As she watched the three small boys, a sudden wave of abhorrence made her suddenly turn back to Suga’s childless lap with something like a sense of relief. ‘What do you want with children?’ she longed to whisper to Suga. ‘They only tie you more tightly to the wheel of fate.’

Unripe Damsons

Halfway down the west-facing slope of the elevation on which the house stood there was a flat stretch of land overgrown with tall weeds. When Yukitomo, shortly after the end of the Sino-Japanese war, had first bought and moved into what had once been a foreigner’s residence he had planted on this piece of vacant land a large number of young plums, peaches, loquats, almonds, persimmons and other trees, since fruit-bearing trees gave the grounds, he said, a more lively air. By now, more than a dozen years later, they had grown to a considerable size and the spot made an ideal playground for the steadily growing band of grandchildren, who would spend their time climbing the trees or helping themselves to the fruit.

Yukitomo’s father, a low-ranking samurai of the Hosokawa clan, had been in charge of the waxtree farms, and even as a small child Yukitomo had been intrigued by the orchards that yielded the raw material for making the wax on which part of the clan’s finances depended. It was this perhaps that had made him fond of all trees, and especially trees that bore fruit, which were inseparably associated in his mind with wealth. During the time when he had worked at the Fukushima prefectural office, he had turned the land at the back of his official residence into an orchard in which he planted newly imported Western varieties of cherry and apple, obtained from the agricultural research station of the prefecture, and would watch in wonder as the great cherries and bright red apples ripened. Even now that he was past sixty it gave him exquisite pleasure to live in a house with nearly two acres of grounds and to savor the fruit off his own land.

Most numerous among the trees were damsons, whose fruit was not allowed to turn ripe and yellow but was shaken down and pickled in tubs while still green. The pickled damsons were carefully put in jars and labeled each year. The relatives all got their share, but still there were old jars left whose contents grew more mature every year, the damsons softer with a special, tart sweetness. Every morning without fail one of them appeared on Yukitomo’s breakfast table for the sake of his health.

One fine day when the May rains had let up temporarily, it was decided to shake down the plums.