My room had a small four-mat antechamber attached to it. Since one had to cross this four-mat room in order to go from the entrance up to where I was, it was an extremely inconvenient room from a practical standpoint. I put K in there. At first, I had intended to place two desks side by side in the same eight-mat room and leave the adjoining room for shared use, but K said he would rather be alone even if it was cramped, and chose that side himself.
As I have mentioned before, the mistress was at first opposed to my arrangement. She said that if it were a boarding house, one person was less convenient than two, and two less than three, and it would be more profitable, but since it was not a business, we had better not do it if possible. When I told her it would be fine because I was by no means a troublesome person to look after, she answered that even if I were not troublesome, she disliked having someone whose temperament she did not know. When I pressed her, saying that then I, who was currently troubling them, was no different, she would not stop excusing herself by saying she had known my temperament from the start. I smiled wryly. Then the mistress changed the direction of her reasoning again. She revised her stance and said I should not bring such a person in because it would be bad for me. When I asked why it would be bad for me, this time she smiled wryly.
To tell the truth, I had no pressing need to live with K either. But I thought that if I laid out the monthly expenses before him in the form of money, he would surely hesitate to accept it. He was a man with such a strong independent spirit. So I wanted to keep him at my house and quietly hand the cost of two portions of food to the mistress without his knowing. However, I had no intention of confiding to the mistress a single word about K's financial situation.
I only spoke to her about K's health. I said that left alone, he would only become more and more eccentric. Adding to that, I told her various things: that K had a poor relationship with his adoptive family, that he had become estranged from his own parents' home. I declared that I was taking K in with the resolve of one who clasps a drowning man, transferring my own warmth to him. I asked both the mistress and the young lady to look after him with warm care, on that understanding. It was only when I had gone this far that I finally persuaded the mistress. But K, who had heard nothing from me, was entirely unaware of this sequence of events. And I, on the contrary, was satisfied with that, and welcomed K, who had moved in sluggishly, with a feigned ignorance.
The mistress and the young lady kindly took care of things such as putting away his luggage. Interpreting all of this as stemming from their goodwill toward me, I rejoiced in my heart—even though K remained, as always, in his sullen manner.
When I asked K how he felt about the new lodgings, he only said in a single word that they were not bad. From my point of view, it was not merely 'not bad.' The place he had been living in until then was a dirty room facing north, damp and musty. The food, too, was as crude as the room. Moving to my house, he was like one transported from a dark valley to a tall tree. That he showed no sign of thinking much of it came, on the one hand, from his stubbornness, and on the other, from his convictions. Nurtured on Buddhist doctrine, he regarded any talk of luxury regarding clothing, food, and shelter as virtually immoral. Having happened to read the biographies of ancient holy monks and saints, he was inclined, all too easily, to separate spirit and flesh. There may even have been times when he felt that flogging the flesh increased the radiance of the spirit.
I adopted the policy of not opposing him as much as possible. I devised a way to set ice out in the sunlight and melt it. I thought that in time, when it had melted into warm water, the moment would surely come when he would notice himself.
