These tales of the past Maki knew only by hearsay, from Seki and the other maids. At first she had tended to wonder at and despise a family that did not give its elder son his due, however wanting his character might be in some respects, but before long she too had changed her mind and begun to consider it natural that even his own parents should shun him. With the autocratic Yukitomo, the morally upright Tomo, and with Suga and Yumi – for all their wilfulness, their straitlaced attitudes, their feminine secretiveness and changeability – she could, as she got used to them, find something in each to which she responded, but with Michimasa the longer she was with him the more she felt what a relief it would be if he were not there. Michimasa was close-fisted, gluttonous, and snappish with the servants. When food was put before him he would wolf it down like a starving child, and whenever he opened his mouth to speak he invariably inspired a sense of disgust as though he gave off some foul odor. His mere presence was enough to cast an ugly pall over those about him.

Even the affection that Yukitomo and Tomo showed for the infant Takao frequently roused his anger. He would look at Takao in Maki’s arms with the air of an animal that shows no feelings of joy yet has limitless reserves of rage and jealousy, and would say maliciously, ‘God – what’s the point of continually putting fresh clothes on a baby like that? What a waste!’ And he would scowl into the baby’s face with his vacant eyes aglint, as though he might start beating it at any moment. Every time this happened Maki had the uneasy feeling that she herself was included in his hatred, and would reflect that perhaps Takao’s mother was better off dead after all. No woman, she was convinced, be she saint or vilest sinner, could be happy married to a man like that.