Light and dark

[41]

THE SAME nurse brought in a small pot of green tea.

“It will be only a little while. Make yourselves comfortable.”

They had no choice but to sit down properly, facing each other, and sip their tea.

“I’m feeling too nervous to sit still.”

“It’s like being guests in someone’s house.”

O-Nobu withdrew from her obi a lady’s watch and glanced at it. Tsuda was less concerned with the time than the procedure he was about to undergo.

“I wonder how long it’s going to take. Even if you can’t see it, just hearing the scalpel is enough to make you feel awful.”

“It scares me just to look at something like that.”

O-Nobu arched her eyebrows as if she were actually afraid.

“That’s why you’re going to wait up here. There’s no need for you to go in just to watch that dirty business.”

“But you should have family with you at a time like this — it’s wrong not to.”

Seeing the serious look on O-Nobu’s face, Tsuda laughed.

“That’s if you’re so seriously ill it’s a matter of life and death. Nobody’s going to haul people in for a minor surgery.”

Tsuda was a man who disliked showing a woman anything dirty. Especially about himself. To dig deeper, it might be said that observing even his own dirtiness caused him more distress than it would another man.

“Then I’ll wait here,” O-Nobu said, taking out her watch again. “Do you think it’ll be over by noon?”

“I imagine. But now that I’m here, what difference does it make?”

“You’re right. I was just—”

O-Nobu didn’t continue, nor did Tsuda pursue her thought.

The nurse looked in from the head of the stairs.

“We’re ready — if you’ll just follow me.”

Tsuda rose at once. At the same time, O-Nobu started up.

“I told you to wait here.”

“I’m not going in with you. I want to use the phone.”

“You have business somewhere?”

“Not business — I wanted to let O-Hide-san know you’re here.”

His sister’s house was in the same ward, not far from the clinic. Tsuda, who hadn’t thought of O-Hide at all in connection with his illness, stopped O-Nobu as she attempted to stand.

“Don’t bother letting her know, you’re making much too much of this; besides, if that one shows up she’ll be an awful nuisance.”

Though she was younger than he, his sister’s temperament was very different from his own and he found her difficult to manage.

“But I’m the one who’ll be criticized afterward.”

Lacking a reason to require her to desist, Tsuda acquiesced in spite of himself.

“I don’t mind if you call but it doesn’t have to be now. Since she’s in the neighborhood she’s certain to show up. That means I’ll be listening to her carry on about me and my father, my faults and his virtues, and that will be an ordeal with my jittery nerves after surgery.”

O-Nobu laughed softly, as if she feared being overheard downstairs. But the white teeth she revealed informed her husband in no uncertain terms that she was feeling less sympathy for him than simple amusement.

“Then I won’t phone.”

O-Nobu rose to her full height and stood alongside Tsuda.

“You have other calls to make?”

“The Okamotos. I promised to phone them by noon, would you mind if I call?”

Descending the stairs one behind the other, they separated, one moving to the telephone, the other sitting down in a chair in front of the treatment room.