十一

I promptly moved into that house. I rented the very room where I had first spoken with the widow when I arrived. It was the finest room in the whole residence. This was around the time when a few houses of the sort called high-class boarding homes began to be built in the Hongō area, so I knew well enough what the best room a student could occupy ought to look like. The room that became my new domain was far grander than any of those. For a while after moving in, it seemed almost too good for me as a student.

The room was eight mats in size. Beside the alcove was a stepped shelf, and on the side opposite the veranda was a one-ken-wide closet. There were no windows at all, but in their place bright sunlight fell warmly on the south-facing veranda.

On the day I moved in, I saw flowers arranged in the alcove and a koto leaning against the wall beside them. I liked neither. Having been raised at the side of my father, who took pleasure in poetry, calligraphy, and sencha tea, I had acquired a taste for things Chinese from childhood. Perhaps because of that, I had come by a habit of quietly despising such seductive decorations.

The implements my father had collected in his lifetime were thrown into utter disarray by that same uncle of mine, yet some few remained. When I left the country, I entrusted them to an old friend from middle school. From among them I had wrapped four or five scrolls that looked interesting and packed them in the bottom of my trunk. I had meant, as soon as I moved, to take them out and hang them in the alcove for my enjoyment. But when I saw the koto and the flower arrangement just mentioned, my courage suddenly failed me. Later, when I heard that these flowers had been arranged as a treat for me, I smiled wryly to myself. The koto, of course, had been there from before, so likely for want of anywhere else to put it, it had simply been left leaning there.

Hearing such a tale, the shadow of a young woman will naturally flit across your mind. In me too, from before the move and not only after, such curiosity had already stirred. Whether this mischief had beforehand spoiled my natural ease, or whether I was simply not yet used to people, when I first met the young lady of the house my greeting came out halting and awkward. In return, she too flushed red.

Until then, from the widow’s bearing and manner I had imagined all there was to know of this young lady. Yet my imagining was not at all to her advantage. She is the wife of a soldier, so she must be thus; she is the daughter of such a wife, so she must be so—in this order my guesses stretched on. But the moment I saw the young lady’s face, every one of those guesses was swept away. And into my head there came a new scent of the opposite sex, such as I had never imagined before. From then on, the flowers arranged in the alcove before me ceased to displease. Even the koto leaning in the same alcove no longer felt in the way.

And when those flowers had regularly wilted, they would be rearranged anew. The koto too was often carried off to a room diagonally partitioned beyond. I, resting my cheek on my hand at the desk in my own room, listened to its sound. Whether the player was skilled or not, I could not well tell. But since she rarely played anything intricate, I thought she was probably not skilled. About the level of the flower arranging, I supposed. With flowers I could tell well enough, and the young lady was by no means good at it.

Even so, without shame, all manner of flowers adorned my alcove. The arrangement, to be sure, looked the same whenever I saw it. And the vase, likewise, never once changed. But the music on the other side was even stranger than the flowers. It merely plinked and plonked the strings, never once letting her voice be heard. She was not silent in song, but her voice came out as small as if she were whispering secrets indoors. And when scolded, it vanished entirely.

I delightedly gazed at these poor flower arrangements, and lent my ear to the dubious sound of the koto.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”