Thirst for Love (20 page)

Yakichi was mistaken. Etsuko’s seeming happiness was the result of hours of pondering, which had brought her face to face with a vast enigma, which she was now quietly surveying with folded arms.

Yesterday Saburo had passed the day working in the fields as if nothing had happened. When Etsuko passed, he doffed his straw hat politely. This morning he had saluted her in the same way.

This quiet young man had nothing to say to his employers save as their orders or their questions required. He felt no discomfort when saying nothing all day. Were Miyo here, he would have been lively enough, all in fun. His resplendently youthful mien, even in silence, however, did not show the slightest trace of introspection or reserve. As if his whole body spoke, indeed sang, to nature, to the sun, every inch of him at work seemed brimming with the garrulity of life.

It even seemed possible to believe that deep in his simple, guileless spirit he was blithely confident that Miyo was still a member of this household and that, after the little business that kept her away was complete—perhaps even today—she would return. He might have felt a little uneasy about Miyo’s absence, but he would never ask Yakichi or Etsuko where she was.

Etsuko liked to think that Saburo’s demeanor was entirely attributable to her. After all, she had not told him what had happened to Miyo. Thus Saburo, naturally, had neither reviled her nor gone after Miyo. Etsuko’s resolve to inform Saburo was weakening, though not only for her own sake. She was beginning to feel that she must do what she could to preserve this fleeting happiness she imagined she saw in Saburo.

But why his mother had not come back with him Etsuko was still at a loss to explain. Unfortunately, Saburo was simply not one to volunteer information about his trip and the events of the Tenri Festival.

Faint, inexpressible hopes—shadowy and imaginary, too ridiculous to articulate—came into being at the root of Etsuko’s doubts. Torn between guilt and these hopes, she found that she dared not look Saburo in the face.

“That Saburo. Nothing bothers him. He looks as if he doesn’t have a care in the world,” Yakichi thought to himself as he stood in the station. “I figured, even Etsuko figured, that when we fired Miyo he would quit and go after her. But somehow we were wrong.

“But, what’s the difference? When Etsuko and I go away, that will be the end of it. And when I get to Tokyo, who knows what good things may happen?”

Etsuko tied Maggie’s chain to the fence and looked down the tracks. The rails gleamed in the cloud-wrapped day. Their dazzling steel surfaces, faceted with countless abrasions, seemed linked to Etsuko in undemonstrative, yet tender comradeship. From the blackened pebbles between the tracks traces of fine steel filings glinted. Soon the rails began to ring faintly, transmitting a distant vibration.

“I hope it doesn’t rain,” said Etsuko, abruptly. She thought of the trip she had taken to Osaka in September.

“Judging by this sky, it won’t,” said Yakichi, inspecting the clouds. The ground shook as the Osaka-bound train came into the station.

“Are you ready to go?” said Etsuko.

“Why aren’t you coming too?” insisted Yakichi, in a tone the noise of the train somehow justified.

“Look how I’m dressed. And there’s the dog, too,” said Etsuko lamely.

“We can leave Maggie at the bookstore. We’ve been buying there a long time, and they like dogs.”

Etsuko thoughtfully untied the dog’s leash. She was attracted to the notion of relinquishing this last half day in Maidemmura. To return home now to spend this evening with Saburo, as matters stood, suddenly seemed painful to her. She still found it difficult to believe that he was there, and that he had not left, never to be seen again, when he returned from Tenri a few days before. To make matters worse, he made her uneasy. Watching him in the field, swinging his mattock as if nothing mattered, filled her with fear.

Even the long walk she had taken the day before—had she not taken it in order to rid herself of that fear?

She unhooked the leash and said: “All right. I’ll go.”

Now here she was, in Osaka, where she had imagined she might end up when she had walked with Saburo down that untraveled highway. But now she walked with Yakichi. What strange events, what unexpected alterations, come into men’s lives! Not until they were outside in the crowds did it occur to them that there was an underground passage leading to the Osaka terminal from the platform under the Hankyu store at which they had debarked.

Yakichi held his cane forward at an angle and, holding Etsuko’s arm with his other hand, started across the intersection. Somehow they became separated.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” he shouted at last, from the safety of the sidewalk on the other side.

They went halfway around the parking area, constantly menaced by blasts from the horns of passing cars, and were finally pushed into the turbulence of the Osaka terminal. A tough-looking young man was there, hawking tickets for the night train to anyone carrying luggage. Etsuko stared at this young ruffian, imagining how much his slender dark nape looked like Saburo’s.

They crossed the great main floor, echoing with the noise of the loudspeaker announcing train departures and arrivals, and entered a hallway that seemed tranquil by contrast. Then they came to a sign reading: “Stationmaster.”

While Yakichi talked to the stationmaster, Etsuko sat down in the anteroom, and there, ensconced in a white-linen-covered armchair, she unexpectedly dozed off. She was awakened by a loud voice shouting into a telephone. As she watched the station clerical personnel move about in the large office, she began to realize how exhausted she was. A great load of some kind oppressed her. Her weary heart felt pain simply from watching the violent motions of life. She sat there, her head pillowed in the chair back, watching the spectacle of a lone desk-top telephone drawing to itself now bell tones, now high chattering voices.

A telephone—it seems a long time since I last saw one. It’s a strange device, constantly entangling the emotions of human beings within itself, yet capable of uttering nothing more than a simple bell tone. Doesn’t it feel any pain from all the loves, the hatreds, and the desires that pass through it? Or is the sound of that bell really a scream of the pain, convulsive and unendurable, that the telephone continually inflicts?

“I’m sorry I was so long. I have the tickets, though. Seats on tomorrow’s Special Express are very scarce. He was very kind.”

Yakichi placed the two blue tickets in her outstretched hand. “They’re second-class—just for you.”

Actually, it was the third-class tickets that had been sold out. He could have purchased second-class tickets even at the windows. Once Yakichi set foot inside the stationmaster’s office, however, he had to accept what was given him.

After that they went to the department store to buy some toothpaste, some toothbrushes, some vanishing cream for Etsuko, and some cheap whisky for the going-away party—if one could call it that—they were having this evening. Then they went home.

Their bags had been packed for tomorrow’s trip since that morning. All Etsuko had to do, once she had packed the few items they had purchased in Osaka, was prepare the food—only slightly more elaborate than usual—for the party. Asako and Chieko (who had not been talking to Etsuko much of late) helped her in the kitchen.

Custom produces an almost superstitious way of observance. Thus Yakichi’s decree that the whole family eat together in the unused ten-mat drawing room was not received with very good grace. “Etsuko,” said Kensuke, in the kitchen, “it’s strange that Father should ask that. It’s almost as if you were going to Tokyo to stand by his deathbed. How good of you to take the trouble.” He filched a piece of the food she was preparing.

Etsuko left to see whether the cleaning of the parlor was yet complete. In the faint glow of dusk, the unlighted room seemed as desolate as a great empty stable. Saburo was there alone sweeping, his face to the garden.

Perhaps it was the darkness of the room, or the broom in Saburo’s hand, or the muffled sound of the broom gently brushing across the
tatami
, but the inexpressible loneliness of the young man there made a deep impression on Etsuko as she stood on the threshold observing. It was enough to make her believe she was seeing his inner self for the first time.

Guilt and passion alternately gnawed and burned her heart, each with equal intensity. As this new pain coursed through her, she felt the anguish of love as she had never before felt it. It must have been love that had made her feel since yesterday that she could not bear to look at him.

His loneliness, however, was to her a tangible, pure thing, which afforded almost no place for her glance to enter. Her lovesick longing trampled on memory, on reason; it even made Etsuko forget, little by little, the cause of the guilt she now experienced—Miyo. She would apologize only to Saburo; she would receive only his imprecations. In the very simplicity of her desire to punish herself appeared egoism in its purest form. Never before had this woman who seemed to think only of herself experienced an egoism so immaculate.

Saburo became conscious of Etsuko standing in the shadows and turned: “Was there something, ma’am?”

“You’re just about done with the cleaning, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Etsuko advanced to the center of the room and looked around. Saburo stood still, the broom leaning against his shoulder. He was wearing a khaki shirt, its sleeves rolled up. Etsuko stood before him in the half-light like a wan ghost, her breast heaving.

“Oh,” she said, with difficulty, “tonight, at one o’clock, will you meet me in the grape field in back? Before I go, there’s something I must tell you.”

Saburo said nothing.

“Well, will you come?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you coming, or aren’t you?”

“I’ll be there.”

“One o’clock. In the grape field. Don’t let anyone know.”

“Yes.”

Saburo moved stiffly away, seemingly unaware of what he was doing.

The ten-mat room was fitted with a one hundred-watt bulb, but when it was turned on, there didn’t even seem to be forty watts of light. Under this dim lamp, the parlor seemed darker than the evening gloom outside.

“My, it’s depressing,” said Kensuke. After that, for the rest of the meal, everyone took turns looking up at the bulb.

To make matters worse, they were eating from their most formal individual tables, arranged with Yakichi in the place of honor in front of the
tokonoma
and the other seven, counting Saburo, grouped around him in a semi-circle. In the forty-watt gloom, however, some of the small foods were so invisible that the appropriate U-shape grouping was, at Kensuke’s suggestion, narrowed to permit greater light. This made the family look as if it were working indoors on the night shift instead of attending a party.

They toasted each other with the cheap whisky.

Etsuko was tormented by anxieties of her own making; Kensuke’s clowning face, Chieko’s incessant blue-stocking chatter, Natsuo’s cheerful high-pitched laughter all made no impression on her. She was attracted, lured, by pain and uneasiness, much as a mountain climber is lured by ever higher ascents. She kept creating new anxieties, ever new agonies.

Nevertheless, there was in Etsuko’s present uneasiness something tawdry, something quite different from the creative anxiety she had shown. When she had set out to get rid of Miyo signs of this new anxiety were already visible. It could lead to a succession of deliberate, monstrous miscalculations that could eventually deprive her of her allotted place on earth. It was as if she went out where other people came in—through a door as high as that of a fire lookout tower, to which many would never climb. Yet there Etsuko had resided all along, in a windowless room with a door she dared not open lest she plunge to her death. Perhaps the only basis, the only rationale, by which she could leave that room was the prior resolve that she would never depart from it.

She sat next to Yakichi, in a place that permitted her to go through the meal without seeing her aged traveling companion unless she turned to do so. Saburo, who sat directly across from her and who was having his glass filled by Kensuke, took up all her attention. His forthright, square hand seemed to nurse the glass, brimming with the liquor shining amber in the dim light.

It won’t do at all for him to drink too much
, Etsuko thought.
If he drinks too much, everything will be spoiled. He’ll get drunk, go to sleep, and that will be that. I only have tonight, tomorrow I’ll be on my way.

When Kensuke tried to fill Saburo’s glass again, Etsuko stretched out her hand.

“Now, don’t be a picky old aunt. Let your darling boy have a drink.” This was the first time Kensuke had ever mentioned Etsuko’s feelings for Saburo before the assembled family.

Saburo clutched his empty glass and laughed. The import of Kensuke’s words was lost on him. Etsuko smiled and calmly replied: “That stuff isn’t good for young people.” Then she quickly appropriated the bottle.

“Listen to Etsuko,” said Chieko, taking her husband’s side with restrained hostility; “she’s the head of the Society for the Protection of Young People.”

There was no real reason at this point that the taboo subject of Miyo’s absence, now three days old, was not bandied about openly. Amazingly, just the right degree of hostility and just the right degree of kindness had worked to cancel each other out and maintain that taboo intact, a feat made possible by a tacit agreement involving Yakichi, who treated the entire matter as if he didn’t know it existed; Kensuke and Chieko, whose kindness had been refused; and Asako, who didn’t talk to Saburo. If however, just one clause of that agreement should be violated, there could be a crisis. It now seemed possible that Chieko would bring Etsuko’s actions out in the open in her presence.

* * *