The Jay

The Jay

Kawabata Yasunari
Translated by Edward Seidensticker

Indulge yourself in the short story set in modern Japan. Traces in the modern day characters of the good old values, the life filled with grace, humble dignity, brotherly love, and respect for elders in Ancient Japan are noted although the circumstances have been brought to this century.
The Jay was noisy from dawn.
It seemed to have flown from a lower branch of the pine tree as Yoshiko was opening the shutters and then come back again. They could hear its wings from the breakfast table.
“What a racket,” said her brother, starting to get up.
“Leave it alone,” said her grandmother. “I think the little one must have fallen from the nest yesterday. I could still hear the mother last night after dark. I suppose she couldn’t find it. And isn’t that nice, here she is back again this morning.”
“Are you sure?” asked Yoshiko.
Save for a liver attack some ten years before, her grandmother had never been ill, but she had suffered from cataracts ever since she was very young. Now she could barely see, and with the left eye only. She had to be handed her food. She could grope her way around the house, but she never went out alone into the garden.
She would sometimes stand and sit at the glass door and gaze at her fingers, spread out in the sunlight. Her whole life seemed to be concentrated in the gaze.
Yoshiko would be afraid of her. She would want to call from behind, and then she would slip away.
Yoshiko was filled with admiration that her blind grandmother could talk about the jay as if she had not seen it.
When she went out to do the breakfast dishes, the jay was calling from the next door.
There were chestnuts and several persimmons in the backyard. She could see against them that a gentle rain was falling, so gentle that she could not make it out except against the dark background.
The jay flew to the chestnut, skimmed the ground, and flew back again, calling out all the while.
Would the nestling still be near, that the mother was so reluctant to leave?
Yoshiko went to her room. She must be ready by noon.
Her mother and father would be bringing her fiancé’s mother.
As she sat down before the mirror she glanced at the white dots on her fingernails. They were said to be signs that someone would come with gifts, but she had read in a newspaper that they really showed a deficiency in vitamin C or something of the sort. She was pleased with her face when she had finished making herself up. She thought her eyebrows and lips rather charming. She liked the set of her Kimono.
She had thought she would wait for her mother to help her, and then she was glad that she had dressed by herself.
Her father and mother, actually her stepmother, did not live with them.
Her father had divorced her mother when Yoshiko was four and her brother two. It was said that her mother had been gaudy and extravagant, but Yoshiko suspected that there had been deeper causes.
Her father had said nothing when her brother had found a picture of their mother and shown it to him. He had frowned and torn the picture to pieces.
When Yoshiko was thirteen her new mother came into the house. Later, Yoshiko was to think it rather remarkable of her father to have waited almost ten years. Her new mother was a kind woman and they lived a quiet, happy life.
When her brother entered high school and went to live in a dormitory, it was plain to all of them that his attitude toward his stepmother was changing.
“I’ve seen Mother,” he said to Yoshiko. “She was sure that she had turned white, and she was trembling.
Her stepmother came in from the next room.
“It’s all right. There’s nothing wrong at all with his seeing his own mother. It’s only natural. I knew it would happen. It doesn’t bother me at all.”
Her stepmother seemed drained of strength, and so tiny that Yoshiko felt somehow protective.
Her brother got up and went out. Yoshiko wanted to slap him.
“You are not to say anything, Yoshiko,” said her stepmother softly. “It would only make things worse.”
Yoshiko was in tears.
Her father brought her brother home from the dormitory. She thought that would be the end of the matter; and then her father and stepmother moved away.
She was frightened; she felt that she had the full force of a man’s anger, perhaps of vengefulness? She wondered if she and her brother had something of the same thing in them. She had felt certain, as she had left the room, that her brother had inherited that terrible masculine something.
Yet she felt, too, that she knew her father’s loneliness those ten years he had waited to take a new wife.
She was startled when her father came to talk of a prospective bride-groom.
“You have had a hard time of it, Yoshiko, and I’m sorry. I have told his mother that I want you to have the girlhood you never had.”
There were tears in Yoshiko’s eyes.
With Yoshiko married, there would be no one to take care of her grandmother and brother, and so it was decided that they would live with her father and stepmother. The decision was what touched Yoshiko most. Because of what her father had been through, she had been frightened of marriage, but now that it was coming it did not seem so frightening after all.
She went to her grandmother when she had finished dressing.
“Can you see the red, grandmother?”
“I can see that here is something red.” She pulled Yoshiko to her and looked intently at her kimono and obi. “I have forgotten what you look like, Yoshiko. How nice if I could see you again.”
Embarrassed, Yoshiko put her hand to her grandmother’s head.
She went out into the garden. She wanted to run and meet her father and stepmother. She opened a hand, but the rain was scarcely enough to wet it. Lifting her skirts she looked through the shrubs and bamboo, and found the nestling jay in the grass under the hagi.
She stole up to it. Head pulled in, it was a tight little ball. It seemed without strength and she had no trouble taking it. She looked around but could not find the mother.
She ran to the house.
“I’ve found it, Grandmother. It seemed very weak.”
“Really?” You must give it water.”
Her grandmother was very calm.
She brought a cup of water and put its beak in, and it drank most prettily, swelling its small throat.
“Kikikikiki.” It quickly revived.
Hearing, the mother jay called from a power line.
“Kikiki.” The nestling struggled in Yoshiko’s hand.
“How very nice,” said her grandmother. “You must give it back.”
Yoshiko went into the garden. The mother jay left the power line and sat watching Yoshiko from the cherry tree.
Raising her hand to show the nestling, Yoshiko put it on the ground.
She watched from inside the glass door. The nestling called forlornly up. The mother came nearer and then was at the lower branches of the pine tree just above. The nestling flapped its wings as if it were to take a flight. And fell forward, calling out to its mother.
Very cautious, the mother still did not alight.
Then, in a swoop, it was beside the nestling, whose joy was boundless. The head shook, the outstretched wings were trembling, it was like a spoiled child. The mother seemed to be feeding it.
Yoshiko wished that her father and stepmother would hurry. She wanted them to see.