Light and dark

[26]

SEATED WHERE he was, Tsuda struggled to identify the voice in the drawing room. Presently he slapped his knee with his hand.

“I know! Kobayashi!”

“Yes.”

His aunt’s simple answer was unsmiling and composed.

“So it’s Kobayashi. I saw the fancy red shoes and wondered who was putting on airs like an important guest paying a rare visit — If I’d known I wouldn’t have thought twice about using the front entrance.”

The image that rose to Tsuda’s mind was too familiar to him to require imagining. He recalled the odd outfit Kobayashi had been wearing when they had met last summer. Over a robe with a white crepe de chine collar, he had sported a dark blue kimono with a white splash pattern, a so-called Satsuma splash, a hakama with brown vertical stripes, and a see-through jacket of net; and in this outlandish get-up he might have been the proprietor of an umbrella shop who has stopped on his way out of a local funeral to place in the folds of his robe a thin wooden carton of ceremonial rice and red beans. At the time, he had explained that his Western suit had been lifted by a burglar. Whereupon he had begged a loan of some seven yen. A friend, sympathizing with his loss, had offered to gift him his own summer suit if he could find the means to buy it out of hock at a pawnshop.

“What’s so special about today that he goes into the great room and breaks out his fancy visitor’s manners?”

Tsuda posed the question with the hint of a smile.

“He has something to discuss with your uncle. It’s a subject it would be hard to talk about in here.”

“Really! Does Kobayashi have serious matters to discuss? Must be money, or if not—”

Observing the serious expression that had suddenly appeared on his aunt’s face, Tsuda pulled back in midsentence. His aunt lowered her voice a little. Her softened voice was, if anything, better suited to her composure.

“There’s also O-Kin’s engagement. If we say too much about that in here it’s bound to embarrass her.”

It was for that reason that Kobayashi, in contrast to his customary braying, was affecting a voice so gentlemanly that it was difficult to know, listening in here, who the speaker was.

“Has it been decided?”

“It seems to be going well.”

A glimmer of anticipation brightened his aunt’s eyes. Tsuda, who had been feeling expansive, reeled himself in.

“So I needn’t go to the trouble of making an introduction.”

His aunt regarded him in silence. Tsuda’s attitude, not superficial exactly but clowning and somehow hollow, appeared to be incongruent with her current feelings about life.

“Yoshio, was that your attitude when you chose your own bride?”

Not only was the question abrupt, but Tsuda hadn’t the slightest idea what she meant by asking it.

“I suppose I know what you mean by my attitude, but as the person in question, I myself have no idea so it’s a bit difficult to reply.”

“It makes no difference to me whether you reply or not — you try taking on responsibility for seeing a young woman happily on her way. It’s no trifling matter.”

Four years ago, lacking the means to provide his eldest daughter a dowry, Fujii had borrowed a considerable sum of money. No sooner had he finally paid off the loan than it was time to arrange his second daughter’s marriage. Now O-Kin was engaged and, if the arrangements should be settled, hers would be the third marriage he must finance. Her standing was of course different from his daughters’, and in that sense there was nothing preventing him from spending as little as he could manage; even so, the event would certainly strain the family’s household budget and cast a shadow over their current way of life.