It was only a matter of time until his attitude toward Kiyoko, affirmative on the surface and critical underneath, should make an appearance.
[186]
“I APOLOGIZE for last night.”
Abruptly Tsuda tried this approach. He was curious about the effect it might have on her.
“I’m the one who should apologize.”
Her reply came easily. Detecting no discomfort in it gave Tsuda cause to wonder.
Can it be that the surprise she felt last night is already in the past for her this morning?
If she were no longer able to recall what she had felt, his mission, for better or for worse, had been reduced to insignificance.
“I felt sorry afterward for having startled you.”
“Why did you, then?”
“I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help it because I didn’t know. I had no idea you were staying here.”
“But you came all the way from Tokyo with a present for me.”
“That’s true. But the fact is, I didn’t know. I ran into you by accident.”
“How can that be?”
Her response came as a surprise: clearly she was thinking his behavior had been intentional.
“Why would I have done that on purpose? Certainly not for my own amusement.”
“You seemed to have been standing there for quite a while.”
To be sure, he had been gazing at the water overflowing in the basin and peering at his reflection in the mirror. No question he had tarried, even combing his hair with the comb that had been lying there.
“What are you supposed to do when you get lost and have no idea where you’re going? There’s nothing you can do.”
“I suppose. But that wasn’t how it seemed to me.”
“Are you thinking I was lying in wait? You can’t be serious. I may have a prodigy of a nose, but it didn’t tell me when you’d be going to the bath.”
“Of course not! That’s silly.”
Kiyoko’s “Of course not!” was articulated with such conviction that Tsuda couldn’t help laughing.
“Why would you even suspect such a thing?”
“You must know why.”
“I don’t, I have no idea.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. It’s something that shouldn’t need explaining.”
Tsuda could only try approaching from a different angle.
“But what reason would I have to lie in wait for you at the end of a hallway? Just tell me that.”
“I can’t say—”
“There’s no need to be polite — please tell me.”
“I’m not being polite. I can’t say what I can’t say.”
“But it’s something you’re thinking, isn’t it? So if you wanted to, you should be able to come out with it.”
“There’s nothing on my mind — not a thing.”
This simple remark thwarted Tsuda’s advance even as it intensified his persistence.
“Then where does your suspicion come from?”
“If it’s wrong to be suspicious, I apologize. And I won’t be anymore.”
“But you’ve already doubted me.”
“I can’t help that. It’s true I doubted you. And I’ve admitted it. All the apologizing in the world won’t change that.”
“But why can’t you just tell me what it is you’re doubting?”
“But I already have.”
“That was only half of it, a third of it — I want the whole truth.”
“Oh my god! I don’t know what to say!”
“It’s so simple. All you have to say is I doubted such-and-such about you for such-and-such a reason and you’d be finished in one breath.”
Apparently distressed until that moment, Kiyoko suddenly appeared persuaded.
“That’s what you want to hear?”
“Obviously. That’s precisely what I want to hear, which is why I’ve persisted in making you miserable. But you keep trying to conceal it.”
“If only you’d said so right away. That’s not something I have to conceal. There is no reason. It’s just that you’re a person who does that sort of thing.”
“Lies in wait?”
“Yes.”
“That’s absurd!”
“I’m sorry, but the person I’ve seen you be is that sort of person.”
“I see—”
Folding his arms, Tsuda lowered his head.
[187]
PRESENTLY HE looked up again.
“It feels as though we’re arguing. I didn’t come here to argue with you.”
Kiyoko replied.
“I certainly didn’t mean for that to happen. I got swept away somehow, it wasn’t on purpose.”
“I know it wasn’t. Maybe it’s my fault for grilling you.”
“Maybe so.”
Once again, Kiyoko smiled. Discovering in her smile the same easiness he had identified before, Tsuda could forbear no longer.
“As long as we seem to be doing questions and answers, would you answer just one more?”
“Of course. Anything.”
The reply issued from someone prepared to respond to whatever question Tsuda wished to pose. That in itself disappointed him not a little before he had spoken.
She’s already forgotten everything, this woman.
Even as the thought formed, he recognized that this was characteristic. He felt a need to confirm this.
“You went pale last night, didn’t you, at the top of the stairs?”
“I suppose so. I couldn’t see my own face so I don’t know, but if you say I did, I must have.”
“Really? So I’m still not a total liar in your eyes? I’m grateful for that. So you’ll accept the facts as I perceive them?”
“Whether I accept them or not, if I truly went pale what can I say?”
“Exactly — and I think you also tensed.”
“Yes, I could feel that myself. It was so bad I felt I might collapse if I stood there any longer.”
“In other words, you were shocked.”
“Yes, I was utterly surprised.”
“Which is why—” Interrupting himself, Tsuda looked down at Kiyoko’s hands as, bending slightly forward, she carefully peeled an apple. The transformation, the lusciously colored skin curling under the knife and dropping to reveal gradually the pale, juicy whiteness of the fruit, recalled for Tsuda a time that was already more than a year in the past.
Can this be the woman who used to peel an apple for me just this way, in this same posture, in those days?
The way she held the knife and moved her fingers, her elbows almost touching her knees and her long kimono sleeves flaring open, everything was a replica of how it had been except for a single difference he noticed right away. A beautiful twin-stone ring adorned her finger. Nothing separated them so incontrovertibly as the glittering brilliance of those small gems. Gazing at the pliant movement of her fingers, Tsuda was lulled into a reminiscence like a dream in the midst of which, rapt as he was, he couldn’t avoid acknowledging the bright flash of a warning.
He quickly looked away from Kiyoko’s hands and glanced at her hair. The hairstyle the maid had alleged to have helped her with that morning was the conventional “eaves,” hair gathered in a bun on either side of her head. There was nothing unusual about her darkly lustrous hair except that it retained the regular, vertical furrows left by the teeth of the comb.
Resolved, Tsuda began again where he had left off.
“Which is why I’m wondering—”
Kiyoko didn’t look up. Tsuda continued anyway, undaunted.
“I’m wondering, since you were shocked last night, how you’re able to be so composed this morning.”