Light and dark

[40]

AS THE weather was fine, they had the hoods lowered and set out with the satchel in one rickshaw and the bundle in the other. They had turned the corner of their side street and traveled several blocks along the trolley tracks when O-Nobu’s rickshaw man abruptly hailed Tsuda’s. Both rickshaws stopped.

“I left something at home.”

Looking back, Tsuda gazed in silence at his wife’s face. It wasn’t only her husband who could be brought to a standstill by the power of the words that issued from the lips of this meticulously groomed young woman. The rickshaw man, still gripping the wooden traces in both hands, directed at O-Nobu a similarly curious gaze. Even passers-by couldn’t help glancing with interest at the couple.

“What is it? What did you forget?”

O-Nobu appeared to be deliberating.

“Wait just a minute. I’ll be right back.”

O-Nobu directed her man to turn around. Left behind in a state of psychological limbo, Tsuda watched her receding back in silence. The rickshaw disappeared around the corner, and when it presently reappeared it bore down with reckless speed. When she had pulled alongside Tsuda, O-Nobu took from her obi a foot-long metal chain and dangled it for him to see. At the end of the chain was a ring of five or six keys of varying sizes; as she held the chain aloft for Tsuda’s inspection, the keys jangled.

“I forgot this — I left it on top of the tansu.”

In a household of only two and the maid, they took the precaution of locking up their valuables when they left the house together; accordingly, one of them had to carry the key chain.

“You keep them.”

O-Nobu stuffed the jangling keys back into her obi, patted them with her open hand, and smiled at Tsuda.

“Safe and sound.”

The rickshaws moved off again.

They arrived at the clinic slightly later than the appointed hour but not too late for morning office hours.

Troubled by the thought of sitting side by side in the waiting room, Tsuda stepped to the prescriptions window as soon as they were inside.

“May I go straight up to the second floor?”

The student at the window summoned from the back the apprentice nurse. No more than sixteen or seventeen, she bowed to Tsuda with an easy smile and then, noticing O-Nobu standing at his side, as though put off a little by her splendor, frowned as if to say, “Who let this peacock in?” When O-Nobu stepped into the silence and spoke first, thanking her in advance for her trouble, the nurse also dipped her head in her direction as though noticing her for the first time.

“Can you carry this for me?”

Tsuda handed the nurse the satchel he had taken from the rickshaw man and moved toward the stairs to the second floor.

“This way, O-Nobu.”

O-Nobu, who had been standing in the entrance peering at the patients in the waiting room, hastened to follow Tsuda up the stairs.

“My goodness! It’s gloomy in there.”

Fortunately, the second floor, open to the south and east, was light.

O-Nobu slid open the shoji and stepped onto the deck. Eyeing the clothes drying just below at the Western laundry, she turned back to Tsuda.

“At least it’s cheerier up here — this is quite a decent room. The tatami are stained, though—”

Formerly a house used by someone’s mistress, a contractor perhaps, even the second floor, which had been remodeled, retained somehow a hint of its flavorful past.

“It’s old all right, but it might just be nicer than our second floor.”

Having observed the dazzling white of the laundry in the sun in a fresh, autumn mood, Tsuda glanced around him as he spoke at the ceiling, soot-darkened over time, and the decorative posts on either side of the alcove.