To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (33 page)

Since the supper hour was delayed, we got to bed exceedingly late. Moreover, the sudden increase in the number of people gave my aunt a great deal of trouble in finding room for all of us and arranging the beds. The three males were put together in one room and lay inside the same mosquito net. My uncle found it difficult settling his stout body in the summer heat and busily flapped a round fan.

"Ichi-san, how do you like it, this awful heat? We'd have been much more comfortable in Tokyo tonight, huh?"

Goichi, lying next to me, agreed with me that we would have. Not one of the three of us could account for our coming so far down to Kamakura to lie huddled this close together inside a mosquito net.

"Well, this is fun too," my uncle said, settling the question once and for all. But the heat remained to keep us from sleeping.

Goichi, with a boy's curiosity, asked his father one question after another about the fishing excursion. And my uncle, half in jest, told a pleasant story about the fish yielding themselves up of their own accord if only we could get ourselves into a boat. I found it somewhat odd that not only did my uncle relate the story to his son but every so often calling my name made a listener out of me in spite of my having no interest whatever in it. However, as I had to make some response, I found myself committed before his talk ended to joining the fishing party. As I had earlier had no intention of going, this change was totally unexpected. My uncle, looking thoroughly unworried, soon began snoring loudly, and Goichi as well soon fell into a calm sleep. I alone deliberately kept my sleepless eyes closed and reflected on various matters late into the night.

When I awoke the next morning, I saw that Goichi had slipped off somewhere. With my head still on my pillow for want of sleep, I was traveling along a path that could be called neither dreaming nor meditating. Occasionally I stole a glance at my uncle's sleeping face. I thought he looked like a quite different species. And I wondered if I too looked as free from care as he did while sleeping and being observed by others.

Goichi suddenly came in. "Ichi-san, the weather today, what do you think?"

Urged to go and take a look, I rose and went out to the open veranda. A soft curtain of mist hung over the entire area in the direction of the sea. Even the trees on the nearer headlands did not appear in their usual color. "Is it raining?" I asked.

He jumped down onto the ground and glanced at the sky. "A little."

He seemed so worried about the day's boating trip being called off that he even dragged his two sisters out to the veranda and time and again repeated, "Well? Well? What do you think?" He at last seemed to have reached the conclusion that his father's opinion as the final arbiter was necessary, so he went to wake him up.

With sleepy eyes my uncle glanced in apparent indifference over the sky and sea. "From the appearance of things, I'm sure it'll be fine before long."

His words reassured Goichi, but Chiyoko looked at me and said, "I'm worried. We can't rely on such an irresponsible forecast." I could say nothing.

"Don't worry. It'll be fine," my uncle assured us again and went off to wash up.

As we finished breakfast, a rain as thin as fog began falling. Yet since there was no wind, the sea looked calmer than usual. My good-natured mother sympathized with us about the unlucky weather. My aunt warned us against going, saying it was likely to turn into a regular rain. Nevertheless, the rest were all insistent.

"Well then," my uncle said, "all the young people will go, and the old ladies can stay behind."

"And which side is the old man on?" my aunt retorted, setting everyone laughing.

"I belong to the younger set today." Whether to prove this or not I don't know, but he stood up, tucked up the bottom of his
yukata,
and stepped down from the veranda. The two sisters and Goichi followed suit, but without adjusting their clothes.

"You'd better tuck up the bottom of your kimono like mine."

"Oh, Father!"

I looked down from the veranda and observed this strange, rustic quartet—my uncle with his hairy banditlike legs; the two young women in their straw hats resembling the braided hat worn by Lady Shizuka, the heroine of medieval legend; and their brother, his black waistband tied into a knot behind.

Momoyoko looked up at me and said with a slight smile, "Ichi-san's looking at us as if he's about to make a nasty remark."

"Hurry up and come down," Chiyoko scolded.

"Get him an old pair of
geta,"
my uncle said to her.

I went down. Takagi, who had been expected to come over, had not yet arrived, however. Thinking he had probably put off coming because of the weather, we agreed to start out and walk slowly ahead and send Goichi for him.

My uncle talked on and on to me in his usual way, and I attuned myself to him. Before long our masculine pace carried us way ahead of the sisters. Once I looked back and saw that they didn't care in the least about having fallen behind—they weren't making the slightest effort to catch up. I could only assume they had purposely lagged behind in order to wait for Takagi. That might be what they should do out of courtesy to an invited guest, but at that time it didn't seem to me the reason. I couldn't feel that such was their motive even if I made allowance for it. I had looked back with the intention of giving them a sign to quicken their pace, but I abandoned that and kept up with my uncle.

We reached the cape, where the path turned into Kotsubo. There at the side of the headland jutting out was a narrowly cut, sloping path which allowed a single person to pass around to the other side of the cape. My uncle halted at the highest point along the slope.

Suddenly he called out to his daughters, his powerful voice quite in keeping with his physique. I have to say frankly that more than once I had attempted to look back. But each time I had tried to, I had had—either from shame or self-respect—a sense of something that had stiffened my neck as hard as a boar's so that I couldn't.

They were more than a hundred yards below us. Takagi and Goichi were close behind them. When my uncle had called out "Yo-ho!" in his booming voice, the girls looked up simultaneously, but then Chiyoko immediately turned to glance behind at Takagi coming along after them. He took off the straw hat with his right hand and waved it toward us. But of the four only Goichi offered any oral response to my uncle's call. He shouted his reply with his hands above his head. Since he had probably trained himself for commands at school, his voice was so loud that it almost echoed along the cliffs and sea.

My uncle and I were standing at the verge of the cliff waiting for everyone. They came up talking together without changing their slow pace even after my uncle's shout. It seemed to me that they weren't talking in an ordinary way but quite playfully. Takagi was wearing something brown and baggy like an overcoat. He had his hands in his pockets sometimes. At first I wondered about it, thinking it impossible in this heat to be wearing an overcoat, but as he came nearer, I saw that it was a thin raincoat.

Just then my uncle said, "Ichi-san, it certainly would be fun sailing around out on the sea in a yacht." As if I hadn't noticed it before, I turned my eyes from Takagi to the sea below our feet. Near the beach was an empty white boat quietly floating on the waves. A fine rain thinner than a drizzle was still falling, obscuring the surface of the sea. The trees and rocks on the cliffs on the opposite side of the bay were almost in monochrome, unlike a typical day when they are so distinctly defined. Meanwhile, the four stragglers at last came up to where we were standing.

"Sorry I kept you waiting," Takagi said, excusing himself as soon as he saw my uncle. "I was shaving and couldn't stop halfway."

"Don't you feel hot with all that stuff on?" my uncle asked.

"He can't take it off," said Chiyoko laughing, "no matter how hot he is. He may be elegant on the outside, but underneath he's barbaric."

Opening his raincoat, Takagi said, "Look."

He had on a thin short-sleeved shirt, an odd-looking pair of knickers from which his bare legs emerged, black
tabi,
and a pair of block-like
geta.

"It's a relief to return to Japan from abroad with the freedom to wear whatever I want, even in front of ladies."

Our party, tramping single file along a road about six feet wide, came to a squalid fishing village, whose offensive odor struck us at once. Takagi took a white handkerchief from his pocket and covered his short moustache.

Suddenly my uncle put a strange question to a small boy standing nearby looking at us. "Where's the house of the man from the west who came from the south to be an adopted son?"

"I don't know," said the child.

I asked Chiyoko why her father had asked the question in such an odd way. The master of the house to whom they had inquired the previous night, she explained, had forgotten the fisherman's name, but said that we would find him if we went into this village asking for such-and-such a person. Hearing this carefree set of instructions and method of inquiry, I couldn't help feeling strangely envious when I compared them with my own meticulousness and rigidity.

"Will they understand such a funny question?" Takagi asked doubtfully.

"It'll be a miracle if they can," said Chiyoko, laughing.

"They'll understand," my uncle said with assurance.

Goichi, half in fun, asked everybody we met, "Where's the house of the man from the west who came from the south to be an adopted son?"—each time to our amusement. We finally came upon a dirty tea stall in which a young lute player wearing a braided hat on her head, leggings, and a pair of white coverings for the back of her hands was resting. When Goichi asked the question to the elderly keeper of the stall, she quite unexpectedly replied simply, "It's right near here." All of us clapped our hands and laughed. It turned out to be a small straw-thatched house along a slope at the end of about three flights of stone steps from the road.

We must have appeared a strange group as one by one the six of us climbed the narrow stone steps, each of us in a different outfit. Moreover, it was so amusingly easygoing that not one of us had any clear idea of what was going to happen next. Even my uncle, leader of the troop, though he knew only that we were to go out in a boat, apparently didn't know anything specific, such as whether the fishing was with rods or nets, or even how far we were to head out. As I stepped along behind Momoyoko on those stones worn down by the force of treading feet, I thought it a real pleasure of summering to have been able to abandon myself to this kind of meaningless behavior. At the same time, though, I suspected that behind it all a very important act in a serious drama was being played between a man and a woman. And if there were any part I was to- take in that drama, it could only be in the role of lightly being made fun of by calm-faced Fortune. And finally it occurred to me that if my uncle, dealing artlessly and uncalculatedly in everything, were to give this act its finishing touch unnoticed by anyone, he should be called a playwright endowed with an incomparable deftness of execution. As such thoughts came running across my mind, Takagi, who was right behind me, said, "It's too hot to bear! If you don't mind, I'm going to take off my raincoat."