"They're not first-rate ones, but I don't imagine anyone would dislike them."

It felt somehow odd to a.s.sociate Sensei with dried mushrooms.

When a reply came from him, I was quite surprised, particularly because it seemed written for no special reason. I decided that he had written back out of sheer kindness. That idea made his straightforward letter delight me. Besides, it was the first letter I had ever received from him.

Although one might naturally have thought that we corresponded from time to time, in fact we never had. I received only two letters from Sensei before his death. The first was this simple reply. The second was an extremely long letter that he wrote for me shortly before he died.

My father's illness prevented him from being very active, even once he was up and about, and he seldom went outdoors. One unusually balmy day when he did venture out into the garden, I accompanied him just as a precaution. I offered my shoulder for him to lean on, but he brushed it off with a laugh.

CHAPTER 23.

To keep my father from boredom, I frequently partnered him in a game of shgi shgi. Being lazy, we couldn't be bothered to set up a special board but sat as usual around the warm kotatsu kotatsu, placing the board between us on the low table so that between moves we could keep our hands tucked under the rug. Sometimes one of us would lose a piece, and neither would notice until the next game. Once, to great hilarity, my mother had to use the fire tongs to retrieve a lost piece from the brazier's ashes.

"A go go board is too high," my father remarked, "and it has those legs, so you can't put it on the table and play in comfort around the board is too high," my father remarked, "and it has those legs, so you can't put it on the table and play in comfort around the kotatsu kotatsu the way you can with the way you can with shgi shgi. This is a fine game for the indolent. How about another round, eh?"

He would always suggest another round whenever he had just won. Mind you, he'd say the same thing if he had just lost. In a word, he simply enjoyed sitting around the kotatsu kotatsu playing playing shgi shgi regardless of the outcome. regardless of the outcome.

At first I found this rare taste of the pleasures of the retired quite beguiling, but my youthful energies soon began to fret at such bland stimulation. From time to time I would yawn and stretch up my arms, waving aloft some piece I happened to be holding.

Whenever I thought about Tokyo, I felt the blood that pumped strongly through my heart pulsing to a rhythm that cried "Action! Action!" Strangely, through some subtle mechanism of the mind, this inner pulse seemed to be empowered by Sensei.

In my heart I experimentally compared the two men, my father and Sensei. Both were quiet, retiring people who, as far as the world at large was concerned, could just as well be dead. Neither received the slightest recognition. Yet playing partner to my shgi shgi-loving father and sharing his simple enjoyments gave me no satisfaction, while Sensei, to whom I had never gone for mere amus.e.m.e.nt, had influenced my mind far more deeply than would any idle entertainment. "My mind" sounds too cool and detached-let me rather say "my breast." It would have felt no exaggeration to say that Sensei's strength seemed to have entered my body, and my very blood flowed with his life force. When I pondered the fact that my father was my real father, whereas Sensei was quite unrelated to me, I felt as astonished as if I had come upon a new and important truth.

As tedium settled over me, my parents' initial delight in me as some rare and precious creature was also fading, and they began to take my presence for granted. I suppose everyone experiences this shift when they return home for a vacation-for the first week or so you are fussed over and treated as honored guest, then the family's enthusiasm wanes, and finally you are treated quite offhandedly, as if they don't really care whether you are there or not. This second phase now inevitably set in.

These days, furthermore, each time I came home from the city, I brought a new aspect of myself that was strange and incomprehensible to my parents. It was an element that was fundamentally out of harmony with both of them-rather as if, to make a historical a.n.a.logy, I had introduced into a traditional Confucian household the disturbing aura of forbidden Christianity. Of course I did my best to hide it. But it was part of me, and try as I might to keep it to myself, they sooner or later noticed. Thus I grew bored and disillusioned with home life, and longed to go back to Tokyo as soon as possible.

Fortunately, my father's condition gave no sign of deteriorating further, although the state of his health continued to be fragile. Just to be sure, we called in a highly reputable doctor from some distance away, but his careful examination revealed no new problems.

I decided to leave a little before the end of the winter vacation. But when I announced this decision, human feelings being the perverse things they are, both parents were against it.

"You're going back already? It's very soon, isn't it?" said my mother.

My father joined in. "You could easily stay another four or five days, surely?"

But I held to my original plan.

CHAPTER 24.

By the time I returned to Tokyo, the New Year decorations had disappeared from house fronts. In the city no sign remained of the recent New Year festivities; the streets were given over to a chill, wintry wind.

I took the first opportunity to visit Sensei and return the money I had borrowed. I also brought along the mushrooms that my mother had pressed on me. Laying them before Sensei's wife, I hastened to explain that my mother had suggested the gift. The mushrooms were carefully packed inside a new cake box. Sensei's wife thanked me politely. When she rose to leave the room, she picked up the box, then feeling its lightness asked in surprise what the cakes were. It was typical of the wonderfully childlike frankness she could display once she got to know someone well.

Both of them questioned me at length and with great concern about my father's illness. "Well, it seems from what you say of his condition that there's no cause for immediate alarm," Sensei said. "But being the illness it is, he'll need to look after himself very carefully."

I could see that he knew a great deal more than I did about kidney disease.

"It's typical of that illness that the patient feels quite well and unaware of the disease. I knew a military officer who was killed by it-he simply died overnight, quite astonishing. His death was so sudden that his own wife hadn't even realized he was ill. He just woke her in the night saying he felt bad, and the next morning he was dead. It happened so swiftly that she said she'd a.s.sumed he was sleeping."

The optimism I had been inclined to feel shifted to sudden anxiety. "I wonder if that's what will happen to my dad. There's no saying it won't."

"What does the doctor say?"

"He says there's no hope of curing it, but he also a.s.sured us there's no need to worry for the present."

"Well, then, that's fine, if that's what the doctor says. The man I just told you about wasn't aware he was ill, and besides, he was quite a rough army fellow, not the sort to notice things."

I felt somewhat comforted.

Seeing this change in me, Sensei added, "But sick or well, humans are fragile creatures, you know. There's no antic.i.p.ating how and when they might die, or for what reason."

"That's how you feel yourself, is it, Sensei?"

"I'm in fine health, but yes, even I think this from time to time." A suggestion of a smile played on his lips. "You often hear of people keeling over and dying, don't you? Of natural causes. And then other people die suddenly, from some unnatural act of violence."

"What's an unnatural act of violence?"

"Well, I don't know. People who commit suicide use unnatural violence on themselves, don't they?"

"People who are murdered also die from unnatural violence."

"I wasn't thinking of murder, but now that you mention it, that's true, of course."

So the conversation ended that day.

Even later, after I returned home, my father's illness did not worry me unduly. Nor did Sensei's talk of natural and unnatural deaths leave more than a pa.s.sing, vague impression on my mind. I was preoccupied with another matter, for I finally had to set to and write the graduation thesis that I had tried, so many times, to come to grips with before.

CHAPTER 25.

If I were to graduate this June as expected, I had to finish the thesis in the required form by the end of April. But when I counted off the remaining days on my fingers, my heart began to fail me. The other students had all been visibly busy for some time gathering material and writing notes, while I alone had done absolutely nothing toward the paper. I had put it off with the intention of throwing myself into the task after the New Year, and in this spirit I now set about it.

But in no time I ground to a halt. The abstract idea of a grand theme was outlined in my mind, and the framework of the discussion felt more or less in place, but now I sat head in hands, despairing. So I set about reducing my theme to something more manageable. Finally I decided to bypa.s.s the trouble of systematically setting down my own ideas. Instead, I would simply present material from various books on the subject and add a suitable conclusion.

The topic I had chosen was closely related to Sensei's field of expertise, and when I ventured to ask his opinion about it, he had approved. In my present state of confusion, therefore, I naturally took myself straight off to visit Sensei and ask him to recommend some books.

He willingly told me all he knew and even offered to lend me two or three books. But he made absolutely no move to take on the task of actually advising me. "I don't read much these days, so I don't know what's new in the field. You should ask your professors."

I recalled then that his wife had said that he had once been a great reader, but for some reason his interest had waned considerably.

My thesis momentarily forgotten, I spontaneously asked, "Why aren't you as interested in books as you used to be, Sensei?"

"There's no particular reason. . . . I suppose it's because I believe you don't really become a finer person just by reading lots of books. And also . . ."

"What else?"

"Nothing else really. You see, in the old days I used to feel uncomfortable and ashamed whenever someone asked me a question I couldn't answer, or when my ignorance was exposed in public somehow. These days, though, I've come to feel that there's nothing particularly shameful about not knowing, so I don't any longer have the urge to push myself to read. I've grown old, in a word."

Sensei spoke quite serenely. His words held no hint of the bitterness of someone who has turned his back on the world, so they failed to strike me as they might have.

I went home feeling that, although he did not seem old to me, his philosophy was not very impressive.

From then on I spent my days sweating over my thesis like one possessed, my eyes bloodshot with effort and fatigue. I asked friends who had graduated a year ahead of me how they had fared in this situation. One told me how on the final day of submission, he had hired a rickshaw and rushed his thesis to the university office, barely managing to get it there before the deadline. Another said he had taken it in fifteen minutes past the five o'clock cut-off time and almost been rejected, but the department head had kindly intervened and allowed it to get through.

These tales made me feel both nervous and encouraged. Every day at my desk I pushed myself to the limits of my energy. When I wasn't seated at the desk, I was in the gloomy library, scanning its high shelves. My eyes foraged greedily among the gold-printed t.i.tles on the books' spines, like a collector avidly searching through antiques.

The plum trees bloomed, and the cold winter wind shifted to the south. Sometime later came the first rumors of cherry blossoms. Still I plowed doggedly ahead, like a blinkered workhorse, flogged mercilessly on by my thesis. Not until late April, when at last I had completed the writing, did I cross the threshold of Sensei's house once more.

CHAPTER 26.

In the first days of summer, when the boughs of the late-flowering double cherries were misted with the first unfurling of green leaf, I finally achieved my freedom. Like a bird released from its cage, I spread my wings wide in delight and let my gaze roam over the world before me. I immediately went to visit Sensei. Along the way my eyes drank in the vivid sight of a citrus hedge, its white buds bursting forth from the blackened branches, and a pomegranate tree, the glistening yellowish leaves sprouting from its withered trunk and glowing softly in the sunlight. It was as if I were seeing such things for the first time.

When he saw my happy face, Sensei said, "So you've finished the thesis, have you? Well done."

"Thanks to you," I replied, "I've finally made it. There's nothing left to do."

Indeed I had the delightful feeling just then that I had completed all the work I had to do in life and could proceed to enjoy myself to my heart's content. I was well satisfied with the paper I had written and confident of its worth. I chattered happily on to Sensei about it.

As usual, Sensei listened with the occasional interjection of "I see" or "Is that so?" but made no further response. This lack of enthusiasm left me not so much dissatisfied as somehow deflated. But I was so full of energy that day that I attempted a counterattack. I invited him to come out with me into the world that was everywhere bursting into fresh green leaf.

"Let's go for a walk somewhere, Sensei. It's wonderful out there."

"Where to?"

I did not care where. All I wanted was to take him out beyond the city limits.

An hour later we had indeed left the city behind us and were walking aimlessly through a quiet neighborhood that was something between village and town. I plucked a soft young leaf from a citrus hedge, cupped it between my palms, and made it whistle as one does with a gra.s.s blade. I was good at this, having picked it up by imitating a friend of mine from Kagoshima. I gaily played as I strolled along, while Sensei walked beside me, ignoring me, face averted.

At length the little path opened out at a point below a large house shrouded by the fresh young leaves of an overgrown garden. We quickly realized that this was no private dwelling-the sign attached to the front gate bore the name of a plant nursery. Gazing at the gently sloping path, Sensei suggested we go in for a look. "Yes," I agreed, "it's a nurseryman's plantation, isn't it?"

Rounding a bend in the path, we came upon the house on our left. The sliding doors were all wide open, and there was no sign of life in the empty interior. The only movement was of the goldfish that swam about in a large tub that stood by the eave.

"All's quiet, isn't it. Do you think anyone would mind if we went farther?"

"I don't think it would matter."

On through the garden we went, still seeing no sign of anyone. Azaleas bloomed all around us like flames.

Sensei pointed to a tall bush of orange azaleas. "This one would be the sort they call kirishima kirishima."

A plantation of peonies extended a good thirty yards across, but the season was too early for flowers. Sensei stretched himself out on an old bench by the peony bed, while I sat at the end of the bench, smoking a cigarette. He lay there looking at the brilliantly clear blue sky. I was entranced by all the young leaves that surrounded me. Looking carefully, I discovered that the color of each was subtly different. Even on a single maple tree, no branch held two leaves of exactly the same hue. A pa.s.sing breeze lifted Sensei's hat from where he had hung it, on the tip of a slender little cedar sapling, and tossed it to the ground.

CHAPTER 27.

I immediately retrieved the hat. "It fell off, Sensei," I said, flicking off the red grains of earth that clung here and there.

"Thank you."

He half-raised himself to take it. Then, still propped there, he asked me something odd. "Forgive the sudden question, but is your family reasonably well off?"

"Not particularly, no."

"So how well off are you, if you'll excuse my asking?"

"Well, we own a bit of forested land and a few rice fields, but there's very little money, I think."

It was the first time Sensei had directly asked me about my family's financial situation. I, in turn, had never inquired about his circ.u.mstances. When I first met him, I had wondered how he could spend his days without having to work, and the question had remained with me ever since. I had kept it to myself, however, believing it would be discourteous to ask outright.

As I sat here now, my weary eyes steeping in the balm of the fresh spring leaves, the question naturally occurred to me again. "What about you, Sensei? How well off are you?"

"Do I look rich to you?"

In fact, Sensei generally dressed quite frugally. The house was far from big, and he only had one maid. Nevertheless, even an outsider like myself could see that he led a fairly affluent life. Although his lifestyle could hardly be termed luxurious, there was no sense of pinched frugality or straitened circ.u.mstances.

"Yes, you do," I replied.

"Well, I have a certain amount of money. But I'm far from wealthy. If I were, I'd build a larger house."

Sensei had by now sat up, and was cross-legged on the bench. He traced a circle on the ground with the tip of his bamboo cane. Once it was complete, he jabbed his cane upright into the earth.