The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (27 page)

The world had been an uneasy place in those days. Now, in 1950, the world was no less uneasy. Assuming that the various temples had been burned down as a result of this uneasiness, what reason was there that the Golden Temple should not be burned down now?

Although I was avoiding the lectures, I used to go quite often to the library and one day in May I ran into Kashiwagi, whom I had been carefully avoiding. When he saw me trying to avoid him, he pursued me with an amused expression. The realization that, if I ran away from him, he could not possibly catch up with me on his clubfeet, prevented me from moving. Kashiwagi caught me by the shoulder. He was out of breath. The lectures had finished for the day and I should estimate that it was about half past five. In order not to meet Kashiwagi, I had gone round the back of the university building after leaving the library, and had taken the path between the high stone wall and the barracks which housed the classrooms. Wild chrysanthemums grew in abundance on the waste land, interspersed with scraps of paper and empty bottles that people had thrown away. Some children had sneaked into the grounds and were playing catch. Their raucous voices drew one's attention to the emptiness of the classrooms, which one could see through the broken windows. All the students had left and row after row of dusty desks stood there silently.

I passed the barracks and came to the other side of the main university building. I stopped outside a little hut on which the flower-arrangement department had hung a sign saying "Studio." The sun shone on the row of camphor trees that grew along the wall and the delicate shadow of the leaves was reflected across the roof of the hut onto the red brick wall of the main building. The red bricks looked gay in the evening sun.

Kashiwagi supported his body against the wall. He was breathing heavily. The shadow of the leaves of the camphor trees lit up his cheeks, which looked as haggard as ever, and gave them a peculiarly lively air of motion. Perhaps it was the reflection of the red brick wall, so unsuited to Kashiwagi, that produced this impression.

"It's five thousand one hundred yen, you know!" he said. “Five thousand one hundred yen at the end of this month. You're making it harder and harder for yourself to pay me back.”

He extracted my bond of indebtedness from his breast pocket, where he always carried it, and spread it out before me. Then, evidently fearing that my hand might reach out for the document and tear it to pieces, he hurriedly folded it up again and put it back in his pocket. Nothing remained in my vision but an after-image of a poisonous, red thumbprint. It looked exceedingly cruel, that thumbprint of mine.

“Pay me back quickly!” said Kashiwagi. "It's to your advantage. Why don't you use your tuition fee or something to pay off the debt?”

I did not answer. Was one obliged to pay back one's debts in the face of a world catastrophe? I was tempted to give Kashiwagi the tiniest hint of what was in my mind, but I stopped myself.

“I can't understand you if you won't say anything,” said Kashiwagi. "What's wrong? Are you ashamed of your stuttering? Surely you've got over that. Everyone knows you're a stutterer-even this. Yes, even this!” He struck the red brick wall, on which the evening sun was reflected. His fist was dyed with browhish-yellow powder.

“Even this Hall knows. There's not a person in the university who doesn't know about it!”

Still I stood facing him in silence. At that moment one of the children missed the ball and it came rolling between us. Kashiwagi began to bend down in an effort to pick up the ball and throw it back to them. Seeing this, I was overcome by a perverse desire to observe how Kashiwagi would manage to move the ball with his clubfeet from where it lay about a foot away, so that he could reach it with his hand. My eyes seemed to turn unconsciously towards his feet. Kashiwagi perceived this with almost uncanny speed. Before one could tell whether he had really tried to bend down, he pulled himself up straight and stared at me with a look of passionate hatred in his eyes that was most unlike him. One of the children approached us timidly, picked up the ball from where it lay between us and ran away. Finally Kashiwagi said to me: "All right. If that's your attitude, I know what to do. Before I go home next month, I'll get as much of my money back as I can. You'll sec! You'd better be prepared.”

In June the important lectures became more and more infrequent and the students began to make preparations for returning to their home-towns. June io was a day that I shall never forget. It had been raining steaany since the morning, and in the evening it became a torrent. After supper I was reading a book in my room. At about eight o'clock I heard steps approaching along the corridor between the guest hall and the Great Library. It was one of the rare evenings on which the Superior had not gone out. Evidently he had a guest. There was something strange about those footsteps. They sounded like scattered raindrops beating against a wooden door. The steps of the novice who was conducting the guest to the Superior's quarters were soft and regular, and were almost drowned by the guest's drawn-out steps, which made the old floor boards of the corridor creak in a most peculiar fashion.

The temple was charged with the sound of rain. The night rain poured down on the large, ancient temple and the endless, vacant, musty rooms were replete with its sound. In the kitchen, in the deacon's residence, in the sexton's rooms, in the guest hall, there was nothing but the sound of rain. Now I thought of the rain that had captured the Golden Temple. I partly opened the sliding-door of my room. The little central courtyard, which consisted only of stones, was overflowing with rain water and I could see the black, glossy back of the water as it ran along from stone to stone.

The novice returned from the Superior's quarters and stuck his head into my room.

"There's a student in there called Kashiwagi who's come to see the Superior. Isn't he a friend of yours?”

I was overcome by uneasiness. The novice, who wore glasses and who worked as a primary-school teacher during the day, was about to leave, but I stopped him and asked him into my room. I was imagining all sorts of things about the conversation that was going on in the library and I could not bear to be alone.

A few minutes passed. Suddenly the sound of the Superior's hand-bell rang out. With its commanding peal it pierced the noise of the rain; then it stopped abruptly. The apprentice and I looked at each other.

"It's for you," he said. I forced myself to stand up.

When I reached the Superior's room, I knelt down outside. I could see the document with my thumbprint lying on his desk. The Superior raised one end of the piece of paper and showed it to me. He kept me kneeling outside the room.

“Is this really your thumbmark?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, this is a fine thing you've done, isn't itl If I have any more trouble of this sort from you, I shan't be able to keep you here any longer. You'd better wake up to the fact. This isn't the first time...” Perhaps because Kashiwagi was in the room, the Superior broke off. “I'll pay back the money myself," he continued, "so you can leave now.”

At these words I was able to look at Kashiwagi for the first time. He was sitting on the floor with the look on his face of someone who has behaved in a most laudable manner He did, however, avert his eyes. When Kashiwagi had done something evil, he always had an air of the greatest purity, as though, quite unbeknown to himself, the very essence of his nature had been extracted. It was I alone who knew this about him.

When I returned to my room, I was conscious that tonight, in the fierce sound of the rain, in my solitude, I had been released.

“I shan't be able to keep you here any longer”-for the first time I had heard the Superior tell me this, for the first time he had given me this pledge. Suddenly it all became clear. The Superior was already contemplating my expulsion from the temple.
I must hurry to carry out my decision.

If Kashiwagi had not acted as he did that night, I should probably not have had an opportunity to hear those words from the Superior and my plan would have been further postponed. At the thought that it was Kashiwagi who had given me the strength to break through my inertness, I was overcome by a strange sense of gratitude for him.

The rain gave no sign of letting up. It was chilly for June and my little back room, surrounded by its wooden boards looked desolate in the feeble light of the electric bulb. This was my dwelling, from which I should probably soon be expelled. There was not a single ornament in the room The black edge of the faded straw-matting on the floor had been torn and twisted, and one could plainly see the hard threads. Often when I entered my dark room and turned on the light, my toes would catch on the torn edge of the mat, but I made no effort to repair it. My zeal for life had no concern with straw mats.

Now that summer was approaching, my little room was redolent with the acrid odor of my body. It seemed funny that though I was a priest, my body should have the smell of an ordinary young man. This smell had penetrated the old, glossy black pillars in the four corners of the room and even the wooden walls. Now the unpleasant odor of a young man oozed out between the grain of the wood, to which age had managed to give a certain patina. The pillars and the walls had been transformed into living things—immovable, yet exuding a raw, fishy smell.

Then the strange footsteps that I had heard before approached along the corridor. I stood up and went into the corridor. Kashiwagi was standing there, like a mechanical device that has abruptly come to a stop. Behind him the light from the Superior's quarters lit up the Sailboat Pine Tree in the garden and I could see the wet, blackish-green prow of the tree raising itself high in the darkness.

A smile came to my face, and it gave me great satisfaction to realize that when Kashiwagi saw this smile he displayed for the first time an expression that was close to fear.

"Won't you drop in for a while?” I said.

"Well, well. Don't try to frighten me! You're an odd fellow, aren't you?"

Kashiwagi came into my room, and eventually he managed to lower himself sideways onto the floor with that usual slow movement of his that made one think he was trying to crouch. He raised his head and looked round the room. Outside, the sound of the rain closed us in like a thick curtain. Amid the splash of the water on the open veranda one could hear the raindrops bouncing back from the paper sliding-doors in different parts of the building.

"Well," said Kasniwagi, “you mustn't hold it against me, you know. After all, it's your own fault that I had to go about it this way. Well, so much for that!” He extracted from his pocket an envelope, on which I could see the imprint of the temple, and counted the bank notes that were inside. There were only three thousand-yen notesbrand-new ones that had clearly been issued since January.

"The bank notes at this temple are nice and clean, aren't they?” I said. “Our Superior is so fastidious that he makes the Deacon go to the bank every three days to get clean money for all our small change.”

“Look at this!" said Kashiwagi. “Only three of them. You've got a really stingy priest running this temple, don't you? He says he won't recognize the interest on loans between fellow students. Though he's profited to his heart's content from that sort of thing himself"

To see Kashiwagi overcome by this unexpected disappointment cheered the cockles of my heart. I laughed without reserve and Kashiwagi joined in. For a moment there existed a sort of harmony between us, but almost at once Kashiwagi stooped laughing and, fixing his eyes somewhere about my forehead, spoke as if he was casting me off. “I know,
”
he said. "You've got some destructive scheme in your mind these days, don't you
?"

I had the greatest difficulty in supporting the weight of his gaze. Then I realized that his understanding of “destructive” was entirely different in nature from what I was planning, and I regained my composure. There was not the trace of a stutter in my reply. "No, nothing," I said.

"Really? You're a strange fellow. You're about the strangest person I've ever met."

I knew that this remark was inspired by the friendly smile that still did not fade from my mouth. It was quite certain that Kashiwagi would never realize the meaning of the gratitude that had sprung up within me, and this thought made my smile spread even further of its own accord.

"Will you be going back to your home town now?" I asked in a manner that normal friends might use in speaking to each other.

"Yes, I'm going home tomorrow. Summer in Sannomiya, It's pretty boring there too, though.”

"Well, we shan't be seeing each other at the university for some time."

"What? You're never there yourself any way.”

As he spoke, Kashiwagi hurriedly unbuttoned the front of his uniform and felt for the inside pocket.

“I decided to bring you these before I left for home,” he said. “I thought they'd please you. You had such an absurdly high opinion of him, didn't you?"

He dropped a small bundle of letters on my table. I was amazed to read the sender's name on the envelope.

"Please read them,
”
said Kashiwagi in a matter-of-fact tone. "They're a memento from Tsurukawa."

"Were you friends with Tsurukawa?” I asked.

"Well, let's sec. Yes, I suppose I was a friend in my own way. Tsurukawa himself hated to be thought of as my friend. At the same time I was the only person to whom he ever confided. He's been dead three years now, so I suppose it's all right to show these letters to people. You were so rnendly with him that I thought I'd let you see them and no one else. I've been meaning to let you look at them some day."