Thirst for Love (19 page)

She was provoked, however, by Miyo’s face as she returned, already confidently settling down to her daily life with Saburo. Etsuko found herself smoothly slipping back into her original conviction that this project must not, by any means, be set aside.

5

“
S
ABURO’S COMING!
He’s taking the shortcut across the ricefields over by the government housing. You can see him from upstairs. But he’s alone—I don’t see his mother!” Chieko had come running into the kitchen to inform Etsuko. It was the evening of the twenty-seventh, the day after the Tenri Festival.

Etsuko had been broiling mackerel on the small clay charcoal burner. She quickly moved the fish, along with the grill on which it had been broiling, to the counter nearby and placed the iron kettle over the coals. The simple serenity of her actions proclaimed the intensity of her emotions. She rose, gesturing to Chieko to accompany her upstairs.

The two women hurriedly climbed the stairs to the second floor. “That fellow Saburo really gets people excited here,” said Kensuke, from the prone position he had assumed with his Anatole France novel. Shortly, however, he caught the mood of the women and came to stand beside them at the window.

The sun was half submerged in the wood west of the housing development. The sky glowed like a hearth.

The figure advancing across the stubbled fields was clearly Saburo, his pace firm, direction sure. Was there anything strange about this? This was the day; this was the time at which he had been expected all along.

His shadow stretched obliquely before him. He restrained the bag slung from his shoulder with one hand, as would a schoolboy, so that it did not swing. He wore no hat. His strong gait was filled with a repose that knew neither fear, nor apprehension, nor even fatigue. The route he was taking led to the highway. He swung right and took the raised path between the ricefields. Every once in a while he had to pick his way around the racks on which rice was drying.

Etsuko felt her heart beating wildly—from neither joy nor fear. She could not determine whether she was waiting for calamity or happiness, yet she knew that it had come—that which she awaited. The turmoil in her breast prevented her from saying what she knew she had to say. Somehow she managed to utter to Chieko: “What shall I do? I don’t know what to do.”

How surprised they would have been, Chieko and Kensuke, if they had heard these words from Etsuko a month earlier. She had changed. This once strong woman had lost her backbone. What she was looking forward to now was the last gentle smile Saburo would all unknowingly turn toward her, and the first terrible denunciation which—in the full knowledge he would have to come to—he would knowingly turn upon her. She was haunted by the memory of these past nights, filled with the turnings and returnings of those two anticipations.

What would happen thereafter seemed to her already established. Saburo would revile her; then he would set out after Miyo. At this time tomorrow Etsuko would no longer ever be able to see him. In fact, for all she knew, the last time she would ever be able to look at him to her heart’s content would be here, from a distance, at this second-floor window.

“Don’t be silly! Get hold of yourself!” said Chieko. “If you had the courage to fire Miyo, surely there’s nothing you can’t do. You really showed us. We admired you for it.” She reached one arm around Etsuko’s shoulder, as if encouraging a little sister.

To Etsuko the action of getting rid of Miyo had been her first attempt to ease her own suffering; it was also a concession, a surrender to that suffering. To Kensuke and his wife, however, it had looked like her opening attack.

To send a woman four months pregnant out of the house, wicker trunk on her back, is no small thing, reflected Chieko. Miyo’s sobs, Etsuko’s relentless determination, and the cold resolution with which she saw Miyo to the station and forced her onto the train—the melodrama which they had witnessed the day before—had moved Chieko and Kensuke mightily. They had never dreamed that such a performance would take place in Maidemmura. Her wicker trunk held to her back by a braided-palm cord, Miyo had descended the stairway, followed shortly by Etsuko looking like a constable.

Yakichi had shut himself up in his room and did not even look Miyo’s way when she came in to say goodbye. “We appreciate your long service,” was all he said. Asako, shocked speechless by these events, silently hovered about. Kensuke and Chieko, however, took pride in the fact that they needed not one word of explanation to know what was going on. These two flattered themselves into believing that they were capable of immorality because they were capable of comprehending immorality and vice—an attitude like that of newsmen assuming the pose of guardians of society.

“You’ve brought it off this far all alone; now we’ll help you with the rest. Don’t hesitate. We’ll do whatever is in our power,” said Kensuke.

“I’ll do anything you say, Etsuko. What Father might think doesn’t matter now,” said Chieko.

The two vied with each other for Etsuko’s attention as they looked out the window with her between them. Etsuko rose, started to brush back the hair at her temples and moved over to Chieko’s mirror stand.

“May I use some of your cologne?”

“Do.”

Etsuko took up the green bottle, sprinkled several drops in her hand and nervously applied it to her temples. The mirror was covered with a faded cover of Yuzen silk, which she did not remove. She was afraid to look at her face. Before long, however, she began to worry about how she would look to Saburo, whom she must meet in a few minutes. She pushed back the mirror cover. Her lipstick seemed too thick. She wiped her lips with a little lace-edged handkerchief.

How quickly we forget our actions! While the emotions in our memory linger, our actions pass without a trace. The Etsuko who had listened unmoved to the sobs of Miyo, unceremoniously and unfairly informed of her discharge; the Etsuko who had forced this poor pregnant girl to shoulder her belongings and then had practically prodded her onto the train—she found it hard to believe that that Etsuko and this Etsuko were the same woman. She felt no remorse; in fact she did not restrain the obduracy of her tense spirit in resisting remorse. She found herself perched helplessly on the series of agonies of her past, on the accumulated heap of her immobile, rotting emotions. Isn’t the thing we call guilt the emotion that over and over brings men new lessons in lethargy?

Kensuke and his wife did not let this opportunity to help pass unnoticed. “If Saburo ends up hating you now, everything will be wasted. If only Father would say he was the one who fired Miyo! But, of course, he isn’t big enough,” said Chieko.

“He said that he wouldn’t say anything to Saburo, that he was going to take no responsibility for it,” said Etsuko.

“I don’t blame him. Anyway, leave it to me. I won’t do you any harm. What if I tell him that Miyo got a telegram saying her mother was sick, and she had to go off into the country and see her?” said Chieko.

Etsuko returned to herself. She saw this pair not as good counselors, but as two untrustworthy guides conducting her into a tepid, misty region she did not wish to enter. If she followed them, yesterday’s determined actions would have no meaning.

Perhaps her act of firing Miyo had been nothing but a confession of her desperate love for Saburo. She preferred to think, however, that it was done for herself alone, so that she herself could live—an act which she could not avoid and which, therefore, she was justified in taking.

“Saburo must be given to understand clearly that it was I who discharged Miyo. And I’ll be the one to tell him. Please don’t help me. I’ll do it alone.”

Kensuke and Chieko could only view Etsuko’s cool resolve as wild-eyed determination born of desperation and bewilderment.

“Now look at it calmly. If you do what you say you’ll ruin everything.”

“Chieko’s right; it isn’t going to work. Just leave it to us. We won’t harm you.”

Etsuko smiled enigmatically and twisted her mouth slightly. She was arriving at the opinion that the only way she could remove the gratuitous obstacle this pair was placing in the way of her actions was to anger and alienate them. She slipped her hands back into her sash and adjusted it, and, like a great, weary bird listlessly adjusting its feathers, stood up. As she started down the stairs, she said: “You really needn’t bother helping me. I’ll get along.”

Kensuke and Chieko were taken aback by Etsuko’s rebuff. They were angry—with the anger that men wishing to help fight a fire might feel when restrained by the officer in charge. When it comes to controlling fires, the proper use of water is an absolute necessity, but this husband and wife were like the people who keep basins of lukewarm water ready to throw on fires.

“I wish I were able to turn away kindness like that,” said Chieko.

“Incidentally,” said Kensuke, “I wonder why Saburo’s mother didn’t come.” They had been so involved with Etsuko’s panic over the simple fact of Saburo’s return that they had not even discussed this additional complication. The oversight irked Kensuke.

“Forget it. Just see if we help her anymore! It’s a lot easier this way.”

“Yes, we’ll just relax and watch.” Kensuke was himself at last. He regretted, nevertheless, that he had lost the sense of humane satisfaction that usually supported his taste for human misery.

Etsuko had returned to the charcoal burner, which rested on a counter Yakichi had installed by the veranda, where they cooked their meat and vegetables. She removed the iron kettle and replaced the grill.

With Miyo gone, the women had decided to take turns at cooking the rice. Today, the first day, it was Asako’s turn. Nobuko was helping her by taking care of Natsuo. She was singing to him: their wild laughter echoed about the house, already thick with twilight.

“What’s happening?” said Yakichi, coming out of his room and crouching down by the brazier. He nervously took up the cooking chopsticks and turned the fish.

“Saburo’s come back.”

“Is he here?”

“No, not quite.”

The last traces of the setting sun clung to the leaves of the hedge of tea bushes that ran a few feet from the veranda. Tiny hard buds that had not yet flowered stuck out in a multitude of silhouettes. A branch or two protruding high out of the rather unkempt hedge shone gaily in the low rays of sun.

The sound of Saburo’s whistle came up the stone stairs.

Etsuko recalled the tenseness of that time when Saburo had come to say goodnight and she, playing
go
with Yakichi, could not look his way. She dropped her eyes.

“Well, I’m back,” called Saburo, standing on the other side of the hedge, which concealed his body below the chest. His shirt was open at the neck; his dark throat was bare. Etsuko’s glance collided with his youthful, innocent grin. The thought that this would be the last time she would see his smiling face free of reproach imparted a painful intensity to her glance.

Yakichi grunted and bowed absently. He was looking at Etsuko, not Saburo.

The oil under the mackerel broke into flame. Etsuko did not move. Yakichi hurriedly blew it out.

“What is this? Here the whole house has seen more of Etsuko’s love than it cares to, and this whippersnapper alone isn’t aware of it,” he said to himself.

With considerable annoyance, Yakichi again blew out flames that threatened to devour the fish.

Etsuko was now aware that she had deluded herself. She had bragged to Kensuke and Chieko that she would tell everything to Saburo, but now she saw clearly that her resolve was based on an imaginary courage. Having met this open, innocent, smiling face, how could she maintain that unlucky resolve? Yet now there was no one to whom she could turn for help.

Still, there had been in the courage Etsuko had paraded, even from the first, the fear that it would prove insufficient. Did it not contain, also, the fond hope that the hours of grace during which Saburo had not yet been told the truth, during which Etsuko could live under the same roof with him unhated by him, might ever be extended just a moment more?

After a time Yakichi said: “I don’t understand. His mother isn’t with him, is she?”

“No?” said Etsuko, with a question in her tone, as if she were noticing the fact for the first time. She felt uneasy, yet somehow happy: “Shall I go ask him if she is coming later on?”

“Forget it,” muttered Yakichi; “if you do, you’ll have to mention Miyo.” The irony with which he cut off the discussion had the quality of aged, sagging skin.

For two days after that, Etsuko felt as if she was existing in the middle of an extraordinary calm. Those two days seemed like inexplicable, false symptoms of recovery occurring in someone hopelessly ill, ironic indications of a rally that ease the minds of his relatives and once again, however delusively, bring back hopes lost for a time.

What had happened? Was this happiness?

Etsuko took Maggie for a long walk. Then she went, with Maggie on her leash, to Okamachi station with Yakichi. He was going to Umeda terminal to make arrangements for the Special Express tickets. It was the afternoon of the twenty-ninth.

Three days earlier, she had gone, her face rigid, with Miyo to this same station. Now Yakichi stood there, leaning on the newly painted fence, chatting with her. He was dressed in a suit and carried a snakewood cane—he had even shaved. He let a number of Umeda-bound trains go by.

Etsuko was unusually cheerful, a fact that made Yakichi uneasy. She would scold the busily sniffing dog for rocking her off balance on her
geta
. Or she would gaze, smiling gently with slightly brimming eyes, at the people standing or passing by the bookstore and the butcher shop by the station. Red and yellow flags glistened in the advertisements of the children’s magazines in the bookstore. It was a cloudy afternoon, with a cutting wind.

“I wonder if she’s happy because she’s been able to talk to Saburo,” Yakichi mused. Maybe that’s why she isn’t coming to Osaka with me today. Yet, if so, I wonder why she hasn’t objected to taking this long trip with me tomorrow.”