Evening star., 1928-11-13

novel Madame Chrysanthcme.
Toto-San and Kaka-San were hus-
band and wife. They were very old
so old that everybody had always
known them. The oldest inhabitants
did not remember when these two had
ever been young.
They were beggars in the street
Toto-San, who was blind, dragged after
him in sort Of wheel-chair his wife,
Kaka-San, who was paralyZed and
could not walk. She was his eyes and
his intelligence. She told him the way.
And he was her legs and locomotion-
he pulled her wherever she thought 1t
best for them to go.
Their manner Of begging was not bold.
They did not bother pasSers-by with
pleadings. They simply held out their
hands, in Silence-poor old hands,
wrinkled like those of mummies. The
people were always polite to them, as
the japanese are, and gave them aims
to the best of their ability-rice, heads
Of fish, old soups, occasional small coins.
They went to the religious festivals
celebrated in the temples. They took
old idol In granite, under the great
meadows. The devotees would give
them help, however small it might be.
With the setting cf the sun this old
couple sank into themselves, fatigued
with another day of useless life, another
day older, another day nearer that
grave which they were already so near.
Nothing at night could animate the
forms of these human derelicts.
Who knows what passed in those two
old japanese heads? Perhaps nothing
whatever. They struggled to keep on
living. They ate with their little chop
sticks, helping each other tenderly.
They covered each other up from the
cold.
Once every week Toto-San combed
his wife's beloved hair. Her arms were
paralyzed SO she could not raise them
quite high enough to fix her japanese
coiffure. Trembling and fumbling, in
his blindness, Toto-San had learned
how to do 1t. AS he worked he careSsed
the poor old head, which allowed itself
to be stroked with coquettish abandon.
Her hair was thin, and Toto-San did
not find much to comb on the poor
yellow parchment of her scalp. He sue
ceeded, however, in fixing the hair up
in puffs, after the japanese fashion.
She, absorbed in the process, watched
him in piece Of broken mirror and
gave him instructions here and there.
They also went through their ablu-
tions conscientiously, for 1t is tradi-
so long 1t must have been an unavoid-
able habit. They had done them so
often in so many long years! Did the
cold and pure water give them new
life each day? Did they experience
a little more comfort in the freshness
of each new morning?
This was wretchedness indeed-to
feel, each morning, little older than
the day before, a little more stih, q
little less able to meet the cares and
worries of life in the world. Yet to
wish obstinately to live on, to display
their decrepitude in the light OF day,
to set out on that same route which
they had followed for years in their
beseeching, silent plea for aims. .
One morning, in the fields, death
suddenly caught old Kaka-San. 1t was
a beautiful April morning-the sun
was shining beautifully and the grass
seemed to be very green. All around
the rice crop glistened in the breeze in
its glory Of color.
The air was filled with the music Of
graSshopperS, which, in Japan, buzz
very loud, indeed. Beyond the fields Of
rice were the woods, not unlike the
European oak. But here and there one
could see rose-colored clumps
In fiower-and the light foliage Of the
bamboo. Farther of were the noun
tains, like small domes with little
In the midst Of this calm and verdure
the chair of Kaka-San stopped-for a
halt that was to be its last. Peasants
men and women-about 20 good little
Japanese substituted to the wheel
chair where the old woman was dying
convulsively, twisting her old arms.
She had had q stroke quite suddenly
while being drawn along by Toto-San
on a pilgrimage to the temple Of the
The good people did the best they
could for her. They attempted to re-
store her with cordial made OF rice
brandy. They rubbed her with aro-.
matte herbs. They bathed the back OF
stream. Toto-San touched her gently
caressed her timidly, not knowing what
to do-hindering the others with his
awkward, blind movements, and trem-
bling with anguish in all his limbs.
AS q last resort they made her swal-
low, in small pieces. bits of paper which
contained efficacious prayers written on
them by priests. It was in vain, how
ever, for the hour had struck. Death
was there. invisible, holding the old
woman tight in his secure grasp.
A last convulsion and Kaka-San was
dead. Dead in this little shaded ceme-
terry, which seemed to have been chosen
by the fateS for her final resting place.
1t even seemed to have been selected by
Kaka-San herself.
So the good people did not delay.
They hired some coolies who were pass
ing and set them to work digging
grave. Everybody was in something of
a hurry, for all were on pilgrimage to
to leave this poor old woman unburied