CHAPTER 34

That night it was after ten when I left Sensei’s house. I was due to go back to my family home in two or three days, so I said my farewells as I left.

“I won’t be seeing you for a while,” I explained.

“You’ll be back in September, won’t you?” Sensei’s wife asked.

Having graduated, I had in fact no reason to come back to Tokyo in September. Nor did I fancy the idea of returning to the city in August, at the height of the hot summer. In fact, since I felt no urgency to search for work, I could come back or not as I wished.

“Yes, I guess it’ll be around September.”

“Well, then, take good care, won’t you? We may end up going somewhere ourselves over the summer. It promises to be very hot. If we do, we’ll send you a postcard.”

“Where do you have in mind, if you were to go somewhere?”

Sensei was grinning as he listened to this conversation. “Actually, we haven’t even decided whether we’re going or not.”

As I rose to leave, Sensei held me back. “How is your father’s illness, by the way?” he asked.

I had had very little news on the subject, I replied, so I could only assume that he was not seriously ill.

“You can’t make such easy assumptions about an illness like his, you know,” he reminded me. “If he develops uremia, it’s all up with him.”

I had never heard the term uremia and did not know what it meant. Such technical terms had not come up in my discussion with the local doctor back during the winter vacation.

“Do look after him well,” Sensei’s wife added. “If the poison goes to his brain, he’s finished, you know. It’s no laughing matter.”

This unnerved me, but I managed to grin. “Well, there’s no point in worrying, I guess, since they say it’s not an illness you recover from.”

“If you can approach it so matter-of-factly, no more need be said, I suppose,” she replied, and looked down, subdued. I guessed she was recalling her mother, who had died of the same illness many years ago. Now I felt genuinely sad at the thought of my father’s fate.

Sensei suddenly turned to her. “Do you think you’ll die before me, Shizu?”

“Why?”

“No particular reason, I’m just asking. Or will I move on before you do? The general rule is that the husband goes first, and the wife is left behind.”

“That’s not always so, by any means. But the husband is generally the older one, isn’t he?”

“You mean therefore he dies first? Well, then, I’ll have to die before you do, won’t I?”

“You’re a special case.”

“You think so?”

“Well, look at you. You’re just fine. You’ve almost never had a day’s illness. No, it’s certainly going to be me first.”

“You first, you think?”

“Definitely.”

Sensei looked at me. I smiled.

“But just say it turns out to be me who goes first. What would you do then?”

“What would I do . . .” Sensei’s wife faltered, seeming stricken by a sudden apprehension of the grief she would feel. But then she raised her face again, her mood brighter.

“Well, there’d be nothing I could do, would there? Death comes when it will, as the saying goes.” She spoke jokingly, but her eyes were fixed on me.