Light and dark

[65]

ALL THE while she was engaging at length in verbal head-butting with her uncle, different thoughts were playing incessantly across her mind.

She didn’t doubt that Okamoto acknowledged her and Tsuda as a prime example of matrimonial harmony. She also understood, however, how unlikely it was that he had revised the dislike he had felt for Tsuda from the time of their first meeting. Accordingly, she felt certain that he must be observing skeptically the intimacy she and her husband appeared to share. To put it another way, beneath his surprise that a woman like O-Nobu should succeed in loving a man like Tsuda, he maintained his confidence in the astuteness of his own vision. His conclusion, that it was O-Nobu and not himself who had misjudged the man, seemed to have sifted down to the bottom of his heart like a fine powder, ready at any time to diffuse itself into the surrounding air.

Then why does he persist in pushing me for my thoughts about Miyoshi?

O-Nobu failed to understand. She was aware that he regarded her privately as a wife who had misjudged her husband, and to put her awareness aside and respond to his request without hesitation would have taken more courage than she possessed. In the end, her only choice was to hold her tongue. But to someone who had grown accustomed over the years to her immoderate lack of reserve, her silence on this occasion was hard to comprehend. Her uncle turned away from her to her aunt.

“This child’s a bit of a different person since she got married. She’s become timid. I wonder if that’s also her husband’s effect — it’s odd.”

“It’s because you keep hounding her to say something; it sounds more like a scolding than a request — who could handle that?”

Her aunt’s attitude was less admonitory toward her uncle than protective of her. But O-Nobu’s heart was now too full of her own feelings to rejoice at this.

“But isn’t this a matter for Tsugiko to decide? All she has to do is make up her mind and it’s done, she doesn’t need me to get involved.”

O-Nobu couldn’t help recalling the moment when she had chosen her own husband. Discovering Tsuda, she loved him at once. Loving him, she confessed her desire to become his wife to her guarantors at once. Receiving permission, she married him at once. And from start to finish, she was ever her own protagonist. The responsible party. She couldn’t recall ever being inclined to disregard her own intentions and rely on others.

“What in the world does Tsugiko-san say?”

“She says nothing. That girl is more timid than you.”

“If the principal party is acting that way, what can we do?”

“Exactly right! Timid as she is, there’s nothing we can do.”

“She’s not timid. She’s docile.”

“Since she isn’t saying anything, it hardly matters which. Or maybe she can’t say anything because she has nothing to say.”

O-Nobu profoundly doubted that two people whose connection was as tenuous as this could ever become a genuine couple. Not when even my own marriage is turning out this way, she reasoned. Unable to perceive her cousin’s situation as closely resembling her own, she saw only the logic in front of her nose. It seemed less ridiculous than frightening. How superficial her cousin was, she even thought.

“Uncle—” she began, looking at him with her small eyes wide open as though in dismay.

“It’s a disaster. She never intended to say anything. Which is why we wanted you there. Truthfully speaking.”

“But what was I supposed to do?”

“Tsugi insisted that we invite you. She considers you much cleverer than herself. She was convinced you’d have all sorts of things to say afterward even if she didn’t have a clue.”

“I wish you’d said something so I could have been prepared.”

“She wouldn’t let us. She wouldn’t let us say a word.”

“But why?”

O-Nobu glanced at her aunt.

“Because she was embarrassed,” her aunt replied before her uncle could interrupt her.

“It wasn’t only that. Mostly she was afraid she wouldn’t get a useful evaluation if O-Nobu went in prepared. She wanted to hear your unbiased first impression.”

O-Nobu finally understood why her uncle had been pressing her.