Light and dark

[19]

THE NEXT morning Tsuda woke up much later than usual. The house was hushed, as though it had already been put in order. Moving past the front entrance from the tatami drawing room to the sitting room, he slid open the shoji and discovered his wife sitting erectly alongside the brazier with the newspaper in her hand. The sound issuing from the bubbling kettle seemed to bespeak a tranquil household.

“I didn’t mean to sleep in, it happens naturally when there’s no need to wake up.”

Tsuda might have been offering an excuse; he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall above the calendar and saw that it was just minutes before ten o’clock.

When he returned to the sitting room having washed his face he sat down absently at his usual black-lacquer tray. This morning it seemed less to be awaiting his arrival than exhausted with waiting. He was removing the cloth from the tray when he recalled something abruptly.

“Damn!”

The doctor had advised certain precautions for the day before the surgery but at the moment he couldn’t remember them precisely. He spoke to his wife abruptly.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

O-Nobu, surprised, glanced at her husband’s face.

“To make a phone call.”

He rose as if with a kick that scattered the composure of the room and left the house at once by the front entrance. Running to the public phone several blocks to the right along the streetcar tracks, he was back in a moment and, halting at the front door, called to his wife:

“Bring me my billfold from upstairs. Or your coin purse, either one.”

“Is something the matter?”

O-Nobu had no idea what her husband was thinking.

“Just bring it.”

With O-Nobu’s purse thrust inside his kimono, Tsuda went back to the main street, where he boarded a trolley.

By the time he returned, carrying a fairly large paper parcel, thirty or forty minutes had passed and it was approaching noon.

“That was some bare cupboard of a purse — I thought you’d have more.”

With this exclamation, Tsuda dropped the parcel he was carrying at his side onto the tatami floor of the sitting room.

“There wasn’t enough?”

O-Nobu’s gaze conveyed her compulsion to concern herself with minute details.

“I’m not saying that — I had what I needed.”

“I had no idea what you were buying — I thought you might be going to the barber.”

Tsuda became aware of his hair, uncut for over two months. He even recalled a sensation he had experienced for the first time yesterday that his hat, already a little small for his head, seemed to rub when he put it on because he had let his hair grow too long.

“You were in such a hurry I didn’t have time to go upstairs.”

“There isn’t that much money in my wallet, either, so it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”

O-Nobu deftly unwrapped the parcel and removed a tin of tea, bread, and butter.

“My goodness, this is what you wanted? You should have let me send Toki to fetch it for you.”

“What does a maid know? There’s no telling what she would have bought.”

Before long, O-Nobu had prepared some fragrant toast and steaming Oolong tea.

When he had finished his simple Western meal, neither breakfast nor lunch, Tsuda spoke as though aloud to himself.

“I was planning to go to Uncle Fujii’s this morning. I wanted to tell him about my illness and apologize for not visiting while I was at it, but it’s already so late.”

He meant that he intended, having missed the morning, to discharge the obligation of a visit that afternoon.