She was unable to settle down. In her attempt to flee uneasiness, she required something on which to focus all her attention. She was also urgently in search of a conclusion to the lingering question she had been carrying with her. In sum, she had the feeling that writing a letter to Kyoto would enable her to collect the tangled thoughts that were buzzing in her brain.
Taking up her brush, she began with the usual comments on the season, proceeded to a mechanical apology for having been out of touch, and paused for a while to think. Inasmuch as she was writing to Kyoto, she was obliged to center her letter around news of herself and Tsuda. This was the news every parent wished to hear from a newly married daughter. It was at the same time the topic that every young woman was required to address in a letter to her mother and father back home. O-Nobu, who believed there was no point in writing a letter home without including such news, was obliged to consider, brush in hand, the state of her relationship to Tsuda at the current moment, how far it had progressed. It wasn’t that she felt oppressed by a necessity to report things to her mother and father exactly as they were. But as a married woman she was sensible of an urgent need to scrutinize and confirm her situation. She descended into deep deliberation. Her brush was stilled in her hand. She had to think, forgetting about even her poised brush. The harder she thought, the farther removed she felt from grasping anything substantial.
Until she took up the brush, she had been distressed by a nettling, random uneasiness. Having begun to write, she had finally landed. Now she was beginning to feel distressed by uneasiness about the place where she had come to ground. On the trolley she had divined that the images flickering across her brain converged here, in this place — she had at last arrived at the wellspring of the anxiety that was tormenting her. But she was unable to apprehend its actual form and substance. Consequently she would have to carry the riddle forward into the future.
If I can’t solve it today, I’ll have to solve it tomorrow. If I can’t resolve it tomorrow, it will have to wait until the day after. If not the day after…
This was her logic. This was her hope. It was this she was ultimately resolved to achieve. She had already proclaimed her determination in front of Tsugiko.
It doesn’t matter who he is, you must love the man you’ve chosen for yourself with all your heart and soul, and by loving him you must make him love you every bit as deeply no matter what.
Yet again she swore to herself to go to this length. She commanded her own will to settle for nothing less.
Her mood brightened a little. She began writing again. Unabashedly she assembled sentences into a picture of herself and Tsuda designed to afford her parents as much pleasure as she could manage. From one touch to the next she conveyed the flavor of the two of them living their life together as though happily. She marveled at the buoyancy of her brush as it danced brightly across the paper. A long letter composed itself in a single breath. She had no idea how to measure the length in time of this effortless effort.
When she had finished and put the brush down, she read over what she had written. Because the same mood that had governed her hand now governed her eye, she found nothing that seemed to require revision. Even the Chinese characters she had trouble with that would normally send her to the dictionary seemed perfect as they were. With just two or three corrections of mistaken particles that obscured the meaning of a sentence, she rolled the letter up. Then, in her heart, she put her parents on notice.
Everything I have written in this letter is true. I haven’t lied, or exaggerated, or gone out of my way to put your minds at ease. If anyone doubts this, I shall detest him, disdain him, spit in his face. Because I know the truth better than he. I have described the truth beyond the superficial facts on the surface. A truth that is understood only by me. But this is a truth that will have to be understood by everyone in the future. I am not deceiving you in any way. If there is anyone who will say that I have written a deceptive letter to put you at ease, that person is blind though his eyes be open. That person is the liar. I beg you to trust the writer of this letter to you. Surely god trusts me already.
O-Nobu placed the letter next to her pillow and went to bed.
[79]
SHE RECALLED the moment when she met Tsuda for the first time in Kyoto. She had been home for a long-overdue visit with her parents for two or three days when her father had sent her on an errand. She had been obliged to take a sealed letter and a Chinese book in its cloth case to the Tsuda residence eight blocks or so away. She had learned for the first time directly from her father that he had been in and out of bed with a mild case of nerve pain, and that he had from time to time been borrowing books from Tsuda’s father to divert him in his hours of idleness. The errand was returning one volume and bringing home another. Standing at the front of the house, she called inside to announce herself. A large screen was standing open just inside the entrance. As she was gazing curiously at the strange characters that appeared to be dancing on the white parchment, the person who emerged from behind the screen to greet her was neither a maid nor a student houseboy but Tsuda Yoshio himself, in Kyoto at just that time on a visit to his own parents.
Until this moment, they hadn’t met. O-Nobu knew about Yoshio only what she had heard from her father that morning, that he had recently returned and was currently at home. Even this much she had chanced to learn only because her father had decided to borrow another book, written a letter to that effect, and, in passing, had mentioned his friend’s son.
Yoshio had taken from O-Nobu the Chinese book in its case and, for some reason, had studied at length the title, inscribed in imposing calligraphy, A New Anthology of Ming Dynasty Poetry. His prolonged scrutiny of the book obliged O-Nobu to observe him the while. When he lifted his eyes abruptly, it was at once apparent that O-Nobu had been gazing at him intently. O-Nobu would have explained that, having placed her in the position of awaiting his reply, he had left her no choice. “Unfortunately my father isn’t at home just now,” he said, looking up. O-Nobu turned to leave. But he bid her wait and, while she looked on, without a word of explanation or apology, opened the letter addressed to his father. This unhesitating action also attracted O-Nobu’s attention. His behavior was improper. But it was also unmistakably decisive. O-Nobu felt disinclined to characterize him as unmannerly or reckless.
With a glance at the letter, Yoshio had asked O-Nobu to wait at the entrance and had withdrawn to look for the requested book. In just ten minutes he was back and apologized for having detained her to no purpose. The designated volume was not to be found, but as soon as his father returned he would make sure it was delivered. O-Nobu declined to impose to that extent. Promising to come back for it the following day, she went home.
That afternoon, Yoshio had appeared with the book in hand. Quite by chance it was O-Nobu who had gone to the entrance to see who was calling. Once again they came face to face. And this time they took notice of each other at once. The volume in Yoshio’s hand was roughly three times thicker than the one O-Nobu had returned that morning. He had wrapped it in a batik shawl for carrying, and as he lifted it, swinging from his arm, he might have been showing her a bird cage.
Accepting an invitation to come in, he had stepped up to the tatami parlor and spoken with O-Nobu’s father. To O-Nobu it appeared that he engaged effortlessly in a rambling conversation suitable for elders and of no possible consequence or interest to young people, bantering about random subjects of particular interest to her father as if it were no trouble at all. He knew nothing about the book he had brought and even less about the one O-Nobu had returned. He confessed he was unable to read the complex characters in many strokes that filled page after page, but with the four block characters in the title as a guide, Poems of Mei-Cun Wu, he had searched the bookshelves high and low. O-Nobu’s father had thanked him profusely for going to the trouble….