Kokoro

by Sōseki Natsume

  For me, that evening was relatively peaceful. I followed K to his room, settled myself beside his desk, and deliberately chattered on for a while about nothing in particular. He looked annoyed. No doubt a light of victory glinted in my eye, and my voice held a note of triumph. After I’d spent some time warming my hands over his brazier, I returned to my room. Just for that moment I felt that, though K was in every way superior to me, for once I had nothing to fear from him.

  Soon I drifted into a calm sleep. But I was awakened by the sudden sound of my name. Turning to look, I saw that the sliding doors were partly open, and K’s dark shape was standing there. The desk lamp still glowed in the room beyond. Stunned by the sudden change in my world, for a long moment I could only lie there, speechless and staring.

  “Are you in bed already?” K asked. He always stayed up late.

  “What is it?” I said, addressing K’s shadowy phantom shape.

  “Nothing really,” he replied. “I just dropped in on my way back from the bathroom to check if you were asleep yet.” With the lamplight behind him, I could make out nothing of his expression. His voice, however, was if anything calmer than usual.

  After a moment he slid the doors carefully closed. Darkness instantly returned to my room. I closed my eyes again, to shut out the blackness and dream in peace. I remember nothing more. But the next morning when I recalled the incident, it struck me as somehow strange. Had I perhaps dreamed it? I wondered.

  Over breakfast I asked him about it. Yes, he said, he had opened the doors and called my name.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked, but he gave only a vague reply.

  We lapsed into silence. Then he abruptly asked if I was sleeping well lately. The question struck me as rather odd.

  That day our lectures would begin at the same time, so we set off together. The previous night’s incident had been bothering me all morning, and I brought up the subject again as we walked. He still gave no satisfactory answer, however. “Did you want to continue our earlier conversation?” I asked.

  He vehemently denied it. This firm response seemed like a curt reminder that he had said he wouldn’t talk about it anymore. He always had a fierce pride in his own consistency, I reminded myself. Then I found myself recalling how he had spoken of “resolve.” Suddenly this simple word, until that moment quite insignificant, began strangely to oppress me.

  CHAPTER 98

  I was well aware that K usually acted decisively, but I could also see perfectly well why he was being so astonishingly irresolute now. I proudly believed, in other words, that my knowledge of the norm gave me a clear grasp of the present exception. But as I slowly digested this word resolve, my confident pride teetered and finally began to crumble. Perhaps he was not behaving so out of character after all. Perhaps, in fact, he held carefully tucked away within his breast the means by which to solve at a stroke all his doubts, anguish, and torment. When I considered the word resolve in this fresh light, a shock ran through me. I would probably have been wiser to turn this astonishment to good account and coolly reconsider just what this resolve might constitute. Sadly, however, I was blinded by my own single-minded preoccupation. The only interpretation I could imagine was that he was resolved to act in relation to Ojōsan. I leaped to the conclusion that his decisiveness would be exercised in the pursuit of love.

  A voice whispered in my ear that it was time for me too to be decisive, and I unhesitatingly complied. I gathered my courage for a final resolve. I must act before K did, and without his knowledge, I decided. Silently I awaited my chance. Two or three days passed, however, and no opportunity presented itself. I was waiting for a time when K was out and Ojōsan had also left the house, when I could approach Okusan in private. But day after day either he or she was always there to stymie my plan. The longed-for moment never arrived. I seethed with impatience.

  A week later I could finally wait no longer, and I faked illness to attain my end. I lay in bed until around ten, grunting a vague response when Okusan, Ojōsan, and K himself told me it was time to get up. When K and Ojōsan had both left and a hush had fallen on the house, I finally left my bed. “What’s the matter?” Okusan asked when she saw me appear. She urged me to go back to bed and said she would bring me something to eat. But I was in no mood to sleep further, being in fact perfectly well. I washed my face and ate in the sitting room as usual, while Okusan served me from the other side of the brazier. As I sat there, bowl in hand, eating what could be either breakfast or lunch, I was agonizing over how to broach the subject of Ojōsan, so no doubt I looked every bit the part of a suffering invalid.

  I finished the meal and lit a cigarette. Okusan could not leave until I rose, so she sat on beside the brazier. The maid was called in to remove the dishes, while Okusan kept me company, busying herself with topping up the kettle or wiping the rim of the brazier as she sat there.

  “Is there something you ought to be doing?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, then inquired why I wanted to know.

  “Actually,” I replied, “I have something I’d like to discuss.”

  “What is it?” she said casually, her eyes on my face. She was treating the moment lightly, apparently unreceptive to my mood, and I faltered over how to proceed. After beating about the bush for a while, I finally asked whether K had recently said anything to her.

  “What about?” she asked, startled. Then, before I could answer, she said, “Did he say something to you?”

  CHAPTER 99

  “No,” I replied, having no intention of telling Okusan what K had confessed to me. But the lie immediately made me unhappy. I awkwardly backed away from it by saying that K hadn’t asked me to say anything on his behalf that I could recall, and my present business had nothing to do with him.

  “I see,” she said, and waited for more.

  There was nothing for it but to broach the subject at last. “Okusan,” I said abruptly, “I wish to marry Ojōsan.”

  She took this more calmly than I had anticipated, although she stared at me in silence, apparently at a loss how to respond.

  But I had gone too far now to let her gaze disconcert me. “Please, Okusan. Please let me marry her,” I said. “Let me make her my wife.”

  Okusan’s mature years lent her far greater calm than I could muster. “That’s all very well,” she replied, “but isn’t this rather hasty?”

  “It’s now I want to marry her,” I said, which made her laugh.

  “Have you thought this through properly?” she went on.

  I earnestly assured her that although the request was sudden, the impulse behind it was anything but.

  A few more questions followed, which I have forgotten. Okusan had quite a masculine clarity and directness that made her far easier to talk to than the usual woman in this kind of situation.

  “Very good,” she finally said. “You may have her. Or rather,” she corrected herself, “since I’m not in a position to speak so patronizingly, let me say, ‘Please take her for your wife.’ As you know, the poor girl has no father to give her away.”

  And so the question was settled, straightforwardly and without fuss. It would have taken no more than fifteen minutes from beginning to end. Okusan demanded no conditions. It would not be necessary to consult the relatives, she maintained. All she had to do was inform them of the decision. She even stated that there was no need to consult the wishes of Ojōsan herself.

  Here I balked—educated man though I was, I was apparently the more conventional in such matters. As for the relatives, I said, I would leave that up to her, but surely the right thing to do next was to gain the girl’s consent.

  “Please don’t worry,” Okusan replied. “I wouldn’t make her marry anyone she didn’t want to.”

  Once back in my room, I felt somewhat unnerved at how remarkably smoothly the discussion had gone. I even found myself almost doubting that it could all really be as safely settled as it seemed. At the same time, however, my whole being was swept with a sense of re
newal at the thought that the future was now decided.

  Around noon I went into the living room and asked Okusan when she planned to tell Ojōsan the news of our conversation. Since she had already agreed, she said, it didn’t matter when she told her daughter. I turned to go back to my room with the uncomfortable feeling that she was playing the male far better than I was in all this, but Okusan held me back. If I wished, she said, she would tell her daughter right away, as soon as she came back from her lessons that day.

  That would be best, I agreed, and returned to my room. But the idea of sitting mutely at my desk listening as the two of them murmured together in the distance made me jittery. At length I put on my hat and went out.

  And now once again, on the road below the house, I crossed paths with Ojōsan coming up. Quite innocent of all that had happened, she looked surprised to see me.

  “You’re back, are you?” I said politely, raising my hat.

  “Are you better now?” she asked in a rather puzzled tone.

  “Yes, yes, much better, thanks,” I replied, and stepped briskly around the corner toward Suidō Bridge.

  CHAPTER 100

  I walked through Sarugaku-chō, out onto the main street of Shinbōchō, and turned toward Ogawamachi. This was the route I usually took when I wanted to browse among the secondhand bookshops, but today I could not summon any interest in tattered old volumes. As I strode along, it was the house I had left that filled my thoughts. I thought of what Okusan had said that morning, and I imagined what would follow once Ojōsan arrived back. My legs seemed propelled forward by these two thoughts. From time to time, I found myself halting in the middle of the road at the thought that Okusan would at this moment be talking to Ojōsan. Then my feet would pause again when it struck me that by now the conversation would probably be over.

  At length I crossed the Mansei Bridge, climbed the hill to Kanda Myōjin Shrine, then from Hongō Hill made my way down Kikusaka to the foot of the road leading up to Koishikawa. Throughout this long walk, in essence a kind of elliptical course through three city wards,1 I had scarcely thought once of K. Looking back now, I ask myself why, but there are no answers. I can only marvel that it was so. I could simply say that my heart was so intensely focused on the scene at home that it drove him from my mind, but it astonishes me to think that my conscience could let that happen.

  My conscience sprang to life again the moment I opened the lattice door at the entrance and stepped into the house, to follow my usual course through K’s room into mine. He was, as always, seated at his desk reading. As always, he raised his eyes from the book and looked at me. But he did not say the habitual words, “Just back, are you?” Instead he said, “Are you better now? Have you been to the doctor?”

  In that instant I had the urge to kneel before him and ask his pardon. Nor was this some mere feeble impulse. I believe that if K and I had been standing in the wilderness together just then, I would have followed the dictates of my conscience and begged his forgiveness. But there were others in the house. My natural instinct was quickly curbed. And to my sorrow, it never returned.

  We saw each other again over the evening meal. Innocent of what had happened, K was merely subdued. He cast no suspicious glance my way. Okusan, of course, understood nothing of how things stood and was markedly cheerful. Only I knew everything. The food was lead in my mouth.

  Ojōsan did not join us at the table as she usually did. “I won’t be long,” she called from the next room when Okusan urged her to join us.

  K looked surprised and finally asked Okusan what was wrong.

  “She’s probably feeling shy,” replied Okusan, sending a glance in my direction.

  “Why should she?” K persisted, increasingly puzzled.

  Okusan looked at me again, with a little smile.

  As soon as I came to the table, I had been able to guess from Okusan’s face more or less what had transpired. But the thought of sitting there while everything was explained to K was intolerable. Okusan was the kind of person who could all too easily do this without a second thought, and I was cold with trepidation. Luckily, however, K sank back into silence, and Okusan, though more jovial than usual, did not after all move the conversation in the direction I dreaded. With a sigh of relief, I returned to my room.

  But I was haunted with worry over how to deal with K. I prepared an arsenal of justifications for my defense, but none would hold up when I was face-to-face with him. Coward that I was, I had no stomach for the explanation I would have to give.

  CHAPTER 101

  Two or three days passed, and still I said nothing. All that time, needless to say, constant anxiety about K weighed me down. I must at least make some sort of move just to ease my conscience, I told myself. Okusan’s high spirits and Ojōsan’s manner with me were a further painful goad to action. In her forthright and unreserved way, Okusan might all too easily let something slip at the dinner table at any moment. I could never be sure, either, that K’s heart would not find cause for suspicion in the way Ojōsan had begun to behave toward me, which seemed to me worryingly obvious. All told, it was imperative to let K know how matters now stood between me and the family. Yet making such a move felt next to impossible—I was all too aware what shaky moral ground I stood on.

  Perhaps there was nothing for it, I thought, but to ask Okusan to reveal the situation to K, needless to say at a time when I was out. But simply having the facts told to him indirectly would do nothing to alter my shame. On the other hand, if I asked her to tell him some made-up story, she would certainly demand an explanation. And if I were to confess the whole thing to her, I would be choosing to reveal my failings to the girl I loved and her mother. I was an earnest young man, and it seemed to me that such a confession would compromise the trust that marriage depended on. I could not bear the thought of losing so much as a particle of my beloved’s belief in me before we had even married.

  In short, I was a fool whose foot had slipped from the straight and narrow path of honesty that I had set myself to walk. Or perhaps I was really just cunning. For now, only heaven and my own heart understood the truth. But I was cornered; in the very act of regaining my integrity, I would have to reveal to those around me that I had lost it. I was desperate to cover my deceitfulness, yet it was imperative that I act. I was paralyzed, transfixed by my dilemma.

  Five or six days later, Okusan suddenly inquired whether I had told K about it. Not yet, I replied. Why not? she asked reproachfully. I froze. The shock of her next words has seared them into my memory.

  “So that’s why he looked so odd when I mentioned it. Don’t you think it was wrong of you to keep quiet and pretend nothing had happened, to such a close friend?”

  I asked if K had said anything in response. Not really, she replied. But I could not resist pressing her for more detailed information. Okusan, of course, had no reason to hide anything.

  “There really is nothing worth telling,” she said, then launched into a thorough description of how he had taken the news. All in all, I saw that K had taken this final blow extremely calmly. His first reaction to the news of my new relationship with Ojōsan had been simply to say “Is that so?” “I hope you’ll rejoice with us,” Okusan had said, and at this he looked her in the eye for the first time. “Congratulations,” he said with a little smile, and stood up. Before he opened the door to leave the sitting room, he turned to her again and asked when the wedding would be. “I wish I could give them a wedding gift,” he apparently said, “but I’m afraid I haven’t the money.”

  As I sat before her hearing these words, my heart clenched tight with pain.

  CHAPTER 102

  I realized that two days or more had passed since Okusan had told K about our engagement. Nothing in K’s manner toward me had hinted that he knew anything, so I had remained unaware of it. I was now filled with respect for his composure, even though it was no doubt only superficial. By any standard, he was by far the better man. Though I’ve won through cunning, the real victory i
s his was the thought that spun in my head. How he must despise me! I said to myself, and I blushed with shame. Yet it mortified me to imagine going to K after all this and submitting to the inevitable humiliation.

  Floundering in indecision, I finally put off the question of what to do until the next day. This was Saturday evening.

  That night, however, K killed himself.

  I still shudder at the memory of finding him there. I usually slept with my head facing east, but for some reason—fate, perhaps—that evening I had laid out my bedding to face the opposite direction.1 I was awakened in the night by a chill draft blowing in on my face. Opening my eyes, I saw that the sliding doors between our two rooms, which were normally closed, stood slightly ajar, just as they had when he appeared there some nights earlier.

  This time, however, K’s dark figure was not standing in the doorway. As if with a sudden presentiment, I propped myself on one elbow and peered tensely into his room. The lamp had burned low. The bedding was laid out. But the edge of the quilt was thrown back. And there was K, slumped forward with his back to me.

  I called out to him. There was no response. “Is something wrong?” I called again. But his body remained motionless. I leaped up and went to the doorway. Standing there, I surveyed his room by the lamp’s faint light.

  My first feeling was almost the same as the initial shock his sudden confession of love had given me. I took in the room with a single sweeping glance, and then my gaze froze—my eyeballs stared in their sockets as if made of glass. I stood rooted to the spot. When this first gale of shock had blown through me, my next thought was Oh god, it’s all over. The knowledge that this was irredeemable shot its black blaze through my future and for an instant lit with terrifying clarity all the life that lay before me. Then I began to tremble.