Just at that moment a man suddenly ran out from the alley, brushed Keitaro aside as he rushed past him, and jumped on the platform the moment the motorman was putting his hand to the handle to start up the car. Before Keitaro had a chance to recover from his surprise, the car had already jerked forward. The man, his body only half through the door, called out, "Sorry!" As the two exchanged glances, Keitaro noticed that the man's final stare was cast toward Keitaro's feet. The moment the other had run against him, he had kicked the walking stick from his hand onto the ground. As Keitaro quickly stooped to pick it up, he noticed that it had fallen with the snakehead toward the east. The shape of the head made him feel that it was a fingerpost.
"So it's better to be at the eastern stop after all."
He hurried back to the porcelain dealer's. He remained there determined to single out the face of every passenger that got off any streetcar marked "Hongo 3-Chome." He scrutinized the first few cars with a glance so fierce that he might have been stalking a parent's murderer. Then, as he regained his composure, he gradually came to feel more confident.
He regarded the plaza within his field of vision as a wide stage and discovered on it three men whose attitude was more or less similar to his own. One of these, a policeman at the police box, was on watch as Keitaro was and was looking in the same direction. Another was a switchman in front of the Tenkado store. The last was a middle-aged man who, in the center of the square, was alternately waving a red flag and a green one as if they were some sort of sacred symbols. Keitaro felt that of all these men, it was he and the policeman, apparently standing in boredom from the point of view of any passer-by, who were actually expecting something to happen at any moment.
Streetcars came one after another and ground to a halt before him. Passengers getting on shoved their way into the congested passageway inside the car, and those getting off bore down imperiously from above. Keitaro saw many a scene of rude struggle enacted by nameless men and women in their gathering and dispersing. But in spite of his long wait, the object of his surveillance, the man in the black fedora, failed to appear. Perhaps he had long since descended at the western stop.
Keitaro felt that it was idiotic to remain standing in one spot scrutinizing these faces uselessly and with such intensity that his eyes were going out of focus. He began to feel that it would have been far more sensible if, instead of spending those two hours in feverish absorption before his boardinghouse desk, he had made sufficient arrangements with Sunaga to assist him in the undertaking. By the time he keenly felt his regret, the sky was gradually losing its light, and the colors of everything in sight began to subside into a dark-bluish shade. Some electric lamps and gaslights started to brighten the glazed shop windows here and there and to disperse the gloom of the winter twilight.
Suddenly he became aware of a young woman standing about six feet from him, her hair done up in a low pompadour. Each time a streetcar let its passengers in and out, he thought he remembered spending the rest of his attention glancing to his left and right. So he was especially surprised by the presence of this woman who had unexpectedly turned up quite near him, the when and where of her arrival a mystery.
She had on a somber-colored coat, its trailing length suitable for a person her age. Keitaro imagined under this the lively colors adorning a young woman's body. She seemed to be standing there trying to conceal these from the world. Even the ornamental neckband of the undergarment she would be dressed in was concealed by a silk scarf. She had on nothing that would attract anyone's attention except for this scarf, whose whiteness emerged all the more conspicuously in the thickening gloom of evening.
Indeed, what struck Keitaro as most prominent about her was this white color, which indicated a tendency to disregard the seasonal fashion. It did not make him feel that he had come upon something strange and incongruous under a cold, darkening sky, but rather gave him an agreeable mood of having found something fresh amid the sooty street. His attention was thus drawn to the area about her neck. Aware of his glancing at her so directly, the woman turned away slightly. But apparently still ill at ease, she had raised her right hand to her ear as if to comb back a stray hair. Since her hair had obviously been perfectly arranged, Keitaro felt that this gesture was quite useless. But the woman's hand exacted his renewed attention.
She did not have on those silk gloves that women of her class would have worn. Instead, the pair of kidskin gloves snugly fit her delicate fingers. In fact, the gloves fit so well that not a crease or even any looseness appeared anywhere, so much so that the leather seemed like a thin coat of colored wax applied evenly to the back of her hands. Keitaro had noticed when her hand was raised that the glove extended down her wrist by about three inches.
He turned his attention from the woman to look at a streetcar. But the person he was expecting failed to emerge among the throng getting off. He had a two- or three-minute respite from his vigilance. He was not that attracted to the woman to look forward to his free time just to watch her, yet in the intervals of the arrivals of streetcars, he stole observant glances in her direction, careful not to be perceived.
He had first thought she was waiting to catch a streetcar either for Hongo or Kamezawacho. Presently, the streetcar for each of these destinations came by and stopped, but she gave no sign of taking either, so he was slightly puzzled. The idea occurred to him that she might be one of those people who, instead of forcing themselves onto a congested car and enduring the pain of being crushed, strike a balance and deem it more profitable to wait, even if a few moments are wasted. But when a streetcar came without the "Car Full" sign showing, one that might even have had one or two empty seats, she still showed no intention of boarding, so he was all the more confused.
The woman seemed aware of the excessive attention given her by Keitaro, for on the slightest change in his behavior, she appeared consciously to prepare to avoid his glance, like a person who opens an umbrella before a single raindrop falls. She deliberately looked in the opposite direction or took a few steps away from him. Made to feel oddly constrained by such actions, Keitaro tried to keep himself from openly staring toward her.
But it eventually occurred to him that she might be unfamiliar with the area and was waiting at the wrong stop. If that were the case, he ought to be kind enough to inform her. His courage suddenly called forth, he turned unhesitatingly toward her. Then all at once she broke into a walk toward the jewelry shop several yards ahead, and there, her brow almost against the store window, she began looking at the rings, sash-clips, coral branches for ornamenting an alcove, and other items displayed — as if she had taken no notice of Keitaro's existence. He regretted his stupid loss of dignity in trying to show an uncalled-for kindness to a stranger.
He had noticed from the first that her features were not that remarkable. Although when observed directly in front it was not that noticeable, from the side her nose was decidedly flat. To make up for the deficiency though, her complexion was fair, her eyes clear. The light through the glass pane of the jeweler's falling upon her nose, part of her soft, full cheek, and her brow offered to Keitaro, from the angle at which he was standing, a strangely impressive contour made up of light and shadow.
With that contour and the fine figure of the woman wrapped in her long coat still in his mind, he again turned toward the streetcars.
Two or three came again, and each ran eastward to repeat Keitaro's disappointment. He took his watch from under his kimono sash and peered at it like a man who has abandoned all hope of success. It was long past five. He glanced at the dark sky overhead as if he were noticing it for the first time. Bitterly he clicked his tongue. The bird had escaped the net he had taken so much trouble to set up. It had easily flown away at the western stop. The old woman's prophecy concocted purposely to deceive, the bamboo cane he had brought with him as if it were something precious, and the direction the walking stick had suggested — all these turned out to be sources of vexation.