Light and dark

[125]

HER NEXT attempt to gain access was through Fujii. O-Hide’s acknowledgment that she had visited her uncle that morning provided a convenient means of moving the conversation in that direction. But O-Hide guarded her gate as vigilantly as she had before. When necessary she ventured outside the gate and engaged with O-Nobu amiably. O-Nobu knew that O-Hide had grown up under her uncle’s protection. She also understood that she had been influenced by him spiritually. This meant that her first task in the order of things was to remark on Uncle Fujii’s personality and lifestyle in a manner likely to please her. In fact, her words struck O-Hide’s ears as exaggerated, not to mention false: not only was she unable to discover in them anything to engage with seriousness, but as the same path was followed at length, she couldn’t help revealing in her countenance the displeasure and even disgust she was naturally feeling. Nimble as ever, O-Nobu drew back the instant she noticed that she had underestimated her companion. Whereupon O-Hide began to descant about Okamoto. As far as O-Hide was concerned, this uncle, who stood in the same relation to O-Nobu as Fujii did to herself, was a perfect stranger toward whom she felt neither intimacy nor anything else. Her words, accordingly, were smooth skin only with no flesh or blood beneath them. Even so, O-Nobu was obliged to swallow whole as if it were delicious the hand-cooked meal O-Hide had prepared in return for her own flattery.

When her turn came round again, O-Nobu was not so foolish as to heap a bowl with a second portion of ingratiation and force it on O-Hide. This time, deftly seizing an opportune moment to shift the conversation, she tried stirring things up with Madam Yoshikawa. However, by merely lavishing praise as before, she was in danger of achieving a similarly dismal result. Accordingly she put aside considerations of good and bad and merely launched the name into the air between them. She was prepared to proceed gradually in accordance with the effect this had.

She knew that O-Hide had called at the house when she was at the bath on her way back from Fujii. It never occurred to her that she had already visited Madam Yoshikawa before going to see her uncle. Nor would she have dreamed that O-Hide would have taken herself to the Yoshikawas as a result of the upheaval that had occurred at the clinic the previous day. On this head, O-Nobu was naive to the same degree as her husband, and she was to be surprised by O-Hide to the same degree that Tsuda had been surprised by Kobayashi. The manner in which they were surprised, however, was different. Kobayashi reported undeniable facts. O-Hide resorted to silence that felt pregnant with meaning. And to a pale flush in her face that accompanied the silence.

When the lady’s name first escaped O-Nobu’s lips, she felt as if a single drop of miraculous medicine had fallen from the skies and landed between them. Its effect was immediately apparent right before her eyes. Unfortunately it was of no use to her. Or at least it was an effect she didn’t know how to make use of. Its unexpected nature was shocking to her merely. Even as she spoke the name, she wondered whether she ought to apologize at once for speaking out of turn.

The second surprise followed hard on the first. Observing O-Hide as she averted her face slightly, O-Nobu was obliged to amend the impression she had received at first. She understood now for the first time that the change in O-Hide’s complexion was not due to anger. Her expression, which could only be described as a simple awkwardness so commonly observed that one grows tired of seeing it, surprised O-Nobu even further. The meaning of the expression was clear to her. Accounting for it would have to await an explanation from O-Hide.

As O-Nobu wondered in confusion what to do, O-Hide abruptly changed the subject. The change, a leap inconsequent to everything that had preceded it, as if O-Hide had grafted bamboo onto a tree trunk, was more than sufficient to hand O-Nobu a third surprise. But she was confident. She stepped into the challenge with open arms.