Light and dark

[103]

SHE HAD arrived at the entrance to the clinic three or four minutes earlier. The doctor saw patients in the morning and afternoon, and since afternoon hours had been set between four and eight to accommodate people working at companies and in government offices, O-Nobu opened the door and stepped inside into relative quietness.

Not realizing she had arrived at an off-hour, she found it odd that the interior should be so hushed. Not a single patient was in evidence. On her previous visit a tangle of lace-up boots and various styles of geta had been heaped just inside the door. Now only a single pair of women’s geta had been left neatly side-by-side on the quiet concrete. New geta that, by the look of them, were too expensive to be worn by a nurse or a menial, they made her pulse quicken. Unmistakably they belonged to a young wife. Her heart heavy with the suspicion Kobayashi had instilled in her, she was unable to take her eyes off them.

A student’s face appeared in the small square window on the right. Noticing the unmoving figure of O-Nobu, he looked at her inquiringly, as if to ask who she might be. O-Nobu promptly asked whether Tsuda had a visitor and whether it was a young woman. Then, declining the offer to usher her in, she went alone to the foot of the stairs and looked up.

From the second floor came the sound of voices in unflagging conversation. But the tenor of the talk was nothing like the unimpeded flow of words between partners in a normal chat. There were strong feelings. There was agitation. And, clearly detectable, the aftermath of a struggle to contain resentment. This dialogue, unmistakably intended to be heard by no one else, beset O-Nobu’s nerves like pins and needles. She felt even more overwhelmed than when she had stared at the geta. She strained to hear.

Tsuda’s room was directly above the surgery. Immediately at the top of the stairs was a wall with a small tatami room on the right; to reach Tsuda it was necessary to move down the hall past this room. This meant that the dialogue was reaching O-Nobu from behind her, which made it difficult to overhear.

She tiptoed up the stairs, her lissome body as quiet as a cat’s. And she was rewarded with the same success as a cat.

At the head of the stairs to the right, as a precaution against falling, a railing six feet long had been installed. Leaning against it, O-Nobu peered in at Tsuda. Immediately O-Hide’s sharp voice reached her. She registered in particular the word “Sister.”… Breathless with surprise, she felt her nerves tauten again. The word had exploded from O-Hide’s lips like a bullet aimed at Tsuda — she had to know the context in which it was being deployed.

As she strained to hear, the pitch of their vehemence steepened. Clearly they were arguing. And before she knew it, she had been dragged down into the whirlpool of the argument. For all she knew, she might have been its principal cause.

But without knowledge of the context, she was unable to ascertain her position in the exchange. And the words they used — more precisely, the words O-Hide was using — pelted the air like frantic hail. There simply wasn’t time to take up and scrutinize the words as they came tumbling down. “Character,” “cherish,” “predictable”—one after the other, words like these assailed O-Nobu’s ears as she stood rooted to the spot.

She considered waiting where she was until the argument should become clear. Then O-Hide discharged as though it were a final round a remark that thudded into her and quickened her pulse yet again. “There’s someone else beside Sister you care about.” Nothing mattered to O-Nobu so much as this single, so distinctly audible, line. At the same time these words, more than all the others, were unclear. Independently, unless she heard what followed, they were of no use to her. No matter what it might cost her, O-Nobu wouldn’t be satisfied until she had heard what came next. At the same time she couldn’t bear to hear more. At each exchange, the words between the siblings had climbed in pitch until now it was impossible not to suppose they had arrived at a summit. Forced to advance further, one of them would raise a hand against the other. O-Nobu accordingly felt obliged to enter the sickroom as a kind of relaxant against a spasm of impropriety.

She understood well the nature of the bond between these siblings. She had also known for a while that she herself was the cause of the disharmony between them. To show her face at this moment would require skill. But she was not without confidence that she could manage. Taking a deep breath at what sounded like the most volatile moment, she slid open the door as quietly as she could.