To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (29 page)

After dinner my uncle suggested to me—though I don't know why—that we try our hand at a game of
go,
since we hadn't played in a long time. I didn't feel much like playing, but since he had been kind enough to ask, I agreed, and we moved into another room. We played two or three games. Since we were both poor at
go,
it didn't take much time, so when the stones were put away, it wasn't that late.

We began talking over cigarettes. I found an appropriate time to ask whether Chiyoko's marriage had been settled yet or not. I had asked simply in order to show that I had no objection to her getting married. Also, I had done it because I thought the sooner the problem was solved, the more at ease I'd be and the happier Chiyoko would be too.

My uncle then said in his frank way, "No, and it's not likely to be settled soon. Every once in a while we have an offer, but each of them has something difficult that troubles us. Moreover, the more we inquire, the more complicated it all becomes. So I'm thinking of having it settled, if possible, by not getting so deeply involved in the particulars. Marriage proposals are rather odd things, aren't they? I might as well tell you now. When Chiyoko was born, your mother said that she wanted her as your future wife—she said this about an infant just out of the womb!" My uncle was laughing and looking directly at me.

"I understand my mother was very much in earnest when she said that."

"Of course she was in earnest. She's an honest woman, my sister-in-law. And really a very nice person. Even now I understand she talks about it quite seriously with your aunt."

He burst into another laugh. I thought that if he took the incident that lightly, I would speak up on my mother's behalf. But at the same time I reflected that if all this was the skillful means by which a man of the world got another person to understand a particular situation, any words put in by me would only be proof of my own stupidity, so I kept quiet. My uncle is a kind man as well as an experienced one. Even now I don't know which of those two sides his words are to be attributed to. But the fact remains that ever since then I have been inclined more and more toward not marrying Chiyoko.

After that evening I stayed away from the Taguchis for about two months. If only my mother hadn't been concerned about it, I might have gotten along quite well without once turning my steps toward Uchisaiwaicho. And even if she was anxious, had my concern about her been the only question, I might have persevered to the very end in having my own way. That's the kind of person I am. But toward the end of those two months I suddenly realized it wasn't in my own best interest to remain so obstinate. The truth was that the more I alienated myself from the Taguchis, the more my mother began trying to find every possible opportunity to be in contact with Chiyoko. So the situation was becoming even more tense in that what I most feared—my mother's entering into direct negotiations with Chiyoko— might occur at any moment. I made up my mind to move the crisis one stage forward. With this resolve I again began crossing the Taguchi threshold.

Their behavior toward me hadn't changed in the least, of course. And mine toward them was the same it had been two months earlier. As before, we laughed, joked around, and made light of each other's faults. In short, the time I spent with them was cheerful enough to be called uproarious. But to be honest, it was a little too cheerful for me. I was left feeling mentally exhausted by such empty endeavors. I think a sharp eye might have easily detected the deceptive light that was casting ugly colors upon my true self.

In the course of these visits I remember only one occasion in which I felt the pleasure of having my mood and my words perfectly joined, like the two sides of a sheet of paper. The incident occurred on a day when the Taguchi family was following its custom of going out together once or twice a year. I had gone toward the back of the house and found, to my surprise, Chiyoko sitting quietly alone. She seemed to have caught a cold and had a compress applied around her throat. Her complexion was pale, which was unusual for her, and it made her seem lonely. I hadn't realized that all the others were out until she said with a smile that she was the only one home.

That day, perhaps because of her illness, she was much quieter and calmer than usual. When I saw her there so solitary and strangely depressed—this girl who the moment she saw me could not resist the challenge to tease me with all the powers at her command and have me tease her back—I suddenly felt something tender rising within me. No sooner had I seated myself than some gentle, soothing words unintentionally escaped my lips. With a funny look she said, "You're awfully sweet today. When you get married, you'll have to be this kind to your wife."

For the first time in my life I realized that my maintaining such an unreserved friendliness toward her had, until that moment, implicitly given me the freedom to treat her as unamiably as I wished. When I perceived something like a pleased, though faint, look wavering in her eyes, I regretted my injustice to her.

We drifted back over a past so intimate to each of us that it seemed that we had been reared together. Reminiscent words of bygone days passed our lips to help revive those earlier times. It surprised me to find her own recollections, vivid even in trifling details, far superior to mine. She could even remember that moment four years ago when she had stitched up a tear in my
hakama
as I stood by the front door of her house. She even recalled that the thread she had used was silk, not cotton.

"I still have those pictures you painted for me."

Only when she said this did it come back to me that I had given some pictures to her. But that had been when she was eleven or twelve. She had thrust in front of me some colors and sheets of paper her father had bought for her, forcing me to draw something.

The fact that I have never once touched a paintbrush since those days is evidence of my accomplishment in art, so her interest in those drawings must have been nothing more than a momentary stimulus from some red and green colors. I smiled in embarrassment upon hearing that she still had them.

"Shall I show them to you?"

I told her not to bother. Disregarding my request, she went and brought from her own room a small box containing the paintings.

She took out several of my drawings. They were no more than simple sketches of red camellias, purple asters, and fancy dahlias. But the careful execution of neatly painted detail, trouble taken where it was obviously not needed and without begrudging the waste of time, was almost a complete surprise to me as I now am. I was caught up in admiring that earlier self, the one that had worked with such conscientious meticulousness.

"When you painted these for me, you were much kinder than you are now!" Her words came abruptly.

I couldn't make any sense out of what she had really meant. When I looked up from the pictures to her face, I found her large dark pupils staring straight at me. I asked her why she had said that.

Without answering, she continued to gaze at me. Then in a voice lower than usual she said, "If I asked you to paint for me now, you wouldn't work as diligently as you did then, would you?"

I couldn't come out with a yes or no. But I secretly admitted to myself that she was quite right. "Still, it never occurred to me that you'd keep such things so carefully," I said.

"I intend to keep them even when I get married."

An odd feeling of sadness came over me as I heard those words. And yet I was even more fearful that this same feeling was likely to find a response in her heart. I imagined at that very moment a pair of big dark eyes already brimming with tears.

"You can't take that kind of trash with you."

"Why not? They're mine," she said and piled the red camellias and violet asters and whatnot one over the other back into the box.

To help change the mood, I asked when she intended to get married.

"Soon."

"But the final decision hasn't been made yet . . ."

"No, everything's all been settled."

Her reply was clear. Till then I had wished, as a last resort to setting my mind at ease, that she would make her wedding match as quickly as possible, but at this response my heart gave a start like a sudden dashing of waves, and I was surprised to feel a clammy sweat creeping out of the pores of my back and under my arms.

She stood up with the small box in her arms. As she opened the
shoji,
she looked down at me and said very succinctly, "I made it all up," and then went to her room.

I remained where I was with no thought whatsoever of moving. I didn't feel even the slightest vexation. For the first time I had actually been made aware of how I might be affected by her marrying or not, and I was thankful that she had given me this awareness by poking fun at me. It's possible that I might have been in love with her without realizing it until then. Or she herself might have been in love with me without any realization on her part. For a while I was bewildered by one thought: Is what I really am so incomprehensible and so dreadful?

In the distance I heard the phone ringing. Chiyoko came hurrying along the corridor to ask me to answer the call with her. I couldn't make out what she meant by answering the call together, but I got up at once and followed her.

"I've asked someone to call me, but my voice is hoarse, and speaking only makes my throat feel worse. So you speak for me, and I'll be the listener," she said.

I bent forward, prepared to speak to someone I not only didn't know, but couldn't even hear. Chiyoko was already holding the receiver against her ear. Since she was monopolizing the words coming through to her, my only role was to tell the other party with my louder voice what she was saying in her low voice, although I didn't know what anything meant. At first I went at it, not minding how ridiculous and time-consuming it was, but soon her questions and answers began to arouse my curiosity until, all bent over, I stretched out my hand toward her and called out for her to give me the receiver. Smiling, she shook her head. I straightened and tried to grab it from her. She wouldn't let go. We began fighting to hold it when suddenly she hung up. And then she burst into a loud laugh.

Afterword I thought again and again—if only we had such a scene a year earlier. And each time this thought came to me, it seemed as though fate had pronounced the time too late, and the chance had already fled. There were other times when that same fate incited me, hinting at possible opportunities to seize the moment to repeat two or three scenes of the same sort. If we had actually dared use the light in our eyes as the only reflection of each other's affection, we might have from that day come to love each other with a love never to be severed by worldly concerns. As it turned out, I took the opposite route.

Setting aside the intentions of the Taguchis and my mother's own wishes as having as little significance as the suggestions of an outsider, just the comparison of Chiyoko's personality to my own, each stripped of all it had acquired, always made me feel that the two of us had no possibility of ever being united. I believe this, though I may not be able to provide a satisfactory reason for it. Yet it's not to give others an explanation that I believe it.