When the two-panel screen was taken out of a closet and Sōsuke viewed it in the light, he was sure it was something he recognized. Toward the bottom of the screen were depicted in dense profusion bush clover, bellflowers, susuki, kudzu vines, and ominaeshi;[17] above them, a perfectly round silver moon; and off to one side of the moon, the verse: “A country lane, the sky above / amidst the moonlight / ominaeshi,” which was signed by Ki’ichi.[18] As Sōsuke knelt in front of the screen and his eyes lingered now on a dark discoloration on the silver disk, now on the underside of the wind-tossed kudzu leaves, looking positively desiccated, and now on the signature, “Hōitsu,”[19] written in semi-cursive style in the middle of a crimson circle the size of a rice cake, he was transported back to the time when his father was still alive.
During the New Year’s holidays his father would without fail bring this screen out from the dark storehouse and set it up in the vestibule, then place in front of it a square box made of rosewood in which to collect New Year’s greeting cards. At the same time he would hang in the parlor a pair of scrolls depicting a tiger—auspicious on this occasion, he always said. To this day Sōsuke recalled his father having informed him once that these scrolls were the work of Gantai, not Ganku.[20] There was an ink spot on the figure of the tiger. It was no more than a small splotch on the muzzle of the beast, depicted here with its tongue out, drinking from a valley stream, yet it was still conspicuous enough to have irritated his father no end. Whenever his father caught sight of Sōsuke near these scrolls, he would look at him with a peculiar mixture of amusement and resentment and say, “Do you remember splashing that ink there? You could be very naughty when you were a little boy.”
Now, as he knelt in obeisance to the screen and thought of the life he used to lead in Tokyo, he told his aunt, “Thank you, I’ll accept your offer.”
“Oh yes! You certainly should take it,” she said, adding in an abundance of goodwill, “If you like I’ll have a courier deliver it for you.”
Once the necessary details had been worked out, Sōsuke decided that that was enough for one day and went home. After dinner he went out on the veranda with Oyone. As they refreshed themselves in the cool air, two white yukata side by side in the darkness, he reported on the events of the day.
“Didn’t you see Yasu-san?” Oyone asked.
“No, evidently he’s at the factory all day long, even on Saturdays.”
“It must be hard work.” Such was Oyone’s comment about Yasunosuke’s situation; about the uncle and aunt’s past conduct, she had nothing to say.
When Sōsuke expressed his concern about Koroku’s future—what ever could be done about it?—she said only, “Yes, I wonder.”
“If she keeps making excuses, there are a lot of things I could say to her,” Sōsuke said, letting his imagination run wild. “But if I start down that road, it’s bound to end in a lawsuit, and since there’s no proof of anything, we could never win.”
“No one expects you to win some judge’s ruling.”
Sōsuke smiled wryly at Oyone’s quick response and ceased to pursue this scenario.
“This all happened because I couldn’t come to Tokyo then.”
“And when you were able to come to Tokyo, it didn’t make a difference anyway.”
The couple continued for awhile in this vein, then, again peering up at the ribbon of sky beyond the eaves, spoke about tomorrow’s weather and retired beneath their canopy of mosquito netting.
The following Sunday Sōsuke sent for Koroku and told him what their aunt had said, sparing no details.
“I have no idea why she chose not to tell you all of this herself,” he said. “Maybe it’s because she knows you’re a hothead, or maybe it’s because she still thinks of you as a child who can only be fed a simplified version of things. But in any case, what I’ve just told you is the truth of the matter.”
But Koroku’s craving to know was not to be satisfied by even this highly detailed account. He replied only with a curt “I see,” and cast at his brother the peevish look of someone who had been wronged.
“There’s nothing to be done about it now. Anyway, your aunt and Yasu-san meant well enough, I suppose.”
“Yes, I know that!” Koroku’s tone was bitter.
“Well, then, maybe you think it’s my fault. And it is, of course. I’ve been full of faults my whole life!” Stretched out on the tatami, puffing a cigarette, Sōsuke had nothing further to say about the matter.
Koroku, too, fell silent, and fixed his gaze on the Hōitsu screen that had been set up in a corner of the parlor. “Do you remember this screen?” his brother asked. Yes, Koroku murmured, he did. “It was delivered from our aunt’s the day before yesterday. It’s the only thing of Father’s I have left. If it could be sold for enough to cover your tuition, I’d give it to you here and now. But a single, peeling screen is hardly going to get you through university,” said Sōsuke. Then, with a self-deprecating smile, he muttered, “And what insanity to leave such an object standing here in this heat. But I don’t even have a place to store it.”
In spite of his chronic exasperation with this nonchalant, dithering brother of his and the yawning gulf between them, Koroku could never bring himself to quarrel over anything serious. This time, too, he appeared to wither. “I don’t care about the screen,” he ventured, “but what would you suggest I do from now on?”
“Well, it is a problem,” said Sōsuke. “But we don’t have to decide anything before the end of the year. So in the meantime you should think things over carefully. And I’ll do the same.”
By nature Koroku could not stand having things left up in the air. He began to complain bitterly about his intolerable situation. Even if he were to attend his classes, how could he concentrate? How could he even prepare his lessons? But his complaints had no effect on his brother’s detached attitude. When his litany became too shrill to ignore, Sōsuke cut him short.
“To be able to muster so many complaints about one little thing—yes, you’ll get ahead, that’s for sure. Well, if you want to quit school, there’s really nothing to stop you from dropping out right now. You’re made of a lot stronger stuff than I am.” Their conversation thus stalled, Koroku returned to his dormitory in Hongō.[21]
That evening, after a bath and dinner, Sōsuke went out with Oyone to a festival at a local tutelary shrine. There they bought two inexpensive plants and took them home, Sōsuke carrying one pot, Oyone the other. To give the plants the benefit of the night dew they opened up the shutters that faced the embankment and set them down side by side in the garden.
“How are things going for Koroku?” Oyone asked her husband as they crawled into bed under the mosquito net.
“Not well at all,” Sōsuke answered. In about ten minutes they were fast asleep.
Sōsuke awoke the next day to another week at the office, where he had no time to think about Koroku. Even while relaxing back at home he took care not to expose the problem directly to the light of his mind’s eye. The brain beneath his thatch of hair could not withstand such perturbation. When he recalled how, with his penchant for mathematics, he once had the stamina to sketch out the most complicated geometric figures in his head, he couldn’t help shuddering at the drastic decline in his faculties, which seemed to have set in over an incredibly short time.
All the same, once every day or so, the figure of Koroku hovered indistinctly at the back of his mind and triggered the reaction, for that moment at least, that he must give serious consideration to his brother’s future. The next moment, however, he invariably stifled the thought on the grounds that there really was no cause for haste. Thus Sōsuke passed the days, unable to dispel the nagging sense of indecision lodged in his breast.
Early one evening at the end of September, when dense clusters of stars were visible in the Milky Way, Yasunosuke showed up at their door as though fallen from the sky. His visits were so rare that Sōsuke and Oyone were taken by surprise, and they suspected that he had come with some defi
nite purpose in mind. And in fact he had come to discuss matters related to Koroku.
Recently Koroku had turned up at Yasunosuke’s factory and unburdened himself. Yes, he’d heard from his brother all about the money meant for his tuition, but then he’d made it this far as a serious student and was not at all happy at the thought of being unable to attend university, and so whatever it might take—borrowing money or whatever else—he really wanted to go as far as he could . . . Now couldn’t Yasunosuke come up with some solution? Yasunosuke had answered, “I really need to discuss these things with Sō-san,” but Koroku stopped him in his tracks, saying that his brother was not the sort to listen to anybody, and since he himself had dropped out of university he thought it was perfectly all right for others to give up on their education, too. If you wanted to pinpoint the cause of all this, well, basically Sōsuke was to blame, in spite of which he wasn’t fazed a bit and paid no heed to anything others might say. This being the case, Yasunosuke was the only one he could turn to. It might seem strange to rely on him now that his own mother had formally refused any further assistance, but he hoped Yasunosuke would be more understanding than she was. Koroku persisted in his queries and showed no sign of letting up.
Yasunosuke did his best, he said, to mollify Koroku before sending him home, telling him he was mistaken about his brother, who was actually quite concerned about him and due to come over soon for another discussion. As Koroku was about to leave he had taken out of his pocket several blank sheets of paper and asked his cousin to affix his seal: He would need them, he explained, to complete the requisite absence reports for school.[22] Until it was resolved whether he was to continue his education or drop out, he could not possibly study, and so there was no point in his attending classes every day.
Yasunosuke left after chatting for less than an hour, saying that he was busy, without reaching any concrete agreement with Sōsuke about Koroku’s future. His parting words were that in any case they should all have a leisurely get-together sometime and come to a decision, preferably with Koroku present if that would be all right.
When the couple was alone Oyone addressed her husband: “May I ask what you’re thinking?”
Striking a pose with hands thrust under his sash and shoulders slightly raised, Sōsuke said, “I’m thinking how much I wish I could be like Koroku again. Here I am constantly worrying that he might meet up with the same fate that I did, while for him his brother doesn’t even exist. Can you beat that?”
Oyone took the tea things out to the kitchen. Their conversation over, husband and wife spread out the bedding on the tatami. The cool, silvery river of the Milky Way hung suspended high above their dreams.
The following week having passed with no visit by Koroku or any further communication from the Saekis, Sōsuke’s household reverted to its normal uneventfulness. Every day the couple rose at an hour when the dew still glistened and witnessed a beautiful sun shining above the eaves. After nightfall they would sit together, a lamp with a base of dark red bamboo between them, casting elongated shadows in its light. When their conversation stalled, as it did with some frequency, the only sound to break the silence was the tick-tock of the pendulum clock.
Even with this return to their weekly routine they did discuss certain issues concerning Koroku. It was a foregone conclusion that if he was determined to continue his education, or for that matter even if he was not, he would soon have to vacate his current boardinghouse and either move back to the Saekis or stay with Sōsuke and Oyone; there really was no other choice. Nonetheless, while it might seem as though Sōsuke’s aunt had addressed this issue once and for all, it was likely that if appealed to she would not refuse to take Koroku in again for the time being, as a gesture of goodwill. Yet it would then be ethically remiss of Sōsuke not to assume responsibility for everything beyond his brother’s lodging, that is, tuition, spending money, and all other expenses necessary for Koroku to continue his education. Sōsuke simply could not afford to do this, however, given their current household budget. Sōsuke and Oyone calculated in minute detail their present income and expenses.
“No, it can’t be done,” he said.
“Any way you look at it, it would be impossible,” she agreed.
Next to the sitting room they occupied at the moment was the kitchen, which was flanked by the maid’s room, on the right, and on the left, a six-mat room. There being only three of them in the house, including the maid, Oyone had deemed the six-mat room of no particular use and placed there, by the east window, her small vanity with a mirror attached. It was here that, once Sōsuke was done with his ablutions and his breakfast, she retired in the morning to change her clothes.
“Instead of Koroku staying at the Saekis, couldn’t we clear out the six-mat room and have him live with us?” Oyone proposed. Her idea was that if they took charge of room and board and the Saekis contributed something each month toward the remaining expenses, then Koroku would be able to realize his wish and finish his schooling. “As for his clothes,” she added, “he could make do with hand-me-downs from you and Yasu-san that I redid to fit him.”
The idea had in fact already occurred to Sōsuke, who had not, however, been keen to ask so much of Oyone, and had therefore not even mentioned it. Now that his wife had suggested this arrangement herself, though, he naturally lacked the conviction to reject it. He wrote to Koroku. As long as his brother had no objections, he said, he would visit the Saekis once again and discuss the matter. The very same evening Koroku received the letter he dashed right on over, the rain pelting down on his oilpaper umbrella. He was in high spirits, as if the deal were already done.
Oyone gave Koroku cause for such assurance. “After all,” she said, “your aunt only said what she said because back then, we just foisted everything to do with you on them and did nothing about it for the longest time. Say what you will, if only it had been possible, your brother would somehow have made things right a long time ago, but they just didn’t work out, as you know. Anyway, if we present them with this plan for you to live here, neither your aunt nor Yasu-san could say no. It will all surely turn out well, so you can stop worrying. I promise you.”
Thus reassured by Oyone, Koroku returned to Hongō in the driving rain. Two days later he was back to ask if his brother had talked with the Saekis. Three days after that he appeared again, saying that he’d been over to their aunt’s and learned that she still hadn’t had any visit from Sōsuke, and urging that his brother move on this matter as soon as possible.
For his part Sōsuke passed the days telling himself that he would go over soon; in the meantime, autumn settled in with the visit still unpaid. And so it had come about that one splendid Sunday afternoon, deciding he could delay no longer, he addressed the issue in a letter that he mailed to Banchō. And in response he had received a reply from his aunt to the effect that Yasunosuke was presently unavailable, having gone to Kobe.
5
MRS. SAEKI paid a visit on a Saturday afternoon after two o’clock. It had been unusually cold and cloudy since morning, now that the wind had suddenly shifted to the north, and the guest warmed her hands over a cylindrical brazier encased in bamboo.
“My goodness, Oyone-san, this room must be nice and cool in the summer, but it does get chilly this time of year, doesn’t it!”
Mrs. Saeki’s naturally curly hair was piled neatly on top of her head, and her kimono jacket was tied in front with an old-fashioned braided cord. The woman was fond of her drink at the dinner table, and it was perhaps to this that she owed her lustrous complexion and plump figure, both of which contributed to a remarkably youthful appearance for someone her age. Whenever she stopped by, Oyone would comment to Sōsuke afterward on how young she looked, and he would invariably reply that so she should, having in all these years borne only one child, as though this fact alone accounted for her appearance. Oyone thought that he might have a point. But after listening to Sōsuke’s remarks she would often retreat to the six-mat room and glance at her face i
n the mirror. Each glance gave her the impression that her cheeks had grown still more hollow than the last time she had looked. Nothing was quite so painful for Oyone as thinking of herself in relation to children. In the household of their landlord, on top of the embankment behind their house, there was a whole flock of children whose clamorous voices, which could be heard clearly as they played on the swing or at hide-and-seek in the garden up above, always made Oyone feel empty and wistful. And here, in front of her, sat the aunt who, precisely because she had borne a single son and seen him grow up without incident into an educated gentleman, wore this look of complacency—and also of sufficient prosperity to have conferred on her a double chin. Yasunosuke seemed to worry constantly about his mother’s weight and the risk of a stroke; but to Oyone, the worried son and the mother who was the object of his concern appeared equally fortunate.
“And how about Yasu-san?”
“Well yes, my dear, finally he’s back. He got home the night before last. Of course his being away is why we’ve taken such a terribly long time to respond—I mean, it seems I really owe you an apology.” Without expanding on this gesture, however, she returned to the subject of her son’s affairs. “Well, the boy did manage to graduate from the university—and thank you for all your warm encouragement!—but it’s what happens from now on that’s absolutely crucial, and I do worry. Still, he’s had that job at the Tsukijima factory since September, and so long as he sticks to it the way he’s been doing, I’m pretty sure things will work out all right in the end . . . But then, where young people are concerned, you can never tell what kind of turnabout they might make somewhere down the road.”
Oyone could only get in edgewise a “how nice” here and a “congratulations!” there.
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