It was a fact that, somewhere along the way in his wandering, he had shaken Kiyoko off. But how could a man with no idea where he is going be expected to know someone else’s whereabouts?
If only I’d been aware of the general direction; I wouldn’t have been caught off guard.
The thought led him to the feeling that he had already let slip his first opportunity. To be sure her appearance, the way she had turned her back, discouraging him from ascending the stairs by switching off the light, the sound of the bell she had rung at once to summon the maid, what was all this if not a warning? An admonition. A severing of ties.
Yet she had been surprised. Far more surprised than he. The simple explanation might be that she was a woman. It was also possible that, while his surprise had been mitigated by a certain expectation, she had experienced abruptness and nothing else. But was that all there was to say about her surprise? Mightn’t it also be that she had felt confronted by her complex past?
She had paled. She had turned rigid. Tsuda yoked his hope to this. He essayed an interpretation that suited him at the moment. Then he turned his interpretation over and examined it from the other side. After a careful look at both sides, he had to judge which was rational. Insufficient data made it hard to arrive at a determination. Each conclusion was quickly invalidated. When he was tending one way, his self-confidence intervened. When he tilted in the other, a fire gong of disillusionment clanged in his ear. Oddly enough his confidence, what he referred to invidiously as his vanity, seemed to reside inside him. In contrast, the clanging fire gong of disillusionment seemed to assail him from outside his mind. Though he intended to consider them both without bias, he couldn’t help distinguishing between the intimate and the removed. Perhaps it was rather the case that near and distant were natural attributes, intrinsic to each respectively. The result was inevitable. Admonishing self-love, he stroked its head; peeling his ears, he cursed the sound of the gong.
With these thoughts pursuing each other back and forth across his mind, Tsuda was unable to fall peacefully asleep. Resolving to revisit everything in the morning, he tried to summon sleep but could only toss and turn to no avail.
About to smoke a cigarette, he reached for the box of matches next to his pillow and noticed the quilted jacket the maid had folded and hung on the kimono rack on her way out of the room. He realized it was the jacket O-Nobu had packed for him; he had crawled into bed still wearing the one provided by the inn. He recalled the flattery he had used as they were leaving the clinic to thank O-Nobu for the jacket she had made for him. And he remembered her reply.
“Try comparing them and see which is better.”
Not surprisingly, the jacket provided by the inn was superior. Even Tsuda could tell at a glance the difference between something woven with synthetic thread and pure silk fabric. Comparing the jackets, he summoned to the stage of his memory his secret thought in his wife’s presence at the time.
O-Nobu and Kiyoko.
Speaking the words aloud to himself, he crushed his cigarette into the ashtray and, hearing it hiss, pulled the comforter up over his head.
It was only as his determination and efforts to sleep disappeared somewhere in exhaustion that they were finally rewarded. At last, unaware, Tsuda fell deeply into a dream.
[ 178 ]
ON THE verge of shattering when a man entered the room and threw open the rain shutters early in the morning, his dream managed to sustain itself in the space between deep sleep and waking. When he finally rose from his bed as the sun was lifting in the sky and the light flooding the room was making sleep impossible, his eyes were heavy. Cleaning his teeth with a toothpick, he slid open the shoji. With the eyes of man who has at last awakened from a domain haunted by demons in which he had been trapped since the night before, he surveyed the scene outside.
The garden in front of his room appeared out of place in a mountain village. The landscaping, an irregularly shaped, artificial pond with young pines and azaleas and the like installed around it in predictable places, was more vulgar than merely commonplace. From the miniature mountain near his room, water piped from a real mountain spring emptied into the pond like a diminutive waterfall; there was even a fountain that gushered into the air like fireworks in five or six modestly sized plumes. Observing with a mirthless smile what was unmistakably the source of the noise that had troubled his sleep, Tsuda was led at once to thoughts of Kiyoko, who had distressed him infinitely more than the sound of the water. What if their connection turned out to be in essence the same lackluster affair as the fountain, just as meaningless? That would be intolerable.
With the toothpick still between his teeth and his hands thrust into his robe, he was musing at the threshold of his room when the young man who had been sweeping leaves in the garden with a bamboo broom approached and greeted him politely.
“Morning. That was a tiring journey.”
“You’re the fellow who rode with me in the carriage?”
“By your leave—”
“It really is quiet, just as you said. And this place is endless.”
“Not really. As you can see, there’s hardly any flat land, so they kept digging out and building and building some more on levels. The halls, though, I’m afraid they’re like you say, endless.”
“I got lost on my way back from the bath last night—I was in a panic.”
“That’ll happen.”
While this exchange was in progress, a man and woman were coming down from the hill just beyond the garden. To ease the relatively steep pitch of the hillside, the trail descended through brilliant maples and withered trees in switchbacks, so that even after the couple was in sight it took a while for them to emerge at the entrance to the garden. The young hostler, who knew a generous tipper when he saw one, didn’t stand around waiting. Leaving Tsuda behind without a backward glance, he dashed to the bottom of the hill and greeted the other guests as if he had been waiting to welcome them when they appeared.
Tsuda had a good look at their faces for the first time. He nearly failed to recognize the woman, who had let down the large knot of hair piled atop her head the last time he had seen her and reset it in a normal hairdo, but this was unquestionably the female who had opened the door to his bath in her seductive state of semidress the night before. Her male companion he knew only by his voice; under cover of the distance separating them, he examined his face for the first time. He wore a mustache, closely cropped in the style of the day, and there was an aura about him that somehow confirmed what the bath attendant had said, that he was a merchant. Something in his countenance put Tsuda instantly in mind of O-Hide’s husband, Hori Shōtarō, slightly abbreviated “Hori the Shō-san,” and further shortened “Hori-shō,” a nickname Hori himself often used that seemed to accord perfectly with his brother-in-law’s manner. He imagined that this fellow, too, must have a nickname so redolent of the merchant class it would overpower his high-faluting mustache. Tsuda’s speculation based on a single glance didn’t stop there. Advancing a step further into cynicism, he wondered whether this was truly a married couple. With that question in mind, he sensed something incongruous about the domesticity of their morning as they described it, a walk following a bath after rising early. Tsuda was still standing as before, working on his teeth with his toothpick. Though he was observing them at a distance, the conversation, which included the hostler, was distinctly audible.
“Is there anything the matter with the lady in the annex today?” the woman inquired. The hostler replied.
“No, Ma’am, not that I know of. Is there anything—”
“Nothing special. But we always see her at morning bath, and she wasn’t there today.”
“Is that so? It could be she’s still asleep?”
“Maybe. But we always take morning bath at the same time.”
“I see.”
“And this morning we had a date to walk into the hills together.”
“Shall I go and remind her?”
“It doesn’t matter now
—we’ve already been on our walk. I just thought I’d ask you if maybe she wasn’t feeling well.”
“I think she’s probably still asleep. On the other hand—”
“Never mind about the other hand. You don’t have to be so serious, I was just asking.”
The couple moved away.
With his mouth full of tooth powder, Tsuda ventured into the hall to search for the bath he had used the night before.
[ 179 ]
BUT THIS morning he was spared the necessity of a search. When he had made his way downstairs to the bath without a misstep despite some confusing twists and turns, he was overtaken anew by a sense of how ridiculously he’d been acting since the night before.
Through the glass transom installed beneath the eaves, the strong sunlight of an autumn morning was pouring into the room. Glancing up through the glass above his head, Tsuda could just make out what might have been a rock or an embankment and realized that the tub he was soaking in was below ground. The difference in height between the bath and the cliff outside was considerable. From what he could see, he judged it to be some ten or twelve feet, which meant, inasmuch as he had heard there was an older bath below him, that the inn had been built on multiple levels.
Silverleafs were growing on top of the cliff. Unfortunately the morning sun wasn’t shining there, and the hard sheen of the flowers as they swayed occasionally in the wind made them appear icy cold. Camellias were also visible from the tub as they dropped from the bush and scattered. But the scenery was fragmented. Outside the two feet of view permitted by the glass, Tsuda could see nothing above or below. The vista unknown to him was bound to be ordinary. And yet for some reason it piqued his curiosity. A bird had suddenly begun to warble, a bulbul judging by its melodic song, and hearing it just outside at the cliff but unable to see it, Tsuda felt somehow dissatisfied.
But this dissatisfaction was a mere afterthought. The truth was, from the moment he had come downstairs to the bath, he had been playing over in his mind the incident from the previous night and was as a consequence submerged in a far deeper sense of dissatisfaction. Finding the sunlit bathing room deserted, he had stood in the desolate hallway of the bathing area and just to be sure, as if he were within his rights to do exactly as he pleased, had opened each of the doors to the small tubs lined up on both sides. Possibly he had been prompted to try this by the pair of slippers that had been left in front of one of the doors. But when he came finally to the tightly closed door with the slippers in front of it, he hesitated. He wasn’t unaware of what he was about. He was moreover disinclined to be rude. At a loss for what to do, he strained to hear from outside the door, and the silence inside empowered his hand to turn the handle and push it boldly open. Encountering a private tub as empty as all the others, he experienced relief and disappointment at the same time.
Naked now and soaking in the tub, he had been left in the aftermath of his experiment with an incessant sense of anticipation. With a mirthless smile, he tried comparing himself before and after the change he had undergone since the previous evening. Last night, until the woman with the upswept hair had walked in on him, he had been, if anything, innocent. This morning, before anyone had appeared, he felt a kind of tension that came from lying in wait.
Perhaps the unidentified slippers had incited him to this transgression. But if the slippers had churned him, it was because on arising he had overheard talk of Kiyoko in the banter between the woman from Yokohama and the hostler. She was still in bed. Or at least she hadn’t taken her bath yet. If she were intending to bathe, she would have to be bathing now or on her way here, one or the other.
Tsuda’s keen hearing detected abruptly the sound of someone coming down the stairs. He stopped splashing water on himself. Whereupon the footsteps stopped. Perhaps he was imagining things; it seemed to him that when they resumed a second later they were moving in the opposite direction, back up the stairs. He thought he could imagine why. He wondered if the problem mightn’t be that he had left his slippers outside the door as he had seen others do. Why hadn’t he worn them inside? he asked himself regretfully.
A minute later he was surprised to hear footsteps again, this time outside the building. Both sets of footsteps were immediately connected in his imagination. It came to him easily that the person who had avoided the bath had subsequently gone outside on purpose. Just then he heard a woman’s voice. But this issued from an entirely different direction. From what he could see outside looking up from below, the cliff leveled off at the top, and it appeared that an annex facing the baths had been built on this patch of level ground. At any rate, the voice was coming from that direction. It belonged unmistakably to the woman who had been discussing Kiyoko with the hostler a while ago on her way back from a walk.
The glass transom beneath the eaves that had been ajar last evening to let steam escape was tightly closed this morning, and as a result the woman’s words reached Tsuda indistinctly. But judging from the way she was lifting her voice, one thing was certain: she was standing on the top of the cliff calling out to someone below. In the order of things, some sort of acknowledgment was to be expected from the base of the cliff. Strangely enough, there was no response; the alternating remarks of a normal conversation did not occur. The only talking came from the top of the cliff.
But this time the footsteps did not stop as they had before. Tsuda heard the sound of garden clogs treading irregular stone steps as a woman, unmistakably a woman, ascended the path. About the time she should have been nearing the top, a portion of her skirt appeared in the upper part of the glass transom. It was gone at once. The momentary impression Tsuda retained was the fluttering of a beautiful pattern. In that pattern as it moved out of sight he had the impression he recognized colors he had seen from the bottom of the stairs the night before.
[ 180 ]
RETURNING TO his room, he sat down to his breakfast and engaged the maid who was serving him in conversation.
“Are those guests from Yokohama staying on top of the cliff I can see from the new bath?”
“Yes, did you have a look?”
“No, I just thought they might be.”
“You guessed right. Why not drop in? They’re both charming, Mr. and Missus.”
“They’ve been here a while?”
“Just ten days.”
“And they’re the ones who sing?”
“You seem to know everything. Have you heard them?”
“Not yet. Katsu-san told me.”
The maid provided answers unhesitatingly to whatever Tsuda asked, but she understood boundaries. When he touched the quick of the matter she deflected his question.
“What’s the story with that woman?”
“She’s his wife.”
“His real wife?”
“I imagine so.” The maid laughed. “I don’t guess she’s an imitation wife; why do you ask?”
“Isn’t she a bit saucy for a housewife?”
Instead of replying, the maid abruptly offered Kiyoko as a comparison.
“The lady staying in the back is more refined.”
The layout of the rooms was such that Kiyoko was behind him. The man and woman from Yokohama were staying in what amounted to the front.
“So I’m midway between the two,” Tsuda said, finally realizing.
Even so, since his room was slightly recessed it wasn’t on the way for either of them.
“Is that lady friends with the couple?”
“They’re on good terms.”
“From before?”
“I wonder—I wouldn’t know that. But most likely they became acquainted after they came here. They’re back and forth all day long; they don’t have much to do. Just yesterday they went to the park together.”
Tsuda reeled the conversation in.
“I wonder why that lady is here alone.”
“She needs to recover a bit.”
“What about her husband?”
“They came together, but he left right awa
y.”
“He abandoned her? That wasn’t very nice. He hasn’t been back since?”
“There was something about coming back right away—I don’t know what happened.”
“She must be bored—the wife.”
“Why don’t you drop in on her for a chat?”
“Would that be all right? Ask her when you get a chance.”
“I could do that.” The maid grinned, not taking him seriously. Tsuda inquired again.
“What does she do with herself?”
“Well, she takes her baths, she walks, she listens to them singing—sometimes she does some flower arranging, and at night she often practices her calligraphy.”
“I see—does she read?”
“I suppose she does,” the maid responded carelessly and broke out laughing at the bothersome detail of Tsuda’s questions. Tsuda realized he was being obvious and hastily changed the subject as though a little flustered.
“Someone forgot their slippers outside one of the private baths this morning. At first I thought it must be occupied and didn’t want to barge in, but when I tried opening the door there was no one inside.”
“Goodness! It must have been that sensei again.”
The sensei was a calligrapher. Tsuda remembered having seen his seal here and there on framed and mounted scrolls.
“He must be pretty old.”
“He’s an old man. With a white beard down to here.”
The maid placed a hand on her chest to indicate the length of the calligrapher’s beard.
“You don’t say. Does he practice?”
“He’s working on something huge, a little bit every day; he says it’s going to be inscribed on his tombstone.”
Tsuda was surprised and impressed to hear from the maid that the calligrapher had traveled all this way expressly to work on his own epitaph.
“Can it really take so much effort to create something like that? An amateur would think it could be done in half a day.”
This observation elicited no response from the maid. And it was only a fraction of what Tsuda was thinking but didn’t say. He was comparing this aging sensei’s mission and his own. Alongside the sensei he installed the couple from Yokohama with nothing to do but rehearse old songs. He added Kiyoko to the same line-up, Kiyoko who apparently practiced flower arrangement and calligraphy for no particular reason. Finally, when he heard the maid describe the sole remaining guest as a man who neither spoke nor moved but only sat the livelong day gazing at the mountains, Tsuda said what he was thinking.