十八

I went home and told my wife and daughter about it. My wife laughed. But then she looked at me, saying it must surely be a bother. At that moment, I thought to myself: is this how a man draws a woman’s attention? My wife’s eyes held more than enough meaning to make me think so. Perhaps I should have plainly confessed then exactly what was on my mind. But by then a clinging mass of irresolution had already stuck to me. I was about to speak out, yet hesitated at the last moment. And so I deliberately shifted the angle of the conversation.

I pulled the essential matter of myself out of the question entirely. Then I sounded out my wife’s thoughts on our daughter’s marriage. My wife clearly told me that there had been one or two such talks, of a sort. But she explained that since our daughter was still in school and young, we were not in any great hurry on our side. Though she did not say it aloud, my wife seemed to place considerable weight on our daughter’s looks. She even let slip something to the effect that whenever they wished to decide, they could decide at any time. And the fact that they had no child but our daughter also made them reluctant to easily let her go. There were even signs that she was hesitating over whether to marry her off or take in a son-in-law.

As we talked, I felt as though I had gained various bits of knowledge from my wife. Yet because of this, I fell into a result no different from having missed my chance. About myself, in the end I could not open my mouth with even a single word. I cut the conversation off at a convenient point and was about to return to my room.

The daughter, who until a moment before had been by my side laughing and saying how awful, or whatever, had at some point gone to the far corner, turning her back to me. As I stood and looked back, I saw her from behind. From a back alone one cannot read a person’s heart. How our daughter thought of this matter, I could not guess. She was sitting before a cabinet. Through a gap of about a foot left open in that cabinet, she seemed to be drawing something out and setting it on her lap to gaze at. My eyes caught, at the edge of that gap, the bolt of cloth I had bought the day before yesterday. My clothes and our daughter’s were both stacked in the corner of that same cabinet.

As I rose from my seat without a word, my wife suddenly turned formal and asked me what I thought. The way she asked was so abrupt that I could not understand without反问 what it was she wanted my opinion on. When it became clear she meant whether it was wise to settle our daughter’s future soon, I answered that it would be better to take it easy. My wife said she thought so too.

Into this state of relations among my wife, my daughter, and myself, another man had to enter. The result of that man becoming a member of this household brought a great change to my fate. Had that man not crossed the path of my life, surely there would have been no need to leave you this long account. It is as if I had stood vacant before the passing of a demon, and, unaware, had my whole life dimmed by the shadow of that instant. To confess: I myself dragged that man to our home. Of course my wife’s permission was needed, so I first laid everything bare and asked her. But my wife said to stop. Though I had ample reason that made it impossible to refrain from bringing him, my wife’s stop had not the slightest sound logic to it. And so I forced through what I thought best.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”