Tsuda searched somewhat gravely the faces of his aunt and uncle, but neither replied.
“As a matter of fact, my father wrote to say he couldn’t send money this month so I should manage on my own. Just like that — pretty brutal, I’d say.”
His uncle merely smiled.
“Big brother must be angry.”
“It’s O-Hide; she shoots her mouth off and makes everything worse.”
Tsuda spoke his younger sister’s name with distaste.
“O-Hide’s not to blame. I bet you’ve been on the wrong side of this from the beginning, Yoshio-san.”
“Maybe so. But show me the country where a son returns money his dad has sent him like change out of a cash register.”
“Then you shouldn’t have promised to pay back like a cash register in the first place. Besides—”
“Enough, Aunt! I get it!”
Tsuda stood up. It was clear from his demeanor that he had stood all he could manage. He departed hastily, making sure, however, to brace himself up following his defeat by dragging Kobayashi out with him.
[33]
OUTSIDE, THERE was no wind. As they walked briskly along, the quiet air was chilly against their cheeks. It was as if an invisible dew were falling softly from the starry sky high above them. Tsuda stroked the shoulder of his overcoat. Sensing distinctly in his fingertips the chill that had seeped inside the coat, he looked back at Kobayashi.
“It’s warm enough during the day, but nights are getting cold.”
“Autumn is upon us. Overcoat weather.”
Kobayashi was wearing nothing over his three-piece suit. Clomping along in his American clodhoppers with their decidedly square toes as he brandished his walking stick affectedly, he might have been a demonstrator protesting the chilly air.
“What happened to that coat you had made when we were in school, the one you were so proud of?”
The question was abrupt and surprising. Tsuda couldn’t help recalling the days when he had worn the coat ostentatiously.
“I still have it.”
“You still wear it?”
“I may be strapped just now, but do you suppose I still parade around in a coat from my student days?”
“I guess not. Perfect. Give it to me.”
“You can have it if you want it.”
Tsuda’s reply was on the chilly side. There was something contradictory about a man dressed in new clothes all the way to his socks and shoes wanting someone else’s worn-out overcoat. At the very least it was evidence of the unregulated ups and downs that lay along the path of Kobayashi’s material life.
“Why didn’t you order a coat along with the suit?” Tsuda asked presently.
“Don’t think about me as if I were you.”
“Fine, but how did you manage the suit and the shoes?”
“I resent your tone of voice. Things may be tough, but I haven’t started stealing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Tsuda said no more.
They came to the top of a hill. The slope visible across the broad valley below extended into the darkness like a beast’s back. Here and there the lights in houses glimmered like points of warmth in the autumn night.
“Say! How about stopping for a drink?”
Before replying, Tsuda glanced at Kobayashi to assess his mood. On their right was a high embankment the length of which was covered by a dense stand of bamboo. There was no wind to make the bamboo murmur, but the tips of the broad leaves, which appeared to have fallen asleep, were more than adequate to produce in Tsuda a feeling of desolation appropriate to the season.
“This is some gloomy spot. It must have been the back of a daimyo estate and now they just let it go. They should clear it so it can be developed.”
With these remarks Tsuda hoped to dodge the invitation, but Kobayashi wasn’t to be diverted by a bamboo grove.
“C’mon — for old time’s sake.”
“You were just drinking; you need more already?”
“What we just had doesn’t count as drinking.”
“You said you’d had enough when Uncle offered you a good-night cup.”
“I couldn’t get drunk in front of Sensei and his wife so I had no choice. And having too little is poison, worse than nothing at all. If you’re not careful to get appropriately smashed afterward, chances are you’ll be sick.”
Propounding his arbitrary logic, Kobayashi insisted, making him a troublesome companion.
“Drinks on you?”
The question was half a taunt.
“I don’t mind — why not!”
“Where should we go?”
“Anywhere — how about an o-den shop?*
In silence they descended the hill.
* O-den is a stew, largely vegetarian, kept simmering in a bottomless pot filled with murky broth, and consumed with sake on chilly nights.
[34]
THE WAY home took Tsuda to the right and Kobayashi straight ahead, but as Tsuda bid the other a polite farewell, touching his hand to his hat, Kobayashi looked at him piercingly and said, “I’ll go your way.” In the direction they were heading, places to eat and drink lined the street for several blocks. Midway along they came upon an establishment that might have been a bar, with a glass door warmly illuminated from the inside, and Kobayashi abruptly stopped.
“This looks good. Let’s go in here.”
“Not me.”
“We won’t find the kind of classy place you’d like around here — let’s make do with this.”
“I happen to be ill.”
“I guarantee you’ll be fine so you don’t have to worry.”
“You can’t be serious — I’m not setting foot in there.”
“How about if I promise to make the excuses to Mrs. T. on your behalf?”
Fed up, Tsuda moved quickly away, leaving Kobayashi where he stood. But his friend fell in alongside him and continued in a more serious tone.
“Is having a drink with me so very disagreeable?”
It was exactly that, very disagreeable. At Kobayashi’s words Tsuda stopped at once; the decision he expressed was entirely opposite his inclination.
“Let’s have a drink, then.”
Opening the illuminated glass door, they stepped inside. There were only five or six customers, but the room was narrow and appeared crowded. Having chosen seats facing each other in a corner that seemed easy of access, they eyed their surroundings, waiting for the sake they had ordered, with a certain curious unfamiliarity.
Judging by the dress of the other customers, there was no one in the bar with any social standing. A fellow who appeared to be on his way home from the bath, a wet towel over the shoulder of his kimono jacket, and another in a cotton robe and plain obi with a piece of artificial jade thrust ostentatiously into the drawstring of his jacket represented, if anything, the fashionable end of things. Very much at the opposite end was someone who could only have been a ragman. Intermingled with the others was also a laborer in his smock and worker’s tights.
“It’s a nice proletarian atmosphere.” Kobayashi observed, filling Tsuda’s cup with sake. His flashy, three-piece suit obtruded in Tsuda’s vision as if in contradiction of his remark, but Kobayashi himself seemed oblivious.
“Unlike you, I always feel in sympathy with the working class.”
Looking very much as if he were surrounded by a band of brothers, Kobayashi surveyed the room.
“See for yourself. Those physiognomies are finer than anything you’d find among the upper crust.”
In lieu of looking around him, Tsuda, lacking the courage to respond, peered at Kobayashi, who pedaled back a step.
“You have to admit they’re appealingly tipsy.”
“The upper class doesn’t get tipsy?”