Sunaga had arranged, he said, to see his uncle that morning, but a sore throat had prevented him from going out. In a few days he would be able to, so at that time he would definitely speak to his uncle about Keitaro. Then he added, whether as a precaution or for some other reason, "He's a very busy man, you know. Besides, he has job applicants from all over. I have no idea what he'll say, but it wouldn't hurt to go see him." Keitaro interpreted these words as a warning not to expect too much. One interview would at least be better than none, and in contrast to his usual behavior he pleaded with Sunaga to inquire on his behalf.
Actually, though, Keitaro was not as worried or as anxious as his words implied. It was true, as he had himself asserted, that he had been and still was racking his brains and wasting no effort running about trying to find a job since his graduation from university. But there was exaggeration in the painful tone of voice— in half of it at least — with which he appealed to others, claiming he had not yet been given even the first glimmer of hope. He was not, as Sunaga was, the only child in his family, but like Sunaga he had only his mother at home, his younger sister having married. While he had no house or lot to rent as Sunaga did, he did own a small plot of farmland in the country. This tenanted land brought him yearly yields of rice — not much, but enough so that when the harvest was converted to cash according to the market price, he had no difficulties over the twenty or thirty yen required for his room and board each month. Furthermore, many a time had he requested extra expenses from his indulgent mother as if, so to speak, he were preying on himself. Under these circumstances, his clamoring for a position, though not altogether false, was certainly raised aloud through vanity in the hope of boasting about it to the people back home, to friends, and even to himself. Had the position itself been his real concern, he ought to have worked harder at the university in compiling a better record, but romantic that he was, he had made it a point to be as idle as he possibly could, the result being that his graduation was hardly a brilliant success.
Keitaro talked with Sunaga for an hour or so. He had himself brought forward those urgent questions of position and subsistence, but since he was more concerned about the woman he had seen from behind a while ago, he was not as seriously attentive to those momentous issues as his words implied. At one point when he suddenly heard the laughing voice of a young woman coming from the drawing room below, he felt tempted to ask if Sunaga had a visitor. Yet the very moment in which he was weighing the question became the instrument for destroying the naturalness of its utterance and making it an untimely remark. And so it remained unasked after all.
As for Sunaga, he tried bringing up topics that would humor Keitaro's curiosity as much as possible. He described how the back street he lived on just off the streetcar line was divided by small houses and narrow lanes into cubes that formed a hive of nameless townspeople in almost each of whose homes a drama was being enacted which would never surface to society at large.
He began with a woman who lived several houses down from his, the mistress of a retired hardware dealer whose store was in Nihombashi. She had apparently taken a lover, an actor belonging to some theatrical troupe. The retired merchant knew about the affair but said nothing. On a side street opposite her home was a neat little nondescript house with lattice doors in front owned either by a pettifogger or an employment agency, and sometimes the blackboard in front had such advertisements as "Immediate Openings: Woman Reporter. Woman Cook." Once a pretty woman twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old came looking for a job. Enfolded in her long dark blue twilled mantle with frills on it, she resembled a Western nurse. The gist of the story was that both the master of that house and his wife were surprised to discover she was the daughter of the man he had once served as a houseboy.
Sunaga next mentioned a gray-haired usurer that lived with his wife, who was about twenty years old, in a back alley behind Sunaga's house. It was said he had taken her as security for a loan. The neighboring residence was occupied by a professional gambler. While his dice-rolling cronies gathered there rubbing bloodshot eyes, the wife of one of the gamesters, a baby on her back under a nursing coat, occasionally came to fetch her husband, who was frenzily engrossed in his wagering. Crying, she would beg him to return, and the husband would assure her he would, but only in an hour when he had won back his losses. And then, almost hanging on to him, she would plead with him to leave at once, saying that the more he would try to win back, the more he would lose. Along that frozen midnight street the voice pleading for return and the one adamant against it would disturb the sleep of the neighbors.
As Keitaro listened to these stories, he began to suspect that Sunaga, who had long been in this place rampant with such real-life novels, might likewise be playing a part in a secret drama of his own but feigning innocence. Of course, behind this conjecture was the faint shadow cast by the woman Keitaro had seen from behind.
"While you're on the subject, let me in on your own story," Keitaro said, trying to attack, but Sunaga merely brushed aside the remark with a slight smile. "Well," he replied, "I've got a sore throat today." It sounded as if he had a story to tell, but not to Keitaro.
When Keitaro went downstairs, the woman's clogs were no longer at the entrance. Whether their owner had left or they had been put in the clog box or were hidden by discreet hands, he could not guess. As soon as he was out on the street, he hurried into a tobacconist's, urged on by one knew not what, and emerged with a cigar in his mouth. Smoking, he walked along to Sudacho where, just as he was about to board a streetcar, he remembered the regulations against smoking, so he moved on toward Mansei Bridge. With the intention of making the cigar last until he reached his boardinghouse, he sauntered along, still thinking about Sunaga. Now, the image of his friend did not appear just by itself — it was invariably followed by the flitting figure of the woman he had seen.
Ultimately he felt as if he were being jeered at by Sunaga: "How can you expect to come off looking good in romantic exploration by observing the world through a telescope from the third floor of a boardinghouse on Daimachi in Hongo?"
Keitaro had never been familiar with or even interested in what Tokyoites referred to as the "lower-town life." Occasionally passing through some back street around Nihombashi, he had seen a lattice door so narrow that one had to move sideways to pass through it, an iron lantern hanging for no apparent reason above the earthen floor at the entrance, shining inlaid bamboo filling the gap under the stepping-board, and a sliding door whose lower part was paneled with boards of cedar or some other wood so thin that the sunlight had tinged it translucent red. When he took in these items, he was left with a cramped feeling. He thought he could not bear such a constrained life, one with everything around him so tidily ordered in trivial ways, and so glossy too. People living in such houses were, he imagined, so neat and punctual that they were even likely to be particular about the sharpness of a toothpick used after a meal. He conjectured that these minute points in their mode of living were all governed by traditional rules and, like their tobacco sets, shone dreadfully with the luster of custom which generation after generation of their forefathers had rubbed and polished.