And Then

  Wondering if something had happened, he popped his head into the houseboy’s room on his way in. There he found Naoki, the houseboy, and Seitarō sitting alone, eating strawberries sprinkled with white sugar.

  When he said, “Well, that looks good,” Naoki righted himself immediately and greeted him. Seitarō, his lips still wet, suddenly asked, “When are you going to get married, Uncle?” Naoki grinned.

  Daisuke felt a little trapped. So he said to Seitarō, half-teasingly, half-scoldingly, “Why aren’t you in school today? Eating strawberries at this hour of the day!”

  “But it’s Sunday today,” answered Seitarō seriously.

  “Oh, so it is.” Daisuke showed surprise. Naoki looked at Daisuke’s face and in the end burst out laughing. Daisuke also laughed and went out to the drawing room. There was no one there. A round, carved sandalwood tray lay on the freshly changed floor mats. On it was a teacup with a design by Asai Mokugo of Kyoto baked into it. From the garden the morning green streamed into the wide, empty room and made everything look still. It seemed that the wind outside had suddenly died down.

  As he crossed the drawing room and walked toward his brother’s room, he saw someone’s shadow. “Oh, that’s too much,” he heard his sister-in-law say. Daisuke stepped into the room. Inside stood his brother and sister-in-law and Nuiko. His brother stood facing in his direction, wearing a man’s stiff obi with a gold chain wrapped around and a cloak of a peculiar silk currently in fashion. Seeing Daisuke, Seigo said to Umeko, “See, there he is. So have him take you.”

  Daisuke of course had no idea what he meant. Then Umeko turned to him and said, “Dai-san, you’re of course free today?”

  “Well, yes, I’m free,” answered Daisuke. “Then please go to the Kabukiza with me.”

  As he listened to his sister-in-law’s words, a certain sense of comedy rose swiftly in Daisuke’s head. But today he lacked the daring to tease her as usual. To avoid any complications, he put on a casual expression and said good-humoredly, “Fine, let’s go.”

  Then Umeko asked back, “But you said you’ve already seen it once.” “Once, twice, it makes no difference. Let’s go.” Daisuke smiled at Umeko.

  “You really are dissolute, aren’t you?” observed Umeko. Daisuke felt the comedy mount.

  Saying that he had business to attend to, his brother went out. Apparently, he had promised to come around to the theater about four o’clock, after he had finished his work. It would seem that Umeko and Nuiko could very well have watched by themselves until then, but Umeko had said she did not want to. Seigo had said that in that case, she should take Naoki, but Naoki had sat stiffly in his navy-blue printed kimono and hakama and announced that he would not go. So they had sent for Daisuke as a last resort. This was the explanation Seigo gave on his way out. Daisuke thought it did not make much sense, but he only said, is that so. He concluded that his sister-in-law had gone to the trouble of sending for him because she wanted someone to talk to between acts and to run errands.

  Umeko and Nuiko spent a great deal of time on their toilet. Daisuke stood by, a patient director of their preparations. From time to time he made lighthearted fun of them, drawing two or three protests from Nuiko that Uncle Daisuke was too unkind.

  Daisuke’s father had gone out early that morning and was not home. His sister-in-law said she did not know where he had gone. Daisuke did not particularly want to know. He was only grateful that he was out. Since their last interview, he had not crossed his father’s path more than twice, and then only for ten or fifteen minutes. When the conversation showed signs of becoming involved, he had bowed politely and left. As a result his father had come into the living room and complained that lately, Daisuke could never seem to sit down; no sooner did he see his father’s face than he was preparing his escape. This was what Umeko had to say as she stood before the mirror, patting the back of her summer obi.

  “I really have lost credit, haven’t I?” said Daisuke, and with his sister-in-law’s and Nuiko’s parasols in hand, he stepped out ahead of them to the entranceway. There, three rickshas were lined up.

  Fearing the wind, Daisuke had worn a hunting cap. But the wind had died at last, and from between the clouds the sun beat down upon their heads. Umeko and Nuiko, who went ahead, put up their parasols. From time to time, Daisuke shaded his eyes with the back of his hand.

  At the theater, Umeko and Nuiko were both attentive viewers. But Daisuke, partly because it was his second time, and partly because of the state of his mind these past three or four days, failed to be totally distracted by the stage. He was relentlessly aware of an oppressive heat that weighed heavily on his spirits, and he frequently picked up his fan to send air from his collar to his head.

  Between acts, Nuiko would turn to Daisuke and ask him strange questions. Questions that, in fact, were usually unanswerable. Why was the man drinking sake from a washtub? Or, how could a priest become a general? Umeko laughed every time she heard Nuiko. Daisuke suddenly remembered a review he had seen in the paper two or three days ago by a certain literary figure. According to the article, Japanese plays so abounded in fantastic plots that they were difficult for the audience to follow. When he read this, Daisuke had thought that if he were an actor, he would not care to have people like that come to see him. He said to Kadono that to scold the actor for what the playwright had done was as foolish as wanting to hear Kojirō’s jōruri* recitation in order to know Chikamatsu’s works. Kadono, as usual, had said oh, is that right.

  * Ballad-drama

  Daisuke, who had been accustomed to watching traditional Japanese theater from childhood, was, like Umeko, a pure and simple appreciator of the art form. For him, the “meaning” of the art performed on the stage was to be construed narrowly as applying only to the actor’s skill. Therefore, he and Umeko got along famously. They exchanged glances from time to time, adding commentary that sounded quite professional, and they were mutually impressed. But in general, Daisuke had already begun to lose interest in the stage. Even while the curtain was up, he would look this way and that through his opera glasses. Far in the corner of his field of vision, there were many geisha. Some of them had turned their own glasses toward him.

  To Daisuke’s right was a man of about the same age who had brought along his beautiful wife. Her hair was done up in the married woman’s style. Looking at the wife’s profile, Daisuke thought she bore a strong resemblance to a certain geisha of his acquaintance. To his left was a male party of about four. They were all academics and Daisuke remembered each of their faces. Next to them, two people had taken over a wide area just for themselves. One of them seemed to be about his brother’s age and was dressed correctly in a suit. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, and whenever he wanted to say something, he had a habit of sticking his chin out and turning it slightly upward. When he saw this man, Daisuke thought that he somehow looked familiar. But in the end he did not even try to recall who it was. His companion was a young woman. Daisuke decided that she was not yet twenty. She had come without a cloak, and she let her pompadour hang forward more than most; much of the time she sat with her chin pressed against her collar.

  Out of discomfort Daisuke got up a number of times and went to the rear corridor, where he looked out upon a narrow sky. He was quite ready to hand over Nuiko and his sister-in-law as soon as his brother arrived and to leave early himself. Once he took Nuiko with him and walked all around to stretch his legs. In the end, he even thought of sending for a little sake.

  His brother came just at dusk. When Daisuke told him he was terribly late, his brother pulled a gold watch from his obi and showed it to Daisuke. It turned out to be only a little after six. As usual, his brother sat calmly, looking all round. But when the time came to eat, he went out to the corridor and did not return for a long time. After a while, Daisuke happened to look over and found him talking in the stall of the man with the gold-rimmed glasses. From time to time h
e seemed to address a few words to the young woman as well. But the woman would only show a slight smile, then turn earnestly to the stage. Daisuke thought of asking his sister-in-law the man’s name. But his brother was a man whose social circles were so wide, who in fact looked upon society as his own home, that wherever people were gathered, he easily made way into any group as he was doing now. Thus Daisuke did not give it a second thought and remained silent.

  Then, toward the end of the act, his brother came to their entrance and called to Daisuke to come for just a minute. He took him over to the man with the gold-rimmed glasses and introduced him as his younger brother. Then he told Daisuke that this was Mr. Takagi of Kobe. The gold-rimmed gentleman looked back at the young woman and said this was his niece. The woman bowed gracefully. Daisuke’s brother added that she was Mr. Sagawa’s daughter. When he heard the woman’s name, Daisuke realized how neatly he had been trapped.

  But he pretended to know nothing and chatted about this and that. His sister-in-law turned toward him for an instant.

  After five or six minutes, Daisuke returned to his seat with his brother. Until Sagawa’s daughter had been presented to him, he had planned to escape as soon as his brother appeared, but he could not get away with that any more. He sensed that if he were to appear too selfish now, it would backfire later, so he sat on, enduring his discomfort. His brother did not seem to have any interest in the program either, but he sat poised in his usual easygoing manner, puffing heavily on his cigar. If he made any comments at all, they were on the level of, isn’t that a pretty scene, Nuiko? Unlike her usual curious self, Umeko did not ask a single question or offer any observations on Takagi or Sagawa’s daughter. Her prim manner struck Daisuke as comical. In the past he had from time to time been trapped by his sister-in-law’s stratagems, but never once had he gotten angry. If he were his usual self, he might even have laughed off today’s farce as a welcome diversion from his boredom. That was not all. If he had had any intentions of marrying, he might have turned this farce to advantage and used his ingenuity to create a comedy with a happy ending. He would have been content for the rest of his life laughing at himself. But now, when he thought that even his sister-in-law was colluding with his father and brother to lure him into a pitfall, he could not stand back and watch it as a comic act. As he wondered how his sister-in-law intended to develop the incident further, Daisuke became a trifle anxious. Of all his family, it was Umeko who most enjoyed such intrigues. Somewhere in Daisuke’s mind lurked the fear that if she pressed in on him on the marriage issue, then the closer she pressed, the further he would have to remove himself from his family.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when the performance ended. When they stepped outside, they found that the wind had completely died, but there was neither moon nor stars, and only a few lamps shed light on the quiet night. Since the hour was late, there was hardly any time to linger and chat in the teahouse. There were men to meet the other three, but Daisuke had carelessly neglected to order a ricksha for himself. Thinking it would be troublesome, he pushed aside his sister-in-law’s invitations and took a streetcar from in front of the teahouse. As he waited to change in the middle of a dark road in Sukiyabashi, a woman carrying a child on her back moved wearily toward him. Two or three trains passed on the other side. Between Daisuke and the tracks, there was a high, bank-like mound of piled dirt or rock. Daisuke realized for the first time that he was standing in the wrong place.

  “If you’re waiting to catch the streetcar, you can’t get it here. It’s the other side,” he called to the woman as he began walking. The woman thanked him and followed from behind. Daisuke walked uncertainly in the dark, almost as if he were groping. When he had gone some thirty yards to the left, guided by the border of the moat, he finally found the pole marking the stop. There, the woman got in the train going toward Kandabashi. Daisuke alone got on the Akasaka train on the opposite side.

  In the train, Daisuke felt sleepy yet unable to sleep. Even as he was tossed about, he anticipated the trouble he would have falling asleep that night. Although he was often exhausted and overcome with listlessness toward everything offered by daylight, some unknown excitement would beset him and prevent him from passing a quiet night as he would have liked. In his mind the colors that had left their mark by turn during the day flickered all at once without regard for chronology or shape. And he could not tell exactly what colors or what activities they were. With his eyes shut, he resolved that when he got home he would again seek the aid of whiskey.

  This disorderly, brilliant flow of colors inevitably brought in its wake a reflection—the reflection of Michiyo. And there, Daisuke felt as if he had come upon a haven. But this haven would not project itself clearly on his eye. He perceived it only with the rhythm of his heart. It amounted to no more than a discovery that Michiyo’s face, her manner, her words, her relationship with her husband, her illness—in short, her entire situation constituted an entity exactly suited to his liking.

  The next day, Daisuke received a long letter from a friend in Tajima. This friend had returned to his home province right after graduation and had not been back to Tokyo since. Of course, he had not intended to live in the middle of the mountains, but parental orders had confined him to his hometown. Still, for about one year he had continued to write, to the point of becoming a nuisance, that he would prevail over his father yet and return to Tokyo. Lately, he seemed to have resigned himself at last and sent no more fretful complaints. His family was an old one in the area, and the principal business apparently consisted of cutting trees in the ancestral forest. In this latest letter, he described in detail his daily life. Then he jokingly announced in deadly serious language that he had been elected mayor a month ago and had attained the status of receiving an annual salary of three hundred yen. A middle school teacher straight from the university would earn at least three times as much, he wrote, comparing himself to some of their friends.

  About one year after his return home, this friend had married the daughter of a wealthy man from the outskirts of Kyoto. Needless to say, this was in accordance with parental instructions. Soon afterward, a child was born. He never wrote a word about his wife after the wedding, but did seem to take an interest in the child’s development and from time to time, sent reports that made Daisuke smile. Every time he read one of them, Daisuke imagined the life of this friend, who was deriving satisfaction from his child. He wondered to what extent his feelings for his wife had changed since the wedding because of this child.

  From time to time the friend sent him dried fresh-water trout or dried persimmons. In return, Daisuke had usually sent recently published works of Western literature. In the friend’s response, there was sure to be some comment indicating that he had read the books with interest. But this had not lasted for long. In the end, his friend had not even acknowledged the arrival of the books. When Daisuke finally inquired about them, his friend wrote that he had indeed gratefully received the books. He had thought to send his thanks after reading them, but time had somehow slipped away. In fact, he still had not read them. To tell the truth, it was not so much that he did not have the time, but that he did not feel like reading them. To put it even more bluntly, he could no longer understand them even if he read them. After that, Daisuke decided not to send any more books but to buy toys instead.

  As he put the letter back in the envelope, Daisuke felt keenly the fact that this old friend, with whom he had once shared the same inclinations, was now playing a different tune, governed by thoughts and actions that were nearly the precise opposite of those of the past. And he carefully compared the two sets of notes that sounded from the vibrations of the chord of life.

  As a theorizer, Daisuke accepted his friend’s marriage. He understood that it was a principle of nature that a man living in the mountains with only trees and valleys for companions would want to ensure his security by taking a wife chosen by his parents. By the same reasoning, he conclu
ded that for city dwellers, all marriage was bound to bring misfortune. This was because the city was nothing more than a showcase of human beings. To arrive at this conclusion from his premise, Daisuke had traced the following course:

  He held that spiritual beauty and physical beauty were two distinct categories, and that it was the right of urbanites to expose themselves to every kind of beauty. He concluded that anyone who did not avail himself of this opportunity, thus transferring his affections from A to B, then moving from B to C, was an insensitive brute who did not properly appreciate life. He believed that on the strength of his own experiences, this was irrefutable fact. From this he arrived at the conclusion that all men and women who lived in the city were subject to unpredictable changes, according to circumstance, in their attractions for each other. As a corollary, it followed that the parties to a marriage, threatened by what was popularly called infidelity, were perpetually subject to misfortunes begotten in the past. Daisuke chose the geisha as the outstanding urbanites because of their heightened sensibilities and broad-ranging freedom of contact. Who knew how often in the course of a lifetime some among them would change lovers? Were not all urbanites geisha, only to a lesser degree? Anyone who sang the praises of undying love in this day and age belonged to the first rank of hypocrites in Daisuke’s estimate.

  When he had carried his thoughts this far, Michiyo’s form suddenly drifted into his head. Then he wondered if he had not omitted some factor from his calculations. But try as he would, he could not discover what it might be. In that case, according to his own reasoning, the sentiments he held toward Michiyo were no more than a passing fancy. His mind duly recognized this. But his heart did not have the courage to accept it as a certainty.

  CHAPTER XII

  DAISUKE FEARED HIS sister-in-law’s pressures. He also feared Michiyo’s magnetic powers. It was still too early for summering. He lost interest in every form of diversion. Even when he read, he could no longer recognize his own form in the black print. If he tried to settle down and think calmly, thoughts would come to him as thread off a spool; but once he put them together, they were all such as to be fearful to man. In order to stir up his pale brain, as one would a milkshake, Daisuke decided that he should travel for a while. At first he planned to go to his father’s villa. But insofar as he would still be vulnerable to attack from Tokyo, it would not be very different from staying in Ushigome. Daisuke bought a travel guide and began to research where he should go. He felt as if no ideal place existed on the face of the earth. Still, he tried to force himself to go somewhere. He decided that this did not call for extensive preparations. Daisuke got on a streetcar and arrived in Ginza. It was an afternoon when a cheerful wind blew over the streets. Daisuke walked all around the bazaar in Shimbashi then strolled down the wide avenue toward Kyōbashi. The houses on the other side looked flat, as if they were part of a stage backdrop. The blue sky was painted right above the roofs.