![]() "The baby is dead," Orito answers, in the same language, "and the mother will die soon, if the child is not delivered." She places her fingertips on Kawasemi's distended belly and probes the bulge around the inverted navel. ![]() Maeno now asks her in Dutch, "What are your opinions?" ![]() Orito clasps the fetus's mucus-smeared wrist to search for a pulse. Smellie terms it," Orito uses the Dutch, " 'Prolapse of the Arm.' " "This is what I prayed to hear! The Observations of William Smellie?" "Yes: in an engraving, from the Dutch text Father was translating." "Have you ever seen such a presentation?" asks Dr. Orito lifts the bloodied sheet and finds, as warned, the fetus's limp arm, up to the shoulder, protruding from Kawasemi's vagina. "My orders are clear," states the chamberlain. "I wanted to examine the child's presentation myself, but." The elderly scholar chooses his words with care. Maeno whispers through the muslin curtain. She is too exhausted, Orito thinks, even to fear dying tonight.ĭr. "She's barely spoken"- the maid holds the lamp - "for hours and hours." ![]() Orito dabs the concubine's sweat-drenched face with a damp cloth. In the rice paddy beyond the garden, a cacophony of frogs detonates. "Miss kawasemi?" orito kneels on a stale and sticky futon. The House of Kawasemi the Concubine, above Nagasaki ![]()
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