Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

How many years had passed since Kenzo left Tokyo when he returned from afar and set up a household in the depths of Komagome?
In the novelty of treading his native soil once more, he even felt a tinge of loneliness.

His body still clung to the scent of the distant land he had so recently abandoned.
He loathed it.
He thought he must shake off that odor as soon as possible.
Yet he failed to notice the pride and satisfaction lurking within that very odor.

He commuted twice daily along the road from Sendagi to Oiwake with the restless demeanor common to people in such moods, as though following a strict routine.

One day, a light rain fell.
At that time, he walked off at the usual hour toward Hongō along his regular route, wearing neither an overcoat nor any rain gear save for carrying an umbrella.
Then, just past the rickshaw stand, he unexpectedly came face to face with someone.
That person appeared to have come up the slope from Nezu Gongen Shrine’s back gate and was walking northward in the opposite direction of him. When Kenzo casually glanced ahead, the man had already entered his field of vision from about ten ken away.
And so he found himself involuntarily averting his gaze.

He tried to pass by the man with an air of feigned ignorance.
But he found it necessary to verify the man's facial features once more.
So when they had drawn within two or three ken of each other, they turned their eyes toward one another once again.
Meanwhile, the other man had long since been staring fixedly at him.

The street was quiet.
Between them fell only ceaseless thin threads of rain, making their mutual recognition effortless.
Kenzo immediately averted his eyes and resumed walking straight ahead.
Yet the man remained rooted by the roadside, showing no intention to move, watching intently as Kenzo passed by.
Kenzo had only registered how the man's face gradually pivoted in time with his footsteps.

How many years had it been since he last met this man?
The time when he had severed ties with this man dated back to when he was barely twenty—if even that.
Fifteen or sixteen years had passed since then until today, but during that time they had not once met face-to-face.

His position and circumstances had completely changed when viewed from that time.
When he compared his present appearance—with its black beard and bowler hat—to his former shaven-headed self, even he couldn’t help feeling as though generations had passed between them.
But given that contrast, the other man had changed far too little.
He wondered suspiciously why this person’s hair remained jet black when by any reckoning he should have been sixty-five or sixty-six.
The man’s persistence in maintaining his old habit of venturing out hatless also served as an unsettling reminder of their shared past.

He had never liked encountering that man from the beginning. He had thought that even if they were to meet by chance, it would be better if the man were at least dressed more finely than himself. However, no one seeing the man before him now could possibly think him particularly well-off. While going hatless might be the man’s own choice, judging by his haori and kimono, he could only be taken for an elderly townsman making a lower-middle-class living. He had even noticed that the Western-style umbrella the man carried was made of heavy-looking damask.

That day, even after returning home, he could not forget the man he had encountered on the way.
From time to time, he was troubled by the gaze of that person who had stopped by the roadside and stared intently at him as he passed.
However, he did not confide anything in his wife.
When he was in a bad mood, no matter how much he wanted to talk about something, it was his habit not to tell his wife.
The Wife too was a woman who never spoke beyond necessities toward her silent husband.

II

The next day, Kenzo again passed through the same place at the same time.
The following day, he passed through again.
However, the man without a hat no longer appeared from anywhere.
He went back and forth along the usual road like a machine, like an obligation.

After five uneventful days had passed, on the morning of the sixth day, the man without a hat suddenly emerged once more from the shadow of Nezu Gongen’s slope and threatened Kenzo.
It was in nearly the same place as before, and at almost the same time as well.

At that moment, while being aware of the other man approaching him, Kenzo tried to walk as usual—like a machine or an obligation.
However, the other man’s attitude stood in exact opposition.
He stared with a focus in both eyes so intense it would unsettle anyone.
The man’s intent to approach at the slightest opportunity could be read as clearly as day through those clouded eyes.
As Kenzo passed by as unsparingly as possible, a strange premonition arose in his chest.

"This will hardly end here."

However, even when he returned home that day, he ultimately did not speak to his Wife about the man without a hat.

Kenzo and his Wife had married seven or eight years prior—by which time his relationship with this man had long since been severed—and since their marriage had taken place not in his native Tokyo, she could not have known him directly. However, if only as a rumor, Kenzo himself might have already spoken about it, and it couldn’t be certain that she hadn’t heard from his relatives and come to know of it. In any case, that was not a problem for Kenzo.

Yet regarding this incident, there was one fact from after his marriage that would still occasionally surface in his mind.
Five or six years ago, when he was still in the countryside, a thick letter written in feminine handwriting had suddenly been placed on his desk at work.
At that time, he had made a strange face as he read the letter.
But no matter how many times he read it through, he couldn't finish it.
Though written in tiny characters across some twenty sheets of hanshi paper, after reading through about a fifth of it, he had finally handed it over to the Wife.

At that time, he had needed to explain to the Wife the identity of the woman who had written such a long letter addressed to himself. And in connection with that woman, he had no choice but to bring up this man who never wore a hat. Kenzo remembered his past self compelled by such necessity. However, when it came to how thoroughly he had explained things to the Wife in his conciliatory mood, he had already forgotten. The Wife, being a woman, probably still remembered the matter clearly, but he had no inclination to question her about it anew now. He detested having to consider the woman who had written the long letter alongside the man who never wore a hat. It was because doing so served as a medium to evoke his unfortunate past from afar.

Fortunately, his current state afforded him no leeway to brood over such matters. He returned home, changed his clothes, and immediately entered his study. He was constantly in a state of mind where his own tasks seemed piled mountain-high upon the narrow tatami mats of that six-tatami room. But in reality, far more than the work itself, it was the compulsion of having to do it that dominated him. Naturally, he had to be irritated.

When he opened the box of books he had brought from afar in this six-tatami room, he would sit cross-legged amidst a mountain of Western books and live there for a week or even two weeks. Then, picking up whatever his hands touched one after another, he would read two or three pages at a time. Because of this, the crucial task of organizing the study never got done, no matter how much time passed. Finally, a certain friend who could no longer bear to watch this pitiful state came and briskly arranged all the books on the shelves without regard to order or number of volumes. The majority of people who knew him evaluated him as neurasthenic. He himself believed it to be his inherent nature.

III

Kenzo was indeed driven by work day after day.
Even after returning home, he had not a moment of time he could use at his ease.
On top of that, he wanted to read what he wanted to read, write what he wanted to write, and think about the problems he wanted to think about.
Thus his mind knew almost nothing of what might be called leeway.
He remained constantly glued to his desk.

He who was so busy that he rarely set foot in places of entertainment once had a friend recommend Noh chanting lessons to him—an offer he deftly declined—yet in his heart wondered how others could possibly have such time to spare.
And yet he failed to notice that his attitude toward his own time bore an uncanny resemblance to a miser’s attitude toward money.

As a natural consequence, he had to avoid social interactions. He had to avoid even people. The more complex the interaction between his mind and the printed word became, the more he as a person had to sink into loneliness. There were even times when he dimly sensed that loneliness. Yet at the same time, he was confident that deep within his heart lay an unusual mass of heat. And so, while walking the path of life toward a desolate wilderness, he took this to be nothing other than his true nature. He never once thought that he was going there to wither away the warm blood of humanity.

He was treated as an eccentric by relatives.
However, that was not much of a hardship for him.

“It’s because the educations are different—there’s nothing to be done about that.”

Within him always lay this rebuttal.

“Still just self-praise.”

This remained ever the Wife’s interpretation.

Regrettably, Kenzo could not transcend such criticism from the Wife.
Each time he heard it, his face twisted uncomfortably.
At moments he bitterly resented her fundamental lack of understanding.
Sometimes he rebuked her.
Other times he cut her off entirely.
Then his irritability rang in her ears like the bluster of an empty threat.
The Wife merely amended those four characters—“self-praise”—to four others: “grandiose claims.”

He had but one half-sister and one brother. As for relatives, these two households were all he possessed, yet he had unfortunately not maintained close relations with either. The peculiar reality of growing distant from his own siblings sat uneasily with him. Still, his work appeared to matter more than familial obligations. That he had met them three or four times since returning to Tokyo provided him some justification. Had the hatless man not abruptly obstructed his path, he would have persisted in his clockwork routine—twice-daily commutes through Sendagi, no deviation in course foreseeable. And had a Sunday arrived when his body might find respite, he would simply have sprawled his exhausted limbs across tatami mats, indulging in half a day's stolen rest.

However, when the next Sunday came, he suddenly remembered the man he had met twice along the way. And then, as if suddenly deciding, he set out for his sister’s house. His sister’s house stood beside Tsunokamizaka slope in Yotsuya, set back about a block from the main thoroughfare. Her husband was Kenzo’s cousin—which meant he was also the sister’s cousin. They were either the same age or a year apart, but from Kenzo’s perspective, both were a full twelve years older than him. Due to this husband’s former employment at Yotsuya Ward Office—and because he still disliked leaving the area where they had many connections even after quitting that position—the sister continued living in the old, dilapidated house, unconcerned by its inconvenience to her current workplace.

IV

This sister suffered from asthma.
She wheezed laboriously year-round.
Yet being inherently high-strung by nature, she would never settle unless thoroughly distressed.
She wouldn’t rest unless inventing tasks to pace endlessly around the cramped house.
Her restless, coarse demeanor struck Kenzo as truly pitiable.

The sister was also excessively talkative.
Her chatter wholly lacked dignity.
Facing her, Kenzo inevitably grimaced and fell silent.

This is my sister, after all.

After speaking with her, such reflections always arose in Kenzo’s heart.

That day, Kenzo found this sister—as usual, with a work sash tied around her sleeves—rummaging through the cupboard.

“Well now, how rare for you to actually come.”
“Here now, do sit down.”

Sister offered Kenzo a cushion and went to the veranda to wash her hands.

Kenzo looked around the sitting room during her absence. In the transom hung a faded scroll he had recognized since childhood. He recalled that the name Tsutsui Ken written in the scroll’s colophon—likely a hatamoto calligrapher or something of the sort—was someone whose handwriting was exceptional, as the master of this house had taught him fifteen or sixteen years ago. In those days, he would call that master “Brother! Brother!” and constantly go there to play. Despite there being an uncle-nephew level of difference in their ages, they would often wrestle in the tatami room only to be scolded by Sister, or climb onto the roof to pluck and eat figs, then get into trouble for throwing the peels into the neighbor’s yard. There had also been times when he deeply resented how the master had deceived him by promising to buy him a compass in a box yet never actually buying it no matter how much time passed. After quarreling with his sister, he steeled himself never to forgive her even if she came to apologize—but no matter how long he waited, she never did. In the end, though it was he who grudgingly trudged off to her place, left with nothing to do, he stood silently at her gate until she invited him in—a farcical scene indeed…

Gazing at the old scroll, Kenzo turned memory's bright searchlight upon his childhood self. He felt discomfort with himself for being unable to muster much goodwill toward his sister and her husband who had cared for him so deeply.

"How has your health been lately? You haven't had any terrible attacks, have you?"

He asked this while looking at his sister's face seated before him.

"Well, thank you. Thanks to you and this fine weather, I'm managing the house somehow—though age does tell, you know. I simply can't work like I used to in the old days. Back when Ken-chan would visit, I'd tuck up my kimono and scrub every pot till their bottoms shone! Not a scrap of that energy left now. But thanks to you, I'm getting by like this—drinking milk every day too..."

Kenzo had not forgotten to send his sister a modest monthly allowance, however small.

“You look a bit thinner.”

“Oh, this is just how I’ve always been—there’s nothing to be done about it.”
“I’ve never been one to put on weight since way back.”
“It’s just that I’ve always been high-strung, you see.”
“It’s my nerves that keep me from gaining weight, I tell you.”

Sister rolled up her fleshless thin arm and showed it to Kenzo. Under her large sunken eyes, dark semicircular shadows were listlessly tinged by languid-looking skin. Kenzo silently stared at that parched palm.

“But Ken-chan, you’ve become so splendid—truly wonderful. When you went abroad back then, I’d truly thought we’d never meet alive again—yet here you are, returning in good health. If Father and Mother were alive and here, how delighted they would be.”

Tears had pooled in Sister’s eyes.
When Kenzo was a child，Sister would habitually say，*“When I get some money someday，I’ll buy you anything you like.”*
On the other hand, she would also say，*“In this backwater，this child will never amount to anything.”*
Kenzo recalled his sister’s past words and tone，then gave a bitter smile inwardly.

V
As he called up such old memories，Sister’s aged appearance—she whom he had not seen in so long—struck Kenzo all the more.

“By the way, Sister—how old are you now?”

“I’m already an old woman.”
“I’m just taking one off, you know.”

Sister showed her yellow, sparse teeth and laughed.
The fact that she was fifty-one came as a surprise even to Kenzo.

“So there’s more than a full cycle between us?”
“I thought the difference was at most ten or eleven years.”

“What do you mean just one cycle?”
“There’s a sixteen-year difference between us, Ken-chan—I’m your sister!”
“Because Husband is Three Blue of the Sheep and Sister is Four Green.”
“Ken-chan was Seven Red, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know why, but anyway, it’s thirty-six.”

“Go on and check—it’s definitely Seven Red.”

Kenzo didn’t even know how to calculate his own astrological sign.
The conversation about ages ended there.

“Is he out today?” he asked about Hida.

“He was on night duty again last evening.
Well if it were just his own shifts, it’d be three or four times a month—but others keep asking him too, don’tcha know.
And if he stays even one extra night, he’d still make a bit more—so he ends up taking others’ turns too.
These days it’s probably half-and-half—sleeping there and coming home.
Might actually be staying over there more often than not.”

Kenzo silently gazed at Hida’s desk placed beside the shoji.
Beside the inkstone box, envelopes, and scrolls neatly arranged in an orderly manner, two or three ledger books for bookkeeping stood upright with their red spines facing this way.
And then, a small abacus, beautifully polished, was placed beneath them.

According to rumor, Hida had recently formed a relationship with a suspicious woman and was keeping her in a place very near his workplace.
Kenzo thought that perhaps the reason he kept claiming night duty this, night duty that and not returning home was due to that.

“How has Mr. Hida been lately? Now that he’s gotten quite old, he must be more serious than before.”

“Oh, he’s still exactly the same. That man was born to amuse himself alone—there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s all variety shows and plays and sumo matches—as long as he has money, he’s out gallivanting all year round, I tell you. But oddly enough—whether it’s age or something else—he does seem a bit gentler compared to the old days. Originally—as you know full well—he was quite fierce back then. Kicking, hitting, grabbing my hair and dragging me around the room…”

“On the other hand, you weren’t exactly one to back down either, Sister.”

“What nonsense! I’ve never once had anything to do with mistresses—not even a single time!”

Kenzo found himself amused as he recalled his spirited sister’s past.
Their fights were by no means as one-sidedly defensive as Sister now made them out to be.
When it came to verbal sparring, Sister was ten times more skilled than Hida.
And yet, it struck him as strangely pitiful that this sister of his—once so spirited, now with her docile nature—remained utterly convinced her husband was staying overnight at his workplace whenever he failed to return home, deceived by his excuses.

“It’s been a while since I last treated you to something. How about I do that again?” he said while looking at his sister’s face.

“Thank you. Since you just mentioned sushi, it may not be anything special, but please have some.”

Sister was a woman who, once she saw a guest’s face, would insist on feeding them something no matter the time.
Kenzo, seeing no alternative, resignedly settled himself and finally resolved to broach the matter he had been harboring to Sister.

VI

Lately, Kenzo’s stomach had been troubling him, perhaps from overexerting his mind.
When he occasionally tried exercising as if reminded, his chest and abdomen would only grow heavier.
He was careful to avoid putting anything in his mouth outside of his three daily meals as much as possible.
Even so, he couldn’t withstand his sister’s stubbornness.

“Seaweed rolls won’t do your body any harm.”
“Since I went through all this trouble to get something special for you, you really must eat it.”
“Don’t you like it?”

Kenzo reluctantly stuffed his cheeks with the unappetizing seaweed roll and munched away with his tobacco-roughened mouth.

Because Sister kept dominating the conversation, he couldn’t voice what he wanted to say.
Though he had questions needing answers, being trapped in these one-sided exchanges made him grow increasingly impatient.
Yet Sister remained utterly unaware of his agitation.

True to her nature of both feeding people and foisting gifts upon them, she proposed giving Kenzo the faded Daruma scroll he’d casually complimented before.

“That thing’s no use sitting around the house anyway, so just take it already.”
“Well, Hida wouldn’t want it either—some grubby Daruma like that.”

Kenzo neither accepted nor refused, simply smiling wryly.
Then Sister suddenly lowered her tone, as if about to share a secret.

“Actually, Kenzo—I’ve been meaning to talk ever since you came back—but somehow kept quiet till today.”
“You’ve just returned and must be swamped—and even if I went over, with Ms. O-nui there—it’d be awkward to speak.”
“But then—trying to write a letter—you know how hopeless I am with words…”

Sister’s preamble was both interminable and absurdly comical.
When he considered this woman—his own flesh and blood—who despite relentless childhood writing drills had retained nothing, surviving fifty years without grasping even basic characters—Kenzo felt pity laced with secret shame.

“So, Sis—this story of yours—what exactly is it about? Actually, I also came here today because I had something to discuss with you—”

“Oh, I see. Then I suppose it’s proper to hear your side first. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“But I couldn’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to be so reserved, you know. We’re siblings, aren’t we? You know.”

Sister remained utterly unaware of the plain fact that her own volubility was stifling the other’s speech.

“Well then, let’s take care of your side first, Sis.”
“What exactly is this story you’re talking about?”

“To be honest, Kenzo—though I hate to trouble you like this—I’m getting older and weaker by the day, and my husband being the man he is, he acts like he couldn’t care less what becomes of his wife so long as he’s content alone. Though of course, with his monthly earnings being so meager and all his social obligations, I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it…”

What Sister said was, as might be expected of a woman, quite roundabout.
Her words showed little sign of reaching their point easily, but Kenzo understood their main intent well.
In other words, he thought, she was probably asking him to increase her monthly allowance a bit more.
To him, who had even now heard how she was often made to borrow from her husband, this request was both pitiable and infuriating.

“Please think of helping your sister.”
“After all, with this body of mine, your sister won’t be around much longer anyway.”

These were the last words to come from Sister’s mouth.
Even so, Kenzo could not bring himself to say he disliked it.

VII

He had work for tomorrow that needed finishing tonight once he returned home. Sitting across from this sister who recognized not a shred of time’s value and chattering away endlessly was not without some pain for him. He decided it was about time to leave. And then, just as he was about to go, he finally brought up the matter of the man without a hat.

“Actually, I met Shimada the other day.”

“Oh? Where?”

Sister let out a surprised voice.
She was the sort of woman who tended to put on those exaggerated, artificial expressions common among uneducated Tokyo locals.

“Beside Ōta Field.”

“Then that’s practically next door to you! What will you do? Did you speak to him at all?”

“What do you mean ‘speak’? There was nothing to say.”

“That’s right.
You’re the one who needs to say something first, Kenzo—it’s not like they’ve got any reason to open their mouths on their side.”

Sister’s words were in a tone that sought to accommodate Kenzo’s intentions as much as possible.
She asked Kenzo “What kind of clothes was he wearing?” and then added, “So things still aren’t easy for him after all, huh?”
There seemed to be a measure of sympathy in this.
However, when she began speaking of the man’s past, her tone took on an unmistakably spiteful edge.

“No matter how stubborn someone is, there’s no one as stubborn as that man.”
“Since today’s the deadline, he insists on taking it no matter what—no matter how much I try to explain, he just sits there and won’t budge.”
“Finally, I got so fed up that I said, ‘I’m sorry to say I don’t have the money, but if you’ll take goods instead, feel free to take a pot or a kettle!’ And then he says he’ll take the kettle!”
“It’s unbelievable!”

“Even if he takes the kettle, it’s so heavy he couldn’t possibly carry it.”

“But since he’s such a stubborn mule, there’s no telling what he might do to take it away.”
“He’s the kind of person who’d do such a spiteful thing because he thinks it’ll keep me from cooking that day’s meal, you know.”
“After all, there’s no way anything good would come from him showing up again anyway.”

To Kenzo’s ears, this account did not ring as mere comedy.
The old shadow of himself entangled in these interactions between that person and his sister was, for him, more sad than amusing.

“I’ve met Shimada twice now, Sis.”
“I don’t know when I’ll meet him again from here on out.”

“Just pretend you don’t know him and go about your business.
What does it matter how many times you meet him?”

“But I can’t tell whether he’s deliberately passing through that area to search for my house, or if he just happened to run into me by chance while on some errand.”

This question was one even Sister couldn’t answer.
She merely used words that seemed convenient to Kenzo, to no purpose.
That rang hollow to Kenzo like empty flattery.

“He hasn’t come here at all since then?”

“Ah, he hasn’t come at all these past two or three years.”
“And before that?”

“Before that, well, he didn’t come exactly often, but still showed up now and then.”
“That’s what’s strange about it.”
“Whenever he came, it was always around eleven o’clock.”
“He’d never leave unless we fed him eel rice or something.”
“The man’s real aim was to get at least one meal a day eaten at someone else’s house rather than his own.”
“And yet he’d be wearing quite decent clothes, you know.…”

Sister’s words tended to digress, but as Kenzo listened to them, he surmised that even after he had left Tokyo, some association between the two had persisted—still rooted in financial matters.
However, he could learn nothing beyond that.
He had no idea about Shimada’s present circumstances.

VIII

"Is Shimada still living where he used to?"

Even this simple question was something Sister couldn't answer clearly.
Kenzo had slightly missed the mark.
But since he himself hadn't gone so far as to actively try pinning down Shimada's current whereabouts, he didn't feel particularly disappointed.
He believed there was still no need in this situation to go through such trouble.
Even if he did go through with it, he considered it would only satisfy a kind of curiosity.
Moreover, he now had no choice but to despise such curiosity.
His time was far too valuable to spend on such things.

He merely visualized, with his mind’s eye, the house of that person he had seen during his childhood and its surroundings.

There, along one side of the road ran a wide moat stretching an entire chō.
The unchanging water within was unpleasantly turbid with rotting mud.
Here and there bluish patches had formed, their foul stench assailing his nostrils.
He remembered that filthy quarter by the name of Lord’s estate.

On the opposite side of the moat, row houses stretched on and on.
On those row houses, square dark windows were set at a rate of about one per dwelling.
These row houses, built flush against the stone wall, stretched endlessly so that the estate’s interior remained entirely hidden from view.

On the side opposite this estate stood small single-story houses spaced far apart.
The townscape—where old and new structures mingled in haphazard disorder—naturally lacked uniformity.
Like gaps in an old man’s teeth, empty spaces dotted here and there.
In one such gap, Shimada had purchased a modest plot and erected his dwelling.

Kenzo did not know when it had been built.
But his first visit there occurred not long after its completion.
Though narrow with only four rooms, even through a child’s eyes the woodwork appeared meticulously selected.
The floor plan too showed careful consideration.
The six-tatami guest room faced east; in its cramped garden thickly carpeted with pine needles stood a granite lantern of imposing grandeur.

Fastidious Shimada would tuck up his kimono hem and constantly hang wet rags on the veranda and pillars.
Then barefoot, he would go out to weed the garden before the south-facing living room.
At times he used a hoe to dredge the mud ditch at the entrance.
Spanning that mud ditch was a wooden bridge about four shaku long—roughly four feet.

Shimada had also built a crude rental house alongside his own residence.
He had made a path some three shaku wide between the houses to allow passage to the rear.
The back was a wetland neither field nor farmland.
Stepping on the grass made water ooze up.
The lowest spots often became shallow ponds.
Shimada seemed intent on gradually building another small rental house there too.
Yet that plan never came to fruition.
When winter brought ducks down, he’d say things like “This time I’ll catch one for you”…

Kenzo went over these old memories one after another.
While thinking that if he were to go there now, it would surely have changed so much as to surprise him, he still thought of the scene from twenty years ago as if it were today.

“It’s possible my husband might still at least be sending New Year’s cards.”

As Kenzo was leaving, Sister made these remarks and hinted that he should stay until Hida returned, but he saw no need to comply.

He had thought about visiting his brother’s house near Yakujimae Temple in Ichigaya that day—both as a long-overdue visit and to ask about Shimada—but as the hour grew late and his belief that such inquiries would be pointless strengthened, he went straight back to Komagome instead. That evening found him overwhelmed by the next day’s unavoidable tasks. And so Shimada slipped entirely from his mind.

IX

He had returned to his usual self.
He was able to devote the majority of his vitality to his profession.
His time flowed quietly.
But within that quietness lay a persistent irritation that constantly tormented him.
The Wife, who had no choice but to observe him from afar with no means of intervention, maintained her composure.
To Kenzo, this seemed nothing but an improper coldness in a wife.
The Wife meanwhile cast upon her husband in her heart the same reproaches he directed at her.
The Wife's rationale held that as her husband increasingly lived within his study, their spousal interactions must naturally diminish to only essential matters.

She naturally left Kenzo alone in the study and occupied herself solely with the children.
The children rarely entered the study.
When they occasionally did enter, they would inevitably cause some mischief and get scolded by Kenzo.
Though he scolded them, he still felt a vague dissatisfaction toward these children who never drew near him.

When Sunday came a week later, he did not go out at all. To change his mood, he went to the public bath around four o'clock. Upon returning home, he was suddenly struck by a drowsily pleasant sensation and stretched his limbs across the tatami mats before dozing off. When dinnertime arrived and his wife roused him, he remained oblivious to everything—like a man whose head had been severed. Yet upon sitting down to eat, he felt a faint chill creep down his spine from top to bottom. This was followed by two forceful sneezes. The Wife beside him kept silent. Kenzo too said nothing, though as he took up his chopsticks he grew conscious of this unpleasant feeling toward his unsympathetic wife. For her part, the Wife wondered why her husband wouldn't confide everything unreservedly and let her actively behave as a proper wife should—a thought that only deepened her displeasure.

That evening, he clearly realized he was coming down with a slight cold. He thought to take care and go to bed early, but ended up staying awake past twelve, hindered by the work he had started. When he got into bed, the household members were already all asleep. Kenzo, who had hoped to drink some hot kudzu soup and induce sweating, had no choice but to crawl as he was beneath the cold bedding. He felt an unprecedented coldness and found it extremely difficult to fall asleep. However, the fatigue of his mind soon drew him into the depths of sleep.

When he awoke the next day, he felt unexpectedly calm.
Lying in bed, he concluded his cold had already passed.
But when he finally rose to wash his face, his usual cold-water ablutions left him unbearably weary.
He forced himself to sit at the table, yet found breakfast utterly tasteless.
Though he normally ate three bowls by routine, that day he finished only one before steeping a pickled plum in hot tea, blowing on it repeatedly before drinking.
Even he couldn't fathom why he did this.
The Wife sat beside him serving breakfast as usual, maintaining her silence.
Her manner struck him as a calculated performance of indifference, sparking muted irritation.
He cleared his throat pointedly two or three times.
Still the Wife gave no reaction.

Kenzo briskly pulled a white undershirt over his head, changed into his Western clothes, and left the house at his usual hour.
His wife brought his hat and saw him off to the entrance as usual, but to him at that moment, this could only be perceived as the behavior of a woman who valued mere formality, so he felt all the more displeased.

Outside, he was persistently plagued by a sense of malaise.
His tongue felt thick and parched, and his whole body was as weary as if he had a fever.
He checked his own pulse and was surprised at how fast it was.
The sharp staccato sound against his fingertips and the ticking of his pocket watch marking the seconds intertwined, creating an unusual rhythm in his ears.
Even so, he endured and did as much work as he could outside.

X

He returned home at his usual hour.
When changing into his Western clothes, the Wife stood by him as usual, holding his everyday clothes.
He turned in that direction with an unpleasant look on his face.

“Prepare the bedding.
I’m going to bed.”

“Yes.”

The Wife spread out the bedding exactly as he had instructed.
He immediately got into it and slept.
He did not say a word to the Wife about his cold symptoms.
The Wife, for her part, showed no sign of paying any attention to it.
Thus, both harbored dissatisfaction within their hearts.

When Kenzo closed his eyes and drifted in and out of sleep, the Wife came to his bedside and called his name.

“Will you have your meal?”

“I don’t want any food.”

The Wife remained silent for a while.
However, she did not try to immediately stand up and leave the room.
“You’ve taken ill somehow?”

Kenzo did not answer and buried about half his face in the collar of the bedding.
The Wife wordlessly placed her hand gently on his forehead.

When evening came, the doctor arrived.
The doctor diagnosed it as likely just a cold and provided liquid medicine and a prescribed dose.
He had his wife administer it to him.

The next day, his fever grew even higher. Following the doctor’s instructions, the Wife placed a rubber ice bag on Kenzo’s head and kept her hand pressed against it to prevent slipping until the maid returned with the nickel-plated device meant to be slid under the futon.

A demon-haunted sensation persisted for two or three days. In Kenzo’s mind lingered almost no memory of that interval. When lucidity returned, he stared blankly at the ceiling. Then he noticed his wife sitting by the pillow. The realization struck him abruptly—that he had been nursed by this same Wife. Yet he turned his face away again without a word. Thus no trace of her husband’s state of mind found its way into the Wife’s heart.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s a cold—the doctor said so, didn’t he?”

“I know that.”

The conversation ended there.
The Wife left the room with a displeased look on her face.
Kenzo clapped his hands and called the Wife back again.

“What are you saying I did?”

“No matter what—since you’re ill, isn’t it true that I’m here changing your ice bag and giving you medicine? And yet you tell me to go away, call me a nuisance… it’s too much…”

The Wife looked downward without finishing the sentence.

"I don’t remember saying such a thing."

“That’s something you said when your fever was high, so you probably don’t remember.”
“But if you hadn’t already been thinking that way all along, no matter how ill you were, I don’t believe you would have said such a thing.”

In such situations, rather than reflecting on how much truth might lie beneath his wife’s words, Kenzo was a man who would immediately try to suppress her with his intellect.
Leaving aside factual matters and proceeding purely logically, it was the Wife who lost again in this case.
When delirious with fever, intoxicated by narcotics, or dreaming, people do not necessarily narrate only what they are consciously thinking.
However, such logic was never sufficient to subdue the Wife’s heart.

“Very well then.
“After all, you intend to treat me like a maid anyway.”
“As long as you only care about yourself, you don’t mind…”

Kenzo watched the Wife’s retreating figure as she rose from her seat, his expression filled with irritation.
He remained utterly unaware that he was cloaking himself in the authority of logic.
From the perspective of his mind, honed by academic rigor, his Wife—who could not wholeheartedly submit to this clear logic—was nothing but a complete fool.

Eleven

That evening, the Wife brought rice porridge in a clay pot and sat again by Kenzo’s pillow.
While serving it into a bowl, she asked, “Won’t you sit up?”

His tongue was still thickly coated.
He could hardly bring himself to put anything into his mouth, which felt oppressively heavy and thick.
Even so, for some reason, he sat up on the bedding and tried to take the bowl from his wife’s hand.
However, as the unpleasant rice grains merely slid roughly down his throat, he wiped his mouth after just one bowl and immediately lay back down as before.

“You still have no appetite, I see.”

“It’s not tasty at all.”

The Wife took out a business card from her obi.

“Someone like this came while you were asleep, but I sent them away because you were ill.”

Lying down, Kenzo reached out his hand, took the business card printed on cream-colored paper, read the name, but found it belonged to someone he had neither met nor heard of before.

“When did he come?”

“It was certainly the day before yesterday, I believe—I thought I should discuss it with you, but since your fever hadn’t gone down yet, I deliberately kept silent.”

“He’s a complete stranger.”

“But he came saying he wanted to see you about Shimada.”

The Wife looked at Kenzo while emphasizing the name “Shimada.” Then the shadow of that hatless man he had met recently flashed through his mind. Since recovering from his fever, there had been no chance for him to recall this man until now.

“Do you know about Shimada?”

“When that long letter arrived from that woman O-nui-san, didn’t you tell me about it?”

Without answering, Kenzo picked up the business card he had set down and stared at it. How much he had told her about Shimada back then remained unclear to him.

“When was that again? Must’ve been ages ago.”

Kenzo recalled how he had felt when showing that lengthy letter to his wife and gave a bitter smile.

“That’s right. It must be about seven years now. Since it was back when we still resided in Senbon-dori.”

Senbon-dori was the name of a town on the outskirts of a city where they had lived at that time.

After a moment, the Wife said, “If it’s about Shimada, I don’t need to ask you—I already know from your brother.”

“What did your brother say?”

“What do you mean ‘what’? —It’s just that he’s said to be not a very good person, isn’t he?”

The Wife still seemed to want to know Kenzo’s feelings regarding that man.
However, he conversely wanted to avoid it.
He silently closed his eyes.
Before standing up with the tray holding the clay pot and bowl, the Wife said once more.

“The person whose name is on that business card says he’ll come again.”
“He said he’ll come again once your illness has healed, and then left.”

Kenzo reluctantly opened his eyes again.

"He'll probably come."
"Since he's introduced himself as Shimada's proxy, he'll definitely come again."

"But will you meet him?"
"If he comes..."

Truth be told, he did not want to meet.
The Wife, all the more, did not want her husband to meet this strange man.

"It would be better if you did not meet him."

"It's fine to meet him. There's nothing to be afraid of, I tell you."

To the Wife, her husband’s words came across as yet another instance of his usual obstinacy.
Kenzo disliked it, but he thought there was no helping it since it was the proper method.

Twelve

Kenzo’s illness recovered completely before long.
Around the time when periods of staring at printed text, wielding his fountain pen, or sitting with arms crossed lost in thought had begun to resume, the man who had once been sent away empty-handed suddenly appeared again at his doorstep.

Kenzo received a business card printed on torinoko paper bearing the familiar name Yoshida Torakichi and gazed at it for some time.
“Will you meet him?” she asked in a small voice.

“I’ll meet him. Show him to the parlor.”

The Wife made a face that seemed ready to refuse and hesitated briefly. Yet after reading her husband’s expression, she wordlessly left the study once more.

Yoshida was a portly, well-built man around forty. He wore a striped haori and had slung a glinting watch chain over a white crepe heko obi—still in vogue at the time. His speech marked him plainly as a townsman. Still, no one would mistake him for an upstanding merchant. Where “I see” was called for, he drawled “Naaaru”; instead of “Quite right,” he answered with “You bet” in a tone thick with feigned admiration.

For Kenzo, as a matter of protocol for the meeting, it was necessary to begin by inquiring into Yoshida’s background.
However, Yoshida—more eloquent than he—had already taken the initiative to outline his background before being asked.

He was originally in Takasaki.
And there, frequenting the military camp there and supplying provisions and fodder was his business.

“Through such connections, I gradually came to receive the kind assistance of the officers.”
“And among them, I came to receive special patronage from Mr. Shibano.”

Kenzo suddenly remembered the name Shibano upon hearing it. That was the surname of the military officer into whose family the daughter of Shimada’s second wife had married.

“So that’s how you came to know Shimada, then.”

The two of them spent some time discussing this military officer named Shibano—the fact that he was no longer in Takasaki; that it had been several years since his transfer to a far western post; that his household remained financially strained due to unceasing heavy drinking—all of this was undeniably new information to Kenzo, yet none of it became a topic of particular interest to him. Kenzo, who harbored no ill feelings toward this couple, merely listened calmly while thinking to himself that he understood. However, when the conversation turned to its main point and Shimada’s matter was finally brought up, he naturally felt an unpleasant sensation.

Yoshida began to persistently appeal about the old man’s destitute circumstances.

“When someone’s too kind-hearted for their own good, they end up being deceived by everyone and losing out.”
“It’s just that they go recklessly handing out money or doing things like that even when there’s no prospect of getting it back.”

“Is it that they’re too kind? Isn’t it rather because they’re too greedy?”
“Isn’t it rather because they’re too greedy?”

Even if the old man was in dire straits exactly as Yoshida claimed, there was no other way for Kenzo to interpret it.
Moreover, the very claim of his destitution was already dubious.
Yoshida Torakichi, the very proxy himself, did not even attempt to defend that point.
“Perhaps that may be the case,” he said, then dissolved into laughter.
Yet immediately after that, he brought up the proposal of whether it might not be possible for them to provide a certain monthly contribution.

Honest Kenzo found himself forced to lay bare his financial circumstances to this near-stranger of a man.
He painstakingly detailed how his monthly income of 120 or 130 yen was being consumed, striving to convince the other that nothing remained at month’s end.
Yoshida listened with solemnity to Kenzo’s explanations, periodically interjecting his trademark drawn-out “I see” and ingratiating “You bet.”
Yet how far Yoshida truly trusted him—or where his suspicions began—even Kenzo couldn’t discern.
The man appeared fixated on maintaining an attitude of abject humility throughout.
Not once did he let slip any disquieting phrase or hint of overt demand.

Thirteen

Interpreting that this settled the business Yoshida had brought, Kenzo inwardly anticipated his departure.
However, Yoshida’s attitude clearly contradicted this expectation.
He did not touch upon the matter of money beyond that point, yet remained planted there indefinitely, continuing harmless small talk that neither poisoned nor healed.
And so, naturally, the conversation returned once more to Shimada’s circumstances.

“What do you think?
The old man, being of advanced years, has lately been saying nothing but things that sound terribly forlorn—is there no way we could ask to resume our former association?”

Kenzo was momentarily at a loss for a reply.
Having no other recourse, he silently gazed at the tobacco tray placed between them.
In his mind vividly arose the image of that old man—holding a heavy damask Western-style umbrella, his peculiar eyes fixed upon him.
He could not bring himself to forget the past when he had been indebted to that man.
At the same time, he could not suppress his feelings of aversion toward that man, stemming from a reflection of that man's character.
Caught between both, he was unable to speak for some time.

“Since I’ve gone to the trouble of coming here, I do hope you’ll at least grant me this one request.”

Yoshida’s demeanor grew increasingly polite.
No matter how he considered it, Kenzo found the association unbearable; yet he could not help but acknowledge that refusing it would be an act of ingratitude.
He resolved to follow the morally correct course, even if he found it repugnant.

“In that case, it shall be as you wish.”
“Please convey to him that I have agreed.”
“However, even if I do associate with him, maintaining our former relationship is utterly impossible. Please make sure to communicate that clearly to avoid any misunderstanding.”
“Moreover, given my current circumstances, it would be difficult for me to visit and comfort the old man from time to time...”

“In that case, I suppose it simply means we’ll be permitted to call on you.”

For Kenzo, hearing the term “association” was painful.
Unable to affirm or deny it, he closed his mouth again.

“No, that’s quite alright—circumstances are entirely different now compared to the past.”

With the look of someone who had finally completed his task, Yoshida said this, then tucked the tobacco pouch he’d been handling into his waistband and briskly departed.

Kenzo saw him out to the entrance and then immediately entered the study.
Feeling motivated to finish the day’s work quickly, he abruptly turned to his desk, but with some preoccupation having taken root in his mind, it did not progress as he had hoped.

There, the Wife briefly showed her face.
“You,” she called out twice, but Kenzo, seated at his desk, did not turn around.
After the Wife withdrew in silence, Kenzo continued his work until evening, albeit without progress.

When he finally sat down at the dinner table later than usual, he exchanged words with the Wife for the first time.

“What exactly is that man Yoshida who came earlier?” the Wife asked.

“I heard he used to be an army supplier or something in Takasaki,” Kenzo replied.

Naturally, their exchange could not possibly end there.
She pressed her husband for a satisfactory explanation about Yoshida’s connection to Shibano and his relationship with Shimada.

“He’s ultimately just asking for money or something like that, isn’t he?”

“Well, yes.”

“So what did you do—I suppose you refused him?”

“Yeah, I refused.”
“I had no choice but to refuse, you know.”

In their hearts, they each separately considered their household’s financial state.
The amount they spent each month—and had to continue spending—was, for him, a painfully earned income, while for the Wife who managed all expenses with it, it could hardly be called ample.

Fourteen

Kenzo attempted to rise from his seat then.
However, the Wife still had things she wanted to ask.

“So he just obediently left like that? It’s a bit odd.”
“It’s a bit odd.”

“But if he’s refused, there’s nothing to be done about it, right?”
“We can’t exactly pick a fight over it.”

“But he’ll come again, won’t he?”
“Just like that, he quietly went home and stayed there?”

“Let him come if he wants.”

“But I hate it—it’s like being swarmed by flies.”

Kenzo surmised that his wife had overheard their entire conversation from the next room.

“You heard everything, didn’t you—every last word.”

The Wife neither affirmed nor denied her husband’s words.
“Then that should be fine.”

Having said this, Kenzo stood up and made to go to his study.
He was a self-determined man.
He believed there had never been any need to explain further to his wife.
The Wife was also a woman who recognized her husband’s rights in that regard.
Yet precisely because she outwardly acknowledged her husband’s rights, a persistent discontent always simmered within her.
The domineering attitude her husband displayed in every matter was by no means pleasant for her.
Why won’t he open up a little more?—this feeling ceaselessly stirred in the depths of her heart.
Yet she remained utterly indifferent to the fact that she herself lacked both the natural aptitude and the skill to draw her husband out.

“It seems you’ve agreed that associating with Shimada is alright.”

“Ah.”

Kenzo made a face that seemed to say, “So what?”
The Wife had made it her habit to always fall silent once things reached this point.
By nature, whenever her husband took such an attitude, she would suddenly lose all motivation and could not bring herself to take even a single step forward from there.
Her unfriendly demeanor, reflecting back on her husband’s temperament, tended to make him all the more domineering.

“Since it doesn’t concern you or your family, why should you care? I’ve decided it on my own.”

“You don’t have to concern yourself with me at all—that’s perfectly fine.”
“Even if you did care, it’s not like you’d ever actually bother…”

To Kenzo’s scholarly ears, his wife’s words sounded like a complete digression.
And that digression could only be seen as evidence of her lack of intelligence.
He felt in his gut: Here we go again.
However, the Wife immediately returned to the issue at hand and brought up something that demanded his attention.

“But wouldn’t it be disrespectful to your father? Now that you’re associating with that person…”

“You mean ‘Father’ as in my old man?”

“Of course it’s your Father.”

“My old man’s been dead for ages, hasn’t he?”

“But didn’t your Father declare before passing away that since they’d severed ties with Shimada, you mustn’t have any association with him going forward?”

Kenzo vividly remembered the scene from when his father and Shimada had quarreled and severed ties.
However, he did not have particularly affectionate or tender memories of his own father.
Moreover, he had no recollection of being given such a stern ultimatum regarding the severance of ties in the first place.

“Who told you that?”
“I don’t recall ever telling you that.”

“It wasn’t you.
I asked your brother.”

The Wife’s reply was neither strange nor unexpected to Kenzo.
At the same time, neither his father’s will nor his brother’s words had any significant effect on him.

“My father is Father, my brother is Brother, and I am myself—so there’s nothing to be done.”
“From my perspective, there’s no basis to refuse the association—that’s why.”

Having declared this, Kenzo became aware of the fact that deep down he found the association utterly loathsome.
But that inner turmoil did not register with his wife at all.
She thought only that her husband was once again obstinately sticking to his usual stubbornness and needlessly opposing everyone’s opinions.

XV

Kenzo once walked along, led by the hand by that person.
That person had made a small Western-style outfit for Kenzo.
Since it was a bygone era when even adults were barely acquainted with foreign clothing, the tailor paid no heed whatsoever to children’s fashion.
His jacket had two buttons aligned near the waist while leaving the chest open.
The marled woolen fabric was stiff and coarse to the touch.
The Western-style trousers especially—pale brown with vertical stripes—were the kind only a horse trainer would wear.
Yet back then, he had walked proudly in those clothes while being led by the hand.

His hat, too, had been something unusual for him at that time.
The act of slipping a shallow pot-bottom-shaped felt hat over his shaved head like a hood gave him immense satisfaction.
As usual, when he was led by the hand by that person to a vaudeville hall to see a magic show, the magician borrowed his hat and demonstrated poking a finger through the prized black woolen crown from back to front. Startled yet anxious, he repeatedly stroked the hat that had returned to his hands.

That person had also bought him many long-tailed goldfish.
Warrior prints, nishiki-e, even two- or three-panel connected pictures—he bought them all just as Kenzo asked.
He even possessed a scarlet-braided suit of armor that fit his body and a dragon-headed helmet.
He would put on that suit of armor about once a day and brandish a command baton fashioned from gold-leaf paper.

He was also the owner of a short wakizashi that was about the length a child could wield.
The menuki of that wakizashi was crafted with a carving of a mouse dragging along a red chili pepper.
He treasured this silver mouse and this coral-crafted chili pepper as if they were his own precious treasures.
He sometimes wanted to draw out this wakizashi and look at it.
He tried many times to draw it out again.
But the wakizashi never came out. —This feudal-era ornament, too, had passed into little Kenzo’s hands through that person’s kindness.

He was often taken by that person to ride in boats.
In the boat there would always be a boatman wearing a straw raincoat tied around his waist who cast nets.
The way the mullets and inada came leaping right up to the water's edge cast a platinum-like light into his small eyes.
The boatman would sometimes row out a ri or two offshore and even catch sea bream.
On such occasions high waves would come rocking the boat until his head grew heavy.
Then he would often end up falling asleep inside the boat.
What he found most amusing was when pufferfish got caught in the net.
He would tap their bellies with cedar chopsticks as if beating a drum, delighting in how they puffed up and seethed with indignation……

After meeting with Yoshida, such childhood memories would suddenly come welling up in Kenzo’s heart. All those memories were fragmentary in nature yet vivid in his mind. And though fragmentary, none of them could ever be separated from that person. The more he gathered the fragmented facts, the more they seemed to contain an inexhaustible supply of seeds—and when he discovered that each of those inexhaustible seeds was invariably interwoven with the figure of the man without a hat, he suffered.

"Why is it that I can recall these scenes so vividly, yet fail to remember what was in my own heart back then?"

This became a major question for Kenzo.
In reality, he had completely forgotten his own feelings at the time toward the person who had taken such care of him in his childhood.

However, there’s no way I could have forgotten such things—so perhaps from the very beginning, I lacked the emotional attachment toward that person commensurate with the debt of gratitude.

Kenzo also considered this.
Not only that, but he had likely concluded that this was indeed the case regarding himself.

He did not tell the Wife about the childhood memories he had recalled regarding this incident.
Given that she was an emotionally fragile woman, he did not even consider that doing so might have served to soften her resentment.

Sixteen

The day they had awaited finally arrived.
Yoshida and Shimada appeared together at Kenzo’s front door one afternoon.

Kenzo did not know what words to use or how to interact with this person from his past.
The natural impulse that might have settled these matters without deliberation was now entirely absent in him.
While sitting knee-to-knee with someone he had not seen in over twenty years, he found himself unable to summon any real nostalgia, responding instead with something verging on coldness.

Shimada had long been a man with a reputation for being high-handed.
Kenzo’s brother and sister had detested him for that alone.
In truth, Kenzo himself had feared this in his heart.
The present Kenzo evaluated himself as being far too elevated to have his self-respect wounded even by the mere manner of speech from a man like this.

However, Shimada was more polite than Kenzo had expected. He seemed to make a deliberate effort not to neglect properly ending his sentences with polite forms like "desu ka"—the kind a first-time acquaintance would use in greetings—and "masen." Kenzo recalled his childhood when that person had called him "Kenbo, Kenbo." Even after their relationship had ended, whenever they met, he would still persist in using that same "Kenbo, Kenbo," and Kenzo naturally remembered past instances when this had irritated him.

*However, if things kept up like this, it should be fine.*

Kenzo therefore exerted himself to avoid showing an unpleasant expression to the two men as much as possible. They too seemed intent on leaving as amicably as possible and said nothing that might upset Kenzo. Because of this, the nostalgic conversations that should naturally have arisen between them scarcely materialized. As a result, their talk was prone to frequent lulls.

Kenzo suddenly found himself thinking about the incident that had occurred on that rainy morning.

“I happened to meet you a couple of times along the way recently—do you often pass through that area?”

“The truth is, Takahashi’s eldest daughter has settled just up ahead here.”

Kenzo had absolutely no idea who this Takahashi might be.

“Hmm.”

“You know—that Shiba’s…”

Shimada’s stepwife had relatives in Shiba, and Kenzo vaguely recalled hearing as a child that their household was either a Shinto priest’s or a Buddhist monk’s. Yet among those relatives, he had only met a man about his own age named Mr. Yō two or three times, with no memory of ever encountering any others.

“Speaking of Shiba—if I recall correctly—that was where O-nui-san’s younger sister was married into.”

“No, she’s an elder sister.”
“She’s not a younger sister.”

“Ah.”

“Yōzō alone has died, but the rest of the sisters have all settled into good situations—it’s quite fortunate.”
“As for the eldest one—you probably know this—she went to ——.”

Indeed, the name —— was not unfamiliar to Kenzo.
However, that person had already died long ago.

“Because all that remained were women and children—quite a predicament—they came to rely on me as ‘Uncle’ for everything.”
“Moreover, with my house undergoing repairs lately and needing supervision, I pass by here nearly every day.”

Kenzo unwittingly recalled how this man had once taken him to the bookstore at Ikenohata and bought him a modelbook.
This man, who had never purchased anything without haggling down even a sen or two, had on that occasion too planted himself at the shopfront to claim a mere five rin in change and refused to budge.
To Kenzo, standing there clutching Dong Qichang’s modelbook, that demeanor had seemed utterly unsightly and disagreeable.

"The carpenters and plasterers supervised by such a man must find it infuriating," Kenzo thought. As he did so, he looked at Shimada's face and let slip a bitter smile. Yet Shimada appeared not to notice it in the least.

Seventeen

“But thanks to those books he left behind for us, even though that man passed away, we’ve managed not to fall into hardship and can somehow get by.”

Shimada said this in a tone suggesting that books produced by —— were something every person in society ought to know about.
Yet Kenzo regrettably remained unaware of that particular work’s title.
He guessed it might be a dictionary or textbook but felt no compulsion to inquire further.

“Books, you see, are truly a blessing—because once you create one, it keeps selling forever.”

Kenzo remained silent.
Having no choice, Yoshida engaged with him and remarked that if one wanted to make money, books were the surest way.

“The congratulatory gift was settled, but when —— died, leaving only women behind, I actually negotiated with the bookstore...”
“So I fixed an annual amount and had them pay it from their side.”

“Hmm, that’s impressive.”
“Well, I suppose when one pursues scholarship, it does require that much capital—it seems a bit of a loss at first glance—but once you see it through to completion, well, that approach ends up yielding better returns, so us uneducated folk simply can’t compete.”

“It’s profitable in the end, you see.”

Their conversation held no interest for Kenzo. Moreover, no matter how much one might try to interject, it kept advancing toward some peculiar tangent where such responses were impossible. Feeling idle, he had no choice but to compare their faces while occasionally glancing toward the garden.

That garden was an unsightly, neglected space. A single pine tree, its green having faded at some unknown time, suffocated under a dense mass of bluish-black leaves by the fence—aside from this, there were scarcely any trees worthy of the name. The ground, unresponsive to the broom, lay uneven and littered with pebbles.

“How about you also try making a profit, Sir?”

Yoshida suddenly turned toward Kenzo.
Kenzo could not help but let out a bitter smile.
With no other choice, he said “Yes, I’d love to make a profit,” tacking on an afterthought.

“There’s no particular reason.
If you go all the way abroad…”

This was uttered with an elder’s presumption.
To Kenzo’s ears it sounded as though this man claimed credit for funding his Western education—a notion that twisted his face in displeasure.
Yet its speaker remained serenely oblivious.
Even when confronted with Kenzo’s visible discomfort.
At last Yoshida tucked his tobacco pouch into his sash and prompted their departure with “Perhaps we should take our leave for today,” finally rousing them toward exit.

After seeing the two out and returning briefly to the sitting room, Kenzo sat back down on the zabuton cushion, folded his arms, and began to think.

“What on earth did they come here for?” This was no different than coming here just to annoy others. “Did they find that amusing?”

Before him lay the gift Shimada had brought earlier, left untouched.
He vacantly stared at the modest box of sweets.

Without saying a word, his wife began clearing away the teacups and tobacco tray. Finally, she stood silently before him where he sat.

“Are you still sitting there?”

“No need—I’ll get up now.”

Kenzo immediately tried to stand up.

“Will they come again?”

“They might come.”

Having said this, he entered the study.
The sound of a broom sweeping across the tatami room lingered for a while.
When it stopped, children’s voices clambered over the box of sweets.
By the time everything had settled into quietude, rain began falling again from the twilight sky.
Kenzo remembered the overcoat he kept meaning to buy but still hadn’t purchased.

18

The rainy days continued for many days.

When it cleared up completely, a deep radiance fell from the sky—as if dyed—onto the land below.

The Wife, who had spent each day in oppressive gloom with her mind solely on her sewing needle, stepped out to the veranda edge and looked up at this blue sky. Then she suddenly opened the wardrobe drawer.

When she had changed her clothes and came to check on her husband’s face, Kenzo remained propping his cheek with his hand, gazing at the muddy garden.

“What are you thinking about?”

Kenzo turned slightly and looked at his wife’s going-out attire.
In that instant, his world-weary eyes discovered an unexpected freshness upon his wife.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes.”

The Wife’s reply was far too brief for him.
He returned to his former lonely self.

“What about the children?”

“I’ll take the children with me.
If I leave them behind, they’d make a fuss and be a nuisance.”

Kenzo spent that Sunday afternoon quietly alone.

The Wife returned after he had finished his evening meal and withdrawn once more to his study, by which point an hour or two had already passed since the lamp was lit.

“I’m back.”

Her unamiable demeanor—not even an apology for being late—displeased him.
He merely turned his head slightly without speaking.
This silence again became the conduit casting shadows over his wife’s heart.
She stood motionless for a moment before retreating to the family parlor.

Their chance for conversation withered completely then.
They were never that breed of affectionate couple compelled to speak upon meeting.
Even attempting such intimacy would have felt unbearably trite between them.

Two or three days later, the Wife first brought up the matter of her outing that day during a meal.

“When I went to the house the other day, I met Uncle from Moji.”
“I was quite taken aback.”
“I thought he was still in Taiwan, but he’d come back without anyone noticing.”

Uncle from Moji was known among them as a man not to be taken lightly.
When Kenzo was still in the countryside, he had suddenly come by train and pleaded that an urgent need had arisen, insisting Kenzo arrange a small loan. Kenzo withdrew a modest amount from the savings he had deposited in a local bank and lent it to him—whereupon the man later mailed a properly stamped IOU.
In it, he had even included a clause stating, “However, regarding the matter of interest…,” so Kenzo thought him rather excessively scrupulous, but the money he had lent never returned after that.

“What is he doing now?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing. He said he’s starting some company or other and absolutely wants your approval, so he plans to come up here soon.”

For Kenzo, there was been no need to inquire further.
Back when he had been able to borrow money from him, this uncle had claimed to be establishing some company or other—and had actually done so.
The Wife’s father had not doubted it either.
Uncle had skillfully persuaded her father and taken him all the way to Moji.
There, declaring this was the company currently under construction, he showed him a house being built by complete strangers with no connection.
He had indeed used this very method to extract several thousand yen in capital from the Wife’s father.

Kenzo wanted to know nothing more about this person.
The Wife also found it unpleasant to speak.
However, as usual, the conversation did not end there.

“Since the weather was so fine that day, I also stopped by your brother’s place for the first time in ages.”

“I see.”

The Wife’s hometown was in Koishikawa Daichō, and Kenzo’s brother’s house was in Ichigaya Yakujimae, so her visit wasn’t much of a detour.

Nineteen

“When I told your brother about Shimada’s visit, he was quite taken aback.”
“He said there’s no obligation to receive him after all this time.”
“He said you’d do better not to engage with someone like that at all.”

A hint of admonishment was visible on the Wife’s face.

“Did you go all the way to Yakujimae just to hear that?”

“You’re being sarcastic again."
“Why must you always interpret everything others do in the worst possible light?”
“Because I felt terribly remiss in not visiting, I merely stopped by briefly on my way back.”

The fact that his wife occasionally visited his brother’s house—a place he himself rarely went—was essentially her fulfilling social obligations on her husband’s behalf, so even Kenzo had no grounds to complain about this.

“Your brother is worried about you,” she said. “If you keep associating with someone like that, there’s no telling what trouble might arise.”

“What sort of trouble do you mean?”

“Even your brother can’t predict exactly what might happen. But he’s certain nothing good will come of it.”

Kenzo couldn’t imagine anything good coming of it either.

“But I still feel obligated.”

“But since you paid money to sever ties, there’s no reason for any obligation to remain on your part, is there?”

The severance payment had long ago been handed over from Kenzo’s father to Shimada under the name of child-rearing expenses.
That had certainly been in the spring when Kenzo was twenty-two.

“Moreover, you had already been taken back to your family home fourteen or fifteen years before handing over that money, hadn’t you?”

From what age to what age he had been entirely raised by Shimada was not even clear to Kenzo himself.

“He said it was from three to seven years old.”
“Your brother said that.”

“Is that so?”

Kenzo recalled his own past that had vanished like a dream. In his mind appeared countless minute pictures, as if viewed through a magnifying glass. But none of those pictures had any dates attached to them.

“Since it’s properly written in the IOU, there shouldn’t be any mistake.”

He had never seen any documents related to his removal from the family register.

"There’s no reason you wouldn’t have seen them."
"You must have forgotten."

"However, even if I did return home at eight years old, there was still some contact until my reinstatement—it can’t be helped."
"It’s not as though our ties were completely severed."

The Wife fell silent.
For some reason, Kenzo found this silence unbearably lonely.

"I’m not pleased about it either."

"Then you should just stop."
"It’s absurd—you associating with someone like that now."
"What on earth could that man be thinking?"

“I don’t understand that in the slightest,” said Kenzo. “Though I imagine he must find it just as trying.”

“Your brother said he undoubtedly came intending to make it about money again,” his wife countered, “so we must be careful.”

“But since I refused the money from the start,” Kenzo replied, “there’s no need to worry.”

“But there’s no telling what he might bring up from now on.”

From the very beginning, such a premonition had been at work in the Wife’s heart.
In the mind of Kenzo—a man of strong logic who had believed he had already warded off such an outcome—a faint anxiety sprouted anew.

20

That anxiety hovered around his work to some extent.
Yet his work was so demanding that it submerged even the shadow of that anxiety somewhere.
And before Shimada appeared again at Kenzo’s entrance, the month had already reached its end.

The Wife brought the account book messily scribbled in pencil and presented it before him.

For Kenzo, who had made it a rule to hand over all the money he earned from outside work to his wife, this was unexpected.
He had never before had an instance where his wife thrust an expenditure statement into his hands at month’s end.

“Well… she must manage somehow.”

He always thought this way.
So whenever he needed money for himself, he made requests to his wife without hesitation.
The cost of the books he bought each month alone amounted to a considerable sum.
Even so, his wife kept a composed face.
Inept in financial matters, he sometimes even suspected his wife of extravagance.

“You must properly keep the monthly accounts and show them to me.”

His wife made a displeased face.
From her own perspective, she felt there was no steward of finances as faithful as herself.

“Yeah.”

Her reply ended there.
And even when the month ended, the account book never made its way into Kenzo’s hands.
When in good spirits, he tacitly allowed this.
But in foul moods, he would stubbornly insist she show it.
Yet when she did, he found it jumbled and nearly impossible to grasp.
Even if listening to her explanations helped him parse the ledger’s surface, he still couldn’t gauge how much fish they’d actually eaten each month, how much rice they’d needed, or whether these amounts were too high or too low.

Even in this instance, he took the ledger from his wife’s hands and merely skimmed through it.

“Has something changed?”
“If you don’t handle this…”

The Wife gave her husband a detailed explanation about their current living situation.

“That’s strange. So you’ve managed to make it this far somehow.”

“There’s actually been nothing left over each month.”

The idea of there being any surplus hadn’t even occurred to Kenzo. At the end of last month, when four or five old friends had sent him an invitation postcard about some excursion, he remembered declining to join them for no other reason than lacking the two-yen fee.

“Still, it seems we should at least be scraping by.”

“Whether we go or not, there’s no choice but to manage with this income.”

The Wife spoke with an air of guilt about how she had pawned her own kimono and obi that she had stored away in the drawer of the chest of drawers.

He had often witnessed his own sister and brother wrapping their best clothes in a furoshiki cloth and secretly carrying them out or bringing them back in.
Their furtive mannerisms, so careful to avoid others’ notice, appeared to his childish mind like those of criminals evading daylight, etching a lonely impression upon him.
These associations now made him feel all the more desolate.

“When you pawned them, did you go yourself?”

He himself, who had never yet passed under the pawnshop’s curtain, considered it impossible that she—less acquainted with hardship than himself—would come and go from such a place with such composure.

“No, I had someone else do it.”

“Who with?”

“To the granny from the Yamano household. They have a regular pawnshop ledger there, so it’s convenient.”

Kenzo did not inquire further.
That his wife had to pawn items she brought from her own family home to supplement the household budget, even though her husband had not even provided her with a single proper garment, was undeniably a disgrace to him as a husband.

21

Kenzo decided to work a little more.
The effort stemming from this resolution soon began turning into a few banknotes each month that made their way into his wife’s hands.

He took what he had newly received from the inner pocket of his Western clothes and tossed the envelope onto the tatami.
Silently picking it up, his wife turned it over and immediately recognized the source of the banknotes.
The household’s shortfall was thus supplemented in silence.

At that moment, his wife showed no particular joy in her expression. Yet she thought that had her husband given it to her with kind words, she surely could have looked happy. Kenzo likewise thought that had his wife received it looking pleased, he might have offered kind words. Thus this money—procured to meet their material needs—ended up failing rather than serving as a means to fulfill the emotional wants existing between them.

Two or three days later, to make up for the sense of dissatisfaction from that occasion, the Wife showed Kenzo a bolt of fabric.

“I was thinking of making you a kimono. What do you think of this?”

The Wife’s face shone with radiance.
Yet through Kenzo’s eyes, it seemed artfully contrived.
He detected artifice in its composition.
Thus he steeled himself against her coaxing manner.
The Wife rose from her seat like one chilled.
After she had departed, he grew all the more irritated contemplating why psychological necessity had compelled him to render his own wife so cold.

When the next opportunity to speak with his Wife came, he said this:

"I am not the cold-hearted person you take me for."
"It’s just that I dam up the warm affection I possess—because you make it so it can’t come out—that I have no choice but to act this way."

"No one would do such a spiteful thing."

"You’re always doing it!"

The Wife looked resentfully at Kenzo.
Kenzo’s logic did not get through to his Wife at all.

“Your nerves have become quite strange lately.”
“Why can’t you observe me more calmly?”

There was no room in Kenzo’s heart to lend an ear to his wife’s words.
He felt pain as vexing as his own unnatural coldness.

“You’re suffering all alone even though no one’s doing anything to you—there’s just no helping it.”

They felt like a man and woman who could never manage to discuss things thoroughly with each other.
Therefore, neither could feel compelled to change their present selves.

The extra work Kenzo had newly taken on was not particularly difficult for his scholarship or education.
Yet he disliked the time and effort it demanded of him.
To meaninglessly fritter away time now seemed more dreadful to him than anything else in the world.
He was a man convinced he must accomplish something—nay, that he must accomplish it—within his lifetime.

Whenever he finished that extra work and returned home, dusk had already fallen.

One day, he hurried his tired feet and roughly opened the lattice door of his house’s entrance.
As soon as she saw his face, the Wife emerged from the back and said: “You—that man has come again.”
Since she always referred to Shimada as “that man,” Kenzo could nearly guess from her manner and words who had visited during his absence.
He went up to the tea room in silence and changed from Western clothes into a kimono with her assistance.

22

When he sat down by the brazier and lit a cigarette, the evening meal was soon brought before him.
He immediately posed a question to his Wife.

“Did you let him in?”

To the Wife, this question was so abrupt that she couldn’t even comprehend what he meant by “let in.”
Startled, she looked at Kenzo’s face—then, from her husband’s expectant demeanor, finally grasped his meaning.

“That man? —But since you were out…”

The Wife, in a tone as though not letting Shimada into the sitting room had been something to annoy her husband, offered an excuse-laden reply.

“You didn’t let him in?”

“Yes. Just at the entrance for a moment.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He said he should have come by sooner, but he’d been traveling and apologized for the long silence.”

The words “I’m sorry” rang in Kenzo’s ears like mockery.

“Would he really travel? I can’t imagine a man like him having business in the countryside.”
“Did he tell you where he went?”

“He didn’t mention that.”
“He said his daughter asked him to come visit.”
“It must be that O-nui-san’s house, I suppose.”

Kenzo also remembered having met the man named Shibano, to whom O-nui-san had been married.
He had also recently heard from Yoshida and knew where Shibano was currently posted.
That was a certain city in the Chūgoku region where a division or brigade was stationed.

“Is he a military man—the household O-nui-san married into?”

Because Kenzo had abruptly stopped talking, his wife paused for a moment before posing this question.

“You’re well-informed.”

“I heard it from your brother-in-law some time ago.”

Kenzo juxtaposed in his mind the figures of Shibano and O-nui-san as he had seen them long ago.
Shibano was a dark-skinned man with broad shoulders, but judging by his facial features, he belonged rather to the category of handsome men.
O-nui-san was also a slender woman of elegant build, with an oval face and fair complexion.
What struck him as particularly beautiful were her long almond-shaped eyes with their thick lashes.
They had married when Shibano was still a second lieutenant or lieutenant.
Kenzo remembered once passing through the gate of their new residence.
At that time, Shibano—having returned from his unit—puffed out his chest and gulped cold sake from a Western-style cup placed on the cat board of the long brazier.
O-nui-san revealed her pale skin as she smoothed her hair at the dressing table.
He kept picking up pieces of nigiri sushi arranged for him from the plate and eating them……

“Is O-nui-san exceptionally beautiful?”

“Why?”

“But I hear there had been talk of making her your bride, hadn’t there?”

Indeed, there had indeed been such talk.
When Kenzo was fifteen or sixteen, he once left a friend waiting on the street and attempted to stop by Shimada’s house alone. By chance, O-nui-san stood on the small bridge over the mud ditch before the gate, gazing out at the street. She smiled faintly and nodded to Kenzo as they met face-to-face.
The friend who witnessed this—a boy just beginning to learn German—teased him by saying, “Frau waiting by the gate!”
Yet by age, O-nui-san was one year older than he.
Moreover, at that time, Kenzo possessed neither the ability to discern feminine beauty nor any particular preferences regarding women.
To this was added a peculiar emotion akin to shame—a natural force that repelled him, who wished to approach women, away from them like a rubber ball.
Setting aside whether other complications existed, the marriage between him and O-nui-san was abandoned as something that could never materialize.

Twenty-Three

“Why didn’t you marry that O-nui-san?”

Kenzo suddenly raised his eyes from the tray.
Like someone jolted from a nostalgic dream.

“It’s absolutely not an issue.
That idea was Shimada’s alone, you know.
And besides, I was still a child then.”

“Isn’t she his real child?”

“Of course. O-nui-san is Otoh-san’s stepchild, you see.”

Otoh-san was Shimada’s second wife.

“But if you’d married that O-nui-san… How do you suppose things would be by now?”

“There’s no telling without having lived through it.”

"But perhaps you might have been happy."
"That way, perhaps…"
"Maybe so."

Kenzo grew slightly annoyed.
The Wife fell silent at that point.

"Why do you ask such things?"
"It’s pointless."

The Wife felt as though she were being chided.
She lacked the courage to confront it.

"After all, I was never to your liking from the start…"

Kenzo flung his chopsticks down and thrust his hands into his hair.
Then he began scrubbing vigorously at the dandruff that had accumulated there.

The two of them accordingly went to separate rooms and did separate work.
After the child who had come to greet him with a “Good day” left, Kenzo read a book as usual.
After putting the child to sleep, the Wife began the remaining sewing from the day.

The matter of O-nui-san once again became an issue between the two of them after a day's interval, and even that arose from a chance trigger.

At that moment, the Wife entered Kenzo’s room holding a postcard. After handing it to her husband, instead of leaving immediately as usual, she sat down beside him. As Kenzo kept holding the received postcard in his hand without any sign of reading it, the Wife—unable to endure any longer—finally urged her husband.

“That postcard is from Hida-san, you know.”

Kenzo finally looked away from his books.

“It seems something has come up regarding that man.”

Sure enough, the postcard stated that Shimada wanted to meet regarding his matter and requested him to come by, with the date and time clearly specified.
The discourtesy of summoning him all that way had also been politely apologized for.

“What could it be?”

“It’s completely unclear. It’s not as though there’s anything to discuss.”
“We haven’t brought up any discussion from our side in the first place.”

“It’s not like you’re warning us not to associate with him altogether.”
“It says Brother will be there too, doesn’t it? Right there.”

The postcard indeed contained exactly what the Wife had said.

When he saw his brother’s name, O-nui-san’s figure suddenly cast a shadow in Kenzo’s mind. Just as Shimada had tried to keep him and this woman together to maintain the relationship between the two families, this woman’s biological mother had also seemed to harbor a hope of making her own daughter and his brother husband and wife.

“If only our families hadn’t ended up on such terms, Kenzo,” she said. “I could still visit your house often.”

That Otoh-san had said such things to Kenzo was now a thing of the distant past when looked back upon.

"But O-nui-san's current husband was her original betrothed, wasn't he?"

"Even a betrothal could've been refused depending on circumstances."

"Which side did O-nui-san actually want to go to?"

"How could that ever become clear?"

“Then what about your brother?”

“That’s impossible to know either.”

In Kenzo’s childhood memories, there was not a single element tinged with human sentiment that could answer his wife’s question.

Twenty-Four

Kenzo eventually wrote a reply postcard and conveyed consent.
And when the appointed day arrived, he set out once again for Tsu no Morizaka as promised.

He was a man exceedingly precise about time.
His character, which bordered on foolish honesty in one respect, in another respect made him neurotic.
He checked his watch twice along the way.
In truth, from the moment he awoke until he lay down to sleep, it was as if he were perpetually pursued by time.

He often thought about his work.
The work was by no means progressing as he had intended.
Whenever he took a step closer to his objective, the objective would retreat another step away from him.

He thought again about his wife.
Even now, when the once-overpowering influence of her Shinshū hometown had naturally waned, it still cast a shadow of dark unease in his heart.
He thought again about his wife’s hometown.
The sense that economic pressure was about to assail the household became the seed that planted in his mind a dull swaying, as if aboard a ship.

He also had to contemplate his sister and brother, along with Shimada, as a whole.
Amidst all being shadows of decay and hues of decline, he had to consider even himself—bound by ties of blood, flesh, history—alongside them.

When he arrived at his sister’s house, his heart was heavy.
Yet contrary to this, his mind was agitated.

“Oh, I must apologize for making you come all this way,” Hida greeted him.
This was not his former attitude toward Kenzo.
Yet amidst the changing times, what brought Kenzo pain rather than satisfaction was this pride—that he alone could maintain superiority over this man who was his sister’s husband.

“Even if I tried to come up, I’m just too swamped to manage it, you see.”
“In fact, just last night I was on night duty.”
“Actually, I was asked to work tonight as well, but since I had a promise with you, I managed to refuse and just now made it back.”

As he listened silently to Hida’s words, the rumor that he was keeping a strange woman near his workplace seemed utterly false.

If described in old-fashioned terms—aside from being merely adept at arithmetic and penmanship—he had no great learning or talent, so in a modern company like this, there should be no reason for him to be so highly valued.
Even such a doubt arose in Kenzo’s heart.

“And Sister?”

“Moreover,O-Natsu’s had another one of her asthma attacks.”

Sister was leaning against a cylindrical pillow placed atop the sewing box,wheezing exactly as Hida had described.
To Kenzo’s eyes as he stood peering into the family parlor,the disheveled hair appeared gruesomely matted.

“How do I look?”

She couldn’t even lift her head upright,turning her small face sideways to gaze at Kenzo.
The effort of attempting speech immediately irritated her throat,bringing back full force what had been a partially subsided coughing fit.
Each hacking convulsion overlapped its predecessor without respite,the relentless progression draining his spirit merely from witnessing it.

She looked like she was suffering.

He whispered this as if to himself and furrowed his brows.

Beside an unfamiliar woman in her forties rubbing Sister’s back from behind, there was a tray holding a container of mizuame syrup with a single cedar chopstick placed beside it.
The woman nodded politely to Kenzo.

“It’s been since the day before yesterday, you see.”

Sister had made it her perennial habit to waste away like this for three or four days in sleepless, foodless decline, then gradually return to her former state through the resilience of her vitality.
Kenzo was not unaware of this, but witnessing the violent coughing and faint, fading breaths before him, he found himself overwhelmed with anxiety—more so than the afflicted herself.

“Trying to speak must be bringing on the coughing fits.”
“Please stay quiet.”
“I’ll go over there.”

When the coughing fit had subsided momentarily, Kenzo said this and returned to the main room as before.

25

Hida was reading a book with an unperturbed expression.
“Oh, it’s just her usual chronic illness again,” he said, paying no heed to Kenzo’s concerned inquiries.

The pitiful figure of his wife—withering away naturally through countless yearly repetitions of the same ordeal—appeared to stir not a shred of sentiment in this man.
In truth, he was a man who had never once spoken a kind word to his wife, with whom he had cohabited for nearly thirty years.

When he saw Kenzo enter, he immediately closed the book he had been reading and removed his wire-rimmed glasses.

“While you were in the tearoom just now, I started reading some trivial stuff.”

Hida and reading—this was an extraordinarily mismatched combination.

"What's that?"

"Oh, it's nothing someone like Kenzo would read—just some old thing."

Laughing, Hida took the book lying facedown on the desk and passed it to Kenzo.
To his surprise, it was *Chōzan Kidan* (Tales of Chōzan), leaving Kenzo somewhat startled.
Yet this very act—listening to his own wife coughing as though on death's doorstep with complete detachment while calmly reading such material—laid bare the fundamental nature of this man's character.

“I’m old-fashioned, you see, so I’ve always had a fondness for these old tales.”

He seemed to regard *Chōzan Kidan* as mere ordinary tales. However, he wasn’t so ignorant as to mistake Yuasa Jōzan, its author, for a mere storyteller.

“So he’s a scholar after all, that man.”
“How does he stack up against Kyokutei Bakin?”
“Why, I’ve even got Bakin’s *Hakkenden* here.”

Sure enough, he had neatly stacked the letterpress-printed subscription edition of *Hakkenden* on Japanese paper inside the paulownia wood bookcase.

“Kenzo, do you have *Edo Meisho Zue*?”

“No.”

“That’s an interesting book. I love it. If you like, I can lend it to you. After all, it shows you exactly what old Edo was like—places like Nihonbashi and Sakurada back in the day.”

He took out one or two old books bound in light yellow Mino paper covers from another bookcase atop the tokonoma. Then he treated Kenzo as though he were a man who had never even heard of *Edo Meisho Zue*. For Kenzo, there remained a nostalgic memory from his childhood when dragging that very book out from the storehouse and carefully examining its illustrations page by page had been his greatest joy. Among them, the curtain of Echigoya and Mount Fuji depicted in Suruga-cho had now become the representative focal points of his memory.

“In this state, there’s no way I could find the time—even if I tried—to leisurely read books unrelated to my research like I did back then.”

Kenzo thought to himself. He resented himself for being so consumed by impatience and also pitied himself.

Since his brother had not appeared by the appointed time, Hida—perhaps to fill the interval—persistently tried to continue discussions about books. When it came to books, he seemed confident that no matter how long he talked about them, it wouldn’t inconvenience Kenzo. Unfortunately, his knowledge was such that he regarded *Chōzan Kidan* as mere ordinary tales. Even so, he had bound and kept every single issue of the old *Fūzoku Gahō* (Customs Illustrated) magazine.

When the conversation about books ran its course, he reluctantly changed the subject.

“He should be arriving any moment now, Mr. Chotaro too.”
“He was told so explicitly—he wouldn’t have forgotten—but…”
“Besides, since today’s a curfew day, he has to be back by eleven at the latest.”
“Shall I send someone to fetch him?”

At this moment another change seemed to come—the sound of his sister coughing violently like kindling catching fire could be heard from the direction of the tearoom.

26

Before long came the sound of someone opening the lattice gate at the entrance, followed by geta being removed in the entryway.

“Looks like he’s finally here,” said Hida.

However, the footsteps that had passed through the entryway immediately entered the tearoom.

“It’s bad again. I’m shocked! I had no idea. Since when?”

Short phrases—half interjection, half question—reverberated in the ears of the two men seated in the sitting room. That voice was indeed Kenzo’s brother, just as Hida had surmised.

“Mr. Chotaro—we’ve been waiting since earlier.”

Impatient Hida immediately called out from the sitting room. The tone that seemed to say he didn’t care what became of his wife’s asthma perfectly exemplified this man’s characteristics. It was no wonder everyone called him “a truly self-centered man”—even in this situation, he appeared to consider nothing beyond his own convenience.

“I’m coming now.”

Chotaro also seemed somewhat annoyed and took quite a while to emerge from the tearoom.

“Why don’t you have some rice gruel?”
“You don’t want it?”
“But if you don’t eat anything at all, your body will just get more exhausted.”

Because Sister was too breathless to respond, the woman rubbing her back offered appropriate replies with each remark.
The brother, who frequented the house more regularly than Kenzo, appeared familiar with this unfamiliar woman as well.
Perhaps because of this, their interactions showed no sign of coming to an end.

Hida puffed up sulkily.
Like someone washing their face upon waking, he vigorously scrubbed his dark face with both hands.
Finally turning toward Kenzo, he said in a low voice.

"Kenzo, this is exactly why you're such trouble."
"All talk and no substance."
"I'm shorthanded myself—that's why I'm reduced to asking favors."

Hida's reproach was unmistakably aimed at a woman unknown to Kenzo.

"Who is that person?"

"That's our old acquaintance O-sei."
"When you used to visit back then, Kenzo—wasn't she always at the house?"

"Huh?"

Kenzo had no recollection of ever meeting such a woman at Hida’s house.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? It’s O-sei, after all.”
“As you know, she’s a truly kind and sincere woman—but that’s precisely what makes her troublesome.”
“Her endless chattering’s her curse, you see.”

To Kenzo, who remained largely ignorant of the circumstances, Hida's words merely came across as self-serving exaggerations and failed to leave any significant impression.

Sister coughed again.
Until the asthma attack had eased a little, even Hida stayed silent.
Chotaro too did not emerge from the tearoom.

“Somehow it seems even more severe than before.”

Feeling slightly uneasy, Kenzo started to rise from his seat as he said this.
Hida stopped him without a moment’s hesitation.

“No no, it’s fine, it’s fine.”
“That’s her chronic condition—perfectly normal.”
“A stranger might be startled, mind you.”
“But a fellow like me’s grown accustomed over the years—doesn’t faze me one bit.”
“Truth is, if I let every attack trouble me, I couldn’t have shared a roof with her till now.”

Kenzo could not reply.
Inwardly, he contrasted it with the painful feelings he had experienced when his wife was struck by a hysterical fit.
When Sister’s coughing subsided, Chotaro finally showed his face in the sitting room.

“I’m terribly sorry. I was supposed to come much earlier, but unfortunately there was an unexpected guest.”

“You’re here, Chosan? I’ve been waiting.”
“This is no joke.”
“I was just about to send someone after you.”

Hida was in a position where he could speak to Kenzo’s older brother in such a familiar tone.

27

The three immediately began their discussion.
Hida was the first to speak.

He was a man who made a fuss over the smallest details in any discussion.
The more he made a fuss over details, the more he seemed to believe that his own existence was being strongly acknowledged by those around him.
Everyone laughed behind his back, saying, “Just flatter Mr. Hida this and Mr. Hida that, and that’s all you need to do.”

“Now then, Chosan—what should we do about this?”

“Right.”

“Well, this is clearly a matter where the very premise is flawed from the start, so I don’t think there’s any need to discuss it with you, Kenzo—but I...”

“Right. There’s no need for us to entertain such a thing being brought up now, is there?”

“That’s why I brushed him off. Bringing up such a thing now is like begging the priest to bring back to life a child you yourself killed—that’s why I told him to stop. But no matter what you say to that fellow, he just sits there and won’t budge, so there’s nothing to be done. But the reason that man comes barging into my house like that even now is, truth be told, because of our past relationship. But that was way back when—a story from ages ago, you know. On top of that, he wouldn’t borrow without paying, you know…”

“And it’s not like we’re lending anything for free either.”

“That’s right. He goes on about family ties and all that nonsense, but when it comes to money, he’s more ruthless than any stranger.”

“You should’ve told him that when he came.”

The conversation between Hida and his brother showed no sign of returning to its original point.
What’s more, Hida appeared to have even forgotten Kenzo’s presence altogether.
Kenzo finally felt compelled to intervene.

“What on earth happened? Did Shimada suddenly pay a visit here too?”

“No—I went through the trouble of calling you over, only to end up rambling on about my own matters. My apologies. Well then, Chosan—shall I go ahead and explain the whole situation to Kenzo here?”

“Yes, please do.”

The matter turned out to be surprisingly straightforward.
――One day, Shimada suddenly appeared at Hida’s residence.
Claiming he’d grown old with no one to rely on and felt anxious, he requested that Hida convey his wish to Kenzo—to have him revert to using the Shimada surname again as before.
Hida too was startled by the abruptness of this demand and initially refused.
But since Shimada wouldn’t yield no matter what was said, Hida ultimately agreed to at least relay his wish to Kenzo.
――That was all there was to it.

“That’s a bit odd.”

To Kenzo, no matter how he considered it, nothing but oddness came to mind.

"That's odd."

His older brother gave verbal form to the identical view.

"In any case, it's undeniably odd—after all, he's past sixty and his wits have begun to rust."

“Couldn’t it be greed that’s twisting his mind?”

Hida and his brother laughed as if amused, but Kenzo alone could not join their company.
He remained bound by the persistent feeling that it was odd.
By his reasoning, such a thing was utterly impossible.
He recalled the conversation from when Yoshida first came.
Next, he recalled the scene when Yoshida and Shimada had come together.
Finally, he recalled the words Shimada had spoken when, claiming to have returned from a trip during his absence, he had come to visit alone.
Yet no matter how he tried to recall it—no matter which angle he examined—he could not imagine how such an outcome might have arisen from there.

“It’s undeniably strange.”

He tried repeating the same words to himself once more.
Then at last, changing tack, he said:

“But that shouldn’t pose a problem.
You need only refuse.”

Twenty-Eight

From Kenzo’s perspective, Shimada’s request defied all logic in a most peculiar way.
Consequently, resolving it proved straightforward.
It could be settled simply by refusing.

“However, if I don’t at least bring it to your attention once, the fault would lie with me,” said Hida, as if mounting a defense.
He appeared incapable of resting unless he treated this meeting with absolute solemnity.
Accordingly, his statements shifted depending on the circumstances.

“And given who we’re dealing with,”
“If things go wrong, there’s no knowing what he might do—you must be careful!”

“If he’s senile, then there’s nothing to worry about, right?” When his brother pointed out this contradiction half-jokingly, Hida grew even more serious.

“That’s precisely why it’s dangerous—because he’s senile.”
“If he were a reasonable man, I would’ve refused him on the spot.”

Such twists and turns occasionally arose during their discussions, but ultimately the conversation circled back to its starting point, culminating in Hida rejecting Shimada’s request as their representative.
Since this was an outcome all three of them had anticipated from the very beginning, the path taken to reach that conclusion struck Kenzo as nothing more than a waste of time.
However, he felt obliged to express his gratitude to Hida for handling the matter.

“Oh no—to receive such kind words from you leaves me quite overwhelmed,” said Hida, who instead appeared rather pleased.
He grew increasingly animated—to such a degree that no one could have mistaken him for a man too occupied to return home.

He grabbed the rice crackers there and began crunching them noisily.
And in between each bite, he would refill his large teacup with tea and drink it down several times.

“You still eat heartily as ever.
You still put away about two bowls of eel rice even now, don’t you?”

“Well, once you hit fifty, you’re done for.
Back then, I used to polish off about five bowls of tempura soba right in front of you, Kenzo.”

Hida had been a man with a voracious appetite even back then.
And he took pride in eating more than others.
Moreover, he wanted to be praised for his large belly and would slap it whenever he had the chance.

Kenzo recalled the days when this man would take him to vaudeville theaters, and on their way back, the two would often duck under the noren curtains of street stalls to have stand-up meals of sushi and tempura.
He taught Kenzo the shamisen techniques for the Shika Odori dance that he had heard at those vaudeville theaters and made him learn jargon like “cooking the books.”

“After all, stand-up meals can’t be beaten,”
“I’ve tried eating my way around all sorts of places in my time.”
“Kenzo, do try eating soba in Karuizawa once—you’ll think you’ve been tricked, I tell you.”
“While the train’s stopped, you get off and eat—stand right there on the platform.”
“Truly worthy of its reputation as the home of soba—it’s delicious, I tell you.”

He was a man who often gallivanted about under the guise of religious devotion.

"But more than that, I was shocked to see a sign in Zenkoji Temple's precincts that read 'Original Fujihachi-ken Instruction Hall,' Chotaro."

"Why don't you go in and try one?"

"But you need an initiation fee for that, you see."

As he listened to such talk, Kenzo began to feel as though he had somehow reverted to his former self.
At the same time, he found himself forced to clearly recognize in what sense his current self had separated from them and where he now stood.
Yet Hida remained utterly oblivious to this shift.

"Kenzo, you've been to Kyoto before, haven't you?
Do you know about that bird over there that chirps 'Bring a plate, let's have some soup!'?" he inquired.

When his sister, who had been calm since earlier, began coughing violently again, he finally fell silent.
Then, as if declaring his thorough irritation without words, he pressed both palms together and scrubbed vigorously at his dark face.

Kenzo and his brother stood up to peek into the tea room.
Both of them sat by their sister’s bedside until her attack subsided, then left Hida’s house separately.

29

Kenzo could no longer forget that such a world lay waiting behind him.
This world had belonged to a distant past during his ordinary days.
Yet when pressed to crisis, it bore an inherent nature to abruptly transform into the present.

In his head floated and sank Hida’s chestnut-burr head, resembling that of Gannin-bo.
The dimly visible figure of his sister—cat-like with her tightly set jaw—struggled breathlessly.
The haggardly long face characteristic of his brother, drained of vitality, appeared and disappeared.

Long ago, he had become part of this world, only to later break free from it through natural forces.
Having escaped, he did not set foot in Tokyo for many years.
Now he had retreated back into it and caught the scent of the past for the first time in ages.
For him, it was a mixture—one-third nostalgia and two-thirds revulsion.

He gazed in a direction that had no relation at all to that world.
There in that place was a young man who sometimes crossed before him with youthful vigor and shining eyes.
He listened to their laughter.
That bright resonance, like a bell proclaiming future hopes, stirred Kenzo's dark heart.

One day, having been invited by one of those youths, he turned onto the path that led from Hirokoji through Kiridoshi on his way back from a stroll along Ikenohata.
When they came before the newly built geisha office, Kenzo suddenly looked at the youth’s face as though remembering something.

In his head flashed the thought of a certain woman with whom he had absolutely no connection.
The woman, who had killed someone during her time as a geisha, had spent over twenty years enduring dark days in prison before finally being able to show her face in society again.

"It must've been so hard."

Kenzo thought that if one were a woman whose life depended on her looks, there must be an almost unbearable loneliness there. However, to the youth accompanying him—who could only believe that spring would stretch endlessly before him—his words had little effect. This young man was still only twenty-three or twenty-four. He was startled to realize for the first time the distance between himself and the youth.

"I too am just like that geisha after all."

He told himself this inwardly.
Ever since his youth, he had been prone to developing white hairs, and whether it was his imagination or not, streaks of white in his hair had markedly increased of late.
While he still thought of himself as having time ahead, ten years had slipped by unnoticed.

"But this isn't someone else's affair, you know. In truth, I too spent my entire youth within prison walls."

The youth looked surprised.

“What do you mean by prison?”

“School, and then the library. When you think about it, both are rather like prisons, aren’t they?”

The youth did not answer.

"But if I hadn’t continued my long prison life, I would never exist in the world today—so there’s no help for it."

Kenzo's tone was half-explanatory.
It was half self-deprecating.
He who had built his present self upon the prison life of the past now had to build his future self upon that present self.
That was his principle.
And from his perspective, it was undoubtedly the correct principle.
But advancing according to that principle seemed to him at this time to bring nothing but the result of needlessly growing old.

“A person who dies after doing nothing but study is rather pointless, isn’t it?”

“That’s not true at all.”

His meaning ultimately did not get through to the youth.
He walked while thinking about how much his current self had changed from when he married and how it must appear in his Wife’s eyes.
Each time the Wife gave birth to a child, she grew older.
Her hair at times fell out to an embarrassing degree.
And now she was already carrying their third child in her womb.

Thirty.

When he returned home, the Wife lay asleep in the back six-tatami room with her arm as a pillow.
Kenzo looked at the red fabric scraps, ruler, and sewing box scattered beside her and made a face that said “Again?”

The Wife was a woman who slept frequently.
In the mornings she sometimes rose later than Kenzo.
There were quite a few days when she lay down again after seeing him off.
Her constant excuse was that unless she clung persistently to sleep like this, her head would grow numb and she’d be unable to focus on anything all day.
Kenzo would sometimes think this might be true, or wonder whether such a thing were even possible.
Especially after scolding her, when she could sleep anyway, the latter feeling arose more strongly.

“You’re feigning sleep.”

He often refrained from closely observing how his nagging affected his hysterical Wife, instead interpreting her unnatural attitude toward him as mere spite, and would let bitter whispers escape his lips.

“Why don’t you go to bed earlier at night?”

She was a night owl.
Every time Kenzo said this to her, she would firmly reply that she stayed up because her mind was too alert at night to sleep.
And she would stay awake as long as she wanted, never stopping her sewing.

Kenzo resented this attitude of his Wife. At the same time, he feared her hysteria. Moreover, he was gripped by the fear that his own interpretation might be mistaken. He stood where he was and stared for a while at his Wife’s sleeping face. The profile resting on her elbow was rather pale. He stood in silence. He did not even call her by the name Osumi. He suddenly shifted his gaze and noticed a bundle of books tossed aside next to a bare white arm. It did not appear to be a stack of ordinary letters, nor did it look like a bundle of newly printed materials tied together. The entire bundle had a brownish tinge and showed signs of age, with a carefully tied knot in old-fashioned twisted cord. One end of the bundle of documents was nearly buried beneath the Wife’s head, her black hair obscuring Kenzo’s view.

He didn’t even feel like going out of his way to pull it out and look, and once again turned his gaze to the Wife’s pale forehead.
Her cheeks were sunken as though slipping away.

“My goodness, how thin you’ve become!”

A female relative who had visited her after a long absence had once made such a remark in apparent surprise upon seeing her face of late.
At that moment, Kenzo felt as though all the causes that had made the Wife so thin lay solely within himself.

He entered the study.

About thirty minutes had passed, he estimated, when the sound of the front door opening echoed and two children returned from outside. To Kenzo sitting there, the exchange between them and the babysitter came through with crystalline clarity. The children soon rushed into the back room. There, the Wife exclaimed about their clamor and scolded them sharply.

After some time had passed, the Wife appeared before Kenzo, still holding in her hand the bundle of documents that had been by her pillow earlier.

“Earlier, while you were out, your brother came by.”

Kenzo stopped his fountain pen and looked at the Wife’s face.

“Has he already left?”

“Yes. He’d just stepped out for a walk, so I urged him to wait since he’d be back soon, but he said he didn’t have time and wouldn’t come up.”

“I see.”

“He said there’s apparently a friend’s funeral in Yanaka. So he told me he had to hurry or he wouldn’t make it in time, and couldn’t come up. But he said if he has time on his way back, he might drop by—so he told me to tell you to wait for him when he returns.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s apparently about that man again.”

The brother had come about Shimada.

Thirty-One

The Wife placed the bundle of documents she was holding in front of Kenzo.

“He told me to give this to you.”

Kenzo received it with a puzzled look.

“What’s this?”

“They’re all documents related to that man, apparently.”
“He thought showing them to you might be helpful, so he stored them in the drawer of the document chest and brought them out today,” she said.

“Did such documents even exist?”

He continued holding the bundle from his Wife’s hands, vacantly gazing at the yellowed paper.
Then he flipped through them aimlessly.
The stack measured nearly two inches thick—perhaps from years in a damp corner—and a single worm-eaten line now stirred nostalgia in his eyes.
He ran his fingertips roughly over its jagged path.
But he felt no urge now to undo the twisted cord’s careful knot and inspect each document inside.

"What could possibly come out even if I opened it?"

His state of mind was perfectly captured in this single phrase.

“Father apparently gathered and kept them all properly for the future.”

“I see.”

Kenzo did not hold much respect for his father’s discernment and understanding.

“With it being Father, he must’ve kept absolutely everything.”

“But all of that must have been out of Father’s consideration for you,” she said. “With someone like him around, there’s no telling what claims he might make after you’re gone. Father thought these would be useful then, so he took care to bundle them together and give them to your brother.”

“Is that so? I wouldn’t know.”

Kenzo’s father had died of apoplexy. Long before his father’s health failed, Kenzo had already left Tokyo. He hadn’t even been present at his parent’s deathbed. That these documents had remained in his brother’s keeping for so long without ever reaching his eyes was hardly surprising.

He finally untied the knot of the documents and began unfolding each stacked sheet one by one. Papers labeled “Procedural Records,” others titled “Matter of the Replacement Pledge,” and a folded hanshi ledger inscribed “Receipt for Security Deposit, Meiji 21, First Month” emerged in succession. At the ledger’s end, Shimada’s handwriting declared, “The aforementioned monthly installment received today has been fully settled,” with a thick black seal stamped beneath.

“Father was getting three or four yen from him every month.”

“From that man?”

The Wife was peering into the ledger upside down.

“I wonder what the total comes to.”
“But there should also be other amounts that were paid out in lump sums.”
“Because it’s Father, he must have kept those receipts.”
“It must be somewhere.”

The documents kept coming out one after another.
But to Kenzo’s eyes, all of it was jumbled and impossible to decipher.
He then picked up a thick bundle that had been folded into four and stacked together, and opened it.

“There’s even an elementary school graduation certificate in here.”

The name of that elementary school had changed over time.
The oldest one bore a vermilion seal reading “First University District, Fifth Middle School District, Eighth Elementary School.”

“What is that?”

“Somehow I’ve forgotten too.”

“It’s quite old, isn’t it?”

Among the certificates were two or three awards mixed in.
In the center, encircled by ascending and descending dragons, were inscriptions alternating between "First Division" and "Second Division," with "writing materials" always noted alongside to the side.

“I did receive some books as well, though.”

He recalled how, overjoyed, he had dashed home clutching volumes like *Kunzen Kunmō* and *Yochi Shiryaku*. He also remembered the blue dragon and white tiger he had seen in a dream the night before receiving that reward. These distant memories now felt startlingly immediate to Kenzo—unlike their usual remoteness.

三十二

To the Wife, these old-fashioned certificates still struck her as novel.
She took them up again after her husband had once put them down, carefully unfolding each sheet one by one.

“It’s strange. Things like ‘Lower Elementary Fifth Grade’ and ‘Sixth Grade.’ Did such things really exist?”
“Things like ‘Lower Elementary Fifth Grade’ and ‘Sixth Grade.’”
“Did such things really exist?”

“So they did exist.”

Kenzo then turned his attention to the remaining documents.
His father’s illegible handwriting caused him great difficulty.

“Take a look at this. I don’t have the courage to read it. On top of being illegible to begin with, he’s gone and added all these haphazard red marks and lines.”
“On top of being illegible to begin with, he’s gone and added all these haphazard red marks and lines.”

A draft-like document concerning dealings between Kenzo’s father and Shimada was passed into his wife’s hands.
The wife, meticulous by nature, read through it carefully.

“Your father looked after that Shimada at some point, didn’t he?”

“I’ve heard such stories myself.”

“It says here: ‘The individual being young and incapable of steady work was received into this household and raised for five years under these circumstances—’”

The sentences she recited sounded like petitions Edo-period townspeople might have submitted to a magistrate.
Moved by their tone, Kenzo found himself envisioning his old-fashioned father before his eyes.
He recalled being told in appropriately deferential language about matters like the shogun’s falconry processions.
His wife, however, focused solely on factual content, utterly indifferent to stylistic matters.

“Because of that connection, you were sent to that man’s household as an adopted son.”
“It says so right here.”

Kenzo pitied his ill-fated self.
Unperturbed, the Wife began reading the continuation.

“In the matter of Kenzo being sent as an adopted son at age three: Heikichi having fallen into discord with his wife and ultimately divorcing, we took in Kenzo, then eight years old, and have raised him for fourteen years up to the present—the rest is all red and jumbled; I can’t read it.”

The Wife maneuvered her eyes and the document into various alignments to read further.
Kenzo sat with folded arms waiting silently.
She soon began giggling under her breath.

"What's amusing?"

"But..."

Without responding, she rotated the document toward her husband.
With her index fingertip, she pinned down vermilion annotations resembling split-footnotes.

"Why don't you read this section here?"

Kenzo knitted his brows into an eight as he painstakingly read through the line.

“While employed at the handling office, [he] became involved with a widow named Tōyama Fuji, which marked the beginning of the matter.”

“What nonsense.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“It is true because it’s true.”

“So that was when you were eight years old, then.”
“And then you returned to your own household, I take it?”

“But they didn’t return the family register.”

“Him?”

The Wife took up the documents again.
Even leaving unreadable sections untouched and skimming only what she could decipher, her curiosity was no less stirred by the prospect of uncovering facts still unknown to her.

Toward the documents’ end were enumerated instances where Shimada had not only failed to restore Kenzo’s family register to its original state and return it to his birth household, but had also surreptitiously exploited his seal—after covertly altering Kenzo’s status to household head—to indiscriminately borrow funds.

When they finally severed ties, the IOU for the money given to Shimada as support payments also emerged.
In it was written at great length that, in exchange for Kenzo's family register following the severance of relations, an initial sum of -- yen would be provided, with the remaining balance of -- yen intended to be paid in monthly installments by the thirtieth day through negotiations, and so on.

“Every single clause here is absurdly convoluted.”

“Since there’s a seal for ‘Relatives’ Proxy Hida Torahachi’ at the bottom, Mr. Hida must have written this as well.”

Kenzo compared Hida’s recent demeanor of seeming to understand all matters with the wording of this IOU.

33

The brother who had said he might stop by after the funeral never showed his face.

“Because it got too late, he must have gone straight home.”

For Kenzo, this arrangement proved more expedient.
His work demanded that he spend the prior day or evening conducting research and contemplation; otherwise, he could not discharge his duties.
Thus, having his essential time eroded by external demands became an acute torment for him.

He bundled together the documents his brother had left once more and tried to tie them with the original crucial twine.
When he applied force with his fingertips, the crucial twine snapped with a pop.

“It’s gotten too old and brittle.”

“Impossible.”

“But these documents are practically eaten through by bugs.”

“Now that you mention it...”
“I just threw them into the drawer and left them untouched all this time.”
“But how did Brother manage to keep them?”
“He’d sell anything off when hard up.”

The Wife looked at Kenzo’s face and burst into laughter.

“No one would buy them anyway—such bug-eaten paper.”

“But you know… It’s remarkable he didn’t just toss them into the wastebasket.”

The Wife brought out a thin thread twisted with red and white from the hibachi drawer, neatly rebound the documents there, and handed them to her husband.

“There’s no place to keep it on my end.”

His surroundings were filled with books.
The portable document case was crammed with old papers and notebooks.
The only space remaining was in the single cupboard storing bedding and futons.
The Wife gave a wry smile and stood up.

“Brother will surely come by again within the next two or three days.”

“Is it about that matter?”

“That’s part of it, but when he came here today to attend the funeral, he said he needed hakama and asked to borrow yours—he even put them on right here. He’s certain to come back to return them, without a doubt.”

Kenzo found himself briefly contemplating his brother’s circumstances—that he couldn’t attend the funeral procession without borrowing Kenzo’s hakama. He still remembered how, when he first graduated from school, he had worn a threadbare haori received from his brother and taken a photograph with friends by the pond. When one of those friends turned to Kenzo and asked who among them would be the first to ride in a carriage, he did not reply, only gazing forlornly at the haori he wore. The haori was indeed an old ro silk crepe with a family crest, but to put it harshly, it was so shabby that it barely remained intact as a mere formality. There had even been a time when he was invited to a close friend’s wedding reception at the Hoshi ga Oka tea house and, having nothing suitable to wear, had borrowed both hakama and haori from his brother to make do.

He summoned these memories unknown to his wife.
Yet rather than pride, they brought him sorrow in his present state.
A sense of past and present—that time-honored phrase which best encapsulated the sentiment—arose unbidden within him.

“You’d think he’d at least have a hakama.”

“He must have lost them all over time.”

“This is troublesome.”

“Since it’s at our house anyway, you can just lend it when he needs it.”
“It’s not something you use every day.”

“As long as it’s here at the house, that’s fine.”

The Wife recalled the recent incident where she had pawned her own kimono in private without her husband’s knowledge.
For the husband, there existed a pessimistic philosophy that it was not impossible he himself might one day fall into the same circumstances as his brother.

In the past, though poor, he stood on his own in the world.
Now he lived a frugal life with no margin for error, yet those around him regarded him as the central pillar of vitality.
That was painful for him.
That someone like him was considered the most well-liked among his relatives made him feel all the more pathetic.

Thirty-Four

Kenzo’s brother was a minor official.
He worked at a large bureau in the center of Tokyo.
That his own pitiable figure had persisted within that imposing structure struck him as profoundly incongruous.

“I’m already old and worn-out, you know.”
“After all, young and capable people keep flooding in one after another.”

Inside that building, hundreds of people labored relentlessly through days and nights.
His vitality spent, he had become little more than a formless shadow.

“Ah… I’m so sick of this.”

In his mind, which recoiled from exertion, such notions always lurked.
He was sickly.
He aged prematurely beyond his years.
He dried up prematurely beyond his years.
And with a sallow complexion, he worked like a man heading to his death.

“After all, not sleeping at night takes its toll on the body, you know.”

He often caught colds and coughed.
At times, he also developed a fever.
Then that fever would threaten him as though it were inevitably a precursor to tuberculosis.

In truth, his occupation was indeed of a nature that was difficult even for robust young men.
He was made to stay overnight at the bureau every other night.
Thus he had to stay awake and work through the night.
The next morning, he returned home in a daze.
That entire day, he had no courage to do anything and even spent it just lying down listlessly.

Even so, he was forced to work for his own sake and for his family’s.

“This time seems rather precarious—couldn’t you ask someone else?”

Whenever rumors of reforms or restructuring arose, Kenzo would hear these very words from his brother’s mouth. There had been more than one or two occasions when he had even gone so far as to send letters making such requests while Kenzo was away from Tokyo. Each time, he would specifically name this or that influential figure. Yet Kenzo knew them only by name; not a single soul existed whom he could approach to secure his brother’s position. Kenzo could only prop his cheek on his hand and ponder.

He had repeated these anxieties countless times while remaining in the same position from years past to the present day, neither advancing nor developing.
The life of this man, who was about seven years older than Kenzo, was like an unyielding machine that permitted no change—nothing could be observed but its gradual wearing away.

“You’d think after twenty-four or twenty-five years of doing that sort of thing, he’d have managed something by now.”

Kenzo sometimes felt compelled to criticize his own brother with such words.
The past when his brother had been enamored with showiness and loathed studying now seemed to appear vividly before his eyes.
He would strum the shamisen, practice the single-stringed koto, shape starch dumplings to toss into pots, boil agar and set it in molds—all his time back then had been squandered on nothing but eating and amusement.

“If you put it that way—well, I guess everyone’s just reaping what they sowed.”

To the extent that this had become the occasional laments he let slip, he was a lazy man.

After his brothers had all died and he had naturally come to inherit Kenzo’s family home, he waited for his father to pass away and immediately sold off the estate.
With that, he settled the existing debt and moved into a small house.
And then he sold off the household items that wouldn’t fit there.

Before long, he became the father of three children.
Among them, his beloved eldest daughter contracted malignant pulmonary tuberculosis just before reaching marriageable age, so he employed every possible means to save her.
However, all he could do proved utterly futile against the cruel fate.
When she finally succumbed after suffering for over two years, the chest of drawers in his house had been emptied completely.
They had no hakama for the ceremony, of course—not even a simple crested haori.
He received Kenzo’s old Western clothes worn abroad and, treasuring them, attended the bureau daily.

35

Two or three days later, Kenzo’s brother indeed came to return the hakama, just as the wife had anticipated.
“I’m terribly sorry for the delay. Thank you.”

He took out the hakama—its both ends folded back over the waistboard and neatly creased—from the wrapping cloth and placed it before the Wife. Compared to his younger days as a man of great vanity who used to hate even carrying small packages, he now had completely lost his former flair. In exchange, he had no slickness either. With his rough hands, he grabbed the corner of the soiled wrapping cloth and carefully folded it.

“This is a fine hakama.”
“Did you have this made recently?”

“No. I don’t have nearly that much courage. It’s been here all along.”

The Wife recalled the figure of her husband, who had sat with an air of solemnity wearing this hakama during their wedding. At the extremely simplified wedding ceremony held in a distant place, his brother had not been in attendance.

“Hmm.”
“I see.”
“Now that you mention it, I do feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before. But things from the old days are sturdier after all.”
“It’s not worn out at all, is it?”

“He rarely wears it, you know.”
“Even so, he managed to muster the resolve to buy such a thing while living alone.”
“Even now, I find it strange.”

“Perhaps he had it made specially with the intention of wearing it at the wedding.”

The two of them laughed and talked about that bizarre wedding ceremony from back then.

The Wife’s father, who had come all the way from Tokyo bringing her with him, had dressed his daughter in a long-sleeved kimono while failing to prepare even basic formal attire for himself.
He remained in his silk crepe single-layer kimono worn casually and even ended up sitting cross-legged.
Kenzo, who had no one to consult with but an elderly woman, was all the more troubled.
He had no clear plan for the wedding ceremony.
Since there had originally been an agreement to secure one after returning to Tokyo, the matchmaker was not present there.
Kenzo read through something like a notice that the matchmaker had written and sent for reference.
It was indeed an imposing document, written in meticulous calligraphy on fine paper, but within it were only references to works like *The Mirror of the East*, rendering it utterly impractical.

“There was no such thing as female or male butterflies at ours, you know. To begin with, the rim of the sake cup was chipped.”

“So you went through with the three-times-three exchange anyway?”

“Yes. That’s why we creak and strain like this as a couple.”

His brother gave a bitter smile.

"Since Kenzo's quite stubborn himself, you must have your hands full too."

The Wife merely laughed.
She showed no particular sign of engaging with her brother-in-law’s words.

“He should be back any moment now.”

“Today I really must stay and talk about that incident…”

His brother still tried to continue.
The Wife suddenly stood up and entered the dining area to look at the clock.
When she came out from there, she was holding the documents from before.

"You need these, don’t you?"

"No, I just brought those for reference—you probably won’t need them."
"You’ve already shown them to Kenzo, haven’t you?"

"Yes, I showed them."

"What did he say?"

The Wife found herself unable to respond.

“There are quite a lot of various documents included here, aren’t there.”
“In these—”

“Father said we mustn’t risk something happening later, so he kept them stored away carefully.”

The Wife did not mention that she had read aloud what she thought was the most important part of them for him at her husband’s request.
His brother also stopped discussing the documents after that.
The two spent the time until Kenzo’s return in idle chat.
Kenzo returned after about thirty minutes.

36

When he had changed into his usual clothes and entered the drawing room, the familiar documents bound with thin red-and-white twisted thread lay on his brother’s lap.

“The other day—”

With his dry fingertips, his brother tightened the knot of the thread he had started to undo back to its original state.

“When I looked through these just now, there are some unnecessary things mixed in here for you.”

“Is that so?”

Kenzo learned that his brother had not looked through these documents—stored away as if they were important—for a long time.
His brother also noticed that his younger brother was not examining them with particular diligence.

“Oyuki’s registration request is in here.”

Oyuki was the name of his brother’s wife.
That the application to the ward chief required at the time of their marriage would come to light from there was something neither of them had anticipated.

His brother had divorced his first wife. His next wife had died. When his second wife fell ill, he often went out without showing much sign of concern. There seemed to be some reassurance that her condition was merely morning sickness and thus not serious, but even after her condition took a critical turn, he showed no sign of changing his demeanor, leading people to interpret it as mistreatment toward a wife he had grown to dislike. Kenzo also thought that perhaps that was the case.

When taking his third wife, he himself nominated the woman he desired and sought their father’s approval. However, he did not consult his younger brother even once. As a result, Kenzo—strong-willed as he was—found his resentment toward his brother affecting even his blameless sister-in-law. He insisted that he refused to call someone without education or status his sister, tormenting his weak-willed brother.

"What a difficult man he was."

Such criticisms voiced in private only hardened his stubbornness instead of inducing self-reflection.
Having unwittingly fallen into such adverse consequences from pursuing scholarship to uphold customs, he was prone to acknowledging his own lack of insight only to take pride in that very insight.
He looked back on his former self with eyes filled with shame.

“If the registration request has gotten mixed in, I’ll return it, so you can take it with you.”

“No, since it’s a copy, I don’t need it either.”

His brother did not even touch the red-and-white thread.
Kenzo suddenly wanted to know the date.

“About when was it, I wonder?”
“When did you submit that to the ward office?”

“It’s old business.”

His brother said only this much and fell silent.
A shadow of a smile appeared on his lips.
He was not yet so senile that he had forgotten those days—how his first and second attempts had failed, until at last he ended up with the woman he had finally come to love.
At the same time, he was no longer young enough to speak of it.

“How old was she?” asked the Wife.

“Oyuki?”
“Oyuki is a year younger than Osumi-san.”

“She’s still quite young, then.”

His brother gave no reply and abruptly began untying the cord around the documents resting on his lap.

“There was still something like this inside!”
“This has nothing to do with you either.”
“When I saw it earlier, I was rather startled—look here—”

He effortlessly extracted a single document from the tangle of aged papers.
It was a draft birth notice for his eldest daughter Kiyoko.
In the phrase “The aforementioned person was born at 11:50 a.m. on the 23rd of this month,” only “the 23rd of this month” bore a struck-through line, overlaid with irregular trails of insect damage crisscrossing diagonally.

“This is Father’s handwriting too, see?”

He turned that single piece of scrap paper toward Kenzo as if it were something precious and showed it.

“Look—it’s been eaten by insects.”
“Of course that’s only natural.”
“It’s not just the birth notification—we’ve already submitted the death notification too.”

His brother was quietly mouthing the birthdate of the child who had died of tuberculosis.

Thirty-seven

His brother belonged to the past.
Splendid prospects were no longer spread out before him.
Kenzo, seated across from this man who looked back at every turn, felt as though he were being dragged backward from the direction his life should advance.

He felt lonely.

Kenzo carried too much hope for the future to walk alongside his brother as a companion.
Yet even his present self was undeniably lonely.
He clearly understood that the future extending from this present would naturally grow lonelier still.

His brother told Kenzo that he had rejected Shimada’s request as per their previous discussion.
However, when it came to detailed points—by what procedure he had refused it and how the other party had responded—he gave no coherent reply at all.

“Well, since Hida was the one who came and said so, it must be true.”

Kenzo could not determine whether Hida had gone to meet Shimada and settled the matter, or whether he had sent a letter informing him of the meeting’s outcome.

“I suppose he probably went.”
“Or perhaps—given that man’s ways—did he settle it with just a letter?”
“I ended up forgetting to ask about that part.”
“Though when I went to visit Sister again after that, Hida was still out, so I couldn’t meet him after all.”
“However, according to Sister at the time, she said that since he was busy, it seems things are still left as they are.”
“That man is quite irresponsible—it’s possible he didn’t go at all.”

The Hida that Kenzo knew was undoubtedly an irresponsible man.
On the other hand, he was the type to agree to anything if asked.
He, who was so pleased when others humbly entreated him that he would readily take on any task, would not budge easily if the manner of the request displeased him.

“But this time, you see—since Shimada himself took it straight to Hida’s place.”

His brother implied that Hida himself ought to have gone to settle things with the other party, or else it would breach social propriety.
Yet he was not one to personally involve himself in such matters.
Whenever trouble arose requiring careful handling, he would invariably turn away.
And so he endured and guarded against it as much as circumstances allowed, suffering alone.
To Kenzo, this contradiction seemed neither infuriating nor amusing—only somehow pitiable.

“Since we’re brothers, others might see some resemblance between us.”

Thinking this, feeling pity for his brother amounted to the same as feeling pity for himself.

“Is Sister better now?”

He changed the subject and asked about his sister’s condition.

“Ah,”
“Asthma really is such a strange thing, isn’t it?”
“To clear up completely after all that suffering.”

“Can she talk now?”

“Not only can she talk—she’s chattering away quite energetically.”
“In her usual manner.”
“Sister’s theory is that Shimada went to O-nui-san’s place and had schemes put into his head.”

“Impossible. It’s more fitting to interpret it as that man being prone to spouting such nonsense.”

“I see.”

His brother was thinking.
Kenzo made a look that seemed to say how ridiculous.

“Otherwise,” he said, “she thinks he must be getting old and feeling like everyone finds him a nuisance.”

Kenzo remained silent.

“Well, there’s no denying he’s lonely. But given that he’s the type, it’s not loneliness from human feeling—it’s loneliness from greed.”

His brother somehow knew that letters were being sent from O-nui-san to her mother every month.

“Apparently, Otoh-san is receiving a pension from the Golden Kite Order or something like that. So Shimada must have become unbearably lonely unless he could get something from somewhere. After all, he’s that greedy.”

Kenzo could not muster much sympathy for someone whose loneliness stemmed from greed.

Thirty-eight

Days without incident continued for a while longer.

Days without incident were, for him, merely days of silence.

During that time, he was sometimes compelled to retrace his own memories.
While feeling pity for his own brother, he had, before he knew it, become a man of the past like that brother.

He attempted to cleave his life in two.
Then the past that should have been cleanly severed came chasing after him instead.
His eyes gazed ahead into the distance.
Yet his feet kept tending to walk backward.

And at that dead end stood a large square house.
The house had a second floor with wide wooden stairs.
Both the upper and lower parts of that second floor looked the same to Kenzo’s eyes.
The courtyard enclosed by corridors was also perfectly square.

Strangely, no one lived in that spacious house.
To him in his youth—still young enough to remain unbothered by its loneliness—there yet lacked both experience and understanding of what a home was.

He imagined the endless succession of rooms and corridors stretching straight into the distance as being like a town beneath a ceiling.
Then, with the resolve to walk alone through its deserted paths, he raced about the entire area.

He would sometimes climb up to the front second floor and look down through the narrow latticework.
Several horses with ringing bells and belly bands passed one after another before his eyes.
Across the road directly opposite stood a large bronze Buddha statue.
The Buddha sat cross-legged atop a lotus pedestal.
It carried a thick staff and wore a conical hat on its head.

Kenzo would sometimes descend to the dim earthen-floored area and cross the horse thoroughfare to go down the stone steps opposite.
He often climbed up to the Buddha statue this way.
Stepping on robe folds or grasping the staff's handle, he would climb until his hands reached its shoulders from behind or his head touched its hat—then with nothing left to grasp, he would climb back down.

He also remembered the square house and the house with a red gate located near the bronze Buddha statue.
The house with the red gate stood at a dead end, reached after turning sharply twenty ken along a narrow alley branching from the cramped thoroughfare.
Its rear was entirely covered by a tall thicket.

At the end of this cramped thoroughfare, turning left brought one to a long downhill slope.
The slope that surfaced in Kenzo’s memory had been built up with irregular stone steps from bottom to top.
Perhaps due to age and shifting stones, these steps were uneven in places.
From the gaps between stones, blue-green grass swayed in the wind.
Even so, this spot undeniably served as a path people used.
Still wearing his straw sandals, he climbed up and down those high stone steps several times.

When he descended the slope to its end, there was another slope, and ahead on a slight rise, a cedar grove appeared dark and blue-black.
Exactly between those two slopes, in the valley-like depression on the left side, stood another thatched-roof house.
The house was set back from the front and slightly shifted to the right; however, along the section facing the thoroughfare, a makeshift structure resembling a temporary tea stall had been erected, where even two or three camp stools were usually neatly arranged.

Peering through gaps in the reed screen, he saw a stone-encircled pond in its depths.
Above the pond hung a wisteria trellis.
The two pillars supporting both ends of this water-spanning structure were buried in the pond.
Azaleas grew thick around it.
Within moved shadows of crimson carp.
Kenzo resolved to catch that fish which stained the murky depths phantom-red.

One day when the house stood empty, he fixed a line to an ungainly bamboo pole and cast bait into the pond—only to recoil as something eerie tugged the line.
When this relentless force pulling him toward watery darkness reached his forearm, terror seized him and he flung the rod aside.
The next day he found a foot-long crimson carp floating motionless on the surface.
Alone, he trembled in fear……

"I wonder who I was living with back then."

He had no memory of it whatsoever.
His head was like blank paper.
But if he consulted the index of understanding, he had no choice but to conclude that he had lived with the Shimada couple.

Thirty-Nine

Then the scene changed abruptly.
The desolate countryside suddenly disappeared from his memory.

Then before him dimly appeared a small house with lattice windows at the front.
The house without a gate was in a town that seemed like a back street.
The town was long and narrow.
And it bent and turned to both the right and left.

Just as his memories were hazy, his house too remained perpetually dim.
He could not associate sunlight with that house.

He contracted smallpox there.
When he grew older and heard about it, they said it had been the smallpox vaccination that somehow brought on the actual disease.
He thrashed about within the dark latticework.
He scratched and tore at the flesh of his entire body indiscriminately, wailing in agony.

He once again found his young self by chance inside a large building. The partitions seemed divided yet continuous, and within them people were scattered here and there. The tatami mats or thin-edged flooring in the vacant area glowed yellow, rendering the surroundings as desolate as a temple hall. He was up high. There, he ate a boxed meal. And then he dropped something resembling inarizushi—tofu pouches tied with kanpyo—from above to below. He clung to the railing and peered down repeatedly. But no one would retrieve it for him. The adults in the group were all preoccupied with what was happening in front. In front, the pillars shook violently and the large house collapsed. Then from between the collapsed roof emerged a bearded military officer, swaggering out.—At that time, Kenzo still had no conception of what a play was.

In his mind, this play and the loose hawk were connected without any meaning.
When the hawk suddenly flew diagonally toward the blue bamboo thicket visible ahead, someone beside him shouted, "It’s loose! It’s loose!"
Then someone else clapped their hands, trying to call the hawk back—Kenzo’s memory snapped off sharply at this point.
Whether he had seen the play or the hawk first—even that remained unclear.
Consequently, whether he had first lived in the countryside where only rice fields and thickets were visible or in the dimly lit house facing the cramped town’s thoroughfare—even that remained unclear.
And in his memories of that period, there was scarcely any trace of people.

However, it was not long after that that the Shimada couple clearly arose in his consciousness as his parents.

At that time, the couple were in an unusual house.
Turning right from the entrance required ascending about three stone steps along the adjacent fence.
From there stretched an alleyway roughly three shaku wide; passing through it led out to a broad, bustling street.
Turning left down the corridor meant descending two or three steps in the opposite direction.
Then there stood a rectangular hall.
The earthen-floored area running along the hall was likewise rectangular.
When he stepped out from this earthen area to the front, a large river came into view.
Upon its surface sailed numerous ships with white sails.
Along the riverbank lay firewood piled high within a fenced enclosure.
The vacant lot between fences sloped gently downward to meet the water's edge.
From gaps in the stone wall, Benkei crabs frequently extended their claws.

Shimada’s house occupied the middle section of this long, narrow building divided into three parts.
It had originally belonged to a wealthy merchant—the rectangular hall facing the riverbank likely serving as their shop—but who this owner had been, or why he had vacated it, remained mysteries entirely beyond Kenzo’s understanding.

Once, a Westerner rented that spacious room to teach English.
This being an era when Westerners were still called *ijin*—foreigners—Shimada’s wife Otsune felt uneasy, as though cohabiting with some monstrous creature.
Yet this Westerner persisted in wearing indoor shoes and shuffling all the way to the veranda of Shimada’s rented quarters.
Whenever Otsune lay there pale-faced, complaining of nervous pains, he would station himself on that veranda, peer into the room, and murmur words of concern.
Whether those murmurs were Japanese, English, or mere pantomime—Kenzo could never discern.

Forty

The Westerner had left before anyone knew it.
When little Kenzo suddenly noticed, the spacious room had already transformed into what was called a government office.

The government office—what they called an *atsukaisho*—seemed to be something like today’s ward offices.
Everyone was handling affairs at low desks lined up in a row.
Since this was an era when tables and chairs were not yet widely used as they are today, sitting for long periods on tatami must not have been particularly inconvenient; those who were summoned and those who came of their own accord all removed their geta in the earthen-floored entrance and sat formally before the makeshift desks.

Shimada was the head of this government office.
Consequently, his seat was positioned at the very end, farthest from the entrance.
From there, bending at a right angle toward the lattice window overlooking the river—how many people had been present, how many desks had stood—Kenzo’s memory could not clearly recount it to him.

Since Shimada’s residence and the government office were merely partitioned sections of a single long, narrow house, he enjoyed no small convenience whether coming to work or leaving.
Even on fine days, he had no need to trouble himself with stepping on bare earth.
On rainy days, he could avoid the bother of using an umbrella.
He commuted to work from his home via the veranda.
And then he walked back home along the same veranda.

This relationship made young Kenzo considerably bold.
He would occasionally show his face in official settings and was indulged by everyone.
He became full of himself, fiddling with the vermilion ink in the clerk’s inkstone box, checking the sheath of a small knife, and committing one pesky prank after another that would attract flies.
Shimada, with all possible tyranny, approved of this little tyrant’s attitude.

Shimada was a stingy man.
His wife Otsune was even more stingy than Shimada.

“So that’s what they call being tight-fisted.”

After he returned to his biological home, such comments occasionally reached his ears.
However, at that time, he watched without any concern as Otsune sat by the long brazier and had the maid serve miso soup.

“In that case, no matter what, the maid is pitiful.”

The members of his biological family gave a bitter smile.

Otsune also always kept the rice tub and the cupboard containing side dishes locked.
When Kenzo’s biological father occasionally visited, she would surely order soba and have him eat it.
At that time, both she and Kenzo ate the same thing.
However, even when mealtime came, she never set out the meal as usual.
Kenzo, who had taken this for granted, was greatly surprised after being taken back to his biological home to see three full meals served in addition to snacks.

However, when it came to money, the couple was surprisingly generous toward Kenzo.
When going out, they would dress him in a yellow-striped silk haori or even drag him all the way to Echigoya to buy a crepe silk kimono.
While he sat at Echigoya’s shop selecting fabric patterns, evening drew near; when the many apprentices suddenly shut the wide frontage’s shutters from both sides, he grew terrified and once burst out crying loudly.

The toys he desired were naturally his to have.
Among them were tools for shadow play.
He often took delight in projecting Sanbasō’s silhouette onto a screen of pasted paper, making the figure shake its bell-adorned eboshi hat and move its legs.
He had someone buy him a new spinning top and soaked it in a muddy ditch by the riverside to season it.
However, since this ditch flowed from between the firewood yard’s fences into the river, he—fearing its loss—would pass through the government office’s earthen entrance countless times daily to retrieve and inspect it.
Each time, he jabbed a stick into crab holes within the stone wall where they hid.
Then he pinned down those too slow to escape, capturing several alive to tuck into his sleeve.…

In short, he—as an only child received from elsewhere—was treated exceptionally by this stingy Shimada couple.

Forty-One

However, a certain unease toward Kenzo always lurked in the depths of the couple’s hearts.

On chilly autumn evenings when they sat facing each other before the long brazier, they would often pose such questions to Kenzo.

“Who’s your father?”

Kenzo turned toward Shimada and pointed at him.

“Then who’s your mother?”

Kenzo looked at Otsune’s face and pointed at her.

Having thus temporarily satisfied their demands, they next posed similar questions in a different form.

“Then who are your real father and mother?”

Kenzo had no choice but to reluctantly repeat the same answer.
However, for some reason, this pleased them.
They looked at each other and laughed.

At times, such scenes occurred almost daily among the three.
There were times when things did not end with merely these questions and answers.
Otsune was especially persistent.

“Where were you born?”

Every time he was asked this, Kenzo had to answer by citing the house with the red gate visible in his memory—a small red gate shrouded by a tall thicket.
Otsune had trained him so that whenever she posed this question, Kenzo could give the same answer without difficulty.
His reply was mechanical.
But she did not care at all about such things.

“Kenbo, whose child are you really? Don’t hide it—tell me properly.”

He felt tormented.
At times he grew angrier than pained.
He wanted to stay silent deliberately without giving them the answer they sought.

“Who do you like most? Your father? Your mother?”

Kenzo found it unbearable to voice the response she wanted just to satisfy her expectations.
He stood rigidly silent like a stick.
Otsune’s interpretation—attributing this solely to his youth—proved overly simplistic.
In his heart, he detested her attitude.

The couple endeavored with all their might to make Kenzo exclusively theirs. Moreover, in reality, Kenzo was indeed their exclusive possession. Therefore, being cherished by them ultimately led to the same outcome as having his freedom stripped away for their sake. He already endured physical constraints. But an even more terrifying mental constraint cast a vague shadow of discontent in his heart—though he understood nothing.

The couple tried to make Kenzo conscious of their benevolence at every turn. To this end, they would sometimes raise their voices with “Father.” At other times, they stressed the word “Mother.” Naturally, Kenzo was forbidden from eating mere sweets or wearing mere clothes apart from those given by Father and Mother.

Their efforts to forcibly implant their kindness into the child’s heart from the outside ended up producing the opposite result upon him.
Kenzo grew irritable.

"Why did they meddle so much?"

Every time they said "Father" or "Mother," Kenzo yearned for freedom to be his alone.
He who delighted in toys bought for him and gazed endlessly at brocade pictures had instead grown unappreciative of those who bought such things for him.
He wanted, at the very least, to cleanly separate the two and lose himself in pure enjoyment.

The couple doted on Kenzo.
But within that affection lay an anticipation of strange rewards.
Just as a man who uses money to keep a beautiful woman compliant buys her whatever she desires, they could not act for the sake of expressing affection itself; instead, they had to show kindness solely to win Kenzo's favor.
Thus nature punished them for their impurity.
Yet they themselves remained unaware.

42

At the same time, Kenzo’s temperament was damaged.
His inherently compliant nature gradually receded beneath the surface.
And what filled that deficiency was none other than stubbornness.

His selfishness grew increasingly pronounced.
If he couldn’t get what he wanted, he would immediately plop down right there in the street or by the roadside and refuse to budge.
On one occasion, he yanked out a boy’s hair from his back with all his strength.
On another occasion, he insisted he absolutely had to take home the pigeons kept at the shrine.
To him—who knew nothing beyond waking and sleeping in the narrow world where he could monopolize his foster parents’ indulgence—all other people seemed to exist solely to obey his commands.
He came to believe that his word was law.

Before long, his audacity took yet another step further.

One morning, he was woken by his parents and went out to the veranda while rubbing his sleepy eyes.
He had a habit of urinating from there every morning upon waking.
However, because he was sleepier than usual that day, he ended up falling asleep while urinating.
And then he knew nothing of what happened after that.

When he opened his eyes, he found that he had tumbled down onto his own urine.
Unfortunately, the veranda he fell from was high.
Since it was located midway down the slope leading from the main street to the riverbank, it was about twice the usual height.
Because of that incident, he finally threw out his back.

The startled foster parents immediately took him to Nagakura in Senju and administered as much treatment as possible.
However, his severely injured back did not easily regain its strength.
He lay in the tatami room every day, applying a yellow, viscous liquid with the smell of vinegar to the affected area.
He did not know how many days it had continued.

“Still can’t stand up?”
“Try standing up.”

Otsune pressed him every day.
Yet Kenzo could not move.
Even when able to move, he deliberately remained still.
Lying there, he secretly rejoiced while watching Otsune’s anxious face.

He finally stood up.
And then he walked all around the place no differently than usual.
Then, as Otsune’s surprised and delighted manner was filled with an utterly theatrical expression, he felt he should have refrained from standing up and remained lying down a little longer.

His weaknesses and Otsune’s weaknesses clashed head-on with considerable frequency.

Otsune was a woman remarkably skilled at deception.
Moreover, she proved a handy woman who could instantly shed tears whenever she glimpsed personal advantage.
Having dismissed Kenzo as merely a child and lowered her guard, she unwittingly laid bare every facet of her true nature before him.

One day, Otsune was sitting with a guest and berated a woman named Kō—who had come up in conversation—so harshly that it was uncomfortable to overhear; but after the guest left, Kō coincidentally came to visit her.
Then Otsune began directing insincere flattery at Kō.
Finally, she even went so far as to tell an unnecessary lie—that just now someone had been praising you a great deal.
Kenzo got angry.

“She told such a lie!”

He laid bare his own stubborn child’s honesty directly before Kō.
After Kō left, Otsune flew into a rage.

“When I’m with you,I can’t help but feel like my face is on fire!”

Kenzo felt that it would be good if Otsune’s face would just catch fire already.

Deep within his chest, an aversion to her was always at work somewhere, unbeknownst even to himself.
No matter how much he was doted on by Otsune, she harbored within her character something so ugly that even the affection needed to repay her could not emerge from him.
And the one who knew that ugliness best was none other than the spoiled child who had been coddled in her embrace.

Forty-Three

In the midst of this, a strange phenomenon occurred between Shimada and Otsune.

One night, when Kenzo abruptly opened his eyes, the couple were fiercely arguing beside him.
The incident struck him as utterly sudden.
He began to cry.

The following night too, his deep sleep was shattered by the same arguing voices.
He cried again.

As these clamorous nights accumulated endlessly, their shouting voices gradually intensified.
Eventually both began resorting to physical blows.
The sounds of striking, stomping, and screaming terrified his small heart.
The quarrels that once ceased when he started crying now progressed relentlessly whether he slept or woke.

In his childish mind, Kenzo could not comprehend at all why this unfamiliar scene occurred every late night.
He simply disliked it.
To him, who possessed neither morals nor sense of right and wrong, nature simply taught him to despise it.

Before long, Otsune told Kenzo the facts.
According to her account, she was the most virtuous person in the world.
In contrast, Shimada was a terrible villain.
However, the worst of all was Otoh-san.
When Otsune used words like “that bastard” or “that woman,” her face took on a look of unbearable frustration.
Tears streamed from her eyes.
However, such intense expressions only served to worsen Kenzo’s mood and had no other effect.

“That bastard is the enemy!”
“He’s an enemy to both your mother and you!”
“I’ll have my revenge even if it grinds my bones to dust!”

Otsune gritted her teeth.
Kenzo wanted to get away from her side as soon as possible.

He preferred Shimada over Otsune—who clung to him from morning till night trying to win him over.
Unlike before, Shimada was often not at home.
The time he returned was always late at night.
Therefore, there was little opportunity for them to meet during the day.

However, every night Kenzo saw him in the dim lamplight’s shadow. He saw those sinister eyes and lips trembling with rage. He heard the voice of anger that escaped like swirling smoke from the throat.

Even so, he would occasionally take Kenzo out with him as before. Though he never touched alcohol, he harbored an intense fondness for sweets. One evening he took Kenzo and Otoh-san’s daughter O-nui-san for a walk along a lively street, stopping at a sweet bean soup shop on their return. This marked Kenzo’s first encounter with O-nui-san. As such, they scarcely even glanced at one another. Not a single word passed between them.

When Kenzo returned home, Otsune first asked where Shimada had taken him.
Then she pressed further about whether they had stopped by Otoh-san’s house.
Finally came the harsh interrogation demanding who had accompanied him to the sweet shop.
Despite Shimada’s warnings, Kenzo truthfully recounted the facts.
Yet Otsune’s suspicions remained unshaken.
She deployed various stratagems to fish out further details.

“That bastard was there too, wasn’t he?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“If you tell me, Mother will give you something nice.”
“That woman went too—didn’t she?”
“Wasn’t she?”

She was determined to make him say she had gone.
At the same time, Kenzo was absolutely resolved not to say it.
She suspected Kenzo.
Kenzo despised her.

“Then what did Father say to that girl?”
“Did he talk more to that girl, or to you?”

In Kenzo’s heart—which gave no answer—only a sense of displeasure grew stronger. But Otsune was not a woman to remain there.

“At the sweet shop: where did he have you sit?
On the right side? Or the left?”

The questions born of jealousy never ceased, no matter how much time went by.
She, who in her relentless questioning heedlessly laid bare her own character without a moment’s self-reflection, remained utterly oblivious to the fact that her foster child—not yet ten years old—had become completely fed up with her.

Forty-Four

Before long, Shimada suddenly vanished from Kenzo's sight.
The residence that had been wedged between the back street facing the riverbank and the bustling main street also abruptly vanished to who knows where.
Kenzo, now left alone with Otsune, found himself in an unfamiliar, strange house.

In front of the house hung a rope noren at the entrance—whether it marked a rice shop or miso shop remained unclear.
His memory linked this large store to boiled soybeans.
He still hadn’t forgotten eating them daily.
Yet about his newly relocated residence, no clear image would surface.
Time had neatly swept away this desolate memento for him.

Otsune spoke about Shimada to everyone she met.
She cried out in frustration again and again.

“I’ll die and curse you!”

Her bluster served only as a means to increasingly distance Kenzo’s heart from her.

Having separated from her husband, she tried to make Kenzo her exclusive possession.
She also believed he was her exclusive possession.

“From now on, you’re my only support.”
“Do you understand?”
“You must stay strong for me.”

Every time she made these appeals, Kenzo stiffened.
He found himself utterly unable to offer her the cheerful, obedient response of a dutiful child.

In Otsune’s heart, which sought to make Kenzo her own, there was always at work not so much an impulse driven by love as a malice propelled by desire.
That cast an unpleasant shadow into the innocent Kenzo’s heart for no reason at all.
But regarding all other matters, he was utterly absorbed.

Their life together lasted only a short while.
Whether it was due to material deprivation or whether Otsune’s remarriage had forced the change in their circumstances—he, still too young in years, could not understand at all.
After all, she suddenly vanished from Kenzo’s sight once again.
And then, before he knew it, he had been taken back to his family home.

“When I thought about it，it felt as though it were someone else’s life.”
“I couldn’t believe it was my own.”

The events that arose in Kenzo’s memory were too distant from his present self.
Even so, he had to recall his own past—a life resembling that of someone else.
Moreover, he had to recall it with a certain unpleasantness.

“Did Otsune go marry into that Hatano household again around that time?”

The Wife still remembered the address on the long letter that had come from Otsune to her husband years before.

“Probably.”
“I don’t really know either.”

“That Hatano person is probably still alive, don’t you think?”

Kenzo had never even seen Hatano’s face.
The question of whether he was alive or dead had naturally never crossed his mind.

“You said he was a police inspector, didn’t you?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Why, you’re the one who said that yourself!”

“When?”

“That time when you showed me the letter.”

“Is that so?”

Kenzo recalled a little of the contents of the long letter.
Within it had been enumerated nothing but the hardships she had endured while caring for young Kenzo.
She wrote in exhaustive detail about all these circumstances—how she had raised him from infancy on nothing but rice gruel due to her lack of breast milk, how she’d struggled with his poor bladder control and nightly bedwetting—and among these wearisome accounts, mentioned that a relative judge in Kofu now sent her money every month, making her quite fortunate these days.
However, as for whether her husband had actually been a police inspector, Kenzo had no recollection whatsoever.

“He might already be dead.”

“He might still be alive for all we know.”

Between them passed this exchange—neither fully about Hatano nor entirely concerning Otsune.

“Just as that man showed up unannounced, that woman too might appear out of nowhere any day now.”

The Wife looked at Kenzo’s face.
Kenzo remained silent with his arms crossed.

Forty-Five

Both Kenzo and his wife well remembered the tendencies of the letters Otsune had written.
Even people with no particular ties to her were kindly sending monthly installments of money, yet here was someone who—despite having been cared for so thoroughly in childhood—could hardly feign ignorance now; this critical tenor permeated every page.

At that time, he sent this letter to his brother in Tokyo.
He asked his brother to caution her to be more careful, since having such things sent frequently to his workplace would be a nuisance.
A reply came promptly from his brother.
The reply stated that since she had been divorced from her foster family and married into another household, making her a stranger, and furthermore, given that Kenzo had already left that foster family long ago, they had persuaded the other party by arguing that it would be troublesome to have her correspond directly with him now, so he could rest assured.

Otsune’s letters ceased coming altogether after that.
Kenzo felt relieved.
Yet something unsettling remained within him.
He could not forget the past when he had been under Otsune’s care.
At the same time, his loathing for her remained unchanged from before.
In short, his attitude toward Otsune was identical to his attitude toward Shimada.
And his loathing for her was even more intense than what he felt toward Shimada.

"Having Shimada alone is trouble enough—if another woman like that comes barging in now, it’ll be unbearable."

Kenzo thought to himself.
As for her husband’s past, about which she knew little, the Wife’s inner thoughts were even more tumultuous.
The Wife’s sympathy was now directed solely toward her birth family.
Her father, who had once held a position of some standing, had gradually fallen into financial hardship after a prolonged period of unemployment.

Kenzo began sitting opposite the young men who came to talk at his house from time to time, contrasting their cheerful demeanor against his own inner life.
Then, to him, the young men all seemed to gaze fixedly ahead, walking cheerfully onward step by step.

One day, he addressed one of the young men thus.

"You're fortunate—all you ever think about is what you'll become or what you'll do after graduating."

The young man gave a wry smile.
And then he answered.

“That was how it was in your time.”
“Young people today aren’t so carefree.”
“Of course we think about what we’ll become or do—it’s not that we don’t—but we also know full well the world won’t bend to our whims.”

Indeed, compared to when he had graduated, society had grown tenfold harsher.
Yet this was merely a material matter of food, clothing, and shelter.
Thus the young man’s response diverged slightly from what he had anticipated.

“No—you’re fortunate because you aren’t burdened by the past like I am.”

The young man made a face that suggested it was difficult to comprehend.

“You don’t seem in the least troubled by the past.”
“Even so, it seems there’s still a part of your world that lies ahead.”

This time, it was Kenzo’s turn to give a wry smile.
He told the young man about a new theory on memory proposed by a certain French scholar.

At the moment when someone is about to drown or fall off a cliff—the fact that they often visualize their entire past in an instant as a single memory—this philosopher offered an interpretation of that phenomenon.

“Humans live constantly fixated on their future hopes, but when that future gets suddenly blocked by some immediate danger and things reach the point of ‘I’m done for,’ they abruptly turn their gaze backward to the past. That’s why all past experiences rise to consciousness at once, according to this theory.”
“According to that theory—”

The young man listened to Kenzo’s explanation with apparent interest.
However, being entirely unaware of the circumstances, he could not relate it to Kenzo’s own circumstances.
Kenzo was not so foolish as to consider his present self as someone placed in a perilous situation where he would recall his entire past in an instant.

**Forty-Six**

Shimada, who had become the starting point for dragging Kenzo’s mind into that unpleasant past, finally appeared in his tatami room again five or six days later.

At that moment, this old man reflected in Kenzo’s eyes was precisely a ghost from the past.
He was also a man of the present.
And he was no less a shadow of a dimly-lit future.

"How far will this shadow keep clinging to my body?"

Kenzo’s chest swayed not from curiosity’s stimulation, but rather from ripples of anxiety.

“The other day, I stopped by Hida’s place.”

Shimada’s manner of speaking remained as polite as before.
Yet when it came to why he had gone to Hida’s house, he feigned complete ignorance.
His tone resembled that of someone who had merely dropped by on their way to other business, under the guise of a courtesy visit after a long absence.

“That area has changed quite a bit from the old days, hasn’t it?”

Kenzo doubted the sincerity of the man sitting before him.
Had this man truly gone to Hida to plead for his reinstatement? And had Hida, as agreed in their discussion, flatly refused? Kenzo found himself unable to trust even these clear facts.

“Originally, there was a waterfall over there, and everyone used to go out often in the summer.”

Shimada pressed on with his small talk, paying no heed to his listener.
For his part, Kenzo saw no reason to broach unpleasant matters himself and simply let himself be dragged along in the old man’s wake.
Before long, Shimada’s polite speech began to crumble.
Finally, he started referring to Kenzo’s sister without any honorifics.

“Your sister O-Natsu has aged.”
“Though to be fair, it’s been ages since I last saw her.”
“Back then, she was quite the fiery one—always picking fights with me.”
“But since we were practically siblings anyway, we’d make up in no time after squabbling—maybe too quickly.”
“Whenever she got into trouble, she’d come sniveling to me for help. Out of pity, I scraped together what I could each time.”

What Shimada was saying was so overbearing that one could imagine how furious the sister would have been had she been listening in secret. Moreover, it was filled with malice, trying to impose on others distorted facts seen solely from his self-serving perspective.

Kenzo gradually became less talkative. In the end, he fell silent and stared fixedly at Shimada’s face.

Shimada was a man with an oddly long philtrum. Moreover, whenever he looked at things out on the street, he always had his mouth open. Therefore, he looked a bit like a fool. However, as a kind fool, he was by no means a man who appeared in anyone’s eyes. His sunken eyes, in their depths, were always speaking of something contrary. His eyebrows were rather severe. The hair on his narrow, high forehead had never been parted to the sides since his youth. It was always combed straight back like that of a Hōin or some such figure.

He suddenly looked into Kenzo’s eyes.
He then tried to read his mind.
His manner of speech, which had momentarily reverted to its former brashness, now returned to its present politeness.
He finally abandoned his attempts to regain his old footing with Kenzo.

He began glancing around the room.
The stark room contained neither framed paintings nor hanging scrolls.

“Do you like Li Hongzhang’s calligraphy?”

He abruptly posed this question.
Kenzo found himself unable to answer either way.

“If you like it, I could give it to you.”
“Even that—if you consider its value—must be worth quite a lot nowadays.”

Long ago, Shimada had hung a half-cut sheet of Tang paper above the kitchen hearth—inscribed with phrases like “white hair, ashen face, survived ten thousand deaths”—claiming it was forged calligraphy by Fujita Tōko to which he had “assigned a historical period.”
The Li Hongzhang piece he proposed giving Kenzo was equally questionable as to its actual provenance and authorship.
Kenzo, having no intention of accepting anything from Shimada, offered no response.
Shimada finally departed.

Forty-seven

“What on earth did that man come here for?”

The wife was certain there was no way he had come without some purpose.
Kenzo, too, was somewhat influenced by exactly the same feeling.

“I can’t really tell.”
“After all, we’re as different as fish and beasts.”

“What?”
“Someone like that and me—well,”
The wife suddenly recalled the relationship between her own family and her husband.
Between them lay a chasm formed by nature that kept them apart.
Her stubborn husband had never attempted to leap over it.
Those who had dug the chasm persisted in a mood that insisted they should naturally be the ones to fill it.
Her family conversely held that since her husband had arbitrarily started digging this rift himself, he ought to level it.
The wife’s sympathies naturally lay with her own family.
She interpreted her husband as an eccentric scholar incapable of harmonizing with society.
At the same time, she acknowledged being a primary factor in why he had become estranged from them.

The wife tried to end the conversation in silence.
However, Kenzo—who had been entirely preoccupied with Shimada—failed to grasp her meaning.

“Don’t you think so?”

“That man and you are as different as fish and beasts.”

“Of course I’m not comparing myself to outsiders.”

The conversation returned to Shimada.
The wife asked with a laugh.

“He was going on about that Li Hongzhang hanging scroll, wasn’t he?”

“He says he wants to give it to me.”

“Don’t you dare accept it.”
“If you take that thing, who knows what new demands he’ll make afterward.”
“When he says he’ll give it, it’s just empty talk.”
“He’s really trying to get you to buy it—I’m certain of it.”

The couple had many other things they wanted to buy besides Li Hongzhang’s hanging scroll.
The fact that she could not dress their growing daughter in decent kimonos to take her out was, from the wife’s perspective, undoubtedly a worry her husband failed to notice.
The husband, who was paying monthly installments of two yen and fifty sen to the Western clothing store for the raincoat he had recently had made, could hardly have been in a carefree state of mind.

“It seems he didn’t bring up reinstatement at all.”

“Yeah, he didn’t say anything. It’s just like being caught in a fox’s grasp.”

Kenzo couldn’t tell whether Shimada had deliberately raised such an outrageous demand from the start to provoke him, or whether—after bringing it to Hida as a serious negotiation—he had only realized its futility when flatly rejected, and thus abandoned it.

“Which is it?”

“There’s just no figuring out what someone like that is thinking.”

Shimada was, in fact, the sort of man who might well do either.

Three days later, he appeared at Kenzo’s front door once again.
At that time, Kenzo was sitting before the desk in his study with the lamp lit.
Just at that moment, a certain problem in his mind began to show a thread of its solution.
He strained earnestly to pull it closer within reach.
His train of thought was abruptly severed.
He made a bitter face and looked toward the maid who had placed her hands on the study’s entrance.

“He doesn’t need to come so often and disturb others—he could just stay away.”

He muttered this inwardly.
Lacking the courage to flatly refuse the meeting, he fell silent for a moment when he saw the maid.

“Shall I show him in?”

“Yeah.”

He had no choice but to answer.
And then he asked, “How is the mistress?”

“She said she’s feeling a bit unwell and has been lying down since earlier.”

Kenzo couldn’t help but feel that his wife only slept when hysteria arose.
He finally stood up.

Forty-eight

Since it was a time when electric lights had not yet been lit at every household, the parlor contained its usual dim oil lamp burning.

The oil lamp was constructed with a slender bamboo stand into which the oil jar was snugly fitted, its flat base—resembling the shape of a drum’s body—designed to sit firmly on the tatami mats.

When Kenzo entered the parlor, Shimada had pulled the lamp close to himself and was gazing at its condition while repeatedly adjusting the wick in and out.
Without any formal greeting, he said, “The soot seems to be accumulating.”

Indeed, the glass chimney had grown dim with smoke.
This oil lamp tended to develop such irregularities when someone raised the flame too high where the rounded wick’s trimming failed to lie flat.

“I’ll have it replaced.”

There were about three lamps of that same model in the house. Kenzo called the maid and tried to have her replace it with one from the tea room. However, Shimada only gave a vague reply and kept his eyes fixed on the soot-clouded lamp chimney.

“What’s wrong with it?”

He muttered to himself and peered into the gap of the round lid, its floral patterns worn opaque from rubbing.

In Kenzo’s memory, he was undoubtedly a man of meticulous fastidiousness when it came to such matters. If anything, he was excessively particular. As if compensating for his innate moral and financial slovenliness, he obsessed over dust in the tatami rooms and verandas. He would tuck up his kimono hem and scrub floors barefoot, sweeping and sprinkling water even where no cleaning was needed.

When things broke, he would invariably repair them himself.
Or perhaps he attempted to repair them.
No matter how much time it took or whatever effort was required for that purpose, he never minded.
Not only was this behavior inherent to his nature, but to him, the single-sen copper coin gripped in his hand seemed far more valuable than time or effort.

“What—such things can be done at home.”
“There’s nothing requiring money to have done.”
“A waste.”

The prospect of suffering a loss was more terrifying to him than anything else.
And yet, no matter how much invisible loss accumulated, he remained unaware of it.

"My husband is far too honest."

Otoh-san had once used these words when evaluating her husband to Kenzo.
Even Kenzo, still naive about the world, understood well that it was not the truth.
Merely for her own sake—knowing it was a lie—he had interpreted her in good faith as trying to patch over her husband’s character, and so he said nothing to Otoh-san at the time.
But now, upon reflection, her criticism seemed to have a firmer foundation.

“After all, his failure to notice major losses must be what passes for honesty.”

Kenzo rather pitied the old man, who was straining his underdeveloped brain to the utmost in an attempt to satisfy his financial desires—a brain that couldn’t even keep pace with those very desires. And with his sunken eyes now brought close to the frosted glass lid, staring at the dim light as though conducting research, Kenzo gazed at him as a pitiable figure.

"He had aged this way."

Kenzo, having contemplated a phrase that seemed to distill Shimada’s entire life before his eyes, wondered how he himself would age.
He disliked the word god.
But at that moment, the word god had indeed surfaced in his heart.
And then he felt strongly that if that god were to look upon his own entire life through god’s eye, there might be no great difference from this greedy old man’s life.

At that moment, Shimada appeared to suddenly turn the oil lamp’s screw, and the interior of the slender chimney filled with a red flame.
Startled by this, he seemed to have turned the screw too far in the opposite direction, making the already dim light even darker.

“It seems something’s out of order here.”

Kenzo clapped his hands and had the maid bring a new oil lamp.

Forty-nine

That evening, Shimada’s demeanor showed no difference from when he had last visited.
In his interactions, he used only words that acknowledged Kenzo as an independent person.

However, he appeared to have completely forgotten about the hanging scroll from before.
He did not even mention the character “Li” from Li Hongzhang’s name.
The matter of reinstatement remained entirely unmentioned.
He showed not even a hint of broaching the subject.

He tried to keep the conversation as mundane as possible.
However, no matter where or how they searched, there was simply no issue of mutual interest to be found between them.
To Kenzo, the majority of what he said did not seem far removed from utter meaninglessness.

Kenzo was bored.
Yet within that boredom lay a persistent vigilance.
He was dominated by the premonition that this old man would surely appear before him one day, bearing some object and in a more clarified form than now.
He was also dominated by the speculation that this object would undoubtedly take on a form that was either unpleasant or disadvantageous to him.

Amid his boredom, he felt a tension—slender yet razor-sharp.
Perhaps because of this, Shimada’s eyes as they regarded him now differed entirely from when they had gazed at the oil lamp’s light—dimmed by soot through its frosted glass chimney.

“If there’s an opening, I’ll pounce.”

Those sunken eyes, though dulled, unmistakably conveyed this intent.
Naturally, Kenzo found himself bracing against it.
Yet at times, he felt tempted to cast aside this defensive stance and bestow some semblance of calm upon those hungry eyes.

At that moment, a groan-like voice suddenly came from the wife in the inner room.
Kenzo’s nerves were more sensitive to this sound than those of an ordinary person.
He immediately strained his ears.

“Is someone ill?” asked Shimada.

“Yes—my wife is a bit…”

“I see. That’s not good.”
“What’s wrong with her?”

Shimada had still never seen the Wife’s face.
He did not even seem to know when or from where she had come as a bride.
Therefore, his words contained nothing more than a polite gesture.
Kenzo had not thought to seek sympathy for his wife from this man either.

“The season has been quite harsh lately—one must take good care.”

Because the children had long since fallen asleep, the inner rooms lay quiet.
The maid appeared to be in the three-mat room adjoining the distant kitchen.
What pained Kenzo most was leaving the wife utterly alone at such a time.
He clapped his hands and summoned the maid.

“Go sit by her in the back.”

“Yes.”

With an air of incomprehension, the maid shut the intervening sliding door.
Kenzo turned once more toward Shimada.
Yet his attention strayed from the old man altogether.
His fervent wish for Shimada’s swift departure permeated every word and gesture.

Even so, Shimada did not readily rise.
When the thread of conversation snapped and he found himself utterly at loose ends, he finally slid off the zabuton cushion.

“My apologies for intruding... At such a busy hour... I shall call again soon.”

He, who had said nothing about his wife’s illness, turned back toward Kenzo again after stepping down into the entryway.

“If I come by in the evening, would you generally be available?”

Kenzo gave a vague reply while standing there.

“The truth is, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

Kenzo did not ask in return what the matter was.
From the dim lamplight held in Kenzo’s hand, the old man made his dull eyes glisten and looked up at him again.
In those eyes still lurked a malicious, unpleasant glint that seemed ready to slip into his pocket at the slightest opening.

“Well then, I’ll take my leave.”

Finally, Shimada—who had opened the lattice and stepped outside—uttered these words and vanished into the darkness at last.

There wasn’t even an eaves light lit at Kenzo’s gate.

Fifty

Kenzo immediately came to the inner room and stood by his wife’s bedside.

“What’s wrong?”

The Wife opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling.
Kenzo looked down at her eyes again from beside the futon.

The light of the oil lamp placed in the shadow of the sliding door was dimmer than that in the guest room.
The dimness made it hard to discern where the Wife’s eyes were directed.

“What’s wrong?”

Kenzo had to repeat the same question once more.
Even so, the Wife did not answer.

He had encountered this phenomenon countless times since their marriage.
However, his nerves were far too sensitive to ever grow accustomed to it.
Every time he encountered it, he invariably felt the same degree of anxiety.
He immediately sat down at the bedside.

“You can go now—I’ll stay here.”

The maid, who had been sitting absently at the edge of the futon watching Kenzo with a look of boredom, stood up without a word.
Then, saying “Goodnight,” she pressed her hands to the threshold in a bow and slid the door firmly shut.
Left behind on the tatami mat was a glinting object with a red streak.
He scowled as he picked up the needle the maid had dropped.
Normally he would have called the maid back, scolded her, and handed it over, but now he stayed silent, holding it in his hand while he thought for a time.
Finally he jabbed the needle sharply into the sliding door.
Then he turned back toward his Wife again.

The Wife’s eyes had left the ceiling.
However, it remained unclear exactly where they were focused.
Within her large black pupils lingered a semblance of living light.
Yet this light lacked any vital animation.
She kept her eyes wide open—eyes that seemed severed from her very soul—staring vacantly at whatever lay in their fixed direction.

“Hey.”

Kenzo shook his Wife’s shoulder.
Without responding, she moved only her head with deliberate slowness to turn her face partially toward him.
But in those eyes existed not the faintest glimmer acknowledging her husband’s presence.

“Hey, it’s me.
Do you understand?”

In such situations, within these hackneyed, curt, and brusque words he always used lay a pity, pain, and sorrow unknown to others and understood only by himself.
And within them too lay the sincerity and supplication of one kneeling in prayer to heaven.

“Please speak.
I beg you, look at me.”

He pleaded with his wife thus in his heart.
However, he never attempted to voice that earnest plea.
Despite being prone to sentimental moods, he was a man who could never become superficial.

The Wife’s eyes suddenly returned to their usual state.
And then, like someone waking from a dream, she looked at Kenzo.

“Husband?”

Her voice was thin and drawn-out.
She began to smile.
But when she noticed Kenzo's still-tense face, she stopped her smile.

"Has that man left?"

"Yeah."

The two remained silent for a time.
The wife bent her neck again to look at the child sleeping beside her.

"He sleeps soundly, doesn't he?"

The child lay fast asleep in bed, small pillows neatly arranged.

Kenzo placed his right hand on his wife's forehead.

"Shall I cool your head with water?"

"No need for that now."

"Are you alright?"

"Yes."

"Truly alright?"

"Yes.
You should rest too."

"I can't sleep yet."

Kenzo had to enter his study once more and spend the quiet night alone.

Fifty-One

Whereas his eyes were sharp, his mind remained clouded.
He suffered in the fog that obstructed his path of inquiry, like someone whose thread of thought had been severed.

He envisioned his own pitiable figure that would have to stand on a higher platform than many others come tomorrow morning.
He felt guilty toward the young man who earnestly stared at his own pitiable face or seriously transcribed his own halting words.
To wound his own vanity and self-esteem was a great pain for him, who could not rise above them.

"Will tomorrow’s lecture also fail to come together?"

When this thought arose, he suddenly grew sick of his own efforts.
At times when his train of thought had flowed smoothly, even the confidence and conceit that would occasionally surface—"My mind isn’t bad"—spurred by some unknown force, would vanish in an instant.
Simultaneously, his resentment toward his surroundings—the very things disrupting his mind’s workings—had grown more intense than usual.

He finally flung down the fountain pen as if hurling it away.

“I’m done.
I don’t care what happens.”

The clock already showed past one.
After extinguishing the oil lamp and stepping out into the darkened hallway along the veranda, only the two shoji screens of the back room at the far end were illuminated by a light.
Kenzo slid open one of them and stepped inside.

The child was curled up like a puppy, fast asleep.
His wife also lay on her back with eyes quietly closed, fast asleep.

Taking care not to make a sound, he sat down beside her, stretched his neck slightly, and peered down at his wife’s face from above.
Then he gently held his hand over her sleeping face.
She kept her mouth closed.
In his palm, he could faintly feel the lukewarm breath escaping from his Wife’s nostrils.
The breath was regular.
It was also calm.

He gradually withdrew the hand he had extended. Then the feeling surged in his chest that he still couldn’t be at ease unless he called out his Wife’s name one more time. But he immediately overcame that impulse. Next, he again placed his hand on his Wife’s shoulder and tried once more to shake her awake, but he stopped that as well.

"She’ll be alright."

He was finally able to arrive at an ordinary person’s conclusion. However, to him—whose nerves had grown acute regarding his Wife’s illness—this conclusion seemed nothing more than the ordinary procedure anyone would take in such circumstances.

For the Wife’s illness, deep sleep was the best medicine.
To Kenzo, who sat by her side for hours anxiously gazing at her face, this sleep—more precious than anything—settling quietly on her eyelids always made him feel as though he were witnessing nectar descending from heaven before his very eyes.
Yet when this sleep lasted too long, her eyes—now hidden from his view—instead became a source of unease.
In the end, to see into the depths behind those sealed lashes, he would sometimes deliberately shake his unresponsive Wife awake.
When she opened her heavy eyelids with a weary expression that pleaded Let me sleep longer, only then did he feel regret.
But his nerves refused to relent unless they confirmed her tangible existence, even through such pitiable means.

Before long, he changed into his sleepwear and got into his own bed.
He surrendered his clouded yet restless mind to the quiet governance of the night.
The night was too dark to cleanse that murkiness, yet sufficiently quiet to still its clamorous motion.

The next morning he awoke to his Wife’s voice calling his name.

“It’s time already.”

Still in bed, the Wife reached out, took the pocket watch from his bedside, and gazed at it.
The sound of the maid chopping something on the cutting board could be heard from the kitchen.

“Is the maid already up?”

“Yes. I went to wake her earlier.”

The Wife, having woken the maid and left her to her tasks, returned once more to bed.
Kenzo immediately got up.
The Wife also stood up at the same time.

Neither of them said a word about last night’s events, as though they had completely forgotten them.

52

The two of them paid neither attention nor reflection to their own behavior.
The two of them were dimly aware that they shared a causal relationship unique to themselves.
And they had fully grasped that this causal relationship remained utterly incomprehensible to anyone else.
Thus they never even entertained the doubt that they might appear strange in the eyes of third parties unaware of the circumstances.

Kenzo went out silently and worked as usual.
Yet even amidst his work, he would suddenly imagine his wife’s illness.
Before his eyes floated his wife’s black eyes, as though dreaming.
Then he immediately felt he must descend from the high platform where he stood and return home.
He grew certain that a summons from home might arrive at any moment.
He stood in a corner of the spacious room, gazing at the distant doorway directly opposite.
He looked up at the high domed ceiling resembling an upturned helmet’s metal bowl.
This ceiling—constructed by layering lacquered square timbers to exaggerate its height—failed to envelop his small heart.
Finally, his gaze fell upon the many youths lined up below him, listening devoutly to his words.
And then he was abruptly compelled by them to return to reality.

Kenzo, who had been so tormented by his wife’s illness, comparatively did not harbor fear of being cursed by Shimada.
He considered this old man to be a stubbornly cruel and avaricious man.
Yet at the same time, he had come to look down on him as someone who lacked the ability to fully exhibit those very traits.
Yet having his precious time wasted on unnecessary meetings became for Kenzo a nuisance beyond what most people would tolerate.

“What on earth does he intend to come here to say next time?”

Anticipating an onslaught, Kenzo’s tone—subtly betraying his unease—elicited his wife’s remark.

“You already know how this goes, don’t you?”
“You’d gain far more by cutting ties quickly instead of fretting over such things.”

Kenzo inwardly agreed with his wife’s words.
Yet he voiced a contrary response.

“I’m hardly concerned about someone like that.”
“There’s nothing fearsome about him to begin with.”

“No one called him fearsome.”
“But it must be a nuisance all the same—even for you.”

“There are countless things in this world you can’t abandon for a reason as simple as it being troublesome.”

Having exchanged this conversation with his wife—one laced with an element of obstinacy—Kenzo found himself unable to refuse the meeting when Shimada next came, despite his mind being more burdened than usual.

What Shimada had said about wanting to discuss something was, just as his wife had surmised, indeed a matter of money. He had been lying in wait for an opening to pounce, and perhaps thinking that waiting indefinitely would lead nowhere, he—who had been observing him for some time—began to close in on Kenzo at last, regardless of whether the opportunity was ripe.

“I’m in a bit of a bind, so... Since I have nowhere else to turn, please—just this once.”

In some part of the old man’s words lurked a presumptuousness—as though he felt entitled to have his demands accepted as an obligation. However, that had not manifested strongly enough to wound Kenzo’s nerves in a corner of his self-esteem.

Kenzo stood up and retrieved his wallet from the desk in his study.
His personal funds, not being in charge of the household finances, were naturally meager.
It was not uncommon for the wallet to lie empty beside the inkstone box for days on end.
He took out all the bills he could get his hands on and placed them before Shimada.
Shimada made a strange face.

"In any case, I can’t comply with your request exactly as you’ve made it."
"Even so, I gave you every last bit I had."

Kenzo opened his wallet and showed it to Shimada.
After he had left，Kenzo entered his study again，leaving the empty wallet tossed in the parlor.
He did not say a word to Wife about having given the money.

53

The next day, upon returning home at the usual hour, Kenzo sat at his desk and fixed his eyes on yesterday’s wallet—placed in its usual spot as though it were something important.
This large leather bifold was rather too splendid an item for him to possess—a high-quality article indeed.
He had bought it on the busiest street in London.

To him now, as the mementos he had brought back from abroad were losing all their interest, this wallet too could only appear as a useless encumbrance.
He even began to suspect why his wife had meticulously returned it to its original place. Casting an ironic glance at the empty wallet, he spent several days without laying a hand on it.

Eventually, a day came when money was needed for something.
Kenzo picked up the wallet from the desk and thrust it under his wife’s nose.
“Hey, put some money in here.”
The Wife, holding a ruler in her right hand, looked up at her husband’s face from below.

“It should be in there.”

After Shimada had left that day, she had made no attempt to ask her husband about anything. As a result, the fact that the old man had taken the money never became a topic between them. Kenzo assumed his wife was speaking without knowing the circumstances.

“I already gave that away.”
“The wallet’s been empty for ages now.”

The wife still seemed unaware of her own misunderstanding. She tossed the ruler onto the tatami and reached her hand toward her husband.

“Let me see.”

Kenzo handed it to his wife with a look that said this was ridiculous.
The Wife inspected the contents.
Inside were four or five bills.

“See? There’s money in here after all!”

She pinched the grimy, creased bills between her fingers and lifted them up to chest level to display.
Her manner carried a faint smile, as though basking in her own triumph.

“When did you put this in?”

“After that man left.”

Rather than feeling pleased by his Wife’s consideration, Kenzo regarded it as something unusual.
The Wife as he understood her was not a woman who often did such thoughtful things.

“Did she perhaps pity that I’d had money taken by Shimada in private?”

He thought this.
Yet he did not voice the reason to question her.
She too, who had never abandoned the same stance as her husband, did not trouble herself to offer any explanation.
The money she had replenished was thus silently accepted and silently spent.

Before long, the Wife’s belly gradually grew larger.
She began to breathe with labored breaths during her daily movements.
Her mood also changed frequently.

“There’s a chance I might not survive this time.”

She would sometimes say this and shed tears, moved by something she could not name.
Kenzo, who usually paid no heed, would at times find himself compelled to respond.

"Why?"

"I just can’t help feeling that way."

Within words that could rise no higher in question or explanation, there always lurked something vague.
That vague something passed through simple words and vanished into a distant place beyond their reach.
Like the sound of a bell slipping into an ethereal world beyond the reach of eardrums.

She recalled Kenzo’s brother’s wife who had died of morning sickness. And she compared it with her own past suffering from the same illness when she had given birth to her first daughter. When she thought about how she had managed to pass through that critical point where, had nourishment not passed through for another two or three days, she would have had to receive a nutrient enema, being alive felt more like a mere coincidence.

“Women are such trivial things, aren’t they?”

“That’s women’s duty, so there’s no helping it.”

Kenzo’s reply was commonplace.
But when he examined it in his own mind, it was nothing but utter nonsense.
He smiled bitterly to himself.

54

Kenzo’s mood also had its ups and downs.
Even if haphazardly spoken, his words were not all of the sort to put his wife’s mind at ease.
At times, the sight of her lying there in evident discomfort grated on his nerves unbearably.
He remained standing by her bedside and deliberately tried giving unnecessary orders in a stubborn manner.

The Wife did not move. She lay there with her large belly pressed against the tatami, adopting an attitude that said he could hit or kick her as he pleased for all she cared. The Wife, who had never been one for many words to begin with, now clung even more tightly to silence, maintaining her composure even as she saw before her eyes how this was agitating her husband.

"In other words, she's stubborn."

In Kenzo's chest, these words were deeply engraved as though they encapsulated all of his Wife's defining traits. He had to forget all other matters entirely. The notion of stubbornness alone became the focal point of all his attention. He plunged everything else into darkness and cast as intense a beam of hatred as he could upon this four-character phrase. The Wife once again received that hatred silently, like a fish or a snake. Consequently, to others, while the Wife always appeared as a woman of dignity, her husband could not help but be judged as a deranged hothead.

“If you act so obstinately, you’ll bring on another fit of hysteria.”

From the Wife’s eyes occasionally came such a light.
For some reason, Kenzo intensely feared that light.
At the same time, he intensely detested it.
Patient by nature, he inwardly prayed for safety while outwardly putting on a front of “Do as you please.”
The Wife was well aware that somewhere in that resolute attitude there was always a weakness akin to a facade.

“It’s not like it matters—I’ll just die in childbirth anyway.”

She muttered loudly enough for Kenzo to hear.
Kenzo wanted to tell her to drop dead.

One night, he suddenly awoke and saw his Wife lying there with her large eyes wide open, fixed on the ceiling.
In her hand was the razor he had brought back from the West.
She gripped only the black handle without raising the blade folded into its ebony sheath, so the cold light did not strike his vision.
Even so, he started.
He sat up halfway on the bedding and suddenly wrenched the razor from his Wife’s hand.

“Don’t you do anything stupid.”

No sooner had he spoken than he threw the razor.
The razor struck the glass embedded in the shoji, shattered part of it, and fell onto the far edge.
The Wife remained dazed, not uttering a single word like someone lost in a dream.

Was she truly driven by desperation to resort to blades? Or was she compelled by her illness’s seizure to surrender her will and handle edged tools in a trance? Or was this merely a woman’s ploy to startle others—specifically to overpower her husband—and if so, where exactly lay her true intent?
Was she trying to make her husband—the one who treated her—return to being a peaceful and kind man? Or was she merely driven by a superficial desire to dominate?—Kenzo, lying in bed, interpreted a single incident in five or six ways.
And at times, he would quietly turn his sleepless eyes toward his Wife to observe her movements.
The Wife, whose state of being asleep or awake was unclear, did not move at all.
She looked as though she were flaunting death.
Once again, Kenzo returned to grappling with the solution to his own problems upon his pillow.

That solution was far more crucial in shaping his real life than his school lectures.
The basis of his relationship with his Wife had to be firmly established through that single solution alone.
In a time far simpler than the present, he had believed wholeheartedly that his Wife’s inexplicable actions stemmed solely from illness.
In those days, whenever her fits occurred, he would kneel at her feet with the earnestness of one confessing sins before God.
He believed this to be the kindest and most honorable course a husband could take.

"If only I could clearly understand the cause even now."

His heart overflowed with such compassion.
Yet unfortunately, the cause no longer appeared as simple as it once had.
He had no choice but to keep thinking.
Exhausted by ultimately unsolvable problems, he would doze off only to have to rise again immediately and go out to deliver his lectures.
He never managed to speak a single word to his wife about what had happened the previous evening.
By sunrise, his wife too wore a face as though she had forgotten everything.

Fifty-Five

After such unpleasant scenes, nature would usually step in between them as a mediator.
The two of them had, without realizing it, begun to speak like an ordinary married couple.

However, at times, nature remained nothing more than a complete bystander.
The couple lived with their backs turned to each other, no matter how far they went.
Whenever their relationship reached a state of extreme tension, Kenzo would invariably tell his wife to return to her family home.
The wife, for her part, wore an expression declaring that whether she returned or not was entirely her own affair.
Because he found this attitude hateful, Kenzo did not scruple to repeat the same words again and again.

“Well then, take the children and go to your family’s house for now.”

The Wife had once returned to her family home following these words.
Under the condition that he would send them provisions every month, Kenzo rejoiced at having regained his former student-like existence.
He observed this sudden transformation of being left alone with only the maid in the relatively spacious residence and did not feel the slightest loneliness.

"Ah, how clear and pleasant this feels!"

He set up a small dining table in the center of the eight-mat room and wrote in his notebook there from morning until evening.
As it was the height of summer, he, not being physically strong, would often lie on his back and collapse onto the tatami mats.
On those tatami mats—unknowable as to when they had last been replaced—the yellowed stains of age, steaming against his back, had seeped even into his heart.

His notebook too was filled with characters so small they felt stiflingly cramped.
For him at that time, nothing brought greater pleasure than preparing as many extra drafts as possible—manuscripts so cramped they could only be likened to fly heads.
And it was painful.
It was also a duty.

The maid—said to be the daughter of a nurseryman in Sugamo—had brought two or three bonsai plants from her home for him.
Placing them on the edge of the tearoom, she served his meals while chatting about various things.
He was pleased by her kindness.
But he despised her bonsai.
They were cheap items that you could buy pot and all for just twenty or thirty sen at any festival.

He wrote in his notebooks without ever thinking about his wife.
The thought of showing his face at her family home did not arise at all.
All concern for her illness vanished entirely.

Even if she fell ill, her parents were there, weren’t they? If it were serious, they’d surely let me know.

His mind was far calmer than when the two of them were together.
Not only did he not meet any of his Wife’s relatives, but he also did not go to see his own brother and sister.
In return, they did not come either.
He spent the cool nights following his daytime studies walking all by himself.
Then he entered the patched blue mosquito net and slept.

A little over a month later，the Wife suddenly came.

At that time, Kenzo was strolling through the not-so-spacious front garden under the evening sky where the sun had set.
When his footsteps reached the front of the study’s veranda, his wife suddenly emerged from the shadow of a half-rotted lattice door.

“You needn’t make it seem as though it’s all because of you.”

Kenzo noticed that the surface of the geta his Wife wore was oddly frayed, their heels worn down to an unsightly degree.
He felt pity.
He took out three one-yen bills from his wallet and pressed them into the Wife’s hand.

“They’re disgraceful—use this to buy new geta.”

Several days after the Wife’s return, her mother visited Kenzo for the first time.
Her request differed little from what his Wife had asked—she merely elaborated on wanting him to take them back again while seated formally on tatami.
To refuse someone already resolved to return struck Kenzo as heartless.
He consented immediately.
The Wife came back to Komagome with their children once more.
Yet her demeanor remained unchanged from before she had left for her parents’ home.
Kenzo felt inwardly deceived by her mother.

Every time he replayed these summer events in his mind alone, he grew irritated.
He found himself wondering how much longer this would continue.

56

At the same time, Shimada never forgot to show his face at Kenzo’s place from time to time.
The fear that having once gained a foothold in financial matters meant losing everything if he let go now tormented him all the more like a persistent horsefly.
Kenzo would occasionally enter his study and have to produce that wallet before the old man.

“That’s a fine wallet you have there.”
“Well, well.”
“Foreign-made things really are different, aren’t they?”

Shimada took the large bifold in hand and, as if deeply impressed, turned it over front and back to examine.

“If I may ask—how much did this cost over there?”
“Over there?”

“I believe it was ten shillings.”
“Converted to Japanese currency, that would come to about five yen.”

“Five yen?—Five yen is quite a reasonable price.”
“There’s a bag maker in Asakusa’s Kurofune-cho that I’ve known for ages—they could make one for you much cheaper there.”
“Next time you need one, I’ll place the order for you.”

Kenzo’s wallet was never full.
There were times when it was completely empty.
In such cases—since there was no help for it—he would not rise no matter how long time passed.
Shimada too found excuses to prolong his stay.

“I won’t leave until you give me spending money.”
What a nuisance he is.

Kenzo seethed inwardly.
Yet however much trouble he felt, the Wife never took extra money from their funds to give to the old man.
The Wife too acted as though this much were permissible and voiced no particular complaints.

As this went on, Shimada’s attitude gradually became more proactive.
He began nonchalantly demanding lump sums of twenty or thirty yen from him.

“Please, just this once.
At my age, I have no children to lean on—you’re the only one I can turn to now.”

He hadn’t even noticed how brazen his own words were.
Even so, when Kenzo remained sullenly silent, he shifted his sunken, dull eyes with a cunning look and kept staring him up and down.

“With a lifestyle like this, there’s no way you can’t come up with ten or twenty yen.”

He even went so far as to say such things.

When he left, Kenzo turned to his wife with a look of displeasure.

“He’s trying to wear me down bit by bit.”
“Since he tried to take everything at once and was rejected, this time he’s keeping his distance and inching closer bit by bit.”
“He’s truly a nuisance.”

Kenzo was the sort of man who, whenever angered, would often let slip a part of his pent-up resentment through the use of superlatives like “truly,” “the most,” or “greatly.”
When it came to matters like this, the Wife, instead of being tenacious, was quite composed.

“It’s your fault for getting entangled.”
“That’s why you should’ve been cautious from the start and kept him at bay.”

Kenzo’s resentful cheeks and lips showed an expression that might as well have declared he’d known this all along.

“If I want to sever ties, I can do it anytime.”

“But won’t all your past dealings just amount to a loss?”

“Well, from your perspective—having no part in any of this—it must look that way.”
“But I’m not like you.”

Kenzo’s meaning did not get through to the Wife.

“From your perspective anyway, someone like me must seem a fool.”

Kenzo grew weary even of correcting her misunderstandings.

When even a minor emotional rift arose between them, they wouldn’t exchange this much conversation.
He silently watched Shimada’s retreating figure before promptly entering his study.
There he sat motionless, neither reading books nor taking up his brush.
For her part, the Wife showed no inclination to tend indefinitely to this solitary man who seemed severed from family life.
Since her husband had confined himself in the study of his own volition, she resigned herself to this inevitability and paid him no heed at all.

Fifty-seven

Kenzo’s heart was crumpled like a ball of wastepaper.
At times, he grew so tormented by this surge of bile that he could no longer endure keeping it contained without venting it through some pretext.
He would kick off the veranda flowerpots that the children had wheedled their mother into buying—acts of meaningless destruction.
Even the reddish unglazed pot shattering with a clatter just as he intended gave him some small satisfaction.
But no sooner had he seen the pitiful sight of those cruelly crushed stems and blossoms than he was overcome by a fleeting helplessness.
The awareness that it was their father who had mercilessly destroyed his own children’s beautiful diversion—they still blissfully unaware—only deepened his sorrow.
He half-regretted his actions.
Yet he could not bring himself to confess his fault before the children.

"It’s not my responsibility."
"Ultimately, who is it that makes me do such insane things?"
"That guy’s the one to blame."

In the depths of his gut, such excuses always lurked.

Calm conversation was necessary to settle his turbulent mood.
But for him, who shunned others, such conversation could never reach him.
He was alone, and in his solitude, he felt as though smoldering from his own inner heat.
Even on ordinary days, when he saw business cards from insurance solicitors and the like—which were never welcome—he would raise his voice and scold the blameless maid who relayed messages.
The voice clearly reached even the ears of the solicitor standing at the entrance.
He later felt ashamed of his own attitude.
He grew angry at himself—at least at the self that could not approach all of humanity with goodwill.
At the same time, he boldly recited within his mind the same sort of excuse he might make if he had kicked over a child’s flower pot.

“It’s not my fault.”
“Even if that man doesn’t understand that it’s not my fault, I know it perfectly well myself.”

He, lacking faith, could not bring himself to say, “God understands well.” If he could have said that, he felt no happiness at what might have been. His morality had always begun with himself. And there it ended.

He sometimes thought about money.
There were days when he wondered why he had not worked toward amassing material wealth until now.
"Even I—if I’d focused solely on that—"

In his heart, there was also such self-conceit.

He felt his own wretched living conditions to be absurd.
He felt sorry for relatives poorer than himself who were struggling with even more frugal living conditions.
He even gazed upon Shimada—who was squabbling from morning till night with utterly base desires—with pity.

“Everyone wants money.”
“And beyond money, they don’t want anything else at all.”

When he thought this way, he could no longer understand what he had been doing all this time.

He was by nature a man inept at earning money.
Even when he could earn, he begrudged the time it required.
Fresh out of school, he had turned down all other offers and taken forty yen from a single institution, content with that.
Half of those forty yen had been taken by his grandfather.
With the remaining twenty, he rented a room in an old temple and survived on potatoes and fried tofu.
Yet throughout that period, he ultimately achieved nothing.

The man he had been then and the man he was now differed considerably in many respects.
Yet his lack of financial cushion and his ultimate failure to achieve anything appeared unchanged no matter how far back he looked.

He wanted to dispose of his half-hearted self by choosing one of two paths—either becoming wealthy or attaining greatness.
But for someone as imprudent as him, it was already too late to begin amassing wealth now.
When he tried to pursue greatness, various worldly cares interfered.
Upon scrutinizing the roots of these troubles, he found that his lack of money remained the fundamental cause.
Not knowing what to do, he grew increasingly agitated.
A considerable span of time still lay before something truly great—something beyond money’s dominion—would enter his view.

58

When Kenzo returned from abroad, he already felt the need for money.
After a long absence, when he came to establish a new household in his birthplace of Tokyo, there was not even a single silver coin in his pocket.

When he left Japan, he entrusted his wife and children to his wife’s father.
The father vacated a small house within his estate and assigned it as their residence.
The house where the Wife’s grandparents had lived until their deaths was narrow but not particularly shabby.
The decorative sliding doors were pasted with paintings by Nanko, calligraphy by Hosai, and all manner of mementos that evoked the tastes of the deceased—kept just as they had been in life.

The father was a government official.
He was not in a position to live lavishly, but neither was he so hard-pressed as to make his own daughter and her children—entrusted to him during Kenzo’s absence—suffer hardships.
Moreover, a certain monthly stipend was provided to Kenzo’s Wife from official sources.
Kenzo left his family behind with peace of mind.

While he was abroad, the cabinet changed.

At that time, the wife’s father was pulled out from his relatively safe sinecure and assumed a position that required him to work vigorously.
Unfortunately, this new cabinet soon collapsed.
The father had no choice but to be swept into the whirlpool of collapse.

Far away, Kenzo, having heard of this change, turned eyes filled with sympathy toward the skies of his homeland. However, regarding his wife’s father’s financial situation, he hardly troubled his mind over it, deeming there was no particular need for concern.

Imprudent as he was，even after returning，he paid no attention to that matter.
Nor did he notice.
He assumed that even with just the twenty yen his wife received each month，they could manage sufficiently to raise two children with a maid.

“After all，there’s no rent to pay.”

His carefree assumption made his eyes widen in shock when confronted with reality.
His wife had worn through all her everyday clothes during her husband’s absence.
With no alternative, she ended up altering Kenzo’s plain men’s garments left behind and wearing them.
Meanwhile, cotton spilled from the futon.
The bedding had split open.
Yet her father watching nearby could do nothing.
After losing his position, he had gambled on speculation and lost what meager savings remained.

Kenzo, who had returned from abroad wearing a high collar so stiff he could barely turn his neck, could only stare silently at his wife and children in their bleak circumstances.
He—the Westernized one—was cruelly struck down by irony.
His lips lacked even the courage to twist into a bitter smile.

Soon after, his luggage arrived.
His luggage, from which he had not brought even a single ring for his wife, consisted solely of books.
In the cramped retirement dwelling, he thought it foolish that he couldn't even open the lid of the box.
He began searching for a new house.
At the same time, he also had to arrange for money.

As his only recourse, he resigned from the position he had held until then.
As an inevitable consequence of that act, he was able to receive a severance payment.
The amount that came into his hands under the regulation—which granted half a month's salary upon resigning after one year of service—was, needless to say, not substantial.
But with that, he barely managed to acquire the furniture and household goods necessary for daily life.

He tucked a small amount of money into his pocket and walked around various secondhand shops with an old friend.
Because this friend had a habit of recklessly haggling down prices regardless of the item's quality, Kenzo was forced to spend no small amount of time merely walking about.
Tea trays, tobacco trays, braziers, rice bowls—there was no shortage of things that caught his eye, but those he could actually afford rarely materialized.
The friend would order Kenzo to settle for this price, and if the shop owner refused, he would leave Kenzo at the storefront and stride briskly ahead.
Kenzo had no choice but to hurry after him.
Whenever Kenzo lingered even slightly, the friend would call out loudly to him from afar.
He was a kind man.
At the same time, he was so fiercely persistent that he seemed unable to distinguish whether he was buying things for himself or for others.

59

Kenzo also had to purchase new bookshelves and desks in addition to their everyday furniture.
He stood at the storefront of a man who made Western-style cabinetry for a living and negotiated with the proprietor, who kept clacking his abacus.

The bookshelf he had commissioned lacked both glass doors and a back panel.
The accumulation of dust was not something his strained finances allowed him to mind.
The wood had not been properly dried, so when he placed the heavy Western books on it, the shelf board warped disconcertingly.

Even gathering such crude furnishings alone had cost him no small amount of time.
The money he had gone to the trouble of resigning to obtain had already vanished without him realizing.
Careless as he was, he opened his eyes in wonder and surveyed his bleak new residence.
And then he recalled how, while abroad, compelled by necessity to have clothes made, he had ended up at a loss as to how to repay the money borrowed from a fellow lodger.

Then came a letter from that man pressing him to make arrangements for repayment if possible.
Kenzo sat down before the newly fashioned high desk and spent some time gazing at this letter.

Though their cohabitation in that distant land had been brief, the memory of that person retained for Kenzo a faint sense of freshness.
The man had graduated from the same school as he.
Their years of graduation were not far apart.
Yet between the financial means of this splendid official—dispatched on government orders under the pretext of investigating some important matter—and Kenzo’s own stipend, there yawned a gap so vast as to defy comparison.

He had rented a parlor in addition to his bedroom.

At night, he would put on an elegant nightgown made of satin with embroidery and sit cozily by the hearth reading books.

In a cramped north-facing room, Kenzo sat stiff and cowering as though confined, secretly envying that man's circumstances.

Even Kenzo had known the wretched experience of skimping on lunches.
Once, after going out, he bought a sandwich on his way back and wandered aimlessly through a spacious park while eating it.
Fending off the slanting rain with an umbrella clutched in one hand while repeatedly stuffing his mouth with thinly sliced meat and bread using the other proved excruciatingly awkward.
Several times he moved to sit on a bench there, only to hesitate.
The bench lay thoroughly drenched by the rain.

On one occasion, he opened the tin of biscuits he had bought in town when noon came. And without drinking so much as a sip of hot or cold water, he would crunch vigorously on the hard, brittle stuff and force it down using nothing but his own saliva.

On another occasion, he shared a perfunctory meal at a dubious cheap eatery with drivers and laborers. The backs of the benches there rose steeply like tall folding screens, so unlike an ordinary dining hall, he couldn’t take in the entire room at a glance—but he could freely observe the faces of those seated in the same row as himself. They all had faces that looked as though they hadn’t seen a bath in ages.

Kenzo, living such a life, must have appeared so pitiable in the eyes of this fellow lodger that he often invited Kenzo out to lunch.
He also took him to the public bath.
At tea time, he came over to call on him.
It was during this time, as Kenzo had grown quite close to him through these interactions, that he borrowed money from the man.

At that moment, he showed a careless attitude as though discarding scrap paper and handed two five-pound banknotes to Kenzo.
He never said when to pay it back.
Kenzo, for his part, had thought that once he returned to Japan, things would somehow work out.

After returning to Japan, Kenzo vividly remembered these banknotes.
But until receiving the demand letter, he hadn't considered repayment would become so urgent.
At an impasse, he reluctantly went to visit an old friend's house.
He knew full well this friend wasn't particularly wealthy.
Yet he also understood this friend held a position allowing slightly more financial leeway than himself.
The friend indeed accepted his request and laid out all required money before him.
He immediately went to repay the person who'd shown him kindness abroad.
He resolved to have his newly indebted friend accept repayment through monthly ten-yen installments.

60

Having finally settled in Tokyo this way, Kenzo became aware of his material meagerness. Even so, he had remained happy while his awareness of superiority in realms beyond financial power persisted in his mind. When that awareness was finally thrown into disarray by monetary concerns, he reflected for the first time. Even the black cotton crested kimono he casually wore when going out now began to seem like proof of his incompetence.

"It's unconscionable—now there's someone else coming to pester me for money."

He regarded Shimada as the very worst example of that breed.

That his present self occupied a higher social standing than Shimada from every conceivable angle was an undeniable fact.
Equally undeniable was how this left his vanity utterly untouched.
To now receive polite greetings from someone who once addressed him so brusquely brought him no satisfaction.
To be seen as a source of petty cash—from the perspective of one who judged him a pauper—was infuriating beyond measure.

He decided to ask his sister for her opinion, just to be sure.

“Just how desperate *is* that man, I wonder?”

“Well, that’s true.”
“If he’s coming to ask for money this often, he must be in quite a bind.”
“But Ken, if you keep giving to others like this all the time, there’ll be no end to it.”
“No matter how much money you make—”

“Do I look like I make that much money?”

“But compared to our household, you’re the one who can make as much money as you want, aren’t you?”

Sister used her own household’s finances as the standard. As ever verbose, she explained in detail to Kenzo how Hida had never once brought home his full monthly earnings; how his meager salary required disproportionate social expenses; how his frequent night duties made lunch allowances alone amount to considerable sums; and how each month’s shortfall was barely covered by Bon and year-end bonuses.

“Even those bonuses—it’s not like he hands over the entire amount to me.”
“But lately, the two of us are practically like retirees—we send our monthly provisions to Hiko-san to manage, so we ought to be a little better off, you see.”

While living together as an adoptive family yet keeping their finances separate, Sister and her husband maintained special provisions such as mochi they had pounded themselves and sugar they had purchased themselves.
It seemed they had made it a rule to pay for any treats served to guests visiting their home entirely out of their own pockets.
Kenzo gazed with an almost vacant expression at the economic state of this household, which existed under an extreme individualism.
However, for Sister, who lacked both ideology and logic, there was no phenomenon more natural than this.

“Kenzo, you’re lucky you don’t have to stoop to such things.”
“And since you’ve got the skills, all you have to do is work and you can earn as much money as you want.”

When he listened silently to her words, Shimada and his troubles would tend to vanish from his mind.
Even so, she finally added.

“Well, that’s fine.”
“When it becomes too much of a hassle, just say something like ‘I’ll give it to you when it’s convenient’ and send him away.”
“If he’s still being a nuisance, just pretend you’re not home.”
“There’s no need to concern yourself.”

This advice struck Kenzo as utterly characteristic of Sister.

Having failed to get a clear answer from Sister, he then cornered Hida and posed the same question.
Hida simply said everything was fine.

"After all, he still has that land and house he's always had—it's certain he isn't in dire straits."
"And O-nui-san has been properly sending remittances to Otoh-san."
"He's bound to come spouting irresponsible nonsense—just leave him be."

What Hida had said also remained within the realm of irresponsibility and was no different from his usual glib remarks.

61

Finally, Kenzo turned to his wife.

“What on earth could Shimada’s actual circumstances be like now? Whether I ask Sister or Hida, I can’t get a clear picture of the actual situation, but—”

The Wife looked up at her husband’s face with an air of indifference.
She cradled her large belly—still swollen from recent childbirth—as if in discomfort, and rested her disheveled head on a vermilion-lacquered boat-shaped pillow.

"If you’re so concerned about it, why don’t you go investigate it yourself?"
"Then you’ll find out right away."
"Even Sister doesn’t associate with him anymore these days—she couldn’t possibly know anything definite about that."

“I don’t have time for that.”

“Then if you leave it alone, that would be the end of it.”

Her reply carried a tone that criticized Kenzo for what could be perceived as unmanliness. She had been molded by nature not to voice even her deepest thoughts carelessly, and she rarely bothered to argue at length even about the strained relationship between her birth family and her husband. There were many days when she maintained an air of perfect composure, pretending complete ignorance of matters like Shimada—who bore no relation to her whatsoever. The image of her neurotic husband reflected in the mirror of her mind remained perpetually that of a timid and obstinate man.

“Leave it alone?”

Kenzo retorted.
The Wife did not answer.

“Haven’t I been leaving it alone all along?”

The Wife still did not answer.
Kenzo abruptly stood up and entered his study.

Scenes like this were often repeated between them, not limited to matters involving Shimada. Conversely, given the flow of their interactions, the opposite scenario would sometimes arise—

“I hear O-nui-san has spinal disease.”

“If it’s spinal disease, that must be difficult.”

“I hear there’s no hope of her recovering.”
“That’s why Shimada is worried.”
“If that person dies, the connection between Shibano and Otoh-san will be severed, so the usual money they’ve been sending every month might stop coming.”

“How pitiful, to come down with something like spinal disease now.”
“She’s still young, isn’t she?”

“I told you she’s a year older than me, didn’t I?”

“Does she have any children?”

“It seems there are quite a number.”
“I haven’t properly inquired how many exactly.”

The Wife imagined the feelings of a woman not yet forty who was about to die, leaving behind many children who had not yet come of age.
The results of her own impending childbirth, now drawing near, also began to weigh on her mind.
While confronting her swollen belly, she found her husband’s lack of concern both pitiable and enviable.
Her husband did not notice at all.

“The reason Shimada’s so worried must ultimately stem from his own poor everyday conduct.”
“Apparently he’s disliked by everyone.”
“According to Shimada, that fellow Shibano was a heavy drinker and quarrelsome—which supposedly kept him from ever getting promoted—but I suspect there’s more to it than that.”
“No doubt they’ve simply grown weary of Shimada himself.”

“Even if they aren’t tired of him, with that many children around, there’s nothing he could’ve done anyway.”

“That’s right. Since he’s a military man, he’s probably just as poor as I am.”

“Why on earth did that man get involved with Otoh-san in the first place—”

The Wife hesitated slightly.
Kenzo didn’t understand her meaning.
She rephrased her question.

“Why did he become so close with Otoh-san?”

When Otoh-san was still a young widow, there had been an occasion requiring her to visit an administrative office for some business. At the time, Shimada—taking pity on a woman unaccustomed to handling such matters alone—had kindly assisted her in various ways. This, Kenzo had heard as a child from someone, was how their relationship began.
Yet how to apply the concept of romantic love to Shimada was something he now found incomprehensible.

“Greed must have played a part too, don’t you think?”

The Wife said nothing.

Sixty-two

The report about O-nui-san’s incurable illness softened Kenzo’s heart.
He and she had not met face to face in years; even during their frequent obligatory meetings in the past, they had scarcely exchanged familiar words.
When sitting down or rising, they had generally settled for silent bows.
If one could call such a relationship an “association,” theirs was exceedingly faint and insubstantial.
Though lacking any strong favorable impression, her image—unclouded by unpleasant memories—now held far greater value to him than those of Shimada or Otsune.
It lay in its power to stir compassion for humanity within his hardening heart.
And in its capacity to condense vague, scattered humankind into one relatively distinct representative.
He gazed distantly at her death-approaching figure with sympathetic eyes opened.

At the same time, a sense of self-interest stirred within him.
The death of O-nui-san, which might occur at any moment, would undoubtedly give the cunning Shimada another pretext to extort him.
Having clearly foreseen this, he wanted to avoid it by any means possible.
Yet he was not the kind of man to devise strategies for evading such situations.

"There's no choice but to let matters collide and rupture."

He resigned himself to this.
He folded his arms and waited for Shimada to come.
Before Shimada could arrive, he had not expected that his adversary Otsune would suddenly come to visit.

The Wife appeared before him as usual in the study and said, “That Mrs. Hatano has finally come.”
He looked more annoyed than surprised.
To his wife, his demeanor seemed like that of a dithering coward.

“Will you see her?”

Her phrasing—if you’re going to meet her then meet her; if you’re going to refuse then refuse—urged him to decide one way or another quickly.

“Since I’ll meet her, give it.”

He gave the same greeting as when Shimada had come.
The Wife heaved herself up heavily and went to the back.

When he entered the parlor, he saw an old woman dressed in shabby clothes sitting hunched over.
The simple appearance—so utterly different from the Otsune he had imagined in his mind—surprised him far more powerfully than Shimada had.

Her demeanor, compared to Shimada’s, was quite the opposite.
She bowed politely, as though standing before someone of a different social standing.
Her speech was also exceedingly courteous.

Kenzo recalled the stories about her family home that he had often heard as a child.
According to her accounts, both the countryside residence and its garden were splendid creations that embodied the utmost in goodness and beauty.
The distinctive feature of water flowing freely beneath the floorboards remained a key detail she unfailingly emphasized.
The phrase "Nanten pillars" still echoed faintly in Kenzo's memory.
Yet young Kenzo had never known where in the countryside this grand estate might lie.
Nor could he recall ever being taken there afterward.
As far as Kenzo knew, she herself had never returned to that large house where she was born.
When his critical eye had grown keen enough to vaguely discern her character, he began suspecting this too might be another of her fanciful fabrications.

Kenzo compared the woman who had tried to present herself as wealthy, refined, and virtuous as possible with the white-haired old woman now sitting deferentially before him, gazing in wonder at the contrast time had wrought.

Otsune had always been a woman of ample flesh.
The Otsune he now saw still retained that corpulence.
If anything, he suspected she might have grown even stouter than in her younger days.
Yet she had undergone a complete transformation.
From every angle, she appeared a country-bred old woman.
To put it with some exaggeration, she resembled an aged villager who might come trudging from nearby hamlets with a basket of roasted barley strapped to her back.

Sixty-three

“Ah, you’ve changed.”

The instant their eyes met, both felt the same thing simultaneously.
Yet Otsune—who had deliberately come—was fully prepared for this transformation.
Kenzo, however, lacked nearly all such readiness.
Thus it was not the guest but rather the host who found himself blindsided.
Still, Kenzo showed little sign of surprise.
His nature compelled this restraint; more crucially, he dreaded the theatrical flourishes spilling from Otsune’s calculated artifice.
To endure her performance now as some fresh spectacle struck him as unbearable.
If possible, he wished to seal her vulnerabilities preemptively.
This would serve her interests—and his own.

He listened to a rough account of her life history up to the present from her.
During that time, a certain amount of misfortune—inseparable from the human world—seemed to linger fittingly.

After parting with Shimada, when she married Hatano in her second marriage and no child was born between them, they decided to take in an adopted daughter from somewhere and raise her.
Whether it was some years after Hatano’s death or while he was still alive—though Otsune did not specify which—the adopted daughter took in an adopted son-in-law.

The adopted son-in-law’s business was a liquor store.
The store was located in a rather bustling part of Tokyo.
It was unclear exactly how prosperous their livelihood had been, but words of weakness like "troubled" or "destitute" never escaped Otsune’s lips.

Eventually, the adopted son-in-law went off to war and died, so the women alone could no longer keep the shop running.
The parent and child had no choice but to close it down and, relying on a relative living near the outskirts, moved to a far more remote area.
Until the daughter found a second husband there, they had managed to make ends meet solely on the annuity that went down each year to the bereaved family of the deceased adopted son-in-law.…

Otsune’s account was, contrary to Kenzo’s expectations, rather calm.
Exaggerated gestures, grandiose language, dramatic lines—these did not appear in great number.
Nevertheless, he noticed that there was not the slightest rapport between himself and this old woman.

“Ah, I see. That’s very…”

Kenzo’s greeting was brief.
Having given her this reply—too brief even for an ordinary exchange—he found himself feeling no particular sense of lack.

"The karma from the past still haunts me even now."

Having thought this, he could not feel at ease.
Though by nature disinclined to cry, it was characteristic of him to sometimes wonder why truly tearful people or situations never presented themselves before him.

"My eyes are built to well up with tears at any time—and yet."

He stared intently at the figure of the old woman sitting curled up on the zabuton.
And he sadly observed her character, which did not allow tears to dwell in her own eyes.

He took out the five-yen note from his wallet and placed it before her.

“Excuse me—please take a rickshaw home.”

She declined at first, saying she hadn’t come for such purposes, then accepted Kenzo’s offering.
Regrettably, this gift held only hollow sympathy, devoid of any naked sincerity.
She seemed fully aware of this.
And so she carried herself as one resigned—human hearts that had drifted apart over time were now beyond mending; there was nothing left but acceptance.
He stood in the genkan watching Otsune’s retreating back.

If that pitiful old woman had been a good person, I could have wept.
Even if I couldn't weep, I might have been able to satisfy her heart more.
I could have taken in my destitute former foster parent and given them their deathbed water.

No one could fathom what lay in Kenzo’s heart as he silently thought these things.

Sixty-four

“So she finally came too—the old woman.”
“Until now it was just the old man, but now it’s both the old man and the old woman.”
“From now on, you’ll be haunted by both of them.”

The Wife’s words were uncharacteristically arid.
Her attitude—neither jest nor cold critique—irritated Kenzo’s already reflective mood.
He gave no reply.

“Did she bring up that story again?”

The Wife asked Kenzo in the same tone.

“What do you mean by ‘that story’?”

“That story about how you used to wet the bed when you were little and troubled that old woman.”

Kenzo did not even force a wry smile.

But within him already lay the question of why Otsune had not mentioned it.
The moment Kenzo heard her name, he had been reminded of her eloquence—so much so that Otsune was a woman who spoke with remarkable skill.
Above all, she possessed an artful ability to protect herself.
Kenzo’s biological father—easily swayed by smooth talk and prone to delight in transparent flattery—never failed to praise her.

“She’s an admirable woman.”
“After all, she has good social standing.”

When turmoil arose in Shimada’s household, she laid out every word she could muster before her father.
And then she shed copious amounts of sorrowful and bitter tears over those words.
Father was deeply moved.
He immediately became her ally.

In terms of being skilled at flattery, Kenzo’s father also doted greatly on his sister.
Whenever she came asking for money, he would say things like “Even I can’t keep up with this,” yet eventually the necessary sum would always be taken from the cashbox.

“Hida may be that sort of man, but it’s because I pity O-nui-san.”

After his sister left, his father would always utter what sounded like excuses loud enough for those nearby to hear.

Yet Sister’s eloquence—which had made Father so pliant—proved far inferior to Otsune’s when compared.
In sincerity especially, it fell woefully short.
Indeed, when Kenzo was sixteen or seventeen, he had briefly wondered how many besides himself—who had actually dealt with her—could see through her character at all, so masterful was her way with words.

When Kenzo met her, his inner vexation stemmed largely from this eloquence.

"I'm the one who raised you."

The thought that she might expound on this single phrase for two or even three hours - forcing him to relive memories of childhood obligations anew - made him recoil in exasperation.

"Shimada is your enemy."

She seemed determined to exaggerate this old conviction lingering in her mind like a flickering newsreel and lay it bare before him once more.
He could not help but shrink from this too.

Whichever he listened to, tears intermingled with resentment were undoubtedly present.
The sight of those tears, so decoratively employed, was unbearable to him.
She was not a woman who spoke in a loud voice like her sister.
But when she deemed it necessary, she infused her words with a repulsive intensity.
It was nearly the same demeanor and tone as the woman in Encho’s sentimental tales who, while repeatedly thrusting a long fire tongs into the ashes, would recount her resentment at being deceived by others, tormenting her listener.

When his expectations were betrayed，he found it not so much fortunate as utterly strange that Otsune’s character had congealed into an unmistakable mold—unyielding as prison bars—lodged deep within his mind.

The Wife explained to him:

“Isn’t this something from nearly thirty years ago?”
“Even she must feel some restraint by now.”
“Besides，most people have already forgotten.”
“And human nature changes little by little over time.”

Even when he laid out restraint, forgetfulness, and changes in nature before him and thought them through, none of it made any sense to Kenzo.

“She’s not that indifferent a woman.”

He couldn’t accept it unless he said this in his gut.

**Sixty-Five**

The Wife, who did not know Otsune, laughed at her husband’s persistence instead.

“That’s just your habit, so there’s no helping it.”

The part of Kenzo reflected in her eyes had indeed always been this way. She particularly thought this disagreeable habit of her husband’s manifested most glaringly in his dealings with her own family.

“It’s not me who’s persistent—it’s that woman who’s persistent. You’ve never dealt with her, so you can’t grasp how sound my judgment is—that’s why you spout such nonsense!”

“But since the woman you imagined has now appeared before you as a completely different person, isn’t it only natural for you to retract your old views?”

“If she’d truly become a different person, I’d take it back anytime—but she hasn’t. Only the surface has changed; her insides remain exactly as they always were.”

“How can you know that?”
“You don’t have any new evidence at all!”

“Even if you don’t understand, I know perfectly well.”

“You’re quite dogmatic yourself.”

“As long as the criticism hits the mark, being dogmatic isn’t a problem at all.”

“But if it doesn’t hit the mark, a great many people will end up being inconvenienced.”
“As for that old woman—since she has no connection to me—I don’t particularly care, though.”

Kenzo understood clearly what his wife’s words meant.
However, his wife said nothing more.
While internally defending her parents and siblings, she had no intention of pushing her arguments as far as she could go in open confrontation with her husband.
She was not a person of rational disposition.

“What a hassle.”

Whenever the discussion threatened to follow a slightly more intricate path, she would inevitably say this and dismiss the immediate issue.
And she endured the hassle that arose from not progressing toward a resolution indefinitely.
However, enduring it was by no means pleasant for her own self.
From Kenzo’s perspective, it felt even more distasteful.

“You’re so obstinate.”

“You’re so obstinate.”

The two of them hurled the same accusatory words at each other from both sides.
And so they each read well the resentment lodged in the other’s heart from each other’s demeanor.
Moreover, they each had to acknowledge that there was reason in the other’s criticisms.

Patient Kenzo finally stopped going to his wife’s parental home.
The Wife, who neither asked why he no longer went nor requested that he occasionally visit, simply remained silent, still repeating “What a hassle” in her heart and making no effort to change her attitude.

“This is more than enough.”

“I’ve had more than enough of this too.”

The same words were often repeated in both their hearts.

Even so, their relationship, elastic like a rubber cord, stretched and contracted somewhat with each passing day and circumstance.
Just when it seemed to have reached an impasse so tense that one couldn’t tell when it might snap, it would gradually return to its original state through natural momentum.
When such favorable mental states continued for a while, warm words would escape the wife’s lips.

“Whose child is this?”

Taking Kenzo’s hand and placing it on her own belly, the Wife posed him this question.
At that time, her belly was not yet as large as it would become.
Yet she had already begun to sense life’s pulse stirring within her womb—those faint tremors she now sought to transmit through her husband’s fingertips.

“When people quarrel,” she added, “it’s because both sides are at fault.”

Even Kenzo—stubbornly convinced of his own blamelessness—could only respond with a resigned smile.

“If people part ways, no matter how close they were, that’s where it ends; but if they stay together, even as enemies, they’ll manage one way or another.”
“In other words, that’s what humans are, I suppose.”

Kenzo tilted his head as though he had formulated some profound philosophical truth.

66

Besides matters concerning Otsune and Shimada, news of his brother and sister also occasionally reached Kenzo’s ears.

Every year when the weather turned cold, Kenzo’s brother—who inevitably developed physical ailments—would catch a cold at autumn’s onset, take about a week off from the office, then force himself back to work despite lingering discomfort, resulting in days of unresolved fever and suffering.

“It’s because I push myself too hard.”

He faced an unavoidable choice: either strain to prolong his monthly salary’s viability or rest properly and accelerate his dismissal.

“They say it’s likely pleurisy.”

He made an anxious face.
He feared death.
He harbored a stronger sense of dread than anyone else toward the disintegration of his flesh.
And so, he had to diminish that mass of flesh at a faster rate than anyone else.

Kenzo turned to his wife—
“Can’t he just take a little more time off without worrying? Even if they have to press him until his fever breaks.”

“I’m sure he’d like nothing more than to do that—but he just can’t manage it, can he?”

Kenzo would sometimes view his brother’s family after his death solely through the lens of their livelihood.
He allowed this as a natural perspective, however cruel.
At the same time, he felt a distinct distaste toward himself for being unable to escape such observations.
He tasted bitter salt.

“He won’t die on us, will he?”

“Surely not.”

The wife did not respond.
She could do nothing but be overwhelmed by her large belly. A midwife connected to her parents’ home came by rickshaw from afar from time to time. He had no idea what the midwife came to do or what she did before leaving.

“Are they going to massage your belly or something?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
The Wife did not even give a proper reply.

His brother’s fever abruptly subsided.

“They performed a prayer ritual, I hear.”

The superstitious Wife had a fondness for most things—incantations, prayers, fortune-telling, faith in deities—you name it.

“You suggested it, didn’t you?”

“No, it’s some strange prayer ritual that someone like me wouldn’t know about.”
“Apparently, they place a ritual razor on their head or something like that.”

Kenzo couldn’t bring himself to believe that the stubbornly persistent fever had subsided due to a ritual razor.

“Since the fever came on due to a state of mind, then it must have cleared up due to a state of mind as well.”
“Even if it wasn’t a razor—a rice paddle or a pot lid would’ve done the same thing.”

“But since even after drinking all that doctor’s medicine it still wouldn’t heal, someone suggested trying it out to see what would happen—and in the end they decided to go through with it. Though I doubt they paid any exorbitant prayer fee for it.”

Kenzo thought his brother a fool.
He pitied his brother’s predicament—unable to take medicine until the fever subsided.
He also considered it a relief that the fever had broken at all, whether through the ritual razor’s influence or otherwise.

As Brother recovered, Sister began to suffer from asthma again.

“Again?”

Kenzo unintentionally said this and suddenly recalled Hida’s demeanor of not being troubled by his wife’s chronic illness.

“However, this time it’s worse than usual, they say.”
“It might even be critical this time—Brother told me to tell you to go visit her.”

The wife, having conveyed Brother’s warning to Kenzo, heavily settled her hips onto the tatami.

“If I stand even briefly, my stomach grows unsettled—I simply can’t manage it.”
“I can’t stretch my arm to reach things on the shelf anymore.”

Kenzo, who had believed pregnant women ought to exercise more vigorously as their time neared, looked at her in surprise.
The discomfort in her lower abdomen and around her waist lay entirely beyond his comprehension.
He found himself stripped of both the resolve and conviction to urge activity.

“Even I cannot pay her a visit.”

“Of course you don’t have to go.”
“I’ll go then.”

67

At that time, Kenzo felt an intense weariness whenever he returned home.
This fatigue—which could not be attributed solely to his work—made him increasingly reluctant to go out.
He often napped.
Even when leaning over his desk with a book open before him, drowsiness would frequently overcome him.
When he jolted awake from a nap’s dream, the need to reclaim lost time stabbed at him more sharply than ever.
He had finally become unable to leave his desk.
He stayed rooted in his study like a man tied to a post.
No matter how little studying he accomplished, no matter how idly he dawdled, his conscience commanded him to remain seated there in that manner.

Thus four or five days passed idly.
When Kenzo finally set out for Tsunomori-zaka, his sister—who had said it might be critical—was already entering recovery.

“Well, that’s fine.”

He made an ordinary greeting.
But deep down, he felt as though a fox had sunk its claws into him.

“Ah, but thanks to you…—As for someone like me, even if I keep living I’ll just be a burden to others and not any use at all. It’d be just right for me to die at a suitable time…but seeing as this must be the lifespan I was born with, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

Sister seemed to want Kenzo to acknowledge the unspoken truth behind her words.
However, he remained silent, blowing cigarette smoke.
Even in such trivial matters, the difference in the siblings' temperaments became apparent.

"But while Hida is around, no matter how sickly or incompetent I am, I have to stay alive—otherwise things would fall apart."

The relatives would praise Sister as being devoted to her husband.
When one observed this sister's attitude while setting aside Hida, who remained far too indifferent to his wife's devoted efforts, it seemed kind to a pitiful degree.

“I was truly born under an unlucky star, I tell you. I’m the complete opposite of my husband, you see.”

Sister's devotion to her husband was entirely innate. However, just as Hida would sometimes make illogical, self-indulgent demands, she would act with incomprehensible earnestness that ended up irritating him instead. Moreover, she knew nothing of needlework. Even when made to practice calligraphy or taught artistic accomplishments, she had failed to learn anything; from her marriage until now, there had never been an instance where she sewed even one robe for her husband. Yet she possessed exceptional strong will. The story still lingered in Kenzo’s ears—how as a child, locked in a storehouse as punishment for stubbornness, she had argued through the lattice door with Mother: “Let me out to relieve myself! If not, I’ll do it right here!”

When he thought this, he found himself compelled to reflect before this half-sister who, though seemingly very different from himself, in reality shared certain similarities with him.

"Sister is just being overt," he thought.
"If you strip away education's veneer, even I'm no different."

He had always overestimated education's power.
Now he clearly recognized his untamed self - impervious to education's influence.
This raw equality of human essence forced awkwardness toward Sister, whom he'd always scorned.
She remained oblivious.

“How is Wife? She’ll give birth soon，won’t she?”

“Yes, she’s suffering with a belly that looks ready to drop.”

“Childbirth is a painful thing, you know.
“I remember it well.”

Sister, who had long been thought infertile, gave birth to a boy for the first time after several years of marriage.
As it was her first childbirth at an advanced age, she and those around her had worried greatly, yet she delivered the fetus without much danger—but the child died soon after.

“Be careful not to act rashly. Even at home, having that child around would’ve been some support though…”

68

Sister’s words contained not only memories of the child she had lost long ago but also dissatisfaction with her current adopted son.

“If only Hiko were a bit more reliable,” she said.

She would occasionally let slip such remarks to those around her.
Though Hiko was not the capable worker she had expected, he was an exceedingly gentle and good-natured person.
There were rumors he couldn’t go a morning without drinking, but Kenzo—who had no deep dealings with him otherwise—couldn’t quite understand where the problem lay.

“If only he’d bring in a bit more money, you know.”

Of course, Hiko did not earn enough income to comfortably support his adoptive parents.
However, if Hida and Sister thought back to when they had raised him, it wasn’t as though they had any right to demand such luxury now.
They did not send Hiko to any school.
The fact that he had begun to earn even a small monthly salary had to be considered rather fortunate for his adoptive parents.
Kenzo found it difficult to pay even noticeable attention to his sister’s complaints.
As for the baby who had died long ago, he felt even less sympathy.
He had never seen that living face.
He had not known that dead face either.
He had even forgotten the name.

“Didn’t you call him something… that child?”

“Sakutaro. There’s a mortuary tablet over there.”

Sister pointed out the small Buddhist altar she had made by cutting into the wall of the tea room for Kenzo. Inside, which was not only dim but also rather dingy, five or six mortuary tablets from their ancestors were lined up.

"Is that small one it?"

“Ah, since it’s the baby’s. They made it small on purpose.”

Kenzo, who couldn’t muster the will to stand and read the posthumous name, remained seated where he was, gazing from afar at the small plaque-like object with gold lettering on its black-lacquered surface.

His face showed no expression.
He couldn’t even recall the worry and pain he had felt when his second daughter contracted dysentery and nearly lost her life.

“Sister though I am, even I don’t know when I’ll end up like that in this state, Kenzo.”

She took her eyes off the Buddhist altar and looked at Kenzo.
Kenzo deliberately avoided her gaze.

In her peculiar nature—voicing anxieties while never truly believing she might die—there was something that distinguished her from ordinary elderly people.
To her mind, just as her chronic illness would persist indefinitely, so too would her lifespan continue enduring eternally.

Her irritable temperament compounded this.
However breathless she became, however much others urged her otherwise, she absolutely refused to relieve herself where she lay.
She would crawl to the toilet if needed.
From childhood habit, she would strip naked each morning to perform her ablutions.
No matter how bitter the wind or how icy the rain, she never ceased this ritual.

“You shouldn’t talk about such anxious things. Just rest as much as you can.”

“I am taking care of myself. After all, I’ve made sure that out of the allowance I get from you, Ken, I always drink milk.”

Like country folk eating rice as their staple, she spoke of drinking milk as though it constituted her entire health regimen.
Aware of his own health deteriorating daily, even as Kenzo urged his sister to recuperate, an absurd thought lingered distantly in his mind—*This concerns me too*.

“I haven’t been well lately—there’s a chance I might become a mortuary tablet before you do.”

His words naturally struck his sister’s ears as a baseless jest. He laughed deliberately, fully aware of this effect. Yet even as he remained certain that he himself was ruining his health—placed in circumstances where he could do nothing about it—he pitied himself more than his sister.

"I’ll just quietly waste away to my death," he thought. "Not a soul will say ‘How pitiful’ for me."

He thought this way and, while smiling, looked at Sister’s sunken eyes, gaunt cheeks, and thin hands devoid of flesh.

Sixty-Nine

Sister was a woman who noticed small details.
Therefore she tended to apply her curiosity even to trivial matters.
While fundamentally honest to a fault, she also possessed an odd tendency toward groundless suspicions.

When Kenzo returned from abroad, she laid out before him pitiable facts about their household finances—details calculated to elicit sympathy.
Eventually she made her request through their brother’s mediation: would he please send her a monthly allowance of any amount he saw fit?
Kenzo settled on a sum appropriate to his means and arranged for their brother to communicate this decision.
Then came a letter from Sister.
It stated that according to Chotaro’s account, Kenzo had agreed to send her a certain monthly sum—but would he privately inform Chotaro exactly how much he truly intended to provide?
She had begun suspecting their brother’s motives now that he stood to become their regular intermediary.

Kenzo thought it utterly foolish.
He felt angry too.
Yet more than anything, he found it contemptible.
He wanted to yell, “Shut up!”
The reply he sent his sister was merely a postcard, yet it perfectly reflected this mood.
Sister never brought it up again.
Illiterate as she was, even her first letter had been written by someone else.

This incident made Sister even more reserved toward Kenzo than before.
Even she, who would inquire about anything down to a mosquito, rarely spoke of Kenzo’s household beyond inoffensive matters.
Kenzo, too, had never once thought to bring up the state of their marriage in front of her.

“How has your wife been lately?”

“Well, she’s much the same.”

Their conversations were often cut short at this point.

Sister’s question—which indirectly acknowledged the Wife’s illness—contained not just curiosity but also a significant measure of concern born of kindness.
Yet that concern proved utterly useless to Kenzo.
And so to her eyes, he remained ever an unapproachable and surly eccentric.

With a desolate heart, Kenzo left his sister’s house and walked northward endlessly, surrendering to his feet’s guidance.
He entered a squalid town that resembled some newly developed area he had never before laid eyes on.
Though Tokyo-born, he keenly understood his directional bearings in this place where he now stood.
Yet nothing remained here to stir his reminiscences.
With a look of bewilderment, he walked across the land from which every vestige of the past had been stripped.

He recalled the green rice fields that once existed and the straight path that ran between them.
At the edge of the rice fields stood three or four thatched-roof houses.
The figure of a man eating agar jelly came to mind—sitting on a camp stool, having removed his sedge hat.
Ahead had stretched a paper-making field as vast as a plain.
When he rounded that corner toward the town’s continuation, there was a bridge over a narrow river.
The river’s banks rose high with stone walls, creating an unexpectedly long drop to the water below.
The old-fashioned bathhouse curtain at the bridge’s edge and the eggplants arrayed at the neighboring greengrocer’s often made Kenzo think of Hiroshige’s landscape prints in his youth.

However, now everything had vanished completely, as if it were a dream.
All that remained was the land.

"When did it change so much?"

Kenzo, who had been preoccupied solely with the changes in people, was astonished by the far more drastic transformation of nature.

He suddenly recalled playing shogi with Hida during his childhood.
Whenever Hida sat before the shogi board, it was his habit to say, "After all, I'm a student of Mr. Fujikichi from Tokorozawa."
Even now, Hida was the kind of man who would surely say the same thing if he had a shogi board before him.

"What will become of me ultimately?"

When the contrast between humans, who only decline yet remain surprisingly unchanged, and the suburbs, which change yet grow more prosperous each day, presented Kenzo with unexpected material for comparison, he could not help but think.

Seventy

The sight of him returning home with a listless face immediately caught his wife’s attention.

“How is the patient?”

She appeared to be trying to hear clearly from Kenzo’s lips the final destiny that all humans must one day reach.
Before giving an answer, Kenzo first became aware of a contradiction.

“There’s nothing wrong.
She’s lying down, but it’s not like she’s in critical condition or anything.
Well, it’s like we were tricked by my brother.”

A sense of how foolish it all was showed somewhat in his tone.

“Even if we were tricked, I don’t know how much better that would be.
If something were to happen—then you’d really see…”

“It’s not my brother’s fault.”
“He was deceived by Sister.”
“And Sister was deceived by her illness.”
“In other words, everyone’s being deceived—that’s how the world works.”
“The cleverest one might be Hida.”
“No matter how much his wife nags him, he’ll never fall for it.”

“So he’s not at home after all?”

“As if he’s there! Though I can’t say how it was when he acted downright wicked.”

Kenzo recalled the gold watch and chain that Hida wore.
His brother had privately dismissed them as mere gilded trinkets, but Hida himself insisted on flaunting them as genuine wherever he went.
Whether gold-plated or authentic, no one knew where he had bought them or how much he had paid.
Even Sister, who by nature couldn’t ignore such matters, merely made half-hearted speculations about their origins.

“He must have bought them on installments.”

“It might be something that came from a pawnshop.”

Even though no one had asked her, Sister offered various explanations to Brother.
To Kenzo, this trivial matter had sown seeds of imagination between them.
The more she did so, the more self-satisfied Hida appeared.
Though even the small monthly allowance Kenzo sent was occasionally borrowed, Sister never managed to learn how much money came into her husband’s hands or remained in his possession.

“Lately it seems he’s got two or three bonds or something.”

Sister’s words distanced themselves from her husband as though taking aim at the neighbor’s property.

To Kenzo, Hida, who remained unperturbed while keeping Sister in such a position, was nothing short of an incomprehensible man.
That Sister herself endured it, accepting it as an unavoidable marital relationship, was also beyond Kenzo’s comprehension.
However, while maintaining absolute secrecy in financial matters, he would occasionally purchase or wear things that defied Sister’s expectations, and his mentality of wantonly trying to startle her was beyond even imagination.
The manifestation of vanity toward his wife, the wife’s satisfaction in thinking her husband capable despite being kept in suspense—these two factors alone were far from sufficient explanation.

“A stranger when money’s needed, a stranger when illness strikes—then isn’t it just sharing the same roof?”

Kenzo's riddle was not easily solved.
The wife, who disliked thinking, again offered no comment.

“Still, since even we as a couple must look rather peculiar to others, perhaps we shouldn’t go around nitpicking everyone else’s affairs.”

“It’s all the same thing.
Everyone thinks only they’re in the right.”

Kenzo was immediately irritated.

“Do you think you’re in the right too?”

“Of course I do.
As you see fit.”

Their arguments often arose from such points. And so, their arguments disturbed the hearts that had finally calmed. Kenzo attributed this to his wife’s lack of restraint. The wife interpreted it as entirely due to her stubborn and obstinate husband.

“Even if she can’t write a single character or sew a stitch, I still prefer a woman like Sister who’s devoted to her husband.”

“In this day and age, what country even has such a woman?”

Beneath the Wife’s words lay a great resentment—that there was nothing as self-serving as men.

71

Despite lacking a logically ordered mind, she possessed an unexpectedly modern streak.
She had not been raised in a household strict enough to bind her to formal, old-fashioned ethics.
Her father—who styled himself a politician—held almost no consistent views on education.
Her mother too lacked the tendency to fuss over childrearing like ordinary women.
At home, she enjoyed a relatively free atmosphere.
And so her schooling ended with elementary school graduation.
She did not engage in deliberate thought.
Yet she instinctively sensed the conclusions of such thinking with primal clarity.

"Just because he bears the title of husband doesn’t mean I can force myself to respect him. If he wants to be respected, he should become a person of substance worthy of that respect and present himself before me. I don’t care whether he has the title of husband or not."

Strangely enough, Kenzo, for all his scholarship, was rather old-fashioned in this regard.
While he sought to realize his principle of living for himself, he unhesitatingly assumed from the outset a wife who existed solely for her husband.

"From every perspective, a wife should be subordinate to her husband."

The root of their conflict lay here.

When Kenzo saw his wife attempting to assert her own existence independent from her husband, he immediately felt displeased.
He would catch himself thinking, "Just a woman..."
When this intensified, it instantly hardened into the words: "What insolence!"
Within the wife's heart always lay waiting the retort: "Even if I am a woman—"

“Even a woman can’t just take being trampled on like that!”

Kenzo at times clearly read this very expression that appeared on the wife’s face.

_It’s not because you’re a woman that I look down on you.
It’s because you’re a fool that I look down on you. If you want to be respected, then build a character worthy of respect._

Unwittingly, Kenzo’s logic had become the same logic that his wife hurled at him.

In this way, they walked round and round on a circular path.
And so, no matter how tired they became, they did not notice.

There were times when Kenzo abruptly stopped on that circular path.
The times he stopped were precisely the times his agitation subsided.
There were times when the Wife would suddenly stop moving on that circular path.
However, the times when the Wife stopped moving were precisely when her stagnation began to thaw.
At that moment, Kenzo finally ceased his roaring.
The wife began to speak for the first time.
Hand in hand, talking and laughing, they still could not bring themselves to leave the circular path.

About ten days before the wife was due to give birth, her father suddenly visited Kenzo.
He had unfortunately been out and, upon returning home at dusk, heard about it from his wife and tilted his head in puzzlement.

“Did he have some business?”

“Yes, he said there are some things he’d like to discuss.”

“What is it?”

The wife did not answer.

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes. He went home saying he’d come back in a couple of days to discuss it properly, so please ask him right away when he comes next time.”

Kenzo could say nothing more than that.

He, who had long refrained from visiting his wife’s father, had never dreamed that the other party would go out of their way to come here, regardless of whether there was business to discuss.
That suspicion became the reason he spoke more than usual.
In contrast, the wife’s words were fewer than usual.
However, this was different from the reticence born of complaints and coldness he so often detected in her.

Night had imperceptibly deepened into full winter.
When they stared fixedly at the slender lamp’s shadow, the flame remained motionless while only the wind’s roar battered fiercely against the storm shutters.
Amidst the howling through the trees, the couple sat for a time in the forest with a quiet Western lamp between them.

72

“When Father came today, he didn’t have an overcoat and seemed cold, so I took out your old one and gave it to him.”

That double-breasted coat made by a rural tailor was so old it had nearly faded from Kenzo’s memory.
He couldn’t comprehend why his wife had given that thing to her father.

“Such a filthy object.”

He felt less perplexed than mortified.

“No. He was happy to wear it and left.”
“Does your father not have an overcoat?”

“It’s not just an overcoat—he has nothing left at all.”

Kenzo was surprised.
The Wife’s face, lit by the slender lamp, suddenly appeared pitiful.

“Is he that destitute?”

“Yes.
He said there’s nothing more he can do.”

The taciturn Wife had managed to keep the detailed story of her birth family from her husband’s ears until now.
Although Kenzo had vaguely known of the financial hardships since leaving his post, never imagining they could be this severe, he now found himself abruptly compelled to turn his gaze back to that man’s past.

He vividly recalled the figure of his wife’s father, clad in a silk hat and frock coat, boldly exiting the stone gate of the official residence.
The entrance floor, constructed by cutting and joining hardwood in the shape of the character '久', was polished to a glossy sheen, at times causing Kenzo’s unaccustomed feet to slip.
Turning left from the reception room that faced a broad lawn ahead, there lay a rectangular dining room connected to it.
Before their marriage, Kenzo still remembered sitting at that dinner table with his wife’s family.
The second floor had tatami mats spread across its rooms.
On a cold New Year’s night when invited to play karuta cards, he recalled passing that warm evening in one of those rooms filled with laughter.

This estate, which had a Western-style building followed by a Japanese-style building, housed five maids and two live-in students in addition to the family. Given the nature of his duties, which involved frequent comings and goings of guests, this household may have required that many servants; but if finances did not permit it, then that need could not possibly have been fulfilled.

Even when Kenzo returned from abroad, the wife’s father did not appear to be in such dire straits.
When he first established his residence deep in Komagome, her father, who had come to visit his new home, said to him:

“Well, owning one’s own house is absolutely necessary for a person. But since it’s not something you need to rush into immediately, put that off for later and focus your efforts on saving as much as you can. If you don’t have two or three thousand yen put aside, you’ll be in real trouble when something happens. If you can manage around a thousand yen, that would suffice. If you entrust that to me, I’ll have it doubled for you within about a year.”

Kenzo, inexperienced in the ways of profit-making, was struck by bewilderment at that moment.

"How could a thousand yen become two thousand in a single year?"

His mind found no solution to this puzzle.
Unable to escape his own greed, he stared in awe at this supernatural power that resided solely in his wife’s father—a force entirely absent within himself.
Yet he who couldn’t possibly scrape together a thousand yen to invest ultimately let matters drift until today, never once feeling inclined to ask the man about his methods.

“There’s no way he could be that destitute, is there?”
“Impossible!”
“But there’s nothing to be done—it’s the way things have turned out.”

The wife’s breathing, already heavy with the imminent physical ordeal of childbirth before her eyes, grew even more labored.
Kenzo silently gazed at her pitiable abdomen and lackluster cheeks.

When they had married in the countryside years earlier, her father had brought four or five cheap fans decorated with ukiyo-e-style beauties from somewhere. As Kenzo twirled one and dismissed them as thoroughly vulgar, the father had retorted, “They’re suitable for the occasion.” But now, having given his own overcoat—made in that very region—to his wife’s father, Kenzo could not bring himself to think, “It’s suitable for the old man.”
No matter how destitute he was, imagining him in such a thing only deepened Kenzo’s pity.

“But it’s still wearable.”

“Even if it’s unsightly, it’s better than freezing.”

The Wife laughed forlornly.

Seventy-three

When he came after skipping a day, Kenzo met his wife’s father for the first time in a long while.

Both in age and experience, the father—far more worldly than Kenzo—had always been courteous toward his son-in-law.
At times, his courtesy verged on unnaturalness.
Yet this did not encompass his entirety.
Beneath the surface lay undulating contradictions.

Through eyes shaped by bureaucratic rigor, Kenzo’s attitude struck him as presumptuous from the very beginning.
It seemed as though Kenzo were rudely vaulting over steps that should never be crossed.
Moreover, he found intolerable Kenzo’s arrogance—that self-assumed air Kenzo appeared to flaunt without restraint.
He detested Kenzo’s bluntness—how he voiced every thought without hesitation.
Even Kenzo’s stubbornness—which could only be perceived as brutish—became fodder for reproach.

He, who despised Kenzo’s childishness, blocked Kenzo—who tried to approach recklessly without any grasp of formalities—with a superficially polite attitude.
Then the two of them came to a halt there and found themselves unable to move.
Maintaining a certain distance, they had to observe each other's shortcomings.
Therefore, they could no longer properly ascertain and understand each other’s merits.
And so both of them never noticed the majority of the shortcomings they themselves possessed.

However, at present, he was undoubtedly the temporary weaker party in relation to Kenzo.
Kenzo, who detested bowing his head to others, when he saw him—now compelled by dire circumstances to appear before him—could not help but imagine himself in the same predicament through the same eyes.

"It must truly be difficult."

Kenzo was constrained by this single thought.
He then listened to the financial proposal the man had brought.
Yet he couldn't muster an agreeable expression.
Inwardly, he cursed himself for being incapable of feigning pleasantness.

“It’s not because it’s about money that I can’t put on a pleasant expression. It’s because of an unpleasantness independent of money that I can’t put on a pleasant expression. You mustn’t misunderstand. I am not a cowardly person who would take revenge in such a situation.”

Kenzo, who desperately wanted to explain himself this much before his wife’s father, had no choice but to remain silent and risk being misunderstood.

Compared to the blunt Kenzo, the Wife’s father was far more courteous. He was also composed. From a bystander’s perspective, he appeared far more gentlemanly.

He mentioned a certain person’s name.

“The other party says they know you, but you know them too, don’t you?”

“I know.”

Kenzo had known that man from his school days.
However, they had no close association.
After graduating, he went to Germany and returned, then suddenly changed careers and joined some large bank—or so Kenzo had heard through rumors. Beyond that, no news of the man’s whereabouts had reached him.

“Is he still at the bank?”

His wife’s father nodded.
But how and where they had become acquainted was something even Kenzo couldn’t begin to fathom.
He tried asking about it in detail but found no answers.
The crux lay solely in whether this man would lend them money.

“He says he’ll agree to lend it,” said his wife’s father, “but insists on having a reliable guarantor.”

“I see.”

“When I asked whom we should name for this role, they expressly requested you—stating they’d approve the loan if you stood as guarantor.”

Kenzo did not hesitate to acknowledge himself as reliable.
However, he thought that his own financial insufficiency must naturally be known to others given his professional circumstances.
Moreover, the wife’s father was a man of exceptionally broad social connections.
Among the acquaintances he routinely mentioned were countless famous people whose social standing far exceeded anything Kenzo could claim.

“Why does this require my seal?”

“They say they’ll lend if it’s you.”

Kenzo thought.

Seventy-Four

He was a man who had never before borrowed money from others by providing a bond.
He had only stamped the seal out of obligation initially, yet stories of people who—despite possessing admirable skills—remained sunk at society’s bottom, struggling and flailing their entire lives, had often reached even his inattentive ears.
He thought that if possible, he wanted to avoid any actions that might affect his future.
However, alongside his stubbornness, an indecisive element of his weak-willed nature often stirred within him.
In this situation, to resolutely refuse to co-sign was, for him, undeniably heartless, cold-hearted, and painful.

“Does it really have to be me?”

“They say they’ll lend if it’s you.”

He asked the same question twice and received the same answer twice.

“This is all rather strange, don’t you think?”

Naive in worldly matters, he could not even infer the obvious circumstance that his wife’s father, having found no one left to stamp the seal no matter where he asked, had finally brought it to him out of desperation.
He grew frightened at being trusted so deeply by this banker with whom he had never even been close.

There was no telling what kind of ordeal he might be subjected to.

In his mind, apprehension about his own future safety functioned at full capacity.
Yet his character was not so simplistic as to resolve this matter through mere self-interest alone.
He had no choice but to vacillate until his intellect furnished him with an appropriate resolution.
Even when this resolution finally arrived, presenting it before his wife’s father demanded tremendous exertion from him.

“I think it’s too risky to put my seal to this, so I must decline. However, I’ll arrange what funds I can through my own means instead. Of course, having no savings myself means I’ll ultimately have to borrow from someone—but if at all possible, I want to avoid loans requiring formal procedures like promissory notes or stamped seals. Since securing funds through my limited connections would sit better with me, I’ll attempt that avenue first. Naturally, I can’t provide the full sum you require. As I’ll be the one arranging this money, repayment too must fall to me—therefore, I cannot take on debt exceeding my station.”

The wife’s father, placed in such a dire situation where any financial flexibility would be a relief, did not press Kenzo any further than that.

“In that case, I’ll leave it to you.”

He wrapped himself in Kenzo’s worn-out overcoat and walked home through the cold.
Having concluded their talk in his study, Kenzo returned from the entranceway straight back to that same study without seeing his wife’s face.
When she saw her father out to the entryway, she merely stood beside her husband on the shoe-removal step and never entered the study.
Though their silent understanding about securing funds hung between them, it never once surfaced as a topic of conversation.

But Kenzo’s heart already bore the burden of responsibility.
He had to act to fulfill it.
He went out again to the house of the friend who had helped him buy a hibachi and tobacco tray together when he had set up his household.

“Could you lend me some money?”

He abruptly posed the question.
The friend, who had no money to begin with, looked at him with a surprised expression.
He held his hands over the hibachi and explained the circumstances in detail to his friend.

“I wonder…”

The money his friend had saved during the three years he taught at a school in China had all been converted into electric railway stocks or something of the sort.

“Then why don’t you ask Shimizu?”

Shimizu, who was Kenzo’s friend’s brother-in-law, ran a hospital in a rather bustling part of downtown.

“Hmm… hard to say.”
“He might have that much money stashed away，but whether he can actually move it…”
“Well，I’ll try sounding him out.”

Fortunately, the friend’s goodwill did not end in vain.

The four hundred yen that Kenzo had borrowed reached the hands of the Wife's father four or five days after that.

Seventy-five

"I did everything I could."

In Kenzo’s mind, there was this sense of reassurance.
Therefore, he did not think much about the value of the money he had procured.
He did not think they would be overjoyed, nor did he feel that this level of assistance would be of any use.
When it came to the question of how and in what areas it had been spent, he maintained an air of complete ignorance.
Wife’s father had not approached him closely enough to confide such internal matters either.

The opportunity proved too fragile to tear down the walls that had long stood between them.
Or perhaps their personalities had grown too rigidly set.

Father was a man of greater worldly vanity than Kenzo.
He preferred having his worth illuminated by bright light rather than striving to make others understand him.
Thus his demeanor toward the wife, children, and close kin surrounding him tended toward exaggeration.

When his circumstances suddenly shifted toward disappointment, he could not help but reflect on his usual self.
To cover this up, he feigned an indifferent attitude toward Kenzo.
When he could no longer persist, he finally asked Kenzo for a joint seal.
Yet the detailed facts of how deeply he suffered under his debts never reached Kenzo’s ears.
Kenzo did not ask either.

The two of them extended their hands while keeping their previous distance.
When one handed over the money and the other received it, they withdrew their hands again.
The Wife, who had been watching from the side, remained silent and said nothing.

When Kenzo had first returned from abroad, the two of them had not yet been so distant. Around the time he had just built his new house, he was shocked to hear that his wife’s father had ventured into a mining business.

“So he’s really digging into a mountain?”

“Yes, apparently he’s setting up a new company.”

He frowned.
At the same time, he placed some trust in his father’s extraordinary strength.

“Do you think it’ll work out?”

“What do you think?”

After this brief exchange between Kenzo and his wife, he received word from her that her father had departed for a city in the northern part of the country on business.

Then, about a week later, her mother suddenly came to Kenzo’s place. Her father had abruptly fallen ill while traveling, so she thought she must now go to him—the purpose of her mother’s visit being to inquire whether arrangements could be made for the travel expenses.

“Ah... We’ll manage the travel expenses somehow. You should go at once.”

Kenzo, who sincerely pitied both the man suffering at the inn and the other standing on the cold train, even conjured in his mind’s eye the desolate sky of some distant place he had never seen.

“After all, we’ve only received a telegram and know nothing of the details.”

“Then you must still be worried. It would be best for you to depart as soon as possible.”

Fortunately, the father’s illness had been mild.
But the mining venture he had undertaken ended up fizzling out after that.

“Still haven’t found any openings, have you?”

“There do seem to be some possibilities, but apparently nothing’s coming together properly.”

The Wife told him how her father had become a mayoral candidate in a large city.
The campaign expenses appeared to be covered by one of his old friends with substantial financial resources.
But when several prominent citizens from the city came up to Tokyo together and met with a certain famous politician—a Count—to inquire about her father’s suitability, the Count reportedly responded that he seemed rather ill-suited for the position, and so the matter was dropped then and there.

“This is really troubling.”

“It’ll sort itself out eventually.”

The Wife trusted her father far more than she did Kenzo.
Kenzo was not unaware of the aforementioned extraordinary strength.

"I only say that out of pity."

There was no lie in his words.

76

But by the time the Wife’s father next visited Kenzo, their relationship had already changed.
The son-in-law who had voluntarily provided travel expenses for his mother-in-law now had to retreat a step.
He stood at a relatively distant remove and gazed at his wife’s father.
Yet the color drifting in his eyes was neither cold nor indifferent.
Rather, it was a lightning flash of resentment trying to ignite from his black pupils.
Straining to conceal that lightning flash, he had no choice but to drape this sharply gleaming thing in a disguise of indifference and detachment.

The father was in dire straits.
The father before his eyes remained courteous.
These two realities pressed down upon Kenzo’s true nature.
Unable to confront him directly, he had no choice but to withdraw.
Forced to endure through mere brusqueness, Kenzo found his father’s desperate circumstances and polite demeanor transformed into obstacles that stifled any genuine expression of self.
To Kenzo, it felt no different than if the father had come expressly to torment him in this manner.
To the father, discovering such ineptitude in his own son-in-law—a manner of response so clumsy it verged on impropriety even for an ordinary man—was an intolerable farce.
Even through the lens of a bystander observing this isolated scene, devoid of context, Kenzo remained a fool.
And even to his wife, who understood this all too well, her husband was never a clever man.

“This time of all times, I find myself at a loss.”

The father, who had first said this, could not even obtain a satisfactory reply from Kenzo.

Her father then mentioned the name of a certain prominent figure in financial circles.
The man was both a banker and an industrialist.

“To tell the truth, I recently met him through someone’s mediation, and it seems things may work out favorably.
Excluding Mitsui and Mitsubishi, in Japan he’s about as prominent as they come, so even were I to become an employee, it wouldn’t particularly affect my dignity. Moreover, since the scope of work seems quite broad, I believe I could find it engaging.”

The position that had been arranged by this financier for the Wife’s father was that of president at a certain private railway company in Kansai.
The man who owned the majority of the company’s shares had the privilege of selecting its president entirely at his own discretion.
However, as an owner of dozens or hundreds of shares required to establish his qualifications in advance, how would the Wife’s father manage to secure the funds?
To Kenzo, who was unfamiliar with the circumstances, even this doubt remained unresolved.

“We’ll have just the temporarily required number of shares transferred into my name.”

Kenzo did not underestimate the man’s capabilities enough to doubt his words.
In terms of freeing him and his family from their current predicament too, he could not help but wish for success.
Yet he found himself unable to change the fact that he still stood in his original position.
His response remained formal.
Then he deliberately hardened those somewhat tender parts within his heart.
The shrewd old man appeared to pay no heed whatsoever to that point.

“However, the problem is that this can’t be done immediately.”
“It’s a matter of timing, you understand.”

He took from his pocket another document that looked like an official appointment and showed it to Kenzo.
Written there were clauses stating that a certain insurance company had commissioned him as an advisor, with the condition of granting him one hundred yen monthly as remuneration.

“If the share transfer I mentioned earlier comes through, I may either quit this or keep it going—I’m not yet certain on that point—but at any rate, even a hundred yen will help tide us over for now.”

Long ago, when he resigned from a government position at their private suggestion, those in power had offered him reassignment as governor of a district along the San'indō route. Yet he flatly refused. That he now accepted a hundred yen monthly from an unremarkable insurance company without complaint could only be attributed to how changed circumstances had reshaped his character.

This unreserved attitude of her father kept threatening to push Kenzo beyond his carefully maintained position. The moment he sensed this pressure, he instinctively withdrew again. What appeared unnatural in his demeanor had been ethically validated by his fundamental nature.

77

Wife’s father was an administrator.
He tended to evaluate people solely from a work-oriented standpoint.
When General Nogi had briefly become Governor-General of Taiwan and resigned shortly thereafter, he said the following to Kenzo:—

“As an individual, General Nogi is truly admirable for his steadfastness in righteousness and depth of compassion.”
“However, when it comes to whether General Nogi was truly suited for the role of Governor-General, I believe there still remains considerable room for debate.”
“Personal virtue may well reach those in close proximity, but it is insufficient to benefit those being governed from afar.”
“When it comes to that, it’s still a matter of ability.”
“Without ability, even the best of good people have no choice but to sit idly by, you see.”

Through connections from his time in office, he managed all affairs of a certain association.
The association, which had a marquis as its president, entrusted him with a surplus of about twenty thousand yen after neatly achieving its founding objectives through his efforts.
Having lost his official career and faced with unrelenting hardships, he eventually dipped into these entrusted funds.
Before long, he had consumed every last yen of it.
Yet to preserve his family’s standing, he confessed this to no one.
Thus he was forced to procure nearly a hundred yen in monthly interest from this deposit just to keep up appearances.
For him—who agonized more over this than his own household finances—it must have been profoundly gratifying, when one considers his state of mind then, to begin receiving that crucial hundred yen each month from the insurance company to sustain his public life.

It was only much later that Kenzo first heard this story from his wife; he felt a newfound sympathy for her father, yet no resentment arose toward him as an immoral man.
He did not feel the slightest shame at being married to such a man’s daughter.
Yet regarding this matter, Kenzo remained nearly silent toward his wife.
The Wife would sometimes turn to him and say:
“I don’t care what sort of husband I have—so long as he treats me well.”

“Would you even be okay with a thief?”

“Oh... Even a thief or swindler would do.”
“If he just takes good care of his wife, that’s enough.”
“However great or respectable a man might be—if he’s unkind at home, it’s no use to me at all.”

In truth, the Wife was exactly the kind of woman her words suggested.
Kenzo also agreed with that opinion.
Yet his conjecture seeped out like a lunar halo into the Wife’s unspoken implications.
There was a faint sense that she was using these words to obliquely criticize him for being so preoccupied with his studies.
But far more strongly than that, the feeling that she, unaware of her husband’s heart, might be implicitly defending her own father through such an attitude struck Kenzo’s chest.

"I am not the kind of man who distances himself from others over such trivial matters."

Though he made no effort to explain himself to his wife, Kenzo continued rehearsing justifications in solitude.

Yet he could only conclude that this natural estrangement between himself and her father stemmed from the older man’s excessive faith in his own administrative prowess.

Kenzo neglected to pay New Year’s respects at his father-in-law’s home.
He merely dispatched a postcard bearing conventional holiday greetings.
The Father showed no leniency.
He issued no formal reproach.
Instead, he compelled his youngest child—a boy of twelve or thirteen—to pen matching felicitations in laboriously ornate script, sending this reply under the child’s name.
This master of bureaucratic retaliation, who understood every nuance of quid pro quo, exhibited not the slightest self-reflection regarding why Kenzo had failed to offer New Year’s salutations in person.

One thing governed all matters.
Profit bred profit, and children begat children.
The two gradually grew apart.
Kenzo, who drew a stark distinction between crimes committed of necessity and faults deliberately perpetrated when avoidable, came to intensely detest this ill-conceived indulgence.

78

“He’s an easy man to handle.”

Even while being aware that he possessed a great deal of something that was easy to handle in practice, Kenzo was irritated that others thought of him this way.

His nerves felt a sharp nostalgia toward those who had overcome such irritation.
He had eyes capable of seeking out precisely such people in the midst of a crowd.
However, he himself could not reach that level.
That was precisely why such people stood out even more to him.
Moreover, he came to respect such people all the more.

At the same time, he cursed himself.
However, he cursed the opponent who made him curse himself even more harshly.

Thus, between his wife’s father and him, a naturally formed rift gradually developed. His wife’s attitude toward him undoubtedly also implicitly contributed to this.

When their relationship became strained, the wife’s heart gradually inclined toward her parental home.
At her parental home as well, out of sympathy, they had no choice but to implicitly take the wife’s side.
However, taking the wife’s side could only mean, in certain situations, making Kenzo the enemy.
The two of them only grew further apart.

Fortunately, nature gave the wife hysteria as a sedative.
The seizures conveniently occurred just as their relationship became strained.
Kenzo would sometimes pick up his wife, who lay face down in the hallway leading to the bathroom, and bring her back to bed.
There had also been an experience where, supporting her from behind with both hands as she crouched on the edge of the veranda where one storm shutter had been opened at midnight, he returned to the bedroom.

At such times, her consciousness was always hazy, less coherent than a dream.
Her pupils were wide open.
The external world seemed to appear only as a phantom.

In Kenzo’s eyes as he sat by her pillow staring at her face, anxiety always flickered.
At times, a sense of pity overwhelmed all else.
He took care to comb his Wife’s disheveled hair.
He wiped her sweaty forehead with a wet hand towel.
At times, to bring her back to her senses, he would spray mist on her face or give her water mouth-to-mouth.

The scenes of the past, more intense than her present seizures, also stimulated Kenzo’s memory.

At one time, he would sleep each night by tying a thin cord between his own obi and his wife’s obi.
This preparation—devised by setting the cord’s length to about four shaku to allow ample turning over in sleep—was repeated for many nights without protest from his wife.

On one occasion, he applied the thread-wound base of a bowl to his wife’s epigastrium and pressed down with all his strength.
Even so, he had to subdue her demonic force as she tried to arch her back at this single point, shedding cold, oily sweat.

On one occasion, he was made to hear strange words from her mouth.

“O-tento-sama has come.
“He has come riding on a five-colored cloud.”
“This is dreadful, you!”

“My baby’s dead and gone.”
“My dead baby has come, so I have to go.”
“There! Can’t you see it’s right there?”
“In the well sweep.”
“I just need to go check, so please let me go.”

Not long after her miscarriage, she shook off Kenzo’s hands as he tried to restrain her and attempted to rise while uttering these words.
…

The Wife's seizures were a great source of anxiety for Kenzo.
Yet over that anxiety there always hung a still greater cloud of loving-kindness.
He felt more pity than worry.
Bowing before this weak and pitiful creature, he did his utmost to appease it.
The wife too wore a look of happiness.

Therefore, as long as no suspicion arose that her seizures were deliberate, as long as his indignation remained too fierce to adopt an attitude of indifference, as long as their frequency did not ultimately obstruct natural compassion nor let grievances like “Why torment yourself so?” intensify—the wife’s illness was necessary to Kenzo as a means to soften their relationship.

Unfortunately, between his wife’s father and Kenzo himself, no such convenient palliative existed.
Thus could not their estrangement—forged through his wife’s agency—be mended even after their marital bond had been fully restored.
It was an uncanny phenomenon.
Yet it remained an undeniable fact.

Seventy-Nine

Kenzo, who detested irrationality, agonized over this matter inwardly.
Yet he devised no particular course of action.
His nature was both straightforward and resolute, yet tinged with an unmistakably passive tendency.

"I bear no such obligation."

Having questioned himself and received an answer from himself, he believed that answer to be fundamental. He resolved to live out his days in perpetual discomfort. He did not even expect that circumstances would naturally bring resolution.

Unfortunately, the wife too never abandoned her passive attitude in this regard. She was a woman who would act if some incident occurred. There were also times when, having been asked by others, she proceeded more vigorously than a man. However, that was limited to times when she had grasped a clear, tangible something right before her eyes. Yet in the marital relationship as she saw it, such a thing did not exist anywhere. Between her father and Kenzo as well, no significant rupture was apparent. Unless there was a major, concrete change that she could recognize as an event, she neglected all else. She perceived that the turmoil in their mental states—between herself, her father, and her husband—was utterly beyond remedy.

“But there’s nothing at all, is there?”

Conscious of the turmoil beneath the surface, she had to respond in this way.
Even if this answer, which she believed most justified, sometimes struck Kenzo’s ears with a false ring, she never wavered.
A mood of resigned indifference—not caring what became of her—ended up hardening her already passive nature into something even more passive.

Thus did the couple’s attitudes align at their worst.
This alignment—which might well have been deemed existing solely to perpetuate their mutual discord—had been distilled from their deeply ingrained personalities.
It was less a coincidence than an inevitable outcome.
Looking at each other’s faces, they each judged their own fate by the other’s physiognomy.

After the wife’s father received the money procured by Kenzo and left home, the couple—not treating this as any special matter—talked about other things instead.

“When does the midwife say it’ll come?”

“She can’t give an exact time, but soon now.”

“Is everything prepared?”

“Yes, it’s all in the cupboard at the back.”

Kenzo had no idea what was inside.
The wife let out a large, pained sigh.

“Anyway, this oppressive feeling is unbearable. It has to come out soon.”

“Didn’t you say you might die this time?”

“Yes—I don’t care if I die or anything else. I just want to get this over with and have it out already.”

“What a pity for you.”

“Fine. If I die, it’ll be your fault.”

Kenzo recalled when his wife had given birth to their eldest daughter in a distant rural area.
When he—wearing an anxious, pained expression—was asked by the midwife to lend a hand and entered the delivery room, she suddenly clamped her teeth onto Kenzo’s arm with a bone-shuddering force.
She groaned like someone undergoing torture.
He felt his wife’s physical agony resonate in his mind.
He even felt like a sinner himself.

“Giving birth must be agonizing, but watching it is just as hard.”

“Then why don’t you just go out somewhere?”

“Do you think you can do this alone?”

The wife did not answer.
While her husband was overseas, she had never spoken a word about when she gave birth to their second daughter.
Kenzo never tried to ask either.
A born worrier by nature, he wasn’t the sort of man who could ignore his wife’s moans and idly stroll outside.

When the midwife next appeared, he pressed for confirmation.

“Within a week?”

“No, it will likely be a bit later than that.”

Kenzo and his wife were both of that mind.

Eighty

The wife, whose due date had gone awry and who had gone into labor earlier than expected, let out a pained groan and startled her husband from his dream as he lay sleeping beside her.

"My stomach started hurting suddenly just a little while ago…"

"Is it coming already?"

Kenzo did not understand how severely his wife’s stomach was hurting.
In the cold night air, he kept only his face protruding from the bedding as he quietly observed her condition.

"Shall I rub it a little?"

Reluctant to sit up, he tried to manage with words as much as possible.
He had experienced childbirth only once.
He had mostly forgotten that experience as well.
However, when their eldest daughter was born, this pain had come and gone repeatedly, like the ebb and flow of the tide, or so it had seemed to him.

“A baby isn’t something that comes so suddenly, you know.
It’ll be a spell of pain followed by a spell of relief.”

“I don’t know why, but it just keeps getting more painful.”

The Wife’s attitude clearly substantiated her words.
Unable to stay settled on the futon, she removed her pillow, turning first to the right then shifting to the left.
For Kenzo—being a man—there was no way he could be of help.

“Shall I call the midwife?”

“Yes—quickly.”

Given her profession’s demands, the midwife’s residence had a telephone installed, but his own home lacked such modern conveniences.
Whenever emergencies arose, he had made it his practice to rush straight to the neighborhood physician he regularly consulted.

The dark early winter night still had a long while before dawn.
He was aware of the trouble caused both to that person and to the maid who was knocking on their gate.
However, he did not have the courage to wait idly until dawn.
After opening the bedroom sliding door, passing through the next room and the parlor, and arriving at the entrance to the maid’s quarters, he immediately urged one of the servants and sent them out into the dark night.

When Kenzo returned to his wife’s bedside, her pain had intensified.
His nerves had become so tense that every minute he had to anticipate the sound of a car stopping at the gate.

The midwife did not come easily.
The wife’s ceaseless groans unsettled the quiet night room with anxiety.
Before five minutes had passed—or perhaps not even that—she declared to her husband, “It’s coming now.”
And then, letting out a scream that seemed to release all the endurance she had painstakingly built up until then all at once, she delivered the fetus.
“Steady now!”

Kenzo immediately stood up and moved to the foot of the futon; he didn’t know what to do. At that moment, the familiar oil lamp cast a deathly quiet light from within its slender glass chimney dimly into the room. The area where Kenzo’s eyes fell was entirely wrapped in a dim shadow where even the striped pattern of the bedding remained indistinct.

He panicked. But moving the oil lamp to illuminate that spot made him feel compelled to witness something no man should see, and he hesitated. He had no choice but to grope blindly in the darkness. His right hand suddenly touched something he had never experienced before - an object with an uncanny texture. The thing quivered like agar jelly. Even by its outline, it was nothing more than an indistinct mass. He lightly stroked this eerie mass that sent chills through his body with his fingertips. The mass neither moved nor cried. Each stroke made him feel as if bits of the quivering agar-like substance were peeling away. If he pressed or grasped it firmly, he thought, the whole thing would surely crumble. He grew frightened and abruptly withdrew his hand.

"But if I leave it like this, it'll catch a cold—it'll freeze from the cold."

Even he, who couldn't tell whether it was dead or alive, found himself gripped by this worry.
He suddenly remembered his wife saying the childbirth supplies were kept in the cupboard.
He immediately slid open the paper-paneled door behind him.
From there he dragged out a great quantity of cotton.
Not even knowing the term "absorbent cotton," he tore at it recklessly and piled the shreds atop the quivering mass.

81

At last, the long-awaited midwife arrived, so Kenzo, finally relieved, retreated to his room.

Night soon gave way to dawn.

The baby’s cry set the cold air inside the house trembling.

“Congratulations on the safe delivery.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a girl.”

The midwife cut off her sentence midway, looking somewhat apologetic.

“Another girl?”

Even Kenzo showed some signs of disappointment.
The first was a girl, the second a girl, and now this time another girl—having become the father of three daughters in total, he silently criticized his wife in his heart, wondering what she intended by only bearing girls each time.
Yet it did not occur to him to consider his own responsibility in having fathered her.

The eldest daughter, born in the countryside, was a beautiful child with delicate, fine-grained skin.
Kenzo often pushed that child around town in a baby carriage.
At times, he would return home while gazing at her face fallen into peaceful sleep like an angel’s.
However, this imagined future never came to pass.
When Kenzo returned from abroad—this daughter who had been brought by someone to meet him at Shinbashi Station—her appearance had deteriorated after their long separation, just as she had told others she’d expected “a better father” upon seeing him again.
Her face gradually lost its softness.
Angular contours emerged.
In these features taking shape within his daughter’s face, Kenzo could no longer avoid recognizing his own growing unattractiveness.

The second daughter had a head covered in boils all year round.
The root cause was thought to be poor ventilation, so they ended up chopping her hair unevenly.
The child, with her short jaw and large eyes, looked like an umibōzu sea monster as she wandered about the place.

Not even through a parent’s biased eyes could he imagine that only the third child would grow up to be good-looking.

“Such things keep being born one after another—what on earth are we going to do?”

He had thoughts unbecoming of a parent.
Within those thoughts—not just about the children—there also lingered a vague sense of wondering what on earth he and his wife were going to do.

Before going out, he briefly looked into the bedroom.
His wife was sleeping peacefully on freshly washed sheets.
The baby too lay wrapped in newly made futon bedding stuffed with thick cotton, placed beside her like a small appendage.
The baby’s face was red.
It was something entirely different in feel from the agar-like mass of flesh that had touched his hand in the darkness the previous night.

Everything had been neatly taken care of. Not even a trace of soiled items could be seen in that area. The memory of the previous night seemed like a vanished dream. He turned toward the midwife.

“Did you change the futon?”

“Yes, I’ve changed both the futon and the sheets for you.”

“It’s impressive you managed to clean up so quickly.”

The midwife merely smiled. This woman, who had remained single since her youth, had a voice and demeanor that were somehow masculine.

“Because you used up all the absorbent cotton so recklessly, we ran out and were in quite a bind.”

“I suppose so. I was quite startled myself.”

While responding in this way, Kenzo did not feel particularly sorry.
Rather than that, the wife—pale-faced from having lost a large amount of blood—became a cause for concern.

“How are you?”

The wife slightly opened her eyes and nodded faintly on the pillow.
Kenzo left the room as he was.

When he returned at the usual time, still in Western clothes, he sat down again by his wife’s bedside.
"How are you?"

However, the wife no longer nodded.

“Something seems off.”

Her face was flushed with heat, unlike when he had seen it that morning.

“Are you feeling unwell?”

“Yes.”
“Shall I send for the midwife?”

“She should be here soon.”

The midwife was supposed to come.

Eighty-two

Before long, a thermometer was placed under the wife’s armpit.

“There’s a bit of a fever.”

The midwife said this and shook down the mercury that had risen in the graduated column.
She was relatively sparing with words.
She left without even suggesting they consult an obstetrician as a precaution.

"Is she really going to be alright?"

"How are you feeling?"

Kenzo was utterly ignorant of such matters.
He feared that any sign of fever might immediately indicate puerperal fever.
His wife, trusting the midwife her mother had sent over, remained surprisingly composed.

“What do you mean ‘How are you?’ It’s your own body we’re talking about!”

The wife did not answer at all.
From Kenzo’s perspective, her face seemed to bear an expression declaring she wouldn’t mind dying.
“Even though someone’s worrying so much about you…”

He carried this feeling with him until the next day and left early in the morning as usual.
Then, when he returned home in the afternoon, he noticed that the wife’s fever had already subsided.
“I guess it was nothing after all.”

“Yes.
But there’s no telling when it might come back.”

“Does giving birth really make fevers come and go so much?”

Kenzo was serious.
The wife let a smile escape her lonely cheek.

Fortunately, the fever did not reappear after that.
The postpartum recovery progressed smoothly from the start.
Kenzo came to his wife’s bedside—she had been ordered to spend the prescribed three weeks in bed—and sat there talking with her from time to time.

“You kept saying ‘I’ll die, I’ll die’ this time, yet here you are perfectly alive.”

“If you want me dead, I can die anytime.”

“That’s entirely your choice.”

The wife, now able to take her husband’s remarks half-jokingly, found herself reflecting on that period when she had sensed a vague danger to her life, despite her muted awareness.

“I truly thought I would die this time.”

“Why did you think that?”

“There’s no reason. I just felt that way.”

Though she had believed she would die, she ended up having an easier delivery than most—the wife hadn’t even registered how her expectations and reality had inverted.

“You’re rather carefree, aren’t you?”

“You’re the carefree one.”

The wife gazed happily at the baby sleeping beside her.
She poked its tiny cheek with her fingertip and began soothing it.
The infant’s face remained so peculiar that one could hardly say it yet bore eyes and a nose arranged in human form.

“Since the birth was easy, she seems a bit too small, doesn’t she?”

“She’ll grow bigger soon.”

Kenzo imagined a future in which this small lump of flesh would grow to be as large as his wife was now.
That future lay far ahead.
But as long as the lifeline did not snap midway, that future was certain to arrive.

“Human destinies are quite difficult to settle, aren’t they?”

To the wife, her husband’s words had come far too abruptly.
And she couldn’t grasp their meaning.

“What did you say?”

Kenzo was forced to repeat the same words before her.

“What does that matter?”
“It doesn’t change anything, but that’s just how it is.”

“How dull.”
“As long as there weren’t other things I didn’t understand, I thought it was fine.”

The wife abandoned her husband and drew the baby close to her side again.
Kenzo entered the study without showing any displeasure.

Within Kenzo’s heart were his wife—who had not died—and a healthy baby; beyond these, there was also the matter of his brother, who remained on the verge of dismissal yet still employed.
There was his sister, on the brink of collapse from asthma but still clinging to life.
There was the matter of the wife’s father, who seemed poised to obtain a new position yet had still not secured it.
There were also the matters of Shimada and Otsune.
And there was also the fact that the relationships between himself and all these people remained unresolved.

Eighty-Three

The children were the most carefree.
They rejoiced as if given a living doll, wanting to approach their new sister whenever they had a spare moment.
To them, even their sister's single blink became a marvel; every sneeze or yawn appeared an inexplicable phenomenon.

"What will she become in time?"

Such questions had never surfaced in their hearts, overwhelmed by immediate concerns.
These children, who couldn't even grasp what they themselves might become, naturally never considered what they might do then.

Viewed in this light, they were even further removed from Kenzo than his wife was.
When he returned home, he would sometimes stand on the threshold without even taking off his Western clothes and absently gaze at this cluster of people.

“They’re clustered together again.”

There were times when he would immediately turn on his heel and leave the room.

At times, he would sit cross-legged right there without even changing his clothes.

“If you keep using nothing but hot water bottles like this, it’s bad for the child’s health.”
“Get rid of them.”
“First of all—how many are you even using?”

Despite understanding nothing, he would offer half-hearted complaints and end up being laughed at by his wife.

Even as the days passed, he did not feel like holding the baby to look at her.
And yet, whenever he saw the children and his wife huddled together in the same room, a different emotion would sometimes arise within him.

“Women end up monopolizing the children, don’t they?”

The wife looked back at her husband with a surprised expression.
In that moment, there was a sense that she had suddenly become aware, through her husband’s words, of things she had been doing unconsciously until now.

“Why would you say such a thing out of nowhere?”

“But isn’t that how it is? Women probably use that to take revenge on husbands they dislike.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. The children cling to my side because you never bother with them.”

“The one who made me stop bothering was undoubtedly you.”

“Do whatever you like.”
“At every turn, it’s just griping.”
“After all, I can’t compete with someone as silver-tongued as you.”

Kenzo was rather sincere.
He did not think of it as either resentment or smooth-talking.

“Women are no good because they love schemes.”

The wife turned over on the futon and faced away.
And then she let her tears fall drop by drop onto the pillow.

“You don’t have to torment me so relentlessly…”

The children who had been watching the wife’s state seemed about to burst into tears.
Kenzo's chest grew heavy.
He had to string together words of consolation before her—who still could not leave her sickbed—even as he knew he would be defeated.
However, his understanding remained something entirely separate from this sympathy.
He wiped his wife’s tears, but he could not use those tears to revise his own thoughts.

When they next met face to face, the wife suddenly struck at her husband’s weakness.

“Why don’t you ever hold the baby?”

“I don’t know... It just feels unsettling to hold her.”
“If I were to break her neck, it’d be terrible.”

“Don’t lie.
You lack affection toward your wife and children.”

“But look here—a man who’s not used to holding something so floppy can’t just go putting his hands on her, can he?”

In reality, the baby was floppy.
It was impossible to tell where her bones were.
Even so, the wife would not concede.
She cited as evidence the instance when their first daughter had developed chickenpox and Kenzo’s attitude had abruptly changed.

“You used to hold her every day before that, but then you suddenly stopped, didn’t you?”

Kenzo had no intention of denying the facts.
At the same time, he made no attempt to revise his own way of thinking.

“No matter what you say, women have their schemes—there’s no helping it.”

He deeply believed this.
As though he himself were a free man released from all schemes.

Eighty-four

The bored wife often read novels she borrowed from the rental bookstore on the futon.
Whenever the grimy cardboard cover of the book lying by her pillow caught Kenzo’s attention, he would ask his wife.

“Do you find this stuff interesting?”

The wife felt as though her low literary taste was being mocked.

“What does it matter? Even if you don’t find it interesting, as long as I do.”

Aware of her isolation from her husband in various aspects, she immediately wanted to say such things.

Before she married into Kenzo’s household, she had known only her father, her brother, and two or three men who frequented the official residence.
And so, all those people lived their lives in a different sense than Kenzo.
She, who had abstracted her concept of men from those few individuals and brought it to Kenzo, found in her husband a man who was entirely the opposite of what she had expected.
She thought that one of them had to be correct.
In her eyes, her own father appeared as if he were the very model of a proper man.
Her thinking was simple.
She was convinced that before long, this husband would be educated by society and, like her father, his mold would change.

Contrary to expectations, Kenzo remained obstinate.
At the same time, the wife’s tenacity proved equally unyielding.
The two despised each other.
The wife—who measured everything against her father’s example—found herself inwardly rebelling against her husband.
Kenzo burned with fresh irritation toward this woman who refused to acknowledge him.
Impatient, he made no effort to conceal his open contempt.

“Then why don’t you teach me?”
“Must you look down on everyone else so much?”

“Because I have no intention of learning from you.”
“If you’re so resolved that you’re already a full-fledged person with this, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

In the wife’s heart lay the conviction of who would blindly obey, while in her husband’s heart lurked the justification that she was ultimately beyond enlightenment.
These verbal clashes repeating between them were old.
Yet old as they were, they never reached resolution.

Kenzo, with an air of boredom, tossed down the rental book from beneath the handrail.

"I'm not saying you shouldn't read."
"That's your prerogative."
"But you ought to avoid straining your eyes too much."

The Wife was most fond of sewing.
When her eyes were too alert to sleep at night, she would work the eye of a fine needle under the oil lamp regardless of whether it was one or two o'clock.
When their eldest or second daughter was born, relying on her youthful vigor, she had taken up her sewing again before a reasonable period had passed—which became the root cause—and had suffered a significant deterioration in her eyesight.

“Yes, holding a needle may be harmful, but it shouldn’t interfere with my usual condition.”
“Besides, it’s not as if I’m reading constantly either.”

“But you shouldn’t keep reading till you’re exhausted. Otherwise you’ll regret it later.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine.”

The Wife, not yet thirty, didn’t fully grasp what overwork meant. She laughed it off without concern.

“Even if you don’t suffer for it, I will.”

Kenzo deliberately made a self-serving remark.
Whenever he saw his wife disregard his warnings, Kenzo tended to resort to such language.
This too was counted by the Wife as one of her husband’s bad habits.

At the same time, his notebook grew increasingly meticulous.
Characters that had initially been the size of flies’ heads gradually shrank to resemble ants’ heads.
Never once considering why he wrote in such minuscule script, he kept moving his Western pen almost mechanically.
In the fading twilight beneath the window where daylight weakened, under the dim oil lamp’s faint glow, he squandered his eyesight whenever free moments arose—never sparing it a thought.
He who had never shown himself the same consideration he demanded of his wife saw no contradiction in this.
The Wife too appeared utterly unperturbed by it all.

Eighty-five

When the wife’s sickbed was removed, winter was already thrusting up frost pillars like drills in their desolate garden.

“It’s been so harsh—this year feels colder than usual.”

“You think that because your blood has thinned.”

“I wonder if that’s the case.”

The Wife, as though noticing for the first time, held both hands over the brazier and looked at the color of her nails.

“If you looked in the mirror, you’d probably notice your own complexion.”
“Yes, I know that.”
She turned back the hand she had again extended over the fire and stroked her pale cheeks two or three times.

“But it really is cold this year too, isn’t it?”

To Kenzo, his wife—who refused to heed his explanation—appeared absurd.

“That’s because it’s winter—coldness comes with the territory.”

Kenzo, who laughed at his wife, was also a man peculiarly sensitive to the cold. Especially in recent winters, the chill had struck his body with severity. He had no choice but to install a kotatsu in his study to block the cold seeping from his knees up to his waist. He had not even considered this might be how neurasthenia manifested itself—in his negligence toward his own well-being, he differed not at all from his wife.

Each morning after seeing her husband off, strands of long hair would remain in the Wife’s hands as she ran a comb through her locks. Each time she combed her hair, she gazed regretfully at the strands caught between the teeth. To her, those strands seemed more precious than the vitality she had lost.

"I, who have brought forth this new life, must fade away as its recompense."

A faint feeling of this sort stirred within her. Yet she lacked the mental faculty to shape that vague sensation into words. Within it swirled both pride at having accomplished something and resentment at being punished. Regardless, the newborn child grew ever dearer to her.

With practiced hands, she lifted the limp infant and pressed her lips to its rounded cheek. Then an irrational yet insistent conviction arose: what had sprung from her body must incontrovertibly belong to her.

She placed the child beside her and sat back down in front of the sewing board. And then, occasionally pausing her needlework, she peered down with a worried expression at the face that lay sleeping so warmly.

“Whose clothes are those?”

“It’s still for the baby.”

“Do you need that many?”

“Yes.”

The Wife kept moving her hands in silence.

Kenzo finally seemed to notice and gazed at the large-patterned piece of fabric placed on his wife’s lap.

“That’s from Sister to celebrate, I suppose.”

“That’s right.”

“What a pointless story. They should just stop if they don’t have the money.”

Kenzo could not comprehend his sister’s compulsion—to set aside a portion of the pocket money she received from him and feel obliged to make such gifts.

“In other words, it’s the same as me buying it with my own money.”

“But since she thinks it’s her social obligation to you, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

Sister was a woman who adhered too scrupulously to what people called social obligation.
Whenever she received something from others, she agonized over returning even more than she had been given.

"It's truly troublesome—all this talk of 'obligation.' I can't understand at all what this 'obligation' even means."
"She'd be far better off taking precautions to keep Hida from borrowing her pocket money than making such formalistic gestures."

When it came to such matters, the surprisingly insensitive Wife made no effort to defend Sister.

"In time she'll give proper thanks in return, so that should suffice."

Kenzo, who almost never brought gifts when visiting others, was still staring suspiciously at the merino fabric on his Wife’s lap.

Eighty-Six

“So apparently, people originally brought all sorts of things to Sister’s place.”

The Wife looked at Kenzo’s face and suddenly blurted out the following.—
“Since people know Sister’s nature of returning fifteen for every ten she receives, they apparently give her something with the purpose of expressing their gratitude.”

“Even if you return fifteen for ten, the total just goes from fifty sen to seventy-five sen.”

“That’s more than enough. That’s how those people are.”

To Kenzo, who spent his days compiling meticulous notebooks that others could only see as some frivolous whim, the very existence of such people in the world seemed unimaginable.

“This is such a troublesome obligation.”
“It’s utterly absurd, isn’t it?”

“It may seem utterly absurd from the outside, but once you’re part of it, there’s simply no escaping it.”

Kenzo found himself compelled to reflect on how he had spent the thirty yen he’d received unexpectedly some time before.

A little over a month earlier, an acquaintance had asked him to write a lengthy manuscript for a magazine he managed.
For Kenzo—who until then had produced nothing beyond meticulous notes—this work represented merely his first attempt at channeling his intellect into unfamiliar territory.
He had been propelled solely by the intriguing sensation flowing from his brush tip.
He had anticipated no compensation whatsoever.
When the man placed the manuscript fee before him, he rejoiced like someone stumbling upon unlooked-for treasure.

He had long been troubled by the dreariness of his study and immediately went to a joinery craftsman in Dangozaka to have a rosewood hanging frame made. He selected one from the stone rubbings known as the Twenty Pieces of the Northern Wei Dynasty that he had received from a friend who had returned from China and placed it inside. Then he hung the frame beneath the long, slender speckled bamboo rod with rings and attached it to the nail in the tokonoma. Perhaps because the bamboo’s rounded shape prevented it from lying flush against the wall, the framed piece remained tilted even when undisturbed.

He descended Dangozaka once more and made his way up toward Yanaka. He then bought a vase from a pottery shop there. The vase was vermillion. Inside, a large floral pattern was painted in pale yellow. Its height was a little over one shaku. He immediately placed it on the tokonoma. The large vase and the comparatively small, wobbly hanging scroll simply could not achieve balance. He gazed at this discordant arrangement with eyes that seemed slightly disappointed. But he thought it was still better than having nothing at all. He, lacking the luxury to indulge in refined tastes, had to find contentment in his dissatisfaction.

He also went to a kimono fabric store on Hongo-dori and bought bolts of fabric.
Having no knowledge of textiles, he simply made a haphazard selection from among the items the clerk showed him.
It was a garishly shiny patterned cloth.
In his naive eyes, shiny things appeared superior to non-shiny ones.
Having been persuaded by the clerk to have a matching haori and kimono made, he finally left the shop clutching a bolt of Isezaki meisen.
Even the name "Isezaki meisen" was something he had never heard before.

After purchasing these items, he gave no thought whatsoever to others.
He paid no heed even to the child about to be born.
He had completely forgotten about the lives of people who were worse off than himself.
Compared to his sister, who placed excessive weight on the social obligations of the mundane world, he had lost even the goodwill he once held toward pitiful things.

“Even taking a loss just to uphold social obligations—now that’s impressive.”
“But Sister’s been a show-off since birth—there’s no helping it.”
“Not being impressive would still be better, I suppose.”

“Is there really no kindness in her at all?”

“I suppose not.”

Kenzo had to consider for a moment.
Sister was undoubtedly a kind woman.
Perhaps it is I who am the cold-hearted one.

87

Around the time this conversation still freshly colored Kenzo’s memory, he received a second visit from Otsune.

Her appearance, dressed in nearly the same shabby clothing as when he had last seen her, had grown even rounder than before—likely from layers of undergarments added against the cold.
Kenzo immediately pushed the brazier he had prepared for guests toward her.

“Please don’t trouble yourself.”
“It’s quite warm today.”

Outside, a calm day faintly shone through the glass set in the shoji.

"You seem to be growing stouter with age."

"Yes, thanks to you, my physical health remains quite robust."

"That’s splendid."

"On the other hand, my financial health keeps wasting away."

Kenzo doubted whether people who grew plump like this in old age were truly healthy.
At the very least, it struck him as unnatural.
There was something vaguely unsettling about it too.

"Is she drinking sake or something?"

Even such a conjecture passed through his mind.

Everything Otsune wore close to her body was old and worn.
The kimonos and haori, which had been through countless washings, seemed to retain a silken sheen in places while remaining oddly stiff and coarse.
No matter how worn down by time they were, it was only in how neatly they had been laundered that her disposition could be seen.
Kenzo gazed at her round yet somehow constricted figure and realized her dire living conditions were laid bare in her words.

“Wherever I look, it’s nothing but people in trouble—it’s quite overwhelming.”
“If even someone like me is struggling, then there isn’t a single person in the world who isn’t.”

Kenzo didn't even feel compelled to explain himself.
He immediately thought:
"This person probably thinks I'm richer than she is, just as she thinks I'm healthier than she is."

Lately, Kenzo had actually been damaging his health.
Though aware of this, he still didn't see a doctor.
He didn't tell his friends either.
He simply endured the discomfort alone.
Yet whenever he imagined his body's future, he grew agitated.
At times he felt others had made him this weak, and raged at no one in particular.

"They must think you're healthy as long as you're young and not bedridden," he thought. "Just like they assume you have money if you live in a gated house with a maid."

Kenzo silently studied Otsune's face. At the same time, his eyes traced the newly arranged vase in the tokonoma alcove and the hanging scroll behind it. The glossy bolt of cloth he ought to soon wear as a kimono lingered in his mind. He questioned why he couldn't feel any compassion for this elderly woman.

"Perhaps it is I who am the cold-hearted one."

He repeated once more in his mind the comment he had made about Sister.
And thus he arrived at the answer: So what if I'm cold-hearted?

Otsune began talking at length about her son-in-law who depended on her. As commonly seen in the world, his earning power quickly became her concern. To her, this "earning power" meant nothing more than the monthly income he provided—beyond that sum of money, there seemed to be nothing else in the entire world by which she measured a person’s worth.

“His earnings are simply too meager—there’s nothing to be done about it,” she said. “If only he could bring in a bit more...”

Instead of calling her son-in-law slow or incompetent, she laid out before Kenzo the monthly income his labor generated.
It was as though, once one measured a bolt of cloth’s dimensions with a ruler, its striped patterns or material quality no longer mattered at all.

Unfortunately, Kenzo worked in a profession where he did not want to be measured by such standards.
He had to coldly let her complaints pass unheeded.

八十八

After a suitable interval, he stood up and entered his study.
He took the wallet lying on the desk, quietly checked inside, and found a single five-yen note.
He returned to the original sitting room with it gripped in his hand and placed it in front of Otsune.

“Excuse me, but please use this to take a rickshaw home.”

“I couldn’t possibly trouble you with such concern.”
“I didn’t come here with that intention at all.”

With words of refusal, she accepted the bill and tucked it into her kimono fold.

Just as Kenzo had used the same phrasing as before when handing over the money, Otsune’s ritualized declinations upon receiving it differed not at all from their initial exchange.
What’s more, even the amount—five yen—matched exactly by coincidence.

"What will I do if there's no five-yen note when she comes next time?"

That Kenzo's wallet never contained that much actual value was known only to him as its owner; Otsune had no way of knowing this. When he anticipated Otsune's third visit yet found himself unable to imagine having five yen to give her this third time, he suddenly felt absurd.

“From now on, whenever that person comes, I feel I must always give five yen. Is this the same as Sister’s unnecessary adherence to social obligations?”

While moving the noshi as though it had nothing to do with her, the Wife continued working without pause and said:

“If you don’t have it, you needn’t give anything.”
“There’s no reason to keep up appearances.”

“Even if I tried to give when I don’t have it, I know I can’t.”

Their conversation ended abruptly.
The sound of dying embers being transferred from the noshi wrapping to the brazier could be heard during that interval.

“Why was there five yen in your wallet again today?”
“In your wallet.”

Kenzo paid four yen and some for a large vermilion vase that clashed with the tokonoma alcove.
When commissioning the hanging scroll, he was charged five yen and some.
Staring intently at the splendid sandalwood bookshelf that the joiner had offered at a discounted hundred yen with “Won’t you buy it?”, he solemnly took from his pocket a sum amounting to less than one-twentieth of that price and handed it to the craftsman.
He also spent over ten yen to buy a glossy bolt of Isezaki silk fabric.
After the manuscript fee he had received from a friend had transformed in this way, only a single soiled five-yen note remained.

“Actually, there are still things I want to buy.”
“What exactly did you intend to buy?”

Kenzo could not list any specific items in front of his Wife.

“There are plenty.”

His words, boundless in their greed, were simple.
His wife, whose tastes diverged starkly from her husband’s, spared herself further interrogation and instead asked him another question.

“That old woman seems far more composed than Sister.
If those two met Shimada here at home, they likely wouldn’t quarrel like that.”

“They’re better off not meeting.”
“Let them meet face-to-face in the same room—that’d be truly unbearable.”
“And you want to bring them here when dealing with them separately is already too much.”

“Even now, do you think they’d still start fighting?”

“Never mind fighting—isn’t it me who can’t bear it?”

“They both still don’t seem to know. That one of them comes to the house.”

“That one of them comes to the house.”

“Who knows?”

Shimada had never spoken of Otsune.
Otsune, contrary to Kenzo’s expectations, had also said nothing about Shimada.

“That old woman is still better than that man.”

“Why?”

“Because when she receives five yen, she leaves quietly.”

Compared to how Shimada’s avarice grew more brazen with each visit, Otsune’s demeanor was markedly different.

Eighty-nine

Not many days later, when Shimada's long-nosed face reappeared in Kenzo's parlor, he immediately thought of Otsune.

They couldn't have been natural-born enemies—they must have shared better days.
However futile others deemed their efforts—like lighting a lamp on a fingernail—how content they must have been hoarding money back then.
What future hopes had driven them?
After the money—that sole memento of their harmony—vanished into thin air, how did they regard their dreamlike past?

Kenzo was just about to mention Otsune to Shimada.
Yet Shimada's face—which had ever shown only an expression numb to the past—remained dull, as though he remembered nothing at all.
It seemed those old hatreds and lingering attachments had vanished from his heart along with the money from those days.

He took out a tobacco pouch from his waist and packed cut tobacco into the pipe's bowl. When dropping the ash, he caught the pipe with his left palm and did not tap the edge of the brazier. It seemed resin had built up, as a sizzling sound occurred when he smoked. He wordlessly felt through his pocket. Then he turned toward Kenzo.

“Do you have some paper? Unfortunately, my pipe is clogged.”

He tore the hanshi paper he had received from Kenzo and fashioned a small twist.
With it, he cleaned the inside of the pipe two or three times over.
He was a man most practiced at such tasks.
Kenzo silently observed his deft movements.

“As dusk approaches, I imagine you must be exceedingly occupied.”

He said this while puffing contentedly on his now-unclogged pipe.

“In our line of work, there’s no year-end or New Year. The whole year stays exactly the same.”

“That’s efficient.”
“Most people don’t get to live like that.”

While Shimada was still forming his next words, the baby started crying in the back room.

“Ah—that sounds like an infant.”

“Yes, she was born just the other day.”

“Well now—congratulations.”
“I hadn’t heard a thing about it.”
“A boy or a girl?”

“A girl.”

“Ah—if I may ask—how many does that make now?”

Shimada asked all sorts of things. He remained completely unaware of what thoughts were surfacing in Kenzo’s heart as Kenzo gave appropriate responses.

Kenzo, who had just four or five days prior read in a foreign magazine a statistical argument that increasing birth rates lead to rising mortality rates, found himself at that moment entertaining a strange notion—neither fully logical nor purely fanciful—that whenever a baby was born somewhere, an old person must die somewhere else.

"In other words, someone must die as a substitute."

His thoughts were hazy, like a dream.
As poetry, it only vaguely invaded his mind.
If he were to press his understanding further until it became clearer, that substitute would be none other than the baby’s mother.
Next, it could have been the baby’s father as well.
But Kenzo at that moment had no intention of pursuing it that far.
He fixed a meaningful gaze solely on the old man before him.
This old man, whose reason for living was nearly impossible to discern, was unquestionably the most fitting candidate to serve as a substitute.

“Why is he so robust?”

Kenzo had nearly forgotten even the measure of cruelty in his own imagination.
Then regarding his health condition that differed from others', he felt an irritation as if he bore no responsibility whatsoever.

At that moment, Shimada suddenly said to him: —

“O-nui has finally passed away.
“The funeral arrangements have been taken care of, but—”

Though Kenzo had long understood she wouldn’t survive—inferred from the diagnosis of “spinal disease” itself—hearing it stated so formally now suddenly made him feel sorry for her.

“I see.”
“How pitiable.”

“Well, given the nature of the illness, there was no way it could have healed.”

Shimada remained composed.
He blew a ring of tobacco smoke as if to say that dying was only natural.

Ninety

However, the economic repercussions arising from this unfortunate woman’s death held far greater significance for Shimada than the death itself.
Kenzo's prediction had to materialize immediately before him.

“There’s something about this I must ask of you.”

Having come this far and meeting Kenzo’s gaze, Shimada’s demeanor had grown tense.
Kenzo could infer what followed without hearing it.

“This concerns money again, doesn’t it?”

“Well, that’s how it is. Since O-nui died, the connection between Shibano and Otoh-san got cut off completely—so I can’t have them sending money every month like before anymore.”

Shimada’s speech veered oddly between coarse and ceremonious.

“Up till now, that Golden Kite pension had been coming through proper-like to me, see? But if that dries up sudden-like, it’s like losing my very reason for being—leaves me in a real fix.”

He altered his tone once more.

“In any case, now that it’s come to this, there’s no one left to look after me but you.”
“So you’ve got to help me out—I’m in dire straits here.”

“Even if you keep hounding me like this, it won’t change a thing.”
“As I am now, I have neither obligation nor reason to do anything of the sort.”

Shimada stared fixedly at Kenzo’s face.
That gaze—half probing, half menacing—served only to inflame the other’s anger.
Recognizing from Kenzo’s demeanor the peril of pressing further, Shimada swiftly compartmentalized the issue.

“We can discuss the long-standing matters properly later—but for now, let’s just handle this immediate crisis.”

Kenzo couldn’t comprehend what sort of emergency had arisen between them.

“I have to get through this year-end. Any household needs a lump sum of a hundred or two hundred yen at year-end—that’s only natural, right?”

Kenzo felt like letting him have his way.

“I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Don’t play dumb with me. With such circumstances as yours, you can’t even manage a little flexibility? That’s impossible!”

“Whether I have it or not, it’s simply that I don’t.”

“But you say you have an income of eight hundred yen a month, don’t you?”

Kenzo was more surprised than angered by this preposterous accusation.

“Whether it’s eight hundred yen or a thousand yen, my income is my income."
“It has nothing to do with you.”

Shimada fell silent at that point.
Kenzo’s answer seemed to have strayed from his own expectations.
Shameless yet not very bright, he could do nothing further to press the other party.

“So you’re saying that no matter how much I suffer, you won’t help me?”

“Yes, not a penny more.”

Shimada stood up.
When he stepped down into the entryway and closed the open lattice door, he looked back once more.

“I won’t come again.”

His eyes, having left behind what seemed to be his final words, shone in the darkness.
Kenzo stood on the threshold and clearly looked down at those eyes.
However, he recognized no awe, terror, or eeriness within that radiance.
The anger and displeasure emanating from his own eyes were more than sufficient to repel those assaults.

From a distance, his wife covertly observed Kenzo’s demeanor.

“What happened?”

“Do as you like.”

“Did he come again asking for money?”

“Who’d give him any?”

The wife smiled while quietly gazing at her husband.

“That old woman’s demands may be drawn out thin, but they’re still safer.”

“And you think Shimada’s business ends here?”

Kenzo spat out these words and even envisioned in his mind the next act that was sure to come.

Ninety-One

At the same time, the memories that had lain dormant until now could not remain undisturbed.
He gazed vividly at that distant past when he had been taken back to his parents' home, with the keen eye of one confronting a new world for the first time.

To his biological father, Kenzo had been nothing more than a minor nuisance.
His father, whose face seemed to ask why this defective thing had come into his life, scarcely treated him as a son.
This attitude of his father's—so utterly transformed from before—had uprooted and withered away Kenzo's affection for his blood parent.
He compared the father who had always smiled at him for his adoptive parents' sake with the father who had turned miserly the moment saddled with an unwanted burden, and found himself astonished.
Next came disillusionment.
Yet he still did not know despair.
The vitality that came with his growth swelled from below and lifted its head, no matter how suppressed.
In the end, he avoided succumbing to melancholy altogether.

His father, who had a great many children, had no intention of showing Kenzo any favoritism.
Even though he harbored no ulterior motive of someday relying on Kenzo, he begrudged spending even a single sen on him.
Though he had taken him in out of obligation to the parent-child bond, beyond feeding him, looking after him was nothing but a loss.

Moreover, even when the person in question returned home, his name was never reinstated in the family registry.
No matter how much care they lavished on raising him at his biological home, once push came to shove and he was taken away again, that would be the end of it.

“I’ll feed you since there’s no way around that.”
“But anything beyond that isn’t our concern.”
“That’s something the other party should naturally handle.”

This was the father’s logic.

Shimada, for his part, observed the unfolding events solely from the angle most favorable to himself.

“Well, if he’s just left with his biological family, things will work out somehow.”
“Once Kenzo becomes a full-fledged adult who can work even a little, I’ll take him back even if it means making a public scandal—that’ll settle everything.”

Kenzo couldn’t live by the sea.
Nor could he remain in the mountains.
Pushed away by both, he wandered aimlessly between them.
He ate what the sea provided while occasionally reaching for the mountains’ bounty.

From the viewpoint of both his biological father and adoptive father, he wasn’t human.
Rather, he was an object.
Where his biological father treated him as a disposable trinket, his adoptive father kept plans to make him useful someday.

“I’ll take you back here now and have you do servant work or whatever—so you’d better get used to the idea.”

When Kenzo visited his adoptive home one day, Shimada took the opportunity to say such a thing.
Kenzo was startled and fled back home.
The callousness instilled a vague dread in a child’s heart.
He could not clearly remember how old he had been at the time, but it was around when the ambition—that he must undergo long years of training to become a respectable person and make his way in society—had already taken firm root.

"It would be terrible to be made into a servant or something."

He repeated the same words over and over in his mind.
Fortunately, those words were not repeated in vain.
He somehow managed to avoid becoming a servant.

"But how did I become who I am now?"

He couldn’t help but find it strange when he thought this way.
In that sense of wonder was mingled no small pride at having fought well against his surroundings and prevailed.
And of course, it also contained the self-satisfaction of viewing what was still unfinished as if it were already completed.

He saw the contrast between past and present.
He questioned how the past had developed into this present.
Moreover，he did not notice at all his own self suffering because of this present.

The rupture of his relationship with Shimada had been due to this present.
That he detested Otsune and could no longer assimilate with his sister and brother had also been due to this present.
That he was gradually growing distant from his wife's father had likewise been undoubtedly due to this present.
From one perspective, he who had built up his present self in such a way that it would no longer align with others was pitiable.

Ninety-Two

His wife turned to Kenzo and said—

“There’s probably no one anywhere who would please you.”
“The world is full of nothing but fools.”

Kenzo’s heart was not composed enough to laugh off such sarcasm.
The circumstances surrounding him—which allowed little room for magnanimity—made him feel all the more constrained.

“You probably think that as long as someone’s useful, that’s all that matters in a person.”

“But if someone isn’t useful, then they’re nothing at all—are they not?”

Unfortunately, Wife’s father was a useful man.
Her brother too was of a nature that developed only in such practical aspects.
In contrast to this, Kenzo was by nature far removed from practicality.

He could not even help with moving.
Even during the year-end cleaning, he remained composed with his hands tucked into his sleeves.
Even when tying up a single trunk, he couldn’t figure out how to thread the thin cord.

“And you call yourself a man?”

He remained motionless, appearing to those around him as nothing but a dullard devoid of wit.
He grew even more still.
And so he increasingly shifted his true abilities in the opposite direction.

From this viewpoint, he had once tried to take his wife’s younger brother to the distant countryside where he lived and educate him there.
That younger brother seemed thoroughly impertinent from Kenzo’s perspective.
He domineered within the household and showed no courtesy to anyone.
When he had a scientist review his schoolwork daily at home, he would sit cross-legged without hesitation in front of the man.
Moreover, he called the man’s name with repeated -kun suffixes.

“That’s no way to handle it.
“Entrust him to me.”
“I’ll take him to the countryside and raise him myself.”

Kenzo’s proposal was silently accepted by Wife’s father.
And then it was silently cast aside.
He looked upon his own son acting with such tyranny before his eyes and appeared to harbor no worries about the future.
Not only he, but Wife’s mother too remained unperturbed.
Wife too showed no sign of concern whatsoever.

“It seems they gave up because if they sent him to the countryside and he clashed with you or something happened, it would sour relations and cause trouble later on.”

When Kenzo heard his wife's explanation, he did not consider it entirely a lie.
But he also thought there might still be another implication lingering.

“He’s not a fool. They don’t require your assistance.”

From the surrounding circumstances, Kenzo inferred that the true intent of the refusal might rather lie here.

Indeed, the wife’s younger brother was no fool.
Rather, he was too clever.
Kenzo himself was well aware of this point.
His attempt to educate her brother for the sake of his and his wife’s future lay in an entirely different direction.
And regrettably, that aspect had still not been understood by either the wife’s parents or the wife herself up to this very day.

“Being useful isn’t the only thing that matters.
What’s the point if you can’t even grasp something that basic?”

Kenzo’s words were domineering in their force.
The wife’s face, wounded by his words, clearly showed dissatisfaction.

When her mood had improved, the wife turned to Kenzo again:
“Instead of barking at me from the start, why don’t you explain it in a way I can understand?”

“If I try to make it understandable, you just say I’m rehashing logic.”

“So make it easier to understand.”
“Stop using that sixth-grade logic I can’t even follow!”

“Then there’s no way I can explain it at all.”
“It’s like demanding someone do arithmetic without numbers.”

“But there are moments when your reasoning can’t be viewed as anything but a device to twist others into submission.”

“It’s because your mind is dull that you see it that way.”

“Even if my mind may be dull, I refuse to be crushed under hollow reasoning with no substance.”

The two of them began circling the same loop once more, round and round.

93

When she couldn’t harmoniously connect with her husband face-to-face, the Wife had no choice but to turn her back on him.
And then she looked at the baby sleeping there.
She picked up the child at once, as though suddenly remembering.

Between the octopus-like, squishy lump of flesh and her, there was neither a wall of logic nor a barrier of reason.
Everything she touched felt undeniably like her own.
She pressed her lips to the baby and kissed it all over, pouring out her warm heart upon it.

“Even if you are not mine, this child is mine.”

Her attitude made this sentiment unmistakably clear.

The baby’s facial features had not yet even taken shape.
No matter how long they waited, almost no proper hair grew on its head.
From a fair eye’s perspective, it was undeniably a monster.

“What a strange child we’ve ended up with.”

Kenzo spoke honestly.

“Every newborn baby is like this.”

“That can’t possibly be the case. A baby that’s a bit more properly formed ought to be born.”

“Just wait and see.”

The wife said this with an air of confidence.
Kenzo had no idea what to make of it.
But he knew that the wife woke up countless times during the night for this baby.
He was aware that she sacrificed her precious sleep and never showed the slightest sign of displeasure.
He even encountered the question of how much stronger a mother’s love for the child was compared to a father’s.

Four or five days ago, when a moderately strong earthquake struck, he—timid as he was—immediately leapt from the veranda into the garden. When he returned to the parlor, his wife hurled unexpected reproach at him.

"You're utterly heartless," she said. "You only care about saving yourself."

Her grievance lay in why he hadn't considered their child's safety before his own. Kenzo stood shocked—never imagining his impulsive act would draw such censure.

“Can women really think of their children even at a time like that?”

“Of course.”

Kenzo felt that he was indeed inhuman.

However, he now gazed coldly at the wife holding the child as though it were her own.

“No matter how many bundles of incomprehensible things there are, they’re useless.”

After a while, his contemplations spread over a broader scope, stretching from the present into the distant future.

"The time will surely come when that child grows up and leaves you.
You seem to think that even if we’re apart, blending completely with the child would be enough—but you’re mistaken.
Just wait."

When he settled into his study, his thoughts suddenly took on a scientific hue.

"When a banana plant bears fruit, its trunk begins to wither the following year.
Bamboo follows the same pattern.
Among animals, there are countless species whose purpose remains unclear—whether they live to bear offspring or bear offspring to die.
Humans too, however gradually, remain governed by these same laws.
Once a mother has sacrificed everything she possesses to give life to her child, she must then sacrifice all that remains to protect that life.
If we suppose she entered this world under heaven’s decree to do so, then monopolizing the child as her rightful reward is only natural.
It’s less intentional than an inevitable phenomenon."

After thoroughly considering the mother’s position this way, he also considered his own as a father.
And when he realized how this differed from the mother’s case, he turned his thoughts once more toward the wife.

“You who have a child are fortunate,”
but before you could enjoy that happiness, you had already made a great sacrifice.
There was no telling how many unnoticed sacrifices you would have to make from here on out.
“You may be happy—but in truth, it’s pitiable.”

94

The year gradually drew to a close.
Amid the blowing cold wind, fine snowflakes began to flutter into view.
The children sang the song "How Many More Sleeps Till New Year’s?" day after day.
Their hearts were just as the song they sang.
They were filled with hope for the coming New Year.

Kenzo, in his study, sometimes listened to their voices while holding a Western-style pen.
He wondered if he too had once had such a time in his life.

The children also sang a ball-bouncing song called "The Master’s Loathed Year-End."
Kenzo gave a wry smile.
Yet even that failed to strike home to his present circumstances.
He was tormented by the effort of stacking ten or twenty thick bundles of Japanese paper folded into quarters on his desk and reading through each sheet one by one.
While reading, he drew lines, circles, and triangles on the paper with red ink.
Then he lined up detailed numbers and performed tedious calculations.

The writings on the Japanese paper were all hastily penciled scribbles, and in dim light, even the character strokes were frequently unclear.
Some were so roughly written as to be illegible, cropping up now and then.
Raising his tired eyes, Kenzo looked at the stacked bundles and felt disheartened.
The English proverb “Penelope’s work” came to his lips time and again.

“It’ll never get done no matter how long it takes.”

From time to time he set down his brush and sighed deeply.

However, there were still countless unresolved matters surrounding him.
He had to fix his eyes with a suspicious look on yet another visiting card his wife had brought.

“What is it?”

“He says he wishes to see you briefly regarding Shimada.”

“Tell him I’m occupied now and send him away.”

Once she had left, the wife immediately returned.

“He says he would like to know when it would be convenient to call upon you.”

Kenzo, wearing an expression that said this was hardly the time, gazed at the tall stack of Japanese paper bundles beside him.
The wife reluctantly pressed him.

“What should I tell him?”

“Tell him to come the day after tomorrow in the afternoon.”

Kenzo also reluctantly specified a date and time.

He, his work interrupted, began to idly blow tobacco smoke.
At that moment, the Wife entered again.

“Did he leave?”

“Yes.”

The Wife gazed at the dirty, red-stamped document spread out before her husband. Just as Kenzo did not comprehend the trouble of being woken repeatedly by the baby at night, the Wife could not imagine the difficulty her husband faced in meticulously reading through this mountain of Japanese paper—
Setting aside her investigation, she sat down and immediately asked her husband.

“He’ll probably come saying that sort of thing again. How persistent.”
“Unrelenting!”

“He likely wants to settle it before year-end.”
“How absurd.”

The Wife thought there was no longer any need to deal with Shimada.
Kenzo’s mind, however, leaned toward giving him some money out of their past ties.
Yet the conversation strayed elsewhere before reaching that point.

“How is your family managing?”

“They must still be struggling as always.”

“Is that position at the railway company president’s office still not available?”

“That position does exist, I hear.”
“But it’s not something they’ll just accommodate to our convenience at a moment’s notice, is it?”

“Will it be difficult to arrange by year-end?”

“Impossible.”

“That must be hard.”

“Even if we struggle，there’s nothing to be done．”
“It’s all just fate．”

The Wife was relatively composed.
She seemed to have resigned herself to everything.

Ninety-Five

When the bearer of the unfamiliar calling card reappeared at his front entrance after a day's interval, just as Kenzo had specified, he was still busy using his frayed Western-style brush to mark various symbols—circles, triangles, and the like—on sheets of coarse Japanese paper. His fingertips were stained here and there with red stamp ink. He went out to the parlor without even washing his hands.

The man who had come for Shimada differed somewhat in manner from the previous Yoshida, but to Kenzo, both were equally distant beings—practically indistinguishable in their remoteness.

He was wearing a striped haori over a stiff obi and white tabi socks.
His demeanor and manner of speech, which were neither quite those of a merchant nor a gentleman, reminded Kenzo of a certain managerial type of person.
Before disclosing his status or profession, he abruptly asked Kenzo—

“Do you remember my face?”

Kenzo was startled and looked at the man.
His face had no distinguishing features.
If one were to insist on a description, it was only that he had lived a life steeped in domesticity up until now.

"I'm afraid I don't recall."

He laughed like a triumphant man.

"I thought as much.
"It's about time you could forget me."

He paused and added.

"But even now, I still remember the days when you were called 'young master this' and 'young master that.'"

“Is that so?”

Kenzo gave a curt greeting and stared fixedly at the man’s face.

“Can’t recall me at all, eh?”
“Then I’ll tell you.”
“Back when Mr. Shimada ran the administrative office, I worked there.”
“Remember how you played that prank—cut your finger with a penknife and made such a fuss?”
“That knife was in my inkstone box.”
“I’m the one who fetched water in a metal basin to cool your finger that day.”

In Kenzo’s mind, such facts were still clearly preserved.
However, he could not even begin to recall what the person sitting before him now had looked like back then.

“Due to that connection, I was asked to come here on Mr. Shimada’s behalf—that’s how things stand.”

He went straight to the point.
And then, just as Kenzo had anticipated, he began demanding money.

“He says he won’t visit your house again.”

“He already said that when he left last time.”

“So, how about we settle this matter cleanly once and for all? Otherwise, you’ll remain troubled indefinitely—there’s no escaping it.”

Kenzo did not take kindly to the man’s tone, which seemed to say, "I’ll spare you the trouble, so hand over the money."

“No matter how tangled up I get, it’s not a bother.”
“The world’s nothing but entanglements anyway.”
“Even if it were an inconvenience—if paying money I’ve no business paying would solve things—I’d still rather put up with the nuisance unpaid. That sits far better with me.”

The man thought for a while.
He also appeared slightly troubled.
However, when he eventually opened his mouth, he brought up something entirely unexpected.

“Moreover, as you are well aware, since the written agreement you provided to Shimada during the severance is still in his possession, would it not be better to hand over a settled sum now and have that document exchanged?”

Kenzo distinctly remembered that written pledge.
When he was to rejoin the family register, Shimada insisted on obtaining a personal written commitment from Kenzo himself, so his father—left with no alternative—told him to write something—anything—and give it to him.
With nothing substantial to write, he reluctantly took up the brush.
Regarding this severance of relations, he had penned just over two lines expressing their mutual desire to avoid future acts of ingratitude or coldness, then handed it over.

“That document is practically scrap. Even if they hold onto it over there, it’s useless—and even if I took it back, it’s of no use to me. If you think you can wring some advantage from it, go ahead and try.”

Kenzo still disliked the man’s attitude of trying to foist such a written agreement upon him.

Ninety-Six

When the discussion reached an impasse, the man paused.
Then, at a convenient moment, he brought up the same issue again.
His arguments meandered aimlessly.
When logic failed him, he didn’t even attempt emotional appeals.
His naked calculation—that any concession would suffice—lay exposed.
Kenzo, worn down by this directionless back-and-forth, finally lost patience.

“If your demand is either buying back that scrap of paper or paying hush money now to avoid future nuisances, I’ll refuse outright. But if you’re truly desperate—and can swear there’ll be no more brazen requests hereafter—then out of past obligation, I might scrape together a token sum.”

“Well, that is indeed the very reason for my visit, so if it’s at all possible, I earnestly hope you’ll grant this request.”

Kenzo thought, *Then why didn’t he say so sooner?*
At the same time, the other man made a face as if wondering why Kenzo hadn’t mentioned it earlier.

“So how much will you give?”

Kenzo silently considered.
However, no clear guideline had emerged to determine what amount would be appropriate.
Moreover, the smaller the sum, the more advantageous it was for him.

"Well, perhaps around a hundred yen."

"A hundred yen."

The man repeated the figure.

"What do you think—couldn't you manage to make it three hundred yen?"

"If there were any valid reason to pay, I'd pay hundreds of yen."

“That’s quite reasonable, but Mr. Shimada finds himself in such difficult circumstances.”

“Well now, I’m having my own troubles with matters of that sort.”

“Is that so?”

His tone was rather sarcastic.

“Even if you say you won’t pay a single penny from the start, there’s nothing you can actually do about it, right?”
“If a hundred yen isn’t good enough for you, then just give up.”

The man finally stopped haggling.

“In any case, I’ll try speaking properly to the man himself about that.”
“Afterward, I’ll consider raising it further, so please be patient.”

After the man left, Kenzo turned to his wife.

“They’ve finally come for it.”

“What do you mean by ‘come for it’?”

“They’ll take my money again.”
“I detest how anyone who comes here is certain to take my money.”

“That’s absurd.”

The wife did not offer any words of sympathy.

“But there’s nothing to be done.”

Kenzo’s reply was also brief.
He found it bothersome even to explain to his wife in detail the process by which he had reached that point.

“That’s your money you’re giving away, so I’ve nothing to say about it.”

“What money do I have?”

Kenzo flung these words out and retreated into his study.
There on the desk awaited him a sheet of paper smothered in pencil marks, its surface blotched red here and there.
He snatched up the fountain pen at once.
And so he was forced to stain what was already stained an even deeper crimson.

When fear took hold that the shift in his mood before and after meeting the visitor might compromise his fairness, he reread the documents he had already finished—just to be sure.
Yet even then, he could not tell whether the standards he had applied three hours prior still held true now.

“Since I am not a god, I cannot maintain fairness.”

While defending his wavering self, he began skimming through the pages with increasing speed.
Yet no matter how much he accelerated, the stack of accumulated hanshi paper showed no sign of diminishing.
When he finally folded one set back into its original form, he had no choice but to open another anew.

“Since I’m not a god, I can’t endure this indefinitely.”

He threw down the fountain pen again.
The red seal ink seeped across the hanshi paper like blood.
He put on his hat and rushed out into the cold street.

Ninety-Seven

While walking through the sparsely populated town, he thought only of himself.

"What were you even born into this world to do?"

Somewhere in his head, something posed this question to him.
He did not want to answer.
He tried to avoid responding.
Yet the voice pursued him more relentlessly.
It repeated the same words endlessly.
He finally shouted:

"I don't know!"

The voice sneered at once.

"It's not that you don't know.
You know but can't reach it.
You're stuck halfway."

It wasn’t my fault.
It wasn’t my fault.

Kenzo strode off as though fleeing.

When he reached the bustling street, the outside world—busy with preparations for the New Year—suddenly struck his eyes with a near-miraculous freshness.
His mood finally changed.

He walked along, peering into one after another of the shopfronts that had been lavishly decorated with every possible means to attract customers' attention.
At times, he would gaze for long periods through the glass at things that held no connection to him whatsoever—coral tree root hangings, gold-lacquered combs and hairpins—without any purpose.

I wonder if people in the world must buy something when the year ends.

At least he himself bought nothing.
It was fair to say that his wife, too, bought almost nothing.
His brother, his sister, his wife’s father—no matter which one he looked at, not a single one had the financial leeway to buy anything.
They were all people struggling to get through the year.
Among them, his wife’s father seemed the most wretched.

“If he had become a member of the House of Peers, they say they would have waited for him anywhere, but...”

While confiding in her husband about her father’s plight of being hounded by debt collectors, his wife had once said such a thing.

It was during the time when the cabinet had collapsed.
The same people who had dragged Wife’s father from his sinecure and forced his resignation tried to fulfill their social obligation by recommending him for the House of Peers just before withdrawing.
However, the Prime Minister—required to select limited appointees from numerous candidates—crossed off Wife’s father’s name without hesitation.
He was ultimately excluded.
The creditors—merciless only toward those lacking some form of insurance—immediately besieged his gate.
After vacating the official residence and reducing his servants, he soon abolished his private rickshaw.
By the time he finally relinquished his entire residence to others, there remained nothing he could do.
As days accumulated into months, he sank ever deeper into wretched circumstances.

“The mistake was getting involved in speculation.”

His wife also said such things.

“While he was a government official, the speculators would let him profit, so they say.”
“That was fine while it lasted, but once he left his post, the speculators stopped caring—that’s why everything fell apart, or so I hear.”

“I can’t make sense of this.”
“To begin with, I don’t even understand what it means.”

“Even if you don’t understand, there’s nothing to be done about it now, is there?”

“What nonsense are you spouting?”
“Then doesn’t that mean speculators never suffer losses at all?”
“You foolish woman.”

Kenzo even recalled the conversation he had exchanged with Wife at that time.

He suddenly noticed.
Everyone who passed him walked by in a hurry.
They all seemed busy.
They all appeared to have fixed purposes.
It seemed they were working diligently solely to resolve those matters as quickly as possible.

Some people did not acknowledge his existence at all.
Some people gave him a brief glance as they passed by.

“You’re an idiot.”

Occasionally, some even wore such looks.

He returned home again and began scrawling red ink across grimy washi paper.

Ninety-eight

Two or three days later, the man Shimada had enlisted came once more through written notice to request a meeting.
Unable to refuse under the circumstances, Kenzo was compelled to enter the parlor and seat himself again before this self-important agent.

“My deepest apologies for disturbing you repeatedly during this hectic season.”

He was a man well-versed in worldly matters.
Though his words feigned sympathy, there was no trace of such commendable earnestness in his demeanor anywhere.

“To be frank, after discussing the recent matter thoroughly with Shimada, he says that given those circumstances, he has no choice but to accept the amount—but in return, he would like to receive it by year-end.”

Kenzo had no such prospect.

“There are only a few days left until year-end, you know?”

“That’s why he’s pressing for urgency too.”

“If I had it, I’d hand it over this instant.”
“But lacking means leaves no alternative.”

“Is that so.”

The two men sat wordless for moments.

“Might I entreat you to show some magnanimity here?”
“I’ve made special efforts coming amidst pressing affairs—all for Mr. Shimada’s sake.”

This was Yoshida’s own contrivance.
Neither the trouble taken nor the inconvenience posed held power to sway Kenzo.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

The two faced each other again with silence between them.

“Then when might we receive it?”

Kenzo had no particular timeframe in mind.

“Let’s sort it out once the new year comes around.”

“Since I’ve come here at someone’s request, I must at least give them some sort of reply—so I’d like us to settle on a deadline, if nothing else.”

“That’s reasonable. Let’s set the deadline through the New Year.”

Kenzo had no other way to say it.
The other party had no choice but to leave.

That evening, to endure the cold and fatigue, Kenzo had buckwheat tea prepared; as he sipped the thick, grayish liquid, he discussed matters with his wife, who sat beside him with a tray placed on her lap.

“I have to come up with another hundred yen.”

“You’re the one making promises to give money you don’t need to give—that’s why we end up in trouble later.”

“I don’t have to give it, but I will.”

The contradiction in his words immediately made his wife uncomfortable.

“If you’re going to be so obstinate about it, then that’s that.”

“You attack others for being pedantic or whatnot, yet you’re such a formal woman yourself.”

“You’re the one who loves formality.”
“In everything, logic takes precedence with you.”

“Logic and formality aren’t the same thing.”

“Yours is no different.”

“Then I’ll tell you this—I’m not a man who only keeps logic in his mouth.”
“The logic in my mouth is in my hands, my feet—my whole body.”

“Then your logic shouldn’t look so hollow, should it?”

“It’s not hollow at all.
“It’s like powdered dried persimmons—the logic just bursts out white from within.
“It’s not like sugar stuck on from the outside.”

Such explanations were already hollow logic to his wife.
She, who could not accept anything unless she could firmly grasp it with her own hands—something visible to the eye—no longer wished to argue with her husband.
Even if she wanted to try again, she couldn’t.

“The reason you’re so formal…”
“You think that as long as you can just grasp what’s visible on the surface, you can immediately dispose of a person without caring about their inner self—that’s why.”
“It’s just like how your father being a lawyer makes you think that as long as there’s no evidence, there’s no basis for complaint…”

“Father never said any such thing.”
“I’m not the kind of person who lives just to decorate the outside.”
“You’re the one who’s always looking at others with such a jaundiced eye…”

Tears fell drop by drop from the wife’s eyelids.
What they were saying was cut off in between.
The talk of sending 100 yen to Shimada went off in an unexpected direction.
And so it gradually became tangled.

Ninety-nine.

After two or three days had passed, his wife went out for the first time in a while.

"I came by to offer belated greetings and deliver some year-end gifts."

Holding the nursing infant, she appeared before Kenzo, her chilled cheeks flushed red as she settled into the warm air.

"How are things at your house?"

"There's nothing particularly different."
"When things reach that point, perhaps they move beyond worry and become resigned instead."

Kenzo found no way to make conversation.

"They suggested buying that rosewood desk, but I stopped it because of bad omens."

That large Chinese-style desk, crafted from a single plank of wood called maidō with its interior fully paneled, was an impressive piece costing over one hundred yen.
The wife's father, who had once taken it as collateral from a bankrupt relative, now found himself under the same fate, destined sooner or later to have it taken away by someone else.

"I don't care about superstitions, but I don't have the nerve to buy such an expensive thing anytime soon."

Kenzo gave a wry smile and blew out tobacco smoke.

“Now that you mention it, why don’t you borrow from Mr. Hida the money you’re giving to that person?”

His wife suddenly said such a thing.

“Does Hida have that much leeway?”

“There is. I heard Mr. Hida has resigned from stock-related work as of this year.”

Kenzo found this new report only natural.
He also found it peculiar.

“He’s probably too old now.
But if he’s able to quit, wouldn’t that leave him in even more trouble?”

“As for what happens later, we can’t know, but for now there’s nothing to worry about, I hear.”

His resignation appeared to stem from one of the directors who had promoted him severing ties with the company.
However, as a result of his many years of service, the money he was entitled to receive was sufficient to temporarily improve his financial situation.

“Since it’s tedious just sitting idle and he wants to lend it out if he can find someone reliable—he asked me today to arrange that.”

“Huh, so he’s finally become a moneylender, has he?”

Kenzo recalled Hida and Sister, who had always mocked Shimada’s cruel deeds.
When their circumstances changed, they began imitating those they had scorned until then, yet remained blithely unaware—in their lack of self-reflection, the couple seemed almost childlike.

“It’s high interest anyway, right?”

His wife had no idea whether it was high or low interest.

"Your sister said that if managed properly, it would bring thirty or forty yen in monthly interest, and they intend to use that as their pocket money to stretch it out thin and long from here on."

Kenzo calculated the principal amount from the high interest rate his sister had mentioned using a rough mental estimate.

“If things go wrong, they’ll all just end up losing again. Rather than being so greedy, it’d be safer to deposit it in a bank and take a reasonable interest rate.”

“That’s why he wants to lend it to someone reliable.”

“Reliable people won’t borrow that kind of money—they’d be too cautious.”

“But you can’t manage with ordinary interest rates either.”

“Then even I wouldn’t want to borrow it.”

“Your brother’s struggling too.”

Hida had apparently revealed his future plans to Kenzo’s brother while simultaneously asking him—as an initial step—to lend him money.

“How absurd,” Kenzo scoffed. “‘Lend me money,’ ‘lend me money’—it’s not like we have anyone begging us for loans on our side! Even Brother must want funds himself, but he hardly needs to borrow under such precarious conditions.”

Kenzo felt bitterness tinged with absurdity.
Hida's self-serving nature became glaringly apparent through this single incident.
His sister's composure as she calmly observed this from the sidelines struck him as utterly incomprehensible.
Even bound by blood ties, he felt no trace of fraternal connection.

"Did you imagine I intended to borrow it myself?"

"I wouldn't dream of such meddling."

One hundred.

Setting aside whether the interest was low or high, the very idea of receiving financial accommodation from Hida was something Kenzo could not seriously consider.
He was someone who sent monthly installments of pocket money to his sister.
If he were to borrow money this time from that sister’s husband, the contradiction would be so obvious that it would be apparent to anyone’s eyes.

“There are certainly plenty of things in the world that don’t add up, but—”

Having started to say this, he suddenly felt like laughing.

“There’s something off here.”
“The more I think about it, the more absurd it gets.”
“Ah well—even if I don’t borrow it myself, things will sort themselves out somehow.”

“Well, there must be plenty of people who’d borrow it.”
“Apparently he’s already lent another small sum.”
“—to that teahouse or something over there.”

The word "teahouse" rang even more absurdly in Kenzo's ears.
He laughed as though unmoored from himself.
To his wife too, the fact that her husband's sister's husband had lent a small sum to a teahouse seemed discordant.
Yet she was not one to consider how this might implicate her husband's standing.
She merely joined her husband in laughter as if sharing some private amusement.

After the feeling of absurdity faded, a reaction set in.
Kenzo found himself dragged back to unpleasant memories of Hida from long ago.

It was around the time his second brother had died of illness. The sick man had always shown his younger brother Kenzo the double-lidded silver pocket watch he owned, nearly making a habit of saying, "I’ll give this to you someday." Young Kenzo, who had never owned a watch, spent a month or two imagining when he might finally fasten that desperately desired ornament to his obi, quietly building this future satisfaction into his plans.

When the patient died, his wife, honoring her husband’s last words, declared before everyone that she would give the watch to Kenzo.
This object—which should have served as a memento of the deceased—had unfortunately been pawned.
Needless to say, Kenzo lacked the means to redeem it.
He spent several days in a state where only legal ownership had been transferred from his sister-in-law, unable to lay hands on the very watch itself.

One day, everyone gathered in one place.
Then, at that gathering, Hida took out the watch in question from his pocket.
The watch had been polished until it was unrecognizable and was gleaming.
A new cord had coral beads added as decoration.
He placed it ceremoniously before the older brother.

“In that case, I shall give this to you.”

The sister standing nearby delivered remarks nearly identical to Hida's.

“Thank you for going to all that trouble.”
“Well then, I’ll accept it.”

The older brother expressed his gratitude and received it.

Kenzo silently observed the behavior of the three.
The three hardly acknowledged his presence there.
He never spoke a word until the end, feeling deeply as though he had suffered a grave insult.
Yet they remained unperturbed.
Even Kenzo, who detested their actions as though they were enemies, could never understand why they had done something so presumptuous.

He did not assert his own rights.
Nor did he ask for an explanation.
He simply withdrew all goodwill in silence.
He judged that cutting off affection toward his own brother and sister would likely be the harshest punishment for them.

"Do you still remember such a thing?"
"You really hold a grudge, don't you."
"If your brother heard this, he'd be shocked."

The Wife studied Kenzo's face, subtly reading his expression.
Kenzo remained utterly still.

“Whether I’m resentful or lacking in manliness, facts remain facts.”
“Even if I cross out those facts, I can’t simply stifle these emotions.”
“The feelings from that time still live on.”
“They live and work within me even now.”
“If I tried to kill them, heaven would resurrect them—it’s futile.”

“If you’d just avoid borrowing money altogether, wouldn’t that solve everything?”

In her mind, the Wife had taken into account not only Hida and his ilk but also her own affairs and those of her natal family.

101

When the year had turned, Kenzo gazed at the transformed appearance of the world overnight with an indifferent expression.

“All of this is superfluous. It’s all petty human contrivances.”

In reality, there was neither New Year’s Eve nor New Year’s Day in his surroundings.
Everything remained merely a continuation from the previous year.
He grew sick of even saying “Happy New Year” upon seeing people’s faces.
Rather than uttering such deliberate words, it felt more agreeable to his mood to remain silent without meeting anyone.

He put on his ordinary clothes and strolled out.
He directed his steps toward where the New Year’s atmosphere least penetrated.
Winter trees and desolate fields, thatched roofs and narrow streams—such sights drifted into his view.
But he had already lost interest even in this delicate nature.

Fortunately, the weather was calm.
Across fields untouched by the dry winter wind, a mist resembling spring hung distantly.
The faint sunlight filtering through gently wrapped around his body.
He deliberately wandered into a place devoid of people or paths.
Noticing his boots caked in mud from half-melted frost, he stood motionless for a time.
While rooted in place, he tried distracting himself by sketching.
But the drawing proved so inept that it only deepened his self-contempt.
Dragging his leaden feet, he returned home once more.
On the way, thinking of the money owed to Shimada, he suddenly felt compelled to write something.

The task of managing the stained Japanese paper marked with red seals was finally completed.
There still remained ten days before the new work would begin.
He attempted to make use of those ten days.
He took up his Western-style pen again and faced the manuscript paper.

While recognizing the disagreeable reality of his progressively failing health, he worked furiously without attending to it.
As if rebelling against his own body, as if maltreating his own well-being, as if seeking vengeance against his own illness.
He hungered for blood.
And since he could not slaughter others, he had no choice but to suck his own blood and find satisfaction.

When he finished writing the planned number of pages, he threw down the brush and collapsed onto the tatami.

“Ah… ah…”

He let out a beast-like cry.

When it came time to convert his writings into money, he managed without encountering any major difficulties.
He only hesitated slightly about what procedure to use when handing it over to Shimada.
He too disliked a direct meeting.
Given Shimada’s final words—a flat declaration that he would never visit again—it was clear neither side had any desire for further encounters.
They absolutely needed someone to intervene as an intermediary.

“There’s no other way but to ask your brother or Mr. Hida.”
“Especially considering how things have gone until now.”

“Well, I suppose handling it that way would be the most appropriate approach.”
“Not that there’s much to be grateful about.”
“It’s not serious enough to involve complete strangers.”

Kenzo set out for Tsumorisaka.

“You’re giving a hundred yen?”

The astonished sister stared at Kenzo with eyes rounded in dismay at the perceived wastefulness.

"But someone in your position, Ken-chan... You can't possibly do something so miserly. And that Shimada isn't just any old man—he's a proper villain through and through. A hundred yen can't be helped."

Sister babbled on about matters that hadn't even crossed Kenzo's mind, interpreting everything through her own assumptions.

"But to have such nerve right at the New Year's start—"

"What's next? A carp climbing a waterfall?"

Hida, who had been sitting cross-legged beside them reading the newspaper, now spoke for the first time.
However, those words did not reach Sister.
Even Kenzo didn’t understand.
Sister laughed with a knowing look—ha ha ha—but to Kenzo, it was all the more amusing.

“But you’re so lucky, Ken-chan. If you want money, you can get as much as you want.”

“Our brains aren’t the same size—after all, this comes down to the skull of Lord Yoritomo, the Right General.”

Hida said nothing but absurd things.
However, he accepted the request without a word of protest.

102

Hida and his [Kenzo’s] Brother visited Kenzo’s house together around the middle of the month.
The thoroughfares from which the New Year pine decorations had been removed still carried a vague scent of the New Year.
The two men who had sat down in Kenzo’s room—where there was neither year-end nor spring—looked around restlessly as though unable to settle.

Hida took out two written agreements from his pocket and placed them before Kenzo.

“Well, this should finally settle matters.”

One document contained archaic phrasing stating that one hundred yen had been received and all future relations would be severed.
Though the handwriting defied identification, Shimada’s seal stood unmistakably imprinted.

Kenzo silently read through clauses like “In consideration whereof hereafter...” and “as a sworn pledge for days to come,” deriding their pomposity.

“Thank you for handling this.”

“As long as we make them sign this contract and keep it filed, there’ll be no more trouble.”
“Otherwise, who knows how long we’d be swarmed like flies.”
“Hey, Cho-san.”

“That’s right.”
“This should finally let us rest easy.”

The exchange between Hida and his brother left no mark on Kenzo.
What rose overwhelmingly within him was the conviction that he’d freely given a hundred yen he needn’t have parted with.
He refused to accept that he’d wielded money’s power merely to sidestep inconvenience.

In silence, he opened another written agreement and found there the text he had sent to Shimada when reinstating himself.

“I, having now been formally released from your household and with upbringing costs submitted by my biological father, hereby resolve that henceforth we shall both strive to avoid becoming disingenuous or inhuman toward one another.”

To Kenzo, neither the meaning nor the logic was fully clear.

“Trying to push that on us—that’s their game, isn’t it?”

“In other words, it’s essentially like we paid them off with a hundred yen.”

Hida and his older brother conferred again.
Kenzo found even interjecting during their conversation to be a bother.

After the two had left, the Wife opened and examined the two written agreements placed before her husband.

“This one’s been worm-eaten.”

“It’s void. Worthless. Tear it up and throw it in the wastebasket.”
“Completely worthless.”
“Tear it up and throw it in the wastebasket.”

“There’s no need to go through the trouble of tearing it up.”

Kenzo stood up from his seat as he was.

When they met again，he asked his Wife：――

“What do you want to do with the earlier written agreement？”

“I put it away in the chest drawer.”

She answered in a tone as though she were preserving something important.
Kenzo neither reproached her for how she handled it nor felt inclined to praise her.

“Well, that’s good—at least that person is settled now.”

The Wife wore an expression that might as well have declared her relief.

"What do you mean it's settled?"

"But if we've obtained a contract like that, everything should be fine. He can't come anymore, and even if he does show up, it'll end there as long as we don't acknowledge him."

“That’s been no different from how things were all along. We could have done that anytime if we’d wanted to.”

“But having something written like that in our hands makes a world of difference.”

“Do you feel secure now?”

“Yes, I’m at ease. It’s all settled now.”

“It’s still nowhere near settled.”

“Why?”

“Hasn’t only the surface been settled?”
“That’s why I say you’re such a formalistic woman.”

On his wife’s face, he saw a look of doubt and defiance.

“Then how can it really be settled?”

“In this world, there’s hardly any such thing as being settled.”
“Once something happens, it goes on forever.”
“It’s just that they take on various forms so they become unclear to others and even to oneself.”

Kenzo’s tone was bitter, spat out as if in disgust.
The Wife silently picked up the baby.

“Good girl, good girl. You don’t understand a single thing Papa says, do you?”

The Wife said this and, several times, kissed the red cheeks.