CHAPTER 35

I had been about to leave, but once this conversation was under way, I settled back into my seat again.

Sensei turned to me. “What do you think?”

I was in no position to judge whether Sensei or his wife would be first to die, so I simply smiled and remarked, “Who can foretell allotted life spans?”

“Yes, that’s what it amounts to, isn’t it,” Sensei’s wife responded. “We each receive a given span of years, and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s exactly what happened with Sensei’s mother and father, you know.”

“They died on the same day?”

“Oh no, not quite the same day, of course, but just about the same—one died soon after the other.”

I was struck by this new piece of information. “Why did they die so close together?”

She was about to answer when Sensei broke in. “That’s enough of this subject. It’s pointless.” He gave his fan a few boisterous flaps, then turned to his wife. “I’ll give you this house when I die, Shizu.”

She laughed. “And the earth under it too, if you don’t mind.”

“The earth belongs to someone else, so we can’t do much about that. But I’ll give you everything I own.”

“Thank you. But I couldn’t do much with those foreign books of yours, you know.”

“Sell them to a secondhand dealer.”

“How much would they come to?”

Instead of replying, Sensei continued to talk hypothetically about his own death. He was firmly assuming he would die before his wife.

Although she had initially treated the conversation lightly, it finally began to oppress her sensitive woman’s heart. “You keep saying ‘When I die, when I die.’ That’s enough talk about the next world, please. It’s inauspicious. If you die, I’ll do everything as you’d have wanted, rest assured. What more could you ask?”

Sensei looked out at the garden and smiled. But to avoid upsetting her further, he said no more on the subject.

I was overstaying my visit, so I hastily rose again to leave. Sensei and his wife saw me to the entrance hall.

“Take good care of your father,” she said.

“See you in September,” said Sensei.

I said my farewells and stepped out past the lattice gate. The bushy osmanthus between the entrance and the front gate spread its branches wide in the darkness as if to block my way. As I pushed the few steps past it, I imagined the scented flowers of the autumn to come, on those twigs where dark leaves now flourished. My mental image of Sensei’s house had always been inseparable from this osmanthus bush.

As I paused there and turned back to look at the house, imagining the autumn day when I would cross that threshold again, the hall light that had been shining through the lattice front was suddenly extinguished. Sensei and his wife had evidently gone back inside. I made my way on alone through the darkness.

I did not go straight back to my lodgings. There were things I needed to buy before my journey, and besides, I had to ease my belly, which was crammed with fine food, so I set off to walk toward the bustling town. It was still full of the activity of early evening. Men and women were casually thronging the streets.

I ran into a friend who had just graduated with me, and he pulled me off to a bar, where I listened to his high-spirited chatter, frothy as the beer we drank. It was past midnight when I finally got home.