“Yes,” he said, absently as always. “I was examined at St. Luke’s the day
before I came. Dr. Inada had his doubts. My heart still isn’t right, he said,
and there’s a little water on the pleurae. And then the doctor here at Itō has
found something in my bronchial tubes. I suppose I’m catching cold.”
“Oh?” I could think of nothing to say.
“I’m not over the first ailment and I get a second and a third. Three
seems to be the grand total at the moment.”
“Please don’t tell Mr. Otaké, sir.” People from the Association and the
Nichinichi were present.
“Why?” The Master was puzzled.
“He’ll start being difficult again if he finds out.”
“And so we shouldn’t keep secrets from him.”
“It would be better not to tell him,” agreed the Master’s wife. “You’ll
only put him off. It will be Hakoné all over again.”
The Master was silent.
He spoke openly of his condition to anyone who asked.
He had stopped both the tobacco and the evening drink of which he was
so fond. At Hakoné he had almost never gone out, but now he forced
himself to walk and to eat hearty meals. Perhaps dyeing his hair was
another manifestation of his resolve.
I asked whether at the end of the match he meant to winter in Atami or
Itō or return to St. Luke’s.
He replied, as if taking me into his confidence: “The question is whether
I last that long.”
And he said that his having come so far was probably a matter of
“vagueness.”
