuoka send her dried mackerel and sardine flakes to see if she might sell those as well, and she began to see, to her surprise, that occasionally there was a greater demand for fish flakes than tea.

It was perhaps little more than a week after Riyo had started going to Yoshio's place. Riyo and Tomekichi had yet to see the Asakusa entertainment district, so Yoshio said he had a day off, and would take the two of them there and show them around. It was still too early for the cherry blossoms, but if they had time they could also stroll through Ueno Park. On the appointed day, Riyo, as Yoshio had instructed, stood waiting with Tomekichi in front of the information booth in Ueno station. The sky was leaden, neither clear nor cloudy, but it was the kind of day that would be pleasantly mild if it didn't rain. After a good ten minutes Yoshio came along in a threadbare gray suit with sleeves that were too short for him.

Riyo, Tomekichi in tow, had on a dress made of blue kimono material with a wave design over which she wore a padded tan suit jacket, all of which suggested this was a special occasion. She looked younger than she usually did, and next to the very tall Yoshio, seemed as short as a schoolgirl, thanks, perhaps, to the Western-style dress.

"Hope it doesn't rain," Yoshio said, casually scooping up Tomekichi and starting off through the crowd of people. Riyo carried a big shopping bag, into which she had put bread, seaweed sushi rolls and tangerines. They rode the subway to the end of the line at Asakusa, walked past the Matsuya department store toward the Sensoji Temple's Niten Gate, and down the shop-lined approach to the temple.

Riyo found Asakusa an unexpected disappointment. She was let down to find that the small vermilion lacquered temple building housed the renowned Asakusa Kannon, Goddess of Mercy. Yoshio explained that before the air raids there had been a huge hall so big you had to tilt your head back to see the top, but she felt no real sense of its hugeness. There was nothing but wave after wave of people. A mass of jostling humanity surrounded the small vermilion building. In the distance they could hear the plaintive, seductive sounds of a trumpet and a saxophone. The wind whistled through the full-budded branches of the trees in the park's burned-out center square, the trees writhing in its grip.

When they passed under the arch of the old clothes market, they could see all the jerry-built shacks of the cheap eateries that stood cheek by jowl around the pond. The smell of cooking oil and steam from kettles of o-den hung in the air. Tomekichi had had Yoshio buy him a yellow cotton candy generously spun around the end of a chopstick at a street stall and walked along licking it.

Theirs had been only a chance encounter, yet Riyo drew strength from it and felt as though she had been with Yoshio ten years. She was not the least bit tired. The streets were lined with movie houses and small review theaters. The three of them strolled through the ravine of large buildings, where American-style billboards bellowed and hectored them.

"It's startin' to rain," Yoshio said, holding up his hand. Riyo looked up at the sky. Large drops of rain began to fall. They concluded the outing they had been looking forward to was now ruined, and went into a small coffee shop with a lighted glass sign out in front that proclaimed it the Mary. The artificial flowers hanging from the ceiling made the place seem all the chillier. They ordered black tea. Riyo took the sushi rolls and bread from her shopping bag and gave them to Yoshio and her son to eat. Yoshio didn't smoke a cigarette, so they were soon finished with their meal, but now it was raining in earnest, and before they knew it the place was packed with refugees from the rain.

"What shall we do? It's really raining, isn't it. And it doesn't look like it's going to stop, either."

"We'll wait a while, and when it eases up I'll take you home."

Riyo wondered if by "home" Yoshio meant her place in Inari-cho. Even if she did let him see where she lived, she could hardly invite him into the house. She had asked another woman from her village to put her up until she could find her own place. She had no room of her own; she slept in the four-by-six entryway. Riyo would rather have gone to Yoshio's shack in Yotsugi, but they certainly couldn't settle down and relax at his place; there weren't even enough chairs to sit on. Riyo checked her purse in the shopping bag, taking care that Yoshio didn't notice what she was doing. She had some 700 yen. She wondered if there might not be an inn somewhere where they could get out of the rain for that.

"I wonder if we couldn't find an inn or something where we could get out of the rain?"

An odd expression crossed Yoshio's face when he heard the words "find an inn."

Riyo then candidly and without hesitation explained the situation where she was staying.

"So I don't want to take you back there. I'd like to see a movie, and if we can find a little inn, rest a bit there, have them bring us some noodles or something, then happily go our separate ways. I wonder if I'm being extravagant?"

Yoshio had apparently been thinking along the same lines. He took off his jacket, draped it over Tomekichi s head, and went out into the rain with Riyo. They ran under the eaves of a nearby movie theater. They found no seats inside and had to stand. They were soon exhausted from standing and breathing the stuffy air. Tomekichi had drifted off into a sound sleep on Yoshio's back. They knew they would have to get to an inn soon, so after an hour or so they left the theater and began walking about, in a driving rain, looking for a place to stay. The rain beat down all about them, the din resounding in their ears like the drumming on the leaves of a banana plant. They at last found a small inn near Tawaramachi.

The couple was shown into a tiny room at the end of a hallway whose floor was riddled with knotholes and creaked as they walked over it. The soft tatami was clammy to the touch.

Riyo took off her wet socks. Yoshio deposited Tomekichi asprawl in front of the alcove and put a dirty cushion under the boy's head for a pillow. A burgeoning torrent of water poured off the eaves in a noisy cascade. There was apparently no rain gutter. Yoshio took out a discolored handkerchief and wiped the rain off Riyo's hair. It was a natural gesture, and she casually allowed herself the luxury of accepting his simple kindness. Within the narrow focus defined by the sound of the rain joy welled up inside her. Why did his touch please her so? She had the feeling that her long-endured isolation would disappear in a burst of joyful song.

"You suppose we can get some food in a place like this?"

"I wonder," Riyo responded. "I'll go and ask."

Riyo went out into the hall and asked the maid, dressed in Western clothes, who was bringing them tea. She told Riyo they could only have Chinese noodles. Riyo ordered two bowls. The couple sat and drank their tea, a boxed, coalless hibachi between them. Then Yoshio stretched out his legs and lay down by Tomekichi. Riyo looked at the threatening, gradually darkening sky through the windowpane.

"How old are you, Riyo?" Yoshio suddenly asked. Riyo turned to him and giggled.

"I can never tell how old a woman is," he continued. "You're twentysix or seven, are you?"

"Listen, I'm an old woman. I'm thirty."

"Wow! You're a year older than me."

"Really! You're so young!" she said, staring at Yoshio in surprise, "I assumed you were over thirty."

For the briefest instant Yoshio's gentle eyes, with his thick eyebrows, flashed and his face flushed, then he looked at his dirty feet. He had also taken off his stockings.

Night fell, but the rain continued.

Later two bowls of lukewarm noodles were brought from a Chinese restaurant. Riyo shook Tomekichi awake and had the half-asleep boy take some of the broth. Riyo and Yoshio decided to stay the night. Yoshio went to the office and paid for the room, and three sets of fresh, clean bedding—something they hadn't expected—were brought in. Riyo laid out the futons. The room seemed futons wall to wall. She removed Tomekichi's jacket, took him to the bathroom, then put him to bed right in the middle of the bedding.

"They seem to think we're husband an' wife," Yoshio commented.

"So they do. Their mistake, I'm afraid."

Riyo felt vaguely uneasy, as though she were wronging her husband, perhaps because the futons lay there before her. She didn't know what might happen later, but she wanted to believe that things had unavoidably turned out this way because it had rained, and that was the explanation she gave herself.

It was the middle of the night and Riyo was pleasantly drifting off to sleep when she heard Yoshio's voice.

"Riyo! Riyo!"

Startled, she lifted her head from her pillow.

"Riyo, can I come over by you?" Yoshio asked in a whisper. The rain had eased, and the water dropping off the eaves sounded only feebly now.

"It'd be wrong."

"It'd be wrong, would it?"

"Yes, it'd make things difficult."

Yoshio sighed.

"Yoshio, I haven't asked you, but what about your wife?"

"I don't have one now."

"You did before?"

"Right."

"What happened?"

"When I came back from the service she was livin' with another man."

"That must have infuriated you."

"Well, yeah, I was mad. But what's gone is gone, right?"

"That's true, but I'm surprised you were able to give her up so easily."

Yoshio fell silent.

"Shall we talk about something?" Riyo asked.

"Hmm. I don't have anything to talk about specially," he said, pausing. "Those Chinese noodles were awful, weren't they."

"Weren't they! And 100 yen a bowl!"

"You two should have a room of your own."

"I wonder if there's not something near you. I'd like to move somewhere near you."

"There's practically nothin'. I'll let you know as soon as there is." He was silent for a moment.

"You know, you're really somethin', Riyo."

"Dear me, how is that?"

"You really are. Not all women are loose."

Riyo said nothing.

She wanted them to be in each other's arms, and then...

Riyo's breathing was labored, but she breathed in short, choppy breaths so that Yoshio wouldn't notice. Her underarms were hot and sweaty now. Trucks passed by in the street, shaking the inn.

"War turns human beings into little more than worms. I know, because I was really gung ho and did things only a madman would do. I ended up a buck private. They really slapped me around, I'll tell you. I want no more of that."

"Yoshio, tell me about your father and mother."

"They live in the country."

"Where in the country?"

"In Fukuoka."

"What does your older sister do?"

"She's on her own, like you, raisin' two kids. She's got herself a sewin' machine and she's makin' dresses. Her husband was killed early on in the fightin' in central China."

Yoshio's voice was placid now, his spirits somewhat revived.

Riyo was loath to see the night end like this. She felt a twinge of regret when she realized that Yoshio had resigned himself to the situation. If she had never laid eyes on him before, lovemaking might have meant nothing to her. Yoshio made no attempt to ask her about her husband.

"Damn! I'm wide awake. There'll be no sleepin' for me. A man should never do what he's not used to doin'."

"My goodness, Yoshio, haven't you ever played around?"

"Sure I have. I'm a man. But my partners have all been professionals."

"Men have it easy."

It had just slipped out, but no sooner had the words left her lips than Yoshio jumped up and threw himself down heavily next to her. There was a quilt between them; Riyo did not resist the force of this man pressing upon her in his passion. She remained silent, her eyes wide in the darkness. Yoshio's head pressed painfully against her cheek. A rainbow of light flashed before her. His warm lips clumsily brushed the flare of her nose. Her legs were rigid under the quilt.

"You don't want to?"

Her ears were ringing loudly.

"It's not right. I keep thinking about Siberia."

Riyo sensed she had said the wrong thing, what she had never meant to say. Yoshio held his awkward position, leaning heavily on her, and lay motionless on the quilt. His head drooped and he was dead silent, looking like a man prostrating himself before a god. Riyo instantly felt she had wronged him. She embraced Yoshi's warm neck with all her strength.

Two days later Riyo cheerfully set off with Tomekichi for Yoshio's place in Yotsugi. Yoshio would normally be found at that time of day standing in the shack by the glass door, headband around his head, but he was not there today. Riyo thought this odd, and had Tomekichi run ahead to see what was the matter.

"There're some strangers there," the boy said, running back to his mother.

Riyo was uneasy. When she got to the door of the shack and looked inside, she saw two young men taking Yoshio's bed from the closet. "Whadya want, lady?" the one with beady eyes asked over his shoulder.

"Is Mr. Tsuruishi here?"

"Nosh died last night."

"Oh dear," said Riyo, "Oh, dear." She was unable to say anything more.

She had thought it strange when she saw the candles burning on the sooty family altar, but it had never occurred to her that Yoshio might be dead.

The young men told her what had happened. Yoshio had gone out on a truck loaded with iron, and on the return from Omiya it had fallen cab-first off a bridge into a river, and he and the driver had been killed.

Today people with the company and Yoshio's sister were cremating his body in Omiya, and they would return tomorrow morning. Riyo was stunned. She blankly watched the two men clear away Yoshio's things. There on the shelf she noticed the two bags of tea Yoshio had bought from her that first day. One bag was half empty and folded over on itself.

"Did you know Nosh, lady?"

"Yes, I knew him slightly."

"He was a good man. There was no reason for him to go to Omiya. Somebody just happened to ask him, and they left after noon. It's really crazy. He survives the war and comes back and then..."

The other man, a heavyset youth, took the postcard of Yamada Isuzu from the wall and blew the dust off it. Riyo's mind was a blank. The small stove, the teakettle, the boots stood there just as they had before. The chalkboard caught her eye. There was a message in red chalk, written in a rude scrawl.

Riyo took Tomekichi's hand, and swinging the heavy rucksack up over her shoulder, started around the high wooden fence. Hot tears suddenly began flowing down her cheeks as a piercing numbness seized her face from within.

"Did Uncle Yoshio die?"

"Uh-huh."

"Where did he die?"

"They say he fell into a river."

Riyo wept as she walked on. The tears poured forth, and she cried until her eyes ached.

Riyo and Tomekichi reached Asakusa around two o'clock. They came within sight of the bridge at Komagata, then walked along the river toward the Shirahige bridge. Riyo looked at the river as they walked, blue-black like the sea, and guessed that it was the famous Sumida River.

The morning they had separated, Riyo had told Yoshio that it would be a disaster if something went wrong and she got pregnant, and Yoshio had said he would assume any and all responsibility, that she needn't worry. He had told her he wanted to take care of her, that he would give her some 2,000 yen a month. He had licked the end of his pencil and written down her Inari-cho address in his little notebook. Before they parted, Yoshio had bought a baseball cap for Tomekichi with a team's name on it at a haberdashery in Tawaramachi. They had finally found a milk hall along the main street, a muddy bog after the rain, and the three of them had each ordered a bottle of milk.

Riyo thought of what had happened as she strolled along the river, the wind from its surface blowing against her. A flock of waterfowl rose up indistinctly in the distance at Shirahige. All sorts of cargo boats were plying the deep blue current. In her mind Yoshio's image was fleshed out and clearly defined, more so than her husband's.

"Mama, buy me a comic book!"

"I will later."

"We passed by a store full of comics a little while ago."

"Did we?"

"You didn't notice?"

Riyo turned around and went back the way she had come. She had no idea where she should walk. It seemed to her that she was unlikely to run across such a man a second time.

"Let's get something to eat, Mama."

Riyo was suddenly exasperated with Tomekichi, who had been pestering her for first one thing, then another. He looked cute in his white baseball cap with its team name in red. She wandered aimlessly. She gazed at the jerry-built shacks along the river and envied the people their homes. A house where bedding was being aired from a second-floor window caught her eye, and she opened the latticework door.

"I have tea from Shizuoka, tea with a good bouquet," she called out with a charming lilt in her voice. "Would you like some?"

There was no response, so she called out once more. A young woman's voice sounded harshly at the top of the front stairs.

"We don't need any!"

Next Riyo opened the glass door of the house adjoining it. "I have some Shizuoka tea."

"Yeah, but we don't need any," answered a man's voice from a room off the entryway.

Riyo doggedly stood in the entry of house after house, but no one told her to set down her burden. Tomekichi trailed behind her complaining. Riyo liked standing in the doorway of each house, even if no one was buying anything, for it diverted her from her depression. It beats begging for money, she told herself. The heavy rucksack numbed her shoulders, so she put a hand towel under each strap where it pulled at her flesh.

The next day Riyo left Tomekichi at home and set off by herself for Yotsugi. She was free now in her solitude to think of Yoshio as much as she wished. She made her way around the construction site fence and found to her surprise a fire crackling inside the hut. Pulling up her rucksack, Riyo approached the glass door; she was thinking fondly of that first day. An old man in a happi coat was feeding wood into the small stove. Smoke from the smoldering fire billowed from the small window. "What is it?" he asked. Coughing, he had turned away from the fire.

"I've been selling tea here."

"Oh, I don't need any 'cause I still have a lot of first-class tea."

Riyo took her hand away from the glass door and quickly left the shack. There was nothing to be gained by going inside. It wasn't that she didn't want to ask the old man where Yoshio's elder sister lived, go there, and, at the least, burn a stick of incense for him, yet she gave that up as well. Nothing would have come of it. Everything depressed Riyo now. She had come to feel that if by chance she were carrying Yoshio's child, she could not go on living, though how she had reached that conclusion was not clear to her. Her husband would at some point return from Siberia; even so she had decided that if things had gone wrong, she had no choice but to die.

And yet the sun shone with uncommon brightness all around her, and the green grasses on either embankment above the dry riverbed burned into her eyes like plants of fire. Riyo's conscience was, to her surprise, unimpaired. She felt not the slightest twinge of guilt for having known Yoshio. Riyo had come to Tokyo to try her hand at selling and had intended to go back to Shimizu if she couldn't sell any tea, but she liked Tokyo, business or no business, and would stay now, even if it meant dying in the street.

Riyo sat down on the green grass of the embankment. Near some chunks of concrete below her lay the body of a kitten that had been abandoned, its back to her. She immediately stood up again, swung the rucksack over her shoulder, and started walking toward the station. She abruptly turned into a narrow side street and called out at the lattice and glass front door of a rundown house repaired with assorted odd boards.

"Would you like some tea from Shizuoka, I wonder?"

"Well now, how much? Is it expensive?"

When Riyo opened the door several women turned to look at her. They were sewing facing into tabi socks, apparently piecework.

"Hold on just a second," said a petite woman, disappearing into the next room. "I'll go look for a can to put it in."

Women not unlike Riyo were busily sewing the soles of the tabi. Occasionally a needle would glint in the light.

Lawrence Rogers, ed., Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll. (See general references for full citation)