“Yoshio-san. What were you thinking then, when you took a wife?”
“I wasn’t joking, if that’s what you’re getting at. I may not be much, but you do me an injustice if you conclude I’m such a lightweight that my feet are floating above the ground.”
“I know you were serious. I don’t doubt you were being genuine, but there are degrees of genuineness—”
These words, which some might have taken as insulting, Tsuda attended with curiosity.
“Then why don’t you tell me how I seem to you. Please say what you really think.”
His aunt lowered her gaze and half smiled, fiddling with the unstitched kimono fabric. For some reason, possibly because she wasn’t looking him in the face, he felt suddenly uncomfortable. But he knew there was no danger of allowing his aunt to overwhelm him.
“You might be surprised how serious I can be when it’s necessary.”
“You’re a man after all. There must be a part of you that’s put together properly or you couldn’t survive at work every day. Even so—”
His aunt started to say something and, as if she had suddenly thought better of it, changed course.
“Enough of that. There’s no point in discussing it after all this time.”
Folding carefully the piece of red silk she had been ironing, she put it away in a thickly glazed paper wrapper. Seeing then the somehow deflated look on Tsuda’s face, an expression that managed to signal that he was feeling ungratified, she observed, as though having abruptly realized it for the first time, “Yoshio-san, in general you’re too extravagant.”
She had been scolding Tsuda about this implacably since the day he had graduated from college. He had never doubted that she was right. Nor had he ever considered it such a very bad thing.
“I’m a bit extravagant, yes—”
“Not just your clothes and food. You’re a showy, extravagant person at heart and that’s a problem. You’re like a man who constantly peers around the corner looking for the next delicious thing to eat and always wants more.”
“You make me sound like a beggar.”
“Not a beggar. But you do appear to be someone who isn’t naturally serious enough. It would be nice, admirable even, if you could learn to feel content with an ordinary portion of life.”
At that moment, Tsuda felt the shadow of his aunt’s daughters, cousins to him, graze his mind. Both were already married. The elder had accompanied her husband to Taiwan when they married four years ago and still resided there. The younger, who had become a bride just recently, around the time of his own wedding, had been taken off to Fukuoka immediately after the ceremony. Fujii’s firstborn son also happened to be in Fukuoka, where he had matriculated at Kyushu University just this year.
In Tsuda’s eyes, though he was in a position to have married easily either one he chose, neither of these cousins had been appropriate candidates for his wife. So he had moved on as though oblivious. Reviewing his attitude at the time in light of his aunt’s remarks, he could find nothing in particular to be guilty about, which allowed him to face her with equanimity. Just then she rose abruptly and, opening the lid of a Chinese trunk inside the armoire, put away the lacquered paper parcel of fabric.
[ 28 ]
IN THE small tatami room at the rear of the house, Makoto, who had been reviewing his lessons with O-Kin, began abruptly to recite from his reader French sentences incomprehensible to her, purposely interposing between each syllable a long interval: je-suis-poli, tu-es-mal-ade, and so forth. Tsuda was listening with his usual amusement to the shrill second-grader’s voice when this time the pendulum clock on the wall above his head spoke up, sounding the hour. Taking from the folds of his kimono where he had deposited it the bottle of castor oil, he examined the color of the viscous liquid with a look of distaste. Just then his uncle spoke as though he had been prompted even in the drawing room by the sound of the clock.
“Let’s join the others.”
With Kobayashi in tow, he came along the engawa into the sitting room. Tsuda, straightening where he sat, paid his respects to his uncle and turned at once toward Kobayashi.
“You certainly appear to be doing well. That’s quite a suit you’ve had made.”
Kobayashi’s jacket was a coarse fabric that might have been homespun. And no one could have failed to see from the sharp crease in his trousers, a striking contrast to his habitual rumpled look, that they had just come from the tailor. He sat down facing Tsuda with his feet beneath him as if to conceal the odd color of his socks.
“Are you kidding? You’re the one who’s doing well.”
Noticing the tag attached to a three-piece suit hanging in some department store window, he had ordered one made for himself at exactly the same price.
“This cost me twenty-six yen, a real bargain. I don’t know how it looks to a big spender like you, but I can tell you it’s plenty good enough for the likes of me.”
In the presence of his aunt, Tsuda lacked the courage to disparage Kobayashi further. He held his tongue and, asking for a teacup, drank down the castor oil with a shudder. All present in the room observed him wonderingly.
“What’s that garbage you’re drinking? Is that supposed to be medicine?”
Tsuda’s uncle hadn’t been sick a day in his life, and his ignorance where medicine was concerned was extraordinary. Even castor oil was a mystery to him. When Tsuda proceeded to explain his current situation, using words like “surgery” and “out-patient procedure,” his uncle, who had no experience negotiating with illness, appeared unmoved.
“You came all the way over here to tell us that?”
With an expression on his face that might have been saying “You needn’t have bothered,” he stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. It was a beard that appeared to be growing by itself more than being grown, a garden untended by a gardener, and sprouting wildly here and there on his face it made him look like an old man.
“Young people these days are mostly unhealthy. Always sick with some crazy thing.”
His aunt glanced at Tsuda and smirked. Tsuda, familiar with the history that preceded his uncle’s recent harping on “young people these days” as if it were a verbal tic, returned her grin. He had grown up on old saws like “ill body, sick mind” and “illness is the legacy of the father’s sins”; understanding now that they could be interpreted as expressions of his uncle’s pride in himself for never falling ill, he was the more amused. With a half smile still on his face, he turned to Kobayashi. Kobayashi spoke up at once, but what he said was the opposite of Tsuda’s expectation.
“There are some young people these days who don’t get sick. Take me; I haven’t had to stay in bed once recently. It appears to me that people don’t get sick if they’re poor.”
Tsuda was annoyed.
“Hogwash!”
“I beg your pardon—you’re sick as often as you are because you can afford it.”
The seriousness of the speaker propounding this illogical conclusion made Tsuda want to laugh in his face. Whereupon his uncle chimed in with his ratification.
“You’re right about that. What’s more, once you’re sick all you can do is lie there and suffer.”
In the growing dimness of the room, his uncle’s face appeared darkest of all. Tsuda rose and switched on the light.
[ 29 ]
TSUDA’S AUNT reappeared from the kitchen, where she had withdrawn at some point to rattle plates and bowls with help from O-Kin and the scullery maid.
“Yoshio-san, please stay for dinner, it’s been such a long time.”
Tsuda declined on grounds that he was going in for treatment in the morning and rose to leave.
“We were expecting only Kobayashi so there may not be a ton of food to go around, but you should stay and keep us company.”
Unused to being spoken to this way by his uncle, Tsuda felt strangely moved and sat back down to stay.
“Is something going on today?”
“Not exactly…. Kobayashi here
—”
Uncle Fujii stopped and looked at Kobayashi, who grinned as if pleased with himself.
“Has something happened to you?”
“I wouldn’t say happened—in any event, when things are settled I’ll come over to your place and explain in detail.”
“As you know, I’ll be in the hospital beginning tomorrow.”
“Not a problem. I’ll make it a sick call while I’m at it.”
Kobayashi persisted, asking for the location of the hospital and the doctor’s name very much as if this were knowledge he crucially required. Learning that the doctor’s name was the same as his own, Kobayashi, he remarked “Oh! He must be Hori-san’s—” and abruptly fell silent. Hori was Tsuda’s brother-in-law. Kobayashi was aware that he had recently been to see this doctor in the neighborhood for an ailment of a very particular nature.
Tsuda felt he wouldn’t mind hearing the details Kobayashi had referred to. It seemed likely they had to do with O-Kin’s marriage, to which his aunt had alluded. And it seemed possible they might not. Though Kobayashi’s pointed vagueness had somewhat aroused Tsuda’s curiosity, in the end he didn’t extend an explicit invitation to visit him at the hospital.
When, on grounds that he was going in for surgery, he refrained from touching the dishes his aunt had specially prepared, meat and fish and even the rice steamed with mushrooms he was usually so fond of, even she appeared uncharacteristically to feel sorry for him and sent O-Kin out for the bread and milk he was allowed to have. Tsuda winced to himself at the thought of the doughy bread made locally, which stuck in the spaces between his teeth as if held there by glue, but fearing a little to be labeled extravagant yet again, he merely gazed docilely at O-Kin’s back as she left the room. When she was gone, his aunt said to his uncle in front of everyone,
“It would be so wonderful if that child’s engagement were resolved this time.”
“It will be.” Fujii’s response was unhesitating.
“Things seem extremely promising.”
Kobayashi’s comment was also buoyant. Only Tsuda and Makoto remained silent.
When Tsuda heard the suitor’s name, he had the feeling he had met him once or twice at his uncle’s house, but he retained no memory of him.
“Does O-Kin-san know him?”
“She knows what he looks like. She’s never spoken to him.”
“So he’s never spoken to her either—”
“Of course not.”
“It’s amazing a marriage can happen that way.”
Tsuda was confident that his logic was irrefragable; as a demonstration of his confidence to the others, he assumed an expression more confounded than aghast.
“How should it happen? You think everyone must behave just as you did when you were married?”
His uncle’s tone of voice as he turned to Tsuda suggested his mood had soured a little. Tsuda felt some regret; his response had been directed to his aunt.
“That’s not it at all. I didn’t mean to suggest there was anything unfortunate about a marriage being decided under those circumstances. As long as things are settled, the circumstances make no difference.”
[ 30 ]
BUT THE mood in the room had already gone flat. The conversation had flowed along pleasantly enough until now, but following Tsuda’s remark there occurred a cessation, as if a dam had been suddenly closed, and no one ventured to pick up where it had left off. Kobayashi, pointing at the beer glass in front of him, spoke to Makoto at his side in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Makoto-san, shall I pour you a glass? Have a little drink.”
“I hate bitter stuff.”
Makoto kicked aside the invitation, drawing a chortle from Kobayashi, who hadn’t intended serving him in the first place. Perhaps the child believed he had made a friend; he spoke up to Kobayashi abruptly.
“I have a one-yen, fifty-sen air gun—want to see it?”
Standing at once, Makoto ran to the room at the rear of the house; when he returned a minute later with his new toy, Kobayashi felt obliged under the circumstances to admire the shiny weapon. It was also necessary that Tsuda’s aunt and uncle profess an obligatory word of endearment for their exuberant child.
“He’s always pestering his impoverished old man to buy him something, a watch, a fountain pen, whatever. I’ll say one thing, it seems he’s recently given up on a horse and that takes some pressure off.”
“Actually, horses are surprisingly inexpensive. If you go to Hokkaido you can pick one up for five or six yen.”
“As if you’d been there.”
Thanks to the air gun, tongues loosened and the conversation ranged. The subject of marriage surfaced yet again. This was unquestionably the sequel to the earlier discussion that had broken off. However, the participants’ remarks were governed by their moods, which had changed little by little from before.
“It’s a curious business. Just because two people who know nothing about each other get together, there’s no guarantee they’ll end up estranged, and by the same token who’s to say that a couple who prefer each other above everyone else will live in harmony forever after?”
There was no way but this to summarize honestly the reality his aunt had experienced all her life. And her desire to install O-Kin’s marriage out of harm’s way in one corner of this large truth was less a defense than an explanation. In Tsuda’s view, however, this explanation was supremely incomplete and supremely unreassuring. And while his aunt had expressed doubts about his sincerity where marriage was concerned, he couldn’t help thinking that, on this head, it was she who lacked fundamental seriousness.
“Those are the words of a privileged man,” she snapped at him defensively. “You talk about courting and engagements and whatnot, but can the likes of us afford luxuries like that? As long as there’s a taker, or someone to come into our family, we have to be thankful for that, that’s all we can hope for.”
In deference to all present, Tsuda was disinclined to comment on O-Kin’s particular situation. The matter neither concerned nor interested him sufficiently to comment; it was simply that he felt constrained, in order to paint over his aunt’s doubts about his own seriousness, to point out the superficiality of her position, and was thus unable to keep silent. Inclining his head to one side as though deep in thought, he spoke.
“I have no desire to say anything critical about O-Kin’s situation. I just wonder if it’s acceptable to think about marriage in general quite so simply. That strikes me as not adequately serious, that’s all—”
“But, Yoshio-san, if the bride decides to go to wife seriously, and the husband becomes serious about accepting her, where is there room for anything less than serious to be involved?”
“I just wonder if it’s so easy to become serious all of a sudden.”
“I’m proof that it is. Otherwise why would I have married into a house like this and worked as hard as I do to be a good wife?”
“I’m sure that’s true for you, Auntie, but young people these days…”
“People are no different now than they were in the past. Everything depends on your own determination.”
“If that’s your conclusion, there’s nothing to discuss.”
“There’s no need for a discussion. If you look at the facts, I win and you lose. There’s no way of knowing that a man who marries his bride after careful picking and choosing is one bit more serious than a man who hasn’t chosen yet and can’t feel sure.”
Like a man who has decided that the time has come for him to enter the fray, Tsuda’s uncle, who had been picking at the meat, lifted his eyes from his plate.
[ 31 ]
“YOU TWO are at each other; this doesn’t sound like a debate between aunt and nephew.”
He had stepped between them, but not as a referee or a judge.
“I sense some hostility—have you quarreled?” The remark was a caution in the guise of a question. Kobayashi, who had been playing marbles with Makoto, stole a glance in their direction.
Tsuda and his aunt fell silent at the same time. In the end Fujii had to assume a mediator’s attitude after all.
“Yoshio, this may be hard to understand for young people these days, but your aunt isn’t lying. She knew nothing about me when she married into this family, but she was already prepared and determined to make a go of it. She was just as serious before she’d even arrived as after.”
“Even I know that without having to ask.”
“But hold on a minute—in case you’re interested in knowing why your aunt had resolved to take a huge step like that—”
The alcohol in Uncle’s system was making its rounds; like someone who feels a duty to provide moisture to his burning face, he lifted his glass again and took a long pull of beer.
“Truth be told, I’ve never said a word about this to anyone until now—would you like to hear the explanation?”
“Indeed I would.”
Tsuda was half serious.
“Truth be told, your aunt had eyes for this old boy. In other words, this was where she wanted to end up from the beginning. So even before she came she was fiercely determined.”
“Such nonsense! Who would have anything like eyes for a man with a face like yours?”
Tsuda and Kobayashi guffawed. Makoto, left alone with his bewilderment, turned to his mother.
“What’s having eyes for?”
“I have no idea, ask your father.”
“Father? What’s it mean to have eyes for?”
Grinning, Fujii rubbed the middle of his bald head tenderly. To Tsuda—perhaps he was seeing things—the skull appeared slightly redder than usual.
“Makoto—to have eyes for someone means—to like them a lot.”
“What’s wrong with that?”