hair....”His eyes, with their large irises, glittered with a black light—it
really made a strange impression on me,” said Uryu. “Those black eyes
could see everything, and yet they weren’t looking at anything. Thinking
that made me cry.”
“Yes. I suppose living out one’s allotted life like that is nature’s way—is
a happiness nature bestows on its own. When a human being lives to be a
hundred I doubt he needs the Boddhidharma’s Zen meditation just to die a
natural death.”
“Ah—during the war, it’s been almost ten years, but at the time the old
man was very sharp in certain ways. I was—well, I had turned into a person
who didn’t exist in Japan, a person who had vanished from the world—my
fortune was such that I didn’t know when I would die, or when I would be
killed by my country—and so I started to long for the countryside, and I
disguised myself and went there, and under cover of darkness I approached
the old man’s house. I stifled the sound of my footsteps, and the storm door
was closed, but from inside there came a loud voice—Who is it? Are you a
ghost or a thief? Is that Momosuke? — Momosuke is my name. I held my
breath, but then he began trying to wake the attendant—Hey, would you
open the door, Momosuke’s ghost seems to have come. ... I was terrified—I
ran away as fast as I could. The old man must have been able to see me,
right? Momosuke’s ghost seems to have come. . . . Hearing that was
terrifying. I can’t forget it.”
“When you say ‘a person who had vanished from the world’ …’ ’
“I had become a woman,” Uryu whispered. “The man Momosuke had
vanished. . . .”
“Yes—a woman,” I murmured automatically, feeling certain things about
Uryu fall into place. But I said nothing further on that topic, choosing
instead to steer our conversation temporarily in a different direction. “How
is the old man related to you?” “He’s the head of the main family. I’m in
another line. ’
