His wounded pride required him to turn this humiliating denouement around before he parted from these two. But he felt helpless, unprepared to deflect and turn to his own advantage a move that had been played against him so skillfully at the very last minute.
Outwardly he remained calm enough, but beneath the surface of his composure his clever mind wheeled unavailingly. Thoughts crowded into his head, but the congestion they created was a snarl and nothing more, revealing nothing of any use—he was left feeling overwrought but helpless to act. Moreover, he was aware that his agitation was beginning to move toward panic.
At just this critical moment he perceived something else no less unexpected. It was the effect the ten-yen notes had had on the young artist. As he gazed down at the money Kobayashi had laid out, there was an odd light in his eyes. It conveyed surprise and happiness. A certain hunger. And the intensity of his desire to reach for the bills and scoop them up. Each of these feelings, the surprise and happiness, the hunger and the desire, appeared to be altogether genuine. It was impossible to mistake them for false, or contrived, or part of a complicit farce. Tsuda, at least, was persuaded they were real.
What followed sufficed to confirm his judgment. Hara, despite his evident desire to have them, didn’t reach for the notes. But neither did he display the courage to reject Kobayashi’s kindness out of hand. His struggle to restrain the hand that wanted so very badly to reach out was clearly visible in his face. If the pallid youth should be ultimately unable to take the notes, the farce Kobayashi had gone to the trouble of devising would lose half its impact. And should Kobayashi be obliged to return all the money to his pocket despite his declaration that Hara should share some, the comedy would be rendered even more ludicrous. Either way, since the drama appeared to be developing in a direction that would allow him to avoid feeling that his honor had been compromised, Tsuda was encouraged to wait and watch for a while.
Soon enough, the other two commenced a dialogue.
“Hara-kun—why don’t you help yourself?”
“I feel sorry for you.”
“And I’m feeling sorry for you.”
“I appreciate that—”
“And the gentleman sitting across from you is feeling sorry for me, too.”
“I see.”
Hara’s face as he looked at Tsuda suggested he was entirely in the dark. Kobayashi promptly explained.
“I accepted that money from him just now. It’s newly accepted money.”
“Then it’s all the more—”
“Never mind ‘all the more.’ This is about ‘therefore.’ He gave me the money; therefore I’m free to give it to you. I’m free to give it to you; therefore you’re free to take it.”
“Is that logical?”
“Of course it is. If this were money I’d earned working all night to finish a manuscript for thirty-five sen a page, I reckon even I’d be attached to it a little. Otherwise I’d be insulting the sweat that dripped off my brow all night. But this means nothing. This is a donation from the latitude to hang money from trees. And the more of a blessing it is to the recipient, the happier latitude is. Am I right, Tsuda-kun, or am I right?”
Having transcended his initial mortification, Tsuda felt he was being consulted at an opportune moment. A generous concession from him would be more than adequate, in the formal sense at least, to bring to a seemly conclusion tonight’s meeting of three unlikely dinner partners. He seized the opportunity presenting itself to avoid a withdrawal that would appear awkward.
“I agree. I think that would be best.”
At the end of a further dialogue, one of the three notes was finally placed in Hara’s hand. As he returned the remaining money to his pocket, Kobayashi spoke to Tsuda.
“For once, latitude has flowed uphill. But I understand it won’t be flowing any further uphill from here. So once again I say to you, thanks.”
Leaving the restaurant, they walked to the edge of the moat and, waiting for the trolley, looked up at a night sky filled with stars as bright as the moon.
[ 167 ]
SHORTLY THEY went their separate ways.
“Travel well; I won’t be coming to see you off.”
“No? Seems like you should. Your old friend is moving to Korea, after all.”
“I wouldn’t come no matter where you’re going.”
“How hugely heartless of you. In that case I’ll drop in one more time to say good-bye before I leave.”
“I’ve had enough. You needn’t come.”
“I insist. Otherwise, I won’t feel right.”
“Suit yourself. But I won’t be there. I’m leaving on a trip tomorrow.”
“A trip? Where?”
“I have some recovering to do.”
“Recuperating in the countryside? How stylish of you!”
“I’d say latitude is making me a gift. Unlike you, I can never be thankful enough for latitude.”
“And you can never stop demonstrating to me that my advice is meaningless.”
“If we’re being honest, that sounds about right.”
“Fair enough. Wait and see which of us wins. My guess is, a little enlightenment from old Kobayashi will be easier to take than the sock in the teeth from reality you’re heading for.”
Such was their exchange as they parted. It was an expression merely of the hard feelings Tsuda had been storing up since the beginning of the evening. Now, feeling somewhat relieved, he had no room inside himself to consider Kobayashi’s final remarks. Whether he was right or wrong made little difference; Tsuda was adamantly determined, out of pride if nothing else, to be shut of the man, rid of his worldview and his tiresome theorizing. Alone at last in the streetcar, he began at once to conjure a picture of the hot springs.
The next morning was windy. The wind raked the ground aslant with flurries of rain.
“What a bother!”
Tsuda, who had arisen on schedule, looked up at the sky from the engawa and frowned. There were clouds in the sky. They moved incessantly, like wind visible to the eye.
“It could always clear up by noon.”
O-Nobu’s tone of voice suggested she was in favor of carrying on with the schedule they had agreed on.
“If you postpone for a day, that’s just a day wasted. I’d rather you went right away and came home a day sooner.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
The icy rain had not deterred them, but as Tsuda was preparing to depart, a small hitch developed. Removing a kimono for herself from a drawer in the tansu, O-Nobu placed it alongside Tsuda’s clothes atop the lacquered-paper wrapping. Tsuda noticed.
“You don’t have to see me off.”
“Why not?”
“No special reason, it will be unpleasant in this rain.”
“I don’t mind.”
There was something so innocent about O-Nobu’s remark that Tsuda couldn’t help laughing.
“I’m not objecting because I mind you coming along. I feel bad for you. The trip doesn’t even take a day; it seems silly to put you to the trouble of coming to the station. Just last night I told Kobayashi I wouldn’t see him offeven though he’s leaving for Korea.”
“Really! But there’s nothing to do at home.”
“Go out and enjoy yourself—I’d like you to.”
Eventually, with a strained smile, O-Nobu acquiesced, and Tsuda was able to hurry away by himself in a rickshaw.
Despite the crowded streets surrounding the station, it was bleakly deserted on this rainy day. Standing in the emptiness, Tsuda was gazing vacantly at the second-class ticket he had just purchased when a student approached abruptly and addressed him as if he were an old friend.
“Too bad about the weather.”
It was the youth Tsuda had met for the first time at the Yoshikawas’ the other day. This morning, from the moment he doffed his cloth cap, in contrast to his chilliness to Tsuda at the entrance to the house, he was exceedingly polite. Tsuda had no idea what this might mean.
<
br /> “You’re traveling somewhere?”
“Aren’t you?”
“It happens I am, but what about it?”
The student appeared flustered.
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Yoshikawa is occupied today and asked me to bring you this.”
He held up the basket of fruit he was carrying.
“That was kind of her.”
Tsuda reached for the basket, but the student held on to it.
“I’m to carry it to your seat.”
As the train was leaving, the student bowed and Tsuda, commending himself to the Yoshikawas, settled himself deliberately in a corner of the relatively uncrowded car and thought to himself, Good thing I didn’t have O-Nobu come along after all.
[ 168 ]
BY THE time he had removed the newspaper O-Nobu had thought to put in his overcoat pocket and begun reading it more attentively than usual, the weather outside the window was worse. It had been drizzling; now it had begun to rain heavily, and the water streaming from the sky, inundating the space visible through the wide window of the train, appeared the more torrential.
Higher up was a thick layer of clouds. On the periphery of the panorama framed by the window, low-hanging clouds like walls hemming in the rain were also visible. Feeling oppressed by the seamless merger of clouds and rain, Tsuda compared the bleakness of the scene outside the window with the comfort inside the pleasantly appointed car. He believed that physical ease and comfort were special prerogatives of civilized man; imagining how it would feel in the afternoon when he would have to venture outside in the pelting rain, he hunched his shoulders in anticipated discomfort. Just then the passenger next to him, a man who appeared to be around forty who had been gazing vacantly at the rain breaking into droplets as it drove against the window and streamed down the glass in rivulets, leaned forward and addressed his companion, facing him with his legs crossed under him on the seat. The sound of the rain on top of the rattling of the train appeared to prevent his friend from catching everything he said.
“It’s pouring. If this keeps up, the tracks on the narrow gauge might loosen up again.”
He had no choice but to speak in a voice so loud that Tsuda could hear him, too.
“I wouldn’t worry any. Mebbe it’s narrow gauge, but it’s not a damn toy you can’t use in the rain—how’d that be for a blessed catastrophe!”
The speaker was an older man, sixty or so perhaps, in a long, woolen Japanese coat. On his head he wore an odd hat without a brim, an exotic article that looked as though it must have been special-ordered at the sort of shop that displayed in its window an artful array of tobacco pouches, Madras fragments, and antique batiks; its owner, judging by the evidence offered mistakably by his speech, had been born and bred in Tokyo. The elder’s vitality belied his outfit, surprising Tsuda, who also found his language, close to the “cockney” argot of downtown workers, unexpected.
The term “narrow gauge,” which had come up in passing, held special significance for Tsuda. He was a convalescent who would be spending a number of hours that afternoon lurching along on the narrow gauge. Thinking that these two might well be heading in the same direction on a vacation, he began eavesdropping. Since there was no room to change seats and they were obliged to lean forward uncomfortably and speak in loud voices, he heard every word.
“I didn’t imagine the weather would turn this bad. It would have been easier if we’d postponed for a day.”
The self-possessed man in the fedora and camel-hair coat had this to say, to which the elder replied at once.
“What’s a dribble of rain? So long as you’re prepared to get wet, it don’t mean a thing.”
“But the luggage is a problem. I hate to think of it on the narrow gauge, outside on the baggage car.”
“Then how about we stay out in the rain and have them put the luggage in our seats?”
They both laughed aloud. Then the elder spoke again.
“Course there was that ruckus a while back. When the boiler blew and we got stuck—talk about this old heart sinking.”
“I forget what happened—how’d you manage to get out?”
“We waited in the mountains for a train a-coming the other way.
Then we used their boiler to pull us up and over.”
“What about the train they pulled the boiler out of?”
“What about it? It wasn’t going nowhere, that’s what.”
“That’s what I’m asking—I can’t imagine they left it there to rust after it rescued you?”
“Now I think about it, I know what you’re saying. At the time we couldn’t be thinking about that other train. It was getting dark, and cold as a blessed knife. I was shivering.”
Gradually a detailed picture formed in Tsuda’s mind. He was even able to predict that the men would be visiting one or another of the three hot springs on the left and right of the narrow-gauge tracks. In the event, if the train he was about to ride for two hours or possibly three was the unreliable hazard they were describing, there was no guarantee, in this rain, that some sort of calamity wouldn’t occur. On the other hand, their account was likely to be colored by the exaggeration that was bred into all Tokyoites. On the verge of inquiring whether the train was the disaster they made it out to be, he remembered this and, with a wry smile, saved himself the trouble of asking a question. Thoughts about the train led him abruptly to Kiyoko. Thinking Even a woman can travel there and back by herself, he paid no further heed to the aimless conversation.
[ 169 ]
SHORTLY BEFORE the train arrived at their station, as the weather that had been a concern to all of them was beginning to clear, the rain on the verge of abating, Tsuda gazed up at the sky and beheld a bank of clouds sailing across it. On they came like a stampede passing the train overhead from the opposite direction. They bore down with no space separating one from the next as if they were in mutual pursuit. Presently patches within the moving bank that appeared wispier than the rest gradually expanded. One corner in particular appeared to be breaking up in the wind and about to allow a pale light to shine through.
Thankful that the weather appeared to be more kindly disposed toward him than he had anticipated, Tsuda got off the train and onto a streetcar just steps away, where he encountered again the two travelers from before. Seeing that, as he had imagined, they were after all traveling in the same direction as he and using the same transportation, he looked carefully at their hand luggage. But he saw nothing either large or bulky enough to have occasioned concern about getting wet in the rain. The elder at any rate appeared to have forgotten what he had said before.
“Looks like we’re in luck. That’s why I always say when you feel like leaving get up and go. Imagine how miserable we’d be if we’d of stayed home thinking if only we’d of known and feeling sorry for ourselves.”
“Exactly. But I wonder if the weather in Tokyo is as good as this right now?”
“No telling without you go back and have a look. We could always phone and ask. But I’ll wager it is—wherever you go in Japan, the weather’s about the same.”
Tsuda was amused. Just then the old man addressed him.
“I reckon you’re heading for the hot springs. I thought so the minute I saw you.”
“Is that so?”
“Yessir. When a man’s on his way to a spa, you can tell just by looking at him. Right?”
He turned to his companion sitting next to him.
“Exactly,” the fedora replied as if he had no choice.
Unable to suppress an uncomfortable smile at this display of clairvoyance, Tsuda tried to terminate the conversation, but the expansive elder wasn’t about to turn him loose.
“Seriously, though, traveling is so handy anymore. No matter where you’re going, you don’t need to bring nothing along but just yourself. It’s made to order for an impatient old geezer like me. Take this trip; except for my pouch here and that bag of the General’s, all I brought along is me own hide. Isn’t that so, General?�
�
Once again, the man who had been addressed as “General” had nothing more to say than “Exactly.” If this single piece of hand luggage couldn’t be brought aboard and had to be loaded on a baggage car to soak in the rain, the so-called narrow gauge would have to be either jammed with passengers or poorly designed beyond imagining. Tsuda considered inquiring but decided there was no point in asking now and remained silent.
After alighting from the streetcar, he lost sight of the two men. In the teahouse in front of the station, gazing at the assortment of color posters and gravures on the wall advertising one spa after the other as appealingly as possible, he took lunch. It was more than an hour past his usual lunchtime, and he attacked his tray hungrily. But his departure time was approaching. By the time he had put aside his chopsticks, it was time to board the narrow gauge.
The station at the beginning of the line was directly in front of the teahouse. Tsuda received his change from the waitress with his eye on the train, which appeared to be smaller than the trolley, and went outside at once. There was scarcely any distance between the ticket taker and the platform. A few strides carried him to the steps. Inside the car he encountered his fellow travelers yet again.
“Well met. Have a seat.”
The elder slid over for Tsuda, making room for him to spread out the lap blanket he carried over his arm.
“It’s nice and empty today.”
Describing with gusto and his usual effusiveness the milling crowd that rode this line to the hot springs at New Year’s and again in July and August to escape the heat, he turned to his companion.
“In season, it’s a sin to bring a woman along. For one thing their rear ends are too blessed big to fit in the seats. And they get drunk on you right away. We’re packed in here like sardines and they’re belching and puking; it’s enough to make a good man sick.”
He spoke as if oblivious of the young woman sitting next to him.
Light and Darkness Page 43