CHAPTER 65
I moved in immediately and was given the room where our initial interview had taken place. It was the best room in the house. At that time a few better-quality student boardinghouses were springing up in the Hongō area, and I had a fair idea of the top of the range in student accommodation. The room I was now master of was far finer than anything else available. When I moved in, it seemed almost too good for a simple student like me.
It was a large room of eight tatami mats. The alcove had a pair of staggered shelves set into one side, and the wall opposite the veranda contained a long built-in cupboard. There were no windows, but the sun streamed in from the south-facing veranda.
On the day I arrived, I noted the flowers arranged in the alcove, and a koto propped beside them.1 I did not care for either. I had been brought up by a father who appreciated the Chinese style of poetry, calligraphy, and tea-making, and since childhood my own tastes had also tended toward the Chinese. Perhaps for this reason I despised this sort of merely charming decorativeness.
My uncle had squandered the collection of objects that my father had accumulated during his lifetime, but some at least had survived. Before I left home, I had asked my school friend to care for most of them and carried four or five of the best scrolls away with me in my trunk. I intended to take them out as soon as I arrived and hang one in the alcove to enjoy it. But when I saw the flower arrangement and the koto, I lost my courage. Later I learned that these flowers had been put there especially to welcome me, and I smiled drily to myself. The koto had been there all along, for want of somewhere else to store it.
From this description you will no doubt have sensed the presence of a young girl somewhere in the story. I must admit, I myself had been curious about the daughter ever since I first heard of her. Perhaps because these guilty thoughts had robbed me of a natural response, or perhaps because I was still awkward with people, when I first met her I managed only a flustered greeting. She, in turn, blushed.
My imaginary idea of Ojōsan2 had been built on hints gained from her mother’s appearance and manner. This fantasized image of her, however, was far from flattering. Having decided that the mother conformed to the type of the military wife, I proceeded to assume that Ojōsan would be much the same. But one look at the girl’s face overturned all my preconceptions. In their place a new and utterly unanticipated breath of Woman pervaded me. From that moment the flower arrangement in the alcove ceased to displease me; the koto propped beside it was no longer an annoyance.
When the flowers in the alcove inevitably began to wilt, they were replaced with a new arrangement. From time to time the koto was carried off to the L-shaped room diagonally opposite mine. I would sit at the desk in my room, chin propped on hands, listening to its plangent tone. I had no idea whether the playing was good or bad, but the fact that the pieces were fairly simple suggested that the player was not very skilled. No doubt her playing was of a piece with her flower-arranging skills. I knew something of flower arranging and could see that she was far from good at it.
Yet day after day flowers were unashamedly arrayed in my alcove, although the arrangement always took the same form, and the receptacle never changed. As for the music, it was odder than the flowers. She simply plucked dully away at the instrument. I never heard her really sing the accompanying songs. She did murmur the words, it’s true, but in such a tiny voice that she might have been whispering secrets. And whenever the teacher scolded her, the voice ceased altogether.
But I gazed in delight at those clumsy flower arrangements, and I listened with pleasure to the koto’s awkward twang.