Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination - Edogawa Rampo [28]
When she first received the news that her husband had been wounded and would be sent back to Japan, she felt indescribably relieved to know that at least his life had been spared. The wives of his fellow officers even envied her "good fortune."
Presently the distinguished services rendered by her husband were written up in the newspapers. She knew at the time that his wounds were serious, but she never imagined for a moment that he had been crippled to such an extent.
Never would she forget the first time she was permitted to visit her husband in the garrison hospital. His face was completely covered with bandages, and there was nothing but his eyes, gazing at her vacantly. She remembered how bitterly she wept when they told her that his wounds and the shock had left him both deaf and dumb. Little did she dream, however, of the horrible discoveries that were still to come.
The head physician, dignified as he was, tried to appear deeply sympathetic and turned up the white bed-sheets cautiously. "Try to be brave!" were his very words.
She tried to clasp her husband's hands—but could find no arms. Then she discovered that his legs were also missing; he was like a ghost in a bad dream. Beneath the sheets there lay only his trunk, bandaged grotesquely, like a mummy.
She tried to speak, and then to scream, but no sounds came out of her throat. She, too, had been rendered momentarily speechless. God! Was this all that was left of the husband she loved so dearly! He was no longer a man, but only a plaster bust.
It was after she had been shown to another room by the head physician and nurses that she completely broke down, bursting into loud weeping despite the presence of the others. Throwing herself down on a chair, she buried her head in her arms and wept till her tear-cups ran utterly dry.
"It was a real miracle," she heard the physician say. "No other person could possibly have survived. Of course it's all the result of Colonel Kitamura's wonderful surgical skill—he's a real genius with the operating knife. There's probably no other such example in any garrison hospital in any country."
Thus the physician tried to console Tokiko. The word "miracle" was continually repeated, but she did not know whether to rejoice or grieve.
About half a year had passed in a dream. The "living corpse" of Lieutenant Sunaga was eventually escorted home by his commanding officer and comrades in arms, and everyone made quite a fuss over him.
In the days that followed, Tokiko nursed him with tender care, shedding endless tears. Relatives, neighbors, and friends all urged her on to greater self-sacrifice, constantly dinning their definitions of "honor" and "virtue" into her ears. Her husband's meager pension was scarcely enough to keep them, so when Major General Washio, Sunaga's former commanding officer at the front, kindly offered to let them live in the detached cottage on his country estate free of charge, they accepted gratefully.
From then on their daily life became routine, but this too brought maddening loneliness. The quiet environment, of course, was a prime cause. Another was the fact that people were no longer interested in the story of the crippled war hero and his dutiful wife. It was stale news; new personalities and events were commanding their interest.
Her husband's relatives seldom came to call. On her side, both her parents were dead, while all her sisters and brothers were indifferent to her sorrows. As a result the poor crippled soldier and his faithful wife lived alone in the solitary cottage in the country, completely isolated from the outside world. But even this state of affairs would not have been so bad if one of them had not