Read Quicksand for Free Online

as if we were preoccupied with our own thoughts. That made me even more irritated at having been disturbed. I was very angry with my husband.
    â€œAnd how have you girls been amusing yourselves?” he asked, trying to start up a conversation there with Mitsuko.
    â€œToday we used our bedroom as a studio,” I put in dryly. “I wanted to improve my Kannon portrait, so I had Mitsuko pose for me.”
    â€œThat’s giving your model a lot of trouble, isn’t it, when you’re not all that talented to begin with.”
    â€œYes, but I was asked to, for the sake of the model’s honor.”
    â€œNo matter how often you paint her, you can’t hope to succeed. Your model is much too pretty.”
    During that little exchange Mitsuko just giggled, looking down shyly. The conversation died, and she soon left for home.

7
    I BROUGHT ALONG some old letters we sent each other in those days, if you care to look at them. There are lots more. I couldn’t possibly bring them all, so here are just a few you might find interesting. Please begin with the earliest ones; they’re more or less in order. I saved every letter from Mitsuko, and you’ll find some of my own among them too—I’ll explain later, but there’s a reason why she brought them back.

    (Author’s note : the letters that the widow Kakiuchi called “just a few” from their correspondence filled a silk-crepe parcel about ten inches square almost to bursting; the four corners of the cloth had been knotted together with difficulty. Her fingertips crimsoned as she pinched the hard little knot to undo it. What finally came pouring out was a flood of figured paper: all those letters were in envelopes adorned with coquettish, brilliantly colored woodblock designs. The envelopes were small, only big enough to hold a sheet of women’s letter paper folded in four, and they were decorated with evening primroses, lilies of the valley, tulips, portraits of beauties in the manner of Takehisa Yumeji, printed in four or five colors. I was somewhat taken aback at the sight. Doubtless no Tokyo woman would choose such garish envelopes. Even for a love letter, she would prefer something plainer. If you showed her such things, you may be certain she would disdain them as hopelessly vulgar. And a man who received a love letter in an envelope like that, supposing he was a Tokyo man, would surely take an instant dislike to the sender. In any case, the taste for that sort of gaudy excess is indeed typical of Osaka women. And when you think that these love letters were exchanged by two women, they seem all the more excessive. Here I will only quote from several of them to illustrate the fervid emotional situation underlying this account, but it may be well to add a description of the stationery itself. In my opinion, the decorative aspect of the letters is sometimes even more revealing than their content.)

    (May 6, from Mrs. Kakiuchi Sonoko to Mitsuko. The dimensions of the envelope are 5 inches in length by 2¾ inches in width, with cherry and heart-shaped designs on a pink ground. There are five cherries in all, bright-red fruit on black stems. The hearts, of which there are ten, overlap vertically in pairs: those above are pale purple; those below, gold. The notched top and bottom of the envelope is also edged in gold. Ivy leaves printed in very light green cover the surface of the letter paper, over which ruled lines are drawn in silver dots. Mrs. Kakiuchi writes by pen, but the precision of her abbreviated characters shows that she must have had considerable training in calligraphy and no doubt excelled in the subject at school. Her writing suggests a softer version of the calligraphic style of Ono Gado—elegantly flowing, one might say, or, to put it less kindly, somewhat slippery and unctuous. It is singularly well matched to the design of the envelope.)
    Dearest Mitsu,
    Drip-drop, drip-drop . . . Tonight