“Not at all,” Sakai replied cordially.
Although the day had been perfectly calm and the sun had shone brightly, Sōsuke came home to find Oyone waiting for him in the parlor, where, claiming that the house was still piercingly cold, she had set up the portable kotatsu in the middle of the room and hung his change of clothes over it.
It was the first time this winter that the kotatsu had been put to use by day. Although they had been using it at night for some time now, they had stored it by day in the six-mat room.
“But why did you drag it out in the middle of the parlor today?” Sōsuke asked.
“Well, we’re not expecting any guests, so it shouldn’t matter. Koroku is using the six-mat room, after all, and it would just be in his way there.”
This brought home to Sōsuke, as if for the first time, that Koroku was here to stay. He did up the sash around the warm machine-woven robe that Oyone helped him drape over his undershirt, and said, “True, this is our frigid zone here—we’ll have to install a fixed kotatsu just to make it bearable.” If the tatami in Koroku’s six-mat room were less than pristine, the room itself, with its southern and eastern exposure, was the warmest spot in the house.
After a few sips of the hot tea Oyone had brought him, he asked, “Is Koroku home?”
It was of course certain that his brother was there. But not the faintest sound could be heard from the six-mat room, and it seemed impossible that there could be anyone inside. As Oyone rose to call Koroku, Sōsuke stopped her: There was no need to speak to him right now. Then, burrowing under the quilt attached to the portable kotatsu, he lay stretched out on his side. Twilight had already made its presence felt in this room, where the shoji all faced the steep embankment. His arm pillowed beneath his head, he simply gazed into the dark, confined space, his mind blank. The noise made by Oyone and Kiyo in the kitchen sounded as remote to him as the stirrings of faceless neighbors. Before long the room was shrouded in darkness; he could see only the pale white of the shoji. And yet he kept perfectly still. He moved not a muscle, not even to call for a lamp.
When Sōsuke emerged from the darkness to take his place at the dinner table, Koroku also appeared out of the six-mat room and sat across from his brother. Apologizing for her forgetfulness, Oyone went to close the parlor shutters. Sōsuke felt an impulse to point out to Koroku that as evenings came on it might be nice if he helped his busy sister-in-law a bit by lighting lamps, closing shutters, and the like, but then, not wishing to say anything jarring to one so recently arrived under their roof, decided to say nothing at all.
Having waited for Oyone, the brothers picked up their bowls as soon as she returned to the table. Sōsuke took this opportunity to tell them about his chance encounter with Sakai outside the furniture shop on the way home, and how Sakai had bought a Hōitsu screen from the furniture dealer with the oversize glasses.
“Well!” Oyone murmured in surprise. After scanning her husband’s face for a moment, she said, “It must have been our screen, no doubt about it.”
Koroku was silent at first, but once he had heard enough of the couple’s exchange for the context to become clear, he asked, “So, just how much did you sell it for?”
Oyone darted a glance at her husband before answering this question.
As soon as dinner was over Koroku went straight to his room. Sōsuke returned to the kotatsu in the parlor. After a while Oyone came in to take the chill off her feet. In the course of their chat they agreed it would be a good idea to call on the Sakais next Saturday or Sunday and have a look at the screen.
The following Sunday, as was his habit, Sōsuke frittered away most of the morning, luxuriating in this once-a-week opportunity to sleep in. Oyone said she felt sluggish again and leaned back against the rim of the brazier, too weary, it seemed, to do anything. It crossed Sōsuke’s mind that at times like this she used to retreat for the morning to the six-mat room, when it was available, and he realized with a stab of remorse that in assigning the room to Koroku he had in effect deprived her of her one place of refuge.
He urged her to pull out the bedding and lie down in the parlor if she felt poorly, but she demurred. In that case, why not set up the portable kotatsu again, he persisted, saying that in fact he’d like to share it with her; and in the end he had Kiyo get out the quilt and frame and set them up in the parlor.
Koroku, having gotten up slightly before Sōsuke, had gone out somewhere and was not to be seen for the rest of the morning. Sōsuke made no effort to grill Oyone about his brother’s whereabouts. Lately he had been trying to spare Oyone the embarrassment of having to respond to such questions. Better that she castigated her brother-in-law’s conduct openly, he sometimes thought; he could then rebuff her accusations, or commiserate, as the situation demanded.
Even at noontime, Oyone was still resting by the kotatsu. Thinking that she was best left in peace, Sōsuke quietly informed Kiyo in the kitchen that he was off to the landlord’s, draped a sleeveless, Inverness-style cape over his everyday kimono, and went outside.
After being cooped up all morning in the gloomy parlor, Sōsuke found his spirits rising once he reached the street. The muscles beneath his bare skin taut against the cold wind, he reveled in the wintry sensation of instant bodily contraction, which led him to reflect as he walked along that it was not good for Oyone to stay indoors all the time like this; that as soon as the weather warmed up a bit, he must get her out in the fresh air before her health was seriously affected.
Passing through the Sakais’ gate he noticed a bright red swatch, incongruous at this season, tucked in the hedge that separated the approaches to the main entrance and to the kitchen door. On closer inspection he discovered it to be a doll’s tiny nightgown fastened to a branch of the hedge by means of a bamboo skewer inserted through the little sleeve. How resourceful, he thought, admiring the expert way in which it had been hung—and charming to boot! Sōsuke, who had no experience at all of being a father, let alone of having raised girls to the stage where they could manage such a neat trick, stood there for a while and gazed at the tiny red nightgown drying out nicely in the sun. It brought to mind the red shelves, with their array of five musician dolls, which, more than two decades ago, his parents had set up for his now deceased younger sister, along with the elegantly shaped rice cakes and the festive, cloudy cordial that looked sweet but actually tasted bitter.[38]
Sakai was at home, but Sōsuke was asked by the maid to wait in another room until the master had finished with his meal. No sooner had he been seated than there came from the next room the chatteringvoices of the persons responsible for the laundering of the little nightgown. When the maid slid open a panel to bring in some tea, Sōsuke could see behind her two pairs of wide-open eyes peering out in his direction. Later, when she carried in a brazier, a different face presented itself. All of this being quite new to him, it seemed that each time the panel opened there was a complete change of faces, and he could not keep track of how many children he had seen. When the maid had at last ceased her coming and going, one of the children slid the thickly papered panel open ever so slightly, no more than an inch, and in the gap revealed her shining black eyes. Beguiled, Sōsuke beckoned her silently. At this the door was slammed shut and, just behind it, a chorus of three or four voices erupted in peals of laughter.
Presently, one girl piped up, “All right, let’s play house again.” To which another, evidently an older sister, replied, “Okay, but today we’ll play house—foreign style. Now that means,” she went on to explain, “Tōsaku-san will be called ‘Papa’ and Yukiko-san ‘Mama.’”
“That’s silly—talking about your own mother like a stepmom.”[39] He heard another voice giggling with delight.
Then still another voice: “But what about me? I always have to be the O-baba,[40] so you have to tell us what the word for that is, too.”
“For ‘O-baba,’” explained the older sister, “just ‘O-baba’ is fine.”
There ensued a prolonged exchange o
f effusive greetings: “Please forgive the intrusion, but is anybody home?,” “And where might you come from, sir?,” interspersed with attempts to mimic a telephone ringing and the like. To Sōsuke’s ear it all sounded both delightful and exotic.
Just then Sōsuke heard the sound of approaching footsteps: no doubt the master of the house. As soon as they reached the next room a voice was heard commanding, “This is no place for you to be fooling around—we have a guest. Now go back where you belong.”
Immediately a little boy could be heard in protest, “No, Daddy, I won’t . . . Buy me a nice big horsey, please . . . or I won’t go.” The boy seemed very young; his words were not well formed, and they came out in awkward spurts, rendering his protest far from forceful. Sōsuke found this particularly charming.
By the time Sakai sat down with Sōsuke and apologized for keeping him waiting so long, the children had gone off somewhere else.
“Such high spirits—it’s wonderful,” Sōsuke exclaimed in all sincerity, but Sakai seemed to think he was only being polite.
“No, I’m afraid their behavior is pretty wild, as you saw,” he responded apologetically, then proceeded to recite the many needs of children and the endless trouble they caused. There was the time, for example, when they adorned the alcove with an elegant Chinese basket they’d stuffed full of charcoal briquettes; and another, when they filled a pair of lace-up boots he’d just had made with water and left some goldfish swimming around in them. These pranks struck Sōsuke as highly inventive. And then, Sakai continued, with most of his children being girls, there was the constant fuss about new clothes, and to make matters worse, if he went on a trip for so much as a couple of weeks, they looked as though they’d grown at least an inch when he returned. What with one thing or another, he felt he had his back against the wall even now, but then all too soon they’d be getting married, and the preparations would not only be ferociously hectic but no doubt financially ruinous. The childless Sōsuke took this all in without much sympathy. On the contrary, observing how for all Sakai’s complaints about his children, his face betrayed no trace of suffering at all, he felt envious.
Having waited for an opportune moment, Sōsuke now asked his host if he might have a glimpse of the screen that had been mentioned the other day. Sakai agreed with alacrity. Clapping his hands loudly, he summoned a manservant and ordered him to bring the screen over from the storehouse. Turning toward Sōsuke, he said, “It was standing right here until just a couple of days ago, but then the children—them again!—decided it was fun to hide behind the screen and fool around, so I was worried it might get damaged and had it put away in the storehouse.”
Sōsuke regretted having put Sakai to this bother and wished he had not mentioned the screen in the first place. In truth, he entertained only the mildest curiosity about the screen’s fate. After all, once a thing becomes the property of someone else, establishing whether or not it had originally belonged to one was of absolutely no consequence, practically speaking. Regardless of any second thoughts about the matter, however, the screen, as he had requested, was presently brought out from the storehouse, trundled along the veranda, and set before his eyes. As expected, it proved to be the very one that had until recently stood in his own parlor. This realization did not evoke in him any strong reaction at all. Nevertheless, to view it here, surrounded as it now was by the luster of the tatami on which they were sitting, the fine grain of the wooden ceiling, the objects in the alcove, and the patterns on the sliding partitions, to which could be added the elaborate care involved in its being borne from the storehouse by two servants—all of this, Sōsuke had to concede, made the screen look ten times more precious than when still in his possession. At a total loss for words, he went through the motions of gazing intently, as though at something new and fresh, at this thoroughly familiar object.
Under the misapprehension that his guest was a connoisseur, Sakai stood with one hand on the frame, shifting his glance from the screen to Sōsuke’s face and back again. When this failed to elicit the anticipated appraisal, he said, “The attribution is completely solid. Quality will out, they say.”
“Yes, of course,” said Sōsuke.
After another pause, the host repositioned himself just behind Sōsuke and launched into an appreciation of the screen, pointing at one detail or another with his finger and lecturing on the finer points. As one might expect of someone of his extravagance, he explained, the artist had made lavish use of the highest quality paints, which was one of the hallmarks of his works; the coloring was truly exquisite, and so on—remarks that all sounded quite original to Sōsuke, well-worn truisms though they were.
After what seemed to him a decent interval, Sōsuke thanked his host profusely and returned to his seat. Sakai likewise moved back to his cushion, where he started in on the screen’s inscription about “a country lane, the sky above” and the verse’s calligraphic style. Once again Sōsuke was impressed by his host’s extensive interests in haiku and calligraphy. Indeed, so wide was the scope of things about which he appeared knowledgeable that Sōsuke could only wonder when the man had managed to store up all this erudition in his head. Ashamed of his own ignorance, he strained to keep his responses to a bare minimum in order to give full attention to Sakai’s comments.
His guest showing scant signs of interest in haiku and calligraphy, Sakai shifted the conversation back to painting. He graciously offered to show Sōsuke any scrolls or albums among his holdings that he might wish to see, not that there was anything of great distinction, he added. Sōsuke indicated that regrettably he had no choice but to forgo the opportunity . . . but incidentally—and he apologized here for his bluntness—how much, he wondered, had Sakai paid for the recently acquired screen?
“Well, it was really like stumbling on a hidden treasure. I got it for just eighty yen,” his host replied.
Shall I tell him the whole story or not? Sōsuke thought to himself and hesitated for a moment, but it came to him in a flash that owning up to the truth would be entertaining for both of them. At length he said, “Well, actually . . .” and told all, from beginning to end.
Sakai heard his guest out with a few little gasps of surprise along the way. At last he said, “So it was not out of some passion for calligraphy and painting that you asked to see the screen!” and burst out laughing, clearly much amused at his own mistaken assumptions. At the same time he expressed regret at not having dealt directly with Sōsuke nor having settled on a price that was still considerably less than what he had actually paid. He finished with a vehement denunciation of the furniture dealer: “What a scoundrel!”
After this, Sōsuke and Sakai fell into a kind of friendship.
10
SŌSUKE received no more visits from his aunt or his cousin. He, of course, had no time to visit them in their home in Kōjimachi Ward, nor, for that matter, any strong inclination to do so. The two families might be related by ties of blood, but the same sun did not shine down on both houses.
True, Koroku paid the Saekis a visit now and then for a chat, although not, it seemed, with any frequency. Upon his return from such visits, he seldom passed on to Oyone any news of his aunt and cousin. Oyone suspected that the silence might be calculated on Koroku’s part. But feeling as she did that she and his aunt had very little in common, she was if anything quite relieved not to hear about the woman’s sundry doings.
Still, Oyone managed to receive occasional updates on the Saekis by listening in on conversations between Koroku and Sōsuke. Just a week earlier, Koroku had told his brother how very hard Yasunosuke was working in an effort to market another invention. This one had to do with a machine that, from Koroku’s sketchy account, anyway—it had something to do with producing printed matter without recourse to ink—sounded potentially very valuable. The complex nature of this process being utterly foreign to anything in her experience, Oyone simply listened in silence, as was her wont in any case. Sōsuke, being a man, found his curiosity piqued by the project and r
esponded with spirited questions about how inkless printing might be possible.
Lacking any specialized knowledge of the subject, Koroku could hardly be expected to provide many details. He simply related all that he could recall of Yasunosuke’s description. Basically, this new printing process, which had recently been invented in England, came down to still another novel application of electricity. One pole of an electric current gets attached to the type and the other to a sheet of paper. Then all you have to do is press the paper down against the type and in a flash, Koroku explained, the print is transferred to the paper surface.[41] Ordinarily the print is black, but with adjustments it can be changed easily enough to red or blue when color is needed, thus eliminating the time required for drying between applications; and when it’s applied to printing newspapers, over and above the savings on ink and rotary presses, a whole printing run requires twenty-five percent less labor than what’s needed for the current process—from which you can just see how incredibly promising this business will be in the future . . . Once again, Koroku merely repeated what his cousin had told him.
Into Koroku’s recounting there crept a suggestion that Yasunosuke already had this rosy future firmly in his grasp, and the young man’s eyes seemed to gleam with the reflection of his own bright future, assured by his cousin’s success. Sōsuke, meanwhile, took in Koroku’s fervent report with his customary nonchalance, and even when his brother had finished, did not interject any particular criticisms. For in truth he felt that the purported invention appeared on the one hand perfectly plausible, on the other a complete fantasy; until his cousin’s scheme played out one way or another in the real world, it was not for him either to support or to oppose it.
“So, he’s given up on the bonito boats?” Oyone, who had listened in silence, spoke up for the first time.
“It’s not that he’s given them up,” Koroku replied, taking on the role of promoter for Yasunosuke’s enterprises. “But those would be very expensive items. No matter how useful they’d be, I gather that there just aren’t enough people who could afford them.”