That night the future weighed heavily on him. He wondered if, should his father withdraw his material support, he would have the resolve to become a second Terao. If he couldn’t pick up a brush and at least imitate him, it was clear that he would starve. If he didn’t pick up his brush, what could he do?
From time to time he opened his eyes and gazed at the lamp placed outside the mosquito netting. In the middle of the night, he struck a match and had a cigarette. He tossed and turned. The night was not so hot as to hinder sleep. The rain began to fall noisily again. Daisuke thought he might fall asleep to the sound of the rain, but he also woke up to it from time to time. The night passed in a fitful alternation of sleep and wakefulness.
Daisuke left at the appointed time. He got into the streetcar with his rain clogs and umbrella, but with all the windows on one side closed and the large number of people hanging from the leather straps, his stomach soon became queasy and his head heavy. Thinking that he was probably suffering from the effects of sleeplessness, he struggled to reach and open the window directly behind him. The rain beat in mercilessly on his collar and hat. Two or three minutes later, he noticed the annoyed looks on the faces of his neighbors and pushed the glass in its place again. On the outer surface of the glass, crushed raindrops clustered together and warped the view of the street. Daisuke twisted his neck to look outside and rubbed his eyes several times. But no matter how he rubbed, he did not get the impression that the world had changed at all. This was particularly true when he looked at an angle through the glass into the distance.
Once he changed streetcars at Benkeibashi, the crowds thinned and the rain became light. Now he could comfortably turn his head toward the moistened world. But his father’s ill-humored face with its variety of expressions assaulted his brain. He even heard the echo of an imaginary conversation in his ears.
As usual, before he passed from the entranceway to the inner quarters, he stopped to see his sister-in-law. “Isn’t this disagreeable weather that we’ve been having?” she said, and hospitably poured him tea herself.
Daisuke did not feel like drinking it. “Father should be waiting, so I think I’ll go see him,” he said, and started to rise.
His sister-in-law looked uneasy and said, “Dai-san, if it’s at all possible, don’t make an old man worry. Father doesn’t have that much time left him.” It was the first time Daisuke had heard such gloomy words fall from Umeko’s lips. He felt as if he had suddenly fallen into a dark pit.
His father sat with the tobacco tray before him, his head bowed. Even when he heard Daisuke’s footsteps, he did not lift his head. Daisuke went before him and bowed politely. Where he had expected a stern scrutiny, Daisuke was surprised to find that his father’s manner was mild, even solicitous. “It must have been troublesome coming in the rain.”
Then he noticed for the first time that his father’s face had hollowed markedly. Since it had been on the fleshy side to begin with, the change was all the more apparent to Daisuke. Almost involuntarily, he asked, “Is something the matter?”
For a moment, a paternal expression stirred on his father’s face, but he did not seem to take Daisuke’s concern particularly seriously. After a few exchanges, however, he said, “I’ve gotten quite old too.” His tone was so altered that Daisuke had growing cause to take his sister-in-law’s words seriously.
His father intimated that he wished to retire from the business world soon on the grounds of failing health. However, he proceeded to explain carefully, the tide had turned since the commercial expansion following the Russo-Japanese War, and with the enterprise under his control in a state of decline, he would inevitably be charged with irresponsibility if he were to retreat before they had cleared this impasse. He therefore had no choice but to stay on for some time longer. Daisuke found his father’s words most reasonable.
His father expounded on the dangers, difficulties, and pressures of ordinary businesses, and the fearful anguish and tension attendant upon their managers. In conclusion, he observed that whereas the great provincial landowners seemed more modest by comparison, they actually rested on a far more solid foundation than men like himself. With this comparison as his basis, he endeavored once more to bring about the realization of the proposed match. “It would be most useful to have at least one relation like that, and in this situation, it is almost imperative, don’t you think?” he said. For his father, this was rather too bald a proposal of a marriage of convenience, but Daisuke had never overrated him so highly as to be surprised by it. Indeed, he found it rather pleasant that for their last meeting, his father had finally shed his old mask. Daisuke knew that he himself was not above making such a marriage without a moment’s hesitation.
Beyond this, he felt a sympathy for his father such as he had never experienced before. His face, his voice, his efforts to persuade Daisuke—everything about him attested to the misery of old age. Daisuke could not interpret this as a part of his father’s stratagems. He wanted to say that he did not care what happened to him, he would like his father to decide as suited him best.
But now, with that last meeting with Michiyo behind him, Daisuke was not in a position to engage in such a spontaneous act of filial piety as would satisfy his father’s will. He had always been a middleof-the-road sort. He had never submitted word for word to anyone’s command, but neither had he passionately rebelled against anyone’s advice. Depending upon the interpretation, this was the posture of a schemer or the strategy of a born vacillator. If he himself had been confronted with either of these charges, he could not have avoided wondering if they might not be true. But in large part, this was to be attributed neither to artifice nor to vacillation but rather to the flexibility of his vision, which allowed him to look in both directions at once. To this day, it was precisely this capacity that had always dampened his determination to advance singlemindedly toward a particular goal. It was not unusual for him to stand paralyzed in the midst of a situation. His posture of upholding the status quo was not the result of poverty of thought, but the product of lucid judgment; but he had never understood this truth himself until he acted upon his beliefs with inviolable courage. The situation with Michiyo was precisely a case in point.
He had opened his heart to Michiyo, and it did not occur to him to wipe the slate clean before his father. At the same time, he was sincerely sorry for his father. It was obvious what course of action the usual Daisuke would have adopted under these circumstances. Without going through the inconvenience of renouncing his relationship with Michiyo, he would have acceded to the marriage in order to satisfy his father. Thus he could have balanced both parties. It was easy to stand in the middle, not adhering to either side, advancing without being consumed. However, he was now a man of different inclinations from the usual Daisuke. The hour was past for him to shake hands with other human beings with half his body standing beyond the pale of society. He took his responsibility toward Michiyo that deeply and that seriously. His conviction stemmed in part from an assessment of his mind, in part from the longings of his heart. The two overwhelmed him in an enormous wave. Thus he stood before his father, a man reborn.
Like the usual Daisuke, he waited, trying to say as little as possible. From his father’s viewpoint, there was nothing different about him from the usual Daisuke. It was Daisuke who was startled by the change in his father. He had guessed that the real reason he had been refused a meeting these past few days was that his father, fearing Daisuke would disobey him, had deliberately postponed it. Daisuke had resigned himself to being met with a grim face. He had thought that he might even be scolded bitterly. This rather suited Daisuke’s purposes. In fact, one third of him had secretly prepared to make psychological use of the reaction his father’s outburst would provoke in him, enabling him to refuse outright. Daisuke was discomfited to discover that contrary to his expectations, his father’s manner, his choice of words, his principal objective, all tended to blunt his r
esolve. But Daisuke had come armed with a resolve that could overcome even this discomfiture.
At last he said, “Everything that you say is most reasonable, but since I do not have the courage to consent to marriage, I have no choice but to refuse this match.’’
All his father did was to stare at his face. Presently, he tossed his pipe onto the floor mat and said, “Do you need courage?”
Daisuke stared at his knees and was silent.
His father asked again, “The woman doesn’t suit you?”
Daisuke still did not answer. He had never confided so much as a quarter of his thoughts to his father. It was because of this that he had been able to maintain peaceful relations with him for a short while. But from the start, he had never intended to hide the matter with Michiyo. He disliked the cowardliness of scheming to escape consequences that were his due. Only, he felt that the time for confession had not yet come. For that reason Michiyo’s name did not come to his lips.
Finally, his father said, “Then do as you please.” His look was bitter. Daisuke did not find it pleasant either. Still, having no alternative, he bowed and prepared to retire. Then his father stopped and said, “For my part, I don’t intend to look after you any more.”
When he returned to the living room, Umeko asked expectantly, “What happened?” Daisuke did not know how to answer her.
CHAPTER XVI
THE NEXT MORNING, even after he awoke, his father’s last words rang in Daisuke’s ears. Given the circumstances in which they had been uttered, he was forced to attach greater weight to their meaning than might normally have been the case. At least, as far as he was concerned, he would have to resign himself to the fact that material assistance from his father would no longer be forthcoming. In order to return to his father’s good graces, even if he rejected the current match he could not reject all prospective matches. Even if he rejected all prospective matches, he would have to give reasons sufficient to convince his father. For Daisuke, neither alternative was available. Still more impossible was deceiving his father on a matter that touched upon the roots of his personal philosophy of life. When he looked back at the previous day’s interview, Daisuke could only think that things had proceeded as they had been intended. Yet he was fearful. Daisuke felt that he was furthering a destiny natural to himself; in the process, with the weight of this destiny upon his back, he had been pushed to the edge of a precipice.
Daisuke thought that as a first step, he should seek an occupation. But in his mind there was only the word occupation, and it failed to appear in its fleshly reality. Since he had never before been interested in any occupation, regardless of what he tried to imagine, his mind would only slide over its surface and refused to break in to consider the internal reality. Society appeared to him like a flat surface partitioned according to a complex color scheme. And he could only think that he himself had no color whatsoever.
After he had surveyed the entire realm of occupations, his eye came to the vagabond and rested. He clearly perceived his own shadow in the crowd of beggars that roamed between man and beast. What pained him most about an existence of degradation was that it destroyed freedom of the spirit. When his body was besmirched with every kind of filth, how far his heart and mind would sink! Daisuke shuddered.
He would have to drag Michiyo to the depths of this degradation. Michiyo was no longer Hiraoka’s possession in spirit. Daisuke intended to shoulder to his death the responsibility for this woman. Even so, it now seemed to him that between the falseness of a man of stature and the kindness of a man in the dregs of ruin, there was ultimately little difference. To say that he would shoulder the responsibility for Michiyo until he died meant only that he had such an intention, and it could never equal the fact of shouldering the responsibility. Like a man who had been struck by blindness, Daisuke fell into a vacant stupor.
He visited Michiyo again. She was quiet and composed, just as she had been the other day. The spring wind brushed her brow generously. Daisuke understood that she trusted him with her entire being. When he saw proof of this with his own eyes, he was overcome with uncontainable feelings of tender love and pity. And he berated himself for being a scoundrel. He failed to say any of the things he had intended. As he was leaving, he said, “Won’t you arrange to come to my house again?”
Michiyo nodded yes, and smiled. Daisuke felt a pang.
Since the other day, unpleasant though it was, Daisuke had been obliged to choose times for his visits when Hiraoka would be absent. At first he had not thought much of it, but lately, it had become more than disagreeable; it was becoming daily more difficult for him to go. Besides, if he appeared too often in Hiraoka’s absence, there was the risk of arousing the maid’s suspicion. Even now, whether or not it was just his fancy, he could not help feeling that she regarded him with distrustful eyes when she served the tea. But Michiyo was completely unconcerned. At least on the surface, she seemed to think nothing of it.
Of her relationship with Hiraoka, there was of course no opportunity to inquire in detail. On the rare occasions when he phrased a question or two indirectly, Michiyo would not respond. Her natural inclination, whenever she saw Daisuke, seemed to be to drown in the happiness of the moment. However she felt privately, once before Daisuke, she showed not a shadow of the fear that the dark clouds surrounding them might descend at any moment. Michiyo was by nature a nervous woman. When he considered that her recent behavior exceeded her normal performance, Daisuke was forced to interpret it not so much as evidence that her situation was not yet critical, but as an indication that his own responsibility was that much weightier.
In the two days prior to Michiyo’s visit, Daisuke’s mind failed to break any new ground. The letters spelling occupation were burned squarely into his mind. If he shoved them away, the reality that he was without material support took their place and danced furiously. When that vanished, the vision of Michiyo’s future appeared as a raging storm. The whirlwind of anxiety blew into Daisuke’s head. These three concerns, like the points of a pinwheel, spun without a moment’s pause. As a result, everything in his surroundings began to spin. He was like a person on board a ship. In the midst of a spinning head and a spinning world, he continued to remain calm.
There was no word from the house in Aoyama. Daisuke of course did not expect to hear anything. He made an effort to absorb himself in small talk with Kadono. Kadono, being the sort of idle creature with so little to do that he hardly knew what to do with himself in the heat, proudly chattered on just as Daisuke wished. Whenever he tired of talking, he would propose, “Sensei, how about a game of shōgi?”* Toward evening they would water the garden. They walked barefoot, each with a pail in hand, carelessly splashing water everywhere. Kadono said he would prove that he could hit the top of the paulownia tree next door, and just as he flung his pail, he slipped and fell on his seat. The four o’clocks next to the fence began to blossom. The leaves of the begonia growing beneath the water basin grew strikingly large. The rainy season cleared at last, and daytime brought a world of cloud peaks. It was that time of year when the powerful sun burned until the sky was transparent, gathering all the heat of the atmosphere to direct upon the earth.
* Japanese chess
When night came, all Daisuke did was to gaze at the stars above his head. The mornings he spent in the study. There were two or three days when the cry of cicadas sounded steadily from morning on. He often went to the bathroom to cool his head. Then Kadono, thinking it was about time, would come in and say, “It’s unusually hot today, isn’t it.” Daisuke passed about two days in this state of oblivion. On the third day, toward noon, he gazed from his study at the color of the glittering sky; when he smelled the flaming breath emitted from above, he was frightened. He thought his mind would be permanently affected by the fierce weather.
Michiyo braved the heat to keep the promise she had made previously. When he caught the sound of a woman’s voice
, Daisuke himself flew out to the entranceway. Michiyo stood outside the grating, her parasol closed and a bundle in her arms. She apparently had come out in her ordinary clothes: she was just taking a handkerchief from the sleeve of a modest white cotton summer kimono. At first sight of her, Daisuke felt as if fate had cut out Michiyo’s future and thrust it cruelly before his eyes. But he smiled in spite of himself and said, “You look as if you’re going to elope.”
Michiyo answered calmly, “But if I didn’t stop by on a shopping trip, I couldn’t come in comfortably.’’ With these earnest words, she followed Daisuke in. Daisuke immediately offered her a fan. Exposure to the sun had brought a pleasant glow to Michiyo’s cheeks. The usual tired look was nowhere to be seen. Even in her eyes a youthful luster hovered. Daisuke allowed his senses to drown in the vitality of her beauty and for a while forgot all else. But presently, when he thought that it was he who was invisibly chipping away at this beauty, who would finally cause its collapse, he became sad. After all, even today, he had called her to cloud over yet another part of this beauty.
Daisuke hesitated several times before he could unburden his heart. For Daisuke, simply to ruffle this happy young woman’s brow with anxiety constituted the greatest immorality. If not for the fact that a powerful sense of duty toward Michiyo was operating in his heart, he probably would not have revealed to her the circumstances that awaited them in the future, but instead, would have repeated in the same room his confession of the other day and abandoned everything to the simple bliss of love.
At last Daisuke made up his mind. “There hasn’t been any particular change in your relationship with Hiraoka?”