Light and dark

[38]

HIS FRONT gate was closed as usual. He reached for the half door in the gate; tonight it wouldn’t open. Thinking it must be stuck, he tried again several times and finally yanked at it forcefully and only then, hearing on the inside the leaden rasp of the latch resisting, resigned himself.

Inclining his head to one side at this unexpected development, he stood a moment where he was. Not once since becoming a new householder had he spent a night away from home, and even on the rare occasion when he returned late at night he had never until now encountered this.

Today he had been wanting to come home since dusk. He had dined perfunctorily at his uncle’s house because he had been given no choice. The small quantity of sake he had reluctantly consumed had been a concession to Kobayashi. Since evening had fallen he had spent the time away from home with O-Nobu on his mind. As he returned through the chilly night, it was very much as if he had been guided by his longing for the warm lamplight of his house. It wasn’t simply that his body had halted as a horse halts before a wall; his anticipation had been abruptly extinguished in front of his gate. Whether this stanching was O-Nobu’s fault or simply accidental was a matter of no small concern to him.

Lifting his hand, he rapped twice smartly on the locked door. The sound that rang into the darkness of the deepening night in the street was less a command to “Open up!” than a demand to know “Why is this locked?”

“Coming!” a reply immediately sounded from within. It reached his ear as swiftly as an echo, and it was O-Nobu’s voice, not the maid’s. Going suddenly still, he listened in silence outside the gate. He heard the sound of the switch at the entrance, an outdoor light used only when needed. The lattice at the gate immediately rattled open; clearly the front door hadn’t yet been closed.

“Who’s there?”

Footsteps halted at the half door, and O-Nobu requested identi fication.

Tsuda was more impatient than ever.

“Open up! It’s me!”

“Goodness!” O-Nobu cried out. “I didn’t know — forgive me.”

Rattling open the latch, O-Nobu appeared paler than usual as she ushered her husband inside. From the front entrance Tsuda proceeded straight to the sitting room.

As always, it was perfectly tidied. The iron kettle was clanking as it was meant to be. In front of the brazier a thick muslin cushion had been positioned as always on the tatami floor as though awaiting his arrival. Opposite, at O-Nobu’s customary place, a woman’s ink-stone and brush lay next to her cushion. The lid of the box, a mosaic of plum blossoms inlaid with mother-of-pearl, had been set to one side, and the small ink-stone inset in flecked, pear-yellow lacquer ware was glistening. Evidence that the writer had left her seat abruptly, a blot of sumi ink from the tip of the narrow writing brush had seeped into the rice paper, smudging the seven or eight lines of a letter in progress.

O-Nobu, who had followed her husband inside after closing the doors for the night, plumped herself down on her cushion dressed as she was, in an everyday kimono jacket thrown over her nightgown.

“I’m so sorry.”

Tsuda looked up at the pendulum clock. It had just struck eleven. Though he was normally home earlier, this was not the first time since his marriage that he had returned at this hour.

“But why did you lock me out? Did you suppose I wouldn’t be coming home tonight?”

“Of course not. I was waiting, thinking any minute now, any minute now; finally I began to feel so lonely I started a letter to my parents.”

Like Tsuda’s mother and father, O-Nobu’s mother and father also lived in Kyoto. From a distance, Tsuda regarded the letter just begun. But he still wasn’t feeling persuaded.

“But why lock the gate if you were waiting? Afraid to leave it open?”

“No — and I didn’t lock it.”

“You can’t deny it was locked.”

“Toki must have forgotten to unlock it this morning. That must be it — she’s impossible.”

In her habitual way, O-Nobu arched her eyebrows. As the half door was never used during the day, it wasn’t unreasonable to explain how it came to be locked as an oversight that morning.

“What’s Toki doing?”

“I sent her to bed a while ago.”

Deciding it would be going too far to wake the maid to pursue his investigation of the responsible party, Tsuda put aside the matter of the half door and went to bed.