“I went ahead and declined, and they said I should come along by all means.”
“But that’s—”
Tsuda faltered. Because there were things he still wanted to say, his mind refused to function as rapidly as he wished.
“—how could they press you after you’d turned them down?”
“They just did — Uncle Okamoto is a mule.”
Tsuda went silent. He wasn’t sure how he ought to proceed with his inquiry.
“You won’t take me at my word? I hate it when you doubt me this way.”
O-Nobu’s bunching eyebrows signaled emphatically her displeasure.
“I’m not doubting you — there’s just something odd about it.”
“Really! Then you tell me what you think is odd and I’ll explain until you’re satisfied.”
Unfortunately, Tsuda couldn’t say with any preciseness what was odd.
“So you are doubting me!”
Tsuda had the feeling that a failure to declare the absence of any particle of doubt would reflect on his character as a husband. At the same time, to be seen as a pushover by a woman would be painfully distasteful. Despite the battle for supremacy inside him between these two aspects of his ego, he appeared cool and collected on the surface.
“Aah—” With a faint sigh, O-Nobu quietly stood. Sliding back the shoji, which she had carefully closed, she stepped out on the engawa that opened to the south and, placing her hands on the railing, gazed vacantly up at the clear, high, autumn sky. In back of the laundry next door, white shirts and sheets, hung on poles to dry with no spaces between them, were swaying in the crisp breeze as before.
“What a beautiful day!”
O-Nobu spoke the words quietly as though to herself. Tsuda had the sudden feeling that he had been given to hear an appeal from a small bird in a cage. He felt vaguely sorry about tethering a weak woman to his side. He wanted to speak to O-Nobu, but he couldn’t think of an avenue back to the conversation. O-Nobu was still leaning against the railing, in no hurry to come inside.
At that moment the nurse reappeared from downstairs with their food.
“Here we are.”
Tsuda’s tray held only two eggs, a small cup of soup, and some bread. The portion of bread, ordained at some point by the doctor, was one-half of half a small loaf.
Lying on his stomach on the mattress, Tsuda wolfed his food and, when the moment came, spoke up.
“Which is it? Going or not going?”
O-Nobu lowered her fork at once.
“That depends on you. I’ll go if you say I may; otherwise I’ll stay.”
“You’re so obedient.”
“I am, always. Even Okamoto said I should ask you and he’d take me if you agreed. He told me to ask if you weren’t too sick.”
“But you phoned them.”
“I did, I promised to — I said no once, but there was always the possibility that I could go after all, depending on how you seemed, so he asked me to get in touch once more by noon to let him know how you were doing.”
“That’s what Okamoto wrote back to you?”
“Yes.”
But O-Nobu hadn’t shown Tsuda the letter.
“And how do you really feel about it? Do you want to go or not?”
“Of course I’d like to.”
“So the truth is out. Off you go, then.”
With this conversation, they finished their lunch.
[45]
BY THE time O-Nobu had seen to it that her postoperative husband was reposing comfortably on his mattress and descended the stairs alone, the hour when she was expected had come and gone. Giving the rickshaw man the name of the theater and nothing more, she climbed into the cab at once. The rickshaw that was waiting for her in front of the gate was the newest among the four or five lined up at the station on the corner.
Emerging from the side street, her vehicle with its modern rubber tire wheels stuck to main, trolley streets. The rickshaw man seemed to be racing along to no purpose except his eagerness to reach the bustling part of town, and his exuberant gait was contagious. Installed on the thick, well-cushioned seat, O-Nobu felt, even as she experienced a rush of movement in her body, an uplifting of her spirits on a wave of something gentle and cheerful. She was borne aloft by the pleasure of proceeding headlong to her destination with no concern for the teeming humanity surrounding her.
In the speeding rickshaw she hadn’t the leisure to think about things at home. The image she retained, of Tsuda reclining in good spirits on the second floor of the clinic, provided her assurance that she might safely put him out of her mind for this one day at least, and she was entirely untroubled by thoughts of him. Rushing along with her was only what lay ahead. Having never fancied theater in particular, she was less concerned about arriving late than eager to be quickly there. Her breakneck journey in the brand new rickshaw was exciting, and so, in that same sense, was arriving at the theater.
The rickshaw stopped in front of the teahouse connected to the theater. As she responded to the woman who emerged to greet her with “Okamoto,” O-Nobu took in a glittering impression of lanterns, indigo banners at the entrance, silk and paper flowers of crimson and white. But before she had fairly managed to organize the colors and shapes that confronted her all at once as she alighted, she was ushered down a long corridor and found herself peering all of a sudden into the theater itself, a heaping sea of patterns spun into a tapestry many times richer and more intricate than what she had just seen. Such was her feeling as she gazed into the distance through a crack in the door at the end of the corridor that the man from the teahouse had opened for her with a polite “This way, please.” To O-Nobu, who took inordinate pleasure in coming to such places, there was nothing so very unfamiliar about the excitement she was feeling, and yet it felt always like a new excitement. It was, in other words, a perennially unfamiliar feeling. As with a person who traverses the dark and suddenly emerges into the light, O-Nobu’s eyes opened. The awareness that she was about to move from a far corner into the living pattern in front of her, to become a part of it, her every gesture and action woven into its fabric, rose distinctly through her nervousness.
Uncle Okamoto appeared to be absent from the audience. As only his wife and two daughters were there, there was plenty of room for O-Nobu to sit. Even so, the elder daughter, Tsugiko, apparently concerned that O-Nobu’s seat was in the shadow of her own, twisted around and spoke, her body angled to one side.
“Can you see? Shall I switch with you for a while?”
“Thank you — I’m fine here.”
O-Nobu shook her head.
The younger sister, Yuriko, going on fourteen, turned back to O-Nobu in the seat directly in front of her, her left elbow resting on the railing wrapped in velvet, small, ivory binoculars held, as she was left-handed, in her left hand.
“You were awfully late. I thought you were coming to the house.”
Still too young to know better, she neglected to include in her greeting a word of inquiry about Tsuda’s illness.
“You had something to do?”
“Yes.”
O-Nobu turned toward the stage without further explanation. This was the direction in which the girls’ mother had been gazing raptly all along without a glance to either side. The first time their eyes met they merely acknowledged each other with a silent dip of the head and didn’t speak a word until the wooden clappers signaled the end of the scene.
[46]
“I’M SO glad you managed to come. I was just saying to Tsugi that today might be difficult for you.”
Appearing to relax for the first time now that the scene had ended, Okamoto’s wife finally began speaking to O-Nobu.