Tsuda felt obliged to tell his wife in more detail about the surgery in store for him.
“This isn’t a simple matter of draining the pus out of a boil. I have to flush out my colon with a laxative before the doctor goes to work with his scalpel, and apparently there’s a danger of hemorrhaging after the incision is made so I’ll have to lie still in bed five or six days with the wound packed with gauze. But that means, on the other hand, I could postpone until Monday or Tuesday or even move the date up to tomorrow or the day after and it wouldn’t make much difference — in that sense it’s an accommodating condition.”
“It doesn’t sound so accommodating to me, having to lie in bed for a week without moving.”
His wife arched her eyebrows again. As if indifferent to this display, Tsuda, lost in thought, leaned his right elbow against the brazier between them and gazed at the lid on the iron kettle atop it. Beneath the russet bronze lid the water in the kettle was boiling loudly.
“I suppose you’ll have to take a whole week off?”
“I’m thinking I won’t pick a date until I’ve had a chance to let Yoshikawa-san know what’s happening. I could just stay home without saying anything but that wouldn’t feel right.”
“I think you should talk to him. He’s always been so kind to us.”
“If I do say something he might tell me to check in to the hospital right away.”
At the word “hospital,” his wife’s small eyes appeared suddenly to widen.
“Hospital? It’s not as if you’ll be going to a hospital.”
“It’s the same thing—”
“But you said once that Dr. Kobayashi’s place isn’t a hospital — it’s only for out-patients.”
“I suppose it’s more of a clinic, but the second floor is available for staying over.”
“Is it clean?”
Tsuda forced a smile.
“Maybe cleaner than our place—”
It was his wife’s turn to smile stiffly.
[5]
TSUDA, WHOSE custom it was to spend an hour or two at his desk before going to bed, presently rose. His wife remained where she was, leaning comfortably against the brazier, and looked up at her husband.
“Study time again?”
This wasn’t the first time she had asked the question as he stood up. And there was always something in her tone that sounded to him like dissatisfaction. Sometimes he attempted to mollify her. At other times he felt rebellious and wanted to escape. In either case he was always aware, at the back of his consciousness, of a feeling that amounted to a disparagement:
I can’t be wasting all my time with a woman like you — I have things to do for myself.
Sliding open the paper door to the adjoining room in silence, he was on his way out when his wife spoke to his back.
“So the theater is off? And I’m to decline the Okamotos’ invitation?”
Tsuda paused, turning around.
“You should go if you like. The way things are, I can’t make any promises.”
His wife’s eyes remained on her lap. Nor did she reply. Tsuda turned and climbed the steep stairs to the second floor, the steps creaking under his feet.
A Western tome was waiting on top of his desk. He sat down and, opening the book to the bookmark, began at once to read. But the context eluded him, the price of having abandoned the book for a number of days. As recalling where he had left off would require rereading the preceding section, he merely riffled the pages guiltily and regarded the volume as though oppressed by its thickness. A spontaneous feeling that the road ahead was endless took possession of him.
He recalled having acquired the book during the first three or four months of his marriage. And it struck him that, although more than two months had passed, he had succeeded in making his way through less than two-thirds of it. Against the common practice of most men, beneath contempt as he put it, of leaving books behind when they embarked on their careers, he had frequently inveighed in front of his wife. And sufficient hours had been expended on the second floor to oblige her, accustomed to hearing him carry on about others, to acknowledge that he was indeed an avid student. Together with his sense that the road ahead was endless, a feeling of humiliation emerged from somewhere and nibbled perversely at his self-esteem.
However, the knowledge he was struggling to absorb from the book that was open in front of him was of no quotidian consequence to his life at work. It was too specialized, and again too refined. It might have been styled as utterly irrelevant to an occupation such that even the knowledge he had obtained from college lectures had almost never availed him. This was knowledge he wanted to store away as a source of a certain strength that derived from self-confidence. He also wished to acquire it as an ornament for attracting the attention of others. Now, as he became sensible in a vague way of how difficult that was likely to be, he framed a question inwardly to his vanity:
Will this be tougher than I thought?
He smoked a cigarette in silence. Then, as if suddenly noticing it, he turned the book face down and stood up from his desk. With quick steps that caused the stairs to creak again he went back downstairs.
[6]
“O-NOBU!” “O-NOBU!”
Calling his wife’s name through the fusuma,* he slid open the patterned paper door and stood in the threshold of the sitting room. Instantly his vision filled with the colors of the beautiful obi and kimono she had at some point spread in front of her as she sat alongside the brazier. They appeared, as he peered at them in the lighted room from the dark hallway, more strikingly vibrant than usual, and for a long moment he stood there, glancing from his wife’s face to the dazzling patterns and back again.
“Why take all that out at this hour?”
With one end of a thick obi woven in an iris pattern across her knee, O-Nobu looked at her husband as if across a great distance.
“I felt like it — I haven’t worn this obi even once.”
“I suppose that’s the outfit you’re planning to wear for your big day at the theater?”
In Tsuda’s voice was the coldness that accompanies an ironic jab. O-Nobu cast her eyes down without speaking. In her wonted manner she arched her dark eyebrows. There were times when this singular gesture excited him in an odd way, while at other times he felt curiously aggravated. In silence he stepped out onto the engawa* and opened the door to the lavatory. Thence he moved back to the stairs. This time it was his wife who called him back.
“Yoshio-san. Wait.”
As she spoke she rose and approached him.
“Is there something you need?” she asked, stepping between him and the stairs.
What he needed that minute was related to a matter of more importance than an obi or a long under-robe.
“Still no letter from my father?”
“Not yet — when it arrives I’ll put it on your desk as usual.”
Tsuda had bothered to come back downstairs because the letter he was expecting wasn’t waiting on his desk.
“Shall I have O-Toki look in the mailbox?”
“It’ll come registered; they won’t just toss it into the mailbox.”
“Perhaps not, but let’s have a look just to be sure.”
O-Nobu slid open the shoji at the front entrance and stepped down onto the concrete.
“I’m telling you. There’s no point looking in the mailbox for a registered letter.”
“But maybe it wasn’t registered; wait just a minute while I have a look.”
Tsuda withdrew to the sitting room and sat down with his legs crossed in front of him on the cushion he had used at dinner, still in place alongside the brazier. His gaze came to rest on the brilliant profusion of scattered color, the glowing animals and flowers in a yuzen pattern.