He could not ask about her. That would have been to be rude. “She is tired and sleeping,” he thought. He saw Tama, sun-flushed, asleep in the soft flowery quilts. There was still a little slanting rain when he and Bunji left the house, and a maid, bowing deeply, handed them wide umbrellas of oiled paper. The dream of yesterday still held. He must make his plans now. He must go about asking Mr. Muraki — not himself, but by someone as a go-between.
He had been pondering as he sat at his desk whether or not he should tell Bunji, when Bunji spoke. I-wan looked up, startled, at Tama’s name.
“Angry with Tama?” he repeated.
“Yes,” Bunji said. “But I expected it, you know.” The abacus was clacking under his fingers and he was jotting down figures.
“He is not pleased that she went with us yesterday,” Bunji went on. “He scolded her, too — hah, how he scolded last night!” Bunji’s eyes danced. “I can laugh this morning, but I didn’t laugh last night. He said I should know better, too.” He pursed his lips. “I know what he meant,” he added.
“What?” I-wan asked. He felt himself grow hot.
“He is determined now that Tama shall marry General Seki,” Bunji said, and added, “Seki says he will wait no longer.”
I-wan’s head began to grow dizzy.
“But she won’t marry him in a thousand years,” Bunji said gently. He rattled thousands off and put them down. “Those little ivory toys we sent to America—” he said, “fifteen thousand of them.”
“She won’t marry him?” I-wan repeated. His mouth was dry.
“Oh, it’s an old story,” Bunji said. “None of us like it. My mother doesn’t like it, even, but being an old-fashioned woman she can’t say so. She has merely postponed it time after time. When my father begins to say, ‘Now positively, we must decide this thing,’ she always thinks of something. She says, ‘Oh, I’m very busy now — all the heirlooms must be cleaned, so let us wait until next month.’ But it’s getting harder.”
“Next month!” I-wan whispered.
“Oh, Tama will never do it — she will kill herself first, of course,” Bunji said cheerfully. “We all know that, but my father won’t believe it. Under all that gentle look of his, he is so stubborn. But she is as stubborn as he, and that he can’t believe.”
Bunji opened a drawer and drew out another ledger.
“You mean — all this is going on — and you—” I-wan stammered.
“Love difficulties are very common now,” Bunji said, laughing. “In these times almost any young person has love difficulties. The old want their way — and the young want love. Only I!” He burst into fresh laughter. “I have no troubles. I am not in love.”
But I-wan could not laugh with him, for once.
“Why does this — Seki — want Tama, of all women?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s a man of power and money,” Bunji answered, clacking his abacus. “Samurai stock — like my father — Japan’s honor and all that. He wants a young wife who will give him sons. Tama is so healthy — that’s why he wants her. And my father says it will help the country — old Seki’s blood and Tama’s health. The old ones worship the country, I can tell you — and the Emperor.”
“Do you think—” I-wan began in a whisper.
“I don’t think,” Bunji said quickly. “I tell you, I-wan, I don’t think about anything. It doesn’t pay. When I was in school some of the fellows took to thinking and I never saw them again. One day soldiers marched in — they were Seki’s soldiers, too — and marched them off. Seki won’t have any thinking going on in this prefect where he lives. So I made up my mind to enjoy my life.”
I-wan thought it did not seem there could be anything under the spectacled, rather stupid-looking faces of the students he passed every day upon the streets.
“Do you mean there are revolutionists here?” he asked.
“Hush!” Bunji cried under his breath. “Don’t speak that word! Someone might hear you!”
The door was shut, but he went to it and opened it and looked out. No one was even passing.
“I don’t talk about such things,” he said hurriedly. “I don’t listen to them. I have my work to do.”
He went back and began to work determinedly and I-wan turned back to his books dazed. His thoughts whirled about in his head. He got up suddenly, trying to think of an excuse to go back to the house to see Tama — to tell her — why had he not said something more to her yesterday? But he had been so happy that he had forgotten everything else. He felt compelled to turn to Bunji. “Bunji, can I — will you help me to see her — today? I must see her—”
Bunji looked up. “Tama?” he asked. “My father ordered her to stay in her own room for three days.”
“Three days!” I-wan repeated. He could not see Tama for three days!
“Once before he made her stay in for three days,” Bunji said. “There was a time last winter she told him that she would marry Seki in order not to be disobedient to her father, but that she would stab herself afterwards. He had to believe her and he punished her because he was so angry.”
“That was the time you said she was ill,” I-wan cried. There had been such a time, he now remembered.
“Yes, that was it,” Bunji said. “Tama does not disobey in small things — only in great ones, like refusing to be Seki’s wife.”
The door opened and Akio came in. He looked tired and sad, as he almost always did.
“Here is a letter from that Paris dealer,” he said to Bunji. “He complains that the blackwood stands to the Han pottery horses were crushed in shipment. Did you pack them as I told you to do?”
“In rice straw, chopped,” Bunji said, leaping to his feet.
“I told you to wrap them first in shredded satin paper,” Akio said.
“I forgot that,” Bunji said, struck with horror.
“Ah,” Akio said, “I thought so — we must replace them. It will cost hundreds of yen.”
“I could shoot myself,” Bunji said in a low voice. “I am a perfect good-for-nothing!”
“You laugh too much,” Akio said.
He went out and shut the door. Bunji sat down and leaned his head on his hand. “I’ll never be worth anything,” he said contritely. “I’m always forgetting the important thing. Akio told me — and probably I was thinking about something else.”
“Do you think I could see Tama somehow?” I-wan asked abruptly.
Bunji stared at him.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I must see her,” I-wan repeated.
“What for?” Bunji asked, astonished.
I-wan did not answer. He looked at Bunji steadily, feeling the blood rise up his neck, into his cheeks. Bunji stared at him.
“You don’t — you aren’t — not really—” he stammered.
“I know I am,” I-wan said.
Bunji’s mouth fell ajar. Then he began to laugh suddenly and loudly. I-wan waited.
“Why do you laugh?” he asked coldly.
“Oh — it’s funny,” Bunji gasped. “It’s very funny! Our house — a nest of love tangles — Akio — Tama — you — poor old father mixed up in it all — trying to — to — be the dictator—”
“It’s not funny,” I-wan said coldly. He waited for Bunji to be quiet.
“Well,” Bunji said, “if you want to hurry on the Seki business, try to see Tama, that’s all.”
I-wan hesitated, but Bunji’s look discouraged everything he wanted to say.
Beyond his window he could see the long roll of the sea, gray this morning under a gray sky. He would have to think…. But though he thought all day, he came to no conclusion except this — that now certainly he was in love with Tama.