CHAPTER 89
Thus I found myself at a standstill, unable to move in either direction. Maybe you know the feeling of lying there snoozing, perhaps when you are ill, and suddenly you find that your limbs are paralyzed, although you are perfectly aware of everything around you. This was how it sometimes felt to me then, unknown to those around me.
The year ended, and spring came. One day Okusan suggested to K that he invite some friends over so we could play the New Year game of poem cards.1 She was astonished when K responded that he had no friends. Indeed it was true, no one in K’s life really fit the description. He had a number of acquaintances who would pass the time of day with him when they came across each other, but they were hardly the kind of people to ask over for a game of cards. Okusan then turned to me and asked if I knew of anyone to invite, but I was not in the mood for such jolly games, so I gave a noncommittal reply.
When evening came, however, Ojōsan dragged us both off to play. With just the four of us, it was a very subdued game. Unused to such frivolities as he was, moreover, K remained reserved and standoffish. I demanded to know whether he even knew the Hyakunin isshū poems. “Not really,” he replied. Ojōsan apparently took my words to be contemptuous, for she then began to lend him her obvious support, and in the end the two of them were more or less aligned against me. With any encouragement the situation could easily have escalated into a quarrel as far as I was concerned, but luckily K steadfastly maintained his earlier aloof indifference. I could detect not the slightest hint of triumph in him, so I managed to finish the game without incident.
It would have been two or three days later that Okusan and Ojōsan set off in the morning to visit some relatives in Ichigaya. Classes had not yet started, so K and I were in effect left to look after the house for the day. I felt no urge either to read or to take a walk and instead settled beside the brazier, chin propped on elbow, daydreaming. Next door K was equally quiet. Such silence reigned that for each of us, the other could as well not have been there. There was nothing unusual in this silence, of course, and I paid it no particular attention.
Around ten o’clock K suddenly opened the doors between our rooms and stood in the doorway. What was I thinking? he asked. I had not really been thinking anything, or if I had, then I was probably mulling over the usual problem of Ojōsan. Okusan was a necessary part of my conundrum, of course, but lately K’s inseparable involvement had complicated it further. He had been vaguely present in my mind as a kind of obstacle, but now that I was face-to-face with him, I couldn’t come out and say so. I simply looked at him silently. K then strode into my room and sat down in front of my brazier. I took my elbows off the edge and pushed the brazier slightly toward him.
K began to talk in a way that was quite out of character. To which part of Ichigaya had Okusan and Ojōsan gone? he asked. I said I believed they went to the aunt’s house. Who is she? he asked. I told him she was the wife of a military officer. Why had they gone out so early in the year, when the round of New Year visits traditionally did not begin for women until after the fifteenth of January? I could only reply that I did not know.