CHAPTER 79
Behind his back, I asked Okusan and Ojōsan to talk to K as much as possible, convinced that the silence of his previous life had been the cause of his ruin. It seemed clear to me that his heart had rusted like iron from disuse.
Okusan laughed, remarking that he was rather curt and unapproachable, and Ojōsan supported this by describing an encounter she had had with him. She’d asked him if his brazier was lit, and he had told her it wasn’t. She offered to bring some charcoal, but he said he didn’t need any. Wasn’t he cold? she asked. He replied curtly that he was but didn’t want a fire, and he refused to discuss the matter further. I couldn’t simply dismiss her story with a rueful smile; I felt sorry for her, and that I must somehow make up for his rudeness. It was spring, of course, so he had had no real need for a warm fire in the brazier, but I could see that they had good reason to feel that he was difficult.
I then did my best to use myself as a catalyst to bring them together. At every opportunity I encouraged K to spend time in the company of all three of us. When I was talking with him, I would call them in, or when I met up with them in one of the rooms, I’d invite him to join us. Naturally, K did not much care for this. Sometimes he would abruptly rise to his feet and walk out. At other times he ignored my calls. “What’s the point of all that idle chatter?” he asked me. I just laughed, but I was well aware that he despised me for indulging in such frivolities.
In some ways I doubtless deserved his scorn. His sights were fixed on far higher things than mine, I’ll not deny it. But it is surely crippling to limp along, so out of step with the lofty gaze you insist on maintaining. My most important task, I felt, was somehow to make him more human. Filling his own head with the examples of impressive men was pointless, I decided, if it did not make him impressive himself. As a first step in the task of humanizing him, I would introduce him to the company of the opposite sex. Letting the fair winds of that gentle realm blow upon him would cleanse his blood of the rust that clogged it, I hoped.
This approach gradually succeeded. The two elements, which had seemed at first so unlikely to merge, slowly came together until they were one. K apparently grew to realize that there were others in the world besides himself. One day he remarked to me that women were not after all such despicable creatures. He had at first assumed, he told me, that women had the same level of knowledge and academic ability as I had, and when he discovered that they didn’t, he had been quick to despise them. He had always viewed men and women without any distinction, he said, without understanding that one could see the sexes differently. I pointed out that if we two men were to go on talking exclusively to each other forever, we would simply continue in the same straight line. Naturally, he replied.
I spoke as I did because I was by then quite in love with Ojōsan. But I did not breathe a word to him of my inner state.
This man who had constructed a defensive fortress of books to hide behind was now slowly opening up to the world, and the change in his heart delighted me. Opening him up had been my plan all along, and its success sent an irrepressible wave of joy through me. Though I said nothing of it to him, I shared my joy with Okusan and Ojōsan. They too seemed gratified.