At such times Sensei would respond leadenly, “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid. I simply don’t have any right to put myself forward.” As he spoke, an indefinable expression—whether it was despair, or bitterness, or grief I could not tell—was vividly etched on his features. Whatever it may have been, it was strong enough to dumbfound me. I lost all courage to speak further.
As his wife and I talked that morning, the topic shifted naturally from Sensei to this question. “Why is it that Sensei always sits at home, studying and thinking, instead of finding a worthy position in the world?” I asked.
“It’s no use—he hates that sort of thing.”
“You mean he realizes how trivial it is?”
“Realizes . . . well, I’m a woman, so I don’t really know about such things, but that doesn’t seem to be it to me. I think he wants to do something, but somehow he just can’t manage to. It makes me sad for him.”
“But he’s perfectly healthy, isn’t he?”
“He’s fine, yes. There’s nothing the matter with him.”
“So why doesn’t he do something?”
“I don’t understand it either. If I understood, I wouldn’t worry about him as I do. As it is, all I can do is feel sorry for him.”
Her tone was deeply sympathetic, yet a little smile played at the corners of her mouth.
To an observer, I would have appeared to be more concerned than she. I sat silently, my face troubled.
Then she spoke again, as if suddenly recalling something. “He wasn’t at all like this when he was young, you know. He was very different. He’s changed completely.”
“What do you mean by ‘when he was young’?” I asked.
“When he was a student.”
“Have you known him since his student days, then?”
She blushed slightly.
CHAPTER 12
Sensei’s wife was a Tokyo woman. Both she and he had told me so. “Actually,” she added half-jokingly, “I’m not a pure-blood.” Her mother had been born in Tokyo’s Ichigaya district, back when the city was still called Edo, but her father had come from the provinces, Tottori or somewhere of the sort. Sensei, for his part, came from a very different part of Japan, Niigata Prefecture. Clearly, if she had known him in his student days it was not because they shared a hometown. But since she blushed at my question and seemed disinclined to say more, I did not press the subject further.
Between our first meeting and his death, I came to know Sensei’s ideas and feelings on all sorts of subjects, but I learned almost nothing about the circumstances surrounding his marriage. Sometimes I interpreted this reticence charitably, choosing to believe that Sensei, as an older man, would prefer to be discreet on a private matter of the heart. At other times, however, I saw the question in a less positive light, and felt that Sensei and his wife shared the older generation’s timorous aversion to open, honest discussion of these delicate subjects. Both of my interpretations were of course mere speculations, and both were premised on the assumption that a splendid romance lay behind their marriage.
This assumption was not far wrong, but I was able to imagine only part of the story of their love. I could not know that behind the beautiful romance lay a terrible tragedy. Moreover, Sensei’s wife had absolutely no way of understanding how devastating this tragedy had been for him. To this day she knows nothing of it. Sensei died without revealing anything to her. He chose to destroy his life before her happiness could be destroyed.
I will say nothing of that tragedy yet. As for their romance, which was in a sense born of this dreadful thing, neither of them told me anything. In her case, it was simply discretion. Sensei had deeper reasons for his silence.
One memory stands out for me. One spring day when the cherries were in full bloom, Sensei and I went to see the blossoms in Ueno. Amid the crowd were a lovely young couple, snuggled close together as they walked under the flowering trees. In this public place, such a sight tended to attract more attention than the blossoms.
“I’d say they’re a newly married couple,” said Sensei.
“They look as if they get on just fine together,” I remarked a little snidely.
Sensei’s face remained stony, and he set off walking away from the couple. When they were hidden from our view, he spoke. “Have you ever been in love?” I had not, I replied.
“Wouldn’t you like to be?”
I did not answer.
“I don’t imagine that you wouldn’t.”
“No.”
“You were mocking that couple just now. I think that mockery contained unhappiness at wanting love but not finding it.”
“Is that how it sounded to you?”
“It is. A man who knows the satisfactions of love would speak of them more warmly. But, you know . . . love is also a sin. Do you understand?”
Astonished, I made no reply.
CHAPTER 13
People thronged all around us, and every face was happy. At last we made our way through them and arrived in a wooded area that had neither blossoms nor crowds, where we could resume the conversation.
“Is love really a sin?” I asked abruptly.
“Yes, most definitely,” Sensei said, as forcefully as before.
“Why?”
“You’ll understand soon enough. No, you must already understand it. Your heart is already restless with love, isn’t it?”
I briefly searched within myself to see if this might be true, but all I could find was a blank. Nothing inside me seemed to answer his description.
“There’s no object of love in my heart, Sensei. Believe me, I’m being perfectly honest with you.”
“Ah, but you’re restless precisely because there’s no object, you see? You’re driven by the feeling that if only you could find that object, you’d be at peace.”
“I don’t feel too restless right now.”
“You came to me because of some lack you sensed, didn’t you?”
“That may be so. But that isn’t love.”
“It’s a step in the direction of love. You had the impulse to find someone of the same sex as the first step toward embracing someone of the opposite sex.”
“I think the two things are completely different in nature.”
“No, they’re the same. But I’m a man, so I can’t really fill your need. Besides, certain things make it impossible for me to be all you want me to be. I feel for you, actually. I accept that your restless urge will one day carry you elsewhere. Indeed I hope for your sake that that will happen. And yet . . .”
I felt strangely sad. “If you really believe I’ll grow apart from you, Sensei, then what can I say? But I’ve never felt the slightest urge.”
He wasn’t listening. “. . . you must be careful,” he went on, “because love is a sin. My friendship can never really satisfy you, but at least there’s no danger here. Tell me, do you know the feeling of being held fast by a woman’s long black hair?”
I knew it well enough in my fantasies, but not from reality. But my mind was on another matter. Sensei’s use of the word sin made no sense to me. And I was feeling a little upset.
“Sensei, please explain more carefully what you mean by sin. Otherwise, I’d prefer not to pursue this conversation until I’ve discovered for myself what you really mean.”
“I apologize. I was trying to speak truthfully, but I’ve only succeeded in irritating you. It was wrong of me.”
We walked on quietly past the back of the museum and headed toward Uguisudani. Through gaps in the hedge we caught glimpses of the spacious gardens, crowded thick with dwarf bamboo, secluded and mysterious.
“Do you know why I go every month to visit my friend’s grave in Zōshigaya?”
Sensei’s question came out of the blue. He knew perfectly well, what’s more, that I did not. I made no reply.
There was a pause, then something seemed to dawn on him. “I’ve said something wrong again,” he said contritely. “I planned to explain, because it was wrong of me to up
set you like that, but my attempt at explanation has only irritated you further. It’s no use. Let’s drop the subject. Just remember that love is a sin. And it is also sacred.”
These words made even less sense to me. But it was the last time Sensei spoke to me of love.
CHAPTER 14
Being young, I was prone to blind enthusiasms—or so Sensei apparently saw me. But conversing with him seemed to me more beneficial than attending classes. His ideas inspired me more than the opinions of my professors. All in all Sensei, who spoke little and kept to himself, seemed a greater man than those great men who sought to guide me from behind the lectern.
“You mustn’t be so hot-headed,” Sensei warned me.
“On the contrary, being coolheaded is what’s led me to draw these conclusions,” I replied confidently.
Sensei would not accept that. “You’re being carried along by passion. Once the fever passes, you’ll feel disillusioned. All this admiration is distressing enough, heaven knows, but it’s even more painful to foresee the change that will take place in you sooner or later.”
“Do you really think me so fickle? Do you distrust me so much?”
“It’s just that I’m sorry for you.”
“You can have sympathy for me but not trust, is that it?”
Sensei turned to look out at the garden, apparently annoyed. The camellia flowers that had until recently studded the garden with their dense, heavy crimson were gone. Sensei had been in the habit of sitting in his living room and gazing out at them.
“It’s not you in particular I don’t trust. I don’t trust humanity.”
From beyond the hedge came the cry of a passing goldfish seller. Otherwise all was silent. This winding little back lane, two blocks away from the main road, was surprisingly quiet. The house was hushed as always. I knew that his wife was in the next room, and could hear my voice as she sat sewing. But for the moment this had slipped my mind.
“Do you mean you don’t even trust your wife?” I asked.
Sensei looked rather uneasy, and avoided answering directly. “I don’t even trust myself. It’s because I can’t trust myself that I can’t trust others. I can only curse myself for it.”
“Once you start to think that way, then surely no one’s entirely reliable.”
“It’s not thinking that’s led me here. It’s doing. I once did something that shocked me, then terrified me.”
I wanted to pursue the subject further, but just then Sensei’s wife called him gently from the next room.
“What is it?” Sensei replied when she called again.
“Could you come here a moment?” she said, and he went in. Before I had time to wonder why she needed him, Sensei returned.
“In any event, you mustn’t trust me too much,” he went on. “You’ll regret it if you do. And once you feel you’ve been deceived, you will wreak a cruel revenge.”
“What do you mean?”
“The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. I’m trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt. I prefer to put up with my present state of loneliness rather than suffer more loneliness later. We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the price we pay for these times of ours.”
Sensei’s mind was made up, I could see, and I found no words to answer his conviction.
CHAPTER 15
The conversation preyed on my mind later, every time I saw his wife. Was distrust Sensei’s prevailing attitude toward her as well? And if so, how did she feel about it?
On the face of it, I could not tell whether she was content. I was not in close enough contact with her to judge. Besides, when we met, she always appeared perfectly normal, and I almost never saw her without Sensei.
Another question disturbed me too. What, I wondered, lay behind Sensei’s deep distrust of humanity? Had he arrived at it simply by observing his own heart and the contemporary world around him with a cool, dispassionate eye? He was by nature inclined to sit and ponder things, and a mind such as his perhaps naturally reached such conclusions.
But I did not think that that was all there was to it. His conviction struck me as more than just a lifeless theory, or the cold ruins from some long-dead fire. Sensei was indeed a philosopher, it seemed to me, but a potent reality seemed woven into the fabric of his philosophy. Nor was his thinking grounded in anything remote from himself, observed only in others. No, behind his convictions lay some keenly felt personal experience, something great enough to heat his blood, and to halt his heart.
All this was hardly speculation—Sensei had admitted as much to me. His confession hung in the air, heavy and obscure, oppressing me like a terrifying and nameless cloud. Why this unknown thing should so frighten me I could not tell, but it unquestionably shook me.
I tried imagining that a passionate love affair was in some way the basis for Sensei’s mistrust of humankind. (It would, of course, have been between Sensei and his wife.) His earlier statement that love was a sin certainly fit this theory. But he had told me unequivocally that he loved his wife. In that case, their love could hardly have produced this state of near loathing of humanity. The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot, he had said—but this could refer to anyone in the modern world, except perhaps Sensei’s wife.
The grave of the unknown friend at Zōshigaya also stirred in my memory from time to time. Sensei clearly felt some profound connection with this grave. But as close as I had drawn to him, further closeness eluded me, and in my efforts to know him I internalized in my own mind this fragment of his inner life. The grave was dead for me, however. It offered no key to open the living door that stood between us. Rather, it barred the way like some evil apparition.
My mind was mulling all this over when I found another chance to talk to Sensei’s wife. It was during that chilly time of autumn, when you are suddenly aware of everyone hurrying against the shortening days. In the past week there had been a series of burglaries in Sensei’s neighborhood, all in the early evening. Nothing really valuable had been stolen, but something had been taken from each house, and Sensei’s wife was uneasy. One day, she was facing an evening alone in the house. Sensei was obliged to go off to a restaurant with two or three others, to attend a dinner for a friend from his hometown who had a post in a provincial hospital and had come up to Tokyo. He explained the situation to me and asked me to stay in the house with his wife until he returned. I immediately agreed.
CHAPTER 16
I arrived at dusk, about the time the lights are beginning to be lit. Sensei, ever punctilious, had already left. “He didn’t want to be late, so he set out just a moment ago,” his wife told me as she led me to the study.
The room held a Western-style desk and a few chairs, as well as a large collection of books in glass-fronted cases; the rows of beautiful leather-bound spines glinted in the electric light. She settled me onto a cushion before the charcoal brazier. “Feel free to dip into any book you like,” she said as she left.
I sat there stiffly, smoking, feeling awkward as a guest left to while away the time until the master of the house returns. Down the corridor in the parlor, I could hear Sensei’s wife talking to the maid. The study where I sat was at the end of the corridor, in a far quieter and more secluded part of the house than the sitting room where Sensei and I normally met. After a while her voice ceased, and a hush fell on the house. I sat still and alert, half-expecting a burglar to appear at any moment.
About half an hour later Sensei’s wife popped her head around the door to bring me a cup of tea. “Good heavens!” she exclaimed, startled to find me sitting bolt upright, with the formality of a guest. She regarded me with amusement. “You don’t look very comfortable sitting like that.”
“I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”
“But you must be bored, surely.”
“No, I’m too tense at the thought of burglars to feel bored.”
She laughed as she stood there, the teacup still in her hand.
“It’s a bit pointless for me to stand guard in this remote corner of the house, you know,” I went on.
“Well, then, do please come on into the parlor. I brought a cup of tea thinking you might be bored here, but you can have it there if you’d rather.”
I followed her out of the study. In the parlor an iron kettle was singing on a fine big brazier. I was served Western tea and cakes, but Sensei’s wife declined to have any tea herself, saying it would make her sleepless.
“Does Sensei often go off to gatherings like this?” I asked.
“No, hardly ever. He seems less and less inclined to see people recently.”
She seemed unworried, so I grew bolder. “You are the only exception, I suppose.”
“Oh, no. He feels that way about me too.”
“That’s not true,” I declared. “You must know perfectly well it’s not true.”
“Why?”
“Personally, I think he’s come to dislike the rest of the world because of his love for you.”
“You have a fine scholar’s way with words, I must say. You’re good at empty reasoning. Surely you could equally say that because he dislikes the world, he’s come to dislike me as well. That’s using precisely the same argument.”
“You could say both, true, but in this case I’m the one who’s right.”
“I don’t like argumentation. You men do it a lot, don’t you? You seem to enjoy it. I’m always amazed at how men can go on and on, happily passing around the empty cup of some futile discussion.”