四十

One day I went into the school library for the first time in a long while. In a corner of a wide desk, with the light streaming through the window falling across half my body, I was flipping through the newly arrived foreign journals one after another. My homeroom teacher had ordered me to look into a certain matter concerning my major and report back by the following week. But since I could not readily find what I needed, I had to borrow and exchange journals two or three times. At last I managed to track down the paper I required and began reading it with total concentration. Then suddenly, from the other side of the broad desk, a small voice called my name. I looked up and saw K standing there. K bent his upper body over the desk, bringing his face close to mine. As you know, in a library one cannot speak in a loud voice that would disturb others, so this was a perfectly ordinary gesture anyone might make—yet for some reason, just then, I felt a strange sort of sensation.

In a low voice K asked if I was studying. I answered that I had a bit of research to do. Even so, K did not withdraw his face from mine. In the same low tone, he asked if I would not go for a walk with him. I replied that if he waited a little, I might. He said he would wait, and immediately sat down in the empty seat before me. Then my mind began to wander, and all at once I could no longer read the journal. Somehow it seemed to me as if K had something on his chest, as if he had come to negotiate some matter with me, and I could not help feeling that way. Reluctantly, I laid the half-read journal face down and started to rise. K, perfectly composed, asked if I was already done. I said it did not matter either way, and returning the journal, I left the library with K.

Having no particular place to go, the two of us came out from Tatsuoka-chō to Ikenohata, and entered the park at Ueno. There he suddenly broached the subject of that affair from his side. Judging from the circumstances before and after, K had apparently dragged me out for a walk precisely on account of it. Yet his attitude had still not advanced in the least toward any practical course. He merely said to me, vaguely, “What do you think?” By “what do you think,” he meant to ask with what eyes I regarded him, now that he had fallen into such an abyss of love. In a word, it seemed he wanted my judgment upon his present self. There I felt I could surely recognize a point in which he differed from his usual self. Though I may sound repetitive, his nature was not fashioned so weakly as to shrink before the opinions of others. He was a man with the nerve and the courage to press straight ahead alone once he believed a thing. That I, with the family-adoption affair having carved that trait deeply into my breast, should clearly perceive “this is not like him” was only natural.

When I asked K why my criticism was needed at such a juncture, he said in an unusually dejected tone that he was actually ashamed to be so weak a creature. And because he was wavering, he said, he no longer understood himself, and had no choice but to seek an impartial judgment from me. I seized the chance to press him on what he meant by “wavering.” He explained that he wavered over whether to advance or retreat. I immediately stepped one pace ahead. And I asked him: if you wished to retreat, could you retreat? There his words suddenly came to a halt. He only said it was painful. Indeed, his expression plainly showed a look of suffering. Had the object not been the young lady, I do not know how readily I would have poured upon that parched face, like gentle rain, a reply so convenient to him. I myself believe I was born with just such beautiful sympathy. But the me of that time was different.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”