Immediately after her previous husband’s death, according to custom his hands were joined and his fingers interwoven. Kyoko did not tell her present husband about this. In its place, a mirror in the Kamakura style of carving had accompanied the dressing stand. However, she had left the hand mirror in the coffin of her first husband, consigning it to the flames. Kyoko had taken the same dressing stand into her second marriage. Although the mulberry wood of the stand was the color of dried mud, the mulberry of the mirror gleamed brilliantly. After Kyoko had combed a little camellia oil through his hair, her husband, passing his hand over his hair, would rub the mulberry wood of the mirror. Perhaps, she thought, his tubercular germs had gotten into the tiny invisible fissures of the wood. Even when there was no longer any cloud on the mirror, Kyoko had seen her husband blow on the glass and wipe it clear. But from then on, her husband, who would not let the mirror out of his sight, in the restlessness and nervousness of the invalid, had beautifully polished both the mirror and the frame. Of course, it was not obscured enough to mar the reflection of things, and Kyoko, rather than being bothered by it, did not even notice it. By the time Kyoko had the idea of showing him the reflection of the vegetable garden, the surface of the mirror had clouded, and the frame and handle were stained by the dust and leavings of make-up. But there had been the war, the evacuation, and her husband’s critical illness. Since then, not enough time had passed for the color of the mulberry hand mirror to change inside the drawer. Kyoko was not awkward, but when looked at from behind by her husband, she grew stiff. There were evidently things that he discovered for the first time when they were reflected in the mirror. I’ll hold it for you,” and snatch the mirror from her.He seemed to enjoy gazing at Kyoko’s nape reflected from various angles in the dressing-stand mirror. Sometimes, like when she came from the bath, her husband would say: “It’s awkward. Kyoko remembered how ashamed it had made her. Shortly after their marriage, when Kyoko, to look at her back hair, held the mirror behind her to see the reflection in the front mirror, her sleeve would slide all the way down to her elbow. The stand, although not large, was of mulberry wood, and the mirror too was mulberry. The hand mirror belonged to the dressing stand that was part of Kyoko’s trousseau. One could never say that it was simply “this,” a mirror. For her husband, confined to bed, this alone would open out a new life before him. One day, Kyoko had the idea of showing her vegetable garden reflected in a hand mirror to her husband upstairs.
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