"My uncle's to blame! He was blinded by the condition that the other party would pay for my schooling, so my uncle arranged everything in his own way. And now that things have gone this far, my uncle blames me, saying if I refuse, my parents and our family name will be put in a very bad light."
Tsuji had the impression that in less than a month Noe, who was appealing to him with tears of mortification, had suddenly matured to take on something of the savor of a woman. The problem of her marrying, even while she was averse to it, and her anguish had unconsciously stimulated the body and soul of the woman in her and had probably roused into wakefulness this feminine vitality that had lain dormant within her. Tsuji sensed a kind of charm, absent until then, in the somewhat tight thin line along her cheeks and around her shoulders, and he observed the face of the crying and agitated woman, an ugly face yet one increasing in loveliness. She had hesitated to mention it but finally confessed she had already gone through the ceremony.
"I was so terrified I wouldn't let him take a step near me, and I just ran away."
Quite overwhelmed, Tsuji kept staring at her. Was it really possible for a woman to keep her husband at bay even after marrying him? Could a man exist today who remained silent while his wife dragged him down with such an insult?
Clearly feeling Noe was asking for help, Tsuji found the only thing he could do was listen silently to her resentment and her whimpering grievance. Should he thoughtlessly offer his hand, it was quite evident to him that Noe, who had already reached the point of ignition, would transfer the blazing fire of her passion to him, and in no time at all they would together go down to ruin in flames.
In any event, Noe, who had gone through the wedding ceremony, was already a married woman. And probably her name had been placed in the family register by the man who had said he would pay for her schooling. Though Tsuji felt pity for her, to get involved would prove troublesome. The worldly wisdom he had gained through long years of economic distress whispered to him to back away from her. At the same time, however, Noe's misfortune and anguish in being sacrificed to a kind of marriage of convenience and her inability to study freely as she wished due to her family's poverty, which was like his own, aroused in Tsuji a sympathy and compassion he would not have felt about another person's affair.
Noe became so emotionally stirred by the mere fact of Tsuji's mother serving her tea and cake that she began shedding even larger tears.
Inside this house with rooms of only six, four-and-a-half, and three mats, Noe's words, which continued their emotional complaint, could be heard perfectly by Tsuji's mother and sister. After Tsuji had seen Noe off and come back, he found his mother Mitsu sitting on the very cushion Noe had used only a moment ago in his three-mat study.
"Poor thing, isn't she? And still a child."
"Yes, but it can't be helped."
"That child, she likes you, doesn't she?"
"Well, I don't know."
"She's quite unsophisticated, but she's a little charmer."
"You think so? She has the blood of the old Kumaso clan in her. If you touch her carelessly, you may get burned."
"You ought to be settling down."
No longer willing to pursue the subject, Tsuji reached over for his favorite bamboo flute and turned his back to his mother. Before he put his lips to the mouth of the instrument, he waited impatiently while she cleared away the tea things and went out of the room. The piece he played was the famous "Bell of Emptiness," one of the three great traditional melodies for the shakuhachi.
His fascination with the sound of the flute had started from his seventh or eighth year. Next door to their house, which belonged to the Mie prefectural government his father was working for, there lived at that time a junior official who was quite good on the shakuhachi. His Kyoto wife could play ballads on the samisen, and Tsuji's mother Mitsu, who had rigorously acquired during her childhood the knack of playing nagauta, the long epic songs, frequently visited her neighbor to perform together. On those occasions Tsuji went with her and listened in rapt attention to the neighbor's flute. During Tsuji's middle school days when he was back in Tokyo, he found a cheap shakuhachi at a secondhand shop in Shitaya, and by following the neighbor's example he somehow came to be able to produce a few notes. It took him a month to make some flutelike sounds and about half a year to accomplish something like the passage of a song the way he thought it ought to go. Neglecting his studies, he lost himself in playing the flute from morning till night. His mother, who from the first loved songs accompanied by the samisen, suggested, "If you like the bamboo flute so much, why not take lessons regularly from a teacher?" The person Mitsu chose for her son was Chikuo Araki, the famous shakuhachi master of the Kinko School. In a tight-sleeved kimono patterned in white and blue splashes, Tsuji called on him one day to boldly ask for permission. Chikuo, who was already past seventy, allowed this unusual boy to become his disciple.
All of Chikuo's students ranked above the middle class, some of them even belonging to the peerage. In no time at all Chikuo clearly perceived that this poverty-stricken newcomer, his youngest disciple, whom he had allowed on a whim to enter his school, had unexpected genius. Immediately Tsuji became the disciple Chikuo loved beyond all others. But when this young prodigy expressed the desire to establish himself as a shakuhachi performer, the master flatly opposed him. "After all, shakuhachi is a dying art. Someone as young as you are shouldn't spend his entire life on that kind of thing. Do it as a hobby."
Tsuji eagerly went to Chikuo's home for his lessons on each day of the month with a three or an eight in it. Those lessons continued without interruption until Chikuo moved to Imado and it became too difficult for Tsuji to make the trip.
With his father's death it was impossible to play the shakuhachi at leisure, as Tsuji was continually driven to earn a living, but he again went back to the flute when he was twenty-one. At that time he was so highly praised as a performer that he was invited to give concerts at various places far and near.
His favorite instrument for the present was one made by Chikuo's most distinguished disciple, Kado, Tsuji's second master.
While Tsuji listened to the tones he produced on the shakuhachi, the agitation from Noe's visit that had so disturbed his peace of mind gradually subsided.
The night wind passing over the wooded area and meadow sparsely dotted with human habitations swept into this quiet home on a hill at Somei. The heat of the afternoon was at last gone, and before Tsuji realized it, the cries of insects were coiled round the sounds of his flute.
Tsuji had set himself free on the wind of night, his mind lucid as water. The serenity of tranquillity—which could not be violated by anyone at this very moment—was a handful of happiness, which he had at last acquired at twenty-eight years of age. Though this was a rented house with only three rooms in which three persons lived, his mother and her children, Tsuji was satisfied with it. Probably because the owner was a gardener, he had been careful, even though the house was small, to select timber of the finest quality when he built it, Tsuji's three-mat study at the back of the house having been made into a detached room in tea-ceremony style surrounded on all sides by a veranda.
Hanging in the alcove was an India ink drawing of the Goddess of Mercy Kannon by Chikuden, and adorning the opposite wall a portrait of Spinoza framed in lignitic Japanese cedar, and below the picture a desk. On it were only a few books, some European works, and some Japanese and Chinese classics. Tsuji's personal needs and meals were sufficiently looked after by his mother and sister. Though his remuneration from the high school was by no means large, his income was the highest in his life until then and the most reliable. If he desired a woman, he could easily buy an ignorant yet gentle prostitute with the money from his side jobs.
He had long lost any interest in making his life successful. Nor was he concerned any more about social reform. A mere glance at the ominous silence and icy indifference of the social reformers since the trials for high treason had made it quite evident