Ichizo stood up. In an instant I made a decision and called out to stop him.
I once heard a lecture by a certain scholar. He analyzed our present civilization in Japan and revealed quite bluntly to his audience why, if we're not destined to become shallow and superficial, we're in for nervous collapse. He argued that when the truth is not known, we desire to know it, but once we do know it, there are not a few cases in which we repent our knowing and envy that earlier time when we lived blissfully ignorant. "That, or something like it," he said, "is my conclusion," and smiling with a kind of resignation, he left the platform. At that time his remarks reminded me of Ichizo, and while I felt it was a sorry thing for any Japanese to have to listen to such bitter truths, it was even more pathetic for a young man like Ichizo to fear trying to take hold of a secret relating to himself and yet again to have to try in spite of the fear. Inwardly I shed tears of compassion for him.
This account concerns only my relatives and has nothing to do with you, so if it weren't for the past circumstances in which you showed such concern about Ichizo's welfare, I would never confide it to you — but to tell the truth, his sun was already hidden by clouds from the very day he was born.
As I would declare without hesitation to anyone, I hold to the principle that no secret ever settles down in its natural state until it is set free and fully revealed, so I don't attach as much importance as most people do to such words as "safeguarding the peace" or "maintaining the status quo." Therefore, it seemed a rather strange oversight on my part that until then I had not of my own free will thrown any light on Ichizo's fate, which dated back to the time of his birth. Now that I think about it, it hardly seems to make much sense that I kept it secret until the moment he cursed me. For little had I dreamed that even if fresh air were let in on what had been kept concealed, his relationship with his mother would have been any the worse for it.
You, who are on such intimate terms with Ichizo, may have understood the fact implied in my words about his sun already being hidden from the day he was born. In a word, Ichizo and his mother aren't related by blood. And to add a word to prevent any misunderstanding: As a stepmother and stepson they are far more closely related than a real mother and son. They are so inseparably bound by nature with threads of affection that they may well despise the mere blood relationship between a parent and a child. Since this binding thread could not be cut asunder even by the edge of an axe wielded by a demon, there could be nothing to fear in disclosing any secret to Ichizo. And yet my sister had always been afraid to. Ichizo too was terrified. They were both in terror, she with the secret held in her hand, he with the expectation that he would be made to take hold of it. At last I took out the reality he had feared and simply brought it into the open for him.
I don't dare recount to you each and every one of the questions and answers exchanged at the time. From the first, the affair hadn't seemed to me so great an event, and also from the need I had to maintain my cool as best I could, I told the story as though it were, after all, a matter of little importance, but Ichizo, being under extreme tension, took the information as though it were a matter of life and death. To keep the sequence of what I told you before, I'll set down the facts briefly. He was not my sister's child but a housemaid's. Since the incident did not occur in my home and since it happened more than a quarter of a century ago, I haven't been able to ascertain its details. I did hear that when the maid was found to be pregnant by my brother-in-law, my sister dismissed her after giving her a considerable amount of money. She waited until the woman, who had gone back to her home, had given birth to the boy, and then she took charge of him and raised him as her own son. She did this mainly to save her husband's honor, but it must have been partly motivated by a desire to foster the child, since at that time she had been worrying about being unable to have one of her own. As it turned out, as you and all of us relatives have seen, the two of them have gotten along until today as a most loving mother and son, so there would have been no trouble at all had the real situation been confided. From my own viewpoint, they may well feel infinitely more proud than those real parents and children who so frequently in this world fail to get along. For themselves, too, how much more pleasant it would have been to know the real truth and to reflect back on all the affection they had for each other. At least that would be so for me. And so for Ichizo's sake I didn't spare any effort in painting the beauty of this one point.
"I actually think so. Therefore, I see no need to hide it. If you have a sound mind, you should think the same as I do, shouldn't you? If you say you can't, it's your feeling of inferiority. Do you understand?"
"I understand. I understand quite well," Ichizo replied.
"If you do, good. Let's not talk about it anymore."
"I'll say no more about it. There'll never be another day when I bother you about it. You were right in saying that I've been putting a warped interpretation on everything. Until you told me, I was terribly afraid, so much so that my flesh cringed. But now that what you've told me has made everything clear, I'm very much relieved. I no longer have anything to fear, not anything. Though I've suddenly become helpless somehow. Lonely. I feel as if I'm standing alone in the world."
"Still, your mother's what she's always been, you know. I too am what I was. None of us will be any different toward you. Don't get so nervous about it."
"Nervous or not, I do feel lonely all the same. I can't help it. When I get back home and see my mother's face, I'm sure I'll be in tears. Just imagining those tears now makes me feel unbearably lonely."
"It's better not to mention any of this to your mother."
"Of course I won't. If I did, I can't even imagine the pain on her face."
We sat silently facing each other. To relieve the awkwardness I felt, I knocked the ashes from my pipe into a bamboo pot in the smoking set. Ichizo looked down at the hakama covering his knees. Soon he glanced up with that lonely face of his.
"I have something else I want to ask you. Would you please hear me out?"
"I'll tell you anything I know about."
"Where's my real mother living now?"
She had died soon after giving birth to him, from some post-natal complication or from a disease, so I had heard. Of this too my memory was too sketchy to give an account detailed enough to appease his hungry eyes. The account I gave him of the last of his real mother's fate ended in a few minutes. With a pitiful look he asked her name. Fortunately, I hadn't forgotten her old-fashioned name— it was Oyumi. He next asked how old she was when she died. Of that detail my knowledge was the least reliable. Finally he asked if I had ever seen her working at his family's house. I told him I had.
"What did she look like?" he asked.
Unfortunately, my memory about that was quite vague. I was only about fifteen or sixteen at the time.
"I once saw her having her hair done up in shimada." I was sorry I couldn't give a more pertinent answer.
At length, he asked with a resigned look, "Then please just tell me the temple. At least I want to know where she's buried."