Light and dark

[153]

THE POSTSURGICAL recovery Tsuda had to endure was proceeding well. More properly, it was on schedule. On the fifth day, when the doctor had changed the gauze dressing, he confirmed this.

“You’re looking good. There’s no internal bleeding; just at the entrance.”

On the sixth day the dressing was changed again. The wound was even healthier than the day before.

“Am I still bleeding?”

“Just a little.”

Tsuda failed to understand the significance of the bleeding and so the significance of the reply was also lost on him. Choosing arbitrarily to interpret it to mean he had recovered, he was pleased.

But the facts were not exactly as he wished them to be. His brief dialogue with the doctor made that clear enough.

“What would happen if this doesn’t heal?”

“Another resection. But the lesion would be less pronounced than before.”

“That’s discouraging.”

“Shouldn’t be. I’m telling you, your chances of recovery are eight or nine out of ten.”

“Does that mean I still have a way to go?”

“Another three weeks maybe, four at most.”

“And when can I go home?”

“You should be ready by the day after tomorrow.”

Tsuda was thankful. He resolved to leave for the hot springs as soon as he was released. Thinking it was better not to mention this to the doctor even in passing in case he should advise against the trip, he said nothing. The rashness of this was entirely unlike him. Even as he resolved to follow his imprudent impulse no matter what, he was aware of the contradiction, and it made him uneasy. Perhaps to divert himself, he posed the doctor an irrelevant question.

“You said you cut around the sphincter, so I’m wondering why the gauze is packed from below?”

“The sphincter isn’t at the entrance to the wound; it’s recessed a good two centimeters. But there’s a place where we shaved a centimeter or so diagonally from underneath.”

That evening Tsuda began eating rice gruel. Having endured for days a diet of bread alone, the taste of the watery rice was refreshing. He may have lacked the sensibility to appreciate “gruel on a cold night” as poetry,* but sipping the thin gruel he relished, more than an ordinary haiku poet would, its warmth in contrast to the autumn chill.

He was constipated from the surgery, and to help him move his bowels he had once again to drink a mild laxative. His stomach hadn’t bothered him so much but, as it emptied, his mood seemed to lighten. Sprawled on his mattress, physically more comfortable, he spent his time waiting for the day when he was to be released.

Once the night had passed, that day came quickly. O-Nobu had come to pick him up in a rickshaw; the minute he saw her, he spoke.

“So I can finally go home. I’m thankful.”

“But not that thankful, I imagine.”

“I absolutely am.”

“Compared with being in a hospital, I suppose you’d say?”

“Something like that.”

Having replied in his usual style, Tsuda quickly added, as if he had suddenly remembered something, “That jacket you made for me really came in handy. It feels wonderful to wear; maybe it’s the new cotton padding.”

Laughing, O-Nobu chaffed her husband.

“Gracious! You’re so good at flattery all of a sudden. But I’m afraid that you’re mistaken.”

As she folded the jacket in question, O-Nobu confessed to her husband that she hadn’t used only new cotton for the padding. Tsuda was changing his kimono. What was important to him at that moment was wrapping a silk obi with a tie-dyed pattern around and around his hips. He had paid scant attention to the lining in his jacket, nor was he moved to respond affably to O-Nobu’s honest revelation.

“Is that so?” he said merely, and added nothing.

“If it’s comfortable, why not take it with you?”

“I suppose it would put me in mind of your kindness once in a while.”

“Except if the jacket they have for you at the spa turns out to be much nicer, you’ll feel so embarrassed — to wear mine.”

“That would never happen.”

“It could. If something isn’t well made, it’s better not to have it. At a time like that. Because whatever kindness was intended flies out the window.”

O-Nobu’s innocent words conveyed more to Tsuda’s ears than the simple meaning she intended. He heard in what she said the vibration of a certain irony. It was possible to interpret the jacket as a symbol of something. Feeling uncomfortable, Tsuda tied a simple knot in his masculine obi with his back still turned to O-Nobu.

A few minutes later, accompanied by the nurse, they emerged in the street and immediately seated themselves in the waiting rickshaw.

“Sayonara.”

With this single word, the curtain finally fell on an eventful week of hospital life.

* Gruel and the chill of night are not uncommonly linked in the first or third line of a three-line haiku.