To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (8 page)

As he learned much later from Sunaga, the master of the house had on that night been sitting alone at a
go
board in a Western-style drawing room adjacent to the entrance and had been alternately putting down white and black stones, immersed in one of the strategies of the game. He had been trying to solve a problem after having played
go
with a guest. Just at a vital point he had been interrupted by Keitaro's clamor at the door and felt as though he were being disturbed by some country bumpkin. His irritation had made him go out to the hall himself to get rid of the intruder in order to concentrate on the
go
problem. When Keitaro heard these details from Sunaga, he felt that his politeness toward Taguchi had been all the more excessive.

Two days later Keitaro phoned Taguchi and asked outspokenly if the time were appropriate for a visit. The party that answered seemed to have regarded Keitaro's language and manner as rather arrogant and consequently those of a man of considerable position.

"Please wait a moment, sir," the courteous voice said. "Let me ask if your visit is convenient, sir. I will soon bring a reply." But when he returned with the answer, his manner of speech had changed considerably: "You still there? Right now we've got a visitor, so we can't see you. If you want, you can drop in at one in the afternoon."

"Fine, I'll come around one. Remember me to your master." Keitaro put down the phone in disgust.

He had ordered the maid to bring lunch at noon sharp, but it had not come at the appointed hour. As if urged on by the noisy bell from the university tower, he told her to hurry it in, and he finished as quickly as he could.

On the streetcar Keitaro recalled Taguchi's attitude toward him two nights ago. This time too would he be treated in the same rough off-handed manner? Or would he be given a more favorable reception, since the other party had consented to see him? He was prepared to stoop a little, even to put up with being made to feel awkward, as long as he could obtain a good position through the gentleman's kind offices. But he had been offended by the servant who had received his telephone call and who, in less than five minutes, had changed his manner of speech for the worse. He hoped the impertinent boy would not greet him at the door. His frame of mind was such that while he had been insulted by the servant's manner, he was himself unaware that he himself had spoken over the phone somewhat too arrogantly for a person of his status.

At the corner of Ogawamachi, a glimpse from the streetcar to the side street leading to Sunaga's reminded him suddenly of the woman's figure he had seen from behind, and his imagination emerged all at once from shadow to sunshine. It was far more exhilarating to tell himself that he was on his way to the place where Sunaga's pretty cousin lived than to be conscious that he was out to beg some means of livelihood from an old man who, for all the pains he was being put to, would certainly not present a smiling face to him. He had decided, quite arbitrarily, that old Taguchi and Sunaga's cousin had to be father and daughter. Yet the two were decidedly separate in his mind. The other night when he had stood face to face with Taguchi at the entrance to his house, the light had made it difficult to discern the other's features, but as far as he had judged from the contour of Taguchi's face, it was not dignified. That first impression of the older man, even if seen only at night, was indisputably registered in his mind. Yet in spite of this impression, it had never occurred to him that the man's daughter, whatever her relationship to Sunaga, was not good-looking. The idea he had of the Taguchis, therefore, was like a double-sided picture, as it were, light in front, dark in back, each side seeming to be simultaneously separate and yet united into one sheet.

Having turned the picture this way and that, Keitaro found himself standing before Taguchi's gate. The sight of an automobile parked there with a chauffeur inside gave him a slightly uneasy feeling.

He went up to the entrance and handed his card to a young houseboy in a duck-cloth
hakama.
The houseboy told him to wait a moment and carried his calling card inside. Finding that the voice was certainly the same as the one he had heard on the phone, Keitaro, watching the retreating figure, thought him an obnoxious kid.

The boy returned with the card still in his hand. "Sorry," he said, standing in front of Keitaro, "but we have a visitor. Some other time, please."

Vexed, Keitaro said, "I inquired just before on the phone. I was told that you had a visitor then and that I should come around one in the afternoon."

"The visitor hasn't left yet. They're busy with lunch and so forth."

If listened to with composure, the excuse might have been regarded as not altogether implausible, but to Keitaro, who had already been aggravated with the boy since their telephone conversation, these words gave further offense. "Are they really?" he said, and then added, perhaps anticipating what the boy ought to have replied, "Sorry to have caused you so much trouble," concluding with, "Return my thanks for your master's kindness!"

With these inconsistent words as a parting shot, Keitaro whisked round the automobile at the gate as if to say, "Damn that car!"

After finishing the interview, Keitaro had planned to visit a friend who had recently married and settled in a new house in Tsukiji, talking with him till evening and offering an enjoyable account of the relations with Sunaga, Sunaga's cousin, and his uncle, all pieced together by the string of his imagination. When he left Taguchi's front gate and stood beside Hibiya Park, however, his mind was too full to carry out his plan. He found nothing to cheer him in having visited the home of the woman he had seen from behind, that woman whose whereabouts he had finally located. Even less was he aware of having gone there to find a job. The only thing that filled his mind was an annoyance resulting from feelings of humiliation. And he felt that Sunaga, who had introduced him to a man like Taguchi, should assume full responsibility for the treatment he had received. He thought of dropping in on Sunaga on the way home and, after recounting all that had happened, laying before him to his heart's content all these grievances.

He turned around and caught a streetcar straight to Ogawamachi. His watch indicated it was about twenty minutes to two. Arriving at Sunaga's house, he deliberately called his friend's name twice from the street, but whether he was in or out, the upstairs screens remained closed. The rather prim Sunaga, who had told him he hated being called in this boorish way, might have been ignoring Keitaro's shout even if it had reached him. So Keitaro went up to the lattice door at the entrance to make a formal call. When he heard the maid at the door say that Sunaga had gone out just after noon, he stood there disappointed, silent for a moment.

"I thought he had a cold."

"Yes, he did, but he said he felt better today and went out."

Keitaro was about to leave when the maid said, "Just a minute, please. I'll inform his mother," and left Keitaro standing inside the lattice door. Sunaga's mother soon appeared from behind the open sliding door. She was a tall woman with an elongated face and manners in the refined lower-town style.

"Please do come in. He ought to be back before long."

Keitaro, unaccustomed to Edo etiquette, had not yet learned how to decline and depart. Besides, the flow of her words reaching his ears was so smooth that he could hardly find a pause for declining her invitation. Her words were not conventional compliments. In fact, while he was being detained, he seemed to forget the reserve he should have maintained because of the trouble he was causing her, and he felt it would be a pity not to keep her company.

Keitaro finally found himself seated in Sunaga's study. Remarking that it was cold, Sunaga's mother closed the sliding doors and urged Keitaro to warm his hands over the glowing charcoal brazier. As he did so, the agitation he had felt for some time slowy began to subside. He looked at the sliding doors with their huge pattern printed over the white silk paper and then at the small brazier, perhaps made from mulberry, bright with its yellow sheen. Meanwhile, the mother, gentle, eloquent, and seemingly tactful in dealing with every kind of person, talked on. He learned that Sunaga had gone to visit an uncle living in Yarai.

"I asked him," she said, "to go around to Kobinata to visit the temple there, for it lies that way. And he left scolding me: 'Lately, mother, you've gotten to be a stay-at-home. You sent me there last time too instead of going yourself, didn't you? Because of your age, is that it?' You know, he caught a cold the other day and still has a sore throat. So I said he had best not go today. Usually he's rather cautious in his habits, but he is, like other young men, reckless at times and takes no heed of the words of an old woman. . . ."

Whenever Keitaro called on Sunaga and found him absent, his mother would talk of her son in this manner, as if it were the one and only pleasure in her life. Should Keitaro bring up the subject, say, of Sunaga's reputation among his friends, it was her habit to dwell on it eternally, the topic not easily changed. Keitaro was accustomed to this, and on this occasion as well was patiently listening, acknowledging what she was saying with many a nod of the head and waiting for a pause in her flow of words.

In time the subject of their talk drifted from Sunaga to his uncle at Yarai. Keitaro had heard from Sunaga that this uncle was his mother's younger brother and, unlike the uncle at Uchisaiwaicho, was a man of aesthetic tastes. Keitaro still remembered anecdotes about this uncle's insisting it was a disgrace to wear an overcoat whose lining was not satin or about his habit of treasuring what seemed to Sunaga a quite useless thing—he couldn't tell if it was a gem or coral—proudly dubbing it "an Indian jewel imported of old."

"His life," Keitaro said, "is really enviable. What's better than to be able to live in luxury doing nothing?"

"Oh no, it's far from that," said Sunaga's mother, quickly contradicting him. "To be quite frank, at best he can just manage to get along. He's not at all so fortunate as to be able to live luxuriously or even comfortably."

As the question of the wealth of Sunaga's uncle had little to do with Keitaro, he said no more about him. She resumed her talk immediately then as if a break in their conversation indicated some flaw in herself.

"Fortunately, my sister's husband seems well off due to his connections to several companies. But my brother's family and my own are, so to speak, no better than lordless samurai, and often we laugh together over our lives, saying we've become as poor as crows when we consider what we once were."

Somehow reminded of his own state, Keitaro felt a secret shame. Luckily, Sunaga's mother continued talking uninterruptedly, so he was able to dispense with the trouble of finding words to respond with. Thinking this at least a convenience, he continued listening.

"Besides, as you know quite well, Ichizo is such an unenterprising boy. So even after his graduation from the university, I'm not free from worry. I'm quite at a loss. Sometimes I tell him to hurry and find some nice girl to be his wife and to give his old mother peace of mind. He takes no notice of what I say though, telling me that in this world things don't take place just to convenience me. It would comfort me if he would at least ask someone to help him find a job—any kind of job whatever—but about that too he cares not at all. . . ."