Light and dark

[17]

ON HIS way home that day, Tsuda alighted from the streetcar before his stop and made his way a few blocks along the busy thoroughfare before turning into a side street. Midway down the narrow, winding street past the awning on a pawnshop and a go parlor and modest houses that might have been home to a neighborhood fire chief or a master carpenter, he pushed open a door inset with frosted glass and stepped inside. As the bell fastened to the upper part of the door jangled, four or five pairs of eyes glimmered at him from the cramped room just down the hall from the entrance. The room was not merely cramped; it was truly dark. To Tsuda, having stepped abruptly inside from the bright street, it felt like nothing so much as a cave. Huddling in one corner of the chilly couch, he returned the gaze of the glittering eyes, which just now had turned toward him in the darkness. Most of the men had seated themselves near the large ceramic brazier that had been installed in the center of the room. Two with folded arms, two more with one hand each on the edge of the brazier, another, apart, his face lowered to the newspaper scattered about as if to lick the print, and the last, in a corner of the room opposite the couch where he had seated himself, his body slightly atilt, in Western trousers, one leg over the other.

Having turned toward the door as one man when the bell rang, they withdrew into themselves as one man after a single glance. All silent, they sat in an attitude that might have been deep thought. They appeared to be taking no notice of Tsuda, or was it, more likely perhaps, that they were avoiding being noticed by him? It wasn’t only Tsuda; it appeared they kept their eyes lowered, looking away, in fear of the pain of noticing one another.

The members of this gloomy band shared, almost without exception, a largely identical past. As they sat waiting their turn in this somber waiting room, a fragment of that past that was if anything brilliantly colored cast its shadow abruptly over each of them. Lacking the courage to turn toward the light, they had halted inside the darkness of the shadow and locked themselves in.

Resting one arm on the armrest of the couch, Tsuda lifted his hand to his brow. In this attitude, as though he were offering to god a silent prayer, he was led to memories of two men he had encountered unexpectedly in this doctor’s house since the end of last year.

One was actually none other than his sister’s husband. Recognizing his figure in this dark room, Tsuda was astonished. Normally easygoing about such things, if not entirely unconcerned, his brother-in-law had seemed nonplussed, as if the intensity of Tsuda’s surprise had reverberated in him.

The other man was a friend. Supposing that Tsuda was afflicted with the same sort of illness as his own, he had spoken up without any hesitation or reserve, as if to do so were perfectly natural. Exiting the doctor’s gate together, they had engaged over dinner in a complex debate about sex and love.

Whereas the encounter with his brother-in-law amounted to little more than momentary surprise and had resulted in no repercussions, his conversation with his friend, which he had expected would be a one-time-only event not to be resumed, had later produced a rift between them. Obliged to reflect on his friend’s words in the past and their connection to his circumstances in the present, Tsuda shuttered his eyes open and dropped his hand from his brow as if he had received a sudden shock.

Just then, a man in a dark blue serge suit who appeared to be about thirty emerged from the examination room and walked to the prescription window. He was paying his bill when the nurse appeared in the open doorway. Tsuda had seen her before; when she had announced the next patient’s name and was about to withdraw into the examination room again, he called out to her.

“I’d rather not wait for a turn; could you just ask the doctor if I could come for my surgery tomorrow or the day after?”

The nurse stepped inside, and her white presence reappeared in the doorway to the dark room almost at once.

“The second floor happens to be vacant so you’re welcome to come when it’s convenient.”

Tsuda left the dark room as though escaping from it. He stepped into his shoes quickly, and as he pushed the large frosted-glass door open, the waiting room, pitch dark until now, lit up.