This week is Yoshimoto Banana’s piece “Beauty.” I absolutely adore her work. I highly recommend her to anyone who just loves to think and read words on a page. Even in translation [maybe not quite mine, but] her ideas and feelings come across beautifully.

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Yoshimoto Banana – “Beauty”

The other day I had an errand to run so I went to an upscale supermarket. Because there was such a bountiful selection to choose from I ended up buying a lot. My hands loaded with bags I peeked over at the attached flower shop.

There was only one shop attendant and the middle-aged lady before me had a pretty complicated order. She wanted only the most expensive phalaenopsis orchards wrapped as a present and a premium bouquet for some shrine packaged and delivered. An aristocratic arrogance seeped from every pour of her being saying, “I am a rich person. Rich people deserve preferential treatment.”

To make the point ‘this is all I have!’ I had already picked out a handful of tulips and a potted orchard plant I was planning on putting next to the bath. I tried to stand there and give off the feeling of, “Couldn’t you let me go first?” but the person before me had already tried that strategy and was taken first. The shop attendant was giving off a defensive air as if to say, “I can’t do more so I’m just going to focus on wrapping these orchards.”

I had no choice but to wait around for a good twenty minutes. The whole time people kept lining up behind me. I could sense them saying to themselves, “It looks like this might take a long time,” and walk away. As the time passed it became harder and harder for me to leave my spot, and I couldn’t go find another attendant. I am not particularly bad at waiting, but the clerk trying to silently tell us all to come back some other time really made me mad. If that woman with her complicated order would have just turned around and apologized for taking so much time, it would have lightened the mood. But when even close enough to touch shoulders, she was adamant about not even making eye contact. Having been raised in the old part of town, I thought this was quite a bizarre predicament.

Then all of a sudden an extremely beautiful woman who looked just like Hiroko Shino blew in like the wind and picked out a bunch of twenty dollar tulips. As if to say, “Can I just go first, please?” but fearing the worst she started to glance at us standing in line. I leaned over and said, “Actually I’ve been waiting quite a while and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be done anytime soon.” I could have simply just exerted my presence silently but to remain quiet would be giving in to the sticky atmosphere so I had to utilize on my social graces.

“Oh, well I’ll go and find someone then,” she said and scuttled off. When they came back she said to the attendant, “This person was ahead of me,” and let me go first. She then said with a beaming smile, “Good thing I went and got someone, huh?”

So I believe there are two types of rich people. Those of whom money allows a certain breathing room and through that freedom allows a truer sense of character to emerge in a good way, and those for whom money does the exact opposite. As part of the younger generation, I feel like I am stuck between the two. The smiling face of that woman was true beauty and it is just for such beauty that people work to pamper themselves or marry into a rich family. Although ultimately it is not the money but a person’s true nature that is exposed in situations like that. It changes the value of their life. I who am neither rich nor beautiful reflect deeply on this and even now, every time I look at that orchid I kindly remember that softly smiling face.