“Who is this ‘sensei, sensei’ you keep talking about?” my brother asked.
“I told you the other day,” I replied. I felt a flicker of irritation toward my brother, who, though he himself had raised the question, promptly forgot whatever explanation he had been given.
“I may have heard it, but—”
My brother, in the end, was the sort who heard without understanding. From my point of view, there was no real need to make my brother comprehend sensei. And yet I was annoyed. It was, once again, typical of my brother.
Because I spoke of him with such reverence as “sensei, sensei,” my brother seemed to think the man must surely be someone eminent. He surmised he was at least a university professor. A man with no name, a man who had done nothing—where could such a person have any worth? In this regard, my brother’s thinking was exactly the same as my father’s. But whereas my father had leapt to the conclusion that sensei did nothing because he was incapable, my brother let drop remarks to the effect that a man who, though possessed of some ability, lounged about idle, must be a worthless sort.
“An egoist, that’s no good. The notion of living without doing anything is sheer laziness. A man must make use of whatever talents he has, or it’s a fraud.”
I wanted to fire back at my brother and ask whether he truly understood the meaning of the word “egoist” as I used it.
“Still, if the man’s influence gets you a position, well, that’s something. Father seems pleased enough, doesn’t he?”
My brother added this later. Since sensei had sent no clear letter, I could neither believe it nor find the courage to say so aloud. And now that Mother had jumped to conclusions and broadcast it to everyone, I suddenly could not bring myself to deny it. Without even needing Mother’s prodding, I waited for sensei’s letter. And I prayed that the letter might say something about the matter of food and clothing, just as everyone supposed. For the sake of my father, hovering at death’s door; for the sake of my mother, who prayed she might give him some peace of mind; for the sake of my brother, who said a man who did not work was no man; and for the sake of my sister’s husband, my uncle, my aunt, and the rest—I was forced to fret over something I cared nothing about.
When my father vomited a strange yellowish matter, I recalled the danger sensei and his wife had once spoken of. Looking at my mother’s face as she said, “Lying abed so long, his stomach was bound to fail,” I nearly wept before her, who knew nothing.
When my brother and I met in the sitting room, my brother said, “Did you hear?” It meant: had I heard what the doctor said to him on his way out. I understood it well enough without explanation.
“Now that you’re back here, would you consider managing the household?” my brother asked, turning to me. I gave no answer.
“Mother alone can’t do a thing,” my brother went on. He looked at me as though I were fit to sniff the earth and rot, and no one would mourn it.
“If it’s only reading books, the country’s plenty good for that, and you won’t need to work either. It’d suit you nicely.”
“It would be more proper for you to come back, brother,” I said.
“As if I could do such a thing,” my brother rejected it in a single breath. His heart was full to brimming with the resolve to take up work in the world.
“If you won’t, I suppose we’ll ask Uncle to look after things, but even so, one of us will have to take Mother in.”
“Whether Mother will leave here or not is already a big question.”
Thus the brothers, even before their father had died, spoke together of what would come after his death.
