It must sound ridiculous to mention this odd fancy of mine, but actually, I like seeing women having their hair made up. The way the woman somehow contrived to bind my mother's thinning hair into a little round knot wouldn't have made a nice picture to look at, even if a skillful hairdresser had done it; still, it furnished me with enough diversion for killing time. As I watched her hands move, I began imagining to myself how magnificent Chiyoko's hair would be if it were combed out and arranged in such a Japanese way. Chiyoko's hair has a beautiful gloss to it; it's soft and smooth, long and luxuriant. Had I been my usual self on this sort of occasion, I would have suggested that it would be a good chance for her to have her hair done too. But just then it was difficult for me to make such an intimate request. Yet it so happened that she herself said that she somehow felt like having her hair set.
"Go ahead. It's been quite a while since it was done," my mother encouraged. And the hairdresser chimed in eagerly, "Yes, have it done up! The moment I saw your hair, I had the thought that it was too good to be in that foreign style." Finally Chiyoko sat down before the mirror stand.
"I wonder what style it should be."
The hairdresser recommended the shimada. My mother was of the same opinion. Suddenly Chiyoko called out to me, her long hair combed back down over her shoulders. "Ichi-san, what style would you like?"
Her words startled me. "I'm sure your husband would like shimada as well."
Chiyoko herself didn't look the least bit disconcerted. She deliberately turned toward me to say with a laugh,
"Then shall I show you my hair in shimada?"
I went upstairs before her hair was finished. If you're as nervous as I am, and particularly scrupulous about things, you behave in such a way that to the eyes of the unconcerned your conduct is almost juvenile. I separated myself from the mirror stand when the task was halfway through with the intention of freeing myself from the tax of admiration that a woman with a pretty hairdo imposes on a man. That was how deficient I was in the kind of goodwill necessary to flatter Chiyoko's vanity.
I don't like to make myself look good by glossing over some deficiency or other I may have. But even someone like me has enough brains to think about problems slightly deeper than the tricks often played around a brazier in a sitting room. Only, it's my weakness that once dragged down as low as I was then, I can't let myself be sidetracked. And since I know quite well how silly it all was, I hated myself for having gone and gotten involved.
I hate bravado as much as meanness, and I believe it's to my credit to speak of myself as I actually am even if I look degraded or small, so I'm making it a point to be as honest with you as I can. Yet are all those so-called great men of the world above the petty discords that occur around the sitting-room brazier or kitchen table? I'm still a green youth fresh from school, so my worldly experience is nothing to speak of, but insofar as I'm able to use my intelligence and imagination, I doubt if so great and noble a person has ever existed. I do respect Matsumoto, my uncle. But to put it bluntly, it's sufficient to say that he's the type who merely looks great and shows himself high-minded. I don't want to be so discourteous and biased as to label my respected and beloved uncle an imposter or a fake. But as a matter of fact, though he looks with indifference on the mundane world, he's quite attached to it. He stands calmly with his arms folded, apparently unworried by trifles, yet in the back of his mind he does worry about them. I'm inclined to compliment him on his being more refined than ordinary people only in that he keeps his own worries unrevealed. That he can keep them from outward show is due to his property, his age, and his culture, discernment, and self-discipline. And lastly, it's due to the fact that he's in harmony with his home life. His relationship with society, which is seemingly in opposition to it, is actually in keeping with it. Well, I've digressed. Perhaps I've dwelled too long in defending my own fussiness over trifles.
As I said a moment ago, I had gone upstairs. Though the heat was harder to bear there than downstairs because the room was nearer the sun, I was in the habit of spending most of my day there due to my long use of it. As usual, I was sitting blankly at my desk, my chin against my hands. I noticed before my elbows that the Majorca ashtray into which I had earlier dropped some cigarette ashes had been cleaned. Looking at the two geese depicted on it, I imagined Saku's two hands cleaning away the ashes. It was then that I heard someone coming up the stairs. The minute I heard those sounds, I knew they were not being made by Saku's feet. I felt humiliated in having Chiyoko see me in this listless pose of boredom. On the other hand, I don't like using the clever tactic of opening a book near at hand and pretending I'd been reading.
"It's finished. Take a look," she said and immediately sat down in front of me. "I probably look funny. It's been a long time since I've had my hair arranged this way."
"It came out beautifully. After this you ought to always have it done in shimada."
"I'll have to have it taken down and reset a few times to get my hair trained to this style."
After several exchanges of this sort, I found before me without my consciously realizing it the pretty, unsophisticated, and innocent Chiyoko I had known earlier. It's hard to say definitely whether my mood somehow happened to be softened or whether she was seeing me from a different angle. As far as I remember, there seemed to be nothing on either side that could account for this feeling. If this easy state between us had lasted an hour or two longer, the odd suspicion I had had about her might have been blotted out as a mere misunderstanding by drawing a straight black line through it back to its origin. But I made a mess of it, carelessly.
It happened this way. As we talked on a while, I realized she had come upstairs not only to show me her new hairdo but to say good-bye, since she was returning to Kamakura that day. It was then that I made my faux pas.
"So soon? Must you?" I asked.
"It's not that soon," she replied. "I've already been here a night. But it's a little funny, isn't it, going back with my hair like this — as if I were going to be married."
"Are all of you still at Kamakura?" I asked.
"Of course. Why?"
"Takagi-san too?"
This was the name that she had not mentioned and that I too had deliberately been keeping from our talk. But by chance we had somehow regained the feeling of throwing off all restraints, and just at the moment that I was drawn into this mood, the name had dropped from my lips quite inadvertently. The minute I looked at her face, I regretted my careless question.
As I told you earlier, she has a kind of contempt for me as someone who is given to indecision and who has little tact in dealing with the world. And to tell the truth, our intimacy has been established only on each other's tacit recognition of this fact. To make up for my deficiency, I had fortunately one point in my favor that always awed her. That was my reticence. A woman like her who is not satisfied unless she openly shows whatever she has on her mind would never be content with the sullen, undemonstrative attitude I always assume, but in that attitude there is a glimmer that suggests the existence of a mind somehow difficult to penetrate, and this forces her to look upon me as a man she'll never be able to know completely and who, in spite of her contempt, has something in him to be feared, so she has long paid me a kind of respect. She has never explicitly stated it, but in her mind she admits it, and actually it is something I too have implicitly demanded of her as my right.