CHAPTER 47

Amid all this unrest, I nevertheless found time to sit quietly. Occasionally I even managed to open a book and read ten pages or so before I was distracted. The trunk I had packed and closed had been reopened, and I retrieved things from it as the need arose. I reviewed the schedule of study I had set up for myself back in Tokyo. I had not achieved even a third of what I’d hoped to do. The same depressing thing had happened numerous times before, it’s true, but rarely had my study gone less according to plan than this summer. I tried telling myself that this was probably simply the way it goes, but nevertheless my sense of failure oppressed me.

Huddled unhappily in self-castigations, I also thought of my father’s illness. I tried to imagine how things would be after his death. And this thought brought another, the thought of Sensei. At both ends of the spectrum of my misery were poised the images of these two men, so opposite in social standing, education, and character.

Once when I left my father’s bedside and went back to my room, my mother looked in and found me sitting alone, arms folded, amid my jumble of books.

“Why not take a nap?” she suggested. “You must be a bit exhausted.”

She had no comprehension of how I felt. Nor was I childish enough to really expect her to. I simply thanked her. However, she continued standing in the doorway.

“How’s Father?” I asked.

“He’s having a good sleep,” she replied.

Suddenly she stepped into the room and came and sat beside me.

“Has anything come from Sensei yet?”

She had believed me when I assured her there would be a reply. But even when I was writing to him, I had had no expectation that he would send the kind of reply they were hoping for. In effect, I had knowingly deceived her.

“Write to him again, will you?” she urged.

I was not inclined to begrudge the effort of writing any number of useless letters if it would comfort my mother, but having to press Sensei on this matter was painful. I dreaded earning his scorn far more than being scolded by my father or hurting my mother. I already suspected that his lack of response to my previous letter bespoke precisely that reaction from him.

“It’s easy enough to write a letter,” I said, “but this isn’t the sort of matter that gets solved through the mail. I have to go to Tokyo and present myself in person.”

“But with your father the way he is, there’s no knowing when you can go to Tokyo.”

“Exactly. And I’ll be staying here till we know what the story is, whether he gets better or not.”

“That goes without saying. Who on earth would leave someone as ill as he is and take off to Tokyo, after all?”

My first reaction was pity for my innocent mother. But I couldn’t understand why she would choose this hectic moment to bring up the problem. Was there something in her makeup that was equivalent to the oddly casual way I could forget my father’s illness and sit calmly reading, something that allowed her to temporarily forget the invalid in her care and concern herself like this with other matters?

As this thought was crossing my mind, my mother spoke. “Actually,” she said, “actually, it’s my belief it would be a great comfort to your father if you could find yourself a position before he died. The way things are going, it may be too late, but really, the way he talks shows he’s still quite aware of things. You should be a good son and make him happy while you still can.”

Alas, the situation prevented me from being a good son, and I wrote no more to Sensei.