"What did she look like?" he asked.
Unfortunately, my memory about that was quite vague. I was only about fifteen or sixteen at the time.
"I once saw her having her hair done up in shimada." I was sorry I couldn't give a more pertinent answer.
At length, he asked with a resigned look, "Then please just tell me the temple. At least I want to know where she's buried."
How could I have known where her family temple was? I groaned and told him that as a last resort, he'd have to ask his mother.
"Is there no one else besides my mother who knows?"
"Probably not."
"Then I'll have to be content to remain in the dark."
I felt half-sorry for him, half-penitent, as if I'd done him some wrong. For a while his eyes gazed out at a large camellia tree in the garden blooming in the bright sunlight. And then he turned his glance back.
"My mother's insistence that I take Chiyo-chan for my wife is meant, after all, in consideration of the family line, isn't it?"
"Exactly. It's nothing more than that."
Still, he didn't say if he would marry her. Nor did I ask then if he would.
That talk with Ichizo was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had. It embellished my meager past in the sense that both of us were able to completely and unhesitatingly bare our thoughts to each other. I felt that from Ichizo's point of view too, it had perhaps been the first time in his life he had ever been consoled. After he left, what remained with me was the pleasant sensation of having done something good.
"You don't have to worry. I'll take charge of everything." I had warmly tossed off these words as I saw him to the entrance, though I did feel quite awkward when it came to reporting to my sister the results of my talk. For the time being I could only soothe her with words I thought might sound reasonable, reminding her that it would be better for her to wait until Ichizo had graduated, since he himself said that when he left school and had more time to think everything over, he'd definitely settle the question of his marriage one way or another. I also said that it would only disturb his studying for examinations if at this moment he kept being pressed for a definite answer.
At the same time, I told Taguchi the situation Ichizo was now in, with the intention of trying to speed up the question of Chiyoko's marriage before Ichizo's graduation if possible. When Taguchi heard the entire story from me, he responded in his usually tactful, off-hand manner: He said he knew how to deal with it without my having to remind him. "After all, we have to marry her off for her own sake, so we can't forcibly advance it or postpone it just for Ichizo's or his mother's convenience, though putting it that way may sound rude."
"Quite right," I replied, having to admit he was.
I associate with the Taguchis as their relative, of course, but I had never actually meddled in their daughter's marriage negotiations, nor had I ever been asked for advice about it. So until that day I had not heard about any of the marriage prospects, nor had I heard even indirectly any rumors about candidates. I remembered only the name Takagi, whom Ichizo had met and disliked the year before when they were at—Kamakura, was it?—and whom both Ichizo and Chiyoko had mentioned to me. I asked Taguchi how it was going with the young man. With an amiable laugh he replied that from the outset Takagi hadn't come forward. But he also told me that inasmuch as any bachelor of good status and education had a claim as a suitor, it couldn't be said that he was definitely out of the running. I was given further particulars regarding this young man about whom I knew very little and learned that he was in Shanghai and that his return was indefinite. Nothing has developed between him and Chiyoko, though their exchange of letters continues, but I ascertained that it is maintained on the condition that she can read his letters only after her parents do. I suggested unhesitatingly that he might be a good match for her. Whether desiring someone better or thinking otherwise, Taguchi didn't encourage my suggestion. Knowing nothing whatever about Takagi's character, I had no right to recommend him further, so I returned home, leaving that question as it was.
For a long time after our meeting—actually, it was only about a month and a half—I didn't get to see Ichi-zo. I was quite worried about his having to burden himself with family problems while his graduation exams were coming up. I secretly visited my sister just to spy out his condition. She was unconcerned and said quite calmly that he seemed very busy and that such was only to be expected just before his graduation. Since I was still uneasy about him, I made him spare an hour one evening to have dinner with me. We ate together at a Western-style restaurant near his house. I privately studied his frame of mind. As usual, he was calm. It was not altogether mere bluff when he assured me that his exams were of no real importance and that somehow he'd manage to come off fairly well. When I asked him if he was quite confident, his face suddenly became sad. He replied, "The human brain is made of sturdier stuff than we think, isn't it? I confess I've been in great fear for mine, but oddly enough it still hasn't collapsed. I'll probably be able to use it for some time yet."
These words, half-joking, half-serious, gave me an odd feeling of deep pity for him.
The season of fresh foliage was over, and on a day that you feel like flapping a round fan into the open chest of an unlined summer kimono after a bath, Ichizo suddenly turned up again. As soon as I saw him, I asked how his exams were going. He said that he had finished them only the day before. Then he informed me that he would be off on a short trip the next day, so he'd come to say good-bye. Once more I felt somewhat uneasy about his state of mind in heading for a distant spot before knowing the results of his examinations. He hoped to start his tour from Kyoto or thereabouts, pass through Suma and Akashi, and possibly go as far as Hiroshima or some place in that direction. I was surprised by the rather extensive tour he was planning. When I hinted at my disapproval by saying the trip might be quite all right if only he was certain of graduating, he responded curtly, showing much less concern about the examination results than I expected. He almost ignored my suggestion and told me that my caring about such a trifle didn't at all suit the way I usually am. As I talked on with him, I discovered that his idea had sprung from motives that had nothing to do with his graduation record.
"The truth," he said, "is that since that talk between us, I've been racking my brains somehow, so it's recently become too difficult for me to sit calmly in my study at home. I'm badly in need of a trip of some sort, so please let me go as a reward for my admirable conduct in not giving up halfway through my exams."
I told him that he was certainly justified in going wherever he wished with his own money. I said that I thought it might do him good to wander here and there and enjoy himself.
"Thanks," he said, looking slightly satisfied, but then he added, "Actually, I feel sorry for my mother, and though it may not even be right to say this aloud, ever since I heard the account from you, I've been overwhelmed by a strange feeling each time I see her face."
"Do you feel anything unpleasant?" I asked somewhat solemnly.
"No, only a kind of pity," he replied. "At first, I felt unbearably lonely. Then bit by bit, it changed to pity. Just between you and me, it's been too painful lately to see my mother's face day in and day out. Speaking of trips, I'd been thinking for some time that after I graduated, I'd take her to see Kyoto, Osaka, and Miyajima, so if my feelings had remained as they had been, I would have asked you to take care of our house while I accompanied her. But as I've just told you, the circumstances have been completely reversed, so I've come to feel it's better if I went away without her, if only for a short while."
"That you've come to feel so strange embarrasses me," I said.
"I should think I'm likely to miss her quite a bit when I'm away from home. What do you think? Will it turn out all right?" It was with real anxiety that he asked this question.
Pretending I was his much more experienced senior— which I am—I myself could hardly imagine what his future life would be like in this respect. I cou
ld only feel pity for him that because of his lack of self-confidence he was so eager to be reassured by someone else about a problem that belonged only to him. Ichizo, in spite of looking amenable on the surface, is actually quite strong-willed, but this was almost the first time that he had betrayed such a weakness. I tried as best I could to reassure him.
"There's no point in worrying. You can take my word for it that it'll be all right. Go ahead with your trip and enjoy it fully. Your mother's my sister. And what's more, she's made of purer stuff than I am because she's learned much less than I have. She's a woman worthy of anyone's love and respect. How could such a mother and so devoted a son as you ever be separated from each other for good? You can be sure that's impossible, so set your mind at ease."
Ichizo looked as if my words had actually reassured him. I myself felt slightly reassured. On the other hand, the suspicion arose in me that if consolatory words as groundless as mine were having some effect on so clearheaded a person as Ichizo, it must be indicative of a nervous system that had gone slightly out of tune. Suddenly I imagined something extreme happening, and I began having misgivings about letting him travel by himself.
"How about my going with you?"
"Together . . . well . . ." He came out with an embarrassed smile.
"You'd rather I didn't, you mean?"
"Under ordinary circumstances I'd have asked you to come along. But I myself don't know just when and where I'll go. It's a journey without order that's going to take me wherever my whims lead me, so you'd be inconvenienced. Besides, it would be less pleasant for me if I were restricted by you. . . ."
"Then I won't go," I said, withdrawing my suggestion.
After Ichizo left, I still found myself oddly concerned about him. Since I had branded that dark secret on his mind, I felt I should shoulder the responsibility for anything resulting from it. I felt like seeing how my sister was and hearing from her how Ichizo had been recently. I called my wife from the sitting room to tell her all that had happened and to ask her advice. As one who takes things in her stride, which is rather unusual for a woman, she said that the trouble had come from my talking too much about what was unnecessary. At first she paid little attention to what I was saying, but eventually she assured me. "How can Ichizo possibly go wrong?" she said. "Young as he is, he has a lot more discretion than you!"
"What you say sounds as if Ichizo's anxious about me."
"Of course anyone would be anxious about you, seeing you sitting there with your hands in your pockets and that imported pipe in your mouth!"
Before long our children returned from school, and the entire house suddenly became noisy. I forgot about Ichizo and had no time to think of him further until evening, when my sister unexpectedly turned up. Her visit gave me a sudden chill.
As usual, she sat in the midst of our family gathering, exchanging with my wife long apologies for not calling and offering the usual compliments of the season. As I had been sitting with them, I lost the opportunity to escape. "I hear Ichizo's leaving on a trip tomorrow," I put in during the course of their talk.
"As for that—" my sister began, looking somewhat more seriously at me.
Without letting her finish, I said by way of defending him, "If he wants to go, let him. He's worked hard on his exams. If he gets no rest after racking his brains like that, it'll be bad for his health."
She agreed, of course, but stated that her only fear was that his health might not be good enough to get him through the trip. Finally she asked me if I thought his condition was all right from what I had seen of him. I told her it was, and my wife also thought as much. My sister looked more dissatisfied about something than reassured. I thought her use of the word health did not really concern Ichizo's physical condition but must have meant his mental state, and I felt a private stab of pain. She had engraved on her brow misgivings that seemed to have come from something she gathered intuitively from my look. She asked me, "Tsune-san, was there anything unusual about Ichizo when he visited you a while back?"
"Not at all. It was quite the usual Ichizo I saw. Right, Osen?"
"Yes, he wasn't the least bit different."
"I think so too," said my sister. "But somehow there's something odd about him these days."
"In what way?"
"Well, it's hard to explain."
"It's all because of the examinations," I quickly put in, denying her statement.
"It's only your imagination, dear sister," my wife added.
Both of us having comforted her, she at last looked somewhat satisfied and talked on until she agreed to have supper with us. Later, my children and I saw her to the streetcar stop. I had intended only to take a stroll, but I remained uneasy and sent the children home by themselves. I took a seat beside my sister on the streetcar in spite of her telling me to return. We finally arrived at her house.
Going in, I called out before she did for Ichizo, who was fortunately in his room upstairs, to come down. I told him that his mother had been quite worried about him and had taken the trouble to visit me at Yarai and that I had just now managed to set her mind at rest by having a talk with her. Accordingly, it was on my responsibility that he was being allowed to make his trip. "So to give us as little trouble as possible, you should take care to write immediately on arriving or setting out from wherever you happen to be or from wherever you stay so that we can call you back in case you're needed." Ichizo replied that he was already quite aware of such precautions without my having to warn him. He smiled as he glanced at his mother's face.
I believed I had somewhat succeeded in easing my sister's concern, and I returned by streetcar to Yarai at around eleven o'clock.
My wife came out to the porch to meet me. "How did it go?" she asked, as though she had been waiting impatiently.
"Well, I think we can relax," I replied. Actually, I did feel relieved, so I didn't go to Shimbashi Station the following day to see Ichizo off.
The letters he promised came from all the places he reached. They amounted to nearly one a day, but most of them were no more than two or three lines of simple description on picture postcards of the places he visited. My wife ridiculed me for looking relieved each time I received one. Once I said to her that, judging from the cards, he didn't seem to be in any danger and that it appeared her prediction had come true. She answered bluntly, "It's only natural. Heaven forbid that those things you read in the newspaper and in novels should happen so often!" My wife is a woman who regards newspaper articles in the same light as novels. And she firmly believes both untrue. She's a woman who's that alienated from romance.
I was quite satisfied with the postcards, but my brows relaxed even more when letters in envelopes began reaching me. For in them I found no trace, as I had originally feared, of a hand dyeing the rolled letter paper with melancholy hues. Unless you actually read them, you couldn't possibly know how those phrases on stationery indicated with so much more clarity than those postcards did his change in mood. I have a few here that I've kept.
Among the various things accounting for this change in mood—for example, the air in Kyoto and the water in Uji—what seems to have given our Tokyo-bred Ichizo the greatest stimulation was the way of speech of the people who live around Kyoto and Osaka. To those of us who have frequented that area, this probably sounds ridiculous, but the smooth, quiet drawl of their speech may have had a much more soothing effect on Ichizo's nervous condition than sedatives would have. What? Such an accent from the lips of young women? I don't know about that. Of course, words from a pretty young mouth would probably have a much greater effect than those from any other. And since Ichizo is young, he might approach such a woman on his own. But, oddly enough, what he's written has to do with old women:
To hear people of this region speak makes me feel as if I were submitting myself to a slight drunkenness. Some say they dislike that way of speaking for sounding too clammy, but it seems just the reverse to me. What I dislike is Tokyo speech. Tokyoites are unduly proud of speaking in
tones as angular and rough as confetti, and they swagger, jarring their listener's mood. Yesterday I came to Osaka from Kyoto, and today I called on a friend who works for the Asahi newspaper. He took me to Mino'o, famous for its maple leaves in the fall. Of course I didn't see any colored leaves at this time of year, but the place was splendid, with mountains and rills and waterfalls down a precipice where the path ends.
To give me a rest, my friend took me into a two-storied building he said was his newspaper clubhouse. Inside was a wide dirt floor extending the entire length of the building. The floor had been entirely tiled, so that it gave me an impression as tranquil as if I were in a temple in China. I was told the house had first been built as a villa but was later bought by the Asahi and turned into a clubhouse. Even if it had been a villa, what was the use of this broad area all paved with tiles? It looked so odd that I asked my friend, but he had no idea about it. Actually I'm not really that much concerned. Only I thought that since you're versed in such matters, I'd add this superfluous detail.
What I really wanted to tell you about is not this wide floor but rather about the old women who were there. There were two of them, one standing, the other sitting on a chair. Both of them had their heads shaved. The one standing greeted my friend as soon as we entered. "Oh, sorry," she said, "I was just shaving granny here. She's eighty-six. . . . Sit still a moment, dear. There's only a little to finish. . . . There now, you're clean-shaven, not a hair left. There's nothing to worry about." The one sitting passed her hand over her head and said, "Why, thanks!" My friend looked back at me and laughed. "Quite a rustic scene, isn't it?" he said. I laughed too. Not only did I laugh, but I felt as much at home as if I had been born a century ago. I want to take this feeling back to Tokyo as my souvenir.
To the Spring Equinox and Beyond Page 27