“Are you finished, Brother? Are you still eating?”
The state of the food remaining on the tray might have been interpreted either way.
“I’m through.”
Frowning, O-Hide carried the tray to the head of the stairs. Having just left her own tidy home, the breakfast remains, abandoned at her brother’s pillow side for who knew how long, possibly because the nurse had too much on her hands to come and fetch them, struck her as something of a disgrace.
“Filthy!”
The exclamation wasn’t admonitory so much as spoken to herself as she returned to her original seat. In any event, Tsuda did not engage with her.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“I was notified by phone.”
“O-Nobu?”
“Umm—”
“I told her she didn’t have to bother.”
It was O-Hide’s turn not to engage.
“I wanted to come right away but, unfortunately, I had a little problem yesterday—”
O-Hide caught herself and didn’t continue. Since her marriage, she had developed a habit of breaking off in the middle of a thought. There were times when Tsuda took this badly, interpreting it to mean “Since I’m married now even you are an outsider, Brother.” Considering the nature of his own marriage, Tsuda was by no means incapable of perceiving on reflection a certain logic in this. Far from it, he found himself secretly thinking how welcome it would be if O-Nobu would only engage the outside world with an attitude like his younger sister’s. And yet the feeling he was left with when O-Hide treated him in this manner was definitely not pleasant. He no longer had time, nor could he be bothered, to reflect that this was precisely the way he invariably behaved toward her.
Without urging O-Hide to finish, Tsuda spoke his mind.
“Busy as you are, there was no reason for you to come today either. I’m not that sick.”
“But Sister went to the trouble of phoning to ask me to visit if I had time.”
“Is that so?”
“Besides, I have a little business to discuss with you.”
For the first time, Tsuda turned toward O-Hide.
[93]
SINCE THE surgery he had been plagued by an unpleasant feeling in the afflicted area. It was merely a sensation caused by the sudden contraction of the muscles around the incision, which was packed with gauze, but once it began, it was the sort of feeling that progressed as regularly as breathing or the beat of a pulse and did not abate.
He had felt the first contraction the day before yesterday. It had occurred as O-Nobu was on her way downstairs after receiving his permission to go to the theater, and it was by no means a new experience. Familiar with the same sensation from the last time he had been treated, he cried out involuntarily to himself, “Not again!” And indeed, as if on purpose to revive in him a bitter memory, the contractions progressed regularly and unabated. First his flesh contracted and he could feel the gauze chafing; next came a gradual unknotting until he was feeling almost normal, whereupon, with the force of a wave that has receded breaking again upon the shore, a violent contraction assaulted him newly. At this point his will was stripped of its normal authority to command the afflicted area. And the more urgently he struggled to relax his muscles, the more disobedient they became.
He didn’t know what sort of communication existed between these strange assaults and O-Nobu. He had begun to feel sorry about treating her like a bird in a cage. He had felt it was unmanly to keep her tethered to his side. And so he had happily released her into free air. But no sooner had she thanked him for his kindness and left his sick bed than he had begun abruptly to feel abandoned. His ears peeled, he had heard O-Nobu’s footsteps descending the stairs. Even the sound of the bell ringing as she pushed open the door at the entrance had seemed unsolicitous to an extreme. It was just at that moment that the unbearable feeling in the muscles around his wound had begun to recur. He attributed this to some stimulus. And it seemed to him that the stimulus must be coming from hypersensitive nerves. Did that mean that O-Nobu’s actions had rendered his nerves acutely sensitive? Displeased as he was with her behavior, such a conclusion was going too far. Even so, it seemed plain that this was no coincidence. Arbitrarily enough, he posited some connection between the two. And he was inclined to spell it out for O-Nobu after the fact. To make her regret the unfortunate consequence of leaving her husband in a hospital bed and rushing off to enjoy herself for the entire day. But he didn’t know how to convey this appropriately. Assuming he found the right words, he felt certain they would make no sense to her. And even if she did understand, it would be difficult to make her feel just as he wished her to. He would be left with no choice but to suffer his feelings in silence.
As he turned to O-Hide, a new contraction seemed to forewarn him that this would be the outcome. He grimaced.
O-Hide, who knew nothing and could not be expected to follow the minute turns in Tsuda’s reasoning, interpreted his expression as the familiar face he seemed to hold in reserve for when he was alone in her company.
“If this is a bad time, shall I wait until you’re out of the hospital?”
Though there was nothing particularly sympathetic about her attitude, she was nonetheless obliged to be somewhat in consideration.
“Does it hurt somewhere?”
Tsuda merely nodded. Silent for a while, O-Hide observed him. The contractions around his wound began again their regular throbbing. The silence between them continued. All the while, Tsuda maintained the scowl on his face.
“It’s terrible you’re in such pain. What was Sister thinking? On the phone yesterday she was talking as if you were doing well and not in pain.”
“What does she know?”
“So it started hurting after Sister left?”
Unable to say “Hardly! It was O-Nobu’s fault that it started hurting!” Tsuda began suddenly to see himself as a spoiled child. Never mind appearances, he was embarrassed that in his heart he was feeling so very unlike an elder brother.
“So what are you after today?”
“Brother, I don’t have to talk about it now when you’re in pain — it can wait.”
Tsuda was adept at dissembling. But at this moment he had no heart for it. He had already forgotten the feeling in his rear. An important feature of the contractions was that they ceased if forgotten and were forgotten if they ceased.
“I’m all right — why not say what you have to say?”
“As you can imagine, coming from me it’s nothing very nice — you don’t mind?”
Tsuda had a good idea what to expect.
[94]
“THE USUAL again, I suppose?”
It was all Tsuda could think of to say after a brief pause. But his countenance was already declaring as always that he had no desire to hear. O-Hide was angrily aware of this contradiction.
“I said we could talk about it some other time. Then you go out of your way to prompt me and it makes me feel like talking now!”
“Then say what’s on your mind. That’s what you’re here for.”
“But you look so annoyed.”
O-Hide wasn’t a woman to be given pause by a simple look of displeasure, not in front of her brother at any rate. There was accordingly no reason for Tsuda to feel sorry for her. On the contrary, it struck him that this was a creature capable of criticizing him excessively despite the fact that she was his younger sister. Without engaging her in an argument, he leaped ahead.
“Has Kyoto said something again?”
“You might say that.”
Since the almost invariable pattern was that news from Kyoto arrived in duplicate, his letter from their father and hers from their mother, he saw no need of confirming the author of the letter to her. However, in view of current circumstances, he was unable to feel indifferent about its contents. Since he had sent off his second request to Kyoto, the question of whether money would be coming had been constantly on his mind. Despite how careful he was not to talk about the incident they now referred to as “the usual,” he understood better than O-Hide the circumstances that entangled the question with his urgent concern about expenses at the end of the month and the cost of hospitalization in a manner that made it difficult to separate them. And so he felt obliged to step forward with an explicit inquiry.