Minoru calmly introduced Yuichi to Fukujiro. Fukujiro’s face went white.
“I’d like to speak to you for a moment.”
“Won’t you come in the back? This way, please.” Fukujiro left the register in the care of a waiter.
“Stay here,” said Yuichi to Minoru, stationing him in the doorway.
When Yuichi took the roll from his inside pocket and handed it over to him, Fukujiro was dumfounded.
“Minoru tells me he took this from your household safe. He gave it to me, and I am giving it back to you untouched. Minoru was not himself, I believe, so please don’t be harsh with him.”
Silently and suspiciously, Fukujiro stared at the young man’s face. This man before him, whom he had attacked and injured by such a low trick, he had loved at first sight. He quickly thought of a stupid plan. He would confess all and submit to the other’s rebuke. It would be a short cut to winning his sympathy.
First he would apologize. He could take his cue readymade from heroic tales and the songs of minstrels. “Well, sir, you win!” he would say. “When I stand before you in your grandeur, my smallest concern disgusts me. Go ahead, punch me, kick me, do what you want with me until you’re satisfied, and so on.”
Before he went into his act, Fukujiro had a matter to settle. Now that he had his money back, he must count it. The amount of money that was in the safe he always kept in his head, but it still had to check with the balance in his books. And 100,000 yen was not something one could count in. a second. He pulled up a chair to the table, bowed lightly to Yuichi, spread out the money, and began carefully counting the bills.
Yuichi observed the dexterity with which the small businessman counted his money. In the movements of his fidgety fingers there was a dead-earnestness that was aloof from love, anonymous letters, and theft. When he had finished counting, Fukujiro put his hands on the table and nodded to Yuichi again.
“You’re sure it’s all there?”
“Yes, it’s all there.”
Fukujiro had missed his chance. Yuichi was already on his feet. Without another look at Fukujiro, he strode to the door. Minoru had seen all of this unforgivable betrayal by his hero. He stood with his back to the wall, his face pale, and watched Yuichi go. As he went out, Yuichi bowed; Minoru looked away.
Yuichi walked rapidly down the midsummer street. There was no one behind him. A smile tugged at the comers of his mouth. He was filled with an indescribably joyous pride. Now he understood the pride of those who do charitable deeds. When it comes to bemusing the heart, no evil is better than hypocrisy. He knew that, and he was very happy. Thanks to the scene just enacted, the young man’s shoulders were now unburdened. This morning’s heavy oppression seemed to have lifted. To make the joy complete, he decided on a foolish, meaningless purchase. He went to a little stationery store and bought the cheapest possible celluloid pencil sharpener and a pen point.
Chapter 29 DEUS EX MACHINA
YUICHU'S INACTIVITY was complete. There was no matching his composure during this period of crisis. His calmness, born only from the depths of loneliness, silenced the family. It was almost as if they had decided the anonymous letter was a hoax. That is how calm Yuichi was.
He passed those days serenely, not saying much. The youth planted his feet on his own ruins and with the self possession of a tightrope walker perused the morning paper at leisure and took a nap when the sun was high. Before a day had passed, the family had lost the urge to resolve the issue and seemed bent only on how to get around the topic. Above all, it was not a refined thing to talk about.
Mrs. Kaburagi’s reply wire came. It said she was arriving in Tokyo on the Special Express Hato, arriving at eight thirty. Yuichi went to Tokyo Station to meet her.
Mrs. Kaburagi, carrying a single small suitcase, got off the train and picked out the figure of Yuichi wearing a student cap and white shirt with sleeves rolled up. She saw his face with its noncommittal smile, and, much sooner than his mother would have, observed his distress. Possibly she had never imagined seeing anything like this expression, concealing its burden of despair. She hurried toward him in her high-heeled shoes. Yuichi too made his way swiftly toward her. His eyes still averted, he seized Mrs. Kaburagi’s bag.
Her breathing quickened. The youth was conscious as ever of her steadfast gaze.
“It’s been ages. What’s wrong?”
“Let’s talk about it later.”
“All right. Don’t worry, now; I’m here.”
In truth, there was in the lady’s eyes as she said this an unblinking, indomitable strength. Yuichi needed this woman whom he had once so easily forced to her knees. Now in his helpless smile she read the hardship he had undergone. And as she realized that it was not of her making, a feeling of extraordinary courage was born in her.
“Where are you staying?” Yuichi asked.
“I wired the inn that was once our family mansion.”
The two went to that inn, and were greeted by startling circumstances. The well-intentioned manager had made up the second-floor western room of the annex for Mrs. Kaburagi—the very room in which she had discovered Yuichi and Kaburagi.
The manager came to greet them. This old-fashioned, perspicacious gentleman did not forget to treat Mrs. Kaburagi as if she was still a countess. Aware of the awkwardness of the relationship between him, as host, and her, as his guest, and embarrassed that in a sense he had usurped her residence while she was away, he praised his establishment as if it were her home and he the visitor. He slithered around the walls like a lizard.
“The furnishings were so marvelous that we took the liberty of keeping them just as they were. All our guests say that they have never seen such genuine, refined furniture. I apologize about the wallpaper; we had it changed. The gloss of this mahogany pillar, now, is inexpressibly beautiful in a subdued way—”
“But remember that this was once the steward’s house.” “Of course. I’m fully aware of that.”
Mrs. Kaburagi offered no objection to being assigned this room. When the manager had gone she got up from her chair and walked attentively around the old-fashioned room, which looked so narrow because of the bed covered with white mosquito netting. Now once again after six months she was in this room into which she had peeped and then fled from home. It was not her nature to see this turn of events as an inauspicious coincidence. Besides, the wallpaper in the room had been rehung.
“It’s hot. If you’d like to take a shower . ..”
At this suggestion Yuichi opened the door to the narrow book-closet, about three mats in size, and turned on the light. All the books had been removed. A sheet of pure white tiles glared at him. The book-closet had been turned into a moderate-sized bathroom.
As a traveler returning to a land visited long ago discovers first only his old memories, Mrs. Kaburagi was attracted only by Yuichi’s unspoken anguish, the counterpart of her own pain. She did not see his transformation. He looked for all the world like a child in torment, incapable of doing anything about it. She did not know that he himself saw his distress.
Yuichi went into the bathroom. There was a sound of water running. She reached her hand to her back, undid the row of small buttons and loosened her bodice. Her shoulders, smooth as ever, were half-exposed. She didn’t like electric fans, so didn’t .turn on the one in the room, but from her bag she took a silver-leaf Kyoto fan.
His unhappiness and the happiness I am returning to, what a heartless comparison! she thought. His emotions and my emotions are like the blossoms and the leaves of the cherry tree, made to come out without meeting one another.
Moths were colliding with the window screens. She understood the stifling impatience of the great moths of the night scattering the dust from their wings. Anyway, this is the only way I can feel. At least now I can encourage him with my sense of being happy.
Mrs. Kaburagi looked at the rococo sofa on which she had sat so often with her husband. Sat—nothing more. Not even the edges of their clothing had touched; ther
e had been always a fixed distance between them. Suddenly she recalled the memory of their grotesque shapes—her husband and Yuichi, embracing each other. Her bare shoulders felt cold.
What she had seen was accidental—in fact, it had been an innocent intrusion. She had wanted to see the kind of happiness that existed eternally and surely at times when she was not present. Such audacious wishes always invite the most unfortunate results, perhaps.
And now Mrs. Kaburagi was with Yuichi in this same room. She was occupying the very place that happiness might have occupied. Instead, here she was. Her truly sagacious spirit soon awakened to the evident truth that for her there was no possibility for happiness, and that Yuichi would never love a woman.
Suddenly, as if she were cold, she reached back her hand and refastened her bodice. She had come to realize that all her charms would be futile. In the old days, if so much as one button were undone, it was because she was conscious of the presence of a man who would be glad to button it. If one of the men she was accustomed to associate with in that period had observed her modesty here, he would certainly have doubted his eyes.
Yuichi came out of the bathroom combing his hair. His damp and glistening youthful face reminded Mrs. Kaburagi of the coffee shop where she had seen Kyoko, when Yuichi's face was wet from the sudden rain.
In order to set herself free from memories, she called out to him: “All right, tell me quickly. Here you’ve brought me all the way to Tokyo and you haven’t yet told me why.”
Yuichi gave her the gist of what had happened and asked for help. However, what she caught running through it all was the urgent hope that the authenticity of that letter somehow be disproved. Mrs. Kaburagi therefore quickly made a daring resolution—she promised to visit the Minami home the next day. Then she sent Yuichi on his way. She was somewhat intrigued by it all. Her character owed its uniqueness to the fact that in it an inherently aristocratic heart and a whorish heart were naturally combined.
The next morning at ten o’clock the Minami family greeted an unexpected visitor. She was conducted to the second-floor drawing room. Yuichi’s mother appeared. Mrs. Kaburagi said she would like to see Yasuko too. As if acceding to the visitor’s request to be spared an encounter, Yuichi remained in his study.
Her somewhat fuller body in a light purple dress, Mrs. Kaburagi had a style that swept all before her. She smiled constantly, so polite and composed that even before she began her story she had filled Mrs. Minami with terror, making her fear she was to hear about yet another scandal.
“I hate to mention it, but electric fans and I—oh, thank you,” said the guest, and a hand fan was brought. She held the handle of the fan and languidly waved it and let her gaze flutter about Yasuko’s face. This was the first time the two women had sat face to face since the dance the previous year.
Normally, Mrs. Kaburagi thought, I would be jealous of this woman. Her heart, however, had become fierce, and, perhaps out of cruelty, she felt nothing more than contempt for the beautiful young wife.
“Yuchan wired me and asked me to come. Last night I found out all about that strange letter. That’s why I’ve come here today. I understand the letter also had something to say about Mr. Kaburagi.”
The widow Minami hung her head in silence. Yasuko lifted her hitherto downcast eyes and looked straight at Mrs. Kaburagi. Then she said, in a soft but firm voice to her mother-in-law: “I think I’d better not stay.”
Her mother-in-law, not wishing to be left alone, stopped her: “But Mrs. Kaburagi has gone out of her way to come here to talk to both of us.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to be part of any more discussions on the subject of that letter.”
“That’s just the way I feel. But when you don’t discuss the things you should, you regret it later on.”
The way in which these two women went on exchanging very proper words and at the same time walked circumspectly around one ugly word was ironical in the extreme.
Mrs. Kaburagi interrupted for the first time: “Why, Yasuko?”
Yasuko felt as if she and Mrs. Kaburagi were engaged in a clash of wills: “Well, I just don’t have any thoughts now about the subject of this letter.”
Mrs. Kaburagi bit her lip at this curt reply. She thought: My, she takes me for an enemy and is challenging me to a fight. Her patience was at an end. She cut short her efforts to help Yasuko’s narrow, young, virtuous mind to see that she also was on Yuichi’s side. She forgot the limitations of her role and dropped all inhibitions about making high-handed statements.
“I really want you to hear what I have to say. What I have come to report is an auspicious thing of a sort. Some who hear it, however, may look at it as an evil thing, perhaps.”
“Please, hurry and tell us,” said Yuichi’s mother. “I’m in an agony of suspense.” Yasuko did not leave her place.
“Yuchan felt that, besides me, there was no witness who could say that that letter was absolutely without foundation. So he wired me to come. What I have to confess is a bitter pill to swallow. I think, however, that what I have to say will do much to put your minds at east about that disgraceful lie of a letter.” Mrs. Kaburagi’s voice broke as she went on: “Yuchan and I have been having an affair for a long time.”
Mrs. Minami exchanged a long look with her daughter-in-law. This new blow took everything out off her. After a time she regained her composure and asked: “But does * that mean recently, too? You’ve been in Kyoto since spring.”
“When my husband lost his job, he was already suspicious of what was going on between me and Yuichi. So he made me go to Kyoto with him. Just the same, I’ve been coming to Tokyo all the time.”
“And Yuichi ...” The mother fumbled for words but finally fastened on the vague word “friendly,” and somehow managed to say it: “And Yuichi was friendly with only you?”
“Well—” Mrs. Kaburagi looked over at Yasuko as she replied: “There might have been other women. He’s young, after all. That can’t be helped.”
Yuichi’s mother’s face went beet-red; then she nervously asked: “Those other people, weren’t any of them men?” “My!” laughed Mrs. Kaburagi. She took pleasure in letting the vulgar words fall from her lips: “But I know of two women who have had abortions to get rid of Yuichi’s children.”
Mrs. Kaburagi’s confession, candid and bare of superfluous flourishes, had a tremendous effect. This brazen confession delivered before the wife and mother of her lover was far more appropriate and credible in the situation than a maudlin confession meant to elicit tears.
The widow Minami’s confusion was more than she could bear. For the first time in her life her feminine modesty had been attacked there in that vulgar restaurant. As a result her will was paralyzed, so that she could see in this most recent extraordinary event which had been provoked by Mrs. Kaburagi only its naturalness.
The widow tried to calm herself. It was a respite to allow stubborn, fixed ideas to run through her head: Nobody can prove that this confession is a lie. The best proof of its truth is that—regardless of how men might act—it is impossible for a woman to confess that she has been involved in an affair that never took place. Besides, when it comes to a woman rescuing a man, there is no telling how far she might go. So it is possible that a woman like the former countess would march in on a man’s mother and wife and make such an ill-bred admission.
There was in this judgment a marvelous logical contradiction. In short, by her use of the word “man” and the word “woman,” she was already taking a mutual affair for granted. *
If she had been an old-fashioned woman, she would have closed her eyes to an affair like this, involving a married woman and a married man, and covered her ears too; but now she found herself approving of Mrs. Kaburagi’s confession. She was thrown into terrible confusion because her moral outlook seemed to have become cloudy. She was frightened by the part of herself that leaned toward believing Mrs. Kaburagi’s entire story and rejecting the letter as a piece of rubbish, and felt a strong
urge to cling to the evidence she had gathered verifying the letter.
“Yes, but I saw his picture. I still feel sick when I recall that filthy place and that ill-bred waiter with Yuichi’s photograph.”
“Yuchan told me about that. Truthfully, he told me that some of his school friends went in for that sort of thing, and they pestered him so to give them pictures of him that he let them have two or three, and I suppose they got passed around. Yuchan went to some of those places with his friends, half out of curiosity, and when he gave the cold shoulder to a man who kept making passes at him, that man wrote the letter to get back at him.”
“Well, why didn’t Yuichi tell me, his own mother, that story?”
“I suppose he was afraid to.”
“I’m not a very good mother, that’s certain. Granting what you say, however, may I ask you an impolite question? Is there no basis for believing there was anything between Yuichi and Mr. Kaburagi?”
She had been anticipating this question. Nevertheless, she had to struggle to maintain her composure. She had seen it. And what she had seen was not a photograph.
Mrs. Kaburagi was wounded in spite of herself. She was not embarrassed about bearing false witness, but she found it painful to betray that fervent pretense she had built over her life since she beheld that sight—the very fervor from which this effort to bear false witness sprang. She was acting heroically now, but she refused to see herself as a heroine.
“Oh, that’s a story beyond imagination.”
Yasuko had been silent the whole time. The fact that she had not said a word made Mrs. Kaburagi uncomfortable. In truth, the one to respond most honestly in the affair was Yasuko. Mrs. Kaburagi’s veracity did not seem open to question. But what was the watertight connection between her husband and this other woman?
Yasuko bided her time until the conversation between her mother-in-law and Mrs. Kaburagi was finished. In the meantime she was groping for a question that might perplex Mrs. Kaburagi.
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