Tsuda interrupted impatiently.
“I get it. I understand. You’re advising me not to collide with people. Since a collision with you in particular will only hurt me, you’re advising me to me to proceed as amicably as I can, isn’t that it?”
Kobayashi’s face was a picture of innocence.
“With me? I have no intention of fighting with you.”
“I told you I get it!”
“If you do, that’s fine. Let me just say to avoid any misunderstanding, I’ve been talking all the while about O-Hide-san.”
“I know that.”
“And you’re thinking about Kyoto, right? About the Kyoto situation ending badly?”
“Obviously.”
“But the trouble is, that isn’t all! There will be other repercussions. If you’re not careful.”
Kobayashi stared at Tsuda as if to ascertain the effect of his words. Tsuda, trying to remain unconcerned, failed.
[120]
KOBAYASHI SAW the moment and seized it.
“What you should know about O-Hide—” he began, taking Tsuda captive at once. “What you need to know is that she stopped somewhere else before she came to Sensei’s place. Can you imagine where she might have gone?”
Tsuda couldn’t imagine. Where this matter was concerned, there was no place she would have been likely to go other than Fujii.
“It’s not in Tokyo.”
“But it is.”
Tsuda was obliged to rummage in his mind. But no matter how he pondered, he could find nothing where there was nothing to find. When Kobayashi finally disclosed the name with a laugh, there was understandably surprise in Tsuda’s exclamation.
“Yoshikawa! Why would she go to see Yoshikawa-san? He has nothing to do with any of this.”
Tsuda couldn’t help thinking how odd this was.
Connecting Yoshikawa and Hori was accomplished easily enough without the help of a powerful imagination. At the time of his marriage, it would have been clear to everyone that the Yoshikawas, who had undertaken to serve as pro forma go-betweens, had established a social connection with Tsuda’s sister O-Hide and her husband, Hori. Even so, there was no apparent reason why that connection should have prompted O-Hide to appear at Yoshikawa’s door with this problem in her hand.
“She must have gone just to visit, to pay her respects.”
“Apparently not. Not by her own account.”
All of a sudden Tsuda wanted to hear his sister’s story. But instead of satisfying him, Kobayashi spoke reprovingly.
“For someone as cautious and well prepared as you appear to be, you can also be a real dunce. Maybe it’s because you work so blessed hard at being perfect there are places you just don’t get around to. What we have here is a good example. First of all, you had no call to make O-Hide angry, not in your position. And to rile her up and then let her race off to Yoshikawa was just plain dumb. But you’d convinced yourself she’d never go; from the beginning you’ve been underestimating her, and that was a mistake that seems very unlike you!”
In hindsight, based on the consequences, Kobayashi had an easy time uncovering Tsuda’s lapses.
“Your père is friends with Yoshikawa, correct? And your père asked Yoshikawa to look after you, correct? So it’s only natural that O-Hide would have gone straight to him.”
Tsuda recalled the gist of his employer’s warning in his office before he had checked into the hospital. Don’t be doing anything to worry your father. I know exactly what you’re doing in Tokyo. If anything irregular happens, you can count on me letting Kyoto know. So be careful. Even at this distance he could see that the admonition had been intended half in jest. Now it appeared that O-Hide was attempting to convert it into something altogether serious.
“The woman is a loose cannon!”
Tsuda’s assessment included a measure of surprise: imprudence wasn’t part of the family legacy.
“What the devil can she have said to Yoshikawa-san? If you take that one at her word, she’s the only one in the right and everyone else is wrong, and that’s a problem.”
Tsuda had a fleeting vision of serious consequences that lay beyond the immediate impact of what his sister might have said. His own credibility with Yoshikawa, the relationship between Yoshikawa and Okamoto, even Okamoto’s intimacy with O-Nobu — there was no telling how any of these connections might be deranged depending on what O-Hide chose to say.
“Women are all the same: shallow!”
At this Kobayashi suddenly laughed again, and his laughter this time, uproarious, made Tsuda shudder. For the first time he became aware of what he had said.
“But that doesn’t matter now — I assume you heard O-Hide telling Uncle Fujii what she said at the Yoshikawas — what was it?”
“She was talking a blue streak about something. Truth is, I didn’t pay much attention.”
Having come this far, to the critical juncture, Kobayashi went blank and drifted off. Tsuda was dismayed. He had been stewing in his disappointment for a while when Kobayashi returned to the matter at hand.
“But just be patient a little longer. You’ll hear all about it whether you want to or not.”
Tsuda couldn’t believe that O-Hide would show up again.
“I’m not talking about O-Hide. She won’t be coming. But Mrs. Yoshikawa will. I’m not lying, I heard her say so. O-Hide even told her what time she should visit. She’ll probably be here soon.”
O-Nobu’s prediction had come to pass. Tsuda had been wondering how to summon her, and now Madam Yoshikawa was on her way.
[121]
TWO THOUGHTS flickered in his mind in quick succession. The first was a presentiment that handling Madam Yoshikawa when she arrived would require skill. In view of the strategy he had planned, a visit on her own accord was what he most desired, but inasmuch as a new dimension had now been added to the significance of her visit, he would have to change his approach to their conversation. Imagining what her attitude was likely to be in this situation, he felt a certain uneasiness. It seemed reasonable to anticipate a perceptible difference in the lady before and after O-Hide had infused her with a negative bias. But he was also in possession of his customary self-confidence.
He felt prepared to overturn in a single interview whatever prejudice and antipathy she might bring along. To achieve less would be to jeopardize his own future. He awaited her visit with three parts of anxiety to seven parts of confidence in himself.
The second thought suggested he was well advised to alter for the moment his attitude toward O-Nobu. Earlier, in an excess of boredom, he had counted the minutes until she should arrive. Now he was feeling another sort of tension; he anticipated a difficulty of another sort entirely. O-Nobu was no longer needed. Perhaps it were better to say that a visit from her now would seriously incommode him. There were issues, a particular issue, Tsuda wanted to discuss privately with Madam Yoshikawa. He was determined to do what he could to prevent O-Nobu and that lady from running in to each other here.