五十

Though I felt sorry for the mistress, I stood up again and opened the sliding paper door that I had just closed. At that moment, it seemed the oil in K's lamp had run out, for the room was almost completely dark. I turned back, and holding my own lamp in my hand, stood at the entrance and looked back at the mistress. The mistress, as if hiding behind me, peered into the four-mat room. But she did not enter. Leaving it as it was, she told me to open the storm shutters.

After that, the mistress's manner was, as befitting a soldier's widow, quite efficient. I went to the doctor's. I also went to the police. But I went because the mistress ordered me to. Until those procedures were completed, the mistress would not let anyone enter K's room.

K had cut his carotid artery with a small knife and died at once. There was no other wound-like mark anywhere. The blood on the sliding door that I had seen by the dreamlike dim light, I now knew, had spurted all at once from his neck. In the light of day, I looked again clearly at the trace. And I was astonished at the violence of the force of human blood.

The mistress and I cleaned K's room with as much skill and care as we could. Most of his blood had fortunately been absorbed by his mattress, so the tatami were not so badly stained, and the cleanup was relatively easy. The two of us moved his corpse into my room and laid him on his side as if sleeping as usual. I then went out to send a telegram to his family home.

When I returned, incense sticks were already lit at K's pillow. As soon as I entered the room, my nose was struck by the Buddhist-smelling smoke, and in that smoke I recognized two women sitting. It was the first time since last night that I saw the young lady's face. The young lady was crying. The mistress's eyes were red too. Having forgotten to cry from the time the incident happened until then, I was at last, at that moment, able to be drawn into a sad mood. How much my chest was eased by that sadness, I cannot tell. What gave a single drop of moisture to my heart, which had been tightly clenched by pain and terror, was that sadness then.

I sat silently beside the two. The mistress told me to offer incense too. I offered incense and sat silently again. The young lady said nothing to me. Occasionally she exchanged a word or two with the mistress, but only about immediate practical matters. The young lady had not yet the composure to speak of K in his lifetime. Even so, I thought to myself that it was good we had been spared showing her last night's ghastly scene. I was afraid that if such a young and beautiful person were made to see something horrible, her very beauty might be destroyed by it. Even when my terror reached to the ends of my hair, I could not act without regard to that thought. In my mind there lurked a discomfort like whipping a blameless pretty flower.

When K's father and elder brother came from the country, I stated my opinion about where to bury K's remains. While he was alive, K and I had often walked together around Zoshigaya. K had been very fond of that place. So, half in jest, I remember promising him that if he liked it so much, we'd bury him there when he died. I thought too that even if I buried K in Zoshigaya as promised, how much merit it would bring I did not know. But as long as I lived, I wanted to kneel before K's grave and renew my penance month by month. Perhaps because I had not looked after K before, there was a sense of obligation that I had seen to everything for him; at any rate, both K's father and brother listened to what I said.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”