Tsugiko looked forlorn.
“So there’s no chance for someone like me to be happy—”
O-Nobu had to say something. But nothing came to her. Finally, all at once, in a voice that sounded suddenly excited, she spoke in a rush of words.
“There is. There is. Just love someone! And make him love you! If you can just do that, you’ll have more prospects for being happy than you can imagine!”
Vividly etched in her mind as she spoke was an image of Tsuda and no one else. Though she was speaking to Tsugiko, scarcely the shadow of an image of Miyoshi came to mind. Tsugiko, who fortunately had interpreted O-Nobu’s remarks as solely for her own benefit, was not sufficiently stirred to take her exalted mood seriously.
“But who?” she said, looking at O-Nobu as though slightly dismayed. “That gentleman we met last night?”
“It doesn’t matter who. Just love the person you’ve decided is the one for you. And make him love you no matter what.”
The cutting edge of O-Nobu’s pertinacity, normally hidden away, gradually revealed itself. Gentle Tsugiko stepped back a little each time it emerged until, becoming aware of a distance between them not easily bridged, she breathed a quiet sigh.
“Are you doubting what I say? It’s true. I’m not fibbing, it’s true. I’m truly happy, do you understand?”
Having compelled Tsugiko to affirm what she said, O-Nobu continued, as if speaking to herself.
“It’s the same for everyone. A person may not be happy now, but all it takes is her intention and there will be happiness in her future. She will be happy. She will be happy and show everyone. Do you see, Tsugiko, do you agree?”
Failing to understand what O-Nobu was thinking, Tsugiko could only consider vaguely that this prediction was intended to apply to her. But it made little sense no matter how hard she thought about it.
[73]
JUST THEN the footsteps that had rapidly approached down the hall stopped and the door was thrown open. Home from school, Yuriko barged into the room. Removing the bag hanging heavily from her shoulder and depositing it on her own desk, she spoke only a formulaic word of greeting to her elder sister. “I’m back.”
Her desk was installed in the corner just to the right of where O-Nobu once had sat. Yuriko had been allowed to move in to the room the minute O-Nobu had left to join Tsuda, and she had been far from unhappy about her cousin’s departure. Knowing how she felt, O-Nobu was careful to say something.
“Yuriko-san, here I am again — I hope you don’t mind?”
Yuriko didn’t even say “Welcome.” Lowering her right leg to the tatami from the edge of her desk, where she had rested it as she rubbed her big toe encased in black tabi-socks that appeared to be in need of darning, she replied.
“I don’t mind you being here — as long as your husband hasn’t kicked you out.”
“What a thing to say.” O-Nobu laughed as she spoke and, after a pause, resumed.
“Yuriko-san, if I had been kicked out by Tsuda, I assume you’d feel at least a little sorry for me?”
“Umm, I guess so—”
“And if that happened, I could stay in this room again?”
“I suppose—”
Yuriko appeared to be considering.
“You could stay as long as Sister had left to be married.”
“I mean before Tsugiko-san gets married.”
“You’ll be kicked out before that? That would be — I hope you’d put up with whatever you’d have to not to be — I mean, I’m living here, too.”
Yuriko joined the two older girls in laughter. Without removing her hakama, she moved to the brazier and, sitting down between them, began at once to eat the rice cookies on the wooden tray the maid had brought in.
“Snack time so late? This tray brings back memories.”
O-Nobu recalled the days when she was about Yuriko’s age. She remembered vividly coming home from school and reaching for the eagerly awaited tray. Tsugiko, watching with a smile as her little sister gobbled the cookies, seemed to be recalling the same past.
“Do you do have snack time at home even now?”
“Sometimes — it’s a bother to shop for snacks, but even when we happen to have something at home, it doesn’t taste the way it used to; it’s not as yummy anymore.”
“Because you don’t get enough exercise.”
While they were talking, Yuriko had emptied the tray. Finished, she broke into their conversation as incongruously as bamboo grafted to a tree.
“It’s true — Sister will be going to wife any day.”
“She will? Where?”
“I don’t know, but somewhere.”
“Really? What’s the husband’s name?”
“I don’t know his name, but she’ll be going.”
Patiently, O-Nobu framed a third question.
“What will he be like?”
Yuriko replied insouciantly.
“Probably like Yoshio-san. Because Sister adores Yoshio-san. She says he’s a wonderful person who does whatever Nobuko-san wants.”
Tsugiko flushed and lunged at her sister. Shrieking, Yuriko leaped away.
“Uh-oh, the truth is out.”
Pausing briefly at the entrance to comment, she ran from the room, leaving O-Nobu and her sister behind.
[74]
SHORTLY THE maid conveyed to O-Nobu an invitation to stay for dinner, and she left her seat together with Tsugiko once again. The cheerful faces of the entire household were assembled in the bright room. Even Hajime, who had been sulking about something under the engawa and had had to be coaxed out, was engaged in a good-natured conversation with his father. Yuriko had already come in to report that her younger brother had opened his mouth wide and snapped at a rice cookie dangled from above in front of his nose “just like a dog.” Smiling, O-Nobu tuned in to the rambling of her canine cousin.
“When Mercury appears in the sky something bad happens, right, Father?”
“People thought so a long time ago. But now that science has advanced, nobody thinks that anymore.”
“How about in the West?”
O-Nobu’s uncle appeared not to know whether the same superstition had prevailed in Western antiquity.
“In the West? Never in the West.”
“But don’t they say that Mercury came out before Caesar died?”
“You mean before Caesar was murdered—” It appeared that Uncle’s only choice was to camouflage his ignorance.
“You’re talking about the Roman Empire — that’s a different story from the West.”
Persuaded, Hajime lapsed into silence. But he posed another question almost at once. This one, quirkier than the first, he presented as a splendid syllogism. A hole in the ground called a well filled with water; the ground must therefore be on top of water; ergo the ground should sink. Why didn’t it? Uncle’s response was such confabulated nonsense that everyone was amused.
“There’s no way it will sink.”
“But if it’s on top of water it has to.”
“It doesn’t work out that neatly.”
The women burst into laughter, and Hajime swiftly shifted to his third subject.
“Father, I wish our house was a battleship. How about you?”
“Your dad prefers a plain old house to a battleship.”
“But in an earthquake a house would be crushed.”
“But an earthquake wouldn’t disturb a battleship, is that it? I never thought about that. Well done.”
O-Nobu observed with a smile the genuine admiration on her uncle’s face. His earlier suggestion that Fujii should be invited for dinner seemed to have slipped his mind. Her aunt appeared oblivious, as if she had also forgotten. O-Nobu found herself wanting to question Hajime.