二十一

When winter came, it happened that I had to return home unexpectedly. In a letter I received from my mother, she wrote that my father’s illness was taking a turn for the worse, and though there was perhaps no immediate cause for alarm, since he was of an age, she added a request that if at all possible I should make arrangements to come home.

Father had long suffered from a kidney ailment. As is often seen in those past middle age, his was a chronic condition. Yet both he and the family firmly believed that, so long as he took care, there would be no sudden change. Indeed, whenever guests came, he would boast that thanks solely to his careful regimen he had managed to hold on thus far. According to my mother’s letter, however, while he was out in the garden doing something, he was suddenly seized with dizziness and collapsed. The family mistook it for a mild stroke and treated him accordingly at once. Only later, when the doctor judged that it did not seem to be that after all, but rather the result of his longstanding complaint, did they begin to connect the fainting spell with the kidney disease.

There was still some time before the winter vacation. I thought it would do no harm to wait until the end of the term, and so left things as they were for a day or two. But during those one or two days, the sight of Father lying abed, and Mother’s worried face, would now and then rise before my eyes. Each time I tasted a kind of painful unease, and at last I made up my mind to go. To save the trouble and time of having my travel expenses sent from home, I went to see the teacher on the pretext of taking my leave, and arranged to have him advance me as much money as I needed.

The teacher was a little under the weather with a cold, and said he was loath to come out to the parlor, so he had me shown into his study. Through the glass door of the study, a gentle, nostalgic sunlight such as is rarely seen in winter fell upon the desk cover. In this pleasant room, the teacher had placed a large brazier, and from a metal basin hung over the grate the rising steam guarded against any difficulty in breathing.

“A serious illness is one thing, but a trifling cold like this is rather a nuisance,” said the teacher, with a wry smile, looking at my face.

The teacher was a man who had never known a single illness. Hearing his words, I felt like laughing.

“If it’s only a cold, I can bear it, but anything worse I’ll gladly pass up. You’re the same, I’m sure. You’d understand well enough if you tried it.”

“Is that so? If I must fall ill, I’d rather it were a fatal disease.”

I paid the teacher’s remark no particular heed, and at once spoke of my mother’s letter and broached the need for money.

“That must be hard. At any rate, I should have that much on hand, so take it with you.”

The teacher called his wife and had her lay out the necessary sum before me. She brought it from a drawer of the chest in the back, perhaps, and piled it carefully on a sheet of white tissue paper. “That must be worrying for you,” she said.

“Did he faint many times?” the teacher asked.

“The letter says nothing about it. — Does one collapse like that so many times?”

“Yes.”

It was then I first learned that the teacher’s wife’s mother had also died of the same disease as my father.

“It’s a difficult case, no doubt,” I said.

“So it seems. If I could take his place, I would. — Is there any nausea?”

“I don’t know; it says nothing, so probably not.”

“As long as the vomiting doesn’t come, he’ll be all right yet,” said the wife.

That night I left Tokyo by train.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”