CHAPTER 88
I asked K if he and Ojōsan had left the house together. No, he replied. They had come across each other in Masago-chō,1 he explained, so they came home together. I could not really question him further, but over dinner I felt an urge to ask Ojōsan the same question. Her response was to laugh in that way I so disliked, then to challenge me to guess where she’d been. In those days I had a quick temper, and I felt a sudden surge of anger at being treated so flippantly. Okusan was the only person at the table to notice, however. K remained oblivious.
I was uncertain whether Ojōsan was being intentionally teasing or only innocently playful. As young women went, she was very astute, but I had to admit that certain aspects of her were typical of the things about other girls that annoyed me. It was since K’s arrival in the house that I had begun to notice these irritating traits. I was unsure whether to put this down to my own jealousy of K or to her artfulness in relation to me. I am not inclined even now to dismiss my jealousy. As I have said many times, I was well aware that jealousy was at work below my love for Ojōsan. The smallest trifle, something that would be quite insignificant to anyone else, could set it off.
To digress for a moment, it seems to me that this kind of jealousy is perhaps a necessary part of love. Since my marriage, I have been aware that my jealous impulses have slowly faded; at the same time, I no longer feel that early fierce passion of love.
Hesitant as my heart had been, I now knew I had to gather my courage and fling it down before her. By her I mean Okusan, not Ojōsan. My plan was to set marriage discussions in motion by coming straight out and asking for Ojōsan’s hand. Yet though my decision was made, I still held back from day to day. I know this makes me seem terribly irresolute—I don’t mind that it does. But my inability to act did not stem from lack of willpower. Before K had appeared on the scene, any move I felt the urge to make was blocked by my abhorrence of falling into a trap as I had done once before; after K’s arrival, my suspicion that she might be more attracted to him held me back. If she did indeed favor him, I had decided, then there was no value in declaring my own love.
It was not so much that the thought of the shame was painful to me; it was rather that, no matter how I loved her, I hated the thought of marrying a woman who secretly longed for another. Many men are perfectly happy to marry the girl they love whether she returns the feelings or not, but in those days I considered such men to be more worldly and cynical than we were, or else more obtuse to the workings of love. I was much too ardent to have any truck with the notion that once you marry you somehow simply settle down. In a word, I had a romantic faith in the nobility of love, while simultaneously practicing a devious form of it.
Naturally, during all our long time together there had been occasions when I could have confessed myself directly to Ojōsan and asked for her hand, but I had purposely chosen not to. I was very conscious of the fact that Japanese convention forbade such things, but it was not really this alone that restrained me. I assumed that in such a situation Japanese, and particularly Japanese girls, lacked the courage to be frank and honest, so I could not hope for a candid response from her.