三十五

I sat back down after having half-risen, and stayed to keep them both company until the conversation came to a natural pause. "What do you think?" the teacher asked me.

Whether the teacher would die first or his wife would pass away sooner was, of course, not a question I could possibly judge. I simply smiled. "One never knows about lifespan. Not even I." "That truly is a matter of fate. Since we're each given a fixed number of years at birth, there's no help for it. You see, the teacher's father and mother both died almost together." "On the same day?" "Surely not the very same day. But still, together. They passed away one right after the other, after all."

This was new knowledge to me. I found it strange. "How did they come to die at the same time like that?"

His wife started to answer my question. The teacher cut her off. "Let's not speak of such things. It's dull."

The teacher deliberately flapped the fan he held in his hand. Then he turned to his wife again. "Shizu, if I die, I'll leave this house to you."

His wife burst out laughing. "While you're at it, give me the land too." "The land belongs to someone else, so there's nothing to be done. But in exchange, everything I have will be yours." "Thank you very much. But what am I to do with books in those foreign letters?" "Sell them to a used-book store." "And if you sell them, how much would they fetch?"

The teacher did not say how much. Yet his talk rarely strayed from the distant matter of his own death. And that death was always assumed to come before his wife's. At first his wife, too, seemed to reply with deliberately foolish banter. But before she knew it, the melancholy weighed heavy on her sentimental heart. "'If I die, if I die'—how many times must you say it? For pity's sake, enough already, please stop with the 'if I die.' It's a bad omen. If you die, I'll do exactly as you wish, so isn't that good enough?"

The teacher turned toward the garden and laughed. But after that he no longer said the things his wife disliked. As for me, since I was staying rather long, I took my leave at once. The teacher and his wife saw me out to the entryway.

"Take good care of the invalid," said his wife.

"Until September, then," said the teacher.

I bowed and stepped out beyond the lattice door. A single lush osmanthus tree between the entryway and the gate spread its branches in the night shadows, as if to block my path. Taking a few steps, I looked up at the crown hidden beneath its darkened leaves, and called to mind the autumn flowers and fragrance to come. From of old I had kept the teacher's house and this osmanthus together in my memory, as things inseparable in my heart. As I chanced to stand before that tree and let my thoughts drift to the next autumn, when I should cross this threshold again, the entryway electric light that had been shining through the lattice suddenly went out. The couple seemed to have gone inside then. I stepped out alone into the dark street.

I did not return at once to my lodgings. I had shopping to do before going home to the country, and my stomach, stuffed with good food, needed easing, so I simply walked toward the busy part of town. The town was still in the early evening. Among the men and women with no apparent errand, drifting to and fro, I met so-and-so, who had graduated with me that day. He dragged me by force into a certain tavern. There I was made to listen to his spirits, frothy as beer foam. It was past midnight when I got back to my lodgings.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”