Keitaro had some trouble understanding the last part of Sunaga's narrative. Perhaps he was in his own way a poet or a philosopher. But these would merely be words used by others to characterize him as they saw him, and he considered himself neither. The words "poetry" and "philosophy" meant to him something dreamlike, almost beneath notice, with no value except possibly on the moon. Moreover, he had a thorough dislike of theory. A mere theory lacking the power to guide him, no matter how finely it was conceived, was as useless to him as a counterfeit bill. Therefore, he should not have allowed the phrase "a man afraid and a woman unafraid," which sounded like words found in a fortune-telling cracker sold by a street hawker, to pass without some comment. But since it was introduced into Sunaga's personal history as a natural sequence of the narrator's intimate thoughts, Keitaro felt he had to listen submissively in spite of not really knowing what it all meant.
Sunaga also noticed that he had digressed. "This has gotten too theoretical, too complicated. I've let myself run on and on."
"Never mind. It's really been quite interesting."
"It's all because of your cane, isn't it?"
"It seems so, oddly enough. While you're at it, why not go on a little more?"
"I've got nothing more to add," Sunaga replied quite definitely and turned to look at the quiet flow of water.
Keitaro too was silent for a time. For some strange reason, what he had heard from Sunaga — whether poetry or philosophy he couldn't tell — remained in his mind, towering like a huge column of a shapeless cloud that would not soon vanish. The silent Sunaga that Keitaro found sitting before him now looked like some singular person quite removed from the image of the friend so familiar to him. Certain that Sunaga still had something of the story yet to unfold, Keitaro asked when that incident last spoken of had occurred. Sunaga said that it was in about his third year at the university. Keitaro then asked what course the relationship had taken in this period of over a year, how it was proceeding, and what resolution Sunaga had come to. Sunaga merely smiled and said, "Let's get out of here first." They paid for their meal and left. As Sunaga observed the shadow of the cane Keitaro wielded so proudly, he came out with another helpless smile.
When they entered the compound of Taishakuten Temple of Shibamata, they looked as if they were obligated to pay homage to its commonplace edifice. Soon they went out the gate. Both were thinking that they would immediately take a train back to Tokyo, but at the station they found that they still had a great deal of time left before one of the slower local trains was due. They entered a nearby teahouse to rest. What follows is the story Keitaro got Sunaga to tell him on the strength of that earlier promise.
There was one incident during the summer vacation intervening between my third and fourth year at the university. I was in my upstairs room, wondering how I would get through the impending hot season, when my mother came up to suggest a visit to Kamakura if I had the time. About a week earlier the Taguchis had gone there for the summer. My uncle actually doesn't like seaside resorts, so the family usually spent each summer at his villa in Karuizawa. But when my cousins insisted that year, he allowed them to spend the vacation swimming in the sea and so had rented a villa at Zaimokuza in Kamakura.
Before the Taguchis left, Chiyoko had come over to say good-bye and to give us some information about the place. I had heard Chiyoko eagerly inviting my mother to visit them, telling her that even though she herself had not yet seen it, she had been told the house was rather large, built in two or three tiers on a cool bluff in the recess of a hill. So I advised my mother to go by herself, since it would be quite pleasant for her. She took from her kimono a letter that Chiyoko had given her. It was signed by both Chiyoko and Momoyoko, and conveyed what seemed to be their mother's order to have my mother and me join them. If my mother was to go, I would have to accompany her, for it would be worrisome to have someone her age riding the train alone. As for me, unsociable as I am, I hated causing trouble by forcing ourselves on a family already in confusion in a new place, even though we might not actually be a burden to them. But my mother's face indicated her desire to go, although it seemed much more for my own sake than hers, and that made me all the more disinclined. However, we decided to go after all. Others may not be able to understand me, but I'm that strong-willed and weak-willed at the same time.
My mother, being of a retiring disposition, doesn't usually like going on trips. My father had been a strict man and had always demanded respect, so it seems she could seldom afford to be away from home. Actually, I have no memory of my mother and father ever being away for their own pleasure. Even after my father's death, when she had more free time, she unfortunately didn't have many opportunities to go when and where she liked. Without the convenience of traveling far from home or of remaining away a long time, she saw the years advance as the two of us, mother and child, remained in our house.
I carried our suitcase to the train on the day we planned to head for Kamakura. When the train started, my mother smiled at me sitting there beside her and remarked on how long it had been since she was on a train. For that matter, it wasn't a frequent experience for me either. Our talk, under the influence of a fresh mood, was more lively than usual. We discussed what neither of us would ever remember in the least, allowing the conversation to follow its own course. Before we realized it, the train had arrived at our station.
Since we hadn't notified anyone beforehand, no one was there to meet us. But when we hired rickshaws and told the rickshawmen the name of the owner of the villa, they recognized it at once and started off down a sandy road. I noticed that the number of new houses had greatly increased since my last visit. As I looked between the pine trees standing along the road, I saw some strikingly beautiful yellow flowers in the distant fields. At first glance I thought I'd never seen that kind of flower before. They looked something like rape plants. Over and over in the rickshaw I thought about the species this shimmering color belonged to until I realized that they were nothing more than pumpkin flowers, which amused me.
When the rickshaws arrived at the gate of the villa, figures moving back and forth in the drawing room, which had had all its shoji removed, were easily visible from the road. Among them I saw a man in a white yukata, and the thought occurred to me that it was probably my uncle who had come a day or so before from Tokyo to spend the night. But when the entire family came out to the doorway to greet us, that man failed to appear. If it was my uncle, it seemed to me that he might just as soon have remained indoors. But when we went into the drawing room, he was not there either.
As I was looking around for him, my aunt and mother began exchanging those wordy greetings typical of older women: "How awfully hot it must have been on the train," and "How fortunate to have come upon a house with such a fine view," and on and on. Chiyoko and Momoyoko offered my mother a summer yukata to change into and hung her traveling kimono out to air. A maid showed me to a bathroom where I could wash up with cold water. Although the villa was situated near a range of hills quite distant from the beach, the water was not as good as I had expected. When I wrung out the towel and glanced at the bottom of the washbasin, I found a sand-like sediment.