Mr. Itakura often visited the Hirai household after that. Looking back, it’s quite amazing to think that was the first occasion he ever visited the house.
After the fifteenth, when we’d finally put an end to the New Year festivities with some traditional red bean porridge, the Mistress made sure to give me a day off, telling me, ‘Taki, you need to relax too.’
The servant’s holiday was called yabuiri, or ‘into the bushes’, since it signified going home to the countryside, but at the time ‘home’ was a long way away. When I first went into service, I would go to a great deal of trouble to go back up north, or visit relatives in Kasukabe just outside Tokyo to hear news of home, but it was far from relaxing.
Eventually I stopped bothering to go away anywhere, but even so the Mistress would g
