Obliged to observe her brother and his wife with her domesticated eye, O-Hide was constantly aware of her dissatisfaction with them. And her dissatisfaction, whenever something happened, tended to ally her with her parents in Kyoto. Even so, she tried her best to avoid opportunities for collisions with her brother. Feeling as she did that discomfiting her sister-in-law was even worse than attacking her brother directly, she kept constant, careful watch over what she allowed herself to say. In her heart, however, her feelings were the opposite of those she expressed. Her resentment was directed less at her brother, to whom she spoke out, than at O-Nobu, to whom she said nothing. If only her brother hadn’t married such a flamboyant woman! was the feeling she carried always deep in her breast. It never occurred to her to think that she was merely favoring her kin and criticizing O-Nobu unjustly.
O-Hide believed she was well aware of where she stood. And it did not escape her attention that her brother and his wife, while they may not have gone so far as to keep their distance, were certainly not overly fond of her. Even so, it never occurred to her that she should reconsider her position. To begin with, they both objected to it, which made the notion of reform even less conceivable. Since, in the final analysis, disliking her position came down to disliking her, she felt inclined to resist out of spite if nothing else. Second, her conscience told her she was correct: as long as she believed she was acting in her brother’s best interest, what did it matter how much she was hated? Finally, there was the simple fact, accounting for all the rest, that she didn’t like her flamboyant sister-in-law. As a woman with more latitude than O-Nobu, capable of greater extravagance, what was it about O-Nobu, who, in this regard, was beneath her, that she couldn’t stomach? She didn’t bother to ask herself the question. She had a mother-in-law, and O-Nobu, except for her husband, was entirely her own mistress. It didn’t occur to her to consider even this difference relevant.
The morning after O-Nobu had telephoned with news of Tsuda, O-Hide had left for a visit to the clinic barely an hour before O-Toki showed up, just as Kobayashi was barging into Tsuda’s home in quest of the overcoat.
[ 92 ]
HAVING SLEPT poorly the night before, Tsuda picked at the food on the tray the nurse had brought in and, lying back again, closed his heavy eyelids hoping to recover some of the sleep he had lost. O-Hide came in as he was drifting into a state of half sleep; he awoke as she was sliding the paper door open quietly in consideration of the patient, and their eyes met.
At moments like this they never displayed affection for each other. Nor did their expressions seem happy. They would have said that such a display was nothing more than a far too conventional social formality. And close to an exercise in a kind of dissimulation. There was a tacit agreement visible only to themselves as brother and sister and not binding on others. Since there was little point at this late date, conscious of wishing to be thought well of by the other, of going through the motions in a normal way, why not leave aside entirely any clumsy efforts aimed at deception and come face to face with an expression that was not at odds with their conscience? Over the years they had managed to reach this agreement without speaking a word. And the expression that was not at odds with conscience was precisely this one, void of affection.
In the first place, their connection was unusually intimate for a brother and sister. This obviated the need for restraint between them, which made an unaffectionate greeting a simple matter. There was also, besides, something out of tune about them. This troubling discordance inclined them to draw back reflexively, as though repelled at the sight of the other’s face.
Small wonder, then, that Tsuda’s eyes as he raised his head abruptly and discovered O-Hide in the doorway were hooded in lassitude and indifference. Having lifted himself upright, he fell back again on the pillow. O-Hide, true to form in her way, strode into the room as though she hadn’t noticed, and without a word.
The first thing she took in was the tray at the head of Tsuda’s mattress. It was a mess. Alongside an eggshell crushed beneath the weight of a milk bottle that had fallen on its side, a slice of toast with bites missing lay where it had been dropped. A second slice, untouched, rested neatly on a plate. There was also a remaining egg.
“Are you finished, Brother? Are you still eating?”
The state of the food remaining on the tray might have been interpreted either way.
“I’m through.”
Frowning, O-Hide carried the tray to the head of the stairs. Having just left her own tidy home, the breakfast remains, abandoned at her brother’s pillow side for who knew how long, possibly because the nurse had too much on her hands to come and fetch them, struck her as something of a disgrace.
“Filthy!”
The exclamation wasn’t admonitory so much as spoken to herself as she returned to her original seat. In any event, Tsuda did not engage with her.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“I was notified by phone.”
“O-Nobu?”
“Umm—”
“I told her she didn’t have to bother.”
It was O-Hide’s turn not to engage.
“I wanted to come right away but, unfortunately, I had a little problem yesterday—”
O-Hide caught herself and didn’t continue. Since her marriage, she had developed a habit of breaking off in the middle of a thought. There were times when Tsuda took this badly, interpreting it to mean “Since I’m married now even you are an outsider, Brother.” Considering the nature of his own marriage, Tsuda was by no means incapable of perceiving on reflection a certain logic in this. Far from it, he found himself secretly thinking how welcome it would be if O-Nobu would only engage the outside world with an attitude like his younger sister’s. And yet the feeling he was left with when O-Hide treated him in this manner was definitely not pleasant. He no longer had time, nor could he be bothered, to reflect that this was precisely the way he invariably behaved toward her.
Without urging O-Hide to finish, Tsuda spoke his mind.
“Busy as you are, there was no reason for you to come today either. I’m not that sick.”
“But Sister went to the trouble of phoning to ask me to visit if I had time.”
“Is that so?”
“Besides, I have a little business to discuss with you.”
For the first time, Tsuda turned toward O-Hide.
[ 93 ]
SINCE THE surgery he had been plagued by an unpleasant feeling in the afflicted area. It was merely a sensation caused by the sudden contraction of the muscles around the incision, which was packed with gauze, but once it began, it was the sort of feeling that progressed as regularly as breathing or the beat of a pulse and did not abate.
He had felt the first contraction the day before yesterday. It had occurred as O-Nobu was on her way downstairs after receiving his permission to go to the theater, and it was by no means a new experience. Familiar with the same sensation from the last time he had been treated, he cried out involuntarily to himself, “Not again!” And indeed, as if on purpose to revive in him a bitter memory, the contractions progressed regularly and unabated. First his flesh contracted and he could feel the gauze chafing; next came a gradual unknotting until he was feeling almost normal, whereupon, with the force of a wave that has receded breaking again upon the shore, a violent contraction assaulted him newly. At this point his will was stripped of its normal authority to command the afflicted area. And the more urgently he struggled to relax his muscles, the more disobedient they became.
He didn’t know what sort of communication existed between these strange assaults and O-Nobu. He had begun to feel sorry about treating her like a bird in a cage. He had felt it was unmanly to keep her tethered to his side. And so he had happily released her into free air. But no sooner had she thanked him for his kindness and left his sick bed than he had begun abruptly to feel abandoned. His ears peeled, he had heard O-Nobu’s footsteps descending the stairs. Even the sound of the bell ringing as she pushed
open the door at the entrance had seemed unsolicitous to an extreme. It was just at that moment that the unbearable feeling in the muscles around his wound had begun to recur. He attributed this to some stimulus. And it seemed to him that the stimulus must be coming from hypersensitive nerves. Did that mean that O-Nobu’s actions had rendered his nerves acutely sensitive? Displeased as he was with her behavior, such a conclusion was going too far. Even so, it seemed plain that this was no coincidence. Arbitrarily enough, he posited some connection between the two. And he was inclined to spell it out for O-Nobu after the fact. To make her regret the unfortunate consequence of leaving her husband in a hospital bed and rushing off to enjoy herself for the entire day. But he didn’t know how to convey this appropriately. Assuming he found the right words, he felt certain they would make no sense to her. And even if she did understand, it would be difficult to make her feel just as he wished her to. He would be left with no choice but to suffer his feelings in silence.
As he turned to O-Hide, a new contraction seemed to forewarn him that this would be the outcome. He grimaced.
O-Hide, who knew nothing and could not be expected to follow the minute turns in Tsuda’s reasoning, interpreted his expression as the familiar face he seemed to hold in reserve for when he was alone in her company.
“If this is a bad time, shall I wait until you’re out of the hospital?”
Though there was nothing particularly sympathetic about her attitude, she was nonetheless obliged to be somewhat in consideration.
“Does it hurt somewhere?”
Tsuda merely nodded. Silent for a while, O-Hide observed him. The contractions around his wound began again their regular throbbing. The silence between them continued. All the while, Tsuda maintained the scowl on his face.
“It’s terrible you’re in such pain. What was Sister thinking? On the phone yesterday she was talking as if you were doing well and not in pain.”
“What does she know?”
“So it started hurting after Sister left?”
Unable to say “Hardly! It was O-Nobu’s fault that it started hurting!” Tsuda began suddenly to see himself as a spoiled child. Never mind appearances, he was embarrassed that in his heart he was feeling so very unlike an elder brother.
“So what are you after today?”
“Brother, I don’t have to talk about it now when you’re in pain—it can wait.”
Tsuda was adept at dissembling. But at this moment he had no heart for it. He had already forgotten the feeling in his rear. An important feature of the contractions was that they ceased if forgotten and were forgotten if they ceased.
“I’m all right—why not say what you have to say?”
“As you can imagine, coming from me it’s nothing very nice—you don’t mind?”
Tsuda had a good idea what to expect.
[ 94 ]
“THE USUAL again, I suppose?”
It was all Tsuda could think of to say after a brief pause. But his countenance was already declaring as always that he had no desire to hear. O-Hide was angrily aware of this contradiction.
“I said we could talk about it some other time. Then you go out of your way to prompt me and it makes me feel like talking now!”
“Then say what’s on your mind. That’s what you’re here for.”
“But you look so annoyed.”
O-Hide wasn’t a woman to be given pause by a simple look of displeasure, not in front of her brother at any rate. There was accordingly no reason for Tsuda to feel sorry for her. On the contrary, it struck him that this was a creature capable of criticizing him excessively despite the fact that she was his younger sister. Without engaging her in an argument, he leaped ahead.
“Has Kyoto said something again?”
“You might say that.”
Since the almost invariable pattern was that news from Kyoto arrived in duplicate, his letter from their father and hers from their mother, he saw no need of confirming the author of the letter to her. However, in view of current circumstances, he was unable to feel indifferent about its contents. Since he had sent off his second request to Kyoto, the question of whether money would be coming had been constantly on his mind. Despite how careful he was not to talk about the incident they now referred to as “the usual,” he understood better than O-Hide the circumstances that entangled the question with his urgent concern about expenses at the end of the month and the cost of hospitalization in a manner that made it difficult to separate them. And so he felt obliged to step forward with an explicit inquiry.
“What did Mother say?”
“Father must have written to you.”
“He did. You must have a pretty good idea of what that was all about.”
This O-Hide neither affirmed nor denied. She merely allowed the shadow of a faint smile to play about her pretty mouth. It irked Tsuda that the smile appeared tinted by a hint of self-satisfaction at having bested him. At times like this and no other, O-Hide’s beauty, which normally he failed even to notice because it was in the family, affected him uncomfortably. Not for the first time he found himself wondering whether his sister’s uncommon attractiveness mightn’t enhance her ability to make others feel bad. Frequently he wanted to say admonitorily, “I suppose you intend to live your whole life patting yourself on the back for having been chosen for your looks?”
Presently O-Hide turned to Tsuda with her perfectly symmetrical face composed.
“And have you done anything about it?”
“What is there to do?”
“You haven’t said a word to Father?”
Tsuda was silent for a while. His reply seemed hopeless.
“I wrote back.”
“And?”
“And nothing. No reply. There might be something waiting at home, but I won’t know until O-Nobu gets here.”
“But you have some notion of the sort of reply Father is likely to send?”
Tsuda didn’t answer. Groping with one hand beneath the silk collar of the quilted jacket O-Nobu had sewn for him, he withdrew a toothpick and began digging in his front teeth. When O-Hide saw that he was not inclined to break his silence, she tried a different approach to asking the same question.
“Do you think Father will send money?”
“I don’t know.”
Tsuda replied brusquely. And there was anger in his voice as he continued.
“That’s why I’m asking you to tell me what Mother wrote in her letter.”
Averting her eyes, O-Hide looked out at the engawa. This was merely a way to avoid sighing in front of him.
“It’s not as if I’m holding anything back. I’ve been thinking all along it would turn out this way.”
[ 95 ]
ACCORDING TO O-Hide’s account of their mother’s letter, his father was angrier than he had expected. It was one thing if Tsuda were to handle the insufficiency at the end of the month; if, however, he insisted that even that was too much for him, his father was apparently deliberating whether to punish him by withholding future remittances as well for at least the time being. If that were true, it would have to mean that his recent references to repairing a fence or delinquent rental payments had been lies. Even if they weren’t exactly lies, they would need be considered glib excuses. But why had his father found it necessary to put him off with transparent excuses as if he were a stranger? If he were angry, why not scold him like a man?
Tsuda sank into thought. His father’s face and his goatee, his expression reflecting his tendency to pretension in all things, his mother’s hair invariably piled in a bun atop her head because of her meaningless aversion to hairdos—the only way she would ever wear it—trivial details such as these were no help in interpreting the current situation.
“It’s your fault, Brother, for not keeping your promise.”
These words, repeated endlessly by O-Hide since the incident, were the last thing Tsuda wanted to hear. As if he needed a lesson from his little sister to know that breaking a promise was wrong! It w
as simply that he hadn’t acknowledged the necessity of keeping his word this time. And he had hoped that others would affirm his position.
“But that’s so unreasonable!” O-Hide declared. “A promise is a promise even between a father and son. Maybe it wouldn’t matter so much if it concerned only you and Father.”
For O-Hide the most serious problem was her husband Hori’s involvement.
“When a letter like that arrives from Mother, it’s difficult for Hori, too.”
It was Hori who had persuaded his father to compromise his view that once a man had graduated from school, secured a substantial job, and placed himself at the head of a new household, he was obliged by hook or by crook to support himself independently without help from his parents. Acting without hesitation on a request from Tsuda, Hori had talked his parsimonious father-in-law down from his pedestal with a variety of effective arguments arbitrarily selected—inflation, the necessity of professional entertainment, changing times, the distinction between Tokyo and the provinces. He had furthermore proposed the arrangement according to which Tsuda in turn was to put aside the lion’s share of the bonuses he received in midsummer and at year’s end for use in paying back in a lump sum a portion of the monthly help he had been receiving. The responsibility that came along with the acceptance of his plan was of small concern to this insouciant man. Not only had he placed little importance from the outset on the question of making good on the agreement, but by the time the obligation was due he had forgotten all about it. In fact, the entire proceedings had receded to such a distant place in his thoughts that he was surprised when he received from Tsuda’s father a letter close to a reprimand. But Tsuda had expended the money to the last penny and there was nothing he could do. Ever an optimist, he wrote a letter of apology in reply and considered the matter closed. But the fact that society wasn’t constructed to accord with his carelessness was a lesson he was obliged to learn from Tsuda’s father, who had treated him as a guarantor ever since.