Light and dark

[91]

ONE YEAR older than O-Nobu, Tsuda’s younger sister was already the mother of two children. The elder, a boy, had been born four and a half years ago. The simple state of motherhood had more than sufficed to awaken O-Hide’s awareness of herself. There was not a single day when she wasn’t a mother.

Her husband, Hori, was a voluptuary. And he possessed the magnanimity of spirit often observed in a man in pursuit of his own pleasure. In return for disporting himself as he pleased, he extended his wife a commensurate freedom, which was not to say he was intemperately affectionate with her. He congratulated himself on his attitude toward O-Hide. In his view, it was the cumulative effect of his hedonism that had opened the door to this liberal state of mind. His approach to life, assuming he possessed something worthy of a label so formidable, might be precisely put as engaging in all things temperately. Moving on with a smile. Detached. Traversing life casually, untidily, straightforwardly, high-mindedly, benignly. This was his, what might be called, éclat. Unburdened by financial need, he had managed thus far to live by his credo. And no matter where he went, he had never felt the lack of anything. His achievement had made him ever more the optimist. Confident that he was liked by everyone, he was of course convinced that he was also liked by O-Hide. Nor was he wrong about that. In truth, he was not disliked by O-Hide.

O-Hide, who had been courted for her beauty, had come to understand Hori’s disposition only after settling down as his wife. It had taken her some time to comprehend a sensibility that was like innards washed clean in the liquor of dissipation. And her doubts about why a man with so few concerns should have felt it necessary to insist with such seriousness that he wanted her for his wife were obscured quickly enough in the mists of ambiguity. O-Hide was not as tenacious as O-Nobu: before she had divined the answer, she had detached her wifely interest in her husband and been required to turn the sparkling new eye of motherhood on her first-born child.

This was not the only difference between the sisters-in-law. While O-Nobu’s new household comprised only a husband and wife, both sets of parents residing in distant Kyoto, Hori lived with his mother. A younger brother and sister lived with them. There was even a penniless relative in the house. The circumstances simply didn’t permit O-Hide to attend to her husband exclusively. In particular, unnoticed by others, she was obliged to be in tense consideration of her mother-in-law.

Not surprisingly for someone who had been chosen for her good looks, O-Hide appeared never to age. Even compared with O-Nobu, a year younger than she, she looked young. So young it was hard to imagine she was the mother of a four-year-old. Even so, having spent the past four or five years in family circumstances very unlike O-Nobu’s, her understanding of certain things was also different. Not unlikely to be seen as younger than O-Nobu, she was definitely older in some ways. It wasn’t so much speech and attitudes; she had an older spirit. In a word, she had been domesticated, imbued with family life.

Obliged to observe her brother and his wife with her domesticated eye, O-Hide was constantly aware of her dissatisfaction with them. And her dissatisfaction, whenever something happened, tended to ally her with her parents in Kyoto. Even so, she tried her best to avoid opportunities for collisions with her brother. Feeling as she did that discomfiting her sister-in-law was even worse than attacking her brother directly, she kept constant, careful watch over what she allowed herself to say. In her heart, however, her feelings were the opposite of those she expressed. Her resentment was directed less at her brother, to whom she spoke out, than at O-Nobu, to whom she said nothing. If only her brother hadn’t married such a flamboyant woman! was the feeling she carried always deep in her breast. It never occurred to her to think that she was merely favoring her kin and criticizing O-Nobu unjustly.

O-Hide believed she was well aware of where she stood. And it did not escape her attention that her brother and his wife, while they may not have gone so far as to keep their distance, were certainly not overly fond of her. Even so, it never occurred to her that she should reconsider her position. To begin with, they both objected to it, which made the notion of reform even less conceivable. Since, in the final analysis, disliking her position came down to disliking her, she felt inclined to resist out of spite if nothing else. Second, her conscience told her she was correct: as long as she believed she was acting in her brother’s best interest, what did it matter how much she was hated? Finally, there was the simple fact, accounting for all the rest, that she didn’t like her flamboyant sister-in-law. As a woman with more latitude than O-Nobu, capable of greater extravagance, what was it about O-Nobu, who, in this regard, was beneath her, that she couldn’t stomach? She didn’t bother to ask herself the question. She had a mother-in-law, and O-Nobu, except for her husband, was entirely her own mistress. It didn’t occur to her to consider even this difference relevant.

The morning after O-Nobu had telephoned with news of Tsuda, O-Hide had left for a visit to the clinic barely an hour before O-Toki showed up, just as Kobayashi was barging into Tsuda’s home in quest of the overcoat.