“Of course, my last remark would lead one to suppose that the husband is self-reliant. Which is laughable. Tell me, how do I appear to you? Do you think me a strong or a weak person?”
“Somewhere in-between,” I answered. My reply, it would seem, was a little unexpected. He became silent again, and we continued our walk.
The road leading to Sensei’s house passed very near my own lodgings. When we reached the corner of my street and I was about to bid him goodnight, I began to feel that it would somehow be heartless to leave him then and there. “Shall I walk you home?” I said. He made a quick, negative gesture with his hand.
“You had better go home. It’s late. I must go home too. For my wife’s sake . . .”
“For my wife’s sake . . .”: these last words of Sensei’s strangely warmed my heart. Because of them, I was able to enjoy an untroubled sleep that night. And for a long time after, those words stayed with me: “For my wife’s sake . . .”
I knew then that the disagreement which had occurred between them was not very serious. I continued to visit them regularly, and I could see that it had been an exceptional occurrence. Moreover, he took me into his confidence one day and said:
“In all the world, I know only one woman. No woman, but my wife, moves me as a woman. And my wife regards me as the only man for her. From this point of view, we should be the happiest of couples.”
I cannot remember clearly why it was that he took the trouble of telling me this. But I do remember that his manner at the time was serious, and that he was calm. What struck me then as being odd was his last remark: “. . . we should be the happiest of couples.” Why “should be”? Why did he not say, “We are the happiest of couples”? Was Sensei indeed happy? I could not but wonder. But very soon, I brushed aside my doubts concerning Sensei’s happiness.
One day, for the first time since I met her, I had a good talk with Sensei’s wife. I had previously asked Sensei to discuss a book with me, and he had kindly invited me to visit him that day for that purpose. I arrived at nine o’clock in the morning, as arranged. I found Sensei out. A friend of his, I learned, was sailing from Yokohama, and Sensei had gone to see him off at Shimbashi. In those days, the boat train to Yokohama customarily left Shimbashi at eight-thirty in the morning. Sensei had left a message for me, however, saying that he would be back soon and that I should wait. While waiting for Sensei, therefore, I talked to his wife.
By then, I was already a university student.2 I felt that I had become more mature since my first visit to Sensei’s house. I had also become quite familiar with Sensei’s wife. Therefore, when I found myself alone with her, I did not feel at all ill at ease. We talked of this and that. I should not have remembered the conversation at all, had it not been for the fact that in the course of it, we talked of one matter which was of particular interest to me. Before I go on to say what this was, I should perhaps explain a few things about Sensei.
Sensei was a graduate of the university. I knew this from the first. But it was only after my return to Tokyo from Kamakura that I discovered he had no particular employment. I wondered at the time how he managed to support himself.
Sensei lived in complete obscurity. Apart from myself, there was no one who knew of Sensei’s scholarship or his ideas. I often remarked to him that this was a great pity. But he would pay no attention to me. “There is no sense,” he once said to me, “in such a person as myself expressing his thoughts in public.” This remark struck me as being too modest, and I wondered whether it did not spring from a contempt of the outside world. Indeed, he was sometimes not above saying rather unkind things about those of his classmates who had since their graduation made names for themselves. This apparent inconsistency in his attitude, which was at once modest and contemptuous, I quite frankly pointed out to him once. I did not do this in a rebellious spirit. I simply regretted the fact that the world was indifferent to Sensei, whom I admired so much. In a very quiet voice, Sensei answered me: “You see, there is nothing we can do about it. I do not have the right to expect anything from the world.” There was, as he said this, an expression on his face which affected me profoundly. I did not know whether what I saw was despair, regret, or grief. I had not the courage to say any more.
As Sensei’s wife and I sat and talked, our conversation drifted naturally to the subject of Sensei.
“Why does Sensei,” I asked, “not go out into the world and find himself some position that is worthy of his talents, instead of spending all his time studying and thinking at home?”
“There is no hope of that, I am afraid. He would hate it.”
“I suppose he sees that it would be a vain thing to do?”
“Being a woman, I wouldn’t know. But I doubt that that is the reason. I am sure he would like to do something, really. But somehow, he can’t. I am very sorry for him.”
“But he is in good health, is he not?”
“Certainly. He is perfectly well.”
“Well then, why doesn’t he do something?”
“I wish I knew. Do you think that I would be worrying so much, if I did? I feel so sorry for him.”
Her tone of voice held a great deal of sympathy. Her lips, however, were smiling slightly. As far as our outward manner was concerned, I must have seemed the more anxious of the two. I sat there, silent and serious. She looked up, as though she suddenly remembered something, and said:
“You know, when he was young, he wasn’t at all the sort of person he is now. He was quite different. He has changed so much.”
“When was he different?” I asked.
“Oh, in his student days.”
“Then you knew him when he was a student?”
Sensei’s wife blushed a little.
She was a Tokyo woman. Both Sensei and she herself had told me this before. Her father had actually come from some such place as Tottori, while her mother had been born in Ichigaya, when Tokyo was still known as Yedo. For this reason, she once said, half-jokingly, “I am, as a matter of fact, of mixed blood.” Sensei, on the other hand, was from the province of Niigata. It was clear to me, therefore, that her place of origin could not explain how she had come to know Sensei when he was a student. But seeing the blush on her face when I touched on the subject of their youthful acquaintance, I asked no more about it.
In the years between my first meeting with Sensei and his death, I came to know much of what he thought and felt, but concerning the circumstances of his marriage, he told me almost nothing. I was inclined, sometimes, to regard this reserve on Sensei’s part in a favorable light. After all, I would tell myself, he quite naturally would consider it indiscreet and in bad taste to speak of his early courtship to a youth such as myself. But sometimes, I was inclined to regard his reserve unfavorably. I liked then to think that his reluctance to discuss such a matter was due to timidity born of the conventions of a generation ago. I thought myself more free, in this respect, and more open-minded, than either Sensei or his wife. Whatever my thoughts regarding Sensei’s reserve might have been, they were, of course, only speculations. And there was always, at the back of my speculations, the assumption that their marriage had been the flowering of a beautiful romance.
My assumption was not proved entirely wrong. But I was imagining only a small part of the truth that lay behind their love story. I could not know that there had been in Sensei’s life a frightening tragedy, inseparable from his love for his wife. Nor did his own wife know how wretched this tragedy had made him. To this day she does not know. Sensei died keeping his secret from her. Before he could destroy his wife’s happiness, he destroyed himself.