Light and dark

[21]

FOR THE past six or seven years, Fujii had been living the sort of life on the outskirts not uncommon to a man like himself in a corner of a plateau in the northwest quarter of the city near Waseda University. There were times when it struck him that the annual addition of houses large and small being erected in a district that, until recently, had been very much like a suburb, was gradually depriving him of the color green, and he would allow the pen in his hand to go idle as he reflected on his elder brother’s circumstances. At such moments he wondered whether he might borrow money from his brother and build a residence for himself. It seemed clear there was no chance a loan would be forthcoming. Not that his temperament would allow him to accept money even if it came to that. The man who had styled his brother a “dawdler on the road to life” was, truth be told, a life traveler with material anxiety. As is readily observed in the majority of people, anxiety about material things was hardly more than a degree of spiritual uneasiness.

To get from Tsuda’s house to his uncle’s place, there was a convenient streetcar that ran alongside the Edo River for half the way. But the distance was short enough to be covered on foot in less than an hour, and Tsuda had the option of combining the visit with a walk rather than relying on crowded and noisy public transportation.

Leaving his house at a little before one, he ambled along the river’s edge, approaching the end of the streetcar line. The cloudless sky was high; the world was drenched in sunlight. The deep green of the trees covering the ridge ahead was distinctly visible as though highlighted.

Along the way Tsuda recalled the castor oil he had forgotten to buy that morning. The doctor had instructed him to take some around four this afternoon; he would have to stop at a drugstore for a bottle. Instead of turning right at the end of the line and crossing the bridge, he began walking in the opposite direction, toward the bustling shopping district. A brutal swath had been cut diagonally across a portion of the road along his route, apparently a project to extend the trolley track beyond the last station. Moving past craters where existing houses had been remorselessly demolished and hauled away, he reached a turning in the new road and saw a group of people gathered at the corner. The modest crowd was standing three or four deep in a semicircle around a man roughly Tsuda’s age. A pudgy fellow, he was wearing a cotton kimono with a narrow obi and clog shoes but had neither an umbrella nor a cap to cover his head. With a willow tree that had not been cut down at his back, he was holding in both hands a large bag with a cotton flannel lining as he surveyed the crowd.

“Good people, we’re about to prestidigitate an egg from this bag. Without fail, from this completely empty bag. Don’t be surprised, the magic is already here, inside my robe.”

He declaimed these words with a cockiness that seemed an extravagance beyond the means of someone of this tribe. Then, clenching one hand into a fist in front of his chest, he flung it at the bag, opening his fingers with a flourish.

“As you can see, I’ve thrown the egg into the bag,” he said, as if to put one over on the crowd. But it wasn’t a deceit: when he thrust his hand into the bag, the egg was waiting there. Gripping it between his thumb and first finger, he held it up for the spectators to see and placed it on the ground.

Tsuda inclined his head slightly, his face a blend of disdain and admiration. All of a sudden he became aware of something poking at his hip from behind. Startled, he spun around almost reflexively and discovered his uncle’s son grinning up at him like a mischievous rascal. His cap with insignia attached, his short pants, and the knapsack on his back were all the evidence Tsuda needed to know whence the boy had come.

“Back from school?”

His nephew grunted an affirmation that was neither “yes” nor even “yeah.”