CHAPTER 92
Soon after I returned, I heard a rickshaw approaching. In those days the wheels were not yet lined with rubber, and you could hear the noisy clatter from quite a distance. The vehicle eventually pulled up in front of the gate.
About thirty minutes later I was summoned for the evening meal. The room next door was still scattered with the bright disorder of the formal visiting kimonos that the two ladies had just taken off. They apologized to us for being late. They had hurried home, Okusan said, to be in time to prepare supper. This thoughtfulness, however, was quite lost on both K and me. At the table my responses were brief and curt, as if begrudging each word. K was even more taciturn. The two ladies were still in fine high spirits from their rare excursion together, so our black mood was starkly evident in contrast.
Okusan asked me what had happened. I said I wasn’t feeling very well. This was no more than the truth. Then Ojōsan addressed the same question to K. He gave a different reply. He simply said he didn’t feel like talking. Why not? she demanded. On a sudden impulse, I raised my reluctant eyes to his face, curious to know how he would respond. K’s lips were trembling in that way he had. Anyone who did not know him would judge that he was lost for an answer. Ojōsan laughed and said he must be thinking those difficult thoughts of his again. He reddened slightly.
That evening I went to bed earlier than usual. Concerned at my statement that I was feeling unwell, Okusan arrived around ten with some buckwheat soup. My room was already dark, however. She slid the door open a fraction and peered in, in consternation. As she did so, the lamplight from K’s desk cast a soft diagonal beam into my room. It seemed he was still up. Okusan came in and sat at my pillow, setting the bowl down beside me. “Do have this,” she said. “It will warm you up. You must have caught cold.” Grudgingly I drank the glutinous liquid, while she sat watching.
I lay in the dark thinking until late in the night. What this amounted to, of course, was fruitlessly going over and over the same problem without arriving at any conclusion. At one point I suddenly wondered what K was doing right then in the room next door. “Hey,” I called out, only half aware of what I was doing. “Hey,” he immediately responded. He was still up. “Haven’t you gone to bed yet?” I asked through the doors. He was just about to, he replied. “What are you doing?” I asked. This time there was no reply. Instead, five or six minutes later, I heard as clearly as if it were happening beside me the rasp of a cupboard being opened and the dull thump of bedding being laid on the floor. “What time is it?” I asked. “Twenty past one,” he replied. Then I heard him softly blow out the flame of his lamp, and blackness and silence fell upon the house.
As I lay in the dark, my staring eyes only grew clearer. Again without really thinking, I called to K once more. Once more he responded. At length, I brought myself to say I wanted to talk more about what he had told me that morning. “Is it okay to talk now?” I asked. I did not, of course, intend to have this conversation through closed doors. I was just hoping for a simple answer. But although K had responded willingly enough to my earlier calls, he now resisted. “Mm, well,” he muttered softly. Another shock of fear ran through me.