When I returned to Tokyo, I found that the New Year pine decorations had already been taken down. The town was left to the mercy of the cold wind, and nowhere did I see any sign of a proper New Year's cheer.
I went at once to return the money to Sensei's house. I took the dried shiitake mushrooms with me as well. Since it would have seemed a bit odd simply to hand them over, I made a point of telling his wife that my mother had asked me to give them to her, and set them before her. The mushrooms were in a new confectionery box. After thanking me for them, his wife picked up the box as she rose to go into the next room, and seeming surprised at how light it was, asked, "Why, what sort of sweets are these?" Once she grew familiar with me, she would reveal, even in such matters, a very simple, childlike heart.
As both of them repeated various anxious inquiries about my father's illness, Sensei said something like this:
"Indeed, from what you tell me, he doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger right now, but since it is that kind of disease, you must be very careful."
Sensei knew a great deal about kidney disease that I did not.
"The peculiarity of that illness is that one can be afflicted with it and yet remain unaware and perfectly at ease. A certain army officer I knew was finally done in by it, and the way he died was almost unbelievable. Why, his wife, who was sleeping beside him, had no time at all to nurse him or anything of the sort. In the middle of the night he said he felt a little unwell and woke his wife, and by the next morning he was already dead. And what's more, the wife said she had thought all along that her husband was just sleeping."
I, who had hitherto leaned toward an optimistic view, was suddenly filled with unease.
"Do you think my father will come to such an end? One cannot say he will not."
"What does the doctor say?"
"The doctor says it is incurable. But he also says there is probably no need to worry for the time being."
"Then that is well, if the doctor says so. The case I just spoke of was of someone who was unaware of his condition, and besides, he was a rather rough sort of military man."
I was somewhat reassured. Sensei, who had been watching my change closely, then added:
"But whether in health or in sickness, man is a fragile thing. One never knows when, by what means, or in what manner one may die."
"Do you, too, ponder such things, Sensei?"
"Even I, sturdy as I am, am not entirely without such thoughts."
A shadow of a smile appeared at the corners of Sensei's mouth.
"There are those who die suddenly and quietly, are there not? Naturally. And then there are those who die in the blink of an eye. By unnatural violence."
"What do you mean by unnatural violence?"
"I am not quite sure myself, but those who take their own lives all make use of unnatural violence, I suppose."
"Then being killed is also thanks to unnatural violence, I take it?"
"The one who is killed never gave it a thought. Indeed, put that way, it is so."
I went home that day. Even after returning, my father's illness did not weigh so heavily on me. The words Sensei had spoken—of dying naturally, or dying by unnatural violence—left only a shallow impression at the time, and afterward lingered in my mind with no particular hold. I remembered that I must at last seriously begin the graduation thesis which I had several times started and then set aside.
