Light and Darkness

by Sōseki Natsume

  Even in the event the unthinkable happened, I should be all right.

  In the moment, O-Nobu was that confident in her husband. When the time came, she felt equipped to take whatever steps might be required to handle the situation. If that should entail moving an opponent out of the way, so be it, she would be more than up to the challenge.

  What sort of opponent? What would she have answered if she were asked? This was an opponent sketched nebulously in pale ink. And it was a woman. A woman who wanted to steal away Tsuda’s love for her. That was all she knew. But she sensed that such an opponent was lurking somewhere. Had the confrontation between O-Hide and themselves not ended so badly, her next step in the course of things would have been to probe Tsuda for the identity of her opponent.

  If anything, she felt happy about her intention not to proceed according to this strategy. Postponing her concern until later was something she could easily endure. For the moment it occurred to her that taking advantage of this opportunity to inscribe as deeply as possible in her husband’s mind the kindness she was feeling toward him now would be the strategic thing to do.

  No sooner had she resolved to proceed this way than she told a lie. It was a trivial lie. To O-Nobu, however, firmly believing that the check she had brought had rescued her husband from a dire situation that was not only material but also spiritual, it was immensely significant.

  Tsuda had reached for the check and was staring at it again. It was written for an amount that was actually greater than he had required. Before he addressed this, however, he spoke to O-Nobu.

  “O-Nobu, thanks. This is a life-saver.”

  O-Nobu’s lie escaped her lips immediately following his words of gratitude.

  “The reason I went to the Okamotos yesterday was to get this from Uncle.”

  Tsuda looked surprised. It was after all this same O-Nobu who had flatly refused when he had asked her to speak to her uncle about a loan. Wondering what can have accounted for this change in less than a week’s time, he felt in the presence of an unsolvable riddle. O-Nobu explained in the following way.

  “I hated doing it, troubling Uncle for money. But, Yoshio, what choice did I have? How can I fulfill my duty as a wife to you if I can’t find the courage I need at a time like this?”

  “Did you explain to Okamoto-san?”

  “Of course, and it was painful.”

  It was her uncle who had handled the lion’s share of the expenses for her wedding.

  “Especially since I’ve behaved until now as if money were the last thing in the world we were worried about. That made it all the more awkward, I declare.”

  Judging by his own disposition, Tsuda could easily understand the degree of awkwardness O-Nobu would have felt in such a situation.

  “I’m impressed.”

  “The hard part was bringing it up. It’s not as if they don’t have money.”

  “But the world is full of difficult people like Father and O-Hide.”

  The look on Tsuda’s face suggested his self-esteem had been damaged. O-Nobu spoke as if to reassure him.

  “It’s not as if they’re the only reason I took the money. I have a promise from Uncle that he’ll buy me a ring. He’s been saying for a while that he’ll get me one now in return for not having given me anything when we got married. I expect that’s what he was thinking when he gave me the money. So you needn’t worry about it.”

  Tsuda looked at O-Nobu’s finger and confirmed that the stone he had purchased for her was splendidly there.

  [ 113 ]

  TO A rare degree they moved closely together. Tsuda’s heart, armored until now in order to maintain appearances in front of O-Nobu, softened. The care he had taken to obscure the situation in Kyoto behind a curtain of vagueness, a precaution motivated by his fear that O-Nobu might perceive his father as parsimonious, or that her estimation of his father’s wealth might fall below the affluence he wanted her to assume, relaxed. He didn’t notice this. With no effort or even conscious volition, he had arrived here as if swept along by the force of nature. It was very much as if the incident had lifted him gently despite his cautiousness and carried him to this place for O-Nobu’s sake. This made O-Nobu uncommonly happy. She sensed something natural about her husband’s attitude, reformed without any effort at reform.

  Tsuda for his part observed in O-Nobu a similar change in feeling. Ever since their marriage, other issues aside for the moment, they had been engaged covertly in a strange battle over money. There were specific reasons for this. To appear to O-Nobu in the best possible light, Tsuda, who tended to make wealth an object of pride no less than any man, had assessed his father’s holdings at an amount that far exceeded the reality and bragged about it to his wife to be. But that wasn’t all; in his weakness he had taken a step further. The picture of himself he had conjured for O-Nobu suggested that he was, more than now, a young gentleman of considerable means. He had hinted that in the case of an emergency he would be able to request financial aid from his father in whatever amount was needed. Even without such help, monthly expenses would be met without difficulty. By the time they were married, he was already burdened by the responsibility of making good on his intimations. In his clever way he understood full well that, when it came to placing importance on wealth, he had met his match in O-Nobu. Believing as he did, to put it extremely, that love itself was born from the glitter of gold, he felt uneasily the necessity of maintaining appearances somehow or other in front of his wife. In especial he was deeply afraid of being exposed to her contempt. It was partly the lurking presence of his determination to maintain this front, quite apart from actual need, that underlay the arrangement for monthly help from his father that had been brokered by his brother-in-law, Hori. In any case, there was a place in him that was concealed and inaccessible. At the very least there was a considerable discrepancy between his feelings toward his wife and what he allowed to reach the surface. O-Nobu, quick as lightning, felt this distance as palpably as if she held it in her hands. This was inevitably a source of dissatisfaction. But instead of arraigning her husband’s falsehood, she resented his inability to be frank. She explained this to herself as a kind of stand-offishness. It hurt her that he couldn’t expose his weaknesses in front of his wife like a man. In the end she resolved that if this were a man who kept his distance, unwilling to risk exposure, she would prepare for the worst in her own way. This resolution reached her husband faintly like an echo in the woods. Facing each other directly became impossible no matter the lengths they went to. Moreover, in their deference to each other, they were careful never to touch on the problem. However, their quarrel with O-Hide had accidentally battered to the ground at one blow this door to O-Nobu’s heart, though she was unaware that it had fallen. Without any effort or determination to release herself in front of her husband, she quite naturally opened. Thus it was that Tsuda beheld in her something so pleasing she might have been a different person.

  In this state they moved together with a degree of closeness that was rare. And, merged as they now were, something strange happened. They took up with ease a subject they had been avoiding until now. Together as one person, they began devising an approach to resolving the Kyoto impasse.

  The same presentiment gripped them both. Their hearts were constricted by a worrisome certainty that nothing they could do would correct the situation. O-Hide could be counted on to take action. It would surely be directed at Kyoto. And the result was certain to prove disadvantageous to them. To this point they were aligned. When it came to deciding on a corrective measure, their opinions diverged, and it was no simple task to synthesize a compromise.

  O-Nobu designated Uncle Fujii as her first choice for a mediator. Tsuda objected. He knew that both his uncle and aunt were on O-Hide’s side. He proposed Okamoto. This time it was O-Nobu who demurred, on grounds that Okamoto had never been closely associated with Tsuda’s father. She suggested paying a visit to O-Hide herself with an eye to a simpler reconciliation. Tsuda had no partic
ular objection. In his view, even if it weren’t for this most recent incident, it was meet, assuming they wished to avoid a total break, that relations between the two families should be renewed on one pretext or another. That didn’t mean, however, that they shouldn’t try to come up with a slightly more efficient approach in addition to O-Nobu’s visit. They bethought themselves.

  In the end the name Yoshikawa came to both of them. Yoshikawa’s position, his connection to Tsuda’s father, the fact that he was even now looking after Tsuda in accordance with a special request from his father—the more they thought about it, the clearer it seemed that he was admirably equipped to handle things to their advantage. There was, however, an impediment. If they intended to ask someone as difficult to approach intimately as Yoshikawa to speak for them, it would first be necessary to enroll his wife. But O-Nobu found Madam Yoshikawa impossible to be around. Before agreeing to Tsuda’s proposition, she deliberated a minute. Tsuda pressed for his recommendation because, close friends with Madam Yoshikawa, he felt it highly likely to succeed. In the end O-Nobu gave in. Having concluded this conversation in mutual openness, they took warm leave of each other.

  [ 114 ]

  AIDED BY his fatigue from the restless night before, Tsuda’s sleep that night was unexpectedly sound. Awakening with clear sunlight in his eyes, he peered through the window glass at the bright day and heard the familiar swish-swash of scrubbing from the laundry next door, a sound that somehow invoked an autumn mood.

  “If you be going, go in this! Oh yes! Oh my…”

  The laundry men were singing a popular song, adding at the end of every verse a made-up refrain, “O yes! Oh my! No flies on me!” The song helped Tsuda imagine their busy hands as they bent to their work.

  Abruptly, the launderers emerged from an odd opening onto the roof with arms full of white cloth. Approaching the clothes pole, they spread the cloth as if it were a single piece beneath the autumn sky. This activity, repeated daily since his arrival here, was monotonous. But it was also industrious. If there was significance in that, it escaped Tsuda.

  But he had more pressing matters to consider. An image of Madam Yoshikawa rose to his mind. When he tried imagining his future, the picture was all too vague. When he attempted to render it more sharply, the matron always came into focus. Today there seemed to be more than ordinary significance in this focal point representing his future.

  First of all, there was the remnant of his recent visit that continued to trouble him. On that occasion it was she who had abruptly shined a light in his mind on an issue that had been closed between them and sealed. He had struggled, resolved not to hear what more she might have to say. Simultaneously he had willed her to continue. Inasmuch as it was she who had broken the seal, it occurred to him that he had a right to unpack the contents.

  Second, he was concerned about Kyoto. The relative weight of the two matters aside, it was the latter that pressed upon him more urgently. Clearly he was well advised to meet with her as soon as possible. Lumbered with a body that would be unable to move for four or five days, he had gone so far, before O-Nobu had left the previous day, to urge her to visit the matron in his stead. O-Nobu had declined to go, leaving him without a plan, but he still felt strongly that a visit from her was the appropriate move to make.

  It struck Tsuda as passing strange that O-Nobu was so opposed to paying the lady a visit. A woman who normally would have stepped into a delicate situation like this eagerly without a word of encouragement! Such was his thought at the time. He had even tried to persuade her that the errand was a pretext for coming into Madam’s presence that he had prepared expressly for her. But she had not relented, and Tsuda hadn’t felt inclined to apply further pressure at the time. His reluctance was partly a function of the mutual openness they had managed to achieve as a couple, but it was also a reflection of her reason for declining. If she were to go, she had insisted, she would certainly fail. She declined to offer an explanation, saying only that Tsuda himself was certain to succeed. When he objected that timeliness rather than success was the issue, pointing out that a meeting would be impossible until he had left the hospital, which might be too late, her response had surprised him. Madam Yoshikawa would certainly be coming to the clinic for a visit, she declared. She insisted that the matter might be handled most naturally and simply by making use of that opportunity.

  Gazing at the laundry drying on the roof next door, Tsuda gathered in this manner, as though hauling in a net, fragments of the previous day’s conversation and examined them one after the other. He began to feel that Madam Yoshikawa might indeed pay him a sick call. It also seemed she was unlikely to come. He was unsure why O-Nobu had insisted so emphatically that she would appear. He pictured the large group that was said to have sat down to dinner in the restaurant in the theater. He tried assembling in a novelistic manner the conversation that might have transpired between O-Nobu and Madam Yoshikawa. But he was unable to isolate anything in particular that would have led to her prediction, and he had to admit that he was baffled. He acknowledged in O-Nobu a certain degree of the intuition that the heavens unfortunately had chosen to deny him. This gift put him always a little in awe of her, and he lacked the courage it would have taken to dismiss it carelessly. At the same time, he was altogether incapable of relying on it, and he considered whether he might not contrive by himself to draw the lady to the clinic. A phone call occurred to him at once. He tried hard to think if there mightn’t be a way to call that would induce her naturally, without seeming presumptuous or deliberate, to pay a visit. He might as well have been struggling to build something out of foam. No matter how he labored to work something out, it seemed to evaporate before he had managed to complete it. When he realized he was scheming to actualize a fundamentally unreasonable fantasy and was accordingly doomed to failure, he smiled with a certain bitterness and returned to gazing through the window glass.

  A wind had risen. The single willow tree in front of the laundry was swaying in unison with the drying sheets. The three power lines that nearly grazed the tree trembled as though in concert with the rest.

  [ 115 ]

  TO THE doctor, Tsuda appeared beside himself with boredom. As their eyes met he inquired, “How are you doing?” and added at once, consolingly, “It shouldn’t be much longer.” Then he changed the dressing on the wound.

  “You still have to be careful not to disturb the incision or it could be dangerous.”

  With this warning he informed Tsuda that blood had oozed from the wound when he had loosened just a little the gauze that was packed against it. Only a portion of the dressing had been changed. So long as there was a possibility of hemorrhage if the underlayer of gauze was peeled away, Tsuda mustn’t even think of dragging himself out of bed and going home.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to need the full week of bed rest I predicted.”

  The doctor looked sorry for Tsuda.

  “But of course your progress could always accelerate.”

  But the doctor’s attitude suggested he considered Tsuda a privileged patient for whom time and expense mattered little.

  “I assume you don’t have any pressing business?”

  “I think I can manage a week here. But something a little out of the ordinary has come up.”

  “I see. Well, you’ll be on your way soon enough—be patient a little longer.”

  Having nothing more to say about this, the doctor sat down and, possibly because outpatients hadn’t begun to arrive as yet, beguiled Tsuda with a few anecdotes. One of the stories from the doctor’s days as an intern at a large hospital made him laugh in spite of himself. Someone had stormed into the director’s office accusing a nurse of having killed a patient by administering the wrong medicine and demanding that she should be “beaten within an inch of her life!” The story struck Tsuda, whose disposition was exactly opposite the angry protagonist’s, as a ludicrous example of the ridiculous and little else. To put it plainly, his attention was focused exclusively on the
plaintiff’s shortcomings. At the same time, on the obverse side of these faults, he strung his own virtues like lights beneath the eaves and congratulated himself on them. The exercise reduced to something very like evidence of his inability under any circumstances to register his own shortcomings.

  When the doctor had finished his examination, Tsuda was inclined to despondency at the prospect of being condemned by a nasty condition to bed rest for an entire week. Perhaps it was his mood; the current moment felt inestimably precious. He even regretted a little not having postponed the surgery.

  He began thinking about Madam Yoshikawa again. If only there were some way to lure her to the clinic, he had been thinking, and now, gradually, he began instead to hope that she would visit him of her own accord. Though he normally deprecated O-Nobu’s intuition because it so often led her to see through him, there was a place inside him now that hoped, in this exceptional situation only, that she had hit the mark.

  He withdrew a volume from the pile O-Nobu had left. There was evidence here and there of a sensibility that made it clear why Okamoto would have added such a volume to his library. Unfortunately Tsuda wasn’t good at understanding humor. The meaning of the words printed on the page made sense to his mind but had scant impact on his feelings. And he encountered one passage after the other that he couldn’t decipher at all. With no commitment to the book, he skimmed it for something he could handle, skipping pages at a time, until the following passage caught his eye: