Mandarins (9 page)

In their comings and goings, the three laughed and chattered freely. When, as they strolled along, the talk turned to matters beyond her ken, Teruko would peer childlike into the show windows at the parasols and silk shawls, without appearing to feel in the slightest neglected. Whenever Nobuko noticed this, she never failed to change the subject and to bring her sister immediately back into the conversation. Yet it was she herself who was the first to forget her sister. Shunkichi appeared to be oblivious to it all, tossing off clever comments as he swung his way slowly through the pell-mell of pedestrian traffic . . .

In the eyes of everyone, needless to say, the relationship between Nobuko and her cousin gave more than enough reason to suppose that the two would wed. Her classmates were filled with envy and spite at her prospects, and, as foolish as it may sound, it must be said that it was among those who knew Shunkichi the least that such emotions were the most intense. For her part, Nobuko denied—and yet by insinuation deliberately encouraged—the speculation. Thus, for as long as they were still in school, the image lingered in their minds, as clear as a wedding photograph, of Nobuko and Shunkichi as bride and groom.

Nobuko had scarcely completed her studies when she confounded the expectations of all by marrying a young commercial high school
graduate. Within two or three days of the nuptials, they had gone to live
Ō
saka, where he had recently joined a trading company. The well-wishers who saw them off at T
ō
ky
ō
's central railway station later said that Nobuko was her usual cheerful self, ever with a smile on her face, even as she tried to console her lachrymose sister, Teruko.

In their bewilderment and amazement, Nobuko's classmates found themselves filled with ambivalent feelings: a strange sense of contentment on the one hand, a new and entirely different sense of envy on the other. Those with full confidence in her attributed the decision to her mother's wishes; other, less trusting, souls let it be known that she had simply had a change of heart. Yet all of this, as the tongue-waggers themselves were well aware, was mere conjecture.

Why had not Nobuko married Shunkichi? For some time thereafter, such was the inevitable focus of conversation. Then two months went by; Nobuko was quite forgotten, to say nothing of any novel she had been rumored to be writing.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of
Ō
saka, she set about the task of becoming a new and presumably happy homemaker. The couple's two-story rental house was situated in what even for the locality was a particularly quiet neighborhood, surrounded by a pinewood. Sometimes on lonely afternoons, amidst the smell of resin, the light of the sun, and the overpowering stillness that reigned whenever her husband was out, Nobuko, for no apparent reason, would find her spirits sinking. It was then that she invariably reached into a drawer of her sewing box to take out a letter lying folded up at the bottom. Written on pink stationery, it read:

Whenever she read this girlish letter, Nobuko too would weep. Particularly on recalling how Teruko had quietly handed it to her
as she was boarding the train at T
ō
ky
ō
's central station, she was moved beyond words, even if, at the same time, she also wondered whether her marriage had really been entirely the sacrificial act that Teruko imagined it to be. When her tears had dried, the suspicion weighed heavily upon her. For the most part, to dispel the gloom, she would will herself to bask in pleasant reverie, as she watched the sunlight falling on the pines beyond her window slowly turn to evening gold.

Three months went by. Nobuko and her husband spent their days contentedly, as is the wont of newlyweds. There was a hint of feminine reserve in his taciturn manner. On his return from the office, they would sit together for some time after supper. As she knitted, Nobuko would describe a recent novel or play that had become the talk of the town, her comments sometimes evoking an outlook on life colored by the Christian background of her university. His cheeks red with the sake he had drunk, the evening newspaper he had just begun to read spread out on his lap, he would listen without comment or opinion, a look of bemused curiosity on his face.

On Sundays they would generally go off on a sightseeing jaunt to
Ō
saka or the vicinity. Whenever they rode the train or streetcar, Nobuko was struck by the vulgarity of her compatriots in western Japan, eating and drinking even on public conveyances without constraint. In that regard she was pleased at how remarkably refined her husband was. From his hat to his suit to his red-leather lace-ups, his clean-cut appearance, as though he might smell faintly of bathing soap, made for a refreshing contrast. Particularly during the summer holidays, when on a trip to Maiko they encountered his colleagues in a teahouse, she could not help feeling all the more proud of her
husband, though she also noted that he seemed to be on oddly intimate terms with his crude companions.

It was during this time that Nobuko returned to the writing she had long since put aside, spending an hour or two in front of her desk when her husband was away. Hearing of this, he remarked with a slight smirk on his lips: “Well now, you're to be an authoress after all.”

To her surprise, the ink did not flow. She would catch herself, chin in hand, staring out at the wood, ablaze in the sunlight, listening quite unconsciously to the whine of the cicadas.

The lingering heat of late summer gave way to early autumn. One morning as Nobuko's husband was preparing to leave for work, he sought to change his sweat-stained collar, only to find unhappily that all the others had been sent to the laundry. Fastidious as he was, a look of displeasure clouded his face. As he drew up his suspenders, he said in an unusually biting tone: “We can't have you spending all your time writing fiction.” Nobuko lowered her eyes and brushed the dust from his jacket.

Several days later, he looked up from reading a newspaper article about current food problems and remarked that Nobuko might think about ways to economize from month to month, adding: “You're not going to be a college girl forever, you know.”

Nobuko made a halfhearted reply as she embroidered the gauze for her husband's collar. “Rather than bother with all that needlework,” he nagged at her with uncharacteristic persistence, “it would be less expensive simply to buy ornamented collars.” Nobuko fell silent, eventually picked up a trade journal and, with an air of ennui, began to read it. Later that evening, as she switched off the electric lamp in their bedroom, Nobuko turned her back to him and whispered: “I shan't be writing anymore.” He did not reply. A few moments
later, she repeated the same words, more softly still; soon there was the sound of muffled weeping. Her husband tersely scolded her, but though she went on sobbing, she found that before she knew it she was tightly clinging to him.

The next morning they were again a happy couple. Soon, however, there was another incident when, on returning home from work after midnight, reeking of drink, he was in no condition even to take off his raincoat. Nobuko knitted her eyebrows and diligently set about helping him change his clothes. He nonetheless spoke to her sarcastically, slurring his words: “With my having stayed out so long, you must have made considerable progress with your novel.” Thus, with his womanish mouth, he nagged at her.

As Nobuko lay down to sleep, she again wept in spite of herself: “Ah, if Teruko could only see me, what tears would we shed together! Teruko, Teruko, on you alone can I depend!” With such thoughts, calling out again and again to her sister, she tossed and turned all night, forced to endure the smell of sake on her husband's breath.

Again the next day harmony had been restored, quite of its own accord. Yet other scenes would follow, even as the autumn deepened.

It was now rare for Nobuko to sit at her desk, pen in hand, and her husband too seemed less inclined to listen to her speak of literature. Sitting across from each other at the long brazier, they began to pass away the evenings talking of mundane household expenses. Moreover, at least after his evening drink, he apparently found this topic of greatest interest. Nobuko would sometimes look sadly into his face, but he seemed to take no notice, chewing on the whiskers he had recently grown and speaking more animatedly than usual. “And what if we were to have children?” he would ask, wondering aloud to himself.

Meanwhile Shunkichi's name began to appear in a monthly journal. Nobuko had had no contact with her cousin since her marriage, as though she had quite forgotten him. All she knew was what Teruko had written to her—that, for example, he had completed his studies in the literature department and had launched a literary coterie magazine. She had not wished to know more, but now that she was reading his stories, fond memories returned. As she turned the pages, she often smiled and laughed to herself. Even in his fiction, she could see, Shunkichi was a literary Miyamoto Musashi,
¹
a sword in each hand—a sardonic quip in one, a witticism or pun in the other. Still, it occurred to her, perhaps as no more than a fleeting thought, that behind her cousin's easygoing irony there was something she had previously not known in him: a sense of lonely desperation. She felt a vague twinge of guilt.

She became more solicitous of her husband. Sitting across from her at the brazier in the chill of the evening, he would constantly stare into her bright and cheerful face, which appeared more youthful than ever, now invariably touched with cosmetics.

As she sat with her sewing work spread out before her, she would recall their wedding day. Her husband seemed both surprised and pleased at the precision of her memory. “So you remember even that, do you!” he would exclaim, whereupon she would fall silent, replying only with an endearing look in her eyes. She too sometimes wondered why indeed she had not forgotten such things.

Not long thereafter she received a letter from her mother informing her that Teruko was betrothed; for his bride-to-be, she noted, Shunkichi had found a new house on the outskirts of T
ō
ky
ō
. Nobuko immediately wrote a long congratulatory message to both her mother and her younger sister.

“As it happens, I have no domestic help and so must most reluctantly
decline to attend the ceremony . . . ,” she wrote. More than once, without knowing why, her hand faltered, as she looked up and turned her gaze ineluctably to the gray-blue thicket of pine trees under the early winter sky.

That evening she discussed the news with her husband. He listened amused, a familiar thin smile passing across his face, as Nobuko imitated her sister's manner of speaking. Yet somehow she had the feeling that it was to herself that she was making the announcement.

“Well, time for sleep I suppose,” he said several hours later, stroking his soft mustache, as he listlessly stood up from the brazier. Nobuko, who had not decided on a wedding gift, sat with the tongs, idly writing letters in the ashes. Suddenly she raised her head and exclaimed: “How strange to think that now I shall be gaining a brother!”

“Of course,” her husband replied, “just as I have a sister.” In her eyes was the look of one deeply lost in thought, and though she heard his words, she did not reply.

Teruko and Shunkichi were married in the middle of December. Light snow began to fall just before noon of that day. Nobuko finished her solitary lunch, a lingering aftertaste of fish in her mouth. “Perhaps it is also snowing in T
ō
ky
ō
,” she wondered as she sat ruminating at the brazier in the dark sitting room. The snow fell ever more heavily, and still the taste of fish remained.