Pulling the bag through his fist as if to wring it out, he mimed deftly once again throwing something into it and proceeded to produce magnificently a second egg from the bottom. As if this weren’t enough, he turned the bag inside out and displayed, apparently without embarrassment, the filthy striped lining inside. Even so, a third egg was effortlessly manifested with the same gestures. Handling it gingerly as though it were a valuable object, he placed it carefully on the ground alongside the others.
“Folks, I can show you as many of these as I please. But that wouldn’t be much fun, so let’s see what we can do about a live chicken.”
Tsuda turned around to his uncle’s child.
“Let’s go, Makoto. Uncle Tsuda’s on his way to your place.”
To Makoto, a live chicken was more important than Tsuda.
“You go—I want to watch.”
“He’s lying—you won’t see any live chicken if you watch all day.”
“How come? He did all those eggs, didn’t he?”
“Eggs aren’t chickens. He says that to trick people into staying around.”
“What for?”
Tsuda didn’t know the answer himself. Impatient now, he turned to leave, but Makoto took hold of his kimono sleeve.
“Uncle. Buy me something.”
Tsuda, who customarily escaped with a promise of “next time” whenever the boy pestered him and invariably forgot his promise on the next visit, replied in the usual manner.
“I will—”
“A car!”
“A car’s too large!”
“A small one—seven yen, fifty sen.”
Seven yen, fifty was most certainly too large for Tsuda. Without replying, he began to walk away.
“You promised last time and the time before—you’re a worse liar than that egg man.”
“He can do eggs, but there’s no way he can do a live chicken.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do—he can’t produce a chicken.”
“And Uncle Tsuda can’t even buy a car.”
“Hmm—maybe not. I’ll buy you something else.”
“Kid-leather shoes, then.”
Surprised, Tsuda walked a few feet in silence. Lowering his gaze, he looked at Makoto’s feet. There was nothing so shameful about his shoes, but they were a curious color somehow, neither brown nor black exactly.
“They were red until Father dyed them.”
Tsuda laughed aloud. It amused him that Fujii had dyed his son’s red shoes black. His impulse was to construe comically his uncle’s solution in his straitened circumstances to having provided his son with red shoes in ignorance of school regulations. He stared at the outcome of this extreme measure with an uncomfortable expression on his face.
[ 23 ]
“MAKOTO, THOSE are swell shoes. Really!”
“But nobody wears this color.”
“The color doesn’t matter; who else has shoes his own father has dyed for him? You should be grateful and take good care of them.”
“But the fellows all make fun of me—they call them shaggy dog fur.”
Uncle Fujii and the fur of a shaggy dog—connecting the words resulted in a new amusement. But this joke was accompanied by a certain poignancy.
“It’s not doggy fur; take your uncle’s word for that. They’re fine, they’re not shaggy dog, they’re outstanding—”
Tsuda faltered, groping for a word to pair with “outstanding.” Makoto wasn’t one to leave this hanging.
“Outstanding what?”
“Well, outstanding—footwear.”
If his wallet permitted it, Tsuda would like to have bought Makoto the leather lace-ups he wanted. He felt this would serve as partial repayment of his obligation to Uncle Fujii for his solicitude. He essayed a mental tally of the money in his billfold. But at this time he hadn’t the leeway to make an accommodation of this size. It would be different, he thought, if a money order should arrive from Kyoto, but to tighten the vice that held him before he knew for certain whether it would arrive at all would be a demonstration of generosity he couldn’t imagine anyone expected of him under the circumstances.
“Makoto. If you want leather shoes so badly, ask Auntie Nobu to buy them for you when you’re at our house. I’m low on cash right now, so I’m hoping you’ll give me a break on what I spend on you this time.”
Tsuda strolled along the broad street leading Makoto by the hand, as if to cajole him, and again, as if to console him. The street led directly to the end of the trolley line, and the ceaseless traffic of shoes and clogs as pedestrians tramped to and from the station had transformed it over the past four or five years into a burgeoning high street. On display in the show windows here and there was a gorgeous array of merchandise that could not be categorically ridiculed as edge-of-town items. Makoto dashed back and forth across the street, standing in front of a Korean candy store one minute and returning to this side the next to pause beneath the eaves of a goldfish shop. Each time he sprinted away there was a clinking of the marbles in his pocket.
“I won all these at school today.”
Thrusting one hand inside his pocket, he showed Tsuda a palm full of marbles. When the pale blue and purple spheres spilled as though cascading from his hand and scattered into the center of the road, he chased after them frantically. Looking over his shoulder, he petitioned Tsuda’s help with a shout.
In the end Tsuda was dragged into a toy store by this dizzying child of his uncle’s and required to buy him an air gun for one yen, fifty sen.
“You can shoot sparrows, but you mustn’t aim at people.”
“I couldn’t shoot a sparrow with a cheap air gun like this.”
“Only because you’re a lousy shot—if your aim is bad you won’t hit anything whatever gun you use.”
“Then will you shoot a sparrow for me? When we get home?” It seemed clear to Tsuda that he would be pressed to make good on any promise he recklessly offered, so he said something vague and changed the subject. Makoto reeled off a string of names unknown to him—Toda, Shibuya, Sakaguchi—and began critiquing his friends one after the other.
“That Okamoto is no fair. He gets them to buy him three pairs of shoes.”
The conversation returned to shoes. The Okamoto boy whom Makoto was criticizing was the son of a family with a deep connection to O-Nobu. Tsuda reflected in silence on a comparison of the two children.
[ 24 ]
“YOU PLAY at Okamoto’s place these days?”
“Nope.”
“You had another fight?”
“We didn’t fight.”
“Then why don’t you play?”
“Just don’t.”
It appeared that Makoto had more to say, and Tsuda wanted to know what it was.
“Don’t they give you all sorts of stuff when you go there?”
“Nope—not that much.”
“But they treat you—”
“We had rice curry last time, and it was too spicy.”
Spicy curry seemed an inadequate reason not to visit the Okamotos.
“That can’t be why you don’t like going there.”
“It’s not me—Father says I shouldn’t. I’d like to go and use the swing.”
Tsuda inclined his head in thought. What reason could his uncle have for preferring his son not to visit the Okamotos? A difference in sensibility, in family traditions, in lifestyle—all these occurred immediately. His uncle spent his days at his desk promulgating his vehement views with words in silence and wasn’t nearly as powerful in the actual world as with his pen. Secretly he was sensible of this discrepancy, and his perception had made him obstinate and somewhat reclusive. In that part of himself that feared venturing into a society where wealth and authority were paramount and being made a fool of by others, he appeared to be ceaselessly vigilant against the awful possibility that even the smallest corner of his personal domain should be contaminated by their values.
“Why don’t you ask your fa
ther what’s wrong with going to the Okamotos’?”
“I did—”
“What did he say? He didn’t say anything, right?”
“He did!”
“What?”
Makoto appeared a little embarrassed. Presently he stammered a reply in a somber tone of voice.
“He said if I go to Okamotos’ I’ll see, you know, all of Hajime’s things and come home and want, you know, the same stuff for myself. He says I’ll start pestering him to buy me things so I shouldn’t go over there—”
Now Tsuda saw the point. One family lived somewhat better than the other, and the difference in their wealth had to be reflected even in their children’s toys.
“So you only bother your old man about expensive stuff, cars and kid-leather shoes and lord knows what, things you saw first at Hajime’s house—whatever he has goes to the top of your shopping list, is that it?”
Half teasingly, Tsuda lifted a hand and tried clapping Makoto on the back. Makoto screwed his face into an expression that suggested an adult who has had an unattractive truth about himself exposed. Unlike an adult, he offered nothing in the way of self-justification.
“That’s a dirty lie.”
Pressing against his side the one-yen, fifty-sen air gun he had wheedled out of Tsuda, he took off in the direction of home. The marbles in his pocket clinked like prayer beads being vigorously fingered. From his backpack issued a bumping as of textbooks, perhaps, against a lunch box.
Pausing at a black board fence at the corner, he darted a glance back at Tsuda like a weasel and disappeared down the alley. Tsuda had traversed the alley and was stepping through Fujii’s gate at the far end when the bang of a gun sounded just yards ahead of him. With an uncomfortable smile he observed Makoto’s shadowed figure taking careful aim at him through the hedge fence on the right.
[ 25 ]
TSUDA HEARD his uncle’s voice in conversation with someone in the formal drawing room and, noticing through the lattice bars a pair of visitor’s shoes, turned away from the main entrance at once, without opening the front door, and made his way around the house toward the sitting room. The garden that might have been at one time a nursery was neither protected by a wooden gate nor enclosed inside a bamboo fence, so one had only to circumvent the kitchen entrance to a rental house that recently had been erected on the same property to reach the far end of the engawa that ran the length of the house on this side. Passing two or three tall tea bushes that were nonetheless a bit low to afford privacy, and beneath the persimmon tree that remained always vivid in his memory, he discerned his aunt’s figure in its customary place. As a reflection of her profile appeared in the glass set into the shoji, he called to her from outside.
“Hello, Auntie.”
His aunt slid back the shoji at once.
“What happened today?”
Without a word of thanks for the air gun he had bought for her son, she eyed Tsuda doubtfully. This was a woman who could never be accused of affability. On the other hand, depending on the time and the occasion, she was capable of a naturalness that far exceeded the bounds of normal reserve. There were times when her thorough-going naturalness, her innocence of affect, made her seem genderless. Tsuda was constantly comparing his aunt to Madam Yoshikawa. And he was invariably surprised by the difference between them. He marveled at how two women roughly the same age—his aunt had left forty behind three or four years ago—could convey to others such an entirely different feeling.
“I see you’re as charming as ever today.”
“Charming? What do you expect at my age?”
Tsuda sat down on the edge of the engawa. Without inviting him to step up, his aunt continued smoothing the red silk fabric across her lap with a light charcoal iron. Just then the maid, O-Kin, came in from the room next door with a kimono that had been unstitched and bowed to Tsuda, who addressed her at once.
“O-Kin-san, has your engagement been settled? If not, I could introduce you to someone promising—”
O-Kin colored slightly, smiling and nodding her head good-naturedly, and moved toward the engawa with a cushion for Tsuda. Halting her with a wave of his hand, he stepped up and into the room without waiting to be invited.
“Right, Auntie?”
“I suppose,” his aunt murmured absently; as O-Kin poured for Tsuda the obligatory cup of green tea, she looked up.
“O-Kin, you should ask Yoshio to do what he can; this is a good man and he means what he says.”
Unable to flee, O-Kin remained uncomfortably where she was. Tsuda felt obliged to say something more.
“I wasn’t flattering you—I meant it.”
His aunt appeared disinclined to continue the conversation. Just then the sound of Makoto firing his air gun rang out from the rear of the house and she turned toward the noise.
“O-Kin. You’d better go have a look. If he’s using buckshot it could be dangerous.”
Her expression conveyed her disapproval of Tsuda’s unnecessary purchase.
“You needn’t worry; I made sure he knows what not to do.”
“That’s not reassuring. You can bet that child will think it’s amusing to shoot at the chickens next door. Please take the pellets away no matter what he says.”
O-Kin took advantage of the moment to disappear from the sitting room. His aunt pulled the iron from the brazier where she had thrust it to heat up. Tsuda watched idly as the wrinkled silk fabric smoothed and extended on her lap while snatches of the conversation reached his ear from the drawing room.
“By the way, who’s the visitor?”
His aunt looked up as though surprised.
“You’re just noticing now; your hearing must be off. That voice is easy to recognize even from in here.”
[ 26 ]
SEATED WHERE he was, Tsuda struggled to identify the voice in the drawing room. Presently he slapped his knee with his hand.
“I know! Kobayashi!”
“Yes.”
His aunt’s simple answer was unsmiling and composed.
“So it’s Kobayashi. I saw the fancy red shoes and wondered who was putting on airs like an important guest paying a rare visit—If I’d known I wouldn’t have thought twice about using the front entrance.”
The image that rose to Tsuda’s mind was too familiar to him to require imagining. He recalled the odd outfit Kobayashi had been wearing when they had met last summer. Over a robe with a white crepe de chine collar, he had sported a dark blue kimono with a white splash pattern, a so-called Satsuma splash, a hakama with brown vertical stripes, and a see-through jacket of net; and in this outlandish get-up he might have been the proprietor of an umbrella shop who has stopped on his way out of a local funeral to place in the folds of his robe a thin wooden carton of ceremonial rice and red beans. At the time, he had explained that his Western suit had been lifted by a burglar. Whereupon he had begged a loan of some seven yen. A friend, sympathizing with his loss, had offered to gift him his own summer suit if he could find the means to buy it out of hock at a pawnshop.
“What’s so special about today that he goes into the great room and breaks out his fancy visitor’s manners?”
Tsuda posed the question with the hint of a smile.
“He has something to discuss with your uncle. It’s a subject it would be hard to talk about in here.”
“Really! Does Kobayashi have serious matters to discuss? Must be money, or if not—”
Observing the serious expression that had suddenly appeared on his aunt’s face, Tsuda pulled back in midsentence. His aunt lowered her voice a little. Her softened voice was, if anything, better suited to her composure.
“There’s also O-Kin’s engagement. If we say too much about that in here it’s bound to embarrass her.”
It was for that reason that Kobayashi, in contrast to his customary braying, was affecting a voice so gentlemanly that it was difficult to know, listening in here, who the speaker was.
“Has it been decided?”
??
?It seems to be going well.”
A glimmer of anticipation brightened his aunt’s eyes. Tsuda, who had been feeling expansive, reeled himself in.
“So I needn’t go to the trouble of making an introduction.”
His aunt regarded him in silence. Tsuda’s attitude, not superficial exactly but clowning and somehow hollow, appeared to be incongruent with her current feelings about life.
“Yoshio, was that your attitude when you chose your own bride?”
Not only was the question abrupt, but Tsuda hadn’t the slightest idea what she meant by asking it.
“I suppose I know what you mean by my attitude, but as the person in question, I myself have no idea so it’s a bit difficult to reply.”
“It makes no difference to me whether you reply or not—you try taking on responsibility for seeing a young woman happily on her way. It’s no trifling matter.”
Four years ago, lacking the means to provide his eldest daughter a dowry, Fujii had borrowed a considerable sum of money. No sooner had he finally paid off the loan than it was time to arrange his second daughter’s marriage. Now O-Kin was engaged and, if the arrangements should be settled, hers would be the third marriage he must finance. Her standing was of course different from his daughters’, and in that sense there was nothing preventing him from spending as little as he could manage; even so, the event would certainly strain the family’s household budget and cast a shadow over their current way of life.
[ 27 ]
AT A time like this, if Tsuda had been able to volunteer to cover even half the expense, the Fujiis, who had looked after him one way or the other for years, would certainly have deemed that a satisfactory recompense. At present, however, the most he was capable of by way of demonstrating sympathy for his aunt and uncle was to purchase the kid-leather shoes Makoto longed to wear. Even that, in accordance with the dictates of his wallet, must be put aside for the time being and carefully considered. As for begging Kyoto for an accommodation and using it to add a degree of luster to their finances, this was a kindness he was not inclined to undertake. His reluctance was partly due to his certainty that explaining the circumstances to his father would no more move him to action than his uncle could be induced to accept a loan if one were offered. He was left bound up in his own impatience about the money order arriving from Kyoto and displayed no sign of feeling much moved by his aunt’s complaint. Whereupon she spoke again.