Light and dark

[177]

THAT NIGHT he had trouble sleeping. He was bothered by the sound of water, an incessant plash and patter outside the rain shutters. Unable to shut it out, he wondered what it was. Had it begun to rain? Was a mountain stream running past the building? But if it were rain he would be hearing it on the eaves, and the sound was too gentle to be the rushing of a stream — even as he considered possibilities, his mind was troubled by a more important question.

Discovering that the provident maid had taken quick advantage of his absence to lay out his mattress and bedding, he had burrowed under the covers at once and submerged in thoughts about his accidental adventure. Looking back, it seemed to him that he had been very nearly sleepwalking. It was as if he had spent the time wandering the inn without purpose. His behavior at the bottom of the stairs in particular, observing the water eddy in the basin in the stillness and studying the uncomfortable image of himself in the mirror appeared, even at a distance of only a brief hour, to have been a function of what would have to be called an abnormal mental state. Unused to being abandoned by common sense, Tsuda, lying comfortably in his bedding, reflected on what for him had been an anomalous moment and felt embarrassed. Aside from how bad this might have looked to others, he was unable to explain to himself how he had come to feel as he had.

Whatever the answer to that question, when he moved on to wondering how he had managed to forget about Kiyoko’s existence at that time, he couldn’t avoid being struck by an odd feeling.

Can it be that I’m indifferent to her?

He was confident it wasn’t so. He had inquired of the maid where she was staying in the inn before he had finished his supper.

Nevertheless, old boy, you weren’t thinking about her.

It was a fact that, somewhere along the way in his wandering, he had shaken Kiyoko off. But how could a man with no idea where he is going be expected to know someone else’s whereabouts?

If only I’d been aware of the general direction; I wouldn’t have been caught off guard.

The thought led him to the feeling that he had already let slip his first opportunity. To be sure her appearance, the way she had turned her back, discouraging him from ascending the stairs by switching off the light, the sound of the bell she had rung at once to summon the maid, what was all this if not a warning? An admonition. A severing of ties.

Yet she had been surprised. Far more surprised than he. The simple explanation might be that she was a woman. It was also possible that, while his surprise had been mitigated by a certain expectation, she had experienced abruptness and nothing else. But was that all there was to say about her surprise? Mightn’t it also be that she had felt confronted by her complex past?

She had paled. She had turned rigid. Tsuda yoked his hope to this. He essayed an interpretation that suited him at the moment. Then he turned his interpretation over and examined it from the other side. After a careful look at both sides, he had to judge which was rational. Insufficient data made it hard to arrive at a determination. Each conclusion was quickly invalidated. When he was tending one way, his self-confidence intervened. When he tilted in the other, a fire gong of disillusionment clanged in his ear. Oddly enough his confidence, what he referred to invidiously as his vanity, seemed to reside inside him. In contrast, the clanging fire gong of disillusionment seemed to assail him from outside his mind. Though he intended to consider them both without bias, he couldn’t help distinguishing between the intimate and the removed. Perhaps it was rather the case that near and distant were natural attributes, intrinsic to each respectively. The result was inevitable. Admonishing self-love, he stroked its head; peeling his ears, he cursed the sound of the gong.

With these thoughts pursuing each other back and forth across his mind, Tsuda was unable to fall peacefully asleep. Resolving to revisit everything in the morning, he tried to summon sleep but could only toss and turn to no avail.

About to smoke a cigarette, he reached for the box of matches next to his pillow and noticed the quilted jacket the maid had folded and hung on the kimono rack on her way out of the room. He realized it was the jacket O-Nobu had packed for him; he had crawled into bed still wearing the one provided by the inn. He recalled the flattery he had used as they were leaving the clinic to thank O-Nobu for the jacket she had made for him. And he remembered her reply.

“Try comparing them and see which is better.”

Not surprisingly, the jacket provided by the inn was superior. Even Tsuda could tell at a glance the difference between something woven with synthetic thread and pure silk fabric. Comparing the jackets, he summoned to the stage of his memory his secret thought in his wife’s presence at the time.

O-Nobu and Kiyoko.

Speaking the words aloud to himself, he crushed his cigarette into the ashtray and, hearing it hiss, pulled the comforter up over his head.

It was only as his determination and efforts to sleep disappeared somewhere in exhaustion that they were finally rewarded. At last, unaware, Tsuda fell deeply into a dream.