To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (22 page)

"Yes, we did see each other, didn't we? I remember you quite well. Furthermore, we were on the same streetcar on our way back, weren't we? You stayed on, it seems to me, as far as Edogawa. Is that near where you live? You must have had a bad time of it that night, caught in the rain."

Matsumoto had not indicated that he remembered Keitaro at the beginning of their interview, but neither was he pretending to have been made aware of it just now. His behavior suggested that it was all the same if he mentioned it or not. Whether Matsumoto's attitude came from naiveté, nerve, or inherent magnanimity, Keitaro could not tell.

"You were with someone . . ."

"Yes, with a beautiful young woman. You were alone, I believe."

"Yes. You were alone too on your way back, weren't you?"

"So I was."

Their brief flow of brisk talk came to an abrupt end. Keitaro was waiting for some further word about the woman when he was asked a question that had nothing to do with her.

"Is your boardinghouse in Ushigome or Koishikawa?"

"It's in Hongo."

Matsumoto stared at Keitaro as though he had not understood.

When Keitaro saw that the look in his host's eyes seemed to be demanding an explanation of why he had gone to Edogawa if he lived in Hongo, he decided to make a clean breast of the matter rather than contrive some troublesome pretext. He resolved that if he angered Matsumoto, he would simply apologize, and if his host refused to accept this apology, he would politely bow and leave.

"The truth is that I deliberately followed you as far as Edogawa," Keitaro said, looking at Matsumoto, whose face did not reveal the change expected, which was somewhat of a relief to Keitaro.

"What for?" asked Matsumoto in the leisurely tone characteristic of him.

"I was asked to."

"Asked? By whom?" said Matsumoto, his voice somewhat surprised. For the first time he had put a stronger stress than usual into his words.

"Actually, it was Mr. Taguchi."

"Taguchi? Yosaku Taguchi?"

"Yes."

"But . . . you've come to me with a letter of introduction from him!"

It seemed much easier for Keitaro to bring the matter to an end once and for all by giving a full account of what had taken place rather than to be cross-examined in this way. So he confessed to all the circumstances, leaving nothing concealed, from the opening point of his venture—his receiving Taguchi's specially delivered letter and going at once to Ogawamachi to stand watch at the streetcar stop—to its end—his coming to a standstill in the rain after the streetcar arrived at the Edo-gawa terminus. His chief object in the narrative was to give a consistent sequence of events, avoiding as much as possible bothersome amplification, to say nothing of exaggeration, so it did not take him much time.

Matsumoto put in no word of interruption. Nor did he look as if he were going to speak up immediately even after Keitaro finished. Keitaro interpreted this silence as a consequence of the offense Matsumoto had received, so before his host became angry, Keitaro was thinking it best to make a quick apology. Suddenly, however, the silence was broken.

"A really impertinent fellow, that Taguchi. Of all the people you could have been used by. You were made to be quite a fool."

Keitaro looked at the face uttering these words. It actually gave him more relief than anything, for although it was evident that Matsumoto had been jolted by the particulars, there was less anger on his face than there could have been. As for being called a fool, it was a trifle in the present situation.

"I'm sorry about what I've done."

"I don't want your apology. I said what I did only because I feel sorry for you. Being used by that kind of scoundrel."

"Is'he that bad?"

"What need could you possibly have to undertake such a ridiculous scheme?"

Keitaro could hardly bring himself to say at that moment that he had undertaken it out of curiosity. He got around the question by implying that even though he knew the task was unpleasant, he had complied with Taguchi's request because he had to depend on him for a livelihood.

"If you're that desperate for a job, perhaps it couldn't be helped. But you'd better not get involved in that kind of nonsense again. You're putting yourself through unnecessary trouble, aren't you?—following someone in the cold rain."

"I've learned a little from my experience. I don't intend to do it again."

Matsumoto said nothing on hearing this reflection, but gave only a bitter smile. Whether it could be taken either as derision or pity, Keitaro, at any rate, was made to feel humiliated.

"You
look
sorry for having treated me wrongly, but are you really that repentant?"

Actually, Keitaro did not feel remorseful in terms of any fundamental principle, but when asked in this way, he was compelled to feel so and to reply so under the circumstances.

"Well then, go to Taguchi and tell him the girl I was with the other day was a high-class prostitute. Tell him I will guarantee she was."

"Is she really that kind of woman?" Keitaro asked, somewhat surprised.

"No matter what she is, just tell him that."

"I see."

"Don't say 'I see.' Just tell him. Could you do that for me?"

As one of the younger generation brought up in the modern world, Keitaro was not a person who shrank from the rudeness of using such words before his elders. But as he suspected that there might be something unpleasant behind Matsumoto's persistence in forcibly pushing those words at him, he was not disposed to consent hastily.

Seeing Keitaro frown in perplexity, Matsumoto said, "You needn't worry. It's only Taguchi you have to tell it to." But after a moment he added, as though he had become aware of something just then, "You still don't know about how Taguchi and I are related, do you?"

"No, I know nothing about it," Keitaro replied.

"If I tell you about it, you'll have even less courage to inform Taguchi that she's a high-class prostitute, so it goes against my interest to. But I'll tell you, for it's a pity to allow your innocence to always be made a fool of."

With these preliminary words Matsumoto gave Keitaro an explanation of his social contacts with Taguchi. As the explanation was one that was concluded in the simplest way, it was all the more surprising to Keitaro. In a word, Taguchi and Matsumoto were near relatives: Matsumoto had two elder sisters, one of them Sunaga's mother, the other Taguchi's wife.

When Keitaro grasped for the first time how these two men were related, the fact that Taguchi's brother-in-law Matsumoto had met the former's daughter, his own niece, at the streetcar stop at an appointed hour and had dined together in a restaurant appeared now to Keitaro to be one of the most commonplace affairs in the entire world. He realized how ridiculous it had been of him to have assumed that there was some complex intrigue behind "the affair" and to have run around after it as though it had had some luring glimmer. He now understood that it was nothing but a flickering will-o'-the-wisp of his own heated fancy.

"What did Miss Taguchi go out there for? Only to entice
me?"

"She went there on her way home from the Sunagas'. I'd been talking with Taguchi at his house when she telephoned me and asked me to get off at the stop on my way home at about 4:30, where she'd be waiting for me. I thought it would be a bother and didn't feel like going, but she said she had to see me and so on and so forth, so I got off there. She told me then that her father that very morning had informed her I'd buy her a ring as a year-end gift and she should wait for me at the stop and not let me get away until she had gone with me to purchase it. And so she had, as she said, been waiting quite a while before I came. She wouldn't budge on this demand she had come up with so willfully, totally disregarding my own say in the matter. So I was obliged to put her off by treating her to a foreign-style dinner. Hence our dining at the Takaratei. Damn that Taguchi! Why on earth does he go to so much trouble with his nasty tricks? He's far more in the wrong than you, victimized as you've been by him."

To Keitaro, it seemed that he had himself been a far greater simpleton to have been in the wrong, duped by the man. He couldn't help blushing, for had he known about this relationship, he would have used more discretion at the time he had given Taguchi the report on his detective work.

"Then you didn't know at all about being spied on?"

"How could I? You see, even a high-class idler like me has no time to spare for that kind of nonsense."

"How about Miss Taguchi? It seems to me she knew about it."

"Well," Matsumoto said, meditating a while before declaring, "No, she probably didn't. I'd have to say that even Taguchi, fool though he is, is not without some redeeming points. No matter what mischief he's up to, at the moment when the butt of his joke is about to be shamed, he either brings it all to a halt or shows up himself and puts a neat end to it before the person's honor is affected. At least in that there's something to praise him for, his foolishness notwithstanding. After all, even though his way of doing things is unscrupulous, he ultimately reveals his own humanity, imbued with a sort of warm benevolence. In this affair of ours too, he's probably kept it all to himself. If you hadn't come to visit me, I would certainly have remained unaware of it. He's not that merciless a person to announce to anyone beforehand, even to his own daughter, some strategy that will prove the stupidity of the one being made the butt of his joke as you've been. Since he is that way, he'd be better off giving up these pranks. But he won't—it's his damn foolishness."

As Keitaro listened silently to this criticism, he was conscious that a feeling of reliability for the man who had played this trick on him was definitely gaining the upper hand in his mind; it was by now much stronger than the regret he felt in looking back at his own foolish behavior and stronger than his bitterness against the one responsible for making a fool of him. But again there sprang forth in Keitaro the suspicion that if Taguchi were really the kind of man he now felt him to be, why was it that while he was speaking with him, he experienced that enormous feeling of constraint?

"What you've told me about Mr. Taguchi has given me a better understanding of him. But when I'm with him, I somehow feel ill at ease. There's this strange sensation, like being in a kind of pain."

"Why, that's because he himself is on guard against you."

Explained thus, Taguchi's way of looking and speaking, vividly recalled by Keitaro, was now much clearer to him. But why such an old hand as Taguchi had to bother about a stripling fresh from school, Keitaro found quite inexplicable. He firmly believed that he would pass before anyone's eyes just as he actually was, and as such he had thought so little of himself that he had not even felt a claim to be kept at a distance or to be bothered about. So he began thinking that it was rather strange to have been treated so differently from the way he had expected by a man so much older than he was, one far exceeding him in experience.

"Do I look like such a two-faced person?"

"Well, you can never tell that kind of subtlety at first glance. But whether you are or not, you don't have to worry about it. It has nothing to do with my treatment of you."