To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (31 page)

My mother, being of a retiring disposition, doesn't usually like going on trips. My father had been a strict man and had always demanded respect, so it seems she could seldom afford to be away from home. Actually, I have no memory of my mother and father ever being away for their own pleasure. Even after my father's death, when she had more free time, she unfortunately didn't have many opportunities to go when and where she liked. Without the convenience of traveling far from home or of remaining away a long time, she saw the years advance as the two of us, mother and child, remained in our house.

I carried our suitcase to the train on the day we planned to head for Kamakura. When the train started, my mother smiled at me sitting there beside her and remarked on how long it had been since she was on a train. For that matter, it wasn't a frequent experience for me either. Our talk, under the influence of a fresh mood, was more lively than usual. We discussed what neither of us would ever remember in the least, allowing the conversation to follow its own course. Before we realized it, the train had arrived at our station.

Since we hadn't notified anyone beforehand, no one was there to meet us. But when we hired rickshaws and told the rickshawmen the name of the owner of the villa, they recognized it at once and started off down a sandy road. I noticed that the number of new houses had greatly increased since my last visit. As I looked between the pine trees standing along the road, I saw some strikingly beautiful yellow flowers in the distant fields. At first glance I thought I'd never seen that kind of flower before. They looked something like rape plants. Over and over in the rickshaw I thought about the species this shimmering color belonged to until I realized that they were nothing more than pumpkin flowers, which amused me.

When the rickshaws arrived at the gate of the villa, figures moving back and forth in the drawing room, which had had all its
shoji
removed, were easily visible from the road. Among them I saw a man in a white
yukata,
and the thought occurred to me that it was probably my uncle who had come a day or so before from Tokyo to spend the night. But when the entire family came out to the doorway to greet us, that man failed to appear. If it was my uncle, it seemed to me that he might just as soon have remained indoors. But when we went into the drawing room, he was not there either.

As I was looking around for him, my aunt and mother began exchanging those wordy greetings typical of older women: "How awfully hot it must have been on the train," and "How fortunate to have come upon a house with such a fine view," and on and on. Chiyoko and Momoyoko offered my mother a summer
yukata
to change into and hung her traveling kimono out to air. A maid showed me to a bathroom where I could wash up with cold water. Although the villa was situated near a range of hills quite distant from the beach, the water was not as good as I had expected. When I wrung out the towel and glanced at the bottom of the washbasin, I found a sand-like sediment.

"Use this." Chiyoko's voice came from behind.

I looked back and saw her holding a dry white towel over my shoulder. I took it and stood up. From a drawer in the mirror stand nearby she handed me a comb. While I sat before the mirror combing my hair, she leaned against the bathroom doorpost and looked at my wet head.

Since I didn't say anything, she spoke first. "The water isn't too good, is it?"

Without turning my eyes from the mirror, I replied, "Why is it this color?"

When the subject of the water came to an end, I put the comb on the mirror stand and stood up with the towel still over my shoulders. But before I did, she had left the doorway and started toward the drawing room. All of a sudden I called her to ask where my uncle was. She came to a halt and turned around.

"He was here several days ago, but the day before yesterday he went back to Tokyo on what he said was business."

"He's not here then?"

"No. Why? Perhaps he'll come again this evening with Goichi."

Chiyoko added that if the weather was good the next day, they were all to go fishing, so if her father didn't manage to arrive by evening, it would inconvenience everyone. And she urged me to join them.

I was more concerned about the whereabouts of the man in
yukata
I had seen just before than I was about fishing.

"A while ago wasn't there a man in the drawing room?"

"Oh, that was Takagi-san, Akiko's brother. I think you know him."

I didn't answer whether I did or not. But I recognized the name right away. I knew Momoyoko had a friend at school whose name was Akiko Takagi. I knew her face too from a photograph taken with Momoyoko, and I had seen her handwriting on a picture postcard. I had also heard that her only brother was in America or had just returned. As the son of a family that was rather well-off, it was no surprise he should be spending the summer in Kamakura. It would not even have surprised me if his family had a villa there. But I felt like inquiring from Chiyoko where this Takagi was living.

"Just below us," was all she said.

"In a villa?"

"Yes."

We went toward the drawing room without any further words about him. There my mother and aunt were discussing such things as the color of the sea and the direction the enormous statue of Buddha at Kamakura was in, talking as if these trivialities were of the utmost importance. Momoyoko informed Chiyoko that their father had sent a message that he'd join them by evening. Between them they talked about the pleasure of tomorrow's fishing expedition as if they were visualizing it before them and holding the delight in their very hands.

"Takagi-san will come too, won't he?"

"Ichi-san, you come too."

I said I wouldn't. By way of explanation I added I had something to do at home and so had to go back to Tokyo that evening. Actually, I was afraid if Taguchi came with Goichi into this already congested house, there would hardly be room enough to lay my head down. Besides, I felt it would be annoying to meet Takagi. Momoyoko told me he had been speaking about me with them, but in deference to us on my arrival had gone out the back gate to return home. I was glad I had been relieved of the strain I might have had to go through. That's how backward I am in having to meet people I don't know.

When the sisters heard me say I'd be heading back, their faces changed to surprise, and they began to try to dissuade me. Chiyoko was especially bent on detaining me. She called me eccentric. She said that it was unreasonable to leave my mother alone and that even if I wanted to go home, she wouldn't let me. She's privileged to speak much more freely to me than she is even to her own sister or brother. I have often imagined how pleasant it would be for me, despite my many shortcomings, to walk through life if only I could behave as Chiyoko did to me, boldly, frankly, and—as she sometimes did though with good intention—despotically. I have often envied the little tyrant.

"How threatening you are!" I said.

"You're not being a good son!"

"I'll go ask your mother. If she says you'd better stay, then stay," Momoyoko said. She sounded like she was trying to arbitrate between Chiyoko and me as she walked into the drawing room where the women were still talking.

There was of course no need to ask my mother her preference, so it's superfluous to tell you the reply Momoyoko brought back. I was taken captive by Chiyoko.

Under the pretext of wanting to walk to town, I soon went out and strolled at random among the villas, carrying an umbrella to shade myself from the hot afternoon sun. I guess you could say that I went out in order to recall what the place had been like when I had last seen it long ago, but even if I had any such poetic taste at all, I wasn't calm enough at the time, nor did I have room enough in my mind to indulge in such things. All I did was aimlessly walk around reading nameplates on various houses. When I recognized the two characters
Taka-gi
on a nameplate attached to the gatepost of a finely built single-storied residence, I paused in front for a while, thinking that it must have been his. After that I resumed my ramble for about a quarter of an hour. But this latter walk was simply my way of telling myself that I had not gone out for the sole purpose of locating Takagi's house. I then returned in a hurry.

To be truthful, I actually had known almost nothing about Takagi. Only once had I heard something about him from Momoyoko—that he was on the lookout for a suitable wife. At the time, I remember she glanced at my face as if she were trying to sound out my advice and asked, "How about my sister for him?" And I remember saying in my usually cold tone, "perhaps. Speak to your father and mother about it." Since that moment I don't know how many times I've visited the Taguchis, but at least in my presence the name Takagi failed to cross anyone's lips. So what interest could I possibly have in exposing myself to the heat of the burning sand by looking for the house of a man I hardly knew, a man whose face I had not even seen before? Until now I've told no one my reason for having done it. I wasn't even able to give a satisfactory explanation to myself at the time. I had only some vague feeling that a kind of apprehension lying in wait from afar had come to move me. In the course of those two days I spent at Kamakura, I found this apprehension had ultimately developed into an unmistakable shape, and judging from the result, I think now it must have been the same force that drew me out on that stroll.

An hour or so after I returned to the villa, the man whose name was the same as the one I had seen on the nameplate made his appearance. My aunt politely introduced him. I noticed right away that he was well-built and had a healthy complexion. He might have been older than me, but he was so full of vigor that in order to describe his energetic countenance, you had to use the word "young." When I saw him for the first time, I suspected that nature had deliberately placed us side by side in the same drawing room in order to make a comparison of opposites. As the representative of the disadvantaged party, I could only take our being introduced formally to each other as nature's practical joke.

Our features already presented an ill-natured contrast. But just from the way we carried ourselves and our manner of speaking, I couldn't help being conscious of a still greater difference. All those who were there—my mother, my aunt, and my cousins—were all my own relatives, yet compared to Takagi, I looked more like some guest that had come out of nowhere. He handled himself perfectly, without reserve, and yet without lowering to any degree the dignity he possessed. From the point of view of someone who is so afraid of meeting strangers, I wanted to criticize him as a man left to the fashionable world as soon as he was born and to this day raised in that very same place. In less than ten minutes he had deprived me of my share in the conversation and had it all to himself. Meanwhile, he was careful not to leave me completely out in the cold, and so from time to time he cast me a word or two. But the subjects offered were anything but interesting, so I could talk neither to the entire group nor to Takagi alone. He addressed my aunt as if she were his mother. And as if it were a demand of nature, he called Chiyoko "Chiyo-chan," the intimate name reserved for childhood friends like me. "I was speaking with Chiyo-chan about you when you arrived," he said.

The moment I saw him, I envied his good looks. And the moment I heard him speak, I knew at once I wasn't his equal. These facts alone might have been sufficient in this situation to make me feel uncomfortable. But as I observed him, a suspicion arose in me that he was displaying his strong points triumphantly before his inferior. I suddenly began to hate him and deliberately kept my mouth shut even when I was given a chance to speak.

As I look back now on the affair in a more composed state, I realize that my interpretation of Takagi's behavior might have come merely from my own sense of inferiority. Although I tend to doubt others, I am at the same time a person who by nature cannot but doubt himself, which makes it difficult for me to make an assertion either way about something ambiguous. But if my interpretation was actually based on my own warped personality, then there must also be a jealousy behind it which hasn't yet coagulated itself into any definite form.