Light and dark

[183]

THERE WERE actually two adjoining rooms. Tsuda had entered an antechamber with no alcove for hanging a scroll or exhibiting flowers. Thick, cross-hatched pillows in front of a rectangular mirror edged in black on a black wooden stand and the small brazier of paulownia wood alongside it evoked, on a small scale, the atmosphere of a sitting room in a normal Japanese house. There was a black lacquer kimono rack in a corner. The bright colors of the striped garments tossed over it and their silkiness, as if they would be smooth to the touch, evoked the fairer sex.

The heavy paper door to the adjoining room had been left open. Tsuda saw an arrangement of fresh-cut chrysanthemums in the alcove there. Two cushions had been placed face to face in front of it. Tea-brown silk with a round whiteness in the center, a single peony perhaps, the elegant cushions seemed excessively formal as a preparation for receiving a casual visitor. Even before he had seated himself, Tsuda had intuited something.

Everything is too proper. This must represent the distance that separates the destinies of the two people about to face each other.

Recognizing this all of a sudden, Tsuda was on the verge of regretting having come.

But what produced this distance? On reflection it seemed inevitable it should be there. Tsuda had merely forgotten. But how could he have forgotten? Perhaps forgetting was also inevitable.

It was just then, as he was standing in the anteroom lost in thought, gazing at the cushions inside without moving to them or taking a seat, that Kiyoko stepped into view from the far corner of the engawa. What she had been doing there until now Tsuda couldn’t imagine. Nor could he understand why she would have chosen to step outside. Perhaps, waiting for him after straightening the room, she had been gazing at the terraced layers of autumn foliage on the mountain, leaning against a corner of the railing. In any event, her manner seemed odd. To be precise, her behavior at that moment would have been more appropriate to running into an unexpected guest than welcoming someone she had invited.

And yet, curiously enough, this was less offensive to him than the cushions stiffly awaiting them to take their seats or the oblong brazier that had been positioned between the cushions to create what appeared to be an intentional obstruction. Doubtless that was because this attitude was not so distant as to be incompatible with the Kiyoko he had been painting in his imagination.

The Kiyoko whom Tsuda knew was by no means a restless, fussy woman. On the contrary, she was inveterately unperturbed. It might even have been said that a distinguishing feature of her temperament, and of the actions that derived from her temperament, was a certain languor. He had always counted on that quality of hers. He had placed inordinate faith in it, and as a result his faith had been betrayed. Such at least was his interpretation. Even so, notwithstanding his interpretation, the faith he had established at the time, though he wasn’t conscious of it, had remained intact inside him. Her marriage to Seki may have occurred as swiftly as the darting of a swallow, but that was an inconsistency and nothing more. Since his turmoil began only when he strove to connect these two realities without contradiction, he preferred to consider them separately: just as a was a fact, so then must b also be true.

Why did that languorous woman leap into an airplane? Why did she fly loop-the-loops?

It was precisely here that serious doubt lingered. Facts, however, were in the end facts, no matter how they might be doubted, and would not disappear by themselves.

On this head, Kiyoko the rebel was more fortunate than faithful O-Nobu. If, when Tsuda had entered the room, it had been O-Nobu instead of Kiyoko who had thrown him off his pace with an oddly timed entrance from the far end of the engawa, what would his response have been?

She’s up to something again.

Certainly this is what he would have thought. But coming from Kiyoko, this same behavior had an entirely different effect.

She’s as languid as ever.

Having persuaded himself, Tsuda had no choice but to assess her behavior as languid even though she had knocked his legs from under him with a move of dizzying speed.

It wasn’t simply that she had thrown his timing off. She had appeared from the far end of the engawa carrying in both hands the large basket of fruit he had presented her in Madam Yoshikawa’s name. Whatever her intention, it seemed clear the nuisance the gift may have created for her until now couldn’t be taken as a measure of her indifference to Tsuda. Even so, this behavior had to be accounted odd, the more so if she had kept the basket with her on the balcony until now, even more so assuming she had put it down once and picked it up again. At the very least, it was awkward. And juvenile somehow. Nonetheless Tsuda, who knew her normal behavior as if by heart, couldn’t help discerning in this something unmistakably like her.

It’s funny. It’s funny in a way that’s just like you. And you’re not the slightest bit aware of what’s comical about it.

As he watched Kiyoko appear to struggle with the basket as though it were heavy for her, this is what Tsuda would have liked to say.