十二
“By the time I left the country, my mood had already become world-weary. The notion that no one else could be relied upon seemed to have seeped into my very bones by then. I came to think of my hostile uncle and aunt, and the rest of my relatives, as if they were representatives of all humanity. Even after boarding the train, I began to watch the person next to me with quiet vigilance. If they happened to strike up a conversation, I only felt the urge to be even more on my guard. My heart was heavy and gloomy. At times it felt as if I had swallowed lead, so oppressively weighed down. And yet, as I said, my nerves had grown sharp and pointed.
“I think this was a major reason why, once I came to Tokyo, I wanted to leave my boarding house. You might say that if I hadn’t been short of money, I wouldn’t have felt inclined to set up my own household either, but the old me would never have bothered with such troublesome nonsense, even with extra money in my pocket.
“Even after I moved to Koishikawa, I could not for a long while grant any relief to this tense state of mind. I looked around me so skittishly that I was ashamed of myself. Strangely, only my head and eyes worked well, while my mouth, on the contrary, gradually ceased to move. I would sit silently at my desk, observing the ways of the household as keenly as a cat. At times I watched them with such tireless caution that I almost felt sorry for them. I’m like a pickpocket who steals nothing, I thought, and there were moments when I grew sick of myself.
“You must think it strange. How could such a me have the composure to grow fond of the young lady there? How could I have the composure to delight in her clumsy flower arrangements? How could I have the composure to gladly listen to her equally clumsy koto playing? If you asked me that, I could only say that both were simply facts, and tell you so as facts. Leaving the interpretation to your clever mind, I will add just one thing: I doubted humanity where money was concerned, but where love was concerned, I had not yet doubted humanity. So even if to others it seemed odd, and even if on reflection it seemed contradictory, the two coexisted peacefully within my breast.
“Since I always called the widow ‘madam,’ I shall from now on call her madam rather than the widow. Madam judged me to be a quiet person, a gentle man. She also praised me as a diligent student. But about my uneasy eyes and skittish manner, she said nothing. Whether she failed to notice or was simply being tactful, I cannot say, but she seemed to pay it no mind at all. Not only that, on one occasion she called me generous, and spoke in a tone of apparent respect. Honest as I was, I blushed a little and denied it. Then madam earnestly explained, ‘You say so because you do not realize it yourself.’ It seems madam had not originally intended to take in a student like me. She had apparently asked the neighbors to find her a tenant from some government office or the like, meaning to rent out a room. The idea that such a person would be someone of modest salary, forced to lodge in a private home out of necessity, must have been somewhere in her mind from the start. Comparing the guest of her imagination with me, she praised me as the more generous one. Compared to someone living so frugally, I may indeed have seemed generous with money. But that was no matter of temperament, and had almost nothing to do with my inner life. Being a woman, madam tried to extend this to my whole self and apply the same word to all of me.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”