Natsume Soseki - Light and dark

“Where were you?”

“I’m sorry I took so long.”

“Not a problem.”

“I was making myself useful.”

“Doing what?”

“I tidied up the room. And I did the lady’s hair. So I wasn’t that long.”

Tsuda didn’t think a woman’s hair could be done up so easily.

“Chignon? Butterfly?”

The maid merely laughed.

“Go and see for yourself.”

“See for myself? Will that be all right? I’ve been waiting here for an answer since you left.”

“Gracious, I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten the most important part — she says please feel free.”

Relieved, Tsuda made certain half in jest as he stood up.

“She said that? It won’t be a bother? I don’t want to get over there and feel bad for having imposed.”

“Are you always so distrustful? If you are, Madam must be—”

“Who do you mean? Madam Seki or my wife?”

“You must know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Honestly?”

Tsuda retied his obi, and as he was on his way out the maid, who had circled around behind him, draped his kimono jacket over his shoulders.

“This way?”

“I’ll show you.”

The maid led the way. As they came to the familiar mirror, the memory of having wandered these halls as a sleepwalker the night before flickered in Tsuda’s mind.

“So this is where it is!”

The words escaped him on their own. Ignorant of the circumstances, the maid’s inquiry was innocent.

“Where what is?”

Tsuda essayed a deception.

“I’m saying this is where I ran into a ghost last night.”

The maid winced.

“What a thing to say! As if we had ghosts here! You really shouldn’t—”

Tsuda, understanding that his joke about an establishment in the guest business had been in poor taste, glanced up at the second floor knowingly.

“Seki-san’ s room must be up there.”

“How in the world did you know?”

“I know things.”

“Magic eyes?”

“A magic nose — I nose things out.”

“Like a dog.”

This exchange, begun halfway up the stairs, was already in earshot of Kiyoko’s room, the nearest to the landing. Tsuda was aware of this.

“While I’m at it, I’ll nose out Seki-san’s room — watch closely.”

The light slap of his slippers stopped at the door to Kiyoko’s room.

“This is it.”

Peering up at Tsuda askance, the maid burst out laughing.

“I told you.”

“You have some nose, all right. Keener than a hunting dog’s.”

The maid was laughing heartily, but no response to her hilarity issued from inside the room. It was impossible to tell whether anyone was there; the interior was quiet as before.

“Your visitor is here, Ma’am.”

Calling in to Kiyoko, the maid slid the well-seated shoji all the way back.

“May I come in?”

Stepping into the room as he spoke, Tsuda halted in surprise. He had been prepared to come face to face with Kiyoko, but the room appeared to be empty.

THERE WERE actually two adjoining rooms. Tsuda had entered an antechamber with no alcove for hanging a scroll or exhibiting flowers. Thick, cross-hatched pillows in front of a rectangular mirror edged in black on a black wooden stand and the small brazier of paulownia wood alongside it evoked, on a small scale, the atmosphere of a sitting room in a normal Japanese house. There was a black lacquer kimono rack in a corner. The bright colors of the striped garments tossed over it and their silkiness, as if they would be smooth to the touch, evoked the fairer sex.

The heavy paper door to the adjoining room had been left open. Tsuda saw an arrangement of fresh-cut chrysanthemums in the alcove there. Two cushions had been placed face to face in front of it. Tea-brown silk with a round whiteness in the center, a single peony perhaps, the elegant cushions seemed excessively formal as a preparation for receiving a casual visitor. Even before he had seated himself, Tsuda had intuited something.

Everything is too proper. This must represent the distance that separates the destinies of the two people about to face each other .

Recognizing this all of a sudden, Tsuda was on the verge of regretting having come.

But what produced this distance? On reflection it seemed inevitable it should be there. Tsuda had merely forgotten. But how could he have forgotten? Perhaps forgetting was also inevitable.

It was just then, as he was standing in the anteroom lost in thought, gazing at the cushions inside without moving to them or taking a seat, that Kiyoko stepped into view from the far corner of the engawa . What she had been doing there until now Tsuda couldn’t imagine. Nor could he understand why she would have chosen to step outside. Perhaps, waiting for him after straightening the room, she had been gazing at the terraced layers of autumn foliage on the mountain, leaning against a corner of the railing. In any event, her manner seemed odd. To be precise, her behavior at that moment would have been more appropriate to running into an unexpected guest than welcoming someone she had invited.

And yet, curiously enough, this was less offensive to him than the cushions stiffly awaiting them to take their seats or the oblong brazier that had been positioned between the cushions to create what appeared to be an intentional obstruction. Doubtless that was because this attitude was not so distant as to be incompatible with the Kiyoko he had been painting in his imagination.

The Kiyoko whom Tsuda knew was by no means a restless, fussy woman. On the contrary, she was inveterately unperturbed. It might even have been said that a distinguishing feature of her temperament, and of the actions that derived from her temperament, was a certain languor. He had always counted on that quality of hers. He had placed inordinate faith in it, and as a result his faith had been betrayed. Such at least was his interpretation. Even so, notwithstanding his interpretation, the faith he had established at the time, though he wasn’t conscious of it, had remained intact inside him. Her marriage to Seki may have occurred as swiftly as the darting of a swallow, but that was an inconsistency and nothing more. Since his turmoil began only when he strove to connect these two realities without contradiction, he preferred to consider them separately: just as a was a fact, so then must b also be true.

Why did that languorous woman leap into an airplane? Why did she fly loop-the-loops?

It was precisely here that serious doubt lingered. Facts, however, were in the end facts, no matter how they might be doubted, and would not disappear by themselves.

On this head, Kiyoko the rebel was more fortunate than faithful O-Nobu. If, when Tsuda had entered the room, it had been O-Nobu instead of Kiyoko who had thrown him off his pace with an oddly timed entrance from the far end of the engawa , what would his response have been?

She’s up to something again .

Certainly this is what he would have thought. But coming from Kiyoko, this same behavior had an entirely different effect.

She’s as languid as ever .

Having persuaded himself, Tsuda had no choice but to assess her behavior as languid even though she had knocked his legs from under him with a move of dizzying speed.

It wasn’t simply that she had thrown his timing off. She had appeared from the far end of the engawa carrying in both hands the large basket of fruit he had presented her in Madam Yoshikawa’s name. Whatever her intention, it seemed clear the nuisance the gift may have created for her until now couldn’t be taken as a measure of her indifference to Tsuda. Even so, this behavior had to be accounted odd, the more so if she had kept the basket with her on the balcony until now, even more so assuming she had put it down once and picked it up again. At the very least, it was awkward. And juvenile somehow. Nonetheless Tsuda, who knew her normal behavior as if by heart, couldn’t help discerning in this something unmistakably like her.