He was of course unable to forget as well the phantom of his hostess sitting amid this whorl of colors. Walking along, he recalled bits and pieces of their conversation. And when he came upon a certain portion of it he sampled its flavor, chewing, as if it were a mouthful of toasted soybeans.
It might just be that she still has a mind to say something to me about the incident. The truth is, I don’t want to hear it. Yet I’m eager to hear.
Instantly, proclaiming to himself both tenets of the contradiction, he colored in the middle of the dark street, like a man who has exposed his own weakness. Hoping to get beyond his red face, he forced himself to proceed.
Assuming the lady does have something to say to me, I wonder what her point will be.
For the moment, he was unable to resolve his own question.
Does she intend to mock me?
He couldn’t say. She had always been a woman who enjoyed needling others. And their relationship provided her with an abundance of the freedom she needed for that activity. Beyond that, she had become over time, without noticing, a result of social privilege, imprudent. To sample the simple pleasure it gave her to aggravate him, she might well overstep the boundaries of decorum.
And if not that, could it be sympathy? Or because she makes me too much a favorite?
Another question he couldn’t answer. Until now she had been truly kind to him and, more than kind, a patron.
Coming to a thoroughfare, he boarded a streetcar. Outside the window glass as it proceeded along the moat, there was only dark water and a dark embankment with a darker tangle of pine trees atop it.
Taking a seat in a corner of the car, he glanced momentarily at the chilly scenery in the autumn night and had at once to return to other thoughts. Last night he had set aside the irksome subject of money, but his circumstances required that he raise some one way or another. His thoughts returned to Yoshikawa’s wife.
It would have been so easy if I’d revealed my situation to her when I had the chance.
He began to regret having come away so quickly, thinking that was the tactful thing to do. Even so, he lacked the courage to return now with nothing but this errand in hand.
Alighting from the streetcar, he was crossing a bridge when he saw a beggar squatting in the darkness beneath the railing. Like a moving shadow, the beggar bowed darkly as he passed. Tsuda was wearing a light overcoat. He had moreover just left the warming flame in a gas heater that was, if anything, still early for the season. Yet there was no room in his head for appreciating the gap between himself and the beggar. He felt like a man caught in a vice. It was a terrible inconvenience that his father hadn’t remitted his regular monthly stipend.
[14]
HE ARRIVED home in the same mood. He reached for the lattice in his front gate, and before it opened the shoji slid quietly back and he became aware that the figure of O-Nobu had appeared before him. He gazed at her profile, lightly made up, as though in surprise.
Since his marriage he had often been surprised by his wife in this way. Her actions were capable of making him feel preempted, but there were times when her swiftness proved extremely useful. Sometimes as she went about the business of daily life, he observed her movements, which manifested this special agility of hers, as if he were watching the glinting of a knife as it passed before his eyes. The feeling was of something small but acute that was at the same time somehow repellant.
At this particular moment it occurred to Tsuda that some power of O-Nobu’s had enabled her to foreknow his return. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask how this could be. To request an explanation and be turned aside with a laugh would feel like a defeat for the husband.
He went inside as if he hadn’t noticed and changed out of his kimono at once. In front of the brazier in the sitting room, a black lacquer tray with feet attached had been covered with a cloth as though awaiting his arrival.
“You stopped off somewhere again today?”
It was a question O-Nobu could be counted on to ask if Tsuda failed to return at the expected hour. He was obliged accordingly to offer something in reply. Since it wasn’t necessarily the case that he had been delayed by an errand, there were times when his response was oddly vague. At such times he avoided looking at O-Nobu, who would have put on makeup for him.
“Shall I guess?”
“Go ahead.”
This time, Tsuda had nothing to worry about.
“The Yoshikawas.”
“How did you know?”
“I can usually tell by how you seem.”
“Is that so? Not that it was hard to figure out today — I said last night that I intended to set the date for surgery after speaking with Yoshikawa-san.”
“I would have guessed even if you hadn’t said anything.”
“Really? You’re so clever.”
Tsuda related to O-Nobu only the gist of his conversation with Yoshikawa’s wife.
“And when are you planning to go in?”
“It seems I can go anytime.”
Tsuda didn’t mention the oppressive urgency he was feeling to do something about money before he had his surgery. It wasn’t by any means a large sum. But for precisely that reason a simple solution to raising it was evading him and causing additional aggravation. Briefly his thoughts turned to his younger sister in Kanda, but he had no heart for presenting himself at her door. In consideration of swollen household expenses since his marriage, his father had been helping make ends meet by sending money from Kyoto every month with the understanding that Tsuda would repay a portion of the loan out of his year-end and summer bonuses. This summer, circumstances had prevented him from keeping his end of the bargain, and as a consequence his father was already in a disagreeable mood. His sister, who knew all about this, tended to sympathize with their father. From the beginning, in consideration of her husband, he had felt that broaching money matters to his sister was somehow unseemly; now he was more than ever put off by the thought. It appeared, assuming it couldn’t be avoided, that the only thing to do, as O-Nobu had urged, was to write again to his father with an appeal. It occurred to him that including a somewhat exaggerated description of his illness would be a good tactic. Embellishing the reality to a degree that wouldn’t worry his parents excessively was a manipulation that ought to be manageable without suffering the pangs of conscience.
“I think I’ll take your suggestion last night and write my father again.”
“I see. But don’t—”
O-Nobu stopped and looked at her husband. Paying no heed, Tsuda went upstairs and sat down at his desk.
[15]
TAKING FROM his desk drawer the Western-style stationery he normally used, lavender paper and matching envelope, he had written several lines absently with his fountain pen when a thought occurred abruptly. His father didn’t normally expect, nor was he likely to be pleased to receive, a letter from his son scrawled with a fountain pen in colloquial Japanese. Conjuring his father’s face halfway across the country, he put down his pen with an uncomfortable smile. Once again he was struck by the feeling that sending a letter would accomplish nothing. On a scrap of thick, scratchy parchment similar to charcoal paper, he sketched carelessly his father’s long, narrow face complete with goatee and considered what to do.