Light and Dark by Natsume Soseki

Author:Natsume Soseki
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC019000, Fiction/Literary, LIT008030, Literary Criticism/Asian/Japanese
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

[ 97 ]

UNABLE TO advance by unbraiding the tangle of logic and their mutual feelings, they moved in circles, approaching but never quite touching the issue at hand and concealing their irritation at the other’s avoidance. But they were siblings; they shared a dogged, viscous quality like asphalt overheated in the sun. While secretly deploring the other’s incapacity for frankness, neither was sufficiently tactless to level an accusation. Tsuda, however, as the elder brother and the man, was more adept than O-Hide at bringing the conversation to bear.

“So you’re saying you have no sympathy for your big brother.”

“Of course I’m not.”

“Or at least that you have no sympathy for O-Nobu. Which comes down to basically the same thing.”

“But I haven’t said a word about Sister.”

“Anyway, it turns out I’m the real offender in this affair. I’m perfectly aware that’s the conclusion without having to ask you a thing. Fine! I’ll accept my punishment. I’ll get through this month without any money from Father!”

“You can manage that?”

Tsuda’s reply was elicited by the skeptical chill in O-Hide’s voice.

“If I can’t I’ll die trying!”

O-Hide relaxed a little her tightly pursed mouth and revealed a glimpse of her white teeth. The figure of O-Nobu fingering her shiny obi beneath the electric light rose in Tsuda’s mind.

Maybe I should explain our financial situation to O-Nobu once and for all, the whole story.

For Tsuda there was no simpler approach to a resolution. Under the circumstances, however, there was no confession likely to prove so difficult. He had an intimate understanding of O-Nobu’s vanity. It was equal to his own, the vanity that required him to satisfy hers to the extent possible. To rend her trust in him in a place so important to a woman would be like striking a crushing blow to himself. The source of his considerable pain, as he imagined it, was not so much feeling sorry for O-Nobu as having to compromise his dignity in front of his wife. Even in a case like this, so trivial a matter it would invite the laughter of others, he was unable to act. The truth was, his family had more than sufficient money to maintain appearances in front of O-Nobu. This was a fact there was no denying, and it took precedence.

He was, moreover, a man who never lost his temper. A man who had inherited from his mother and father a temperamental inability to forget himself, he took a dim view of emotional outbursts. Having just blurted “Or die trying,” he continued to observe O-Hide closely. He wasn’t embarrassed by the absence in his gut of any feeling nearly so resolute as his exclamation. Far from it, he began dispassionately to work the scales of a balance. Against the pain of confessing to O-Nobu he weighed the unpleasantness of accepting aid from O-Hide. Between the two, he was feeling inclined to choose the latter.

O-Hide, who possessed the means to accommodate him easily, was left unsatisfied by the absence of any heartfelt regret coming from her brother.

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