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 p.r.o.ne to blind enthusiasms-or so Sensei apparently saw me. But conversing with him seemed to me more beneficial than attending cla.s.ses. 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 pa.s.sion. Once the fever pa.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sing 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 att.i.tude 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, dispa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sionate 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 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 Zshigaya 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 gla.s.s-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 amus.e.m.e.nt. "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 pa.s.sing around the empty cup of some futile discussion."

Her words struck me as rather severe, although not particularly offensive. She was not one of those modern women who takes a certain pride in calling attention to the fact that she is intelligent. She seemed to value far more the heart that lies deep within us.

CHAPTER 17.

There was more I wanted to say, but I held my tongue, for fear of seeming to be one of those argumentative types. Seeing me gazing silently into my empty teacup, she offered to pour me another, as if to soothe any possible hurt feelings. I pa.s.sed her my cup.

"How many?" she asked, grasping a sugar cube with a strange-looking implement and lifting it coquettishly to show me. "One? Two?" Though not exactly flirting with me, she was striving to be charming, so as to erase her earlier strong words.

I sipped my tea in silence, and remained mute once the tea was drunk.

"You've gone terribly quiet," she remarked.

"That's because I feel as if whatever I might say, you'd accuse me of being argumentative," I replied.

"Oh, come now," she protested.

This remark provided us with a way back into the conversation. Once more its subject was the one interest we had in common, Sensei.

"Could I elaborate a little more on what I was saying earlier?" I asked. "You may find it empty reasoning, but I'm in earnest."

"Do speak then."

"If you were suddenly to die, could Sensei go on living as he does now?"

"Now how could I know the answer to that? You'd have to ask the man himself, surely. That's not a question for me to answer."

"But I'm serious. Please don't be evasive. You must give me an honest answer."

"But I have. Honestly, I have no idea."

"Well, then, how much do you love Sensei? This is something to ask you rather than him, surely."

"Come now, why confront me with such a question?"

"You mean there's no point in it? The answer is obvious?"

"Yes, I suppose that's what I mean."

"Well, then, if Sensei were suddenly to lose such a loyal and loving wife, what would he do? He's disillusioned with the world as it is-what would he do without you? I'm not asking for his opinion, I'm asking for yours. Do you feel he'd be happy?"

"I know the answer from my own point of view, though I'm not sure whether he would see it the same way. Put simply, if Sensei and I were separated, he'd be miserable. He might well be unable to go on living. This sounds conceited of me, I know, but I do my best to make him happy. I even dare to believe no one else could make him as happy as I can. This belief comforts me."

"Well, I think that conviction would reveal itself in Sensei's heart as well."

"That's another matter altogether."

"You're claiming that Sensei dislikes you?"

"I don't think he dislikes me personally. He has no reason to. But he dislikes the world in general, you see. In fact, these days perhaps he dislikes the human race. In that sense, given that I'm human, he must feel the same way about me."

At last I understood what she had been saying about his feelings for her.

CHAPTER 18.

Her perspicacity impressed me. It also intrigued me to observe how her approach to things was unlike that of a traditional j.a.panese woman, although she almost never used the currently fashionable language.

In those days I was just a foolish youth, with no real experience with the opposite s.e.x. Instinctively I dreamed about women as objects of desire, but these were merely vague fantasies with all the substance of a yearning for the fleeting clouds of spring. When I came face-to-face with a real woman, however, my feelings sometimes veered to the opposite pole-rather than feeling attracted to her, I would be seized by a strange repulsion.

But I had no such reaction to Sensei's wife. I was not even much aware of the usual differences between the way men and women think. In fact, I forgot she was a woman. She was simply someone who could judge Sensei honestly and who sympathized with him.

"Last time you said something," I began, "when I asked why Sensei doesn't put himself forward more in the world. You said he never used to be like that."