“Yes, she is very beautiful. And is she strong physically?” asked Honda, the intent of his question quite the opposite of what his friend must have supposed it to be.
“I can assure you that I know her very well. She is much stronger than this picture would lead you to believe. She has had no serious illnesses. Health is of course the most important thing. It was her father who chose the picture, and I think he chose a rather old-fashioned one.”
“She is of a cheerful disposition, then?”
“Not, I fear, if that expression contains a suggestion of frivolity.”
It was an equivocal response. Honda wanted to meet the girl.
It was clear that the proposal had taken Honda’s wealth into account. Only that could explain the eagerness for an eighteen-year-old bridegroom, however talented he might be. The tempting object must be snatched up before someone else saw its possibilities.
Honda was perfectly aware of all this. And if he were to accept the proposal, the obvious reason would be to control the urges of a difficult eighteen-year-old. But Tōru here before him seemed quite under control already. So the interests of the two parties were more and more divergent, and Honda saw no reason at all to pursue the talks. He felt a certain curiosity about the contrast between the parents and the beautiful candidate herself. He wanted to see greedy self-respect give way. The family that made the proposal was of much prominence, but such considerations no longer troubled Honda.
A dinner party was proposed at which Tōru and the girl would be present. Honda declined. Instead he and the person who had brought the proposal had dinner with the girl’s family.
For two or three weeks the seventy-eight-year-old Honda was in the grip of temptation. He had seen the girl at dinner, and they had exchanged brief remarks. He had received several more photographs. Hence the temptation.
He had not given a favorable answer, nor had he reached a decision; but his aging heart was the victim of impulses which his reason could not control. The willfulness of old age gave him the itch. He longed to show the pictures to Tōru and see his response.
Honda did not himself know what had possessed him, but happiness and pride were at work in the temptation. He knew that if in fact he were to inform Tōru of the proposal he would have passed the point of no return. But willfulness did not see reason.
He longed to see all the results of the match, of bumping the two of them together, a white billiard ball and a crimson. It would be good if Tōru was fond of the girl and it would be good if she was fond of him. She would mourn him when he died, he would be aroused by her greed and come to see humanity for what it was. Either would for Honda be a pleasing result. A sort of festival.
Honda was much too old to have solemn thoughts about the nature of human life. He was at an age when he could justify malicious games. Whatever the malice, death was near, to make amends. He was at an age when youth was a plaything, humanity a collection of clay dolls, an age when, putting ceremony to his own uses, he could turn honesty and sincerity into the play of the evening sky.
When others were as nothing, surrender to such temptations became a kind of destiny.
Late one evening Honda called Tōru into his study. Mildewed by the summer rains, it was the English-style study he had inherited from his father. Honda disliked air-conditioning, and there was a faint glow of sweat on Tōru’s white chest. It seemed to Honda that a doomed white hydrangea was in bloom before him.
“It will soon be summer vacation.”
“But exams come first.” Tōru bit at the chocolate mint Honda had offered.
“You eat like a squirrel.” Honda smiled.
“Oh?” Tōru too smiled, the smile of one whom it is not possible to injure.
Looking at the pale face, Honda thought that this summer the sun must burn it to a crisp. It was a face that did not seem in danger of pimples. With a studied casualness, he opened a drawer and laid a photograph on the table before Tōru.
Tōru was rather splendid. Honda missed no detail. Tōru first examined it with the solemn attention of a guard examining a pass. His questioning eyes looked up at Honda and back again at the picture. Then came boyish curiosity, and he flushed to the ears. Putting the photograph back on the table, he plunged a rough finger into an ear.
“She is very beautiful,” he said, a touch of anger in his voice.
Very, very splendid, thought Honda. There was something poetic in the youthfulness of the response (and it had been in a moment of crisis). Honda forgot that Tōru had responded as he had wanted him to respond.
It was a complex amalgam, as if Honda’s self-awareness had itself for an instant played a boyish role, hiding confusion with a touch of roughness.
“Would you like to meet her?” Honda asked quietly.
He coughed somewhat nervously, hoping that the next response would be as appropriate. Tōru sprang lightly to his feet and went over to beat on Honda’s back.
“Yes.”
The word was almost a growl. Taking advantage of the fact that his father could not see, his eyes were aglow as he said to himself: “The wait has been worth it. Here is someone worth injuring.”
Yet farther on, beyond the window, it was raining. A sad, lonely rain, like a black liquid, giving the bark of the trees a steamy glow in the light from the window. At night the subway trains, here running on elevated tracks, shook the ground. The bright lights in the windows as the train plunged underground again brought a vision to Tōru, still beating on his father’s back. There was no sign tonight of a ship.
22
Tōru went to dinner one night when summer vacation had begun. After dinner, upon a suggestion from her mother that it might be nice to show him her room, Momoko Hamanaka led him upstairs. It was a large Western room, girlish from corner to corner, Tōru’s first experience of the utterly girlish. It was luxuriantly pink. There was girlishness in every detail of the wallpaper, the dolls, the accessories. They quite breathed a beguiling young charm. Tōru took a seat in an armchair. The thick multicolored cushion made sitting difficult.
Momoko had a mature look, and yet there could be no doubt that all these details were of her own choosing. The cool pallor, somewhat blanched, was in keeping with old-fashioned features not too deeply carved. The solitary earnestness made her the only object at odds with the beguiling charm. Her beauty was too formally perfect; and as in the formal perfection of a paper crane it had in it something ominous.
Her mother brought tea and withdrew. The two had met several times before, but for the first time they were alone. That fact did not produce new tensions. Momoko was safe in the knowledge of having obeyed instructions. He must awaken her to danger, thought Tōru.
He had been put off by all the solemn attentions during dinner. But his annoyance was about to leave. A match was being made. Delicate love was being picked up in pincers, tinted. The bonbon had already been put in the oven. To Tōru it made no difference whether he had gone in of his own accord or been put in. He had no reason to be dissatisfied with himself.
The first thing Momoko did when they were alone was to choose an album from four or five numbered ones and offer it to Tōru. Thus he was made aware of her essential mediocrity. He opened it on his knees, and he saw an infant in a bib, its legs spread wide. Pants all swollen with diapers, like a Flemish knight’s. The dark pink of a mouth not yet filled out with teeth. Tōru asked who the infant might be.
Momoko’s consternation was rather wondrous. She glanced at the album and put a hand over the picture and snatched the album from him. Clutching it to her breast, she turned to the wall. Her breathing was heavy.