Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/50

 mother’s eagle eyes on her and she could not relax for a moment.

In the end the atmosphere in the house became unbearable and Kanako went to Shitaya where her elder sister ran a little tea-shop. There she was able to help in the kitchen and with the clothes and the bedding. When it came to waiting on customers in the shop, however, Kanako was too heavy and sluggish by nature to be of much use. Not that she did not try. The relative gaiety of her sister’s life filled her with envy and she did her best to mix with the male customers. Yet she was not sufficiently self-confident about her looks or her manners. She tried copying the other waitresses by powdering her face and curling her hair, but it all struck her as rather pointless. As soon as she began to make herself amiable, she felt that she was in some way betraying her own nature.

“Your eyes are just like Madam’s,” the girls in the shop used to tell Kanako. “You’ve got a nice round face and lovely white skin like hers, too.” She could not help smiling at these compliments; yet she was well aware that, much as she might resemble her sister in some ways, she had none of the elder girl’s attraction. Never once was Kanako flattered into believing that she possessed any real charm. Her face was always slightly crooked as though she were about to cry; it reminded one of Chōjirō, the actor.

One of the waitresses in the tea-shop had formerly been a dancer and she told Kanako about the easy life in the dance halls. Kanako decided to take some lessons, but at her first visit to a dance hall she was thoroughly disillusioned. She could not bear the idea of being dragged round the floor in the arms of one man after another, all complete strangers.

Kanako was afraid that if she continued her present life she might succumb to temptation. She was therefore glad to accept the job as cashier in a Ginza restaurant that one of her sister’s patrons, a wool draper, mentioned to her. Here at least she was safe. But it was no easy job to stand by the cash register all day and late into the night.