It was simple to believe in a world headed for destruction, and had he still been twenty Honda himself would perhaps have so believed; and the very refusal to collapse kept the person who had to slip over life like a skater and presently die constantly on the alert. Who would be so foolish as to skate if he knew the ice was cracking? And if the ice was quite certain not to crack, then a person was denied the pleasure of seeing others fall in. The only question was whether the ice would crack or not while one was skating, and Honda had not a great deal of time left to skate.
And while he was about it, his holdings gradually increased from interest and various sorts of profit.
People thought at any rate that their holdings increased. If they kept ahead of inflation they did increase. But something that increased by laws fundamentally in opposition to those of life could exist only by eating away at what stood on the side of life. Growing profits were the incursions of the white ants of time. A slight increase here and there brought the gentle, steady gnawing.
And then one became aware of the fact that time bearing profits and time for life were of a different nature.
These were thoughts that inevitably went through Honda’s mind as he lay awaiting daylight, altogether too awake, and indulged in the sport of chasing thoughts.
Interest accrues like moss over a great plain of time. We are not up to pursuing it forever. That is because our own time leads us relentlessly downhill to a cliff.
It had been a still-young Honda who thought that self-awareness was entirely a matter of the self. It had been a still-young Honda who had named “self-awareness” the awareness of a reality like a dark, thorny sea cucumber floating in the transparent cask of the self. “Like unto a violent torrent, ever flowing, ever changing.” He had apprehended the principle intellectually when he was in India, but it had taken him thirty years to make it a part of himself.
As he grew older, awareness of self became awareness of time. He gradually came to make out the sound of the white ants. Moment by moment, second by second, with what a shallow awareness men slipped through time that would not return! Only with age did one know that there was a richness, an intoxication even, in each drop. The drops of beautiful time, like the drops of a rich, rare wine. And time dripped away like blood. Old men dried up and died. In payment for having neglected to stop time at the glorious moment when the rich blood, unbeknownst to the owner himself, was bringing rich drunkenness.
Yes. The old knew that time held intoxications. And when the knowledge came there was no longer enough liquor left. Why had he not stopped time?
Even though he reproved himself, Honda did not think that it had been because of his own laziness and cowardice that he had not stopped time while he could.
Feeling the approach of daylight through his eyelids, Honda indulged in a soliloquy.
“No, there was never for me a moment when I had to do it, stop time. If I have something that might be called a destiny, then it has been in this inability to stop time.
“There was for me nothing that might have been called the pinnacle of my youth, and so no moment for stopping it. One should stop at the pinnacle. I could discern none. Strangely, I feel no regrets.
“No, there is still time after youth has gone by a little. A pinnacle comes, and then the moment. But if the eye that discerns the pinnacle is called an eye of awareness, then I must offer a small objection. I doubt that anyone has been more diligent than myself in putting the eye of awareness to work, more relentless in keeping it open. It is not enough for detecting the pinnacle. The help of destiny is needed. I am quite aware that few have been given that in shorter supply than myself.
“It is easy to say that strength of will kept me back. Was that really the case? Is not the will the leavings of destiny? Between will and determination, are there not inborn differences, as between castes in India? And is not the poorer one the will?
“I did not think so when I was young. I thought that human volition sought to make history. And where did history go? That stumbling old beggar woman.
“Some are all the same endowed with the faculty to cut time short at the pinnacle. I know it to be true, for I have seen examples with my own eyes.
“What power, poetry, bliss! To be able to cut it short, just as the white radiance of the pinnacle comes into view. There comes a foreknowledge in the delicate excitement offered by the slopes, in the changing distribution of the alpine flora, in the approach of the watershed.
“Just a little more and time will be at the peak, and without pausing it will begin its descent. Most people beguile the downward course by taking in the harvest. And what is that? The trails and the waters are only plunging downward.
“Endless physical beauty. That is the special prerogative of those who cut time short. Just before the pinnacle when time must be cut short is the pinnacle of physical beauty.
“Clear, bright beauty, in the knowledge that the radiant white pinnacle lies just ahead. And unhappy purity. In that moment the beauty of a man and the beauty of a gazelle are in wonderful correspondence. Raising its horns proudly, raising the hoof of the white-spotted leg ever so slightly in the face of the denial. Replete with the pride of the farewell, crowned with the white mountain snows.
“It would not have become me to raise my hand in farewell to those who were below, where time still ran on. Had I raised my hand in sudden farewell at a street crossing, I would only have stopped a cab.
“Perhaps, unable to stop time, I had to be content with stopping a succession of cabs. For the purpose, and that only, with firm resolve, of being taken to yet another place where time does not stop. Without the poetry and the bliss.
“Without the poetry, without the bliss! That is the important thing. And I know that only in them lies hidden the reason for life.
“Even if time is stopped there is rebirth. That I know too.
“And I must deny Tōru the terrible poetry and bliss. That must be my policy.”
Honda was by now quite awake. With dull pains here and there and with mucus in his throat to tell him that a new day had begun, he became captive of the need to bring together again things that had fallen apart while he slept. As if opening an old folding chair, he brought himself out of bed. The room was light. It was his practice to give notice of his having awakened through the interphone, but today he preferred not to. Instead he took a lacquered box from the shelf, and from it the report on Tōru he had had from the detective agency.
Report on proposed adoption
Number M-2582
Client 1493: Mr. Shigekuni Honda
August 20, 1970
Dainichi Investigating Agency
Tōru Yasunaga, born March 20, 1954; aged sixteen
Permanent residence: 6–152 Yui, Ihara-gun, Shizuoka Prefecture
Present residence: Meiwasō, 2–10 Funabara-chō, Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture
Character and deportment:
The subject is highly intelligent, with the unusual I.Q. of 159. As against 47 percent of examinees with an I.Q. of a hundred, only .6 percent have an I.Q. of over 140. It seems regrettable that such a talented boy should have lost his parents early and, reared by an uncle in straitened circumstances, have been forced to stop his education at middle school. A knowledge of his own abilities, moreover, has not been allowed to go to his head. He has acquitted himself of his rather simple and routine duties with the utmost conscientiousness and diligence, and his modesty and good manners have won him the affection of his colleagues and superiors. Since he is only sixteen, it is too early for a great deal to be reported on his behavior, but it would seem that his ministrations to a demented girl named Kinué who is the sport of the neighborhood have nothing to do with sex but are evidence of a gentle, charitable humanism. She looks up to a youth younger than herself as a god.