“At any rate,” he continued, “don’t put too much trust in me. You will learn to regret it if you do. And if you ever allow yourself to feel betrayed, you will then find yourself being cruelly vindictive.”
“What do you mean?”
“The memory that you once sat at my feet will begin to haunt you, and in bitterness and shame, you will want to degrade me. I do not want your admiration now, because I do not want your insults in the future. I bear with my loneliness now, in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves.”
I could not think of anything to say.
After that day, I used to wonder each time I saw Sensei’s wife whether Sensei’s attitude towards her reflected his inner thoughts, and if so, whether she could be satisfied with her condition.
But I could discern neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction in her manner. Of course, I was not close enough to her to know what her real feelings were. I rarely saw her away from Sensei: besides, in my presence, her behavior was always that of the conventional hostess.
I wondered also why Sensei felt the way he did towards mankind. Was it, I would ask myself, the result of a coldly impartial scrutiny of his own inner self and the contemporary world around him? And if one were as naturally reflective, intelligent, and as removed from the world as Sensei, would one inevitably reach the same conclusions? Such tentative explanations, however, which suggested themselves to my mind, did not completely satisfy me. Sensei’s opinions, it seemed to me, were not merely the result of cloistered reflection. They were not, as it were, like the skeleton of a stone house, which has been gutted by fire. They were more alive than that. True, Sensei, as I saw him, was primarily a thinker. But his thoughts, I felt, were based firmly on a strong sense of reality. And this sense of reality did not come so much from observation of the experience of others removed from himself, as from his own experience.
Such speculations, however, added little to my understanding of Sensei. Sensei, as a matter of fact, had already given me reason to believe that his thoughts were indeed forced upon him by the nature of his experience. But he had hinted only, and his hints were to me like a vast threatening cloud hanging over my head, vague in outline and yet frightening. The fear within me, nevertheless, was very real.
I tried to explain to myself Sensei’s view of life by imagining a love affair in his youth—between Sensei and his wife, of course—involving violent passion at first, and perhaps regret later. Such an explanation, I liked to think, would more or less take into account the association in Sensei’s mind of guilt with love. Sensei, however, had admitted to me that he was still in love with his wife. The cause of Sensei’s pessimism, then, could not reasonably be traced to their relationship with each other. It seemed that Sensei’s misanthropic views which he had expressed to me applied to the modern world in general, but not to his wife.
The memory of the grave in the cemetery at Zoshigaya would come back to me from time to time. That this grave was of some profound significance to Sensei, I knew well. I, who had come so close to Sensei and yet understood him so little, regarded the grave as something that held, in a sense, a fragment of his life. But whatever was buried in it was dead for me, and I knew that I would not find in it the key to Sensei’s heart. Indeed, the grave stood like some monstrous thing, forever separating us.
Meanwhile, it so happened that I had another occasion to have a conversation with Sensei’s wife. It was at the time of the year when the days grow shorter and there is everywhere a feeling of restless activity. There was already a chill in the air. During the previous week, there had been a series of burglaries in Sensei’s neighborhood. They had all taken place in the early hours of the evening. Nothing of great value had been stolen. The houses had been broken into nevertheless, and Sensei’s wife was uneasy. Unfortunately, Sensei was obliged to be away from the house one evening. A friend of his from the same part of the country as himself, and who was a doctor in some provincial hospital, had come up to Tokyo. Sensei and two or three others were taking him out to dinner that evening. Explaining the situation, Sensei asked me to stay with his wife until he returned. I agreed to do so willingly.
It was dusk when I reached the house. Sensei, who was a punctilious man, had already left. “My husband did not want to be late. He left only a minute ago,” said Sensei’s wife, as she led me to her husband’s study. The study was furnished partly in the Western style, with a desk and some chairs. A great number of books, bound beautifully in leather, gleamed through the glass panes of the book cases. Sensei’s wife bade me sit down on a cushion by the brazier. “There are plenty of books here for you to read, if you so wish,” she said, and left the room. I could not help feeling ill at ease, rather like a chance visitor waiting for the master of the house to return. Sitting stiffly, I began to smoke. I could hear Sensei’s wife talking to the maid in the morning room, which was along the same corridor as the study. The study, however, was at the end, and was therefore in a very quiet part of the house. When Sensei’s wife stopped talking, I was surrounded by complete silence. Expecting the burglar to appear any minute, I sat very still, and listened for any suspicious sound that might break the silence.
About half an hour later, Sensei’s wife appeared at the door, “Well!” she said. She seemed both surprised and amused when she saw me sitting there, stiff and serious like a strange guest.
“You seem very uncomfortable,” she said.
“Oh, no, I am not at all uncomfortable.”
“Then you must be bored.”
“Oh, no. I am all tense, waiting for the burglar, and so I am not at all bored.”
She remained standing, with a European teacup in her hand, and laughed.
“This room, being in a rather remote corner of the house, is not an ideal place for a watchman,” I said.
“Well, in that case, come along to the morning room, if you wish. I brought you some tea, thinking you must be bored. You can have it there.”
I followed Sensei’s wife out of the study. An iron kettle was singing on a handsome, long brazier in the morning room. There, I was given black tea and cakes. Sensei’s wife refused to drink tea herself, saying that she would not be able to go to sleep if she did.
“Does Sensei often go out to dinner parties?” I asked.
“No, hardly ever. It seems that of late, he has become less inclined than ever to see people.”
Sensei’s wife seemed to betray no anxiety as she said this, so I became more bold.
“You must then be the only person Sensei likes to be with,” I said.
“Certainly not. I am like all the rest in his eyes.”
“That is not true,” I said. “And you know very well that that is not true.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I think that he has tired of the company of others because of his fondness for you.”
“I see that higher education has made you adept at empty rationalization. You might as well have reasoned that he cannot be fond of me, since I am a part of the world that he dislikes.”
“True. But in this case, I am right.”
“Let us not argue. You men certainly will argue about anything, and with such obvious pleasure too. I have often wondered how it is that you men can, without becoming bored, forever exchange empty saké cups with one another.”
Her words, I thought, were a little harsh. But they did not seem offensive to me. Sensei’s wife was not so modern a woman as to take pride and pleasure in being able to display her mental prowess. She valued far more that thing which lies buried in the bottom of one’s heart.