CHAPTER 37

When I arrived home, I was surprised to see that my father’s health seemed remarkably unchanged.

“So you’re home, eh?” he greeted me. “Well, well. Still, it’s a fine thing you’ve graduated. Wait a moment, I’ll just go and wash my face.”

He had been engaged in some task out in the garden, and now he went around to the well at the back of the house. As he walked, the grubby handkerchief he had fixed to the back of his old straw hat to keep off the sun flapped behind him.

I considered graduation a perfectly normal achievement, and my father’s unexpected degree of pleasure in it was gratifying.

“A fine thing you’ve graduated”—he repeated these words again and again. In my heart, I compared my father’s joy with Sensei’s reaction at the dinner table after the graduation ceremony. He had said “Congratulations,” but his private disdain was evident in his face. Sensei, I thought, was more cultured and admirable than my father, with his unashamed delight. In the final analysis, what I felt was displeasure at the reek of country boorishness in my father’s innocence.

“There’s nothing particularly fine in graduating from the university,” I found myself responding testily. “Hundreds of people do it every year, you know.”

My father’s expression changed. “I’m not just talking about the graduation. That’s a fine thing, to be sure, but what I’m saying has a bit more to it. If only you’d understand what I’m getting at . . .”

I asked him what he meant. He seemed disinclined to talk about it at first but finally said, “What I mean is, it’s fine for me personally. You know about this illness of mine. When I saw you in the winter, at the end of last year, I had a feeling I might not last more than three or four more months. And here I am, still doing so well. It’s wonderful. I can still get around without any trouble. And now you’ve graduated as well. That’s why I’m happy, see?

“You must realize how it pleases me that this son of mine, whom I raised with such love and care, should graduate while I’m still alive and well to witness it. Having someone make such a fuss about a mere graduation must seem boring to you, with all your aspirations—I can see that. But stand in my shoes, and you’ll see it a bit differently. What I’m saying is, it’s a fine thing for me, if not for you, don’t you see?”

Speechless, I hung my head, overwhelmed by shame that no apology could express. I saw that my father had calmly been preparing to die and had decided it would probably happen before my graduation. I had been a complete fool not to think of how my graduation would make him feel.

I took the diploma from my bag and spread it out carefully for my parents to see. Something had crushed it, and it was no longer quite the shape it had been.

My father smoothed it tenderly. “You should have carried such a precious thing home by hand, rolled up,” he said.

“You’d have done better to wrap it around something solid,” my mother chipped in from beside him.

After gazing at it for a while, my father rose to his feet and carried it over to the alcove, where he arranged it so that anyone who entered would immediately catch sight of it. Normally I would have made some remonstrance, but just now I was a very different person than usual. I felt not the slightest inclination to contradict my parents. I sat silently and let my father do as he would.

The warp in the thick, elegant paper refused to respond to his attempts to straighten it. No sooner had he managed to smooth it flat and stand it where he wanted than it would spring back of its own accord and threaten to tip over.