CHAPTER 30

I disliked Sensei just then. Even when we resumed walking on together, I chose not to ask the questions I wanted. Whether he sensed that or not, however, he showed no signs of being disturbed by my sulk. He strode casually on in silence, as serene as always. I resented this, and found myself now wanting to say something to humiliate him.

“Sensei.”

“What is it?”

“You got a little excited earlier, didn’t you? When we were sitting in the nursery garden back there. I’ve almost never seen you excited before.”

He did not reply immediately, which I interpreted to mean that I had hit my mark. But the intended barb also seemed to have somehow gone wide. I gave up and reverted to silence.

Then, without warning, Sensei moved to the side of the road, and there under the carefully clipped hedge, he drew his kimono aside and relieved himself. I waited blankly until he was finished.

“Pardon me,” he said, and set off walking again.

I had lost all hope of getting the better of him. The road slowly grew more populous; houses now lined both sides, and we encountered no further signs of the earlier occasional sloping fields or patches of vacant land. Nevertheless, here and there on the corner of some block we saw a patch of garden with tendrils of bean vines twining up bamboo stakes, or chickens in a wire coop, which lent a certain serenity to the scene. Packhorses constantly passed us, heading home from town.

Always interested in such things, I set aside the problem that had been concerning me. By the time Sensei returned to our earlier conversation, I had forgotten about it.

“Did I really seem so very excited back there?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘very,’ but yes, a little.”

“I don’t mind you seeing me in a bad light. I do get excited, it’s true. I get excited whenever I talk about the question of property. I don’t know how I seem to you, but let me tell you, I’m a most vindictive man. When someone insults or harms me, I’ll bear the grudge for ten years, twenty years.”

Sensei seemed still more agitated now. It was not his tone that startled me, however, but the meaning of his words. For all my longing to know him better, I could never have dreamed that I would hear such a confession from his lips. I had not had the slightest inkling that tenacious rancor was a part of his nature. I had believed him a weaker man; my affection for him, indeed, was rooted in what I saw as his delicate, lofty nature. I had sought on a passing impulse to pierce his armor a little, but what I was now hearing made me shrink.

“I’ve been deceived by people, you see,” he continued. “By people, what’s more, who were blood relatives. I’ll never forget it. They had seemed good folk in my father’s presence, but the moment he died, they changed into unscrupulous rogues. I’ve borne the humiliation and harm they did to me all my life, and I imagine I’ll go on nursing it until the day I die. For I won’t ever be able to forget, you see. And I’ve still not taken my revenge. But I guess I’m doing something far more powerful than taking personal revenge—I not only hate them, I’ve come to hate the whole human race they typify. This is sufficient revenge for me, I think.”

I was silent, unable to produce so much as a word of comfort.