“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.
“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.