The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

CHAPTER ONE / SNAKE

Mother uttered a faint cry. She was eating soup in the dining-room. I thought perhaps somethingdisagreeable had got into the soup. "A hair?" I asked. "No." Mother poured another spoonful of soup intoher mouth as if nothing had happened. This accomplished, she turned her head to one side, directed hergaze at the cherry tree in full bloom outside the kitchen window and, her head still averted, flutteredanother spoonful of soup between her lips. Mother eats in a way so unlike the manner prescribed inwomen's magazines that it is no mere figure of speech in her case to use the word "flutter."

Naoji, my younger brother, once said to me when he had been drinking, "Just because a person has atitle doesn't make him an aristocrat. Some people are great aristocrats who have no other title than the onethat nature has bestowed on them, and others like us, who have nothing but titles, are closer to beingpariahs than aristocrats. Iwashima, for example (mentioning one of his school friends, a count), doesn't hestrike you as being more vulgar than any pimp you might meet in the streets? That damned fool wore atuxedo to his cousin's wedding. Even supposing there was some necessity for him to appear in that outfit,it made me want to puke just to hear the highfalutin' language the idiot saw fit to use when making a tablespeech. That kind of affectation is a cheap front which has nothing whatsoever to do with refinement. Justthe way there used to be signs around the University saying 'High-Class Lodgings,' most of what passesfor the aristocracy might actually better be called 'High-Class Beggars.' The real aristocrats don't put onsilly airs like that Iwashima. Mama is the only one in our family. She's the genuine article. There'ssomething about her none of us can match."

Take the matter of eating soup. We are trained to lean slightly over the plate, to take up a little soupwith the spoon held sideways, and then to bring it to our mouth, still holding the spoon sideways. Mother,on the other hand, lightly rests the fingers of her left hand on the edge of the table and sits perfectly erect,with her head held high and scarcely so much as a glance at the plate. She darts the spoon into the soupand like a swallow - so gracefully and cleanly one can really use the simile - brings the spoon to hermouth at a right angle, and pours the soup between her lips from the point. Then, with innocent glancesaround her, she flutters the spoon exactly like a little wing, never spilling a drop of soup or making theleast sound of sipping or clinking the plate. This may not be the way of eating soup that etiquette dictates,but to me it is most appealing and somehow really genuine. As a matter of fact, it is amazing how muchbetter soup tastes when you eat it as Mother does, sitting serenely erect, than when you look down into it.But being, in Naoji's words, a high-class beggar and unable to eat with Mother's effortless ease, I bendover the plate in the gloomy fashion prescribed by proper etiquette.

Mother's way of eating, not only soup but everything else, is quite a thing apart from normal tablemanners. When the meat appears she at once cuts it up into little pieces with her knife and fork, thentransfers the fork to her right hand and happily skewers one piece after another. Again, while we arestruggling to free the meat from a chicken bone without rattling the plate, Mother unconcernedly picks upthe bone in her fingers and chews the meat off. Even such uncivilized actions seem not only charming butstrangely erotic when Mother performs them. The real things are apt to be deviant.

I have sometimes myself thought things would taste better if we ate with our fingers, but I refrain fromdoing so, for fear that if a high-class beggar like myself imitates Mother badly, it might make me look abeggar plain and simple

My brother Naoji says that we are no match for Mother, and I have at times felt something akin todespair at the difficulty of imitating her. Once, in the back garden of our house in Nishikata Street - itwas a beautiful moonlight evening in the beginning of autumn - Mother and I were sitting in the summer-house by the edge of the pond admiring the moon, when she got up and went into a nearby clump offlowering shrubs. She called to me from among the white blossoms with a little laugh, "Kazuko, guesswhat Mother is doing now."