Light and dark

[144]

THE LIGHT was failing as she reached home. Having walked the five blocks or so from the trolley stop in the chill of twilight mist, she craved the warmth of the brazier. Sitting down beside it as soon as she had removed her coat, she extended her palms toward the embers.

But she managed to rest for scarcely a minute. No sooner had she seated herself than O-Toki handed her the letter from Tsuda. The text couldn’t have been simpler: in the same time it took her to open the seal, she read it at a glance. But having read it, she was no longer the same person. A mere three lines, the note affected her so powerfully it might have been an entire volume. Her heart was pounding in her chest; Tsuda’s message had ignited the mood she had brought home with her.

Don’t come to the clinic today — what could that possibly mean?

Even before the note, she had intended to set out for the clinic at once, and now she was too intent on leaving to waste another minute. As O-Toki came in from the kitchen carrying a dinner tray, she rose, surprising the maid.

“I’ll eat when I get back.”

Throwing over her shoulders the coat she had just now removed, she left the house. But as she approached the main street where the trolley ran, her feet stopped at the corner. For some reason she couldn’t bear to think of showing up. She was abruptly sensible of feeling that appearing now, with things in this state, would avail her nothing.

Knowing Tsuda, I can’t even expect an honest explanation of his note.

Standing on the corner despondently, she watched the streetcars passing to and fro in front of her. If she boarded the one to the right, it would take her to the clinic; the other, to the left, went to the Okamotos’. Even as she considered abandoning her original plan and dropping in on the Okamotos instead, she was able to imagine a difficulty that awaited her in that direction as well. Seeking counsel at her uncle’s house would oblige her to reveal herself. If she expected to get anywhere at all, she would have to expose intimate details of the relationship with her husband she had been concealing until now. In front of her uncle and aunt, she would have to admit to an undiscerning eye where Tsuda was concerned. But she decided that enduring such shame wasn’t called for yet. She had only contempt for indulging in the sort of honesty that would destroy one’s vanity before any sign of recovery was in sight.

Unable to decide, she wavered between right and left. At that moment, oblivious of her quandary, Tsuda, sitting up on his mattress, was preparing insouciantly to sample the dinner the nurse had brought him on a tray. Even before the phone call from O-Hide, he had expected that O-Nobu would show up and had been quietly readying himself for her appearance on the heels of Madam Yoshikawa’s departure, but as his wife had turned back on her way, he had been waiting for the dinner hour in mild disappointment. Possibly because he was tired of waiting, he spoke to the nurse the minute she entered the room.

“Food at last. When you’re alone, a day is so damn long.”

The nurse was a small woman with a sallow complexion. But she had an unusual face that made it impossible for Tsuda to assess her age. The white uniform she always wore helped to distance her from the flock of ordinary women. Tsuda always wondered: When this woman wears a regular kimono, are the shoulders still gathered this way as if she were a child, or have they been let out? Once he had tried asking her the question seriously. She had replied with a grin, “I’m still an apprentice,” satisfying Tsuda’s curiosity in a vague way.

Placing the tray next to his pillow, the nurse hadn’t gone back downstairs directly.

“Are you bored?” she asked, grinning, and subjoined, “Your wife isn’t coming today?”

“Not today.”

His mouth already full of burned toast, this was all Tsuda could manage to say. The nurse was free to continue.

“But you had some other visitors instead.”

“You mean that old lady? She’s a chubby, isn’t she?”

As the nurse showed no sign of joining him in deprecation, he had to carry the conversation himself.

“If I had a bunch of younger, prettier visitors, I’d recover a lot faster,” he said, making the nurse laugh.

“But everyone who comes to see you is a woman,” she teased back. “They must find you very charming.”

It appeared she was unaware of Kobayashi’s visit.

“That lady yesterday was very pretty.”

“Not so pretty — she’s my sister. Do we look alike?”

Without replying one way or the other, the nurse grinned as before.