三十

Walking along in this fashion, the heat and the fatigue gradually threw my natural physical condition into disorder. It was not quite the same as illness, however. I began to feel as though my soul had suddenly moved into another body altogether. Even as I spoke with K as usual, I found myself somehow detached from my ordinary state of mind. The affection and the aversion I felt toward him took on a peculiar character, as if they were limited to the journey alone. In other words, thanks to the heat, the tide, and the walking, the two of us had entered into a new relationship unlike any we had known before. We were then much like peddlers who had fallen in with each other on the road. No matter how much we talked, it was different from usual, and we never touched upon any intricate matter requiring deep thought.

In this vein we eventually made it all the way to Choshi, yet even now I cannot forget that there was a single exception along the way. Before we had left Boshu, the two of us visited Tai no Ura at a place called Kohata. Many years have since passed, and as it was not of great interest to me, I do not recall it clearly, but I believe the story was that this was the village where Nichiren was born. It is said that on the day Nichiren was born, two sea bream were washed up on the shore. Since then the village fishermen have refrained from catching bream, and to this day the cove is full of them. We hired a small boat and went out specially to see those bream.

At that time I simply stared at the waves without cease. And I gazed with never-tiring interest at the slightly purplish color of the bream moving among those waves, as one curious phenomenon. K, however, seemed unable to take as much interest in it as I did. Rather than the bream, he appeared to be imagining Nichiren in his mind. Just there stood a temple called Tanjo-ji. Since it was the village of Nichiren's birth, they had presumably named it Tanjo-ji; it was an impressive temple compound. K proposed that we go to that temple and meet the head priest. To tell the truth, we were dressed most strangely. K in particular, having had his hat blown into the sea by the wind, had bought a sedge hat and was wearing it. Our clothes, needless to say, were both grimy with dirt and reeked of sweat. I said we should not meet with any priest. But K was stubborn and would not listen. He said if I disliked it, I could wait outside alone. Having no choice, I went with him to the entrance, but inwardly I was certain we would be refused. Yet priests, it turns out, are surprisingly courteous; they showed us into a spacious and fine room and met with us at once. At that time my thoughts differed considerably from K's, so I had no mind to lend much ear to the conversation between the priest and K, but K seemed to be asking eagerly about Nichiren. I still remember that when the priest said Nichiren was called 'Grass Nichiren' because his cursive script was so splendid, K, whose own handwriting was poor, made a face as if to say, 'What nonsense.' K must have wished to know a Nichiren of deeper significance than that. Whether the priest satisfied him on that score is doubtful, but as we left the temple grounds he began pressing upon me talk of Nichiren. I was hot and tired and in no state for such things, so I gave him vague replies with my lips alone. Even that grew troublesome, and in the end I fell wholly silent.

I believe it was the following evening. After reaching our inn and eating, just before we were about to sleep, the two of us suddenly began debating a difficult matter. K had taken it amiss that I had not engaged with the subject of Nichiren he had raised the day before. He said those without spiritual aspiration were fools, and in some way berated me as if I were a shallow, frivolous thing. But in my breast lay the matter of the young lady, so I could not simply laugh and accept his near-contemptuous words. I began to defend myself in my own way.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”