五十五

My heart, which had resolved to live as though dead, would at times leap up at the stimulation of the outside world. But no sooner had I made up my mind to break out in one direction or another than a terrible force would emerge from somewhere, grip my heart tightly, and render me utterly unable to move. And that force would press me down, whispering that I was a man with no qualification to do anything. At those words I would immediately wilt and collapse. After a while, when I tried to rise again, I would be clamped down once more. I would clench my teeth and shout in rage: why do you interfere with others? The mysterious force would laugh in a cold voice. It said: you know perfectly well yourself. And again I would slump.

Please understand that within me, who had continued a monotonous life with no upheavals or twists, there was always this kind of painful war going on. It may well be that before my wife grew impatient watching me, I myself had piled up many times over that same impatience. When I could no longer sit frozen in this prison, and yet could no longer break through it either, I came to feel that for me, the easiest effort to carry out was none other than suicide. You may widen your eyes and ask why, but the mysterious terrible force that always came to grip my heart, while holding back my activity in every direction, left open only the path of death, free for me. If I stayed still, that was one thing; but once I moved even a little, there was no way forward for me except to walk that path.

Up to today I have already two or three times tried to advance in the easiest direction that fate led me. But always my wife drew my heart back. And of course I had no courage to take that wife with me. I was a man who could not even confide everything to my wife; the rough act of robbing my wife of her natural span of life as a sacrifice to my own fate was terrifying even to imagine. As I had my own destiny, so my wife had her own lot; to bind the two together and smoke them over fire seemed to me nothing but a cruel extremity, even from the standpoint of absurdity.

At the same time, imagining my wife after I alone had vanished, I found it truly pitiful. I bore indelibly in my bowels the memory of what she said when her mother died—that from then on, in this world, there was no one she could rely on but me. I always hesitated. Looking at my wife’s face, there were times I thought it was good I had stopped. And then I would freeze and shrink again. And my wife would sometimes gaze at me with eyes of dissatisfaction.

Remember this: I lived on in just this way. When I first met you at Kamakura, when I walked with you in the suburbs, my mood was not much changed. Behind me there was always a black shadow fastened on. For my wife’s sake, I dragged my life and walked through the world. It was the same when you graduated and returned to your country. When I promised I would meet you again in September, I was not lying. I fully meant to meet you. Even after autumn passed and winter came, even when that winter ended, I fully intended to meet you.

Then in the height of summer the Meiji Emperor passed away. At that time it struck me that the spirit of Meiji began with the Emperor and ended with the Emperor. The feeling that we, who had received Meiji’s influence most strongly, surviving afterward were simply behind the times, struck my chest with violence. I plainly said so to my wife. She laughed and paid it no mind, but for some reason, suddenly teasing me, she said: then why not die a follower’s death with him?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”