We walked between tombstones on our way out. Next to those with inscriptions such as “Isabella So-and-so . . .” and “Login, Servant of God,” were those with Buddhist inscriptions such as “All living things bear within themselves the essence of Buddha.” There was one tombstone, I remember, on which was written, “Minister Plenipotentiary So-and-so.” I stopped before one that was particularly small, and pointing at the three Chinese characters on it, I asked Sensei, “How does one read that?”
“I presume they are meant to be read as ‘Andrew’,” said Sensei, smiling stiffly.
Sensei did not seem to find the way in which different customs were reflected in the tombstones amusing or ironical, as I did. Silently, he listened to me for a while as I chattered on, pointing to this tombstone and that. But finally he turned to me and said, “You have never thought seriously of the reality of death, have you?” I became silent. Sensei said no more.
Towards the end of the cemetery, there stood a gingko tree, so large that it almost hid the sky from view. Sensei looked up at the tree and said, “In a little while, it will be beautiful here. The tree will be a mass of yellow, and the ground will be buried beneath a golden carpet of fallen leaves.” Every month, I learned, Sensei made a point of walking by the tree at least once.
Not far from us in the cemetery, a man was leveling off a piece of rough ground. He stopped, and, resting on his hoe, he watched us. Turning to our left, we soon reached the main road.
Having no particular destination in mind, I continued to walk along with Sensei. Sensei was less talkative than usual. I felt no acute embarrassment, however, and I strolled unconcernedly by his side.
“Are you going straight home?”
“Yes. There is nothing else I particularly want to do now.”
Silently, we walked downhill towards the south.
Again I broke the silence. “Is your family burial ground there?” I asked.
“No.”
“Whose grave is it, then? Some relation of yours perhaps?”
“No.”
Sensei would say no more about it. I decided to mention the matter no further. But after he had walked a hundred yards or so, Sensei suddenly reopened the conversation.
“A friend of mine happens to be buried there.”
“And you visit his grave every month?”
“Yes.”
Sensei told me no more that day.
After that day, I began to visit Sensei at regular intervals. I found him always at home. And the more I visited Sensei, the more eager I became to see him again.
Despite this, however, there was no great change in Sensei’s manner towards me. He was always quiet. At times, he seemed so quiet that I thought him rather lonely. I felt from the start his strangely unapproachable quality. Yet, at the same time, there was within me an irresistible desire to become close to Sensei. Perhaps I was the only one who felt thus towards him. Some might say that I was being foolish and naïve. But even now, I feel a certain pride and happiness in the fact that my intuitive fondness for Sensei was later shown to have not been in vain. A man capable of love, or I should say rather a man who was by nature incapable of not loving; but a man who could not wholeheartedly accept the love of another—such a one was Sensei.
As I have already said, Sensei was always quiet. Moreover, he seemed to be at peace with himself. But sometimes, I would notice a shadow cross his face. True, like the shadow of a bird outside the window, it would quickly disappear. The first time I noticed it was at the cemetery at Zoshigaya, when I suddenly spoke to him. I remember that I felt then, though only for a passing moment, a strange weight on my heart. Soon after, the memory of that moment faded away. One evening, however, towards the end of the Indian summer, it was unexpectedly brought back to my mind.
As I was talking to Sensei, I happened for some reason to think of the great gingko tree that he had pointed out to me. And I remembered that his monthly visit to the grave was only three days away. Thinking that it would fall on the day when my lectures ended at noon, and that I should be relatively free, I turned to Sensei and said:
“Sensei, I wonder if the gingko tree at Zoshigaya has lost all its leaves by now?”
“I doubt that it will be quite bare yet.”
Sensei was watching me carefully. I said quickly:
“May I accompany you, when you next visit the grave? I should like to take a walk around there with you.”
“I go to visit a grave, not for a walk, you know.”
“But surely, we can go for a walk at the same time?”
Sensei was silent for a while, then said, “Believe me, visiting the grave is for me a truly serious matter.” He seemed quite determined to distinguish between his pilgrimage to the grave and an ordinary walk. I began to wonder whether he was making this excuse because he did not wish me to accompany him. I remember that I thought him oddly childish at the time. I became more forward.
“Well, then,” I said, “please allow me to accompany you as a fellow visitor to the grave.” I really did think Sensei’s attitude rather unreasonable. A shadow crossed his brow, and his eyes shone strangely. I cannot say whether it was annoyance, or dislike, or fear, that I saw in his expression. But whatever it was, there was beneath it, I felt, a gnawing anxiety. And I was suddenly reminded of the way he looked that day at Zoshigaya when I called to him.
“I cannot tell you why,” Sensei said to me, “but for a very good reason I wish to go to that grave alone. Even my wife, you see, has never come with me.”
I thought his behavior very strange. But I did not visit Sensei with the purpose of studying him. And I decided to think no more about it. My attitude towards Sensei then is one of those things that I remember with a certain amount of pride. Because of it, I believe, we were able to become so close to each other. Had I been curious in an impersonal and analytical way, the bond between us would surely not have lasted. I was, of course, not aware of all this at the time. I hate to think what might have happened had I acted differently. Even in his relationship with me, he was in constant dread of being coldly analyzed.
I began to visit Sensei two or even three times a month. One day, seeing that my visits were becoming more and more frequent, Sensei suddenly said to me:
“Why should you want to spend so much time with a person like me?”
“Why? I don’t think there’s any particular reason . . . Am I a nuisance, sir?”
“I did not say that.”
Indeed, he never seemed to regard me as a nuisance. I was aware that the number of his acquaintances was rather limited. As for those who had been in the same class with him at the university, I knew there were no more than two or three in Tokyo. Sometimes, I would find at his house students who were from the same part of the country as Sensei, but it seemed to me that none of them were as close to him as I was.
“I am a lonely man,” Sensei said. “And so I am glad that you come to see me. But I am also a melancholy man, and so I asked you why you should wish to visit me so often.”
“But why should you want to ask?”
Sensei did not answer me. Instead, he looked at me, and said, “How old are you?”
The conversation seemed to me to be rather purposeless. Without pursuing it any further, I left. Four days later, I was back again at his house. As soon as Sensei appeared, he began to laugh.
“You’re back again,” he said.
“Yes, I’m back,” I said, and I laughed with him.
Had anyone else spoken in such a way to me, I think I should have been annoyed. With Sensei, it was somehow different. Far from being annoyed, I was happy.