Light and dark

[58]

LYING IN bed, she heard the clock strike one. She heard two. Then she was awakened by morning light. She didn’t know what time it was, but the sun seeping through a crack in the wooden shutters informed her that she had slept later than usual.

She looked at the clothes scattered near her pillow in the sunlight. They lay on the tatami where she had let them fall the night before, kimono and underwear and long kimono slip in a heap, top and bottom, inside and out, a careless tangle of runaway colors. From beneath the pile, one folded end of her long, narrow obi, an iris pattern in gold thread, extended to within reach of her hand.

O-Nobu gazed at the tangle with a certain dismay. As the work of someone who had always considered neatness to be one of the female virtues, there was something disgraceful about it. As far as she could recall, she had never once since marrying Tsuda allowed him to see this kind of mess; remembering that her husband was not sleeping in the room with her, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Her carelessness today went beyond clothing. If Tsuda hadn’t gone to the clinic and were at home as usual, she would never have allowed herself to sleep this late, no matter what time they had gone to bed the night before, nor had she leapt out of bed the minute she opened her eyes — how could she avoid rebuking herself as a lazy creature?

Even so, it wasn’t easy to get up. O-Toki, possibly to make up for her own remissness the night before, had risen before her and could be heard moving around in the kitchen; that seemed ample justification for remaining in bed, wrapped in bed clothes that were warm against her skin.

As she lay there, the feeling of transgression she had awakened with gradually dwindled. Even a woman, she began to feel, could hardly be blamed for an infraction as minor as this once or twice a year. An easiness spread through her body from head to toe, and in her relaxed mood she savored with gratitude the freedom to experience a rare sense of unburdened tranquility for the first time since her marriage. When she realized — there was no denying it — that her husband’s absence was making this possible, she even felt blessed to find herself alone for the time being. And she was surprised to perceive that going to bed at night and rising in the morning with her husband day after day, a constraint she had overlooked until now, scarcely pausing to register it, had been for her an unexpectedly heavy burden. But this spontaneous awakening was of short duration. By the time she left her bed, having observed with her newly liberated eye her agitation of the previous evening with a measure of ridicule, she was already being governed by a different mood.

Late as it was, O-Nobu discharged her duties as a housewife with the same meticulous care as always. Since her husband’s absence saved her considerable bother, she folded her kimono herself without troubling the maid. When things were put away, she dressed hastily and left the house at once, proceeding straight to the newly installed telephone booth a few blocks down the street.

She made three calls. The first, not surprisingly, was to Tsuda. As he was confined to his bed and unable to come to the phone, she was obliged to learn news of him indirectly. She had expected to hear that there were no complications, and her expectation was confirmed. “He’s doing well — there’s nothing to worry about.” Hearing this assurance from a voice that sounded like the nurse’s and wanting to determine how urgently Tsuda was awaiting her, she requested the voice to ask the patient whether it would be all right if she didn’t visit today. Tsuda sent the nurse back to the phone to ask “Why?” At the other end of the line, unable to hear his voice or see his face, O-Nobu, at a loss to make a judgment, inclined her head. In a case like this, Tsuda wasn’t a man to request that she come by all means. But he was a man to turn sour if she didn’t come. Not that he could be counted on to express satisfaction or happiness if she did. Nor was there any guarantee, having deflected her kindness, that he wouldn’t pout, as if to say “that was your duty as a woman.” Having considered all this on the spot, she let slip on the phone an attitude toward her husband that she had apparently picked up, or thought she had, from Madam Yoshikawa the previous evening.

“Please tell him I won’t be coming in today because I have to go to the Okamotos.”

Hanging up, she called Okamoto to ask if she might stop in. Finally, summoning Tsuda’s younger sister to the phone, she reported his condition in just a very few words and returned to the house.