“But if it’s on top of water it has to.”
“It doesn’t work out that neatly.”
The women burst into laughter, and Hajime swiftly shifted to his third subject.
“Father, I wish our house was a battleship. How about you?”
“Your dad prefers a plain old house to a battleship.”
“But in an earthquake a house would be crushed.”
“But an earthquake wouldn’t disturb a battleship, is that it? I never thought about that. Well done.”
O-Nobu observed with a smile the genuine admiration on her uncle’s face. His earlier suggestion that Fujii should be invited for dinner seemed to have slipped his mind. Her aunt appeared oblivious, as if she had also forgotten. O-Nobu found herself wanting to question Hajime.
“Hajime-san, Makoto is your classmate, right?”
Hajime grunted affirmatively and proceeded to satisfy O-Nobu’s curiosity. His account, which could only have been delivered by a child, abounded in observations, interpretation, and facts. For a while the power of his narrative enlivened the table.
Among the episodes that had everyone laughing was something like the following.
One day on their way home from school, Hajime and Makoto had peered into a deep hole. Dug by the department of public works smack in the middle of the road, the hole was bridged by a cedar plank. Hajime offered Makoto 100 yen if he walked across the plank. Whereupon the reckless Makoto, exacting a promise, had started across the narrow, slippery-looking plank in those same shoes of shaggy dog hair, his knapsack on his back. At first it looked to Hajime as if his friend would fall, but as he watched him slowly approach the opposite side, step after careful step, he began to worry. Abandoning his companion teetering above the deep hole, he ran. Makoto, who was obliged to keep his eyes on his feet, had no idea until he was all the way across that Hajime had disappeared. When he had accomplished his feat and at last raised his eyes, thinking to receive his 100 yen, his friend was nowhere in sight, so the story went.
“It appears that Hajime outsmarted his friend in this case,” Uncle observed.
“It appears that Fujii-san hasn’t been over to play much recently,” said Auntie.
[ 75 ]
BEYOND THE fact that the children were classmates, O-Nobu’s presence in the picture added a distinctive coloring to the recent interaction between the two families. The prospect of having to gather in the future willy-nilly at auspicious and inauspicious moments required both sides, to the extent that circumstances permitted, to arrange opportunities to socialize on a regular basis. Okamoto, who represented the bride’s in terests, was, even more than Fujii, in a position that placed him under this obligation. Furthermore, Uncle Okamoto was possessed of a kind of tactfulness that is often found in successful people. He was also inherently optimistic and generous. But he was a nervous man and feared misunderstandings. He was particularly afraid of being seen as arrogant, a quality people relatively less fortunate were prone to impute mistakenly to those leading lives of ease. Recently, having taken a step back to a somewhat quiet place, an attempt to restore his health after long years of too much work and study, he also enjoyed an abundance of free time and took pleasure in filling the emptiness of his leisure hours with a mosaic of things that accorded with his tastes. This included developing an interest in gradually approaching people he had neglected until now as having no connection to himself.
This tangle of reasons prompted him from time to time to set out for Fujii’s house. Fujii, who appeared to be reclusive, made no effort to repay Okamoto’s visits formally, but neither did he seem displeased by the intrusion. On the contrary, the men took pleasure in their conversations. And while they never managed to reveal themselves to each other in any depth, they found it interesting to exchange glimpses of their respective worlds. These worlds were oddly incongruent. Something that appeared coarse and slapdash to one seemed highly refined to the other; vulgarity from one point of view was of practical interest from the other, and in the space created by the disparity between them, unexpected discoveries abruptly emerged.
“I suppose you’d call him a critic, a fellow like that. But I don’t see what kind of work he could do.”
O-Nobu wasn’t sure what her uncle meant by a critic. Someone who was useless in any practical way, she supposed, obliged to pull the wool over people’s eyes by saying things that sounded momentous.
A man with no occupation who simply plays with logic—what use would society have for such a person? Isn’t it to be expected that a man like that would be in trouble because he was unable to earn a respectable living?
Unable to advance beyond this, O-Nobu smiled at her uncle.
“Have you been to Fujii-san’s recently?”
“I stopped off on my way back from a walk the other day. That house is in a perfect spot to stop when I’m feeling tired and need a rest.”
“Did he have interesting things to say again?”
“He has odd thoughts as always, that one. Last time we talked all about men attracting women and women attracting men.”
“Goodness!”
“Such nonsense, at his age!”
O-Nobu and her aunt expressed their respective dismay, and Tsugiko looked away.
“It’s a funny thing. You have to admire him for considering things as carefully as he does. According to the sensei, in every household the male child will inevitably desire the mother and the female child will desire the father. And when you think about it, of course he’s right.”
O-Nobu, who preferred her uncle in-law to her real aunt, turned a little serious.
“And what about it?”
“It goes like this: if men and women aren’t constantly attracting one another, they can’t become complete people. In other words, there’s an inadequate place inside each of us that we can’t complement on our own.”
O-Nobu’s interest quickly waned. Her uncle’s observation was no more than a fact she had known for a long time.
“That’s just the male-female principle. Opposites attract.”
“Yes, the attraction part is essential, but what’s interesting is that the opposite is essential too—discord instead of harmony.”
“Why?”
“It’s like this: the male and the female are attracted because they have their respective differences. As I said—”
“And?”
“Well, the different part isn’t you. It’s something different from yourself.”
“I don’t—”
“Follow along. If it’s different from yourself, there’s no way you can come together with it. All you can do, forever and ever, is remain apart. It’s clear as day.”
Her uncle cackled as though he had vanquished O-Nobu. O-Nobu refused to cry uncle.
“That’s just theoretical.”
“Of course it is. It’s logic that will hold up splendidly no matter how you look at it.”
“It isn’t. It’s zany. It’s just the kind of false logic that Uncle Fujii throws around.”
O-Nobu was unable to talk her uncle down. But she couldn’t bring herself to believe in what he was saying. No matter what, she didn’t want to believe.
[ 76 ]
UNCLE OKAMOTO ran on about a variety of things that happened to interest him.
As a man achieves enlightenment encountering a woman, so a woman achieves enlightenment encountering a man. But this is a truth limited to pious Buddhists before marriage. The minute the principals enter into a relationship as a couple, the truth turns in its sleep and presents us with a different face, its diametrical opposite. To wit, a man cannot achieve enlightenment without separating from his woman and vice versa. The power of attraction that has obtained until now instantly transforms into a repellant force. From that moment on, we are obliged to acknowledge the truth of the old saw: a man belongs, when all is said and done, in the company of men, a woman, in the company of other women. In other words, the male-female principle, the state of harmony that exists betw
een them, is merely a step on the road to realizing the principle of male-female disharmony that is imminently on its way….
O-Nobu wasn’t sure whether these were original thoughts or a repackaging of Fujii, nor could she be certain what portion was intended seriously and what was in jest. Her uncle, who was useless with a pen, was terrifyingly agile when it came to talking. He was the sort of man who could dress up a simple thought with hand-sewn kimonos beyond counting. Wisdom packaged as proverbs rolled off his tongue ceaselessly. Objections from O-Nobu only added fat to the fire, feeding his fluency until there was no stopping it. In the end she was obliged to cut short the conversation.
“You’re so long-winded, Uncle.”
“You’ll never best him with talk, so you might as well just give it up. If you say something he gets pushier.”
“I know—he’s trying to brew some male-female discord.”
Uncle Okamoto observed O-Nobu and her aunt with a grin as they exchanged their critiques, waiting for a break in their dialogue to pronounce sentence.
“It appears you’ve finally surrendered. And I accept your surrender, I don’t pursue the defeated—because one of a man’s virtues is pity for the weak. Even a man like me.”
Assuming the well-satisfied look of the victor, he rose, slid open the shoji, and stepped outside; decisive footsteps in the direction of the study gradually receded. When he returned a minute later he was holding four or five slender volumes.
“O-Nobu. I’ve brought you something amusing. Give these to Yoshio-san the next time you visit the hospital.”
“What are they?”
O-Nobu took the books at once and looked at the covers. Inexperienced with foreign languages, she had difficulty deciphering the English titles. She read them haltingly, one word at a time: “Book of Jokes. English Wit and Humor…”
“Gracious!”
“They’re all funny. Puns and riddles and suchlike. And they’re the right size for reading in bed; they won’t give him a stiff neck.”
“Made to order for you, Uncle—”
“Maybe so, but it’s harmless, nothing to make Yoshio-san angry no matter what a stick-in-the-mud he is.”
“Of course he won’t be angry.”
“Anyway, this is in the interest of couple harmony. Take it to him and give it a try.”
O-Nobu thanked her uncle, and when she put the books in her lap, he held out to her the slip of paper in his other hand.
“This is reparation for making you cry before. I promised, so please take it along.”
O-Nobu knew what the paper was before she had received it from her uncle’s hand. He waved it pointedly in front of her face.
“When you’re experiencing discord with your mate, this is absolutely the best medicine. In most cases one dose of this and you’ll recover at once—it’s a miraculous cure.”
Looking up at her uncle, O-Nobu protested weakly.
“We’re not suffering discord. We’re truly in harmony.”
“So much the better. If you take this when you’re united, it will make your hearts even healthier. Your bodies, too, more robust. With this wonder drug you can’t lose either way.”
O-Nobu took the check from her uncle’s hand, and, as she peered at it, tears filled her eyes.
[ 77 ]
O-NOBU DECLINED the rickshaw her uncle offered to call for her. But she was unable to reject his offer to see her to the trolley stop. Presently they descended together down the long hill to the river’s edge.
“This sort of exercise is the best thing for my condition—I guess I can damn well walk if I please.”
The remark suggested that he had forgotten, fat as he was and easily winded, the almost ludicrous degree to which he would suffer when he had to climb back up the hill.
Along the way they discussed their late evening the night before. In passing, O-Nobu mentioned finding O-Toki slumped over the table fast asleep. Since the maid had been in the Okamoto house before moving in with the new couple, O-Nobu’s uncle couldn’t escape a feeling of responsibility as her guarantor.
“Your aunt knows her well; she’s a good, honest woman. Otherwise we wouldn’t have assured you she could stay alone in the house. Even so, falling asleep is irresponsible. Of course, she’s young and probably sleepy most of the time.”
Listening to her uncle express his sympathy, O-Nobu, who well knew that if it had been her, no matter how young she was, she would never have been able to fall asleep in a similar situation, merely smiled. In her view, her principal reason for going home this early was a desire to avoid repeating the consequences of her late return the night before.
She boarded the trolley hurriedly as it pulled up. From inside she turned to her uncle and said “Sayonara.”
“Sayonara,” her uncle replied, “our best to Yoshio-san.”
No sooner had they exchanged parting words than O-Nobu was isolated inside the noise and motion of the trolley.
She let her mind wander. The faces and figures of the participants from the night before took their places, one on the heels of another, and rotated past her mind’s eye with the speed of the trolley she was riding. Even so, she was sensible of something connecting the images in the dizzying display. Possibly that certain something underlay and was generating the whirling images. She was compelled to derive its meaning somehow. But her efforts were in vain. She perceived a series of things, a cluster like dumplings, but she had alighted from the trolley without having resolved the nature of the logic holding them together.
The rattling of the lattice door being opened brought O-Toki running from the direction of the kitchen, and, as O-Nobu expected, she bid her mistress “welcome home” and pressed her head politely to the tatami. O-Nobu felt that she was responsible for this dramatically changed behavior.
“Tonight at least I’m home early.”
It appeared the maid didn’t think so. Seeing the self-satisfied look on O-Nobu’s face, she agreed unconvincingly, “Yes—” prompting O-Nobu to a small conciliation.
“I intended to be even earlier, but the day just flies away.”
Bidding O-Toki fold the kimono she had thrown off, she inquired whether anything unusual had come up during her absence.
“Not really,” O-Toki replied.
Just to be sure, O-Nobu reframed the question.
“I suppose no one stopped by?”
O-Toki’s reply was taut, as if she had abruptly recalled something.
“There was someone, yes. A gentleman named Kobayashi-san.”
This was not the first time O-Nobu had heard the name mentioned as one of Tsuda’s friends. She could remember having spoken to him two or three times. But she wasn’t fond of him. And she understood that her husband had little respect for him.
“What was he doing here?” she almost blurted, rudely enough, and then, restraining herself, inquired of O-Toki in a more appropriate tone, “Was there something he needed perhaps?”
“Yes Missus, he came to get that overcoat—”
O-Nobu, who had heard nothing from her husband, made no sense of this.
“Overcoat? What overcoat?”
In her meticulous way, O-Nobu posed O-Toki a variety of questions in an attempt to comprehend what Kobayashi had intended. But she got nowhere. Repeated questions and answers only led them deeper into a labyrinth. When they finally realized it was Kobayashi who was the odd one, not the two of them, they laughed aloud together. An English word Tsuda used often, “nonsense,” surfaced in O-Nobu’s memory. “Kobayashi and ‘nonsense’”—the combination struck O-Nobu as hilarious. Releasing herself without reserve to the comedy that rose in her like a spasm, O-Nobu forgot for the time being the nagging task she had brought home with her from the trolley.
[ 78 ]
THAT EVENING O-Nobu wrote a letter to her parents in Kyoto. Having begun and left off the day before yesterday and again yesterday, she had resolved that it must be completed today no matter what, a resolution by no means exclusively in consider
ation of her parents.
She was unable to settle down. In her attempt to flee uneasiness, she required something on which to focus all her attention. She was also urgently in search of a conclusion to the lingering question she had been carrying with her. In sum, she had the feeling that writing a letter to Kyoto would enable her to collect the tangled thoughts that were buzzing in her brain.
Taking up her brush, she began with the usual comments on the season, proceeded to a mechanical apology for having been out of touch, and paused for a while to think. Inasmuch as she was writing to Kyoto, she was obliged to center her letter around news of herself and Tsuda. This was the news every parent wished to hear from a newly married daughter. It was at the same time the topic that every young woman was required to address in a letter to her mother and father back home. O-Nobu, who believed there was no point in writing a letter home without including such news, was obliged to consider, brush in hand, the state of her relationship to Tsuda at the current moment, how far it had progressed. It wasn’t that she felt oppressed by a necessity to report things to her mother and father exactly as they were. But as a married woman she was sensible of an urgent need to scrutinize and confirm her situation. She descended into deep deliberation. Her brush was stilled in her hand. She had to think, forgetting about even her poised brush. The harder she thought, the farther removed she felt from grasping anything substantial.
Until she took up the brush, she had been distressed by a nettling, random uneasiness. Having begun to write, she had finally landed. Now she was beginning to feel distressed by uneasiness about the place where she had come to ground. On the trolley she had divined that the images flickering across her brain converged here, in this place—she had at last arrived at the wellspring of the anxiety that was tormenting her. But she was unable to apprehend its actual form and substance. Consequently she would have to carry the riddle forward into the future.
If I can’t solve it today, I’ll have to solve it tomorrow. If I can’t resolve it tomorrow, it will have to wait until the day after. If not the day after…
Light and Darkness Page 20