CHAPTER 72
When I got home, I told this story to Okusan and Ojōsan. Okusan laughed, then looked me in the eye and added, “That must have been awkward for you.” I wondered then whether this was how a woman induces a man to talk. Her look certainly gave me reason to think so. Perhaps I should have asked for Ojōsan’s hand then and there. But my heart was by now deeply ingrained with distrust. I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped and deliberately shifted the direction of the conversation elsewhere.
Carefully avoiding the crucial subject of my own feelings, I probed Okusan on her intentions for her daughter’s marriage. She told me frankly that there had already been two or three proposals, but as her daughter was still a young schoolgirl, there was no hurry. Though she did not say as much, she clearly set great store by her daughter’s good looks. She even remarked in passing that a suitable husband could be found anytime they wished. But as her daughter was an only child, she said, she was not inclined to send her off with just anyone. I got the impression that she was of two minds about whether to adopt a son-in-law as a member of their own household, or let her daughter marry out as a bride.1
I felt I was gaining quite a lot of information as I listened. Effectively, however, I had forfeited my own chance to speak. I couldn’t say a word on my own behalf now. At an appropriate point I broke off the conversation and returned to my room.
Ojōsan, who had been sitting with us laughing and protesting at my tale, by this time had retreated to a corner with her back turned. As I stood to leave, I turned and saw her there. It is impossible to read the heart of someone who is looking away, and I couldn’t guess what she might have been thinking as she listened. She was sitting beside the half-open closet and had taken something from it and laid it on her lap. She now appeared to be gazing intently down at it. In a corner of the open closet, I caught sight of the fabric I had bought her two days before. My own new robe, I saw, lay folded there with hers.
As I was standing wordlessly to leave, Okusan suddenly grew serious. “What’s your opinion?” she asked. Confused by the unexpected question, I had to ask what she meant. She wanted to know, she explained, whether I thought an early marriage was a good idea. I said I thought it wise to take things slowly. “I think so too,” she replied.
It was at this point in the relationship among the three of us that another man entered the picture, one whose arrival in the household crucially affected my fate. If he had not crossed my path, I doubt that I would need to write this long letter to you now. It was as if I stood there oblivious as the devil brushed by me, unaware that he cast a shadow upon me that would darken my whole life. It was I who brought this man into the house, I must confess. Naturally, I needed Okusan’s consent, so I told her his story and asked if he could move in with me. She advised against it but had no convincing argument to offer. For my part, I could see every reason why I must bring him into the household, and so I persisted in following my own judgment and did what I believed was right.