To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (38 page)

Her words startled me. "I'm sure your husband would like
shimada
as well."

Chiyoko herself didn't look the least bit disconcerted. She deliberately turned toward me to say with a laugh,

"Then shall I show you my hair in
shimada?"

I went upstairs before her hair was finished. If you're as nervous as I am, and particularly scrupulous about things, you behave in such a way that to the eyes of the unconcerned your conduct is almost juvenile. I separated myself from the mirror stand when the task was halfway through with the intention of freeing myself from the tax of admiration that a woman with a pretty hairdo imposes on a man. That was how deficient I was in the kind of goodwill necessary to flatter Chiyoko's vanity.

I don't like to make myself look good by glossing over some deficiency or other I may have. But even someone like me has enough brains to think about problems slightly deeper than the tricks often played around a brazier in a sitting room. Only, it's my weakness that once dragged down as low as I was then, I can't let myself be sidetracked. And since I know quite well how silly it all was, I hated myself for having gone and gotten involved.

I hate bravado as much as meanness, and I believe it's to my credit to speak of myself as I actually am even if I look degraded or small, so I'm making it a point to be as honest with you as I can. Yet are all those so-called great men of the world above the petty discords that occur around the sitting-room brazier or kitchen table? I'm still a green youth fresh from school, so my worldly experience is nothing to speak of, but insofar as I'm able to use my intelligence and imagination, I doubt if so great and noble a person has ever existed. I do respect Matsumoto, my uncle. But to put it bluntly, it's sufficient to say that he's the type who merely looks great and shows himself high-minded. I don't want to be so discourteous and biased as to label my respected and beloved uncle an imposter or a fake. But as a matter of fact, though he looks with indifference on the mundane world, he's quite attached to it. He stands calmly with his arms folded, apparently unworried by trifles, yet in the back of his mind he does worry about them. I'm inclined to compliment him on his being more refined than ordinary people only in that he keeps his own worries unrevealed. That he can keep them from outward show is due to his property, his age, and his culture, discernment, and self-discipline. And lastly, it's due to the fact that he's in harmony with his home life. His relationship with society, which is seemingly in opposition to it, is actually in keeping with it. Well, I've digressed. Perhaps I've dwelled too long in defending my own fussiness over trifles.

As I said a moment ago, I had gone upstairs. Though the heat was harder to bear there than downstairs because the room was nearer the sun, I was in the habit of spending most of my day there due to my long use of it. As usual, I was sitting blankly at my desk, my chin against my hands. I noticed before my elbows that the Majorca ashtray into which I had earlier dropped some cigarette ashes had been cleaned. Looking at the two geese depicted on it, I imagined Saku's two hands cleaning away the ashes. It was then that I heard someone coming up the stairs. The minute I heard those sounds, I knew they were not being made by Saku's feet. I felt humiliated in having Chiyoko see me in this listless pose of boredom. On the other hand, I don't like using the clever tactic of opening a book near at hand and pretending I'd been reading.

"It's finished. Take a look," she said and immediately sat down in front of me. "I probably look funny. It's been a long time since I've had my hair arranged this way."

"It came out beautifully. After this you ought to always have it done in
shimada."

"I'll have to have it taken down and reset a few times to get my hair trained to this style."

After several exchanges of this sort, I found before me without my consciously realizing it the pretty, unsophisticated, and innocent Chiyoko I had known earlier. It's hard to say definitely whether my mood somehow happened to be softened or whether she was seeing me from a different angle. As far as I remember, there seemed to be nothing on either side that could account for this feeling. If this easy state between us had lasted an hour or two longer, the odd suspicion I had had about her might have been blotted out as a mere misunderstanding by drawing a straight black line through it back to its origin. But I made a mess of it, carelessly.

It happened this way. As we talked on a while, I realized she had come upstairs not only to show me her new hairdo but to say good-bye, since she was returning to Kamakura that day. It was then that I made my faux pas.

"So soon? Must you?" I asked.

"It's not that soon," she replied. "I've already been here a night. But it's a little funny, isn't it, going back with my hair like this—as if I were going to be married."

"Are all of you still at Kamakura?" I asked.

"Of course. Why?"

"Takagi-san too?"

This was the name that she had not mentioned and that I too had deliberately been keeping from our talk. But by chance we had somehow regained the feeling of throwing off all restraints, and just at the moment that I was drawn into this mood, the name had dropped from my lips quite inadvertently. The minute I looked at her face, I regretted my careless question.

As I told you earlier, she has a kind of contempt for me as someone who is given to indecision and who has little tact in dealing with the world. And to tell the truth, our intimacy has been established only on each other's tacit recognition of this fact. To make up for my deficiency, I had fortunately one point in my favor that always awed her. That was my reticence. A woman like her who is not satisfied unless she openly shows whatever she has on her mind would never be content with the sullen, undemonstrative attitude I always assume, but in that attitude there is a glimmer that suggests the existence of a mind somehow difficult to penetrate, and this forces her to look upon me as a man she'll never be able to know completely and who, in spite of her contempt, has something in him to be feared, so she has long paid me a kind of respect. She has never explicitly stated it, but in her mind she admits it, and actually it is something I too have implicitly demanded of her as my right.

But the moment Takagi's name fell accidentally from my lips, I felt as though that respect was lost forever. A sudden change came over her face. I don't want to admit it was necessarily an expression of triumph, but without a doubt a kind of scorn flashed in her eyes that I had never seen there before. I stopped short like a man who has been unexpectedly slapped hard in the face.

"Are you that concerned about him?" She then burst into such a loud laugh that I wanted to cover my ears with my hands. I was given a sharp momentary humiliation. But I couldn't make a prompt reply.

Then she said, "You're a coward!"

I was equally startled by this attribute she had given me. I had half a mind to say, "You're the one who's the coward, deliberately inviting me where you didn't have to." But I restrained myself, thinking it too early to use against a young woman words as violent as hers were. She too remained silent after that. At last I merely asked, "Why?"

Her thick eyebrows moved then. She seemed to have interpreted this question as a cover-up of my weakness when it happened to be pointed out by someone, even though I was well aware of my own cowardice.

"'Why?' you ask! You yourself know why quite well!"

"No I don't. Tell me."

I thought of my mother downstairs, and I thought too that I knew only too well the tendency of young women to be carried away by emotion, so in order to mollify her into talking calmly, I spoke in a low, slow voice, which was almost unnatural under the circumstances. It seemed to make her all the more disgusted.

"If you don't know, you're a fool!"

Perhaps my face became paler than usual. I remember only that I fixed my eyes on her. I also remember that her eyes, fearing nothing, met mine head on at that moment, and both of our glances stopped there in silence for some time.

"To someone as lively as you, Chiyo-chan, an overly cautious person like me may naturally look like a coward. I know I'm extremely hesitant and don't have the courage to say what I have on my mind and put it into action. If you call me a coward for that, I have nothing to say against it, but . . ."

"Who in the world would call such a person a coward!"

"But you despise me for that. I know quite well you do."

"It's you who despise me! I know that much better than you do!"

I saw no particular need to acknowledge her words, so I deliberately held back.

"You assume I'm a woman without learning, without intelligence, and beneath notice, and you despise me out and out in your mind!"

"It's the same thing as your belittling me for being dull. I don't mind your calling me a coward, but if you mean that I'm a coward in a moral sense, then you're wrong—at least as far as my conduct goes, I don't remember ever having done anything cowardly to you in a moral sense. If you use the word 'coward' where you should be calling me sluggish or irresolute, it sounds as if I were a person lacking in moral courage—no, rather, someone without any morals at all. That, I don't appreciate, so please mend your word. Or if I ever wronged you in the sense I've just mentioned, then don't hesitate to tell me what it was."

"Then I'll tell you what cowardice means," said Chiyoko, beginning to cry.

Until that moment I had looked on her as someone stronger than me. But I had only understood her strength as an incarnation of the womanly spirit coming solely from simple tenderness. However, the Chiyoko now revealing herself before me seemed to me nothing more than a vulgar woman, one quite common in the world, a woman bent on conquering. Without being moved by her tears, I merely waited, ready for whatever explanation came. I firmly believed that what would come from her lips would be nothing more than some sophistry to embellish her appearance.

She blinked her wet eyelashes a few times. "You're always sneering at me as if I were some silly, romping girl. You do not . . . love me. You have no desire. . . to be married to me. . . ."

"And for all that neither do you——"

"Just listen. You were going to say that it's the same on both sides, right? Well, all right. I'm not begging you to take me. Only why is it that you neither love me nor think of taking me for your wife . . . and yet . . ."

Here she suddenly faltered. I was not clever enough to guess what was going to follow. "And yet—what?" I said, half-urging her on.

"Why are you jealous?" she said, breaking through the barrier with a sudden force and crying even more.

I felt a burning sensation as the blood came rushing to my cheeks. She hardly seemed to notice.

"You're a coward. A moral coward. You've already had your doubts about my reasons for inviting you and your mother to Kamakura. That's already cowardly, but that's not the point. Why, having accepted my invitation, couldn't you make yourself agreeable as you usually do? My invitation to you turned out to be the same as having invited you to disgrace myself. You insulted a guest of my family, and the result is that you insulted me too."