“I used to be wealthy, you know,” he said again, now addressing me, then he looked at me and smiled.
I continued to make no reply. In fact, I did not have the wit to know how to respond.
Sensei then changed the subject. “How has your father been recently?”
I had heard nothing of my father’s illness since the New Year. The simple letter that arrived each month with my allowance was written in his hand as usual, but he made almost no mention of how he was feeling. His handwriting, moreover, was firm; the brushstrokes gave no hint of the tremors that affect those with his disease.
“No one’s said anything, so I guess he’s fine again.”
“That would be a good thing—still, you have to remember what that illness is like.”
“Yes, I guess he won’t really recover. But he’ll stay as he is for a while yet, I think. There’s been no word about it.”
“Is that so?”
I took his inquiries about my family’s wealth and my father’s illness at face value, as no more than an impulse of the moment. But behind his words loomed a large issue that connected the two topics. I had no way of realizing it, however, since I lacked the experiences that Sensei had been through.
CHAPTER 28
“It’s none of my business, of course, but in my opinion, if there’s anything to inherit you should make sure the matter’s completely attended to before it’s too late. Why not arrange things with your father now, while he’s still well? When the worst happens, you know, it’s inheritance that causes the biggest problems.”
“Yes.”
I paid no particular attention to his words. I believed that the others in our family, my parents included, were as little concerned about this issue as I was. Moreover, Sensei’s uncharacteristic pragmatism somewhat startled me. My natural respect for an elder, however, made me hold my tongue.
“Please forgive me if my anticipating your father’s death like this has offended you. But it’s in the nature of things for people to die, you know. There’s no knowing when even the healthiest of us will die.” Sensei’s tone held an unusual bitterness.
“It doesn’t upset me in the slightest,” I assured him.
“How many brothers and sisters did you say you had?” he asked.
He then inquired about the number of people in the family, what relatives I had, and details of my aunts and uncles. “Are they all good people?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone you’d call bad. They’re country people, for the most part.”
“Why shouldn’t country people be bad?”
This interrogation was becoming disconcerting. But Sensei did not even give me time to consider my answer.
“Country people are actually worse, if anything, than city folk,” he went on. “Another thing. You said just now that you didn’t think there was anyone among your relatives you’d call bad. But do you imagine there’s a certain type of person in the world who conforms to the idea of a ‘bad person’? You’ll never find someone who fits that mold neatly, you know. On the whole, all people are good, or at least they’re normal. The frightening thing is that they can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch. That’s why you have to be careful.”
Sensei was in full flow. I was about to interrupt him when a dog suddenly barked behind us. We both turned in surprise.
Our bench stood at the front corner of a bed of cedar seedlings; to one side of it, a wide stand of thick dwarf bamboo stretched back, hiding the ground. In its midst we could make out the back and furiously barking head of a dog.
As we stared, a child of about ten came running over and set about scolding the animal. He then came over to where we sat and bowed to Sensei, without removing his black school cap.
“There was no one in the house when you came in, sir?” he asked.
“No one.”
“But my mom and sister were in the kitchen.”
“Oh, were they? I see.”
“Yeah. You should’ve said hello and come on in, sir.”
Sensei smiled wryly. He took out his purse and put a five-sen coin into the lad’s hand. “Tell your mother, please, that we’d like to take a rest here for a little.”
The boy nodded, his eyes twinkling with a knowing grin. “I’m leading the spy patrol in our game, see,” he explained, and ran off down the hill through the azaleas.
The dog rushed after him, tail aloft. And sure enough, a couple more children of about the same age soon came running past in the same direction as our spy patroller.
CHAPTER 29
Owing to the interruption, my conversation with Sensei never reached its proper conclusion, so I failed to discover what he was driving at. In those days, though, I felt none of his concerns about property and inheritance and so on. Both by nature and by circumstance, I was not inclined to bother my head over profit and gain. In retrospect, I realize that the whole question of money was still distant for me—I had never had to earn my own living, let alone personally confront the situation Sensei spoke of.
But Sensei had said one thing that I wanted to get to the bottom of—his statement that when it comes to the crunch, anyone can turn bad. I could understand the meaning of the words themselves well enough, but I wanted to find out more of what lay behind them.
Once the boy and his dog were gone, the leafy garden returned to its earlier tranquility. We remained there unmoving a while longer, two people held fast within a silence. As we sat, the beautiful sky was slowly drained of its brightness. Over the trees around us, mostly delicate maples dripping with soft green new leaves, darkness seemed to creep slowly.
The rumble of a cart reached our ears from the distant road. I imagined some villager setting off with his load of potted plants to sell at the market.
At the sound Sensei broke off his meditation and rose abruptly to his feet, like one restored to life. “We ought to be off. The days have grown a good deal longer recently, it’s true, but evening’s rapidly approaching while we sit here idly.”
His back was covered with bits of leaf and twig from the bench. I brushed them off with both hands.
“Thank you. Is any resin stuck there?”
“Everything’s off now.”
“This coat was made quite recently, so my wife will be cross if I come home with it dirty. Thank you.”
We set off down the gentle slope and emerged back in front of the house.
A woman was sitting on the once-empty veranda. She was busy winding yarn onto a spool with the help of her daughter, a girl of fifteen or sixteen. When we arrived beside the big tub of goldfish, we bowed and apologized for our intrusion.
“No, no, not at all,” the woman politely responded, and thanked us for the boy’s coin.
We went out the gate and set off for home. After a short distance I turned to Sensei.
“That thing you said earlier,” I said, “about how people can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch—what did you mean by that?”
“Well, nothing deep, really. I mean, it’s a fact. I’m not just theorizing.”
“Yes, that’s all very well. But what do you mean by ‘when it comes to the crunch’? What sort of situation are you talking about?”
Sensei burst into laughter. Now that his original impulse had flagged, he seemed to have no interest in providing me with a serious explanation.
“Money, my friend. The most moral of men will turn bad when they see money.”
This reply struck me as tiresomely obvious. If Sensei was unwilling to take the conversation seriously, I too lost interest.
I strode coolly onward, feigning indifference. The result was that Sensei dropped somewhat behind.
“Hey there!” he called. Then: “There you are, you see?”
“What?” I turned and waited for him.
“All I had to do was say what I just said, and your mood changed.” He was looking me in the eye.
CHAPTER 30
I disliked Sensei just then. Even when we resumed walking on t
ogether, I chose not to ask the questions I wanted. Whether he sensed that or not, however, he showed no signs of being disturbed by my sulk. He strode casually on in silence, as serene as always. I resented this, and found myself now wanting to say something to humiliate him.
“Sensei.”
“What is it?”
“You got a little excited earlier, didn’t you? When we were sitting in the nursery garden back there. I’ve almost never seen you excited before.”
He did not reply immediately, which I interpreted to mean that I had hit my mark. But the intended barb also seemed to have somehow gone wide. I gave up and reverted to silence.
Then, without warning, Sensei moved to the side of the road, and there under the carefully clipped hedge, he drew his kimono aside and relieved himself. I waited blankly until he was finished.
“Pardon me,” he said, and set off walking again.
I had lost all hope of getting the better of him. The road slowly grew more populous; houses now lined both sides, and we encountered no further signs of the earlier occasional sloping fields or patches of vacant land. Nevertheless, here and there on the corner of some block we saw a patch of garden with tendrils of bean vines twining up bamboo stakes, or chickens in a wire coop, which lent a certain serenity to the scene. Packhorses constantly passed us, heading home from town.
Always interested in such things, I set aside the problem that had been concerning me. By the time Sensei returned to our earlier conversation, I had forgotten about it.
“Did I really seem so very excited back there?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘very,’ but yes, a little.”
“I don’t mind you seeing me in a bad light. I do get excited, it’s true. I get excited whenever I talk about the question of property. I don’t know how I seem to you, but let me tell you, I’m a most vindictive man. When someone insults or harms me, I’ll bear the grudge for ten years, twenty years.”
Sensei seemed still more agitated now. It was not his tone that startled me, however, but the meaning of his words. For all my longing to know him better, I could never have dreamed that I would hear such a confession from his lips. I had not had the slightest inkling that tenacious rancor was a part of his nature. I had believed him a weaker man; my affection for him, indeed, was rooted in what I saw as his delicate, lofty nature. I had sought on a passing impulse to pierce his armor a little, but what I was now hearing made me shrink.
“I’ve been deceived by people, you see,” he continued. “By people, what’s more, who were blood relatives. I’ll never forget it. They had seemed good folk in my father’s presence, but the moment he died, they changed into unscrupulous rogues. I’ve borne the humiliation and harm they did to me all my life, and I imagine I’ll go on nursing it until the day I die. For I won’t ever be able to forget, you see. And I’ve still not taken my revenge. But I guess I’m doing something far more powerful than taking personal revenge—I not only hate them, I’ve come to hate the whole human race they typify. This is sufficient revenge for me, I think.”
I was silent, unable to produce so much as a word of comfort.
CHAPTER 31
Our conversation that day went no further. Indeed, I had no desire to pursue the subject. I quailed to hear Sensei speak like that.
At the edge of town we caught an electric tramcar, but while riding along together we exchanged scarcely a word. Once we got off, our ways parted.
By now Sensei’s mood had changed again. “You’ll be living free and easy until you graduate in June, won’t you?” he remarked in an unusually jolly tone. “It may actually be the freest time in your life, I shouldn’t wonder. Make sure you really enjoy it, won’t you?”
I laughed and raised my hat. Sensei’s face just then made me wonder where in his heart he could be nursing a hatred of the human race. I detected not the least trace of misanthropy in that smile or those warm eyes.
I freely acknowledge that Sensei taught me much about intellectual questions, but I admit there were also times when I failed to gain what I sought from him in matters of the mind. Conversations with him could be frustratingly inconclusive. Our talk that day would haunt me as such an instance.
One day I frankly confessed as much to Sensei’s face. He was smiling as he listened.
“It wouldn’t bother me,” I continued, “if I thought you didn’t really know the answer, but the problem is, you know it—you just won’t say it in so many words.”
“I don’t hide anything.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You’re mixing up my ideas with my past. I’m hardly a good thinker, but I assure you I wouldn’t purposely conceal any ideas I’d arrived at. What would be the point? But if you’re asking me to tell you everything about my past, well, that’s a different matter.”
“It doesn’t seem different to me. Your ideas are important to me precisely because they’re a product of your past. If the two things are separated, they become virtually worthless as far as I can see. I can’t be satisfied with being offered some lifeless doll that has no breath of soul in it.”
Sensei stared at me in astonishment. The hand that held his cigarette trembled a little. “You’re certainly bold, aren’t you?”
“I’m in earnest, that’s all. I’m earnestly searching for lessons from life.”
“Even if it means disclosing my past?”
The word disclose had a frightening ring. Suddenly the man seated before me was not the Sensei I loved and respected but a criminal. His face was pale.
“Are you truly in earnest?” Sensei asked. “My past experiences have made me suspicious of people, so I must admit I mistrust you too. But you are the sole exception; I have no desire to suspect you. You seem too straightforward and open for that. I want to have trusted even just one person before I die, you know. Can you be that person? Would you do that for me? Are you sincerely in earnest, from your heart?”
“If what I’ve just said is not in earnest, then my life is a lie.” My voice shook.
“Good,” said Sensei. “I shall speak, then. I’ll tell you the story of my past and leave nothing out. And in return . . . But no, that doesn’t matter. But my past may not actually be as useful for you as you expect, you know. You may be better off not hearing about it. Besides, I can’t tell you right now—please wait until I can. It requires a suitable moment.”
Even after I returned to my lodgings that evening, my memory of this conversation continued to oppress me.
CHAPTER 32
Apparently my teachers did not find my thesis quite as good as I thought it was. Nevertheless, I managed to pass. On the day of graduation I retrieved from the trunk my musty old formal winter wear and put it on. Up and down the rows of graduating students in the ceremony hall, every face looked heat-oppressed, and my own body, sealed tightly in thick wool impenetrable to any breeze, sweltered uncomfortably. I had been standing only a short time when the handkerchief I held was sodden with sweat.
As soon as the ceremony was over, I went back to my room, stripped off, and opened my second-floor window. Holding the tightly rolled diploma up to my eye like a telescope, I gazed through it, out over the world. Then I tossed it onto my desk and flung myself down spread-eagle in the middle of the floor. Lying there, I reviewed my past and imagined my future. This diploma stood like a boundary marker between the one and the other. It was a strange document indeed, I decided, both significant and meaningless.
That evening I was to dine at Sensei’s house. We had agreed beforehand that if I managed to graduate, I would keep the evening free for a celebratory dinner at his home.
As promised, the dining table had been moved into the living room, close to the veranda. The patterned tablecloth, thick and crisply starched, glowed with a fine white purity beneath the electric light. Whenever I dined at Sensei’s, the chopsticks and bowls were placed on this white linen that seemed to have come straight from some Western restaurant; the cloth was always freshly laundered.
“It’
s just as with collar and cuffs,” Sensei remarked. “If you’re going to have dirty ones, you might as well go for color in the first place. If it’s white, it must be purest white.”
Sensei was, in fact, a fastidious man—his study too was always meticulously tidy. Being rather careless myself, this aspect of him occasionally struck me quite forcibly.
Once I mentioned to his wife how finicky he seemed, and she replied, “But he doesn’t pay much attention to the clothes he wears.” Sensei, who had been sitting nearby at the time, laughed, “It’s true, I’m psychologically finicky. It’s a constant problem for me. What a ridiculous way to be, eh?”
I was not sure whether he meant that he was what we would call highly strung or intellectually fastidious. His wife didn’t seem to grasp his meaning either.
This evening I was again seated across the table from Sensei with the white tablecloth between us. His wife sat at the end of the table, facing the garden.
“Congratulations,” Sensei said to me, raising his sake cup. The gesture did not make me particularly happy, however. This was partly due to my own rather somber mood, but I also felt that Sensei’s tone was not of the cheerful kind calculated to excite joy. Certainly he raised his cup and smiled, and I detected no irony in his expression, but I felt a distinct lack of any genuine pleasure at my success. His smile said, I guess this is the kind of situation in which people usually congratulate someone.
“Well done,” his wife said to me. “Your father and mother must be very happy.”
Suddenly the image of my sick father rose in my mind. I had to hurry home and show him my diploma, I decided.
“What did you do with your certificate, Sensei?” I asked.
“I wonder. Would it still be tucked away somewhere?” he asked his wife.
“Yes, I would have put it away somewhere,” she replied.
Neither of them knew what had become of it, it seemed.
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