O-Nobu reached for the gift she and Tsuda had bought her, in its usual place on top of Tsugiko’s desk. But Tsugiko moved quickly, gripping her hand.
“Don’t!”
O-Nobu couldn’t withdraw her hand.
“Why not? Let me try. I’ll draw one that will please you.”
O-Nobu, who was emotionally indifferent to the tallies, was possessed abruptly by a desire to play with Tsugiko. The impulse was like an intermediary, helping her recall her maidenly self in the days before her marriage. Employing the strength of her arm to take advantage of another’s weakness vitalized her in a manly way. Having wrested her hand from Tsugiko’s grip, she had already forgotten her original objective. She wanted only to seize the little box of tallies from her cousin’s desk. Or she wanted that merely as a pretext for vying with Tsugiko. They vied. Allowing themselves without embarrassment to cry out in the affected voices that seem to emerge instinctively from women, they lost themselves in playful battle. Finally they managed to upend one of the precious vases on display in front of the writing box. Tumbling offits rosewood stand, the vase fell to the tatami, spilling water as it rolled. The cousins finally released each other. Together in silence they observed the charming vase that had been suddenly dislodged from its natural place. Turning to face each other, as though suddenly gripped by an irresistible impulse, they laughed aloud in unison.
[71]
THIS UNEXPECTED tussle drew O-Nobu even closer to her childhood. For an instant a freedom she had never felt in Tsuda’s presence revived in her. She had completely forgotten herself in the present.
“Tsugiko-san, you’d better get a rag.”
“Why me? You spilled it, you should clean it up.”
Together they played at mutual concession and more butting of heads.
“Then paper, rock, scissors,” O-Nobu said abruptly, clenching her slender hand into a fist and thrusting it at Tsugiko. Tsugiko complied at once. The jeweled ring on a finger glinted between them. Each round, they laughed.
“That’s sneaky.” “That’s cheating.”
“You’re sneaky!” “You’re cheating.”
By the time O-Nobu finally lost, the spilled water had been neatly absorbed by the desk cover and the weave in the tatami. Calm and composed again, she took a handkerchief from her sleeve and blotted the wet spots.
“We don’t need a rag, this will do perfectly well. It’s not even wet.”
Returning the tipped vase to its original position, she carefully rearranged the disarrayed flowers. Then she settled herself as if she had forgotten completely the ruckus a minute earlier. Appearing to find this unbearably amusing, Tsugiko couldn’t contain her laughter.
When she had contained her laughing jag, Tsugiko removed the box of tallies in its paper cover from her obi where she had hidden it and put it away in the drawer in the bookshelf beside her. As she locked the drawer with a click, she looked pointedly at O-Nobu.
But this interest in meaningless play that Tsugiko appeared able to sustain endlessly couldn’t hold O-Nobu’s attention for long. Having forgotten herself briefly, she sobered more quickly than her cousin.
“How wonderful to be so carefree all the time!”
O-Nobu returned Tsugiko’s gaze. Her harmless remark was lost on her cousin.
“And you’re not?”
“As if you’re not as carefree as anyone,” she might have been saying; and her emphasis seemed to convey an accumulated resentment at being treated by everyone like a young lady who understood nothing of the real world.
“Whatever in the world is so different about you and me?”
Their ages were different. Their personalities were different. But where inside themselves and in what way they differed with regard to being in consideration of others and feeling constrained was a question Tsugiko had yet to consider.
“What sorts of things do you worry about, Nobuko-san? Tell me.”
“I have no worries.”
“That’s what I thought. So you’re as carefree as I am.”
“Perhaps you could say I was carefree — but in a different way from you.”
“What makes you say that?”
O-Nobu could hardly explain. Nor did she feel like explaining.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“But we’re only three years apart — just three.”
Tsugiko hadn’t taken into account the difference marriage made.
“It’s not only about age. There are changes in status. When a girl becomes someone’s wife, or when a wife loses her husband and becomes a widow—”
Tsugiko looked doubtful.
“Did you feel less burdened when you were here with us or now that you’re with Yoshio-san?”
“I really couldn’t—”
O-Nobu faltered. Tsugiko didn’t give her a chance to prepare a reply.
“It’s easier now, isn’t it? I thought so.”
O-Nobu felt obliged to respond.
“It isn’t that simple.”
“But he’s the man you wanted, isn’t he? Tsuda-san?”
“He is — so I’m happy.”
“Happy but not carefree?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m not carefree—”
“So you’re carefree but you worry about things?”
“I don’t know what to say when you grill me that way.”
“I don’t mean to grill you, but I don’t understand so I can’t help it.”
[72]
AS THE grade of the conversation gradually steepened, it had turned back at some point toward the question of Tsugiko’s marriage. Though O-Nobu wished to skirt the subject if she could, in view of what had passed between them so far she felt an obligation that made avoidance impossible. Even if she couldn’t express the sort of prediction an inexperienced young lady might like to hear, as a slightly older woman who knew more about relations between men and women than her cousin, she wasn’t beyond wanting to extend her the kindness of a relatively emphatic warning. And so she made her way over treacherous ground gingerly and by harmless indirection.
“I don’t know what I can say. Tsuda was a personal matter and I understood myself. But when someone else is involved, it’s like a foreign country to me, I have no idea.”
“Must you tiptoe around?”
“I’m not tiptoeing.”
“But you sound so uninvolved, you sound cold.”
O-Nobu paused a moment before replying.
“Tsugiko-san. There’s something you may not know: a woman’s eyes see clearly for the first time when she encounters the person whose destiny is closest to her own. That’s the moment, the only moment when her eyes accomplish more than ten years of seeing in just one second. And moments like that come very rarely. You might live your whole life and die without ever having one. And so my eyes might as well be blind. At other times—”
“But Nobuko-san, you have such clear eyes, why won’t you use them to see for me?”
“It’s not that I won’t, I can’t!”
“But don’t they say the onlooker sees the go stones more clearly than the players do? You were on the sidelines; you should have been able to see way more impartially than I could.”
“You intend to decide the course of your life based on someone else’s vision?”
“Of course not, but it’d be something to refer to — especially from the person I trust most of all.”
O-Nobu was silent again for a moment. When she began again she was more serious.
“I told you a minute ago I was happy—”
“Yes?”
“You know why I’m happy?”
O-Nobu came to a full stop. Then, before Tsugiko could speak, she subjoined, “There’s only one reason. Because I chose my husband with my own eyes. Because I didn’t rely on an observer watching the game. Do you understand?”