That fall the mountain behind the house was swept by the worst forest fire in years. Afterward the stream that cascaded to the pond abruptly gave out. Early that winter the eldest son became sick. According to the doctor it was consumption, or tuberculosis as it's now called. As he spent his days in and out of bed, the son's bad humor merely got worse. It even happened that in January of the next year, after a passionate argument, he flung a hand warmer at the youngest brother, who'd come on his New Year's calls. After that the youngest brother did not see him again, not even when he died. This event took place upwards of a year later. Tended by his unsleeping wife, the eldest son drew his last breath behind mosquito netting. "How the frogs are singing. Where's Seigetsu?" were his last words. But Seigetsu—perhaps he'd tired of the scenery here—had long ago stopped coming even to beg.
When the first anniversary of the eldest son's death had passed, the third son married his employer's youngest daughter. As the headmaster had been transferred, he and his bride moved into the now vacant detached quarters. They furnished them with a black lacquer chest of drawers and gay red and white cloths. Meanwhile, however, the widow had taken to her bed in the main house. She had her husband's disease. The fatherless only child, Ren'ichi, from the time his mother coughed up blood was put to bed every night with his grandmother. Before retiring, the old lady always tied a towel around her head. Nevertheless, the mice would creep out late at night, drawn by the stench of her boils. Of course, if she had ever forgotten the towel, the mice would have nibbled at them. At the close of the year the eldest son's wife died, like the extinguished wick of an oil lamp. The day after the funeral the Stork's Nest Inn on the north side of the artificial knoll collapsed under a heavy fall of snow.
When spring came around once more, only the thatched cottage of the Pure Heart Pavilion remained by the stagnant pond. The rest of the garden had reverted to a wild, mixed growth of trees.
On an evening when the clouds had a look of snow about them, the second son returned to his father's house. Ten years had passed since his elopement. Although I say "his father's house," it was, in fact, his younger brother's house. His brother did not seem particularly unhappy to see him, nor did he appear overly rejoiced. It was, so to speak, as an event of no interest that he accepted the return of his prodigal brother.
From the time of his arrival the second son shut himself up in the prayer room of the main house, keeping close to the fire. He was afflicted with a malignant disease. In the room was an altar on which memorial tablets for his father and brother had been placed. So as not to see them, he had drawn shut the doors of the shrine. Aside from the three meals a day that he took with them, he hardly ever met with his mother and his younger brother and wife. Only the orphaned Ren'ichi would occasionally visit him in his room. The second son would draw ships and mountains for him on his cardboard slate. Sometimes with a faltering hand he would write out old songs for the samisen, such as one about a teahouse girl and flower viewing at Mukojima.
Time passed, and it was spring again. In the garden, peach and apricot put out their meager blooms amid the luxuriant greenery, and the Pure Heart Pavilion was reflected in the pond's leaden mirror. But the elder brother, as usual secluding himself in the family chapel, seldom got up even in the daytime. One day the twanging of a samisen reached his ears, accompanied by a voice singing in bits and snatches. It sang how in the battle of Suwa a vassal of the Matsumotos, Yoshie by name, had led a cannon attack. The elder brother raised his head slightly where he lay. Surely it was his mother, in the tearoom? The song went on about Yoshie's gallant advance under fire. Was his mother singing to her grandchild? Still she sang, in the Otsu-e kae-uta style. But that was a song popular twenty or thirty years ago, which the old man was said to have learnt from a courtesan. The song ended in praise of the life that, gone with the dew, had left behind an immortal name. The elder brother's eyes, in a face grown bearded with neglect, had taken on a strange gleam.
Two or three days later the youngest son found his brother trenching the north side of the artificial knoll overgrown with butterburs. His breath coming short, he clumsily wielded his hoe. There was something of a serious enthusiasm in his farcical appearance.
"What are you doing, big brother?" the youngest son asked from behind, not taking the cigarette from his lips.
"Me?" The elder brother looked up at him as if dazzled. "I'm thinking of letting a stream through here."
"Letting a stream through?"
"I want to make the garden as it was."
The younger brother merely smiled slyly. After that he made no further inquiries.
Every day the second son, taking his hoe, earnestly continued his work. Weakened by illness as he was, however, he found it a harsh task. In addition to tiring easily he was prone to the various mishaps of one unused to labor, such as raising blisters on his palms and ripping off his nails. Sometimes throwing away his hoe, he would lie down on the ground like a dead man. Around him the flowers and young leaves smoldered in the shimmering garden heat. After a quiet interval, however, he would struggle to his feet and stubbornly set to again.
Nevertheless, even after many days the garden did not show much change for the better. Water plants flourished in the pond, and in the plantations the various trees grew unpruned. Especially after the fruit trees had shed their flowers, the garden seemed more of a wilderness than ever. Not only that, but no one in the family sympathized with his efforts. The enterprising younger brother was immersed in speculations in sericulture and the price of rice. His wife felt a womanly aversion for the elder brother's illness. Even his mother, on account of his condition, feared that he would go too far in his gardening. But the elder brother, setting his face against man and nature, went on restoring the garden piecemeal.
One morning after it had rained, he went into the garden and found Ren'ichi placing stones along the edge of the stream bed overhung by butterburs.
"Uncle." Ren'ichi looked up at him happily. "From now on, let me help you."
"Let you help me?" As it had not for a long, long time, a smile appeared on the elder brother's face. From that day Ren'ichi went nowhere but out into the garden to help his uncle. To entertain his nephew as they rested in the shade, the elder brother told him stories of the unfamiliar, the sea, Tokyo, the railroad. Exactly as if hypnotized, Ren'ichi bit into an unripe plum and listened agog.
The rainy season that year was a dry one. Braving the beating sunlight and the sultry closeness of the tall grass, the aging invalid and the boy gradually went farther afield as they chopped down trees and dug around the pond. But although they managed to prevail over the external obstacles, there was nothing they could do about those within themselves. Almost as in a vision, the elder brother could see the garden as it once had been. When it came to exact memory of details, however, such as the grouping of shrubs and the layout of paths, his mind failed him. Sometimes he would abruptly pause in his labors, leaning on his hoe as if it were a staff, and stare vaguely around him.
"What's the matter?" Ren'ichi would invariably ask, lifting worried eyes to his uncle's face.
"I wonder how this part used to be," his uncle would merely mutter to himself, uneasy and sweating. "I don't believe this maple was here before."
Ren'ichi could only slap at an ant on his mud-daubed hand.
Nor were such internal obstacles the only ones. Gradually as the summer deepened, the elder brother, perhaps because of his ceaseless overworking of himself, became confused in his mind. Filling in the pond where he had excavated it, planting a pine where he'd removed one—such lapses were frequent. What particularly irritated Ren'ichi was the felling of a willow by the water's edge to make pilings. "You just got through planting this tree." Ren'ichi scowled at his uncle.
"Oh? Somehow it's not clear to me anymore." With melancholy eyes his uncle looked out over the noonday pond.
Nevertheless, as the fall