As the two of us walked home, a silence of not just one or two blocks stretched on. Then suddenly the teacher began to speak.
“I’ve done a bad thing. Because I left in anger, my wife must be terribly worried. When you think about it, women are to be pitied. My wife, for instance, has absolutely no one to rely on but me.”
The teacher’s words broke off there for a moment, but without any appearance of expecting a reply from me, he immediately went on.
“Saying that, the husband seems quite self-assured and is a little comical. Now, I wonder how I appear in your eyes. Do I seem strong, or do I seem weak?”
“I think somewhere in between,” I answered. This answer seemed rather unexpected to the teacher. He closed his mouth again and walked on in silence.
The usual route home to the teacher’s house passed right by my lodgings. When we came that far, I felt a little bad about parting at the corner. “Shall I accompany you as far as your gate, since I’m going that way?” I said. The teacher at once stopped me with his hand.
“It’s late, so go home quickly. I must hurry home too, for my wife’s sake.”
The words “for my wife’s sake” that the teacher added at the end warmed my heart strangely at that moment. Because of those words, I was able to go home and sleep in peace. For a long time afterward, I could not forget this phrase, “for my wife’s sake.”
From this I understood that the trouble between the teacher and his wife was not anything serious. That it was also a rare occurrence, I could roughly surmise from my constant comings and goings thereafter. More than that, the teacher once even let slip such a reflection to me:
“In this world I know only one woman. No woman other than my wife appeals to me as a woman. And my wife, for her part, thinks me the only man under heaven. In that sense, we ought to be a pair of human beings born the most blessed.”
Having by now forgotten the circumstances that led up to it, I cannot say plainly why the teacher made such a confession to me. But the seriousness of his manner and the low tone of his voice still remain in my memory. What struck my ear as strange then was only the final clause: “we ought to be a pair of human beings born the most blessed.” Why did the teacher not simply say “blessed,” but qualified it as “ought to be”? That alone was doubtful to me. Especially the emphasis in his voice there was doubtful. Was the teacher in fact happy, or was he not so happy despite being supposed to be? I could not help but doubt in my heart. But that doubt was for the time being buried somewhere.
In the meantime I went to the teacher’s house when he was out, and chanced upon an opportunity to talk alone with his wife. The teacher was away, having gone to Shinbashi to see off a friend who was to sail from Yokohama that day on a steamer bound abroad. It was the custom then for those embarking at Yokohama to take the 8:30 morning train from Shinbashi. I needed to consult the teacher about a certain book, so as previously arranged with his consent, I called at the appointed hour of nine. The teacher’s trip to Shinbashi was a sudden event of that day, undertaken as a courtesy to a friend who had come the day before expressly to say farewell. The teacher left word that he would be right back, and that I should wait even in his absence. So I went up into the sitting room, and while waiting for the teacher, I talked with his wife.
