CHAPTER 66
By the time I left home, I was already thoroughly disenchanted with the world. My conviction that others could not be trusted had, you might say, penetrated me to the marrow. My despised uncle and aunt and relatives seemed representative of the whole of humanity. Even on the train I found myself glancing warily at my neighbors, and when someone occasionally spoke to me, my mistrust only deepened. I was sunk in depression. At times I felt a suffocating pressure, as if I had swallowed lead. Yet at the same time every nerve was on edge.
This state of mind was largely what had prompted my decision to leave the noisy boardinghouse, I think. True, my financial security meant I could consider living in a place of my own, but my earlier self would never have thought of going to such bother, no matter how much money might be in my pocket.
For some time after my move to Koishikawa, I continued in a highly strung state. I kept glancing furtively about, so much so that I unnerved even myself. Although my mind and eyes were abnormally active, however, my tongue grew less and less inclined to speak. I sat silently at my desk, observing those around me like a cat. Sometimes my keen awareness of them was so intense it shamed me to think of it. All that distinguished me from a thief was that I was stealing nothing, I thought in self-disgust.
You must find all this most peculiar—how on earth did I have energy to spare to feel attracted to Ojōsan, to delight in gazing at her clumsy flower arrangements or listen with joy to her inept playing? I can only answer that these were the facts, and as such I must lay them before you. I will leave it up to your clever mind to analyze them, and simply add one thing. I distrusted the human race where money was concerned, but not yet in the realm of love. So despite the obvious contradiction, both states of mind happily coexisted inside me.
I always called the widow by the polite title of Okusan, so I shall do the same here. Okusan apparently considered me a quiet, well-behaved person, and she was full of praise for my studious habits. She made no mention of the uneasy glances or the troubled, suspicious air. Perhaps she simply did not notice it, or maybe she was too polite to speak of it; at any event, it never seemed to bother her. Once she even admiringly told me I had a generous heart. I was honest enough to blushingly deny this, but she insisted. “You only say that because you’re not aware of it yourself,” she said earnestly.
The fact is, she had not originally planned on having a student as a boarder. When she had asked around the neighborhood if anyone knew of a lodger, she had thought in terms of a government official or the like. I imagine she was envisaging some underpaid fellow who couldn’t afford a place of his own. Compared with her impoverished imaginary lodger, I struck her as far more generous in my ways. I guess I was in fact more liberal with my money than someone in more straitened circumstances would have been. But this was a product of circumstance rather than any natural generosity, so it was hardly an indication of what kind of person I was. In her woman’s way, however, Okusan did her best to view my liberality with money as an expression of my general character.