“Swollen with blood.”
“Stop it, Setchan.” A frown wrinkled the beautiful eyebrows. The rebuke was in earnest. “You’re talking nonsense. I’m going to sleep.”
She pushed her niece away, turned over, and pulled the quilt up over her face.
“You’re cheating.” The girl lay where the force of the push had left her. Bundled from head to foot in the quilt, she held her breath and listened.
Silence.
She lay still for a time. Finding it hard to breathe, she timidly pulled her head up. Her aunt lay facing left, the quilt as always tight around her shoulders. “Isn’t she nasty!” The girl rolled away. The lampshade sent a violet light into the far corners of the room and planted a seal of death upon the face of the familiar seventeenth-century beauty on the screen.
“How awful.” The girl rolled over again. Her aunt in front of her was laughing convulsively. It was so unlike her … she laughed so little. But now she laughed, the bright quilt pulled hastily over her nose. Her body shook from shoulders to hips, her eyes were closed, she laughed on. At first the girl did not see. Then she saw as in a mirror, and she too was laughing helplessly. She laughed, she laughed. She could not say a word, she only rolled over laughing. The night was dead quiet. They had to control their voices, and the effort made it so much funnier. It was so funny, it was so funny. The more she thought of it the funnier it was. What could she do, it was so funny.
Satomi Ton (b. 1888)
This story was first published in 1923
Translated by Edward Seidensticker
