CHAPTER 74
K and I entered the same faculty. He proceeded to pursue his chosen course of study, using the money sent to him, quite unconcerned. I could only interpret this as a mixture of complacent faith that the family would not find out, and a defiant resolve that if they did, he would not care. I was far more concerned than he over the question.
During the first summer vacation he did not go home, choosing instead to rent a room in a temple in the Komagome area1 and study during the break. When I came back in early September, he was holed up in a shabby little temple beside the Great Kannon. He had a small room tucked in beside the main temple building, and he seemed delighted that he had been able to get on with his studies there as planned. I think it was then I realized that he was becoming more and more monastic in lifestyle. A circlet of Buddhist rosary beads adorned his wrist. I asked the reason, and in response he told off a couple of beads with his thumb. I gathered that he counted through them a number of times each day. The meaning of this escaped me. If you count off a circle of beads, you never reach an end. At what point, and with what feelings, would his fingers cease to move those beads? This may be a silly question, but it haunts me.
I also saw a Bible in his room, which rather startled me. On numerous occasions in the past he had referred to Buddhist sutras, but we had never discussed the subject of Christianity. I could not resist asking about it. There was no real reason, he replied. He thought it natural to want to read a book that brought such comfort to others. If he had the chance, he added, he would like to read the Koran as well. He seemed particularly interested in the idea of Muhammad spreading the Word “with book or sword.”
In the second year he finally gave in to family pressure and went home for the summer. He apparently told them nothing about what he was studying even then, and they did not guess. Having been a student yourself, you will of course be well aware of such things, but the world at large is surprisingly ignorant about student life, school regulations, and so forth. Things that are quite routine for students mean absolutely nothing to outsiders. On the other hand, locked away in our own little world, we are far too inclined to assume that the world is thoroughly acquainted with everything great and small to do with school. K no doubt understood this ignorance better than I. He returned to college with a nonchalant air. We set off for Tokyo together, and as soon as we were in the train, I asked him how it had gone. Nothing had happened, he told me.
Our third summer vacation was the time when I decided to leave forever the land that held my parents’ graves. I urged K to go home that summer, but he resisted. He said he saw no point in going back every year. He clearly planned to spend the summer in Tokyo studying again, so I resignedly set off for home without him. I have already written of the deep turmoil into which my life was thrown by those two months at home. When I met K again in September, I was in the grip of anger, misery, and loneliness.
In fact, his life had undergone an upheaval rather like my own. Unknown to me, he had written a letter to his adoptive parents confessing his deceit. He had intended all along to do so, he said. Perhaps he was hoping that they would react by grudgingly accepting the change, and decide it was too late to argue, so he could have his way. At any rate, it seemed he was not prepared to continue deceiving them once he entered university; no doubt he realized that he would not get away with it much longer.