Through Sadako's interpretation Mrs. Fujinami explained that Asako's mother's name had been Yamagata Haruko (Spring child). Her father had been a samurai in the old two-sworded days. The photograph was not very like her. It was too serious.
"Like you," said the elder woman, "she was always laughing and happy. My husband's father used to call her the Semi (the cicada), because she was always singing her little song. She was chosen for your father because he was so sad and wrathful. They thought that she would make him more gentle. But she died; and then he became more sad than before."
Asako was crying very gently. She felt the touch of her cousin's hand on her arm. The intellectual Miss Sadako also was weeping, the tears furrowing her whitened complexion. The Japanese are a very emotional race. The women love tears; and even the men are not averse from this very natural expression of feeling, which our Anglo-Saxon schooling has condemned as babyish. Mrs. Fujinami continued,—
"I saw her a few days before you were born. They lived in a little house on the bank of the river. One could see the boats passing. It was very damp and cold. She talked all the time of her baby. 'If it is a boy,' she said, 'everybody will be happy; if it is a girl, Fujinami San will be very anxious for the family's sake; and the fortune-tellers say that it will surely be a little girl. But,' she used to say, 'I could play better with a little girl; I know what makes them laugh!' When you were born she became very ill. She never spoke again, and in a few days she died. Your father became like a madman, he locked the house, and would not see any of us; and as soon as you were strong enough, he took you away in a ship."
Sadako placed in front of her cousin the roll of silk, and said,—
"This is Japanese obi (sash). It belonged to your mother. She gave it to my mother a short time before you were born; for she said, 'It is too bright for me now; when I have my baby, I shall give up society, and I shall spend all my time with my children.' My mother gives it to you for your mother's sake."
It was a wonderful work of art, a heavy golden brocade, embroidered with fans, and on each fan a Japanese poem and a little scene from the olden days.
"She was very fond of this obi, she chose the poems herself."
But Asako was not admiring the beautiful workmanship. She was thinking of the mother's heart which had beat for her under that long strip of silk, the little Japanese mother who "would have known how to make her laugh." Tears were falling very quietly on to the old sash.
The two Japanese women saw this; and with the instinctive tact of their race, they left her alone face to face with this strange introduction to her mother's personality.