I found humor and irony in this great variety of humanity displayed in the names on the tombstones, but I gathered that he did not. As I chattered on about the graves, pointing out this round tombstone or that tall thin marble pillar, he listened in silence. Finally he said, “You haven’t seriously thought about the reality of death yet, have you?”
I fell silent. Sensei did not speak again.
At the end of the cemetery a great ginkgo tree stood blocking the sky. “It will look lovely before long,” Sensei remarked, looking up at it. “This tree turns a beautiful color in autumn. The ground is buried deep in golden leaves when they fall.” Every month when he came here, I discovered, he made a point of passing under this tree.
Some distance away a man had been smoothing the rough earth of a new grave; he paused on his hoe and watched us. We turned left, and soon were back on the street.
I had nowhere in particular to go, so I continued to walk beside him. He spoke less than usual. It did not make me feel awkward, however, and I strolled along easily beside him.
“Are you going straight home?” I asked.
“Yes, there’s nowhere else I need to go.”
We fell silent again and walked south down the hill.
“Is your family grave there?” I asked a little later, breaking the silence.
“No.”
“Whose grave is it? Is it some relation?”
“No.”
Sensei said no more, and I decided not to pursue the conversation. About a hundred yards on, however, he abruptly broke the silence. “A friend of mine is buried there.”
“You visit a friend’s grave every month?”
“That’s right.”
This was all he told me that day.
CHAPTER 6
I visited Sensei quite often thereafter. He was always at home when I called. And the more I saw of him, the sooner I wanted to visit him again.
Yet Sensei’s manner toward me never really changed, from the day we first exchanged words to the time when our friendship was well established. He was always quiet, sometimes almost forlorn. From the outset he seemed to me strangely unapproachable, yet I felt compelled to find a way to get close to him.
Perhaps no one else would have had this response—others might have dismissed it as folly, an impulse of youth. Yet I feel a certain happy pride in the insight I showed, for later events served to justify my intuition. Sensei was a man who could, indeed must love, yet he was unable to open his arms and accept into his heart another who sought to enter.
He was, as I have said, always quiet and composed, even serene. Yet from time to time an odd shadow would cross his face, like the sudden dark passage of a bird across a window, although it was no sooner there than gone again. The first time I noticed it was when I called out to him in the graveyard at Zōshigaya. For a strange instant the warm pulse of my blood faltered a little. It was only a momentary miss of a beat, however, and in no time my heart recovered its usual resilient pulse, and I proceeded to forget what I had seen.
One evening just at the end of autumn’s warm weather, I was unexpectedly reminded of it again.
As I was talking to Sensei, I was for some reason suddenly reminded of the great ginkgo tree that he had pointed out to me. A mental calculation told me that his next visit to the grave was three days away. My classes would finish at noon that day, so I would have the afternoon free.
I turned to Sensei. “I wonder if that ginkgo tree at Zōshigaya has lost its leaves by now.”
“It won’t be quite bare yet, I should think.” He looked at me, his eyes staying on me for a long moment.
I quickly went on. “Would you mind if I go with you next time? I’d enjoy walking around the area with you.”
“I go to visit a grave, you know, not to take a walk.”
“But wouldn’t it be nice to go for a walk while you’re about it?”
Sensei did not reply at first, then said finally, “My sole purpose in going is to visit the grave.” Clearly, he wanted to impress on me the distinction between a grave visit and a mere walk. It occurred to me that he might be making an excuse not to have me along. His tone seemed oddly petulant.
I felt an urge to press my case. “Well, let me come along anyway and visit the grave too. I’ll pay respects with you.” In truth, I couldn’t really see the distinction between visiting someone’s grave and taking a walk.
Sensei’s brow darkened a little, and a strange light shone in his eyes. Was it annoyance, or dislike, or fear that I saw hovering there? Instantly, I had a vivid recollection of that shadow on his face when I had called out to him at Zōshigaya. This expression was identical.
“I have,” Sensei began. “I have a particular reason that I cannot explain to you for wanting to visit that grave alone. I never even take my wife.”
CHAPTER 7
It all struck me as very odd. But my intention in visiting him was not to study or analyze Sensei, so I let it pass. In retrospect, I particularly treasure my memory of that response to Sensei. Because of it, I think, I was able to achieve the real human intimacy with him that I later did. If I had chosen to turn the cool and analytical eye of curiosity on Sensei’s heart, it would inexorably have snapped the bond of sympathy between us. At the time, of course, I was too young to be aware of any of this. Perhaps that is precisely where its true value lies. If I had made the mistake of responding less than guilelessly, who knows what might have befallen our relationship? I shudder to think of it. The scrutiny of an analytical eye was something Sensei always particularly dreaded.
It became my established habit to call on Sensei twice or even three times a month. One day he unexpectedly turned to me and asked, “What makes you come to see someone like me so often?”
“Well, no particular reason, really. Am I a nuisance, Sensei?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Indeed my visits didn’t seem to annoy him. I was aware that he had a very narrow range of social contacts. He had also mentioned that only two or three of his old school friends were living in Tokyo. Occasionally, a fellow student from his hometown would be there when I called, but none of them seemed to me as close to him as I.
“I’m a lonely man,” Sensei said, “so I’m happy that you come to visit. That’s why I asked why you come so often.”
“Why are you lonely?” I asked in return.
Sensei did not reply. He just looked at me and said, “How old are you?”
I could make no sense of this exchange and went home that day puzzled. Four days later, however, I was back at his house again.
He burst out laughing as soon as he emerged and saw me. “You’re here again, eh?”
“Yes,” I said, laughing too.
If anyone else had said this to me, I would surely have felt offended. But coming from Sensei, the words made me positively happy.
“I’m a lonely man,” he repeated that evening. “I’m lonely, but I’m guessing you may be a lonely man yourself. I’m older, so I can withstand loneliness without needing to take action, but for you it’s different—you’re young. I sense that you have the urge to do, to act. You want to pit yourself against something . . .”
“I’m not at all lonely.”
“No time is as lonely as youth. Why else should you visit me so often?”
Here was the same question again.
“But even when you’re with me,” he went on, “you probably still feel somehow lonely. I don’t have the strength, you see, to really take on your loneliness and eradicate it for you. In time, you’ll need to reach out toward someone else. Sooner or later your feet will no longer feel inclined to take you here.”
Sensei smiled forlornly as he spoke.
CHAPTER 8
Fortunately Sensei’s prophecy was not fulfilled. Inexperienced as I was, I could not grasp even the most obvious significance of his words, and continued to visit as usual. Before long I found myself occasionally dining there, which naturally put me in the position of talking to
his wife.
Like other men, I was not indifferent to women. Being young, however, I had so far had little opportunity to have much to do with girls. Perhaps for this reason, my response to the opposite sex was limited to a keen interest in the unknown women I passed in the street. When I first saw Sensei’s wife at the door, she had struck me as beautiful, and every time we met thereafter I thought so again. Otherwise I found nothing really to say about her.
That is not to say that she wasn’t special in any way. Rather, she had had no opportunity to reveal her particular qualities to me. I treated her as a kind of appendage to Sensei, and she welcomed me as the young student who visited her husband. Sensei was our sole connection. That is why her beauty is the single impression I remember of her from those early days.
One day when I visited, I was given sake. His wife emerged to serve it to me. Sensei was more jovial than usual. “You must have a cup too,” he pressed her, offering the little sake cup from which he had drunk.
“Oh no, I . . . ,” she began, then rather unwillingly accepted the cup. I half-filled it for her, and she lifted it to her lips, a pretty frown creasing her forehead.
The following conversation then took place between them.
“This is most unusual,” she remarked. “You almost never encourage me to drink.”
“That’s because you don’t enjoy it. But it’s good to have the occasional drink, you know. It puts you in good spirits.”
“It doesn’t at all. All it does is make me feel terrible. But a bit of sake seems to make you wonderfully cheerful.”
“Sometimes it does, yes. But not always.”
“What about this evening?”
“This evening I feel fine.”
“You should have a little every evening from now on.”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Go on, do. Then you won’t feel so melancholy.”
The two of them lived there with only a maid for company, and I generally found the house hushed and silent when I arrived. I never heard loud laughter or raised voices. It sometimes felt as if Sensei and I were the only people in the house.
“It would be nice if we had children, you know,” she said, turning to me.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I replied. But I felt no stir of sympathy at her words. I was too young to have children of my own and regarded them as no more than noisy pests.
“Shall I adopt one for you?” said Sensei.
“Oh dear me, an adopted child . . . ,” she said, turning to me again.
“We’ll never have one, you know,” Sensei said.
She was silent, so I spoke instead. “Why not?”
“Divine punishment,” he answered, and gave a loud laugh.
CHAPTER 9
Sensei and his wife had a good relationship, as far as I could tell. I was not really in a position to judge, of course, since I had never lived under the same roof with them. Still, if he happened to need something while we were in the living room together, it was often his wife rather than the maid whom he asked to fetch it. “Hey, Shizu!” he would call, turning toward the door and calling her by name. The words had a gentle ring, I thought. And on those occasions when I stayed for a meal and she joined us, I gained a clearer picture of their relationship.
Sensei would sometimes take her out to a concert or the theater. I also recall two or three occasions when they went off for a week’s vacation together. I still have a postcard they sent from the hot springs resort at Hakoné, and I received a letter from their visit to Nikko, with an autumn leaf enclosed.
Such was my general impression of them as a couple. Only one incident disturbed it. One day when I arrived at the house and was on the point of announcing myself at the door as was my custom, I overheard voices coming from the living room. As I listened, it became evident that this was no normal conversation but an argument. The living room was right next to the entrance hall, and I was close enough to get a clear sense of the general tone, if not the words. I soon understood that the male voice that rose from time to time was Sensei’s. The other one was lower, and it was unclear whose it was, but it felt like his wife’s. She seemed to be crying. I hesitated briefly in the entrance hall, unsure what to do, then made up my mind and went home again.
Back at my lodgings, a strange anxiety gripped me. I tried reading but found I could not concentrate. About an hour later Sensei arrived below my window and called up to me. Surprised, I opened it, and he suggested I come down for a walk. I checked the watch I had tucked into my sash when I set off earlier, and saw that it was past eight. I was still dressed in my visiting clothes, so I went straight out to meet him.
That evening we drank beer together. As a rule Sensei did not drink much. If a certain amount of alcohol failed to produce the desired effect, he was disinclined to experiment by drinking more.
“This isn’t working today,” he remarked with a wry smile.
“You can’t cheer up?” I asked sympathetically.
I still felt disturbed by the argument I had heard. It produced a sharp pain in me, like a fishbone stuck in my throat. I couldn’t decide whether to confess to Sensei that I had overheard it, and my indecision made me unusually fidgety.
Sensei was the first to speak about the matter. “You’re not yourself tonight, are you?” he said. “I’m feeling rather out of sorts too, actually. You noticed that?”
I could not reply.
“As a matter of fact, I had a bit of a quarrel with my wife earlier. I got stupidly upset by it.”
“Why . . . ?” I could not bring myself to say the word “quarrel.”
“My wife misunderstands me. I tell her so, but she won’t believe me. I’m afraid I lost my temper with her.”
“How does she misunderstand you?”
Sensei made no attempt to respond to this. “If I was the sort of person she thinks I am,” he said, “I wouldn’t be suffering like this.”
But I was unable to imagine how Sensei was suffering.
CHAPTER 10
We walked back in silence. Then after quite some time, Sensei spoke.
“I’ve done wrong. I left home angry, and my wife will be worrying about me. Women are to be pitied, you know. My wife has not a soul except me to turn to.”
He paused, and then seeming to expect no response from me, he went on. “But putting it that way makes her husband sound like the strong one, which is rather a joke. You, now—how do you see me, I wonder. Do I strike you as strong or as weak?”
“Somewhere in between,” I replied.
Sensei seemed a little startled. He fell silent again, and walked on without speaking further.
The route back to Sensei’s house passed very near my lodgings. But when we reached that point, it did not feel right to part with him. “Shall I see you to your house?” I asked.
He raised a quick defensive hand. “It’s late. Off you go. I must be off too, for my wife’s sake.”
“For my wife’s sake”—these words warmed my heart. Thanks to them, I slept in peace that night, and they stayed with me for a long time to come.
They told me that the trouble between Sensei and his wife was nothing serious. And I felt it safe to conclude, from my subsequent constant comings and goings at the house, that such quarrels were actually rare.
Indeed, Sensei once confided to me, “I have only ever known one woman in my life. No one besides my wife has really ever appealed to me as a woman. And likewise for her, I am the only man. Given this, we should be the happiest of couples.”
I no longer remember the context in which he said this, so I cannot really explain why he should have made such a confession, and to me. But I do remember that he spoke earnestly and seemed calm. The only thing that struck me as strange was that final phrase, we should be the happiest of couples. Why did he say “should be”? Why not say simply that they were? This alone disturbed me.
Even more puzzling was the somehow forceful tone in which he spoke the words. Sensei had every re
ason to be happy, but was he in fact? I wondered. I could not repress my doubt. But it lasted only a moment, then was buried.
Sometime later I stopped by when Sensei happened to be out, and I had a chance to talk directly with his wife. Sensei had gone to Shinbashi station to see off a friend who was sailing abroad that day from Yokohama. Customarily, those taking a ship from Yokohama would set off on the boat-train from Shinbashi at eight-thirty in the morning. I had arranged with Sensei to stop by that morning at nine, as I wanted his opinion on a certain book. Once there, I learned of his last-minute decision to see off his friend, as a gesture of thanks for the trouble he had taken to pay Sensei a special farewell visit the day before. Sensei had left instructions that he would soon be back, so I was to stay there and await his return. And so it came about that, as I waited in the living room, his wife and I talked.
CHAPTER 11
By this time I was a university student, and felt myself to be far more adult than when I had first begun to visit Sensei. I was also quite friendly with his wife and now chatted easily and unself-consciously with her about this and that. This conversation was light and incidental, containing nothing remarkable, and I have forgotten what we spoke of. Just one thing struck me, but before I proceed I should explain a little.
I had known from the beginning that Sensei was a university graduate, but only after I returned to Tokyo had I discovered that he had no occupation, that he lived what could be called an idle life. How he could do it was a puzzle to me.
Sensei’s name was quite unknown in the world. I seemed to be the only person who was in a position to really respect him for his learning and ideas. This fact always troubled me. He would never discuss the matter, simply saying, “There’s no point in someone like me opening his mouth in public.” This struck me as ridiculously humble.
I also sensed behind his words a contemptuous attitude to the world at large. Indeed, Sensei would occasionally make a surprisingly harsh remark, dismissing some old school friend who was now in a prominent position. I didn’t hesitate to point out how inconsistent he was being. I was not just being contrary—I genuinely regretted the way the world ignored this admirable man.