CHAPTER 61
A year later, at the beginning of the following summer, I went back home for the third time. As always, I couldn’t wait to finish final exams and get out of Tokyo, which indicates how much I longed for my home. I am sure you know this well too—the very color of the air in the place I was born was different, the smell of the earth was special, redolent with memories of my parents. To spend July and August nestled back inside that world, motionless as a snake in its hole, filled me with warm pleasure.
My innocent and uncomplicated mind felt no need to bother itself much over the problem of the proposed marriage to my cousin. If you didn’t want to do something, you simply said no, I believed, and there would be no further repercussions. So although I had not submitted to my uncle’s will, I remained unperturbed. I returned home in my usual high spirits, after a year spent unworried by the question.
But when I got home, I discovered that my uncle’s attitude had changed. He did not embrace me with a welcoming smile as he had before. For the first four or five days I remained unaware of the change—my loving upbringing had not prepared me even to recognize coldness. Finally, however, some chance event finally brought it to my notice. I then realized in bewilderment that it was not only my uncle who had changed, but also my aunt. My cousin was also odd, and so was my uncle’s son, who had earlier written a friendly letter asking me to investigate the Industrial College he intended to enter in Tokyo once he had graduated from middle school.
Being who I am, I puzzled over this development. Why had my feelings changed? Or rather, why had theirs changed? Then it occurred to me that perhaps my dead parents had suddenly cleansed my dulled eyes and given me a clear vision of the world. Deep inside, you see, I felt that my parents continued to love me as in life. Even though I was already well acquainted with the real world by then, the strong superstitious beliefs of my ancestors coursed deep in my blood. No doubt they still do.
I climbed the nearby hill alone and knelt before my parents’ graves, half in mourning and half in gratitude. I prayed to them to watch over me, feeling as I prayed that my future happiness lay in those hands buried beneath the cold stone. You may laugh, and no doubt I deserve it. But that is who I was.
In a flash, my whole world changed. This was not, mind you, my first such experience. When I was sixteen or seventeen, my sudden discovery of beauty in the world had stunned me. Many times I rubbed my eyes in sheer disbelief, and doubted my own eyes, while my heart exclaimed, “Ah, how beautiful!” At that age boys and girls alike attain what is commonly called sensuality. In this new state, I was for the first time able to see women as representative of the beauty that the world contains. My eyes, until then quite blind to this beauty in the opposite sex, sprang open, and from that moment my universe was transformed.
It was with precisely the same sort of shock that I became conscious of the change in my uncle’s attitude to me. I was stunned by the realization, which came upon me abruptly, without any premonition. Suddenly, my uncle and his family seemed to me completely different creatures. I was haunted by the feeling that I must make some move, or who knew what might befall me?