The Marrying Monster

Goro put down his tools and relaxed into a pile of wood shavings, his back against a half-finished bathtub. To enjoy the evening cool, he told himself, wiping his face with a blue and white rag. Actually, he wanted to postpone the evening meal. Either the rice would be overcooked to a sticky goo or he would be picking hard, underdone kernels out of his teeth all night. And bean soup, when he made it, always had things swimming in it that had no business there.

A night insect went weep-weep-weep. The sound, the night falling, and the thought of his own cooking made him think of his dead wife.

"She was a good cook, poor thing," he thought out loud. "My, my--how I miss her."

He gave a deep sigh. Oh, to have a wife again--a jolly, round wife and a good cook. Just like the old one with perhaps the small exception that she would not eat a man out of house and home and herself into the grave in the bargain. Had he said that aloud? Bad sign, when a man talks to the night insects--better to go into the house, better to eat rice and bean soup. He shuddered.

He began to get up and paused halfway, one hand against the wood of the tub, the other shielding his eyes. He peered into the forest that came almost to the work yard. Someone was coming through there, he heard it. He sat down again. Fireflies flitted among the trees. What if it were his wife's spirit--would it be a chubby ghost? It should be.

A woman walked out of the forest.

She was tall, he noticed, watching her thread her way among finished and unfinished buckets and tubs, tall and slender--almost gaunt. She had her sleeves tied back out of the way with a white tasuki cord, as though ready for hard work, and her bare arms were wiry and capable looking.

She bowed.

Goro scrambled to his feet, catching a splinter or two in his shoulder on the way up. He bowed.

"Good evening," said the woman. "Is this the house of Goro, the cooper who wants a wife that does not eat too much and is a good cook?"

Goro's eyes crossed and his mouth fell open. His fingers scrabbled.

"You do look unwell ... like a starved goldfish," said the woman, "--I don't mean to seem rude."

"I haven't had dinner ..." said Goro, for want of anything brilliant to say. He felt wondrously helpless; things like this did not usually come up in the tub-making business.

"Naturally, poor thing. I'm sure you can't cook well, either," said the woman and Goro marvelled how ever she had guessed it. "Well, I can cook. I can do the work of three women. Into the house with you now, before you catch cold. Shoo!"

She drove him ahead of her into the house.

"I would say I'm quite charming," she said, closing the door behind them, "when one gets used to me. As for my name, why, 'wife', I think, will do nicely."

And sometime in the next few days still with the feeling that he was being left out of things, Goro found himself married.

The new wife was an excellent cook and indeed did the work of three ordinary women. Dinner was never late, and the house was generally spotless. She spoke neither too much nor too little. On evenings when Goro came home discouraged, she always had some good remark ready about the tub-making business--how much artistry and labor went into a good bucket, how unreasonably little money went to the hard-working artist--cheering things, flattering things. Goro gained weight and was not unhappy. At mealtimes his wife ate a little more than a bird but not quite so much as a large cat.