Light and dark

[33]

OUTSIDE, THERE was no wind. As they walked briskly along, the quiet air was chilly against their cheeks. It was as if an invisible dew were falling softly from the starry sky high above them. Tsuda stroked the shoulder of his overcoat. Sensing distinctly in his fingertips the chill that had seeped inside the coat, he looked back at Kobayashi.

“It’s warm enough during the day, but nights are getting cold.”

“Autumn is upon us. Overcoat weather.”

Kobayashi was wearing nothing over his three-piece suit. Clomping along in his American clodhoppers with their decidedly square toes as he brandished his walking stick affectedly, he might have been a demonstrator protesting the chilly air.

“What happened to that coat you had made when we were in school, the one you were so proud of?”

The question was abrupt and surprising. Tsuda couldn’t help recalling the days when he had worn the coat ostentatiously.

“I still have it.”

“You still wear it?”

“I may be strapped just now, but do you suppose I still parade around in a coat from my student days?”

“I guess not. Perfect. Give it to me.”

“You can have it if you want it.”

Tsuda’s reply was on the chilly side. There was something contradictory about a man dressed in new clothes all the way to his socks and shoes wanting someone else’s worn-out overcoat. At the very least it was evidence of the unregulated ups and downs that lay along the path of Kobayashi’s material life.

“Why didn’t you order a coat along with the suit?” Tsuda asked presently.

“Don’t think about me as if I were you.”

“Fine, but how did you manage the suit and the shoes?”

“I resent your tone of voice. Things may be tough, but I haven’t started stealing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Tsuda said no more.

They came to the top of a hill. The slope visible across the broad valley below extended into the darkness like a beast’s back. Here and there the lights in houses glimmered like points of warmth in the autumn night.

“Say! How about stopping for a drink?”

Before replying, Tsuda glanced at Kobayashi to assess his mood. On their right was a high embankment the length of which was covered by a dense stand of bamboo. There was no wind to make the bamboo murmur, but the tips of the broad leaves, which appeared to have fallen asleep, were more than adequate to produce in Tsuda a feeling of desolation appropriate to the season.

“This is some gloomy spot. It must have been the back of a daimyo estate and now they just let it go. They should clear it so it can be developed.”

With these remarks Tsuda hoped to dodge the invitation, but Kobayashi wasn’t to be diverted by a bamboo grove.

“C’mon — for old time’s sake.”

“You were just drinking; you need more already?”

“What we just had doesn’t count as drinking.”

“You said you’d had enough when Uncle offered you a good-night cup.”

“I couldn’t get drunk in front of Sensei and his wife so I had no choice. And having too little is poison, worse than nothing at all. If you’re not careful to get appropriately smashed afterward, chances are you’ll be sick.”

Propounding his arbitrary logic, Kobayashi insisted, making him a troublesome companion.

“Drinks on you?”

The question was half a taunt.

“I don’t mind — why not!”

“Where should we go?”

“Anywhere — how about an o-den shop?*

In silence they descended the hill.

* O-den is a stew, largely vegetarian, kept simmering in a bottomless pot filled with murky broth, and consumed with sake on chilly nights.