...of caution/expectation

"I'm the father," he said hoarsely, wondering why they were sitting in a darkened room. Then he noticed his mother-in-law, her face half-buried in her kimono sleeve as though she were trying not to vomit. Bird sat down in the chair next to her and felt his clothes stick fast to his back and rear. He shivered, not violently as in the driveway, but with the helplessness of a weakened chick. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness in the room: now he discovered a tribunal of three doctors watching in careful silence as he settled himself in the chair. Like the national flag in a courtroom, the coloured anatomy chart on the wall behind them was a banner symbolic of their private law.

[A Personal Matter, Oe, K.]