Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/68

 “You’re visiting someone’s grave?”

“Yes, sir. And is this your family temple?”

“Oh, no. No, it’s just that I’m getting old, and things are expensive—and worthless when you’ve paid the price. I get bored, and sometimes I go round looking for graves.”

“I see. Your companions have all gone on, have they?”

“You sound like a poet, Sōkichi. Do I remember that you wrote haiku?”

“No, sir. The hike from bottle to bed is about all I’m good for.”

We had walked round the main hall to the cemetery. The old flower woman was waiting, incense in hand, for Sōkichi. She had sprinkled a tombstone with ritual water and changed the flowers in the bamboo pail. The stone, which carried a woman’s posthumous name, was not particularly old.

“Your mother’s grave?” I asked casually.

“No, sir.” Sōkichi took a rosary from his kimono sleeve. “I wouldn’t tell most people, but since it’s you, sir—a geisha I was once fond of is buried here.”

“You must be getting old yourself, Sōkichi.”

“I am indeed, sir. I’m a doddering old man. But you mustn’t laugh at me.” Sōkichi knelt down, rattled his beads, and muttered a passage from a sutra. “The truth is,” he said, as he got to his feet, “that I put this stone up without telling my wife.”

“It sounds like an interesting story.”

“I can’t deny that it is, sir. I haven’t put up stones for my own mother and father, after all these years. And to put one up at my age for a woman who didn’t even ask me to—I’m almost shocked at myself. It cost me a good twenty yen, too. Ten for the stone, five to the temple, a little here and a little there.”

“What house was she in?”

“The Fusahana in Yoshi-chō. Her name was Kosono.”

“I think I’ve heard of her.”

“Most unlikely, sir. She wasn’t a geisha you’d have been