After just one week’s stay at an inn, Sōsuke and Oyone had moved into the house they now occupied. While they settled in, Sōsuke’s aunt and uncle helped them out in various ways. There was no need to buy all those little things for the kitchen if secondhand would do, they insisted, and sent over a complete set of utensils adequate to the needs of a small household. “With the move and all you must have had considerable expenses,” his uncle said, and followed his words up with a gift of sixty yen.
What with all the distractions, half a month went by without a word to the uncle about the property sale that had exercised the couple so greatly when they were living in the provinces.
“Have you spoken to your uncle?” asked Oyone.
“No,” said Sōsuke, “not yet.”
“How strange—when the matter was so much on your mind,” said Oyone with a faint smile.
“Well, it’s not as if I’ve had the occasion to bring it up,” he said in his defense.
Ten days later it was Sōsuke who raised the subject. “You know,” he said, “I still haven’t brought it up. Doing so now is such a bother that I’ve lost interest.”
“If it’s that much of a bother you needn’t force yourself to speak to him.”
“You don’t mind, then?” Sōsuke asked.
“But why should I mind,” said Oyone. “Hasn’t it always been something for you to decide for yourself? It’s never mattered to me one way or the other.”
At which Sōsuke said, “Well then, since it would look odd for me to launch into some formal inquiry all of a sudden, I’ll just wait for the chance to ask him in a natural way. Some kind of opening is bound to come up.” And so he put the matter off.
Koroku was comfortably lodged at his uncle’s house. If he passed the examination and was admitted to the secondary school, he would have to move into a dormitory, an eventuality about which he and his uncle appeared to have already reached an understanding. Having received little help with his tuition from Sōsuke, so recently relocated to the capital, Koroku seemed disinclined to confide in his brother the kind of personal matters he discussed with their uncle. As for his relations with their cousin, so far he and Yasunosuke had been getting along very well. Indeed, the two seemed more like brothers than did Koroku and Sōsuke.
In the natural course of things Sōsuke’s visits to his uncle’s house became less and less frequent, and as even these occasional visits came to seem like a mere formality, they left him feeling quite empty on the way home. In time this tendency reached the point where he barely got through the obligatory comments on the weather before he was itching to leave. It had become a trial to sit still for half an hour and string together enough banal remarks to pass the time. His hosts, too, appeared constrained and somehow ill at ease.
“What’s the hurry? Stay awhile!” his aunt would invariably say, but her effort to detain him only made him all the more eager to leave. All the same, when he had absented himself for a stretch he felt uneasy, as if from a twinge of conscience, and he would resume his visits. From time to time he would go so far as to say, with a nod of apology, that Koroku must be quite a burden for them. But to go beyond this and broach the subject of his brother’s future tuition, or the issue of the property sale executed on his behalf in his absence, was still too great a hurdle. Yet clearly it was not just out of a sense of duty, or the need to meet the world’s expectations where ties of blood are concerned, that, however reluctantly, Sōsuke continued to call on this uncle who held no attractions for him. Rather, his visits were attributable to nothing but an urge to be rid of a kind of knot still lodged in his breast.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Saeki remarked to her husband at one point, “Sō-san is a different person, isn’t he.”
“Yes, he certainly is,” replied her husband. “But when you get right down to it, the kind of business he got himself mixed up with was bound to take its toll, sooner or later.” He made as if to cringe at the iron laws of karma.
“Yes, it’s truly frightening,” she said. “He wasn’t always this subdued. He used to be so full of life—too lively, in fact, for his own good. And now, over the past few years since we last saw him, he’s aged so much I hardly know him. Why, he looks more like an old man now than you do.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said.
“No, I mean it,” she insisted. “Maybe not his hair or his face, but, you know, just the way he looks in general.”
Since their nephew’s return to Tokyo the old couple had engaged in not a few conversations along these lines. And it was true that whenever Sōsuke showed up at their house he looked very much the old man in their eyes.
Oyone, meanwhile, after being introduced to Sōsuke’s uncle and aunt upon arriving at Shimbashi, had for this reason or that never ventured to cross the threshold of their house. When they showed up for an occasional visit, she was the polite hostess, addressing them cordially as “Uncle” and “Aunt.” Yet despite their parting invitation to “come over sometime,” she would merely bow her head with a word of thanks and never get around to paying them a call.
Even Sōsuke had once urged her to follow through.
“Now, why not pay them just one visit?”
“Oh, but I . . .”
Noting the look of distress on her face, he resolutely avoided any further suggestions of this kind.
Relations between the two households continued thus for about a year. Then Mr. Saeki, whom his wife had declared to be more youthful in spirit than Sōsuke, suddenly died. His death was attended by virulent symptoms of meningitis or some such disease: After a few days in bed with what had appeared to be influenza, he fainted in the midst of washing his hands after a visit to the toilet; hardly a day later, he was a cold corpse.
“Well, my uncle’s dead and gone,” Sōsuke said to Oyone, “without my ever having had that talk with him.”
“You were still thinking of bringing that up? My, you do know how to nurse a grudge!” she said.
A year after the uncle’s death, Yasunosuke had graduated from the university and Koroku was about to begin his second year of secondary school. Yasunosuke and his mother moved to Naka Roku-Banchō.
A year after that, during summer vacation, Koroku went on a swimming holiday to the Bōsō Peninsula. Having spent more than a month there, with September upon him he set out from Hota across the peninsula to the Kazusa coast, traveling by way of Kujūkuri to Chōshi, from where, as if it had just occurred to him, he reversed direction and headed back to Tokyo. He turned up at his brother’s just a few days later, on an afternoon still heavy with summer’s lingering heat, and stretched out in the parlor, the room most protected from the sun; his eyes were the only two bright spots on a deeply tanned face that might as well have belonged to someone from the South Seas. The moment Sōsuke appeared Koroku sprang to his feet. “Nii-san, I have something to consult with you about,” he announced, in such solemn tones that, without pausing to change from his office attire, the mildly astonished Sōsuke heard him out.
According to Koroku, on the evening he had returned from Kazusa he was put on notice by their aunt that, regrettably, she would no longer be paying his tuition after year’s end. Having been immediately taken in by his uncle after his father’s death, Koroku had been lulled into a passive sense of security; he had been able to get on with his life much as he had while his father was alive, with no worries about school fees, clothes, even pocket money, all of which had simply been taken care of, such that until that evening the very thought of tuition as a problem had never crossed his mind. When his aunt issued her decree, then, he had been too dazed to offer even a polite response.
With a look full of apology, she proceeded for the next hour, woman that she was, to detail the reasons why she could no longer help him out. There was the death of her husband and the ensuing financial adjustments, then Yasunosuke’s graduation, and on the heels of that, the question of his marriage.
“I’d hoped at least to see you through your graduation
from secondary school, and I made a lot of sacrifices . . .” Koroku repeated this remark by his aunt twice over. At that point in the conversation he suddenly remembered how Sōsuke, when he had come up to Tokyo for their father’s funeral and to make the necessary arrangements, had told him before returning to Hiroshima that funds for his education had been entrusted to their uncle. But when Koroku had asked the aunt about this for the first time, she seemed taken unawares. “Well, yes, at the time Sō-san did leave some small amount with us,” she said, “but that’s long gone. Even when your uncle was still alive we were paying your tuition out of our own pockets, you see.” Since Koroku had never been told by Sōsuke how much had been provided for his schooling, or how many years it was supposed to cover, he was unable to say a word in rebuttal to his aunt’s account.
Then she had added: “But it’s not as if you’re all alone in the world. You have a brother, and you should have a serious talk with him. Come to think of it, I might just meet with him myself and make sure he fully understands the situation . . . Sō-san hasn’t come by much lately, and I’ve been neglecting him myself, so there really hasn’t been any chance for us to discuss things.”
When Koroku had finished recounting the incident, Sōsuke looked his brother in the eye and said simply, “What a mess.” He showed no sign of erupting into a rage and racing off to give his aunt a talking-to, as he might formerly have done; nor did he appear to take offense at the sudden change in attitude on the part of his brother who, up to a moment ago, had kept his distance, as if to make it clear that he could get along perfectly well without any help from this quarter.
Having seen off Koroku, who as he retreated was clearly shaken by what he no doubt saw as the havoc wreaked by mere bystanders on the brilliant future he had projected for himself, Sōsuke stood in the doorway and gazed for a while through the latticework at the patches of fading sunlight.
That evening he snipped two large leaves from the basho plant[15] behind the house and spread them out on the veranda for Oyone and himself to sit on as they enjoyed the cool air. They talked about Koroku’s situation.
“Evidently your aunt has made up her mind that Koroku is our responsibility now . . .” said Oyone.
“Until I’ve seen her and talked things over,” said Sōsuke, “I really couldn’t say what she has in mind.”
“You can be sure it’s as I just told you,” Oyone replied, vigorously waving her fan amidst the shadows.
Sōsuke made no reply. He craned his neck and studied the narrow band of sky visible between the eaves and the embankment. They sat there in silence for a while until, at length, Oyone said, “Still, this just isn’t possible for us.”
“To see someone through university is way beyond me,” her husband agreed, leaving no doubt about his own limited capacity.
The couple’s conversation shifted to another topic and touched no further on either Koroku or his aunt. A few days later, when Saturday came around, Sōsuke ventured a visit to his aunt’s in Banchō on his way home from the office. His aunt declared herself to be pleasantly surprised and treated him with an extra measure of affability. Overcoming his distaste, Sōsuke broached for the first time the question he had stifled these four or five years. Not surprisingly, his aunt mounted the strongest defense possible.
According to her, the money his uncle had realized from the sale of the house and grounds—well, she could not be sure, but over and above the amount owed on the loan he’d hastily taken out to cover debts, it had come to 4,500 yen, or was it 4,300? Be that as it may, it was his uncle’s opinion that inasmuch as Sōsuke had given him the real estate outright before he went away, no matter how much over the advance the property sold for, it could reasonably be considered his personal gain. Still, it would make him uncomfortable to have it said that he had profited from selling his nephew’s property, and so he would keep it in trust for Koroku and leave it to him as his patrimony. As for Sōsuke, seeing that he’d been all but formally disinherited by his own father over that business he got himself involved in, he really didn’t deserve a single penny.
“Now don’t be angry,” his aunt quickly added. “I’m only repeating exactly what your uncle said.” Sōsuke held his tongue and heard her out.
Thanks to his uncle’s shrewdness, though in this case there was a later, unfortunate turn of events, the money set aside for Koroku’s “patrimony” had then been invested in a building on a busy street in Kanda. But before he could take out insurance on it, there was a fire and the building burned to the ground. Since Koroku had never been told about the “trust” arrangement, his uncle thought it better not to inform him of this mishap.
“So there you have it. Believe me, Sō-san, I can understand how upsetting this must be for you, but nothing can be done about it now, it’s beyond our control. You might as well accept it as your fate and just resign yourself to it. Of course, if your uncle were still alive he’d work something out, I’m sure. Even now that he’s gone, if I were in better straits I’d somehow be able to repay Koroku the amount that went up in smoke with that building, or at any rate see him through to graduation.”
Having said this much, his aunt proceeded to launch into another tale of domestic woe. This one had to do with Yasunosuke’s business affairs.
Yasunosuke, an only child, had just graduated from the university this summer. He’d had a cosseted upbringing and no social exposure beyond his circle of classmates, and could be described as obtuse about the ways of the world. Along with this obtuseness, however, was a generous spirit that he brought to his first venture into the arena of practical affairs. Being a graduate of the mechanical engineering program, there were of course suitable openings for him at some of the many well-established companies around the country, even with the recent decline in entrepreneurial fervor. However, showing a speculative tendency he seemed to have inherited from his father, he instead resolved to go into business for himself. Just then an opportunity materialized thanks to a chance encounter with a fellow engineering-department graduate a few years his senior, who had built a modest factory on Tsukijima[16] that he owned outright. In the course of their discussions they hit on the idea of a joint venture, with Yasunosuke investing some capital of his own. Herein lay the new source of woe for the family.
“You see, I sunk the few stocks I owned into this venture,” said his aunt, “and that’s left me as good as penniless. Naturally I know people will look at me and think, Her family’s very small, she owns her own house and the land—she’s got it easy! Just the other day Mrs. Hara was here visiting and she said to me, ‘My, what a nice life you’ve got. Every time I drop by you’re busy washing each and every leaf on your lily plants.’ Well, if she only knew!”
Sōsuke listened to his aunt’s explanation in a daze and was hard-pressed to offer even a token response—further proof, it struck him, of his nervous disorder having robbed him of the capacity he once had to think on his feet and come to quick, clear conclusions. For her part, his aunt seemed worried that he had not taken her at her word and blurted out the amount of funds diverted to Yasunosuke: 5,000 yen. For the time being Yasunosuke had to live on his meager salary plus whatever dividends he received on this investment.
“And who knows what will happen with these dividend payments,” she added. “If he’s lucky it might come to somewhere around ten to fifteen percent, but there’s always the possibility that if some little thing goes wrong, it’ll all go up in smoke.”
In the absence of any glaring evidence of greedy behavior on his aunt’s part, Sōsuke felt at a distinct disadvantage; yet the thought of ending his visit without some sally on behalf of Koroku’s future struck him as absurd. Setting aside the issue of the property sale, he interrogated his aunt on the question of the thousand yen he had entrusted to his uncle for Koroku’s education.
“That’s all gone, every penny of it spent on Koroku,” she replied. “And that’s the honest truth, Sō-san. Seven hundred yen have gone into his secondary-school expenses alo
ne.”
While he was at it Sōsuke thought he might as well try to find out what had become of the paintings and antiques he had asked his uncle to dispose of for him.
“Oh, those! Well, the most ridiculous thing happened . . .” she began, and then paused to gauge Sōsuke’s reaction. “But really, weren’t you told about all that earlier?” He replied that he had not been. “Oh, my goodness! Your uncle must have completely forgotten about it,” she said, and proceeded to recount the incident in full.
Shortly after Sōsuke returned to Hiroshima, his uncle had sought advice from an acquaintance—Sanada, she thought his name was—on how best to sell such objects. The man was said to be quite the connoisseur of paintings, antiques, and all, and as a regular broker was evidently well known in the trade. Anyway, this Sanada had accepted his uncle’s assignment on the spot, and after that he would carry off one object or another, saying that so-and-so is interested in this, so-and-so wants to see that, but then he’d never bring anything back. Whenever his uncle pressed him, he made excuses—the prospective buyer still had it and what not—and never produced the item, until finally things must have got too hot for him to handle and he simply disappeared.
“But you know, there’s still one folding screen left. We noticed it when we last moved. I remember Yasu saying, “This belongs to Sō-san. When you have a chance, why not send it over to him?’”
She spoke about the objects that Sōsuke had entrusted to her husband’s care as though she attached no importance to them whatsoever. Yet Sōsuke himself, in having simply let the matter go up to now, could scarcely be said to have shown much interest in them, either, and he refrained from expressing anger, even faced with someone who seemed unruffled by any twinge of conscience. But then she went on to say, “Listen, we have no use for the screen here, so if you like, why not take it home with you? They say that these things have gone through the roof lately.” For all his diffidence Sōsuke had a mind to accept her offer.
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