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Tsubaki

The Camellia[1]

by Satomi Ton

She was past thirty and still unmarried. She lay facing left, and she was reading a magazine romance by the light of a lamp with a low scarlet shade. The night was still and cold, there was not a suggestion of wind. One would guess that it was not yet midnight, though the sounds of the last passers-by in the street had faded as the night wore on. The very lack of noise struck the ear with a special sharpness.

As she turned a page, she glanced over at her twenty-year-old niece. Their beds were perhaps six inches apart, and the girl lay facing her. The sleeping face was remarkably beautiful. Only the nose and forehead were visible, clean above the velvet border of the quilt. The aunt gazed as though she were seeing the face for the first time.

“Aren’t you calm, though.” She wanted to tease the girl, to laugh with her. But the girl was like a thing modelled, so quiet that not even her breathing was audible. The aunt laughed silently. The floor matting,

  1. ↑ The Japanese have a superstitious fear of the camellia, whose blossoms fall, not petal by petal, but whole, like severed human heads.

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