四十二

As I walked alongside K, I silently awaited in my heart the next words to fall from his lips. Perhaps it would be more fitting to call it an ambush. At that moment, I was prepared to even strike K by surprise if need be. Yet I still possessed a conscience shaped by some education, so had someone come to my side and whispered a single word—"You are cowardly"—I might have snapped back to myself in that very instant. Had that someone been K, I would likely have flushed with shame before him. But K was far too honest to chide me. Too simple. Too good of heart. Blind as I was, I forgot to show him reverence, and instead took advantage of precisely that. I sought to use it to bring him down.

After a while, K called my name and looked toward me. This time it was I who naturally halted my steps. Then K stopped as well. It was only then that I could finally meet K's eyes straight on. K was a taller man than me, so I was obliged to look up toward his face. In that posture, I turned a wolf's heart upon an innocent sheep.

"Let's drop that talk," he said. There was a strangely anguished quality in both his eyes and his words. I could not so much as offer a reply. Then K, as if entreating, corrected himself: "Please, drop it." It was then that I gave him a cruel answer. Like a wolf seizing the throat of a sheep at the first opening.

"Drop it—but it wasn't me who brought it up. Wasn't it you who raised the matter in the first place? If you want to drop it, fine, but merely dropping it with your mouth will do no good. Not unless you are resolved in your heart to drop it. Just what do you intend to do with the principles you ordinarily stand for?"

As I said this, the tall K before me seemed naturally to shrink and grow small. He was, as he always claimed, a rather stubborn man, yet at the same time he was more honest than most, and so when his contradictions were sharply censured, he was never the sort to take it calmly. Seeing his state, I at last felt relieved. Then he abruptly asked, "Resolved?" And before I could answer, he added, "Resolved—if it comes to that, it is not impossible." His tone was like a soliloquy. Like words spoken in a dream.

With that, the two of us ended the conversation and turned our steps toward the lodgings in Koishikawa. It was a comparatively windless, warm day, but being winter after all, the park was a desolate sight. Especially when I looked back at the brownish cedar grove, stripped of its green by frost, standing in a row of tops against the darkened sky, I felt as though the cold were biting into my back. We hurried on foot through the Hongo plateau at dusk, then descended into the Koishikawa valley to climb the hill beyond. It was only around then that I began, beneath my overcoat, to feel the warmth of my own body.

Perhaps because we hurried, we spoke almost not at all on the way back. When we sat at the table after returning home, the mistress asked why we were so late. I answered that K had invited me to Ueno. The mistress looked surprised, saying, "In this cold?" The young lady was eager to ask what there was at Ueno. I only replied that there was nothing, we had merely taken a walk. K, quiet by nature, was even more silent than usual. Whether the mistress spoke to him or the young lady laughed, he offered little response. Then he swallowed his meal as if bolting it down, and before I had even left the table, withdrew to his own room.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”