The young man looked wounded. Kobayashi came to his aid at once.
“I don’t believe it. There aren’t many people with tastes as refined as yours.”
Tsuda had to force a smile.
“There you go again — stop mocking me.”
“I’m not mocking you; it’s a fact. I can’t believe that someone with an appreciation for women as keen as yours would just dismiss art. Any woman lover must also love art, wouldn’t you say, Hara? There’s no way you can hide that.”
Tsuda had arrived gradually at the limit of his forbearance.
“It seems you two have a lot to say to each other, so I think I’ll be on my way — Waitress. Check please.”
As the waitress rose from her chair, Kobayashi stopped her in a loud voice and turned back to Tsuda.
“It so happens Hara-kun has just finished something very special. He went to discuss a price with someone who said he wanted to buy it, and he happened to stop off here on his way back — it seems like a perfect opportunity — you should really buy it. The way I see it, he shouldn’t be selling to the kind of person who’s not ashamed to take advantage of an artist and bargains his price down as low as he can get it. So I volunteered to help him find an appropriate buyer and, to tell the truth, I suggested when we were talking on the corner that he should stop in here on his way back. So buy one, it’s nothing.”
“You expect me to agree to that before I’ve even seen the painting?”
“He’ll show it to you — didn’t you bring it back with you?”
“He asked for a little more time so I left it there.”
“You’re a fool. First thing you know, he’ll have wangled it for nothing.”
Hearing this, Tsuda sighed with relief.
[163]
THE OTHER two began an animated conversation about painting that excluded him. The talk was full of Western terms — some, like “Cubism” and “Futurism,” that he had heard before and others that were exotic-sounding and unfamiliar. There was no need to expel him from the conversation: finding nothing of any interest in what he heard, he had left through the gate on his own accord. But even where he stood, he felt a boredom that exceeded the ordinary, in addition to which there was something irking him more aggressively than boredom. From the beginning he had considered these two, Kobayashi in particular, dilettantes eager to wave the banners of new art. Observing them flaunt their sophistication confirmed his prejudice. When it began to appear to him that their objective might be expressly to make him regret his own ignorance on this head, he gave over the effort he had made to sit patiently and ventured to take his leave. Kobayashi detained him yet again.
“Another few minutes. I’ll leave with you.”
“No, it’s getting late.”
“I don’t see why you have to make anyone feel embarrassed. Or are you saying that waiting for Hara-kun to finish eating will reflect poorly on your status as a gentleman?”
Hara, who had placed some ham on top of a shredded lettuce salad and was just digging in with his fork, paused.
“Don’t trouble yourself about me.”
Tsuda responded appropriately and was rising from his chair when Kobayashi spoke as if to himself.
“What can he be thinking this occasion is for? He invites a man to something he calls a farewell dinner and then insults the guest of honor by leaving him alone at the table and going home — with people like this in the world, no wonder life is miserable.”
“That’s not what I intended.”
“Then stay for a while.”
“There’s something I have to do.”
“I have a little something, too.”
“If it’s the painting, forget it.”
“I’m not twisting your arm to buy it. Don’t be such a cheapskate!”
“Then whatever it is, get on with it.”
“Not with you standing over me. Sit down like a gentleman.”
Obliged to take his seat again, Tsuda took a cigarette from the pack in his kimono sleeve and lit it. Glancing at the ashtray, he saw that it was already full of Shikishima butts. He reflected briefly that there could be no more fitting memorial to this evening. Like the others, the cigarette he was about to smoke would be reduced in under three minutes to ash and smoke and a butt that would end up cold and useless in the ashtray — somehow, the thought was dispiriting.
“So what is your little something? I assume you’re not looking for another handout?”
“There you go again, sounding like a cheapskate.”
Gripping the right front of his jacket with his right hand, Kobayashi reached inside his pocket with his left. As though groping for something he fumbled in the pocket, his eyes never leaving Tsuda’s face. Out of nowhere, an outlandish question framed itself in Tsuda’s mind, a bizarre delusion wispy as the smoke from his cigarette.
Is this scoundrel going to take a pistol from his jacket? Does he intend to stick it in my face?
A minute foreboding whispered through him, his nerves trembling like slender branches in an invisible wind. At the same time, regarding as a spectator the scene in the melodrama he had perversely imagined, his mind dismissed it as absurd.
“What are you looking for?”
“There are a lot of things in here; I can’t just pull something out until I know it’s what I want.”
“It would be awkward if it turned out to be the money you stuffed in there before.”
“There’s no mistaking the money. The money isn’t dead paper, it’s alive. It jumps like a fish when I touch it.”
Talking nonsensically the while, he withdrew an empty hand.
“I can’t find it — how weird.”
Kobayashi thrust his right hand into his left vest pocket but produced only a soiled handkerchief.
“You’re planning to do magic tricks with that?”
Kobayashi paid no attention. With a serious look on his face, he stood, patted both hips at once, and then exclaimed “Here it is.”
From his hip pocket he withdrew a letter.
“I’d like you to read this. And since we won’t be seeing each other for a while, it has to be tonight. Please have a look while I wrap up with Hara-kun. It’s a bit long, but it shouldn’t be much of a bother.”
Extending his hand mechanically, Tsuda took the letter.
[164]
SCRAWLED IN pen on manuscript paper, it was more than twice the length of a normal letter. Moreover, though it was addressed to Kobayashi, the author was someone entirely unknown to Tsuda. When he had read the front and back of the envelope, he wondered what connection this could possibly have to him. But a kind of curiosity adjacent to his cold indifference beckoned him. Removing the ruled manuscript paper from the envelope, ten rows of twenty characters on each page, he read to the end without pausing.
I find myself already regretting having come here. I know you’ll consider me capricious, but my feelings originate in a temperament altogether different from yours, and there is little to be done about it. But before you think “Not again!” please listen to my lament. I was asked to look after the place for a while, until the reorganization of the bank should be settled, because it seemed imprudent to leave the women alone at night. The terms offered me if I accepted the invitation were irresistible: if I wished to work on my novel I should feel free to, if I wanted to go to the library I could take a lunch with me; in the afternoons I could study painting if I liked. When the bank was finally relocated to Tokyo I should have my tuition for the college of foreign languages, I needn’t worry about dealing with the house, my moving expenses would be provided, and so on. Obviously, I didn’t count on all of this, but I was convinced that a certain percentage was true. But when I got here I found that none of it was; it was all lies dressed up as truth. Not only is my uncle mostly away in Tokyo, but I am treated as a houseboy and have no time for anything but the chores I am assigned from morning to night. My uncle refers to me as “our house boy” even in front of guests when I am standing there. Every task, from buying a pint of sake to dusting and polishing the wooden floor of the engawa, falls to me. And I’ve yet to receive one penny. When the one-yen clogs I was wearing cracked, I was fitted out with a pair that cost twelve sen. Promising to give us some money on the morrow, my uncle moved the family into my sister’s house, but once they were there he didn’t breathe another word about money, so I am left without even a home to return to.