DEAR HIROSHI:

Are the examinations over? I expect to be there during your vacation.

And what shall I bring you? I have been looking for your Cantonese dog, but there doesn't seem to be one in the city. Shanghai and Canton might as well be in different countries. I have been thinking I might bring you a greyhound instead. They are very popular here. I suppose you know what a greyhound is, but I am enclosing a snapshot anyway.

The snapshot makes me think—maybe you would like a camera. Let me know which it is to be, a camera or a greyhound.

Tell your father I found his Arabian Nights at Kelly and Walsh—not the sort of Arabian Nights you yourself are supposed to read, however. I have some brocade for your mother, but my taste being what it is, I suppose I shall be laughed at again. Tell her I have fretted much more over her brocade than over your dog.

I shall have much more baggage than I can manage by myself. If I am bringing the dog I will cable, and possibly someone can meet the ship. It will be the Shanghai-mam, in Kobe the 26th.

TAKANATSU HIDEO       

At noon on the 16th Kaname and Hiroshi were at the ship.

"And the dog? Where is he?" Hiroshi burst out as soon as they had found Takanatsu's cabin.

"Oh, the dog—he's outside," Takanatsu answered. He had on a light-colored tweed jacket, a gray sweater, and gray flannel trousers. Now and then he paused in his work on the baggage to take a puff at a cigar, and the concentration he lavished on it heightened the air of bustling activity that filled the narrow little cabin.

"You seem to have brought enough baggage. How long do you stay?" Kaname asked.

"Five or six days in this part of the country. I have business in Tokyo too."

"What's this?"

"Shaohsin wine, very old. You can have a bottle if you like."

"Suppose we get these small bundles out of the way. My man's waiting below."

"But what about the dog?" Hiroshi interrupted. "Isn't Jiiya going to take care of the dog?"

"Don't worry about that. The dog's gentle enough. You can take care of him yourself," Takanatsu replied.

"He won't bite?"

"Absolutely not. You can do whatever you want with him. As soon as he sees you he'll be jumping all over you."

"What's his name?"

"Lindy. It's short for Lindbergh. A high-grade imported name."

"Did you name him?"

"No, he belonged to a foreigner and the name came with him."

"Hiroshi," Kaname broke in to quiet the boy, who was quite carried away with himself, "would you go below and call Jiiya, please? The cabin boy can't manage all this by himself."

Takanatsu glanced at the retreating Hiroshi, then bent to pull a bulky, heavy-looking bundle from under the bed. "He looks well enough."

"Children always look well enough. He's nervous, though. Has he said anything in his letters?"

"Not that I've noticed."

"He wouldn't, I suppose. He doesn't know exactly what's wrong, and at his age he wouldn't know what to say."

"I have noticed, though, that his letters have been coming oftener. Possibly a sign that he's upset.... Well, that's everything." Takanatsu sat down heavily on the bed and gave himself up to his cigar. "You haven't said anything to him yet?"

"Not yet."

"That's where I think you make a mistake, of course. But we've been over it before."

"I probably would tell him if he asked."

"Surely you don't expect him to bring the subject up first?"

"I suppose not. And so I go on not telling him."

"But that's wrong. Really it is. When the time finally does come, it will be much worse to have to break everything at once. Shouldn't you explain, with all the reasons, step by step, and make him understand what has to come?"

"He's already sensed it in a vague way. We haven't said anything directly, but we've shown enough to make him guess. He's probably resigned to the fact that something has to happen, even if he doesn't quite know what."

"But that should make it easier to tell him.... Look at it this way. As long as you say nothing he imagines the worst, and that's why he has a case of nerves. If he thought he might never see his mother again, wouldn't it actually relieve him to know the truth?"

"I've thought the same thing. But I dread the shock it might give him, and I go on delaying."

"I doubt if it would be the shock you think it would. Children are strong—you'd be surprised how strong. You think it would be a terrible blow to him, but you're a grownup and can't really know. The boy is growing and changing, and this is the sort of thing he takes in his stride. If you do your explaining well, he'll probably just resign himself to what can't be helped."

"I've thought over all that. I've thought over everything you've said."

The truth of the matter was that Kaname had awaited the visit of this cousin with a mixture of eagerness and dread. He was disgusted with his own indecision, his tendency to postpone action from day to week to month until it had become clear that he would not be able to speak out until a final crisis forced him to. He felt that if only Takanatsu would come, he would be pushed forward, even rudely and painfully, to a point where the elements of a solution would fall in place almost of their own accord. But now, faced with Takanatsu and what had before been only a distant possibility, he felt less encouraged than frightened, less inclined to face a decision than to recoil from it.

"What are your plans for today?" Kaname changed the subject. "Can you come directly to the house?"

"I have business in Osaka, but it can wait."

"Suppose you come and get settled first, then."

"And Misako? Is she at home?"

"She was when I left."

"Will she be waiting for me?"

"Possibly. Or possibly she'll have gone out. She's very diplomatic, and she may think it would be better to let us talk by ourselves first. Or at least she may have taken that excuse."

"I want to talk to her too, of course, but before that I'd like to find out exactly what you have in mind yourself. It's a mistake for an outsider to get mixed up in a divorce, no matter how good a friend he may be, but with you two it's a matter of getting you to make up your own minds."

"Have you had lunch?" Kaname changed the subject again.

"Not yet."

"Why don't we eat at the Mitsuwa, then? Hiroshi can go on ahead. He has the dog to entertain him."

"I saw him." Hiroshi burst back into the room. "He's a beauty. Just like a deer."

"You ought to see him run." Takanatsu turned toward the boy. "Faster than a train, they say. The best way to exercise him is to lead him along on a bicycle. Greyhounds run in horse races, you know."

"You must mean dog races," Hiroshi corrected.

"You have me there."

"Has he had distemper yet?"

"He's past all that, a year and seven months old. The question is how you are to get him home. A train to Osaka and then a taxi?"

"It's much easier. He can ride on the electric train all the way. Just muzzle him with something and he can go right along with the rest of us."

"We have electric cars like that now? Japan is catching up with the world."

"Oh, we have everything." Hiroshi brought a trace of the Osaka dialect into his speech.

"We have, have we." Takanatsu tried to imitate him.

"Terrible. Not a bit like Osaka."

"The boy's really become too good. He speaks a different language with Misako and me from the one he uses at school."

" I can talk with a Tokyo accent when I want to, but everyone at school is from Osaka." Hiroshi was still displaying his Osaka dialect proudly.

"Hiroshi"—Kaname interrupted the boy, who seemed prepared to run away with the conversation—"why don't you see about getting off the ship and then go along with Jiiya? Your uncle has business in Kobe."

"What are you going to do?"

"I thought I'd go along with him. It's been a long time since he's had any Kobe sukiyaki, and I thought he might like some. I don't suppose you're hungry. You had a late breakfast. And then there are some things we have to talk about."

"I see." Hiroshi knew what that meant. He looked fearfully up at his father, trying to read something from the expression on his face.