CHAPTER 76.

K's crisis had begun to resolve itself a little when I received a long letter from his elder sister's husband. This man was related to the adoptive family, K told me, so his opinion had carried a lot of weight both during the attempted mediation and in the decision that K return to his original family register.

The letter asked me to let him know what had happened to K since relations were severed. I should reply as soon as possible, he added, as K's sister was worrying. K was fonder of this sister, who had married out, than he was of the elder brother who had inherited the family temple. K and his sister shared the same mother, but there was a large age gap between them, and when he was little, she must have seemed to him more of a mother than his adoptive mother.

I showed the letter to K. He said nothing in direct response, but he did tell me that he had received two or three such letters from his sister herself, and that he had replied that she need not be concerned for him. She had married into a household that did not have much money, so unfortunately she was not in a position to offer financial help, much as she sympathized with him.

I replied to her husband along similar lines and a.s.sured him firmly that if problems arose, I would help in any way I could. This was something I had long since decided. My words were intended partly as a friendly rea.s.surance to the sister who was so worried about him, but also as a gesture of defiance toward the two families whom I felt had snubbed me.

K's adoption was annulled in his first year of university studies. From then until the middle of his second year, he supported himself. But it was apparent that the prodigious effort this required was slowly telling on his health and nerves. No doubt the stress of his indecision over whether to leave his adoptive family had also played its part. He grew overly emotional. At times he spoke as if he alone bore the weight of the world's woes on his shoulders, and he grew agitated if I contradicted him. Or he would fret that the light of future hope was receding before his eyes. Everyone, of course, at the beginning of their studies is full of fine aspirations and dreams, but one year pa.s.ses and then another, and as graduation draws near, you realize you are plodding. At this point the majority inevitably lose heart, and K was no exception. His feverish anxiety was excessive, however. My sole concern became to somehow calm him.

I advised him to give up all unnecessary work, and added that for the sake of that great future of his, he would be wise to relax and enjoy himself more. I knew it would be difficult to get this message through to my stubborn friend, but when the time came for me to say my piece, it took even more persuasion than I had antic.i.p.ated, and I struggled to hold my ground. He countered me by a.s.serting that scholarship was not his primary aim; his goal was to develop a toughness of will that would make him strong, and to this end his circ.u.mstances must remain as straitened as possible. From any normal point of view, this determination was wildly eccentric. Furthermore, the situation to which he chose to cling was doing nothing to strengthen his will-indeed, it was rapidly driving him to nervous collapse. All I could do was present myself as deeply sympathetic. I declared that I too intended to pursue a similar course in life. (In fact, these were no empty words-K's power was such that I felt myself increasingly drawn by his views.) Finally, I proposed that he and I should live together and work to improve ourselves. In effect, I chose to give in to him in order to be able to bend his will. And with this, at last, I brought him to the house.

CHAPTER 77.

From the entrance hall the only access to my room was through a little four-mat room that lay between. This anteroom, in effect a pa.s.sageway, was virtually useless for practical purposes. This is where I put K. At first I re-created our previous arrangement, placing two desks side by side in my own larger room, with the idea that we would also share the small one. But K chose to make the small room exclusively his, declaring that he was happier alone no matter how cramped the s.p.a.ce.

As I mentioned, Okusan initially opposed my plan to bring K in at all. In an ordinary lodging house, she agreed, it made sense for two to share, and still better three, but she wasn't doing this as a business, she said, and urged me to reconsider. I told her K would be no trouble. Even so, she replied, she did not like the idea of housing someone she didn't know. In that case, I pointed out, she should have objected to me as well. But she countered with the statement that she had known and trusted me from the beginning. I smiled wryly. At this point she changed her tactics. Bringing in someone like K, she said, would be bad for me. When I asked why, it was her turn to smile.

To tell the truth, there was no real necessity for me to live with K. But if I had tried to give him a monthly cash allowance, I felt sure, he would have been very reluctant to accept it. He was a fiercely independent man. Better to let him live with me, while I secretly gave Okusan money enough to feed us both. Nevertheless, I had no desire to reveal K's dire financial situation to her. I did, however, talk about his precarious state of health. If left to himself, I told her, he would only grow more perverse and eccentric. I went on to describe his strained relations with his adoptive parents and his severance from his original family. By attempting to help him, I said, I was grasping a drowning man, desperate to infuse in him my own living heat. I begged Okusan and Ojsan to help by warmly accepting him. Okusan finally relented.

K knew nothing of this discussion, and I was satisfied that he remain ignorant. When he came stolidly into the house with his bags, I greeted him with an innocent air.

Okusan and Ojsan kindly helped him unpack and settle in. I was delighted, interpreting each generous gesture as an expression of their friendship for me. K, however, remained his usual dour self.

When I asked what he thought of his new home, he replied with a simple "Not bad." This brief response was a wild understatement, I felt. Until then he had been living in a dank, grimy little north-facing room, where the food was of a piece with the lodging. The move to my place was, as the old saying goes, "from deep ravine to treetop high." It was partly sheer obstinacy that caused him to make light of the new place, but partly principle as well. His Buddhist upbringing had led him to think that paying attention to comfort in the basic needs of life was immoral. Brought up on tales of worthy monks and saints, he tended to consider flesh and spirit as separate ent.i.ties; in fact, he may well have felt that to mortify the flesh was to exalt the soul.

I decided to do my best not to argue, however. My aim was to apply a sunny warmth that would thaw his ice. Once the melted water began to trickle, I thought, he would sooner or later come to his senses.

CHAPTER 78.

Aware that under Okusan's kind treatment I myself had grown cheerful, I set about applying the same process to K. From my long acquaintance with him I was all too aware of how different we were. But just as my own nerves had relaxed considerably since I'd moved into this household, I felt surely K's heart too would eventually grow calmer here.

K's will was far steelier than mine. He studied twice as hard, and his mind was a good deal finer. I cannot speak for the later years, when we chose different areas of study, but in the middle and high school years, while we were cla.s.smates, he was consistently ahead of me. I used to feel, in fact, that K would best me in everything. But in convincing the stubborn K to move in with me, I was sure I was showing more good sense than he. He failed to understand the difference between patience and endurance, I felt.

Please listen carefully now, I am saying this for your benefit. All our capacities, both physical and mental, require external stimuli for both their development and their destruction, and in either case these stimuli must be increased by slow degrees in order to be effective. But this gradual increase creates a very real danger that not only you yourself but those around you may fail to notice any problems that might develop. Doctors tell us that a man's stomach is a thoroughly rebellious creature, inclined to misbehave. If you feed it nothing but soft gruel, it will lose the power to digest anything heavier. So they instruct us to train it by feeding it all manner of foods. I don't think this is just a matter of getting it used to the variety, however. I interpret it to mean that the stomach's resilience gradually increases as the stimuli build up over time. Now imagine what would happen if the stomach instead grew steadily weaker under this regimen. K was in just such a situation.

Now K was a greater man than I, but he failed to comprehend what was happening to him. He had decided that if he accustomed himself to hardship, then pain would sooner or later cease to register. The simple virtue of repet.i.tion of pain, he was sure, would bring him to a point where pain no longer affected him.

In order to bring about a change of heart in K, it was this above all that I would have to clarify to him. But if I spelled it out, he would doubtless resist; he would bring up the example of those stoics and saints of old in his defense, I knew, and I would then have to point out the difference between them and him. That would be worthwhile if he were of a mind to listen to me, but by nature, once an argument reached that point, he would stick to his guns. He would simply a.s.sert his own position more vehemently, and having once spoken he would feel obliged to follow through with action. In this respect he was quite intimidating. He was grand in his convictions. He would stride forward to meet his own destruction. In retrospect, the only thing that had any kind of grandeur was the resultant ruin of any hope of success. But there was certainly nothing run-of-the-mill about the process, at any rate.

Knowing his temperament as I did, therefore, I couldn't utter a word. My sense that he was close to a nervous breakdown also made me hesitate. Even if I did manage to convince him, it would only agitate him further. I didn't mind quarreling, but I remembered how poorly I had withstood my own sense of isolation, and I couldn't bear to think of placing my friend in a similar situation, let alone exacerbating it. And so, even after bringing him into the house, I held back from voicing any real criticism. I decided simply to wait calmly to see what effect his new environment would have on him.

CHAPTER 79.

Behind his back, I asked Okusan and Ojsan to talk to K as much as possible, convinced that the silence of his previous life had been the cause of his ruin. It seemed clear to me that his heart had rusted like iron from disuse.

Okusan laughed, remarking that he was rather curt and unapproachable, and Ojsan supported this by describing an encounter she had had with him. She'd asked him if his brazier was lit, and he had told her it wasn't. She offered to bring some charcoal, but he said he didn't need any. Wasn't he cold? she asked. He replied curtly that he was but didn't want a fire, and he refused to discuss the matter further. I couldn't simply dismiss her story with a rueful smile; I felt sorry for her, and that I must somehow make up for his rudeness. It was spring, of course, so he had had no real need for a warm fire in the brazier, but I could see that they had good reason to feel that he was difficult.

I then did my best to use myself as a catalyst to bring them together. At every opportunity I encouraged K to spend time in the company of all three of us. When I was talking with him, I would call them in, or when I met up with them in one of the rooms, I'd invite him to join us. Naturally, K did not much care for this. Sometimes he would abruptly rise to his feet and walk out. At other times he ignored my calls. "What's the point of all that idle chatter?" he asked me. I just laughed, but I was well aware that he despised me for indulging in such frivolities.

In some ways I doubtless deserved his scorn. His sights were fixed on far higher things than mine, I'll not deny it. But it is surely crippling to limp along, so out of step with the lofty gaze you insist on maintaining. My most important task, I felt, was somehow to make him more human. Filling his own head with the examples of impressive men was pointless, I decided, if it did not make him impressive himself. As a first step in the task of humanizing him, I would introduce him to the company of the opposite s.e.x. Letting the fair winds of that gentle realm blow upon him would cleanse his blood of the rust that clogged it, I hoped.

This approach gradually succeeded. The two elements, which had seemed at first so unlikely to merge, slowly came together until they were one. K apparently grew to realize that there were others in the world besides himself. One day he remarked to me that women were not after all such despicable creatures. He had at first a.s.sumed, he told me, that women had the same level of knowledge and academic ability as I had, and when he discovered that they didn't, he had been quick to despise them. He had always viewed men and women without any distinction, he said, without understanding that one could see the s.e.xes differently. I pointed out that if we two men were to go on talking exclusively to each other forever, we would simply continue in the same straight line. Naturally, he replied.

I spoke as I did because I was by then quite in love with Ojsan. But I did not breathe a word to him of my inner state.

This man who had constructed a defensive fortress of books to hide behind was now slowly opening up to the world, and the change in his heart delighted me. Opening him up had been my plan all along, and its success sent an irrepressible wave of joy through me. Though I said nothing of it to him, I shared my joy with Okusan and Ojsan. They too seemed gratified.

CHAPTER 80.

Although K and I were in the same faculty, our fields of study were different, which meant that we came and went at different times. If I returned home early, I could simply pa.s.s through his empty room to reach my own. If he got home before I did, I always acknowledged him briefly before going on into my room. As I came through the door, K would glance up from his book and invariably say: "Just back, are you?" Sometimes I'd nod, and sometimes I'd simply give a grunt of a.s.sent.

One day on my way home I had reason to stop in at Kanda, so I returned much later than usual. I hurried to the front gate and the lattice door clattered as I thrust it open. At that moment I heard Ojsan's voice. I was sure it came from K's room. The sitting room and Ojsan's room lay straight ahead through the entrance hall, while our two rooms were off to the left, and by now I had become attuned to deciphering the location of voices. Just as I hastened to close the lattice door, her voice ceased. While I was removing my shoes-I now wore fashionable Western lace-ups-not a sound emerged from K's room. This struck me as odd. Had I been mistaken?

But when I opened the sliding doors as usual to pa.s.s through K's room, I found the two of them sitting there. "Just back, are you?" said K, as always.

"Welcome home," Ojsan said, remaining seated. For some reason, her straightforward greeting struck me as slightly stiff and formal. The tone had a somehow unnatural ring to my ears.

"Where's Okusan?" I asked her. The question had no real significance-it was just that the house seemed unusually hushed.

Okusan was out, and the maid had gone with her. K and Ojsan therefore were alone in the house. This puzzled me. I had lived there a long time by now, but Okusan had never left me alone in the house with Ojsan. Had she had urgent business to attend to? I inquired.

Ojsan simply laughed. I disliked women who laugh in response that way. All young ladies do it, of course, but Ojsan had a tendency to laugh at silly things. When she saw my face, however, her usual expression quickly returned. There had been nothing urgent, she replied. Okusan had just gone out on a small errand.

As a lodger, I had no right to press the matter further. I held my tongue.

No sooner had I changed my clothes and settled down than Okusan and the maid returned. At length, the time came for us all to face one another over the evening meal. When I had first moved in as a lodger, they had treated me much like a guest, the maid serving dinner in my room, but this formality had broken down, and these days I was invited in to eat with the family. When K arrived, I insisted that he too be brought in for meals. In return I donated to the household a light and elegant dining table of thin wood, with foldable legs. These days one can find tables like this in any household, but back then there were almost no homes where everyone sat around such a thing to eat. I had gone especially to a furniture shop in Ochanomizu and ordered it made to my specifications.

As we sat at the table that day, Okusan explained that the fish seller had failed to call at the usual hour, so she had had to go into town to buy our evening's food. Yes, I thought, that seems quite reasonable, given that she has guests to feed. Seeing my expression, Ojsan burst out laughing, but her mother's scolding quickly put an end to it.

CHAPTER 81.

A week later I again pa.s.sed through the room when Ojsan and K were talking there together. This time she laughed as soon as she caught sight of me. I should have asked then and there what she found so humorous. But I simply went past them to my own room without speaking. K thus missed his chance to come out with his usual greeting. Soon I heard Ojsan open the sliding doors and go back to the sitting room.

That evening at dinner she remarked that I was an odd person. Once again I failed to ask the reason. I did notice, however, that Okusan sent a hard stare in Ojsan's direction.

After dinner K and I went for a walk. We went behind Denzin Temple and around the botanical gardens, emerging below Tomizaka. It was a long walk, but we spoke very little. K was temperamentally a man of even fewer words than I. I was not a great talker, but as we walked, I did my best to engage him in conversation. My main focus of concern was the family in whose house we were lodging. I asked him what he thought of Okusan and Ojsan. He was quite impossible to pin down on the subject, however. He not only avoided the point, but his responses were extremely brief. He seemed far more interested in the topic of his studies than in the two ladies. Our second-year exams were almost upon us, I admit, so from any normal point of view he was behaving much more typically than I. He launched into a disquisition on Swedenborg1 that made my uneducated mind reel. that made my uneducated mind reel.

We both pa.s.sed our exams successfully, and Okusan congratulated us on entering our final year. Her own daughter, her sole pride and joy, was soon to graduate as well. K remarked to me that girls emerged from their schooling knowing nothing. Clearly he chose to completely overlook Ojsan's extracurricular study of sewing, koto koto playing, and flower arranging. Laughing, I countered with my old argument that a woman's value did not lie in scholarly accomplishment. While he did not refute this statement outright, he did not seem willing to accept it either. That pleased me-I interpreted this casual dismissal of my ideas as an indication that his former scorn of women had not changed. Ojsan, whom I thought the embodiment of womanly excellence, was evidently still beneath his notice. In retrospect, I see that my jealousy of K was already showing its horns. playing, and flower arranging. Laughing, I countered with my old argument that a woman's value did not lie in scholarly accomplishment. While he did not refute this statement outright, he did not seem willing to accept it either. That pleased me-I interpreted this casual dismissal of my ideas as an indication that his former scorn of women had not changed. Ojsan, whom I thought the embodiment of womanly excellence, was evidently still beneath his notice. In retrospect, I see that my jealousy of K was already showing its horns.

I suggested that the two of us go away together somewhere during the summer vacation. He responded with apparent reluctance. It's true that he could not afford to go wherever he wanted, but on the other hand nothing prevented him from accepting an invitation to travel with me. I asked why he didn't want to come. He replied that there was no real reason; he simply preferred to stay at home and read. When I contended that it would be healthier to spend the summer studying in some cooler place out of the city, he suggested I go on my own.

I wasn't inclined to leave K there in the house alone, however-his growing intimacy with the two ladies was disturbing enough already. Needless to say, it was ridiculous for me to be so upset over a situation that I had gone out of my way to engineer in the first place. I was clearly being foolish.

Okusan, tired of seeing us endlessly at cross-purposes, stepped in to mediate. The result was that we decided the two of us would go off to the Bsh Peninsula2 together. together.

CHAPTER 82.

K seldom took trips, and I had never been to Bsh, so we both disembarked at the boat's first port of call in complete ignorance of the place. Its name was Hota, I remember. I don't know what it might be like today, but in those days it was a dreadful little fishing village. For one thing, the whole place stank of fish. For another, when we tried sea bathing the waves knocked us off our feet, and our arms and legs were soon covered in scratches and grazes from the fist-size rocks that were forever tumbling around in the water with us.

I soon had enough of the place. K, however, said not a word either for or against it. Judging from his expression at least, he seemed quite unperturbed, although he never emerged from a swim without a bruise or a cut.

I finally persuaded him to leave Hota and move on to Tomiura. From there we went to Nako. All that part of the coast was a popular vacation place for students in those days, and we found beaches to our liking wherever we went. K and I often sat on a rock gazing out at the sea's colors, or at the underwater world at our feet. The water below us was beautifully crystal clear. In the transparent waves we could point out to each other the brilliant flashes of little fish, whose vivid reds and blues were more spectacular than anything to be seen in the fish markets.

I frequently read while sitting on the rocks, while K spent most of his time sitting silently. Was he lost in thought, or gazing at the scene before him, or intent on some happy fantasy? I had no idea. Occasionally I glanced up and asked what he was doing. Nothing, he replied simply. I often thought how pleasant it would be if Ojsan, rather than K, were sitting there beside me. This was all very well, but I sometimes felt a stab of suspicion that K might be thinking the same thing. Whenever this occurred to me, I found I could no longer sit calmly reading. I rose abruptly to my feet and let out a great unrestrained yell. I couldn't dispel my pent-up feelings in a civilized manner, such as blandly declaiming some poem or song. All I could do was howl like a savage. Once, I grabbed K by the scruff of the neck and demanded to know what he would do if I tossed him into the sea. K remained motionless. "Good idea. Go right ahead," he replied without turning. I quickly let go.

The state of his nerves by now seemed to have considerably improved, while my own peace of mind had disintegrated. I observed his calm demeanor with envy, and with loathing, interpreting it as indifference to me. His serenity smacked of self-confidence, and not of a kind that it pleased me to see in him. My growing suspicions now demanded clarification of just what lay behind his self-a.s.surance. Had his optimism about his chosen goals in life suddenly revived? If so, then we had no collision of interests-indeed, it would have pleased me to think I had helped him on his way. But if his calm originated in his feelings for Ojsan, this I could not countenance. Strangely, he seemed oblivious to the signs that I myself loved her-though needless to say, I was anything but eager to alert him to my feelings. Quite simply, he was const.i.tutionally insensitive to such things; indeed, it had been in the faith that no such problems would arise that I had brought him into the house in the first place.

CHAPTER 83.

Summoning up my courage, I decided to confess to K what was in my heart. It was not the first time I had reached this decision. It had been my plan since before our trip together, in fact, but so far I had had the skill neither to seize an appropriate moment nor to create one. It strikes me now that the people I knew back then were all a bit peculiar-no one around me ever spoke about private matters of the heart. No doubt quite a few had nothing to confide, but even those who did kept silent. This must seem most peculiar to you, in the relative freedom of your present age. I will leave it to you to judge whether it was a lingering effect from the Confucianism of an earlier time or simply a form of shyness.

On the face of it, K and I could say anything to each other. Questions of love and romance did occasionally come up, but our discussions around them always descended into abstract theory, and were in any case rare. For the most part, our conversations were confined to the subject of books and study, our future work, our aspirations, and self-improvement. As close as we were, it was difficult to break into these rigid, impersonal discussions with a personal confession. High-minded gravity was integral to our intimacy. I do not know how often I squirmed with impotent frustration at my inability to speak my heart as I had resolved to do. I longed to crack open some part of K's mind and soften him with a breath of gentler air.

To your generation, this will seem quite absurd, but for me at the time it const.i.tuted a huge difficulty. I was the same coward on vacation as I had been back home. Though constantly alert for a chance to make my confession, I could find no way to break through K's determined aloofness. His heart might as well have been sealed off with a thick coating of hard black lacquer, it seemed to me, repelling every drop of the warm-blooded feeling that I was intent on pouring upon it.

Sometimes, though, I found K's fiercely principled stance toward the world rea.s.suring. Then I would regret ever doubting him and silently apologize for my suspicions. In this state of mind, I seemed a deeply inferior person and suddenly despised myself. But then the same old doubts would sweep back in and rea.s.sert themselves with renewed force. Since I deduced everything on the basis of suspicion, all my conclusions cast me in a disadvantageous light. It seemed to me that K was handsomer and more attractive to women than I, and that my fussiness made my personality less appealing to the opposite s.e.x. His combination of firm manliness with something a little absurd, also struck me as superior. Nor did I feel myself a match for him in scholarly ability, although of course our fields differed. With all his advantages so constantly before my eyes, any momentary relief from my fears soon reverted to the old anxieties.

Observing my restlessness, K suggested that if I didn't like it here, we might as well go back to Tokyo, but as soon as he said this, I wanted to stay after all. What I actually wanted was to prevent him from going back himself, I think. We plodded on around the tip of the peninsula, miserably roasting in the painful rays of the hot sun and plagued by the notorious local habit of understating distances when we asked our way. I could no longer see any point in going on walking like this and said as much half-jokingly to K. "We're walking because we have legs," he replied. Whenever the heat grew too much for us, we took a dip in the sea wherever we happened to be. But when we set off again, the sun was just as fierce, and we grew limp with fatigue.

CHAPTER 84.

With all this walking, the heat and weariness inevitably took their toll on us. It's not that we were actually ill; rather it was the disturbing feeling that one's soul had suddenly moved on to inhabit someone else. Though I continued to talk to K as normal, I felt anything but normal. Both our intimacy and the antagonism I felt toward him took on a special quality that was peculiar to this journey. I suppose what I am saying is that, what with the heat, the sea, and the walking, we entered a different kind of relationship. We became for the moment like nothing so much as a couple of wandering peddlers who had fallen in with each other on the road. For all our talk, we never once broached the complex intellectual topics that we usually discussed.

Eventually we arrived at Chshi.1 One extraordinary event on our journey I will never forget. Before leaving the peninsula, we paused at Kominato to take a look at the famous Sea Bream Inlet. It was many years ago, and besides, I was not particularly interested, so the memory is vague, but I seem to remember that this village was supposed to be the place where the famous Buddhist priest Nichiren One extraordinary event on our journey I will never forget. Before leaving the peninsula, we paused at Kominato to take a look at the famous Sea Bream Inlet. It was many years ago, and besides, I was not particularly interested, so the memory is vague, but I seem to remember that this village was supposed to be the place where the famous Buddhist priest Nichiren2 was born. On the day of his birth, two sea bream were said to have been washed up on the beach there, and the local fishermen have avoided catching bream ever since, so the sea there is thronged with them. We hired a boat and went out to see. was born. On the day of his birth, two sea bream were said to have been washed up on the beach there, and the local fishermen have avoided catching bream ever since, so the sea there is thronged with them. We hired a boat and went out to see.

I was intent on the water, gazing entranced at the remarkable sight of all the purple-tinted sea bream milling below the surface. K, however, did not appear as interested. He seemed preoccupied with thoughts of Nichiren rather than fish. There was an impressive temple in the area called Tanjji, or "Birth Temple," no doubt referring to the saint's birth, and K suddenly announced that he was going to go to this temple and talk to its head priest.

We were, I may say, very oddly dressed. K's appearance was particularly strange, since his hat had blown into the sea, and he was instead wearing a peasant's sedge hat that he had bought along the way. Both of us wore filthy robes that reeked of sweat. I urged K to give up the idea of meeting the priest, but he stubbornly persisted, declaring that if I didn't like it, I could wait outside. Since there was no arguing with him, I reluctantly went along as far as the temple's entrance hall. I was privately convinced we would be turned away, but priests are surprisingly civil people, and we were immediately shown into a fine large room to meet him.

I was far from sharing K's religious interests back then, so I didn't pay much attention to what they said to each other, but I gathered that K was asking a great deal about Nichiren. I do remember the dismissive look on his face when the priest remarked that Nichiren was renowned for his excellent cursive writing style-K's own writing was far from good. He was after more profound information. I don't know that the priest was able to satisfy him, but once we left the temple grounds, K began to talk fervently to me about Nichiren. I was hot and exhausted and in no mood to listen to all this, so my responses were minimal. After a while even this became too much of an effort, so I simply remained silent and let him talk.

It must have been the following evening, when we had arrived at our night's lodging, eaten, and were on the point of turning in, that things suddenly grew difficult between us. K was unhappy with the fact that I had not really listened to what he'd said to me about Nichiren the previous day. Anyone without spiritual aspirations is a fool, he declared, and he attacked me for what he obviously saw as my frivolity. For my part, the question of Ojsan of course complicated my feelings, and I couldn't simply laugh off his contemptuous accusations. I set about defending myself.

CHAPTER 85.

In those days I was in the habit of using the adjective human human. K maintained that this favorite expression of mine was actually a cover for all my personal weaknesses. Thinking back on it now, I can see his point. But I had originally begun to use the word out of resistance to K, in order to convince him of his lack of human feelings, so I was not in a position to consider the question objectively. I stuck to my guns and reiterated my argument.

K then demanded to know just what it was in him that I believed lacked this quality. "You're perfectly human, indeed you're even too human" was my response. "It's just that when you talk, the things you say lack humanity. And the same goes for your behavior." K offered no refutation, except to say that if he appeared that way, it was because he had not yet attained a sufficient level of spiritual discipline.

This did not so much take the wind out of my sails as arouse my pity. I immediately stopped arguing, and he too soon grew calmer.