MY DEAR KANAME:

Our trip after we left you went quite as we had planned it. We returned on the 25th of last month. Your most esteemed letter of the 29th arrived yesterday and was read with the deepest astonishment. Though I was aware that Misako's character left something to be desired, I must say that it was not for this piece of effrontery that I reared her. The devil must have given her the itch, if I may be forgiven the expression. I am truly grieved, and I find myself wondering why the fates have conspired to bring such news to me at this age. There is no way, I fear, to convey to you the shame and remorse I feel.

The circumstances being as you have described them, you can hardly be expected, in your indignation, to take kindly to interference. There are nevertheless certain matters which must be discussed, and I shall have to take the liberty of asking whether you and Misako could in the near future visit me. I shall discuss the problem with her in a friendly manner and attempt to make her see her folly, and if she appears not to be in a penitent mood I shall punish her as seems proper. I must ask you most humbly to forgive her should she wish to reform.

I was fortunate enough to find a puppet, and would have written you of it immediately but for a stiffness in the shoulder, which stiffness I was still nursing when this bewildering news arrived. An old man may perhaps be forgiven for complaining that his pilgrimage seems to have won him no grace, that he seems to have earned for himself only the wrath of the Buddha.

I shall be waiting for you whenever it is possible for you to come; even tomorrow would not be too soon. And please—I must be emphatic—do nothing extreme until we have had our talk.

"This will never do." Kaname handed the letter to Misako. " i am truly grieved, and I find myself wondering why the fates have conspired to bring such tidings to me.' "

"What in the world did you say to him?"

"I tried to put it as simply as I could without leaving out the important part. I did everything I could to show him that neither of us was any more wrong than the other. I said that I was responsible too, and that I wanted a divorce as much as you did."

"I knew what sort of answer you would get, though."

But to Kaname it was a surprise. Misako had argued that the news must be broken face to face, that if one tried to explain through a letter, mistakes were sure to arise. Kaname had not been able to answer the argument very successfully, but there were reasons why he had felt he must first send off a warning, and after a few days go for a conference. He wanted to lessen the shock as much as he could, and he knew that, after those pleasant days on Awaji when he had not so much as hinted that anything was amiss, he would not be able to bring the matter up without having sent off a preliminary explanation. Then too, as the letter showed clearly enough, the old man would think he had come to see the puppet. To interrupt the proud story of the new acquisition with unpleasant news would be too cruel. Surely one could have expected the old man to be a little more understanding, in view of his own hardly puritanical past. He liked to let it be known that he was an uncompromising gentleman of the old school. That, however, was an affectation, a hobby of sorts, common enough with men his age, and when it came to practical and immediate matters he ought really to be a little more up with the times. Not only had he refused to take Kaname's letter in the spirit in which it was intended, but his own letter was full of phrases that showed a complete misreading of even its literal sense. "You can hardly be expected, in your indignation," and "There is no way, I fear, to convey to you the shame and remorse I feel." Had he deigned to read only what Kaname had written, he would surely not have felt called upon to mention his "shame." Kaname had taken great pains to phrase his letter in terms that could arouse neither accusations nor apologies. But perhaps the old man's letter, full as it was of formal rhetorical flights, was to be taken as no more than a gesture demanded by his standards of good form.

"I think you cart discount a lot of this. When you write an old-fashioned letter you pretty well have to say old-fashioned things. Probably he did it just for the fun of being old-fashioned, and I doubt if he's really as upset as he pretends to be. Only annoyed to have something like this cut him off when he wants to talk about his puppet."

Misako was a little pale, but she tried to make it appear that the matter disturbed her not in the least, that she was quite above it. Her face was expressionless.

"What are you going to do?" Kaname asked.

"What am I going to do?"

"Are you going to Kyoto with me?"

"I couldn't bear to." It was clear from the way she threw out the words that she really couldn't. "Why don't you go by yourself and have it out with him?"

"You saw what he said. It would be better if you went along. It shouldn't be as hard as you think."

"I can't stand the idea of being lectured to in front of that O-hisa. I'll go after you have everything settled."

They were, for once, looking straight into each other's eyes, but Kaname found Misako's manner a little embarrassing. To hide her self-consciousness she flung her words at him with a certain harshness, blowing smoke rings from a gold-ripped cigarette all the while. Though she was probably not aware of it, her speech and her facial expressions were changing. Perhaps it was Aso's influence. Perhaps she was taking over his mannerisms. It was at times like this that Kaname was most painfully aware of how far from him his wife had gone. She was no longer a part of his house. In her choice of words, the tone of her speech, there was something that might still be said to carry his family name, but he could see it disappearing. He had not been prepared for the pain that came with the realization, and he sensed something of the pain that the final scene, pressing so close, must bring. It occurred to him, however, that his wife had in a way already disappeared. The Misako he saw here—was she not an entirely new person? She had—who knows when?— slipped free of her past and the destiny it had carried with it. Kaname found that sad, but the sadness seemed rather different from regret. And so, perhaps, the final crisis that he so dreaded had already passed....

"What was in Takanatsu's letter?" he asked.

"He has business in Osaka again before long, but he doesn't want to see us until everything is decided. He says he'll probably go back to China without stopping by here."

"And that's all?"

"Well—" Misako was sitting on the veranda. With one hand she rubbed her foot, and in the other she held a cigarette, flicking the ashes into the garden. The azaleas were in full bloom. "He did mention something. He said he would leave it to me whether I wanted to tell you or not."

"Oh?"

"He said he went ahead without asking us and told Hiroshi everything."

"Takanatsu did?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"When they were in Tokyo together. During spring vacation."

"Why the devil did he do that?"

Even now, when he had gone so far as to tell the old man in Kyoto, Kaname had said not a word to Hiroshi. So the child knew everything, and had contrived to keep them from suspecting. It was moving and yet a little repelling.

"He said he didn't intend to, but it all started one night after they had gone to bed. He heard Hiroshi crying and wanted to know what was the matter."

"Then?"

"It was in a letter, after all, and he couldn't write everything. He told Hiroshi we might separate and I might go to live with Aso. Hiroshi wanted to know what would happen to him then, and Takanatsu said that he had nothing to worry about, that he could go on seeing me as though he had two houses, and that some day he would understand why it had happened. That was the sum of it."

"Was Hiroshi satisfied?"

"He didn't say anything. He cried himself to sleep. The next day Takanatsu watched to see how he had come through. They went to the Mitsukoshi, and Hiroshi asked for everything in the store, exactly as though nothing had happened. Takanatsu said he was sure the worst was over—he hadn't known how soon children forget."

"But it's not the same as if I had told him myself."

"Oh yes—he said too that he didn't think we needed to tell Hiroshi anything more if it bothered us to. He said he was sorry he had gone ahead without asking us, but he thought he had taken care of at least that much for us."

"It won't do. I may not be exactly decisive, but I have to have it a bit more definite than that."

Kaname had hoped to postpone telling Hiroshi to the very last moment of the very last scene, but he could hardly tell Misako his reason. He still felt that the near future could bring a sudden and complete change, that he really could not know yet what the final outcome would be. Misako was determined, of course, and yet her very hardness was somehow brittle and fragile, and under the surface she seemed consumed by the strongest doubts. It would take very little, Kaname thought, to make her collapse in tears. Both of them dreaded such a crisis and both of them were constantly on guard to avoid it, but even now as they talked to each other it seemed as though the workings of an instant could cancel out the distance they had come and put them back again at the beginning. He did not for a moment think that Misako would follow the old man's advice. Still, if she did, he himself would have no alternative but to follow along—somewhere in the depths of his consciousness that feeling persisted. Neither resigned nor hopeful, he was a little awed by it.

"If you'll excuse me, then—" The prospect of further discussion apparently too much for her, Misako glanced at the clock as though to signal that the usual hour for her to go out had come, and got up with a rather harried look to change her clothes.

"I've been putting it off, but do you think I ought to see Aso again some time myself?" Kaname asked.

"You really should. Before you go to Kyoto or after?"

"Which would be best?"

"'Even tomorrow would not be too soon.' Maybe you'd better go to Kyoto first. It would be a nuisance if Father were to come here, and besides, once everything is settled, Aso wants us to meet his mother."

"What did you do with Takanatsu's letter?" he called into the hall after her. No more than an attractive and appealing woman in a most womanly rush to be off to her lover, she seemed to him.

"I left it somewhere to show you, I've forgotten where. Won't it do as well if I look when I get back? I've told you fairly well what he said, anyway."

"It really doesn't matter."

After Misako had left, Kaname went out to feed the dogs, a biscuit to one and a biscuit to the other in turns. He helped Jiiya brush them, then went into the small breakfast room and absently lay down.

"O-sayo!... Someone!"

He would have liked some tea, but the maids were evidently shut in their rooms and no one answered. Hiroshi was not yet back from school. Kaname felt lonely and abandoned in the quiet house. Ought he perhaps to go to see Louise again? Always at times like this the urge came upon him, but today for some reason he pitied himself more than usual. Always he found himself reconsidering that vow to stay away from her, pointing out to himself the foolishness of being held to it—what if she was only a prostitute?—deciding that he would see her again; but today in addition he found the house unbearable. The sliding doors, the alcove decorations, the trees outside, were all in place and unchanged, and yet the whole seemed stark and gaping. The previous owner had built the house and lived in it only a year or two, and Kaname had bought it when they moved to Osaka. This room had been added on afterwards. Its fine-grained fir and cedar pillars had, almost untended, taken on a soft glow over the years, and presently they would have an overlay of age that would please even the old man in Kyoto. Lying on the matted floor, Kaname looked with new interest at the mellowed woodwork, at the stand in the alcove and the trailing branch of bright yellow flowers, at the polished wood in the hall reflecting the light from outside like water. For all the excitement of her love affair, Misako still changed the decorations in the Japanese rooms now and then, the hangings and the flowers, to harmonize with the changing of the seasons. No doubt she did it from inertia and habit. Still, when Kaname thought of the day when the flowers would disappear, he knew that even this lifeless marriage, like the sheen of woodwork seen and remembered morning and evening and morning again, was something so near and so familiar that it would continue to pull at him even after it was gone.

"O-sayo, bring me a towel," he called from the hall. Slipping off his serge summer kimono, he wiped the sweat from his back, then changed to the suit Misako had laid out. The old man's letter lay on the floor with the discarded kimono. He was about to put it into his coat pocket when he thought of Louise's coy habit ("Is this from a geisha?" she would say) of going through his pockets for letters. As he started to push it out of sight under the lining of the dresser drawer, his hand brushed against something. Misako had hidden Takanatsu's letter in the same drawer.

"I wonder if I ought to read it." He hesitated before he took it from the envelope. She had hidden it carefully and could hardly have forgotten where. He could see now how little she had wanted to show it to him—indeed, her harried manner had said as much. But she was not given to hiding things from him. The contents must be particularly unpleasant, he thought. It would not be kind to read it. Still—

DEAR MISAKO:

Thank you for your letter. I had thought that by now everything would be decided, but the other day I got a postcard from Awaji and saw that nothing had been. Your letter therefore did not surprise me.

Kaname went up to the second floor of the foreign wing to finish the letter at his ease.

If your decision is really find, would it not be wise to carry it through as quickly as you can? There seems to be no other way open to you, as a matter of fact, now that you have come this far. Kaname humors himself too much and so do you, and this is the result, I cannot help thinking. I do not mind having you come weeping to me, but why not go weeping to him instead? ("Weeping" is perhaps unfair. 1 suppose you do not mean to sound quite so tearful.) You are unable to, of course—that I understand, and I can think of nothing sadder. But if you feel so much reserve, then surely you cannot stay married to him. "He gave me too much freedom," you say, or "I wish I had never met Aso." If you could say only a fraction of that directly to Kaname—if there were only that much frankness between you two as husband and wife— but I shall say no more. I begin to sound peevish. I shall of course not mention your letter to Kaname. It would serve no purpose, only make things worse. I must seem heartless to you, I know, though in fact I think of my own experience with Yoshiko and am more moved than I can tell you. It is only that I must not let myself get emotional. I must keep to the central problem, that of your misfortune in having arrived at a point where there is no course open to you but to leave Kaname. Forget about the past, start over with a new and happy home, I beseech you, and see that you do not make the same mistake again. Kaname too will be happier, I feel sure. You must not think I am angry. I do not have a very subtle mind, however, and I have become convinced that it is hardly my place to plunge into the middle of this complicated relationship of yours, that it would be much wiser for me to stay away until you have made your own decision. I have delayed my sailing in the hope that you might make it soon, but it seems now that I shall have to take care of my business in Osaka and leave again without seeing you. I ant sure you will understand.

There is something I have kept from you. I talked to Hiroshi when we were in Tokyo together. He took it very well, I thought. Have you noticed any change in him? I get letters now and then, though with never a mention of that evening. He is a bright lad—but do not think I am trying to beguile you into overlooking what I have done. If I have meddled more than I should, I apologize. Yet you will admit, I am sure, that it has been easier for me to tell him than it would have been for you.... Presumptuous though it may seem, I should like you to know that I want to do what little I can, as a relative and as the friend who knows them best, to help both Kaname and Hiroshi. I believe that both of them can stand a shock. The way through life is not always smooth, and it is good for a boy to have his troubles. Indeed, Kaname himself has had all too few. A really serious blow might teach him to pamper himself a little less.

Good-by for now. I shall look forward to seeing you when you are married again.

TAKANATSU HIDEO       

May 27

It was for Takanatsu an unusually long letter. Kaname's eyes were filled with tears when he finished reading. Perhaps the empty house had weakened his defenses.