Natsume Soseki - To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

"Well, what kind of woman do you think she was?" asked Taguchi, suddenly shifting the topic and now putting this sort of question to Keitaro.

"She was even more difficult to understand than the man," Keitaro blurted out.

"Can't you even tell if she's an ordinary woman or a professional?"

"Well," said Keitaro, pausing a moment to think. In rapid succession there welled to the surface of his memory the leather gloves, the white scarf, the beautiful smiling face, and the long coat, yet all these together did not provide him with enough evidence to reply. "She wore a rather somber-colored coat and leather gloves, but. ."

These two items, which had especially drawn Keitaro's attention among the articles worn by the woman, did not seem to arouse the slightest interest in Taguchi. His face turned serious, and he proceeded to ask further, "Well, don't you have any opinion about their relationship?"

Already complimented a while ago as proof that his report had passed off smoothly, Keitaro had not expected these ticklish inquiries to crop up one after another. What was more, possibly because he was puzzled, he was made to feel each new question increased in difficulty over the preceding one.

Seeing that Keitaro was at a total loss, Taguchi put the same question in other words: "For example, could they be a married couple or a brother and sister or simply friends, or could she be his sweetheart? Of these various relationships, what do you think theirs is?"

"When I saw the woman, I wondered if she was married or not, but somehow they didn't seem like a married couple."

"Granted then that they aren't married, do you think their relationship is physical?"

From the beginning, Keitaro had not been without sprouts of suspicion. If he were to thoroughly reexamine his thoughts on the matter, he might have found that he had a supposition that the two had already established some clandestine relationship exerting its influence on him even from a distance and, because of that influence, intensifying his interest in spying. He was not that much of a theorist to assert that no relationship worthy of note other than a physical one can occur between a man and a woman, but as is usual with warm-blooded young men, he thought that a man and a woman could be considered as "man and woman" only when viewed from this physical aspect. So thinking, he wanted to survey the world as much as possible from this point of view.

To his youthful eyes the large world of humankind was not clearly perceptible; instead, the microcosm of man and woman was vividly mirrored in terms of the physical. Accordingly, he enjoyed reducing most social relationships to sexual ones. It seemed that the relationship between the two people who had met at the streetcar stop had, in the depths of his mind, been linked from the start as one such couple. Moreover, he was not that much of a moralist to fear needlessly some gross sin behind relationships of this kind. He was one of the common lot of men who possess an average awareness of morality, but his own moral outlook, quite unlike his imaginative powers, was not usually active except when the occasion demanded, so he had not experienced any particular offense when he attributed the relationship between the man and woman to the type that most interested him. The only doubts he had about their relationship concerned the considerable difference in their ages. On the other hand, this difference seemed to indicate to him all the more markedly a characteristic feature of "the world of men and women."

To such an extent had he unconsciously given rein to his imagination concerning the two of them, but when he was asked by Taguchi if it were actually true of them, a decisive reply, irrespective of the responsibility for giving it, did not easily reveal itself in definite form to Keitaro's mind. So he said, "Maybe, or maybe not."

Taguchi merely smiled. At that moment the houseboy in hakama brought in a calling card on a tray. As Taguchi held up the card for an instant, he replied to Keitaro, "Well, it's only natural you don't know," and then immediately turning to the houseboy, ordered him to show the guest into the Western-style drawing room.

As Keitaro had for some time been in a quandary, he thought of seizing this opportunity to take his leave and was about to rise when Taguchi purposely interrupted him before he was able to. In spite of Keitaro's discomfiture, Taguchi proceeded with his questions. To almost none of them was Keitaro able to give a clear answer, finding them even more trying than the oral examination he had undergone at the university.

"Well, let's make this the last one. You've found out the names of the man and the woman, haven't you?"

To this final question Keitaro had no satisfactory response either. While at the restaurant, he had been paying attention to the conversation of the two people, looking forward to their mentioning "Mr. So-and-so" or "Miss So-and-so" or simply a pet name, but no names, even those of a third party, to say nothing of their own, had ever been referred to, as if they had some particular reason for avoiding them.

"I really don't know their names either."

Hearing this response, Taguchi, his hands moving against the sides of the small brazier, began tapping its paulownia rim with his fingertips, seemingly beating time. Continuing this for a while, he said, "It seems somehow that you missed the main points," but added immediately, "Yet you're honest. That's probably your best quality. Maybe that's much better than reporting what you don't know as if you knew it. If you have one strong point, that's what I appreciate in you," and he burst out laughing.

Keitaro discovered, as he had expected, that his own observations were of no practical value and so felt somewhat ashamed of his failure, but since he firmly believed that only a few hours of attentiveness, patience, and conjecture would not have been enough to obtain a result that would have satisfied Taguchi even if a man ten times more competent had been employed, he did not feel that much pain from Taguchi's evaluation. On the other hand, he was not all that delighted to be praised for his honesty, for to be as honest as he was seemed to him nothing more than what an ordinary person's honesty would be.

Having wished for some time to speak out once and for all to Taguchi, even if only a word about what he had in his mind, Keitaro, who had been completely pinned down, had the sudden thought that if he didn't speak now, there would be no further opportunity to.

"I too am sorry about a result that falls so short of the mark, but personal matters of the kind you asked me are almost impossible to ascertain in such a short time by someone as dull as I am. This may sound impudent, but I think it would be better to meet the man openly and ask him exactly what you want to know rather than resorting to petty tricks like spying on him. It would save trouble and allow you to get more accurate and reliable information." Having said that much, Keitaro looked at Taguchi, expecting to be laughed at or played with by someone so rich in worldly wisdom.

On the contrary, Taguchi said rather seriously, "So you understand that much. I'm impressed."

Keitaro deliberately refrained from responding.

"The method you suggest seems the most tactless, yet the most expedient, the fairest. That you were aware of it proves how fine your character really is."

Again praised by Taguchi, Keitaro was even more confused on how to reply.

"It was wrong of me to have asked you to do such a petty thing, not realizing how fine your thoughts are. That was making a mistake in estimating a man of character. But in introducing you to me, Ichizo told me you were interested in some job along the detective line. So I went and asked you to do such an outrageous task. I ought to have known better."