Natsume Soseki - Light and dark

Just then, a man in a dark blue serge suit who appeared to be about thirty emerged from the examination room and walked to the prescription window. He was paying his bill when the nurse appeared in the open doorway. Tsuda had seen her before; when she had announced the next patient’s name and was about to withdraw into the examination room again, he called out to her.

“I’d rather not wait for a turn; could you just ask the doctor if I could come for my surgery tomorrow or the day after?”

The nurse stepped inside, and her white presence reappeared in the doorway to the dark room almost at once.

“The second floor happens to be vacant so you’re welcome to come when it’s convenient.”

Tsuda left the dark room as though escaping from it. He stepped into his shoes quickly, and as he pushed the large frosted-glass door open, the waiting room, pitch dark until now, lit up.

THOUGH TSUDA’S return home was slightly earlier than yesterday, the sun was already low in the western sky, the autumn days having grown abruptly shorter of late, and it was just the hour when the last chilly light, which until minutes ago had illuminated at least the open street, was swiftly fading as if swept away.

Naturally enough, the second floor was dark. But so was the front entrance, pitch-black. Having just now passed the lights shining brightly in the eaves of the rickshaw shop at the corner, Tsuda was mildly disappointed by the darkness shrouding his own house. He rattled open the lattice. But O-Nobu did not emerge. He had not been entirely pleased the night before when she had startled him at this same hour by seeming to lie in wait, but now, obliged to stand alone at the pitch-dark entrance with no one to greet him, he had the feeling somewhere in his chest that what had befallen him last night was in fact less unpleasant. Standing where he was, he called out, “O-Nobu! O-Nobu!” Whereupon his wife replied, “Coming!” from, unexpectedly, the second floor, and he heard her footsteps on the stairs as she descended. At the same time the maid came running from the direction of the kitchen.

“What’s going on?”

A measure of dissatisfaction echoed in Tsuda’s voice. O-Nobu did not reply. However, glancing up at her face, he couldn’t avoid noticing the subtle smile she customarily deployed to beguile him in her silence. It was first of all her white teeth that seized and held his gaze.

“It’s pitch dark up there.”

“I know — I was letting my mind wander and I didn’t realize you were home—”

“You were asleep.”

“Don’t be silly.”

The maid let out a whoop of laughter, and their conversation broke off.

Tsuda was on his way to the public bath, having received from O-Nobu’s hand as always a bar of soap and a towel, when she asked him to wait a minute. Turning her back, she took from the bottom drawer of the tansu a padded flannel jacket edged with silk and laid it in front of him.

“Try it on — it may not be properly flattened yet.”*

With a bemused look on his face, Tsuda stared at the quilted jacket with its broad vertical stripes and black silk collar. This was something he had neither purchased nor bespoken.

“What’s all this?”

“I sewed it. For when you go to the hospital; you have to be careful what you wear in a place like that so as not to make a bad impression.”

“You’ve been working on this?”

It had been only two or three days since he had told O-Nobu that he needed surgery and would have to be away for a week. Moreover, from that day until this moment he hadn’t once noticed his wife sitting at her pattern-cutting board with her needle in hand. He was struck by the oddness of this. O-Nobu on her part observed her husband’s surprise as if it were a reward for her diligence. Accordingly, she provided no explanation.

“Did you buy the cloth?”

“No, I brought this with me — I planned to use it this winter so I just washed and boarded it and put it away for later.”

He saw now that the pattern was decidedly for a young woman: not only were the stripes broad, but the blend of colors was, if anything, on the edge of gaudy. Slipping his arms through the sleeves and flinging them wide open in imitation of a workman kite, Tsuda regarded his own image uncomfortably.

“I arranged to go in tomorrow or the day after,” he said a minute later.

“I see — what about me?”

“About you?”

“Can’t I go with you — to the hospital?”

O-Nobu appeared to be utterly untroubled by the money issue.

* A newly sewn kimono or, as in this case, kimono jacket had to be flattened, usually by placing it beneath the mattress and sleeping on it for a night or two.

THE NEXT morning Tsuda woke up much later than usual. The house was hushed, as though it had already been put in order. Moving past the front entrance from the tatami drawing room to the sitting room, he slid open the shoji and discovered his wife sitting erectly alongside the brazier with the newspaper in her hand. The sound issuing from the bubbling kettle seemed to bespeak a tranquil household.

“I didn’t mean to sleep in, it happens naturally when there’s no need to wake up.”

Tsuda might have been offering an excuse; he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall above the calendar and saw that it was just minutes before ten o’clock.

When he returned to the sitting room having washed his face he sat down absently at his usual black-lacquer tray. This morning it seemed less to be awaiting his arrival than exhausted with waiting. He was removing the cloth from the tray when he recalled something abruptly.

“Damn!”

The doctor had advised certain precautions for the day before the surgery but at the moment he couldn’t remember them precisely. He spoke to his wife abruptly.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

O-Nobu, surprised, glanced at her husband’s face.

“To make a phone call.”

He rose as if with a kick that scattered the composure of the room and left the house at once by the front entrance. Running to the public phone several blocks to the right along the streetcar tracks, he was back in a moment and, halting at the front door, called to his wife:

“Bring me my billfold from upstairs. Or your coin purse, either one.”

“Is something the matter?”

O-Nobu had no idea what her husband was thinking.

“Just bring it.”

With O-Nobu’s purse thrust inside his kimono, Tsuda went back to the main street, where he boarded a trolley.

By the time he returned, carrying a fairly large paper parcel, thirty or forty minutes had passed and it was approaching noon.

“That was some bare cupboard of a purse — I thought you’d have more.”

With this exclamation, Tsuda dropped the parcel he was carrying at his side onto the tatami floor of the sitting room.

“There wasn’t enough?”

O-Nobu’s gaze conveyed her compulsion to concern herself with minute details.

“I’m not saying that — I had what I needed.”

“I had no idea what you were buying — I thought you might be going to the barber.”

Tsuda became aware of his hair, uncut for over two months. He even recalled a sensation he had experienced for the first time yesterday that his hat, already a little small for his head, seemed to rub when he put it on because he had let his hair grow too long.

“You were in such a hurry I didn’t have time to go upstairs.”

“There isn’t that much money in my wallet, either, so it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”