CHAPTER 101
Two or three days passed, and still I said nothing. All that time, needless to say, constant anxiety about K weighed me down. I must at least make some sort of move just to ease my conscience, I told myself. Okusan’s high spirits and Ojōsan’s manner with me were a further painful goad to action. In her forthright and unreserved way, Okusan might all too easily let something slip at the dinner table at any moment. I could never be sure, either, that K’s heart would not find cause for suspicion in the way Ojōsan had begun to behave toward me, which seemed to me worryingly obvious. All told, it was imperative to let K know how matters now stood between me and the family. Yet making such a move felt next to impossible—I was all too aware what shaky moral ground I stood on.
Perhaps there was nothing for it, I thought, but to ask Okusan to reveal the situation to K, needless to say at a time when I was out. But simply having the facts told to him indirectly would do nothing to alter my shame. On the other hand, if I asked her to tell him some made-up story, she would certainly demand an explanation. And if I were to confess the whole thing to her, I would be choosing to reveal my failings to the girl I loved and her mother. I was an earnest young man, and it seemed to me that such a confession would compromise the trust that marriage depended on. I could not bear the thought of losing so much as a particle of my beloved’s belief in me before we had even married.
In short, I was a fool whose foot had slipped from the straight and narrow path of honesty that I had set myself to walk. Or perhaps I was really just cunning. For now, only heaven and my own heart understood the truth. But I was cornered; in the very act of regaining my integrity, I would have to reveal to those around me that I had lost it. I was desperate to cover my deceitfulness, yet it was imperative that I act. I was paralyzed, transfixed by my dilemma.
Five or six days later, Okusan suddenly inquired whether I had told K about it. Not yet, I replied. Why not? she asked reproachfully. I froze. The shock of her next words has seared them into my memory.
“So that’s why he looked so odd when I mentioned it. Don’t you think it was wrong of you to keep quiet and pretend nothing had happened, to such a close friend?”
I asked if K had said anything in response. Not really, she replied. But I could not resist pressing her for more detailed information. Okusan, of course, had no reason to hide anything.
“There really is nothing worth telling,” she said, then launched into a thorough description of how he had taken the news. All in all, I saw that K had taken this final blow extremely calmly. His first reaction to the news of my new relationship with Ojōsan had been simply to say “Is that so?” “I hope you’ll rejoice with us,” Okusan had said, and at this he looked her in the eye for the first time. “Congratulations,” he said with a little smile, and stood up. Before he opened the door to leave the sitting room, he turned to her again and asked when the wedding would be. “I wish I could give them a wedding gift,” he apparently said, “but I’m afraid I haven’t the money.”
As I sat before her hearing these words, my heart clenched tight with pain.