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He recalled having acquired the book during the first three or four months of his marriage. And it struck him that, although more than two months had passed, he had succeeded in making his way through less than two-thirds of it. Against the common practice of most men, beneath contempt as he put it, of leaving books behind when they embarked on their careers, he had frequently inveighed in front of his wife. And sufficient hours had been expended on the second floor to oblige her, accustomed to hearing him carry on about others, to acknowledge that he was indeed an avid student. Together with his sense that the road ahead was endless, a feeling of humiliation emerged from somewhere and nibbled perversely at his self-esteem. However, the knowledge he was struggling to absorb from the book that was open in front of him was of no quotidian consequence to his life at work. It was too specialized, and again too refined. It might have been styled as utterly irrelevant to an occupation such that even the knowledge he had obtained from college lectures had almost never availed him. This was knowledge he wanted to store away as a source of a certain strength that derived from self-confidence. He also wished to acquire it as an ornament for attracting the attention of others. Now, as he became sensible in a vague way of how difficult that was likely to be, he framed a question inwardly to his vanity: Will this be tougher than I thought? He smoked a cigarette in silence. Then, as if suddenly noticing it, he turned the book face down and stood up from his desk. With quick steps that caused the stairs to creak again he went back downstairs.
[6] “O-NOBU!” “O-NOBU!” Calling his wife’s name through the fusuma,* he slid open the patterned paper door and stood in the threshold of the sitting room. Instantly his vision filled with the colors of the beautiful obi and kimono she had at some *Fusuma are a substantial version of shoji, partitions consisting of a wooden framework papered on both sides.
LIGHT AND DARK
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