“You don’t have to be sarcastic. I’m asking because I don’t understand what happened.”
“And I’ve told you that it’s all my fault.”
“But you don’t say why.”
“There’s no reason.”
“You’re just sad for no reason?”
O-Nobu burst into tears again. Her aunt scowled
“What are you thinking? Are you a baby throwing a tantrum? When you lived with us you never cried so hard no matter how badly he teased you. You’re married for five minutes and your husband dotes on you a little and look what happens. Young people are unbearable.”
O-Nobu bit her lip and fell silent. Her uncle, convinced as he was that she was the cause of all the trouble, looked sorry for her.
“There’s no point in scolding her that way. It’s my fault for teasing her too much. Right, O-Nobu? I’m sure I’m right. Look here, to make up for upsetting you, your uncle will get you something nice.”
With her seizure behind her and her uncle treating her like a child, O-Nobu wondered what she could do to bring a peaceful transformation to this awkward moment.
[69]
JUST THEN an unsuspecting Tsugiko, back from her language lesson, appeared in the doorway.
“I’m home.”
The others, lacking the impetus for a reconciliation, seized on her sudden return eagerly, responding to her greeting all at once.
“Welcome back.”
“You’re late — we’ve been waiting for a while.”
“Waiting impatiently. Everybody’s wondering why you’re so late.”
Hoping to recover lost ground from his earlier misstep, Uncle Okamoto, always restless, was even more animated than usual.
“At any rate, it seems there’s something your cousin here wants to discuss with you.”
Converting with this unnecessary remark his real objective into its exact opposite and casting its inverted shadow on O-Nobu, he appeared, if anything, altogether pleased with himself.
However, when the maid appeared, dropping to her hands and knees just outside the room to announce that the bath was ready, he rose as though suddenly remembering something.
“I haven’t time for a bath yet, there’s still work to do in the garden — feel free to go ahead if you like.”
Intending to spend the rest of the autumn day with his feet on the ground in the company of his favorite gardener, he descended to the garden again. On his way out he turned back to the others.
“O-Nobu, have a bath and stay for dinner.”
Two or three steps more into the garden and he was back again. O-Nobu observed with admiration this incessant mental activity so characteristic of her uncle.
“Since O-Nobu is here should we invite Fujii to dinner as well?”
Though they were in different professions, Fujii and her uncle had graduated from the same school and were old acquaintances; recently, the result of the connection to Tsuda, Fujii had had more to do with her uncle than ever before. While O-Nobu interpreted the invitation as issuing from her uncle’s good will toward her, it didn’t please her particularly. If the Fujii household and Tsuda were separate entities, the distance separating her from the Fujiis was even greater.
“I wonder if he’ll come.” The expression on her uncle’s face reflected accurately what O-Nobu was thinking.
“Recently everybody says I’m cloistered, relishing my retirement, but I’m no match for him when it comes to dropping out of the world; he’s been doing it forever. What do you think, O-Nobu, if we ask old man Fujii over for a bowl of rice will he come?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I don’t think it’s likely he’d come—”
O-Nobu’s aunt sounded tentative.
“You might be right — he probably doesn’t accept last-minute invitations. Bad idea? But let’s give him a call anyway, just to see.”
O-Nobu laughed.
“You say ‘Let’s give him a call’ as if there were a telephone in that house.”
“Shall we send somebody over then?”
Not wanting to go to the trouble of writing a letter, or because he thought it a waste of time, O-Nobu’s uncle moved briskly toward the entrance to the garden without another word.
“I think I’ll just excuse myself and have a bath,” said O-Nobu’s aunt, rising.
Everyone knew about her uncle’s fastidiousness where bathing was concerned, but only her aunt was able at a time like this to act decisively on his invitation to precede him into the tub, and O-Nobu envied her unapologetic boldness. She was also repelled. Unfeminine and unpleasant, her attitude was at the same time manly and admirable. How wonderful if only that were possible, O-Nobu felt, and, at the same time, intertwined with that feeling was as always another, that she hoped never to behave in such a way no matter how old she became. As she gazed vacantly at her aunt’s receding back, Tsugiko, the only other person remaining, issued an invitation.
“Shall we go to my room?”
Leaving the clutter of tea things and the brazier as they were, they left the room.
[70]
TSUGIKO’S ROOM was unchanged from the days before O-Nobu’s marriage to Tsuda, when it was also hers. The atmosphere from the past when they had sat here at neighboring desks remained in the walls and in the ceiling. The wooden dolls nicely arrayed atop the small cabinet with glass doors were as before. The pincushion embroidered with roses in its wicker basket was as before. The pair of single-stem vases in blue arabesque patterns they had purchased together at Mitsukoshi were as before.
Glancing around her, O-Nobu breathed in the aroma permeating everything of the virgin days she had spent here with Tsugiko. It was an aroma replete with saccharine reveries, and when those reveries had at last resolved themselves with Tsuda as their object, it was she who had danced jubilantly in front of feelings suddenly transformed into vivid flames. She who had assumed, because there was gas, even though it was invisible to her, that a flame had suddenly been lit. She who had concluded there was no need of discriminating in any way between the reverie and reality. Looking back, she saw that more than half a year had passed since that time. At some point it had begun to appear that reverie would, after all, stop at reverie. That reverie, no matter how far it went, was not to be realized. Or at best, that making it come true would prove exceedingly difficult. O-Nobu sighed faintly to herself.
Am I moving away little by little from my tangible self as though it were a pale dream from the past?
With these thoughts in mind, she looked at her cousin seated in front of her. This maiden’s destiny, which would take her down the same path she herself had followed or possibly bring her to a future even more contrary to expectations than her own, would be decided, in a matter of days, by the fall of the dice her uncle held in his hand.
O-Nobu smiled.
“Tsugiko-san, let me draw a lot for you today.”
“Why?
“No special reason. Just let me.”
“But there has to be a goal or it’s meaningless.”
“There does? Let’s choose one then — what would be good?”
“What would be good, how should I know? You have to choose for me.”
Tsugiko couldn’t bring herself to mention marriage. She even appeared troubled that O-Nobu might blurt it out. It was also perfectly clear that she wanted the subject indirectly broached. O-Nobu wanted to make her cousin happy. At the same time, she was unwilling to accept responsibility for something that might become a nuisance afterward.
“How about if I draw and you decide your own question? There has to be something in your heart you want most to know about — make it that, on your own, whatever you want it to be. Do you agree?”