4

“Whence have I come, and whither do I go — it’s a thing men often say; but it is from the heart of a man who, wish as he might not to put that question, cannot but put it, that the fountain of religion flows; and so it is with poetry; and so all else is, every bit of it, a pastime, a falsehood.”

“Enough — let’s leave it! It’s no use, no use; say it as I will, it’s no use. — Ah, I’m tired! But I’ll say one last word: I’d divide men into two kinds — those who are astonished, and those who take it all coolly —”

“And which kind do I belong to?” Matsuki asked, laughing.

“To the cool kind, of course. The seven of us here belong, every one, to the cool-as-cucumbers kind. Why — of the ten and more thousand millions in this world, how many are there who are not of the cool kind? Poet, philosopher, man of science, man of religion, scholar, statesman — nearly all of them coolly reason it out, put on the face of a man enlightened, weep their tears. Last night I had a dream.”

“I dreamed I had died. Dead, plodding alone down a dark road, I cried out, before I knew it, ‘I never thought I should really die!’ Truly — truly, I cried it out.”

“And from that I think this: that of a hundred men, the hundred of them, who today walk in another’s funeral, or lose a parent, or lose a child, are yet of the company who, after their own death, at the gate of hell, will cry, I never thought I should really die — and be laughed at by the fiends. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

“They say a fright will cure the hiccups — but to want, of all things, to be astonished, when a man can sit cool and eat his beef, why, that’s a queer fancy. Ha ha ha ha,” said Watanuki, clasping his fat belly.

“No — I say I want to be astonished, but I only say it, after all. Ha ha ha ha.”

“You only say it, ha ha ha ha?”

“You only say it — is that all, hee hee hee hee?”

“Is that it! No more than putting up a little prayer about it. Ha ha ha ha.”

“Just a pastime, after all. Ha ha ha ha ha,” said Okamoto, laughing along with the rest; but Kondō caught, on Okamoto’s face, a look of unspeakable anguish.