It was strange how in a few hours he felt he could call this place home. There was a close security here into which he longed to fit himself. It was a fairy world — not his dream, but exquisite enough if one gave up one’s own huge dreaming. And he had given up.
This room of his became a refuge to him. He thought of it pleasurably as he worked at his desk. At the end of the day he went to it and stayed there, happy and alone. He had begun to buy a few books, such books as he had never read before, poems and novels in English. In the small second-hand bookshop where he found them he never looked for such books as he and En-lan used to read. But indeed they were not there. The shopkeeper would have been afraid to sell them, since they were forbidden.
And so instead of these I-wan now read for the first time in his life stories of love and passion openly given and taken. He lay on the mats in his room, and read and paused to look out into his garden and think of what he read. There were other worlds than those he had dreamed of with En-lan. He thought of I-ko. But I-ko could not think of such love as was to be found in these books, love so pure and powerful. He was enchanted with the books.
And then, one summer’s day, not knowing why, he felt restless. He had been four months in Japan and he was used to the shape of the days. Now on this day it was almost time for the evening meal, and he rose and changed his clothing and went into the dining room.
Someone was there arranging flowers in a vase — a woman. She turned, and he saw it was Tama.
“Ah, I am too early!” he stammered in a sweat of horror. She would think he had come early on purpose to intrude himself upon her while she was alone. In all these weeks he had never come upon her alone. He backed away, awkwardly.
“No, never mind,” she said quickly. “Why should we be afraid?”
She was quite at her ease, he thought, amazed, so much more than he was. What could they talk about alone? He could think of nothing. What was in a girl’s mind? He could not imagine. He had never in his life really talked with a girl, except Peony, and he could not count Peony.
She thrust a budded fruit branch into a tall green vase and arranged it.
“How beautiful it is!” he murmured.
She took a pair of scissors and clipped off a twig or two.
“We are taught all such things, we Japanese girls,” she answered. Then she added, half pouting, “But no one teaches me the things I really want to know.”
He was about to ask her, “What things?” when a screen slid back and Mr. Muraki came in and looked at them.
“Hah!” he breathed softly, astonished.
She bowed to him, a quick half-willful little bow, and nodded at the flowers.
“Is this right, Father?” she asked.
Mr. Muraki’s face changed. He forgot his astonishment. He seized the scissors and began clipping twigs sharply while they stood and watched. When he had finished he had reduced the spreading blossoms to a design of bare branch, spare and grotesque, upon which a few flowers hung like exquisite ornaments.
“Hah!” he sighed, his eyes full of peace. “That is as it should be — no exuberance, Tama. It is the rule of art, and of life.”
It was all nothing, I-wan told himself that night when he came back to his own room again — it was less than a moment. But it had been long enough for him to feel his heart beat hard with something he had not felt before — something shy and sweet. He laughed at himself, too, when he remembered it.
“It’s those love stories,” he thought. “I read too much.”
And yet, there the content was. It stayed and it made him more nearly content to go on as he was.
Yes, this content pervaded his days and made everything pleasurable. He did not connect it with Tama, but still to know that she was part of the life in this house somehow deepened his content with it.
He seldom saw her, and never again alone, and he would not have so violated hospitality as to try to see her. She spent the whole of every day at her school, and often he and Bunji and Mr. Muraki dined alone at night. But still sometimes Madame Muraki came in, and then Tama was there, too.
And so the months moved smoothly into each other toward a year. I-wan was beginning to feel he knew this small clean city very well now, having seen it in summer and autumn, and at its most beautiful under soft, quickly melting snow. Instead of the crowded streets of Shanghai here were clean narrow roadways, following the contours of the rocky hills, winding into bridges over deep ravines, and coming out again into vistas of the islands. These roads climbed up the mountains to temples and people’s parks, or they swept downward to the sea. There were no crowds anywhere. People went their way and there was space and everything was clean.
He had to confess a good many things to himself. Certainly this country was very clean, much cleaner than his own. He saw no beggars and no very poor. Or was it that here the very poor were still clean? A cotton kimono flowered like the spring cost still only a few cents. No one looked poor and no one looked rich. Even the rich went barefoot in their wooden shoes if the day were mild. One snowy day he saw a thing he had never seen before. Two restaurant boys on bicycles speeding past knocked each other so that the dishes of food which they carried in baskets on their heads fell to the ground. He looked for them to curse and quarrel, as it would have happened anywhere. But these two bowed and drew their breath softly through their teeth.
“It is my fault,” said one.
“No, no — I can’t allow that; the fault was mine,” said the other.
They stooped, each to pick up the other’s basket, and went on their way. I-wan stood astonished, never having seen such courtesy.
The truth was that already he was being won by this small country which seemed simple and ordered in all its life. He came to love everything — the nights when he slept upon a thick clean mat upon the floor, wrapped in a clean silken quilt, the mornings when he woke to the fresh smell of the sea and heard the soft shir-shir of the sliding screens. Breakfast he ate alone in his room, after he had washed himself. Then he went to the office.
In the afternoon, two or three times a week, as spring came on again, he went with Bunji to a bathhouse and they bathed in a great square pool, having first been cleansed and scrubbed in soap and water by a man who threw buckets of water upon them. In the pool there were women too, and I-wan at first could not bear this. He said to Bunji, “It couldn’t be like this in any other country.”
Bunji opened his eyes.
“Why?” he asked. “A gentleman does not look at a lady in her bath. If I should look at a woman here she would take it as an insult.”
I-wan said nothing. They were strange, these people. They must be very strong and good and far above common flesh, he thought, able to control these warm rushing feelings which somehow troubled him now more than ever, now that his old inner absorption was gone.
And yet, there was Akio. Akio came and went as quietly each day as though he did not belong in his father’s house. At the evening meal he was always there, punctilious, silent, answering only questions put to him but never speaking first. But months passed before Bunji told him about Akio.
Then he said in a calm voice, “Akio fell in love with a courtesan, and my father is angry because he wants to marry her. Akio is so stubborn — it is nearly five years since it happened. My father engaged him long ago to the daughter of a friend. So it is embarrassing to him now. But Akio will not hear of any wife but Sumie. Well, Sumie is a good woman for her place, but not to come into our home. I think my father is right. It is time for Akio to marry. But he will not. It is ridiculous….