三十四

I left the teacher's house a little past ten that night. Since I was supposed to return to my country within two or three days, before rising from my seat I offered a few words of farewell.

"I shan't be seeing you for some time, then."

"You'll be back in September, I suppose."

I had already graduated, so there was no real need for me to come back in September. Yet I had no intention of coming all the way to Tokyo to spend the height of August either. I had no precious time to spare for securing a position.

"Well, sometime around September, I expect."

"Then you'll be in fine spirits. We may go somewhere this summer too, depending. It looks terribly hot. If we go, I'll send you a picture postcard or two."

"Where might you be headed? If you do go, that is."

The teacher listened to this exchange with a faint smile.

"Why, nothing's decided yet, whether we go or not."

As I was about to leave, the teacher suddenly caught hold of me and asked, "By the way, how is your father's illness?" I knew almost nothing about my father's health. Since no word had come of anything serious, I had supposed he was probably not doing badly.

"It's not the sort of thing to take so lightly. Once uremia sets in, he's done for."

I neither knew the word nor the meaning of "uremia." When I had met with the doctor back home during the previous winter break, I had not heard any such term at all.

"Do take very good care of him," the mistress said as well. "Once the poison reaches the brain, that's the end of it, you know. It's no laughing matter."

Though I felt a chill at my inexperience, I gave a silly smile.

"They say it's an illness he won't recover from anyway, so worrying won't do any good.

"If you can resign yourself to thinking that, then so be it."

The mistress, perhaps recalling her own mother who had died of the same disease years before, spoke in a downcast tone and then lowered her eyes. I, too, came to feel genuine pity for my father's fate.

Then the teacher suddenly turned toward his wife.

"Shizu, do you think you'll die before me?"

"Why do you ask?"

"No reason, I just wondered. Or perhaps I'll be taken care of before you. In this world, it's generally the husband first and the wife left behind, as a matter of course."

"It's not written in stone. But the man is, after all, older, you know."

"So that's your reasoning for why he dies first? Then I suppose I must go to the other world before you as well."

"You're different."

"Is that so?"

"Why, you're healthy. Hardly ever been ill, have you? So of course it'll be me first."

"You first, eh."

"Yes, certainly me first."

The teacher looked at my face. I laughed.

"But suppose I were to go first. Then what would you do?"

"What would I do..."

The mistress faltered there. The imagined sorrow of the teacher's death seemed for a moment to seize her heart. But when she lifted her face again, her mood had already shifted.

"What would I do? There'd be nothing for it, now would there, dear. As they say, life and death are uncertain."

The mistress looked pointedly toward me and said this as if in jest.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”