Light and dark

[6]

“O-NOBU!” “O-NOBU!”

Calling his wife’s name through the fusuma,* he slid open the patterned paper door and stood in the threshold of the sitting room. Instantly his vision filled with the colors of the beautiful obi and kimono she had at some point spread in front of her as she sat alongside the brazier. They appeared, as he peered at them in the lighted room from the dark hallway, more strikingly vibrant than usual, and for a long moment he stood there, glancing from his wife’s face to the dazzling patterns and back again.

“Why take all that out at this hour?”

With one end of a thick obi woven in an iris pattern across her knee, O-Nobu looked at her husband as if across a great distance.

“I felt like it — I haven’t worn this obi even once.”

“I suppose that’s the outfit you’re planning to wear for your big day at the theater?”

In Tsuda’s voice was the coldness that accompanies an ironic jab. O-Nobu cast her eyes down without speaking. In her wonted manner she arched her dark eyebrows. There were times when this singular gesture excited him in an odd way, while at other times he felt curiously aggravated. In silence he stepped out onto the engawa* and opened the door to the lavatory. Thence he moved back to the stairs. This time it was his wife who called him back.

“Yoshio-san. Wait.”

As she spoke she rose and approached him.

“Is there something you need?” she asked, stepping between him and the stairs.

What he needed that minute was related to a matter of more importance than an obi or a long under-robe.

“Still no letter from my father?”

“Not yet — when it arrives I’ll put it on your desk as usual.”

Tsuda had bothered to come back downstairs because the letter he was expecting wasn’t waiting on his desk.

“Shall I have O-Toki look in the mailbox?”

“It’ll come registered; they won’t just toss it into the mailbox.”

“Perhaps not, but let’s have a look just to be sure.”

O-Nobu slid open the shoji at the front entrance and stepped down onto the concrete.

“I’m telling you. There’s no point looking in the mailbox for a registered letter.”

“But maybe it wasn’t registered; wait just a minute while I have a look.”

Tsuda withdrew to the sitting room and sat down with his legs crossed in front of him on the cushion he had used at dinner, still in place alongside the brazier. His gaze came to rest on the brilliant profusion of scattered color, the glowing animals and flowers in a yuzen pattern.

O-Nobu was back from the front of the house a minute later with a letter in her hand.

“There was one! This might be from your father.”

As she spoke, she held the white envelope up to the bright light.

“It is. Just as I thought.”

“And it’s not registered?”

Taking the envelope from her hand, Tsuda opened it at once and read it through to the end. When he folded it to replace it in the envelope, his hands moved mechanically. He didn’t look down at them, or at O-Nobu’s face. Gazing vacantly at the pattern of broad stripes on her dressy crepe kimono, he muttered, as if talking to himself,

“Damn.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing to worry about.”

Acutely concerned with appearances, Tsuda was disinclined to reveal the content of the letter to his newlywed wife. At the same time, it was about something he was obliged to discuss with her.

* Fusuma are a substantial version of shoji, partitions consisting of a wooden framework papered on both sides.

* An engawa is a deck of highly polished wood that runs the length of the house, usually along the garden side, from which various rooms can be accessed.