CHAPTER 14

Being young, I was prone to blind enthusiasms—or so Sensei apparently saw me. But conversing with him seemed to me more beneficial than attending classes. His ideas inspired me more than the opinions of my professors. All in all Sensei, who spoke little and kept to himself, seemed a greater man than those great men who sought to guide me from behind the lectern.

“You mustn’t be so hot-headed,” Sensei warned me.

“On the contrary, being coolheaded is what’s led me to draw these conclusions,” I replied confidently.

Sensei would not accept that. “You’re being carried along by passion. Once the fever passes, you’ll feel disillusioned. All this admiration is distressing enough, heaven knows, but it’s even more painful to foresee the change that will take place in you sooner or later.”

“Do you really think me so fickle? Do you distrust me so much?”

“It’s just that I’m sorry for you.”

“You can have sympathy for me but not trust, is that it?”

Sensei turned to look out at the garden, apparently annoyed. The camellia flowers that had until recently studded the garden with their dense, heavy crimson were gone. Sensei had been in the habit of sitting in his living room and gazing out at them.

“It’s not you in particular I don’t trust. I don’t trust humanity.”

From beyond the hedge came the cry of a passing goldfish seller. Otherwise all was silent. This winding little back lane, two blocks away from the main road, was surprisingly quiet. The house was hushed as always. I knew that his wife was in the next room, and could hear my voice as she sat sewing. But for the moment this had slipped my mind.

“Do you mean you don’t even trust your wife?” I asked.

Sensei looked rather uneasy, and avoided answering directly. “I don’t even trust myself. It’s because I can’t trust myself that I can’t trust others. I can only curse myself for it.”

“Once you start to think that way, then surely no one’s entirely reliable.”

“It’s not thinking that’s led me here. It’s doing. I once did something that shocked me, then terrified me.”

I wanted to pursue the subject further, but just then Sensei’s wife called him gently from the next room.

“What is it?” Sensei replied when she called again.

“Could you come here a moment?” she said, and he went in. Before I had time to wonder why she needed him, Sensei returned.

“In any event, you mustn’t trust me too much,” he went on. “You’ll regret it if you do. And once you feel you’ve been deceived, you will wreak a cruel revenge.”

“What do you mean?”

“The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. I’m trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt. I prefer to put up with my present state of loneliness rather than suffer more loneliness later. We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the price we pay for these times of ours.”

Sensei’s mind was made up, I could see, and I found no words to answer his conviction.