Light and dark

[78]

THAT EVENING O-Nobu wrote a letter to her parents in Kyoto. Having begun and left off the day before yesterday and again yesterday, she had resolved that it must be completed today no matter what, a resolution by no means exclusively in consideration of her parents.

She was unable to settle down. In her attempt to flee uneasiness, she required something on which to focus all her attention. She was also urgently in search of a conclusion to the lingering question she had been carrying with her. In sum, she had the feeling that writing a letter to Kyoto would enable her to collect the tangled thoughts that were buzzing in her brain.

Taking up her brush, she began with the usual comments on the season, proceeded to a mechanical apology for having been out of touch, and paused for a while to think. Inasmuch as she was writing to Kyoto, she was obliged to center her letter around news of herself and Tsuda. This was the news every parent wished to hear from a newly married daughter. It was at the same time the topic that every young woman was required to address in a letter to her mother and father back home. O-Nobu, who believed there was no point in writing a letter home without including such news, was obliged to consider, brush in hand, the state of her relationship to Tsuda at the current moment, how far it had progressed. It wasn’t that she felt oppressed by a necessity to report things to her mother and father exactly as they were. But as a married woman she was sensible of an urgent need to scrutinize and confirm her situation. She descended into deep deliberation. Her brush was stilled in her hand. She had to think, forgetting about even her poised brush. The harder she thought, the farther removed she felt from grasping anything substantial.

Until she took up the brush, she had been distressed by a nettling, random uneasiness. Having begun to write, she had finally landed. Now she was beginning to feel distressed by uneasiness about the place where she had come to ground. On the trolley she had divined that the images flickering across her brain converged here, in this place — she had at last arrived at the wellspring of the anxiety that was tormenting her. But she was unable to apprehend its actual form and substance. Consequently she would have to carry the riddle forward into the future.

If I can’t solve it today, I’ll have to solve it tomorrow. If I can’t resolve it tomorrow, it will have to wait until the day after. If not the day after…

This was her logic. This was her hope. It was this she was ultimately resolved to achieve. She had already proclaimed her determination in front of Tsugiko.

It doesn’t matter who he is, you must love the man you’ve chosen for yourself with all your heart and soul, and by loving him you must make him love you every bit as deeply no matter what.

Yet again she swore to herself to go to this length. She commanded her own will to settle for nothing less.

Her mood brightened a little. She began writing again. Unabashedly she assembled sentences into a picture of herself and Tsuda designed to afford her parents as much pleasure as she could manage. From one touch to the next she conveyed the flavor of the two of them living their life together as though happily. She marveled at the buoyancy of her brush as it danced brightly across the paper. A long letter composed itself in a single breath. She had no idea how to measure the length in time of this effortless effort.

When she had finished and put the brush down, she read over what she had written. Because the same mood that had governed her hand now governed her eye, she found nothing that seemed to require revision. Even the Chinese characters she had trouble with that would normally send her to the dictionary seemed perfect as they were. With just two or three corrections of mistaken particles that obscured the meaning of a sentence, she rolled the letter up. Then, in her heart, she put her parents on notice.

Everything I have written in this letter is true. I haven’t lied, or exaggerated, or gone out of my way to put your minds at ease. If anyone doubts this, I shall detest him, disdain him, spit in his face. Because I know the truth better than he. I have described the truth beyond the superficial facts on the surface. A truth that is understood only by me. But this is a truth that will have to be understood by everyone in the future. I am not deceiving you in any way. If there is anyone who will say that I have written a deceptive letter to put you at ease, that person is blind though his eyes be open. That person is the liar. I beg you to trust the writer of this letter to you. Surely god trusts me already.

O-Nobu placed the letter next to her pillow and went to bed.