Light and dark

[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 particular 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.