“You should be ready by the day after tomorrow.”
Tsuda was thankful. He resolved to leave for the hot springs as soon as he was released. Thinking it was better not to mention this to the doctor even in passing in case he should advise against the trip, he said nothing. The rashness of this was entirely unlike him. Even as he resolved to follow his imprudent impulse no matter what, he was aware of the contradiction, and it made him uneasy. Perhaps to divert himself, he posed the doctor an irrelevant question.
“You said you cut around the sphincter, so I’m wondering why the gauze is packed from below?”
“The sphincter isn’t at the entrance to the wound; it’s recessed a good two centimeters. But there’s a place where we shaved a centimeter or so diagonally from underneath.”
That evening Tsuda began eating rice gruel. Having endured for days a diet of bread alone, the taste of the watery rice was refreshing. He may have lacked the sensibility to appreciate “gruel on a cold night” as poetry,* but sipping the thin gruel he relished, more than an ordinary haiku poet would, its warmth in contrast to the autumn chill.
He was constipated from the surgery, and to help him move his bowels he had once again to drink a mild laxative. His stomach hadn’t bothered him so much but, as it emptied, his mood seemed to lighten. Sprawled on his mattress, physically more comfortable, he spent his time waiting for the day when he was to be released.
Once the night had passed, that day came quickly. O-Nobu had come to pick him up in a rickshaw; the minute he saw her, he spoke.
“So I can finally go home. I’m thankful.”
“But not that thankful, I imagine.”
“I absolutely am.”
“Compared with being in a hospital, I suppose you’d say?”
“Something like that.”
Having replied in his usual style, Tsuda quickly added, as if he had suddenly remembered something, “That jacket you made for me really came in handy. It feels wonderful to wear; maybe it’s the new cotton padding.”
Laughing, O-Nobu chaffed her husband.
“Gracious! You’re so good at flattery all of a sudden. But I’m afraid that you’re mistaken.”
As she folded the jacket in question, O-Nobu confessed to her husband that she hadn’t used only new cotton for the padding. Tsuda was changing his kimono. What was important to him at that moment was wrapping a silk obi with a tie-dyed pattern around and around his hips. He had paid scant attention to the lining in his jacket, nor was he moved to respond affably to O-Nobu’s honest revelation.
“Is that so?” he said merely, and added nothing.
“If it’s comfortable, why not take it with you?”
“I suppose it would put me in mind of your kindness once in a while.”
“Except if the jacket they have for you at the spa turns out to be much nicer, you’ll feel so embarrassed — to wear mine.”
“That would never happen.”
“It could. If something isn’t well made, it’s better not to have it. At a time like that. Because whatever kindness was intended flies out the window.”
O-Nobu’s innocent words conveyed more to Tsuda’s ears than the simple meaning she intended. He heard in what she said the vibration of a certain irony. It was possible to interpret the jacket as a symbol of something. Feeling uncomfortable, Tsuda tied a simple knot in his masculine obi with his back still turned to O-Nobu.
A few minutes later, accompanied by the nurse, they emerged in the street and immediately seated themselves in the waiting rickshaw.
“Sayonara.”
With this single word, the curtain finally fell on an eventful week of hospital life.
* Gruel and the chill of night are not uncommonly linked in the first or third line of a three-line haiku.
[154]
BEFORE TSUDA could leave for the hot springs, the first item of business on his agenda was meeting Kobayashi. On the designated day, having received from O-Nobu the money he would need, he turned back to her, smiling.
“It’s too bad he has to cost us so much.”
“Then you shouldn’t give it to him.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to.”
“Then why ever would you? Shall I go instead and turn him down?”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind.”
“Where are you meeting him? Just tell me and I’ll be happy to go.”
Tsuda wasn’t sure if O-Nobu was serious. But it was easy enough to imagine that encouraging something like this as if it were a harmless joke was not unlikely to backfire and leave him with an unmanageable problem. O-Nobu was a woman who acted on her word to the letter when the chips were down. It made no difference that this would entail breaking a promise; there was no guaranteeing she wouldn’t willingly undertake to reject Kobayashi in his stead. As a precaution against entering a danger zone, he purposely diverted the conversation in a frivolous direction.
“Such unexpected courage for a woman.”
“I believe I do have courage. But it’s never been tested so I don’t know how far it actually goes.”
“Let’s not put you to the test. I know it’s there and that’s quite enough. It can be awkward for a man when his wife starts throwing her courage around.”
“It shouldn’t be the least bit awkward. Not if a woman is being courageous for her husband’s sake.”
“I suppose there are occasions when a man might have cause to feel grateful,” Tsuda remarked with no intention of engaging in a serious dialogue. “But I can’t say I’ve seen you display any courage that’s worthy of admiration so far.”
“Of course you haven’t. Because I haven’t let anything out, nothing at all. Try having a look inside. Because it happens I’m not as placid as you think.”
Tsuda didn’t reply. But O-Nobu didn’t stop there.
“Do I appear to be so easygoing?”
“You do. Immensely.”
This unconsidered, vapid exchange brought from O-Nobu a faint sigh before she spoke.
“It’s so unrewarding, being a woman. Why did I have to be born a woman?”
“It’s no use haggling about that with me. You should hold your mother and father responsible and complain to them.”
O-Nobu smiled uncomfortably but had more to say.
“Just you wait!”
“For what?”
Tsuda was a little surprised.
“Just you wait and see.”
“I’m waiting, what the devil will I see?”
“I can’t say until something actually happens.”
“You can’t say meaning you don’t know yourself?”
“That’s right.”
“What a joke! Then your prediction is like grasping at clouds.”
“And I’m saying you just watch because my prediction will definitely come true any time now.”
Tsuda snorted. O-Nobu’s attitude, conversely, was gradually turning grave.
“I’m serious. I don’t know the details, but I’ve been thinking for a while now that the day was coming when I’d have to summon up my courage at a certain moment all at once.”
“At a certain moment all at once? Sounds like a fantasy.”
“I’m not talking about sometime in my whole life. I mean soon. A certain moment all at once that’s coming soon.”
“It’s sounding worse and worse. In the near future a day is coming when I’ll be subjected to a show of reckless courage from my wife — how am I to handle that?”
“I’ll be doing it for you. Just as I said before, this will be courage for my husband’s sake.”
Observing O-Nobu’s earnestness in her face, Tsuda was drawn in little by little. In his temperament there was no poetry equal to hers. In its place, somewhat distasteful facts oppressed him from a distance. Gradually O-Nobu’s poetry, what he had called her fantasy, became active in him. He had been toying with the wings of a bird thinking it was dead; when the wings began abruptly to move, it gave him an odd feeling and he wound up the conversation at once.