Here is a question on geography and the movements of the heavenly bodies:
In what position is Venus present longest for morning observation? Indicate on the chart. What is the shape of Venus when viewed in this position? Please indicate which of the following you believe to be the correct answer:
1. The east half is light.
2. The west half is light.
3. It is shining in a thin crescent, like the moon.
4. It is round.
What is the position of Mars when it is visible in the southern evening sky? Please indicate on the chart.
What is the position of Mars when it is visible in the southern midnight sky? Please indicate on the chart.
Tōru immediately circled “B” on the chart, and so answered the first question successfully. He chose the third possibility for the second question, circled “L” for the third question, and, finding spot “G” at which the sun, the earth, and Mars were in a line, circled it.
“Have you been asked this question before?”
“No.”
“Then why were you so quick?”
“I see Venus and Mars every day.”
Tōru answered quite as if he were a child describing the habits of his pets. As a matter of fact Venus and Mars were like the mice that occupied the signal station. He knew all about their feeding habits.
It was not, however, as if he felt nostalgic for nature or regretted the loss of his telescope. He did have a sense of that uncommonly simple work as his own, and the world beyond the horizon was a source of happiness for him; but he did not feel in the least deprived by the loss of them. It was his task, from now until he was twenty or so, to explore a cave with an old man.
Honda had taken pains to choose as tutors bright, companionable, talented young men of a sort Tōru might look to as models. He made a slight miscalculation in the case of Furusawa, Tōru’s literature teacher. Much pleased with Tōru’s disposition and intelligence, Furusawa would take him to nearby coffee houses when they were tired of their lessons, and sometimes they would go on long walks together. Honda was grateful for these services and liked the cheerful Furusawa.
Furusawa did not at all mind saying unpleasant things about Honda. Tōru enjoyed them, though he was careful not to nod too quick an assent.
One day the two of them walked down Masago Rise past the ward office and turned left toward Suidōbashi. The street was torn up for a new subway line, and Kōrakuen Park was hidden behind construction towers. The twilight of late November came through the framework of a roller coaster as through an empty basket.
Passing trophy shops and sports shops and short-order restaurants, they had come to the Kōrakuen gate. Two rows of lights over the red gate flashed from left to right: “We will no longer be open in the evening after November 23.” So the shining nights would soon be over.
“How about it?” asked Furusawa. “How about a good shaking in a teacup?”
“Well.” Tōru thought of himself in a dirty pink teacup, now rather lonely and short of customers among its blinking little lights. He thought of himself being so shaken and twisted by it that objects became streaks of light.
“Well, do you want to or don’t you? You only have ninety-two days left till the examinations, but I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”
“I’d rather have a cup of coffee.”
“Such dissipation.”
Furusawa led the way down the steps of a coffeehouse called the Renoir. It was across the street from the third-base side of the baseball stadium, which was like a huge trophy pouring forth darkness.
The Renoir was larger than Tōru would have expected from the outside. The tables were generously spaced around a fountain. The lights were soft and the carpet was beige. There were few other guests.
“I had no idea there was such a place so close to home.”
“A cloistered maiden like you wouldn’t.”
Furusawa ordered two cups of coffee. He offered Tōru a cigarette, upon which Tōru leaped.
“It’s not easy to keep it out of sight.”
“Mr. Honda’s much too strict. It’s not as if you were an ordinary middle-school boy. You’ve been out in the world. He wants to make a child of you again. But you just have to wait till you’re twenty. You can spread your wings once you’re in the university.”
“Exactly my own idea. But I have to keep it to myself.”
Furusawa frowned and laughed a pitying laugh. It seemed to Tōru that he was trying to be older than twenty-one.
Furusawa wore glasses, but his good-natured face was very engaging when he smiled, and wrinkles formed around his nose. The horns were bent, and he was forever shoving the glasses back up on his nose, the gesture with his forefinger as if he were reprimanding himself. He had large hands and feet, and he was considerably taller than Tōru. He was the gifted son of a railway worker. Hidden in him was a spirit like a squirming red lobster.
Tōru had no urgent wish to destroy the image Furusawa had of him, as another son of the poor, holding onto the windfall that had come to him. Others, all of them, painted free pictures of him, but it was their freedom. What was most certainly his own was contempt.
“I don’t really know what Mr. Honda is up to, but I should imagine he’s making a guinea pig of you. But that’s all right. He has a big fat estate, and you don’t have to dirty your hands the way other people do clawing your way to the top of the garbage heap. But you do have to hang on to your self-respect. Even if it kills you.”
“Yes,” answered Tōru succinctly. He refrained from saying that he had a great deal of self-respect in reserve.
He was in the habit of tasting his answers. If they seemed sentimental he bit them back.
Honda was off at a dinner with some legal colleagues. Tōru would have something to eat with Furusawa before they went home. He was required, whatever else might happen, to have dinner with Honda at seven every evening when Honda was at home. Sometimes there were other guests. The evenings with Keiko were the greatest trial.
His eye was cool and clear when he had finished his coffee. But there was nothing to see. He looked at the half circle of coffee dregs. The bottom of the cup, round like the lens of a telescope, obstructed his view. The bottom of this world showed a clean white face of porcelain.
Turned half away, Furusawa suddenly spoke as if throwing the butt of his words into the ashtray. “Have you ever thought of suicide?”
“No.” Tōru was startled.
“Don’t look at me like that. I haven’t thought of it all that seriously myself. I don’t like the weak and the sick sort of people that commit suicide. But there is one variety I accept. People who commit suicide to establish themselves.”
“What sort of suicide is that?”
“Are you interested?”
“A little, maybe.”
“Then I’ll tell you.
“Take a mouse that thinks it’s a cat. I don’t know how, but it does. It’s gone through all the tests and concluded that it’s a cat. Its view of other mice changes. They are its meat, that’s all, but it tells itself it refrains from eating them just to hide the fact that it’s a cat.”
“A rather large mouse, I suppose.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not a question of size but of confidence. It’s sure that the concept ‘cat’ has taken on the guise ‘mouse,’ nothing more. It believes in the concept and not the flesh. The idea is enough, the body doesn’t matter. The happiness from the contempt is all the greater.
“But then one day”—Furusawa shoved his glasses up and drew a persuasive line beside his nose—“but then one day the mouse meets a real cat.