CHAPTER 81
A week later I again passed through the room when Ojōsan and K were talking there together. This time she laughed as soon as she caught sight of me. I should have asked then and there what she found so humorous. But I simply went past them to my own room without speaking. K thus missed his chance to come out with his usual greeting. Soon I heard Ojōsan open the sliding doors and go back to the sitting room.
That evening at dinner she remarked that I was an odd person. Once again I failed to ask the reason. I did notice, however, that Okusan sent a hard stare in Ojōsan’s direction.
After dinner K and I went for a walk. We went behind Denzūin Temple and around the botanical gardens, emerging below Tomizaka. It was a long walk, but we spoke very little. K was temperamentally a man of even fewer words than I. I was not a great talker, but as we walked, I did my best to engage him in conversation. My main focus of concern was the family in whose house we were lodging. I asked him what he thought of Okusan and Ojōsan. He was quite impossible to pin down on the subject, however. He not only avoided the point, but his responses were extremely brief. He seemed far more interested in the topic of his studies than in the two ladies. Our second-year exams were almost upon us, I admit, so from any normal point of view he was behaving much more typically than I. He launched into a disquisition on Swedenborg1 that made my uneducated mind reel.
We both passed our exams successfully, and Okusan congratulated us on entering our final year. Her own daughter, her sole pride and joy, was soon to graduate as well. K remarked to me that girls emerged from their schooling knowing nothing. Clearly he chose to completely overlook Ojōsan’s extracurricular study of sewing, koto playing, and flower arranging. Laughing, I countered with my old argument that a woman’s value did not lie in scholarly accomplishment. While he did not refute this statement outright, he did not seem willing to accept it either. That pleased me—I interpreted this casual dismissal of my ideas as an indication that his former scorn of women had not changed. Ojōsan, whom I thought the embodiment of womanly excellence, was evidently still beneath his notice. In retrospect, I see that my jealousy of K was already showing its horns.
I suggested that the two of us go away together somewhere during the summer vacation. He responded with apparent reluctance. It’s true that he could not afford to go wherever he wanted, but on the other hand nothing prevented him from accepting an invitation to travel with me. I asked why he didn’t want to come. He replied that there was no real reason; he simply preferred to stay at home and read. When I contended that it would be healthier to spend the summer studying in some cooler place out of the city, he suggested I go on my own.
I wasn’t inclined to leave K there in the house alone, however—his growing intimacy with the two ladies was disturbing enough already. Needless to say, it was ridiculous for me to be so upset over a situation that I had gone out of my way to engineer in the first place. I was clearly being foolish.
Okusan, tired of seeing us endlessly at cross-purposes, stepped in to mediate. The result was that we decided the two of us would go off to the Bōshū Peninsula2 together.