CHAPTER 29

Owing to the interruption, my conversation with Sensei never reached its proper conclusion, so I failed to discover what he was driving at. In those days, though, I felt none of his concerns about property and inheritance and so on. Both by nature and by circumstance, I was not inclined to bother my head over profit and gain. In retrospect, I realize that the whole question of money was still distant for me—I had never had to earn my own living, let alone personally confront the situation Sensei spoke of.

But Sensei had said one thing that I wanted to get to the bottom of—his statement that when it comes to the crunch, anyone can turn bad. I could understand the meaning of the words themselves well enough, but I wanted to find out more of what lay behind them.

Once the boy and his dog were gone, the leafy garden returned to its earlier tranquility. We remained there unmoving a while longer, two people held fast within a silence. As we sat, the beautiful sky was slowly drained of its brightness. Over the trees around us, mostly delicate maples dripping with soft green new leaves, darkness seemed to creep slowly.

The rumble of a cart reached our ears from the distant road. I imagined some villager setting off with his load of potted plants to sell at the market.

At the sound Sensei broke off his meditation and rose abruptly to his feet, like one restored to life. “We ought to be off. The days have grown a good deal longer recently, it’s true, but evening’s rapidly approaching while we sit here idly.”

His back was covered with bits of leaf and twig from the bench. I brushed them off with both hands.

“Thank you. Is any resin stuck there?”

“Everything’s off now.”

“This coat was made quite recently, so my wife will be cross if I come home with it dirty. Thank you.”

We set off down the gentle slope and emerged back in front of the house.

A woman was sitting on the once-empty veranda. She was busy winding yarn onto a spool with the help of her daughter, a girl of fifteen or sixteen. When we arrived beside the big tub of goldfish, we bowed and apologized for our intrusion.

“No, no, not at all,” the woman politely responded, and thanked us for the boy’s coin.

We went out the gate and set off for home. After a short distance I turned to Sensei.

“That thing you said earlier,” I said, “about how people can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch—what did you mean by that?”

“Well, nothing deep, really. I mean, it’s a fact. I’m not just theorizing.”

“Yes, that’s all very well. But what do you mean by ‘when it comes to the crunch’? What sort of situation are you talking about?”

Sensei burst into laughter. Now that his original impulse had flagged, he seemed to have no interest in providing me with a serious explanation.

“Money, my friend. The most moral of men will turn bad when they see money.”

This reply struck me as tiresomely obvious. If Sensei was unwilling to take the conversation seriously, I too lost interest.

I strode coolly onward, feigning indifference. The result was that Sensei dropped somewhat behind.

“Hey there!” he called. Then: “There you are, you see?”

“What?” I turned and waited for him.

“All I had to do was say what I just said, and your mood changed.” He was looking me in the eye.