Natsume Soseki - Light and dark

Hearing this sound suddenly in the silence that had resumed, Tsuda understood for the first time that there were also guests upstairs. More precisely, he became aware finally of the existence of another human being. Until this moment his attention had been intently focused elsewhere, in a different direction, and he was surprised. It was of course mild surprise. But in its nature it was akin to surprise at seeing someone thought dead coming suddenly back to life. Tsuda wanted to flee. The impulse had partly to do with his reluctance to reveal the witless-ness that had kept him wandering the halls in search of his own room; moreover, truth be told, he was ashamed to expose the ugliness he sensed in himself for allowing his surprise to unseat him even a little.

But the natural course of the event didn’t allow for simple flight. As he turned on his heel a thought occurred.

It could very well be the maid .

This newly considered possibility restored his courage at once. Having transcended his surprise, he found that he was no longer concerned in the least if it was a guest or otherwise.

I don’t care who it is, when she comes down I’ll ask the way to my room .

Resolved, he peered up the stairway from where he stood alongside the mirror. As he did so, he heard soft footsteps coming from just behind the wall as he had imagined. The steps were quiet, so quiet he wouldn’t have detected them but for the slapping of the slipper against the heel. At that moment something in his heart lurched.

This is a woman. But she’s not a maid. For all I know …

Even as the thought passed, the very person he had supposed it might be appeared above him ineluctably; in the grip of surprise ten times more powerful than a minute ago he stopped, rooted to the spot. Not even his eyes moved.

A similar emotion seemed to have assaulted Kiyoko with even more virulence. As she reached the wooden floor and halted there, she became for Tsuda a kind of painting. The impression he received would remain engraved on his heart.

Lowering her gaze innocently enough from the top of the stairs and recognizing Tsuda appeared to occur at once and yet were not truly simultaneous. Not at least as Tsuda perceived them. Between oblivion and discovery, time elapsed. There was a progression of feelings from surprise past amazement to disbelief before she finally stiffened. Brought up short in her tracks, she stood there so rigidly it appeared that a single finger thrust at her shoulder from the side might topple her as if she were a clay figurine.

Apparently intending like most guests staying here for treatment to warm herself with a quick bath before going to bed, she was carrying a small towel. Like Tsuda, she also had with her a nickel soap holder with no cover. Later, revisiting the moment, Tsuda would remember wondering why, standing there so rigidly, she hadn’t dropped it to the floor.

Kiyoko wasn’t dressed as carelessly as the woman he had encountered at the bath a while ago. She had, however, availed herself of the freedom guests at a place like this tacitly agree to allow one another. She wasn’t wearing a proper obi. Instead, she had wrapped around her waist a brightly colored sash of pretty red and yellow stripes. She had stepped into a pair of thin wool slippers, and the long undergarment she was wearing beneath her night dress brushed the tops of her naked feet.

As her body stiffened, the muscles in her face also tensed. And the color in her cheeks and forehead visibly drained. In the midst of observing this distinct transformation, Tsuda snapped out of his trance.

I’d better do something! She looks ready to faint!

He resolved to call out to her. But just then she came to life. Whirling around, she moved away. No sooner had she disappeared down the hall, leaving Tsuda below, than the light at the top of the stairs that had brightly illuminated her suddenly went out. Tsuda heard again what must have been the shoji door being opened in the dark. At the same time, in a small room he hadn’t noticed next to where he was standing, a guest bell rang ear-splittingly.

A minute later, he heard the sound of footsteps hurrying lightly down a distant hall. It was a maid responding to a summons from Kiyoko. Intercepting her, Tsuda asked for directions to his room.

THAT NIGHT he had trouble sleeping. He was bothered by the sound of water, an incessant plash and patter outside the rain shutters. Unable to shut it out, he wondered what it was. Had it begun to rain? Was a mountain stream running past the building? But if it were rain he would be hearing it on the eaves, and the sound was too gentle to be the rushing of a stream — even as he considered possibilities, his mind was troubled by a more important question.

Discovering that the provident maid had taken quick advantage of his absence to lay out his mattress and bedding, he had burrowed under the covers at once and submerged in thoughts about his accidental adventure. Looking back, it seemed to him that he had been very nearly sleepwalking. It was as if he had spent the time wandering the inn without purpose. His behavior at the bottom of the stairs in particular, observing the water eddy in the basin in the stillness and studying the uncomfortable image of himself in the mirror appeared, even at a distance of only a brief hour, to have been a function of what would have to be called an abnormal mental state. Unused to being abandoned by common sense, Tsuda, lying comfortably in his bedding, reflected on what for him had been an anomalous moment and felt embarrassed. Aside from how bad this might have looked to others, he was unable to explain to himself how he had come to feel as he had.

Whatever the answer to that question, when he moved on to wondering how he had managed to forget about Kiyoko’s existence at that time, he couldn’t avoid being struck by an odd feeling.

Can it be that I’m indifferent to her?

He was confident it wasn’t so. He had inquired of the maid where she was staying in the inn before he had finished his supper.

Nevertheless, old boy, you weren’t thinking about her .

It was a fact that, somewhere along the way in his wandering, he had shaken Kiyoko off. But how could a man with no idea where he is going be expected to know someone else’s whereabouts?

If only I’d been aware of the general direction; I wouldn’t have been caught off guard .

The thought led him to the feeling that he had already let slip his first opportunity. To be sure her appearance, the way she had turned her back, discouraging him from ascending the stairs by switching off the light, the sound of the bell she had rung at once to summon the maid, what was all this if not a warning? An admonition. A severing of ties.

Yet she had been surprised. Far more surprised than he. The simple explanation might be that she was a woman. It was also possible that, while his surprise had been mitigated by a certain expectation, she had experienced abruptness and nothing else. But was that all there was to say about her surprise? Mightn’t it also be that she had felt confronted by her complex past?

She had paled. She had turned rigid. Tsuda yoked his hope to this. He essayed an interpretation that suited him at the moment. Then he turned his interpretation over and examined it from the other side. After a careful look at both sides, he had to judge which was rational. Insufficient data made it hard to arrive at a determination. Each conclusion was quickly invalidated. When he was tending one way, his self-confidence intervened. When he tilted in the other, a fire gong of disillusionment clanged in his ear. Oddly enough his confidence, what he referred to invidiously as his vanity, seemed to reside inside him. In contrast, the clanging fire gong of disillusionment seemed to assail him from outside his mind. Though he intended to consider them both without bias, he couldn’t help distinguishing between the intimate and the removed. Perhaps it was rather the case that near and distant were natural attributes, intrinsic to each respectively. The result was inevitable. Admonishing self-love, he stroked its head; peeling his ears, he cursed the sound of the gong.