Light and dark

[90]

SOMEHOW THE clock had advanced to past noon. O-Nobu once again sat down to lunch by herself with O-Toki helping her to rice. This was precisely the routine they repeated daily when Tsuda was away at the office. Today, however, O-Nobu was not herself. She appeared stiffened, though her mind was careeningly in motion. Even the kimono she had changed into when she was preparing to leave the house earlier contributed to an intensified sense of stepping out that was dramatically different from how she was accustomed to feeling.

If O-Toki hadn’t let slip a remark that touched on her agitation that day, she might have finished the meal in silence. The truth was she had no appetite and was attempting to get by with the merest show of eating to avoid giving O-Toki cause to wonder.

For her part, as if out of consideration, O-Toki pointedly refrained from conversation. But when O-Nobu put aside her chopsticks after a single bowl of rice, she asked, “Is something the matter?” and, receiving a mere “No—” in reply, left the tray in place without taking it to the kitchen.

“I hope you’ll forgive me—”

This was regret for her arbitrary decision to go to the clinic. As for O-Nobu, she had other things on her mind.

“I was really loud a while ago — could you hear me down in the maid’s room?”

“No, Missus—”

O-Nobu turned a doubting eye on O-Toki. As if to evade her glance, O-Toki spoke at once.

“That visitor, he had no right—”

O-Nobu didn’t reply. As she merely waited in silence for what was to come, O-Toki was obliged to continue. This provided an impetus to the conversation that developed between them.

“Mr. Tsuda was really surprised. ‘He has some nerve,’ he said, ‘showing up here at the house without an invitation and no warning and speaking with you directly when he knew perfectly well that I was in the hospital.’”

O-Nobu let out a soft laugh of disdain. But she withheld her own comments.

“Did he have anything else to say?”

“He said to give him the coat and get him out of here at once. And he asked whether you were discussing anything with him, and when I told him yes you were, he made an awful sour face.”

“Was that all?”

“No, he asked what you were talking about.”

“What did you say?”

“I went ahead and told him I couldn’t say much because I didn’t know.”

“And then?”

“And then he looked even more sour. ‘Opening the door to every hound dog that passes by is reckless,’ he said, and—‘damn irresponsible.’”

“He said that? But what choice is there if it’s an old friend?”

“That’s just what I went ahead and said. Besides, I told him, the Missus happened to be changing when he showed up and couldn’t come down downstairs right away so there wasn’t nothing else to do.”

“Exactly — and then?”

“And then he made fun of me for always taking Missus’s side no matter what. He said it was amazing how well the Okamotos had trained me and how impressed he was.”

O-Nobu smiled uncomfortably.

“You poor thing. Was that all?”

“There’s more. He wanted to know whether Kobayashi-san had maybe been drinking. I didn’t notice anything, but I couldn’t imagine a person getting drunk in the morning even though it wasn’t New Year’s and then visiting someone at their house—”

“No, I suppose you couldn’t.”

O-Nobu appeared to be expecting there was more to come. Sure enough, O-Toki hadn’t finished.

“Missus — Mr. Tsuda said I should be sure to say this to you when I got home.”

“Say what?”

“There’s no telling what that Kobayashi will say. He’s a dangerous cur particularly when he’s drunk. And no matter what he says, you’re not to pay him any mind. Just take everything he says as lies and you won’t go wrong.”

“I see—”

O-Nobu had no desire to say anything more. O-Toki burst out laughing. “Mrs. Hori had a laugh when she heard that.”

Until that moment, O-Nobu hadn’t known that Tsuda’s younger sister had been visiting at the hospital that morning.