“You mean this?”
“Yes indeed.” Kobayashi reached for the coat at once and flipped it over, examining it with the eye of a dealer in second-hand clothing.
“I didn’t expect it to be so worn—”
“It’s plenty good enough for you!” O-Nobu wanted to say, peering at the coat in silence. As Kobayashi had observed, it was somewhat faded. This was conspicuously evident when the collar was folded back and the cloth beneath it was compared with the rest.
“I suppose I can’t expect too much since I’m getting it for nothing.”
“If it doesn’t suit you feel free to—”
“Are you suggesting I should leave it?”
“Yes.”
As expected, Kobayashi retained his hold on the coat. O-Nobu was thrilled.
“Mrs. T—would it be all right if I just tried it on?”
“Go right ahead.”
O-Nobu’s reply was intentionally the opposite of what she was thinking. Sitting where she was, she watched cynically as Kobayashi struggled to force his arms through sleeves that appeared too tight.
“How does it look?” Kobayashi turned his back to O-Nobu. The multiple creases where the garment had been folded were unsightly. Once again, instead of suggesting, as she should have, that the coat needed ironing, O-Nobu moved in the opposite direction.
“It seems perfect.”
As there was no one else in the room, O-Nobu felt deprived of the chance to exchange eye-to-eye with someone a smile at the ludicrous figure of a back that had been offered her as an opportunity for ridicule.
Just then Kobayashi turned smartly around and, still wearing the coat, sat himself heavily down facing O-Nobu with his legs crossed.
“Mrs. T! People may make fun of me because I’m wearing something odd, but it’s still good to be alive.”
“Is that so?”
O-Nobu fell stubbornly silent.
“That’s maybe hard to understand for someone like yourself who’s never known hardship.”
“Is that so? Personally I’d prefer to be dead than have people laughing at me while I’m alive.”
Kobayashi did not reply. Then suddenly he spoke.
“I thank you. Thanks to you I’ll manage to stay alive this winter.”
He stood up. O-Nobu also rose.
But as they were about to follow each other out to the engawa, Kobayashi wheeled around.
“Mrs. T! If that’s how you feel, you’d better take care never to be laughed at!”
[ 88 ]
THEIR FACES were less than a foot apart. Since Kobayashi had turned back just as O-Nobu was stepping forward, they were obliged to halt in their tracks. They stood there, frozen, face to face. Or, more precisely, peering into each other’s eyes.
At that moment, Kobayashi’s thick eyebrows filled invasively O-Nobu’s field of vision. The black pupils beneath them were trained on her unwaveringly. If O-Nobu wished to understand what they were saying, her only choice was deflecting them with force applied from her side. She spoke.
“That’s not your concern. I don’t require that sort of warning from you.”
“On the contrary, you require it urgently. I suppose you mean to say you can’t remember ever having received a warning before. And I suppose it’s true that you’re essentially a splendid young gentlewoman. Still—”
“That’s enough. Please leave!”
Kobayashi did not comply. As they spoke their faces were mere inches apart.
“But I was talking about Tsuda-kun.”
“What about him? Are you saying that I’m a gentlewoman but Tsuda is not a gentleman?”
“I have no idea of what a gentleman is. First of all, I don’t acknowledge the existence of classes in society.”
“What you choose to acknowledge or not to acknowledge is up to you. But what are you saying about Tsuda?”
“Would you care to hear?”
A blinding stroke of lightning flashed from O-Nobu’s small eyes.
“Tsuda is my husband.”
“I know—so you must want to hear.”
O-Nobu gnashed her teeth.
“Please leave now!”
“I’ll leave—I’m on my way.”
As he spoke, Kobayashi turned and moved, heading for the entrance, just two steps away from O-Nobu along the engawa. Watching in dismay as his back receded, O-Nobu stopped him again.
“Wait!”
“Yes?”
Kobayashi slowed to a halt. Extending in front of him both arms clad in the overcoat that was too long for him, he examined himself from head to toe, as though admiring the figure he cut, a cartoon character in Punch magazine, then turned to O-Nobu and grinned. O-Nobu’s voice was taut.
“Why are you leaving without saying anything?”
“I believe I’ve already thanked you.”
“Not about the coat.”
Kobayashi feigned ignorance. He went so far as to appear puzzled. O-Nobu pursued him.
“You owe me an explanation.”
“For what?”
“For what you said about Tsuda. Tsuda is my husband. If you say things that cast doubt on a husband’s character in front of his wife, even if you insinuate things, you have an obligation to explain clearly what you mean.”
“Or at least to retract what I said; I suppose that would do? Since I’m a person with a limited sense of obligation, as you call it, or responsibility, it might be hard for me to give you the explanation you require, but at the same time, as a man who has no fear of shame, it means nothing to me to retract something I’ve already said. Fair enough. I retract my misspoken remarks about Tsuda-kun. And I apologize. Will that do?”
O-Nobu glowered in silence.
“I hereby declare Tsuda to be a man of impeccable character. A gentleman (assuming that sort of privileged class exists in society).”
O-Nobu, her eyes still lowered, said nothing. Kobayashi continued.
“A minute ago I cautioned you to take good care not to be laughed at. You replied there was no need to heed warnings from the likes of me. That made me feel I should refrain from saying more. Now that I think about it, even that was speaking out of turn. So I retract that, too. I’m sorry if I’ve said anything to offend you. My mistake in every case.”
When he had finished, Kobayashi took his shoes from where they had been neatly aligned on the concrete and put them on. Then he slid back the lattice and, as he was stepping outside, turned and said “Sayonara, Mrs. T.”
Murmuring her own good-bye, O-Nobu stood vacantly where she was for a long while. Finally, she hurried upstairs, sat down at Tsuda’s desk and, all at once, slumping forward, burst into tears.
[ 89 ]
O-TOKI FORTUNATELY remained downstairs, enabling O-Nobu to cry unobserved. When she had cried to her heart’s content, her tears naturally abated.
Stuffing her wet handkerchief back into her sleeve, she abruptly opened the desk drawers. There were two of them. But a methodical examination of their contents turned up nothing new of any interest. That was to be expected: she had already rummaged through the same drawers two or three days earlier, when Tsuda had gone to the clinic, looking for the things he had wanted to take along. Removing what was left, envelopes, a ruler, receipts for lectures he had paid to attend, she carefully replaced them one by one. A small pamphlet advertising Panamas and other sorts of straw hats with lithographs of each recalled an early summer evening when they had gone shopping on the Ginza. Tsuda had brought the booklet of samples home from a store where they had gone to buy a summer hat; distant associations seemed to cling to the pages like the fragrance of past days, the fiery red azalea blossoms in Hibiya Park, the tall, luxuriant willow trees and the pale shadows they cast on one side of the boulevard leading to Kasumigaseki visible in the distance. O-Nobu sat for a while with the booklet open in front of her, deep in thought. Then, as though suddenly resigned, she slammed the drawers shut.
Alongside the desk was a Secession bookshelf in the same functi
onal, rectilinear style. It also had two drawers, but as both slid open with no resistance when she tried the ring handles she felt disappointment in advance of examining them. A place so easily accessed was unlikely to reveal a new discovery. She riffled idly the pages of bound volumes like notebooks filled with writing from the past. Reading each page would be a task. Nor could she imagine that the things she wanted to know would be lurking in these jottings. She was well aware of her husband’s cautious nature. His extreme fastidiousness would not permit him to strew secrets about without placing them under lock and key.
Opening the doors of the cabinet, O-Nobu looked to see if there was anything locked. But it was empty. Sundry papers and booklets and other junk had been stacked carelessly on top of it. The space beneath was jammed with wooden storage boxes.
Turning back to the desk, O-Nobu selected from the rack on top of it a number of letters that had arrived addressed to Tsuda and began to examine them. She felt certain more or less that nothing suspicious would have been left in a place like this. Nonetheless, these letters, which she had noticed right away and refrained from touching, had continued to beckon her interest, drawing attention to themselves as requiring, after all, perusal before she was finished. Telling herself that this was just for the sake of thoroughness, she had finally felt obliged to reach for them.
One by one the envelopes were turned over and the letters unrolled in order as she came to them. Some were quarter sheets, some halves, the rest were full size, but all were read by O-Nobu in silence. When she was finished she returned them to their original places in the order in which she had read them.
Of a sudden, a flame of suspicion ignited in her breast. An image of Tsuda pouring oil on a packet of old letters and carefully incinerating them in the garden rose vividly to her mind. As scraps of blazing paper fluttered into the air, he had pinned them to the ground with a bamboo pole as if afraid they would get away. The cold wind of early autumn had just begun to knife into the skin. It was a Sunday morning. The scene had occurred not five minutes after they had finished breakfast, facing each other across their trays. Putting aside his chopsticks, Tsuda had gone straight upstairs and had returned carrying a package bound with narrow cord; by the time she noticed he had stepped into the garden, circling around by way of the kitchen, he had set the package on fire. The heavy wrapper was already charred when she stepped out to the engawa, the letters inside it just visible. O-Nobu had asked why he was burning the package. Because it was bulky and a nuisance to dispose of, he had replied. When she inquired why he didn’t save it for scrap paper that would be useful when she was putting up her hair and at other times, he hadn’t replied. Instead, he continued to jab away with the bamboo pole at the letters appearing from the bottom of the package. Each time he stabbed at the smoldering package, thick smoke obscured the end of the pole and the burning letters. Gasping, Tsuda had turned his face away from O-Nobu….
Until O-Toki came upstairs to urge her to come down to lunch, O-Nobu pursued these thoughts, sitting as motionlessly as a doll on a stand.
[ 90 ]
SOMEHOW THE clock had advanced to past noon. O-Nobu once again sat down to lunch by herself with O-Toki helping her to rice. This was precisely the routine they repeated daily when Tsuda was away at the office. Today, however, O-Nobu was not herself. She appeared stiffened, though her mind was careeningly in motion. Even the kimono she had changed into when she was preparing to leave the house earlier contributed to an intensified sense of stepping out that was dramatically different from how she was accustomed to feeling.
If O-Toki hadn’t let slip a remark that touched on her agitation that day, she might have finished the meal in silence. The truth was she had no appetite and was attempting to get by with the merest show of eating to avoid giving O-Toki cause to wonder.
For her part, as if out of consideration, O-Toki pointedly refrained from conversation. But when O-Nobu put aside her chopsticks after a single bowl of rice, she asked, “Is something the matter?” and, receiving a mere “No—” in reply, left the tray in place without taking it to the kitchen.
“I hope you’ll forgive me—”
This was regret for her arbitrary decision to go to the clinic. As for O-Nobu, she had other things on her mind.
“I was really loud a while ago—could you hear me down in the maid’s room?”
“No, Missus—”
O-Nobu turned a doubting eye on O-Toki. As if to evade her glance, O-Toki spoke at once.
“That visitor, he had no right—”
O-Nobu didn’t reply. As she merely waited in silence for what was to come, O-Toki was obliged to continue. This provided an impetus to the conversation that developed between them.
“Mr. Tsuda was really surprised. ‘He has some nerve,’ he said, ‘showing up here at the house without an invitation and no warning and speaking with you directly when he knew perfectly well that I was in the hospital.’”
O-Nobu let out a soft laugh of disdain. But she withheld her own comments.
“Did he have anything else to say?”
“He said to give him the coat and get him out of here at once. And he asked whether you were discussing anything with him, and when I told him yes you were, he made an awful sour face.”
“Was that all?”
“No, he asked what you were talking about.”
“What did you say?”
“I went ahead and told him I couldn’t say much because I didn’t know.”
“And then?”
“And then he looked even more sour. ‘Opening the door to every hound dog that passes by is reckless,’ he said, and—‘damn irresponsible.’”
“He said that? But what choice is there if it’s an old friend?”
“That’s just what I went ahead and said. Besides, I told him, the Missus happened to be changing when he showed up and couldn’t come down downstairs right away so there wasn’t nothing else to do.”
“Exactly—and then?”
“And then he made fun of me for always taking Missus’s side no matter what. He said it was amazing how well the Okamotos had trained me and how impressed he was.”
O-Nobu smiled uncomfortably.
“You poor thing. Was that all?”
“There’s more. He wanted to know whether Kobayashi-san had maybe been drinking. I didn’t notice anything, but I couldn’t imagine a person getting drunk in the morning even though it wasn’t New Year’s and then visiting someone at their house—”
“No, I suppose you couldn’t.”
O-Nobu appeared to be expecting there was more to come. Sure enough, O-Toki hadn’t finished.
“Missus—Mr. Tsuda said I should be sure to say this to you when I got home.”
“Say what?”
“There’s no telling what that Kobayashi will say. He’s a dangerous cur particularly when he’s drunk. And no matter what he says, you’re not to pay him any mind. Just take everything he says as lies and you won’t go wrong.”
“I see—”
O-Nobu had no desire to say anything more. O-Toki burst out laughing. “Mrs. Hori had a laugh when she heard that.”
Until that moment, O-Nobu hadn’t known that Tsuda’s younger sister had been visiting at the hospital that morning.
[ 91 ]
ONE YEAR older than O-Nobu, Tsuda’s younger sister was already the mother of two children. The elder, a boy, had been born four and a half years ago. The simple state of motherhood had more than sufficed to awaken O-Hide’s awareness of herself. There was not a single day when she wasn’t a mother.
Her husband, Hori, was a voluptuary. And he possessed the magnanimity of spirit often observed in a man in pursuit of his own pleasure. In return for disporting himself as he pleased, he extended his wife a commensurate freedom, which was not to say he was intemperately affectionate with her. He congratulated himself on his attitude toward O-Hide. In his view, it was the cumulative effect of his hedonism that had opened the door to this liberal state of mind.
His approach to life, assuming he possessed something worthy of a label so formidable, might be precisely put as engaging in all things temperately. Moving on with a smile. Detached. Traversing life casually, untidily, straightforwardly, high-mindedly, benignly. This was his, what might be called, éclat. Unburdened by financial need, he had managed thus far to live by his credo. And no matter where he went, he had never felt the lack of anything. His achievement had made him ever more the optimist. Confident that he was liked by everyone, he was of course convinced that he was also liked by O-Hide. Nor was he wrong about that. In truth, he was not disliked by O-Hide.
O-Hide, who had been courted for her beauty, had come to understand Hori’s disposition only after settling down as his wife. It had taken her some time to comprehend a sensibility that was like innards washed clean in the liquor of dissipation. And her doubts about why a man with so few concerns should have felt it necessary to insist with such seriousness that he wanted her for his wife were obscured quickly enough in the mists of ambiguity. O-Hide was not as tenacious as O-Nobu: before she had divined the answer, she had detached her wifely interest in her husband and been required to turn the sparkling new eye of motherhood on her first-born child.
This was not the only difference between the sisters-in-law. While O-Nobu’s new household comprised only a husband and wife, both sets of parents residing in distant Kyoto, Hori lived with his mother. A younger brother and sister lived with them. There was even a penniless relative in the house. The circumstances simply didn’t permit O-Hide to attend to her husband exclusively. In particular, unnoticed by others, she was obliged to be in tense consideration of her mother-in-law.
Not surprisingly for someone who had been chosen for her good looks, O-Hide appeared never to age. Even compared with O-Nobu, a year younger than she, she looked young. So young it was hard to imagine she was the mother of a four-year-old. Even so, having spent the past four or five years in family circumstances very unlike O-Nobu’s, her understanding of certain things was also different. Not unlikely to be seen as younger than O-Nobu, she was definitely older in some ways. It wasn’t so much speech and attitudes; she had an older spirit. In a word, she had been domesticated, imbued with family life.