Keitaro, unaccustomed to Edo etiquette, had not yet learned how to decline and depart. Besides, the flow of her words reaching his ears was so smooth that he could hardly find a pause for declining her invitation. Her words were not conventional compliments. In fact, while he was being detained, he seemed to forget the reserve he should have maintained because of the trouble he was causing her, and he felt it would be a pity not to keep her company.
Keitaro finally found himself seated in Sunaga's study. Remarking that it was cold, Sunaga's mother closed the sliding doors and urged Keitaro to warm his hands over the glowing charcoal brazier. As he did so, the agitation he had felt for some time slowy began to subside. He looked at the sliding doors with their huge pattern printed over the white silk paper and then at the small brazier, perhaps made from mulberry, bright with its yellow sheen. Meanwhile, the mother, gentle, eloquent, and seemingly tactful in dealing with every kind of person, talked on. He learned that Sunaga had gone to visit an uncle living in Yarai.
"I asked him," she said, "to go around to Kobinata to visit the temple there, for it lies that way. And he left scolding me: 'Lately, mother, you've gotten to be a stay-at-home. You sent me there last time too instead of going yourself, didn't you? Because of your age, is that it?' You know, he caught a cold the other day and still has a sore throat. So I said he had best not go today. Usually he's rather cautious in his habits, but he is, like other young men, reckless at times and takes no heed of the words of an old woman. . "
Whenever Keitaro called on Sunaga and found him absent, his mother would talk of her son in this manner, as if it were the one and only pleasure in her life. Should Keitaro bring up the subject, say, of Sunaga's reputation among his friends, it was her habit to dwell on it eternally, the topic not easily changed. Keitaro was accustomed to this, and on this occasion as well was patiently listening, acknowledging what she was saying with many a nod of the head and waiting for a pause in her flow of words.
In time the subject of their talk drifted from Sunaga to his uncle at Yarai. Keitaro had heard from Sunaga that this uncle was his mother's younger brother and, unlike the uncle at Uchisaiwaicho, was a man of aesthetic tastes. Keitaro still remembered anecdotes about this uncle's insisting it was a disgrace to wear an overcoat whose lining was not satin or about his habit of treasuring what seemed to Sunaga a quite useless thing — he couldn't tell if it was a gem or coral — proudly dubbing it "an Indian jewel imported of old."
"His life," Keitaro said, "is really enviable. What's better than to be able to live in luxury doing nothing?"
"Oh no, it's far from that," said Sunaga's mother, quickly contradicting him. "To be quite frank, at best he can just manage to get along. He's not at all so fortunate as to be able to live luxuriously or even comfortably."
As the question of the wealth of Sunaga's uncle had little to do with Keitaro, he said no more about him. She resumed her talk immediately then as if a break in their conversation indicated some flaw in herself.
"Fortunately, my sister's husband seems well off due to his connections to several companies. But my brother's family and my own are, so to speak, no better than lordless samurai, and often we laugh together over our lives, saying we've become as poor as crows when we consider what we once were."
Somehow reminded of his own state, Keitaro felt a secret shame. Luckily, Sunaga's mother continued talking uninterruptedly, so he was able to dispense with the trouble of finding words to respond with. Thinking this at least a convenience, he continued listening.
"Besides, as you know quite well, Ichizo is such an unenterprising boy. So even after his graduation from the university, I'm not free from worry. I'm quite at a loss. Sometimes I tell him to hurry and find some nice girl to be his wife and to give his old mother peace of mind. He takes no notice of what I say though, telling me that in this world things don't take place just to convenience me. It would comfort me if he would at least ask someone to help him find a job — any kind of job whatever — but about that too he cares not at all. . "
Keitaro, who had always thought Sunaga selfish in this regard, said sympathetically, "It may sound presumptuous coming from me, but how about asking the advice of someone in a position superior to your son? Say the uncle at Yarai you spoke about just now?"
"But that one too has the queerest ideas, isolating himself as he does from all society. Instead of advice, he says that only a fool would serve in a bank and rattle away his life on an abacus. How could I depend on someone with that kind of notion? And that delights Ichizo all the more. He calls on him quite often, saying he likes his Yarai uncle better than others and agrees with him more. Since it was Sunday and fine outdoors, I thought it best for him to visit his uncle at Uchisaiwaicho before he left for Osaka, but he said he preferred Yarai and ended going where he wished."
Keitaro's mind now reverted to the reason he had rushed to this house that day. He had thought that as soon as he saw Sunaga, he would, with the harshest words the occasion demanded, reprove him for the unfair treatment he had received and would leave him with some such speech as "Remember, I'm determined never to enter the gate of that house again!" Sunaga, however, for whom these words were intended, was out, so quite the reverse, Keitaro had been talked to on many subjects by Sunaga's mother, who knew nothing about these circumstances concerning him, and quite naturally Keitaro's anger had faded. But it would be better and even necessary to inform the mother, even though she was not concerned in the matter, of how the interview with Taguchi had failed. Accordingly, when the question of Sunaga's visit to Uchisaiwaicho drifted into their talk, Keitaro thought it the best moment to inform her of the particulars.
"To tell the truth," Keitaro began, "I too visited your relative at Uchisaiwaicho today."
"Oh, did you?" said Sunaga's mother, her face suggesting she was apologizing for having been so concerned about her son she had failed to pay attention to Keitaro's situation. She must have known perfectly well either by seeing it herself or hearing of it from her son that Keitaro had been desperately trying to find a job for some days past, that after several unsuccessful efforts he had asked Sunaga for an introduction, and that Sunaga had arranged an interview for him with his uncle at Uchisaiwaicho. She was probably thinking that with this knowledge about Keitaro's circumstances, a considerate person ought to have asked him about it before he had mentioned it himself.
With this observation of her state of mind, Keitaro tried to make his words into an introduction of the entire course of events that had taken place. But the interjections she uttered every now and then—"That is certainly correct!" or "My, what an unfortunate occurrence!" — which could be interpreted as sympathetic to either party, caused him to omit from his narrative all the abusive language he had used in his fit of anger. After many a repetition of the word "Sorry," she said as if defending Taguchi, "He's truly an enormously busy man. So much so that even my sister, living under the same roof, is unlikely to have even a single day in the week to talk with him undisturbed. I can't stand by indifferently, so I often say to him, 'What good, Yosaku-san, is all the money you earn if you ruin your health by such hard labors! Relax a little. The condition of your body is everything, is it not?' And he replies, 'My thought exactly. But business comes to a boil so quickly that unless you ladle it out soon, it spoils. It can't be helped.' And so he laughs away my advice. But then he sometimes surprises his wife and daughters by saying, as if the idea had just struck him, 'I'm taking all of you to Kamakura. Go get ready.'"