“Didn’t I tell you so? It’s just as I predicted.”
Tsugiko addressed her mother with a look of pride on her face and, turning at once to O-Nobu, explained.
“I made a bet with Mother. Whether you’d come today or not. Mother said you might not come so I assured her you would no matter what.”
“So you consulted the box again?”
Among Tsugiko’s prize possessions was a box, three inches long and less than two inches wide, of fortune tallies. On the black lacquer lid, the words “Fortune Tags” appeared in gold in the spidery characters of the Sung dynasty style; inside were tags fashioned from beautifully planed slivers of ivory inscribed with the numbers 1 to 100.
“Let’s have a look,” Tsugiko would say, shaking one of the thin ivory wafers from the box as if it were a toothpick holder and then unfolding the booklet designed to fit inside. To read the text inscribed in characters the size of a fly’s head, she would remove from its chintz bag lined with habotai silk the magnifying glass that came with the set and bring it close to the tiny page portentously. This gift, which O-Nobu had purchased for four yen, too much to spend on a simple toy, at a shop on the temple grounds on an excursion to Asakusa with Tsuda, had become, for Tsugiko, who would turn twenty-one next year, an accessory that added a dimension of mystery in an innocent and playful way to her young girl’s imagination. Sometimes she even took it with her when she went out, tucking it into her obi just as it lay on her desk in its thick paper case.
“Did you bring it along today?”
O-Nobu had an urge to ask the question half teasingly. Tsugiko shook her head with a strained smile. At her side, her mother spoke as though replying in her stead.
“Today’s prediction didn’t come from a Fortune Tag. We had a far greater oracle today.”
“I see.”
Surveying the faces of mother and daughter, O-Nobu appeared eager to inquire further.
“Tsugi was hoping—,” her mother began, and Tsugiko interrupted, speaking over her.
“That’s enough, Mother. That isn’t something to talk about here.”
Her younger sister, Yuriko, who had been listening to the conversation in silence, giggled.
“I don’t mind telling her.”
“Yuriko-san, you hush. That’s just being mean. You stop or I’m not helping you with piano practice anymore.”
Tsugiko’s mother laughed softly, as if to avoid drawing attention from people seated nearby. O-Nobu was also amused. At the same time, she was even more interested in knowing.
“Tell! What if your sister does get mad — I’ll stand behind you.”
Yuriko looked at her sister with her jaw thrust forward. It was as if, with this however small show of dissatisfaction, she was flaunting in front of her sister the victory of someone who has seized for herself the right to speak or hold her tongue.
“Go ahead and tell, then — do whatever you like.”
Standing as she spoke, Tsugiko opened the door behind their seats and stepped into the corridor.
“Big Sister’s angry, isn’t she?”
“She’s not angry — she’s embarrassed.”
“But there’s nothing embarrassing about saying what she said.”
“Then tell me.”
Yuriko was some six years younger than herself, and her psychology was a child’s; O-Nobu understood her feelings and tried to make clever use of them, but her elder sister’s abrupt exit had already altered the teenager’s mood, and O-Nobu’s attempt at inducement had no effect. Finally, it was the girls’ mother who was obliged to accept responsibility for everything.
“It’s nothing worth making such a fuss about. All Tsugi said was that Yoshio-san would surely come today because he’s so kind and gentle and always does whatever O-Nobu would like him to.”
“Really! Yoshio appears that dependable to Tsugiko-san? How wonderful, I should be grateful; I’ll have to thank her.”
“And Yuriko said in that case it would be nice if Sister could marry a man like Yoshio-san — that’s what Tsugi would have been embarrassed about in front of you, and that’s why she left.”
“Gracious!” There was sadness in O-Nobu’s softly spoken exclamation.
[47]
UNEXPECTEDLY, O-NOBU found herself thinking about Tsuda as a self-centered man. Despite the fact that she extended to him from morning to night what she intended to be the fullest extent of kindness and consideration she was capable of, was there no limit to the sacrifice her husband required? The question that nagged at her perennially now broke into her thoughts in vivid color. Aware that the sole responsible party capable of addressing this doubt was at that moment right in front of her eyes, she looked at Okamoto’s wife. With her parents residing far away, Aunt Okamoto was the only person in all of Tokyo on whom she could rely.
Is a husband nothing more than a sponge who exists solely to soak up a wife’s tenderness?
This was the question she had long wanted to ask her aunt face to face. Unfortunately, she carried within herself inherently a variety of pride. And this hauteur, as it were, which might be interpreted, depending on the viewpoint, as either grim forbearance or simple vanity, constrained her powerfully when it came to this matter. In a relationship between husband and wife that was in a certain sense like two sumo wrestlers facing each other daily in the arena, the woman observed from inside by the two combatants was invariably her husband’s opponent and sometimes even his enemy, but when presenting to the outside, it was O-Nobu’s nature to feel painfully embarrassed, as if she were exposing the weakness of a couple who had been decorously united in the eyes of the world, unless she appeared to take her husband’s side in all things. Accordingly, even when she felt the need to reveal something that was tormenting her, in the presence of this aunt, who, after all, from the couple’s point of view, belonged in the category of others, she was reluctant, fearing in her tremulous way what it might lead her to think about herself and her husband, to speak up. In addition, she worried constantly that her husband’s failure to requite her kindness with the kindness she expected of him might be interpreted as a consequence of her own inadequacy. Among all the rumors about her that might circulate, she most feared, as if it were fire, being labeled “thick.”
There are young women about who hold men far more difficult than Tsuda in the palm of their hands, and here you are, twenty-three years old and unable to tame your husband — it’s because you lack the wisdom.
For O-Nobu, who held that wisdom and virtue were as good as identical, words like these coming from her aunt would have been more painful than anything. To confess as a woman that she had no skill with a man would be no less demeaning, wounding her self-esteem, than the confession that she was a human being unable to function as one. An intensely personal conversation of this sort was impossible at the theater, but even at a different time and place, O-Nobu would have had no choice but to hold her tongue. Having looked at her aunt expectantly, she quickly averted her eyes.
The curtain on front of the stage rippled, and someone peered out into the audience through the narrow opening between the seams. O-Nobu, feeling as if the eyes were looking in her direction, shifted her gaze yet again.
The audience came murmuringly to life all at once as people left their seats or returned to them or moved back and forth in the aisles. The majority, who remained seated, shifted their positions in every direction, incessantly moving: the countless dark heads below them appeared to eddy. Some were dressed gaily, and the shifting panorama of bright color revealed glimpses of a restless pleasure.