“Amuse yourselves, sirs,” he called, “while I make your dinner ready! Those curious rocks I carried up from the sea with my own hands.”
So while they waited for their food to be ready they ran about among the rocks in the garden, and exclaimed like children over the strange water-washed shapes. Everything was to be laughed at, the rock which the water had carved into the lines of a shrewish face, the crab in a little pool scuttling to hide when they looked at him, and especially all that Bunji said was to be laughed at. And every time Tama and I-wan laughed they looked at each other. At first their eyes met only to say, “Isn’t he absurd!” But each meeting was so pleasant that I-wan made every chance to look into her dark eyes, and he discovered that when he looked at her the day sprang again to its perfection.
Then a voice called and they went in to eat their meal. The old man had placed a low table near the edge of the room and they seated themselves about it. The old man paused.
“I have waited until you came,” he said, “to finish the decoration of the room. Look, if you please!”
He waited until their eyes were turned toward him. Then he drew back the screen. There, like a picture, was a hillside of burning maples, their rosy red soft against the clear blue sky. I-wan’s eyes leaped to meet Tama’s, and hers were waiting for him. Her eyes were not full of laughter now. They were very soft and shy. She was beautiful! He felt his heart suddenly move out of its place and the blood poured out into his cheeks. He spoke to hide it. “You must sit here, Tama,” he said, “where you can see.” He pulled the cushion to a place facing the hillside.
“I will sit wherever you say,” she replied.
He felt her docile and this made him giddy. Tama was not usually like this. She had a clear firm way of doing what she wished to do and of arranging even a small thing as she liked. But now she knelt upon the cushion. The sight of her smooth black head, bent before him as she knelt, sent I-wan into silence.
Bunji was playing the clown. He seized his chopsticks and pretended he was famished, holding his bowl and begging for food in the way that beggars do. But now I-wan could not laugh. He was trembling because of Tama. She knelt there, busying herself with the bowls and the cups, smiling, glancing up now and again at the hillside. He wanted to think of something to say, a verse to quote, or some ancient saying out of all he had learned. But he could think of nothing. His mind was empty of everything except the way Tama looked at this present moment. He said, stupidly, “Isn’t it beautiful, Tama?”
He thought, “I am so stupid she will hate me. What is the matter with me?” For all morning they had all been full of talk.
But she nodded her head quickly and joyously, and again their eyes met for a deep moment. Then she took his bowl and filled it with the hot white rice and handed it to him. He took it with both his hands and instantly the moment was full of meaning between them. He did not know what the meaning was.
“Tama—” he began. And when he said her name it seemed to him that the moment rose like a beautiful rocket into the sky and burst into a thousand stars of light. Of course it was she who made the day wonderful, it was she who could make anything wonderful! He grew grave with this discovery. He was almost afraid of it. And yet, was it not for this very certainty that he had so long waited?
All the way home Bunji bantered him.
“What’s wrong with you, I-wan? You’ve gone as quiet as an old man. Tama, the old man of the mountains has bewitched him.”
“Don’t say such things, Bunji,” Tama said. “There are really spirits in the mountains.”
They were walking quickly down the rocky steps of the path hewn into the hillside. Tama was ahead. She had kept ahead ever since they left the inn. He was watching her quickly moving feet. She put her feet down so surely with every step that she never slipped once. Bunji was always slipping on the loose stones. He wore the thick clumping soldier’s shoes that he had worn when he was in military training.
“The only good I ever got from all that drill was these shoes,” he had declared when they set forth in the morning.
“Bunji, don’t,” Tama had said. “It is the duty of every man to be ready to fight for his country.”
“I’ll never fight anybody,” Bunji said stoutly.
“You will if you must,” Tama rejoined practically. And now she said there were spirits in the mountains.
“You don’t believe that, Tama?” I-wan asked.
She turned and pushed back her tossed hair. The sun and wind had burned her face a dusky red.
“Yes, I do,” she answered.
“And you call yourself a moga!” Bunji laughed.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “But I believe in spirits, too.”
“Then you aren’t a moga,” Bunji insisted.
“I am — I am!” she cried, running away from them. She ran down the steps, her skirts flying, and suddenly I-wan ran after her in the rich afternoon sunlight. Behind him he could hear Bunji’s clumping footsteps. But I-wan’s feet were for this moment as swift and sure as Tama’s. He ran, gaining on her with every leap. When she saw this she stopped and turned to face him. And he ran flying past her, not able to stop, so she put out her hand and he caught it hard.
“How you two run!” Bunji panted, coming up.
They all laughed again and because they were laughing it seemed he could hold Tama’s hand for a moment. He had never touched her before. Now, though they were all laughing, he was only thinking of her hand, how it felt in his, so firm and soft. He remembered suddenly Peony, who used to slip her hand into his sometimes. Peony’s hand was not in the least like this. It was slight and narrow and thin, the palm hot and the fingers quivering. Once he had said to Peony, “Your hand makes me think of that bird I caught. It’s trembling.”
But Tama’s hand was strong and cool. When he held it, it did not fold and crumple. It held his, too. Before he could get the whole feeling of it, she drew it away and they all began to run once more. Then suddenly they were down the mountain, and there was the bus line, and they stood waiting for the bus.
“I’m hungry again,” Bunji yawned. “Oh, how my legs ache!”
“Do yours, Tama?” I-wan asked.
She shook her head. “I’m used to walking,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but she stood alert and buoyant. He could feel her brimming with a sort of private happiness.
“Have you liked this day?” he asked.
“Yes!” she answered quickly.
“It’s been the best day of my life,” he said. He waited for her to answer. Then when she said nothing, he asked, “And you?”
“I don’t know what this day has been in my life,” she said, “but it has not been like any other day.”
Before he could speak the bus came clanging around the corner and they climbed in. And then they were at home again. This was home, this house of polished unpainted wood, spreading among the pines of its garden. The lights shone pearly through the rice paper screens as they came in.
The day was ended. And yet it could never be ended. He found a letter waiting in his room. It was from his father. He did not want to read it and he put it aside. It was not for today. For today had brought him to the knowledge of himself. He loved Tama and he wanted to marry her. Now that he knew, he wondered at his stupidity and cursed his own slowness. How was it he had not known the very first moment he saw her?
“My father,” Bunji said the next day, “is angry with Tama.”
I-wan, at his desk, was still in the dream of yesterday. In the night he had waked once to hear rain pattering on the roof. Let it rain, he thought, lying in the darkness. It did not matter tonight. “She hears it, too,” he thought, and listening in deep content, he had gone to sleep. When he woke the tiny garden of his room was green and dripping with freshness. “She sees it, too,” he thought. He could scarcely wait until he saw her.