十九

At first I treated the mistress of the house as a woman of understanding. But as I went on speaking in earnest, her manner gradually changed. Instead of appealing to my intellect, the mistress began to move my heart. Though there should have been, and indeed was, no rift between her and her husband, still there was something. And yet, when she opened her eyes to see it clearly, there was after all nothing there. The mistress’s anguish lay precisely in this point.

At first she asserted flatly that because the master’s way of looking at the world was pessimistic, she herself had as a result fallen out of his favor. Having asserted so much, she could not settle there in the least. When it came down to it, she was rather thinking the opposite. She surmised that the master, as a result of coming to dislike her, had at last grown weary even of the world. Yet however she racked her brains, she could not pin down this surmise and make it fact. The master’s attitude was in every way that of a husband. He was kind and gentle. Having wrapped the lump of suspicion in the affection of each passing day and quietly stored it in the depths of her breast, the mistress that evening opened the wrapping before me.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Did I make him that way, or did it come from what you call his view of life or whatever? Tell me honestly.”

I had no wish to hide anything. But if some thing I did not know existed there, then whatever my answer, it could not satisfy the mistress. And I believed that there was indeed some thing I did not know.

“I do not understand.”

The mistress instantly showed the pitiful look of one met with the unexpected. I immediately added to my words:

“But I can guarantee at least that the master does not dislike you. I only convey to you what I heard from the master’s own lips. He is not one to lie, is he?”

The mistress gave no answer. After a while she said:

“The truth is, there is something I suspect….”

“About the cause of the master’s becoming as he is?”

“Yes. If that is the cause, then the blame is at least not mine, and that alone would be a great relief to me, but….”

“What sort of thing is it?”

The mistress hesitated, gazing at her own hands resting on her knees.

“You judge for me. I’ll tell you.”

“If it is a judgment I can make, I will.”

“I can’t tell everything. If I tell everything I’ll be scolded. Only what won’t get me scolded.”

I swallowed, tense, and drew in my saliva.

“When the master was still at the university, he had one very close friend. That person died just before graduation. He died suddenly.”

In a whisper so small it seemed meant only for my ear, the mistress said, “The truth is, it was an unnatural death.” It was said in a way that compelled me to ask, “How?”

“That is all I can say. But it was after that happened. The master’s nature gradually changed from then. Why that person died, I do not know. The master probably does not know either. But if one thinks the master changed from then, it is not impossible to think so.”

“The grave in Zoshigaya—is that his?”

“I am told not to say that either, so I won’t. But can a man change so much just from losing one dear friend? I am dying to know. That is why I want you to judge that point for me.”

My judgment leaned rather toward denial.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”