Kokoro Part 1

Kokoro.

by Natsume Soseki.

Introduction.

Natsume Sseki's Kokoro Kokoro was published in 1914, two years before his death at the age of forty-eight. Sseki, even then widely acknowledged as j.a.pan's leading novelist, was at the peak of his writing career, and was published in 1914, two years before his death at the age of forty-eight. Sseki, even then widely acknowledged as j.a.pan's leading novelist, was at the peak of his writing career, and Kokoro Kokoro is unquestionably his greatest work. Today it is considered one of j.a.pan's great modern novels, known to every schoolchild and read by anyone serious about the nation's literature. is unquestionably his greatest work. Today it is considered one of j.a.pan's great modern novels, known to every schoolchild and read by anyone serious about the nation's literature.

The reasons for Kokoro Kokoro's importance lie not in its literary quality alone. Sseki was a superb chronicler of his time, and Kokoro Kokoro cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of the world from which it sprang. cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of the world from which it sprang.

j.a.pan's Meiji period (which ended with the emperor Meiji's death in 1912) began in 1868 with the tumultuous overthrow of the old Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled j.a.pan unopposed for 250 years. The shift signaled far more than a change of power. j.a.pan under the Tokugawas had been rigidly feudal and isolationist, a Confucian society cut off from the changes that were rapidly overtaking much of the rest of the world. Pressure from Western nations eager to expand their sphere of trade finally proved irresistible in 1853, when the commander of a U.S. squadron, Matthew Perry, anch.o.r.ed his "black ships" threateningly offsh.o.r.e and sent an ultimatum to j.a.pan's ruling powers. The subsequent internal upheaval resulted in a new government that opened j.a.pan's doors to the West and embraced the introduction of Western culture and technology. In the next four decades j.a.pan was utterly transformed. The Meiji period is synonymous with the fundamental transformation that set j.a.pan on the road to becoming all that it is today.

Such rapid change inevitably comes at a psychological cost, and this is what Sseki acutely doc.u.mented in his finest novels. The dilemmas that he portrayed were deeply felt. Natsume Kinnosuke (Sseki was his nom de plume nom de plume) was born in 1867, the year before the Meiji era began, in what was still known as Edo (now Tokyo). The old j.a.pan was his inheritance in more than birth. He was educated in the Chinese and j.a.panese cla.s.sics and in the Confucian moral code, which Western concepts of individualism and individual rights were only just beginning to undermine. Kokoro Kokoro's central character, the man referred to as Sensei, is of an age with Sseki, and his references to the importance of his old-fashioned moral education clearly reflect Sseki's own experience. For both, the Meiji period's embrace of Western individualism provoked irreconcilable inner conflicts that haunted them through life.

Kokoro's Sensei shares other characteristics with Sseki as well. Family difficulties and alienation, a recurrent theme in many of Sseki's novels, played their part in his own early life. A late child of a large family, Sseki as an infant was formally adopted by a childless couple; his real family took him back only grudgingly when the couple divorced nine years later. Adoption, which plays an important part in the story of Sensei's friend K in Kokoro Kokoro, was common at the time-continuing the family name was more important than maintaining blood ties. Sseki's own adoption was a sorry failure on every level, leaving him feeling unloved, isolated, and bitter.

Like Kokoro Kokoro's Sensei, Sseki, a bright student, attended the new university in Tokyo, where he specialized in English literature. Meiji-era j.a.pan believed that foreign literature held the key to understanding the Western culture that it was then avidly embracing, and Sseki was part of the earliest generation to be trained in this important field. His education gave him elite status, and in 1900 the j.a.panese government selected him to spend two years studying in London; the intention was that he would increase the nation's cultural capital by bringing back a deeper understanding of the West. But Sseki was miserable in England, isolated and alienated from everything around him, which seems to have brought him close to nervous collapse. After his return to j.a.pan, he took up prestigious teaching posts at the First National College and in the English literature department at Tokyo's Imperial University. To all appearances, he was set to rise to the top of his elite profession.

But Sseki could revel in neither his status nor his success. Like Kokoro Kokoro's Sensei, he was an essentially introverted and retiring person; his nervous sensibility shrank from exposure to the everyday world, and the strain of teaching told badly on his nerves. Partly to soothe and entertain himself, he decided to try his hand at a light, humorous novel (I Am a Cat, 1905). To his surprise, upon publication it achieved instant fame. A year later came two more novels: the immensely popular Botchan Botchan (1906) as well as the beautiful haiku-style (1906) as well as the beautiful haiku-style Kusamakura Kusamakura. At the age of forty, encouraged by the Asahi Asahi newspaper's guarantee to serialize any future work, Sseki took the audacious step of resigning from his teaching posts and devoting himself to his writing. newspaper's guarantee to serialize any future work, Sseki took the audacious step of resigning from his teaching posts and devoting himself to his writing.

His novels had moved from gently humorous anecdotes and observations of life to the more philosophical and experimental approach of Kusamakura Kusamakura, which maintains a delightful lightness of touch even as it engages thoughtfully and critically with Meiji j.a.pan's transformations and its fraught relationship to j.a.pan's past. But the mature works that now began to flow from his pen struck a new, more inward note. Sseki became increasingly focused on his contemporaries' quintessential experience, one that he himself felt acutely: the necessity to evolve a modern, individual sense of self and to cope with the new Meiji self's resultant problems: isolation, alienation, egotism, and profound dislocation from its cultural and moral inheritance. Sseki increasingly sought to portray for his readers not only the upheavals of their rapidly changing world but the dilemmas and suffering of the contemporary psyche.

These themes achieved their ultimate statement in the late novel Kokoro Kokoro. It was both written and set in the first days of the new Taish period, which began in 1912 with Meiji's death and the accession of the new emperor. The moment of transition registered profoundly throughout j.a.pan. The unnamed protagonist in the novel's long first section, "Sensei and I," is a naive and earnest young man on the point of graduating from the Imperial University; he is one of the new generation's elite who will inherit the coming era. The focus of this section is his difficult and intense relationship with the older man he calls Sensei, whom we see through his puzzled and intrigued young eyes.

Sseki himself would have known well the disconcerting role of sensei sensei to the worshipful young. Usually translated as "teacher," to the worshipful young. Usually translated as "teacher," sensei sensei is essentially a term of deep respect for one who knows; it implies a position of authority in relation to oneself that comes close to that of master and disciple. In strongly hierarchical Meiji society, Sseki, with his established position as a leading writer, naturally attracted a flock of eager young followers (many of whom would go on to become key literary figures of the Taish period and beyond). We may all too easily imagine Sseki, holding court in his role as is essentially a term of deep respect for one who knows; it implies a position of authority in relation to oneself that comes close to that of master and disciple. In strongly hierarchical Meiji society, Sseki, with his established position as a leading writer, naturally attracted a flock of eager young followers (many of whom would go on to become key literary figures of the Taish period and beyond). We may all too easily imagine Sseki, holding court in his role as sensei sensei, registering private misgivings at the intensity of some of his disciples' devotion to him, and doubts about his suitability as role model for them. However, where Sseki was a successful man, at least in public terms, Kokoro' Kokoro's Sensei is essentially a failure, both in his own eyes and in those of the world. The puzzle that the first section presents is: What are the causes of this failure?

The novel's short middle section balances the unnamed young man's yearning and unfulfilled relationship with the evasive Sensei against that with his own dying father. Like Sensei, the father in some ways embodies the Meiji era, which at that moment is in its own death throes. Themes of betrayal and a failure of moral nerve, which sound through much of Sseki's work and are fundamental to Kokoro Kokoro, are also set to haunt the young man's own future at the end of this section as he opens the long letter he has received from Sensei and begins to read.

That letter const.i.tutes the final section of the novel and is in many ways its real tour de force. In fact, Sseki conceived it first and originally intended it to stand alone as a complete work. It takes us back to the world of Sensei's youth, to his own student days. The letter's painfully honest confession will finally reveal to the young man what he has longed to know-the mysterious secret that cast its long shadow over Sensei's life. But it is more than a simple confession. Writing this letter as he faces his own despairing death, Sensei attempts to redeem himself, if nothing else than in the role of Sensei that he unwillingly accepted late in life, by pa.s.sing on his story for the edification of his young follower and friend. Ironically, his letter becomes the unwitting cause of the young man's own crucial act of moral failure. In fact, Sseki conceived it first and originally intended it to stand alone as a complete work. It takes us back to the world of Sensei's youth, to his own student days. The letter's painfully honest confession will finally reveal to the young man what he has longed to know-the mysterious secret that cast its long shadow over Sensei's life. But it is more than a simple confession. Writing this letter as he faces his own despairing death, Sensei attempts to redeem himself, if nothing else than in the role of Sensei that he unwillingly accepted late in life, by pa.s.sing on his story for the edification of his young follower and friend. Ironically, his letter becomes the unwitting cause of the young man's own crucial act of moral failure.

The man called K, the young Sensei's friend, who precipitates the crisis with which the novel culminates, in many ways embodies the old world's strict code of values and ethics, which was coming into such painful conflict with the new Western concepts of individual rights and the primacy of the ego. K's self-elected death foreshadows the ultimate death of that old world, a world Sseki himself had inherited and whose unattainable and rapidly vanishing certainties preoccupied him. K's death by his own hand, shocking and pointless from the perspective of the new values, is nevertheless a crucial moral victory that haunts Sensei's life. Another, later death also reverberates, both for the dying father and, crucially, for Sensei himself-the ritual suicide of General Nogi. This anachronistic gesture of ethical atonement and expression of desire to follow one's master (here the Meiji emperor) to the grave stunned j.a.pan. The news impels Sensei, the morally paralyzed inheritor of Meiji j.a.pan's dual worlds, finally to act. His suicide is not only an act of personal despair but is expressed half-seriously as "following to the grave . . . the spirit of the Meiji era itself," a final gesture of loyalty to that era's difficult dualities that, he guesses, his young friend will find incomprehensible.

Kokoro is beautifully constructed to express Meiji j.a.pan's spiritual dilemmas. But it does much more: Sseki is a masterful portrayer of human relations, and in fact the novel's wider historical dimensions are usually little more than flickers at the edge of the reader's consciousness. As well as being a compelling portrait of Sensei in maturity and youth, is beautifully constructed to express Meiji j.a.pan's spiritual dilemmas. But it does much more: Sseki is a masterful portrayer of human relations, and in fact the novel's wider historical dimensions are usually little more than flickers at the edge of the reader's consciousness. As well as being a compelling portrait of Sensei in maturity and youth, Kokoro Kokoro tells the story of three young men whose hearts are "restless with love" and of their emotional entanglements not only with the opposite s.e.x but variously with one another. h.o.m.os.e.xuality is not, needless to say, at issue, although a young man's intellectually erotic attraction to an older man is beautifully evoked. The novel's women, particularly Sensei's wife, are portrayed sympathetically, but it is the men who take center stage-another, although no doubt unwitting, expression of the Meiji ethos. Their very different relationships with and reactions to one another form the core of the story and weave its suspenseful and carefully constructed plot. tells the story of three young men whose hearts are "restless with love" and of their emotional entanglements not only with the opposite s.e.x but variously with one another. h.o.m.os.e.xuality is not, needless to say, at issue, although a young man's intellectually erotic attraction to an older man is beautifully evoked. The novel's women, particularly Sensei's wife, are portrayed sympathetically, but it is the men who take center stage-another, although no doubt unwitting, expression of the Meiji ethos. Their very different relationships with and reactions to one another form the core of the story and weave its suspenseful and carefully constructed plot.

In their dilemmas and responses, the characters of Kokoro, Kokoro, although in many ways specific to their time, are fundamentally immensely human. It is the human condition itself that is Sseki's primary interest, here and elsewhere in his work. In although in many ways specific to their time, are fundamentally immensely human. It is the human condition itself that is Sseki's primary interest, here and elsewhere in his work. In Kokoro Kokoro he achieved his finest expression of this great theme. he achieved his finest expression of this great theme.

ABOUT THE t.i.tLE.

Kokoro, the novel's t.i.tle, is a complex and important word that can perhaps best be explained as "the thinking and feeling heart," as distinguished from the workings of the pure intellect, devoid of human feeling. Because one's kokoro kokoro thinks as well as feels, "heart" is at times an inadequate translation. Nevertheless, as the concept of thinks as well as feels, "heart" is at times an inadequate translation. Nevertheless, as the concept of kokoro kokoro is a pervasive motif throughout the novel, I have chosen to express it with the single word "heart" and to preserve its presence in the translation wherever possible. For the t.i.tle, it seemed best to retain the original word. is a pervasive motif throughout the novel, I have chosen to express it with the single word "heart" and to preserve its presence in the translation wherever possible. For the t.i.tle, it seemed best to retain the original word.

Acknowledgments.

I am grateful to the j.a.pan Centre at the Australian National University, under whose auspices I completed this translation while a visiting fellow.

My warm thanks also go to two friends. n.o.buo Sakai of Tezukayama Gakuin Daigaku meticulously checked the translation against the original, and Elizabeth Lawson, as always, generously spared her time to read the final draft and make invaluable suggestions.

PART I.

SENSEI AND I.

CHAPTER 1.

I always called him Sensei, and so I shall do in these pages, rather than reveal his name. It is not that I wish to shield him from public scrutiny-simply that it feels more natural. "Sensei" springs to my lips whenever I summon memories of this man, and I write of him now with the same reverence and respect. It would also feel wrong to use some conventional initial to subst.i.tute for his name and thereby distance him.

I first met Sensei in Kamakura,1 in the days when I was still a young student. A friend had gone there during summer vacation for sea bathing and urged me to join him, so I set about organizing enough money to cover the trip. This took me two or three days. Less than three days after I arrived, my friend received a sudden telegram from home demanding that he return. His mother was ill, it seemed. in the days when I was still a young student. A friend had gone there during summer vacation for sea bathing and urged me to join him, so I set about organizing enough money to cover the trip. This took me two or three days. Less than three days after I arrived, my friend received a sudden telegram from home demanding that he return. His mother was ill, it seemed.

He did not believe it. For some time his parents had been trying to force him into an unwanted marriage. By present-day standards he was far too young for marriage, and besides he did not care for the girl in question. That was why he had chosen not to return home for the vacation, as he normally would have, but to go off to a local seaside resort to enjoy himself.

He showed me the telegram and asked what I thought he should do. I did not know what to advise. But if his mother really was ill, he clearly should go home, so in the end he decided to leave. Having come to Kamakura to be with my friend, I now found myself alone.

I could stay or go as I pleased, since some time still remained before cla.s.ses began again, so I decided to stay where I was for the moment. My friend, who was from a prosperous family in the Chgoku region, did not lack for money. But he was a student, and young, so in fact his standard of living was actually much like my own, and I was spared the trouble of having to find a cheaper inn for myself after he left.

The inn he had chosen was somewhere in an out-of-the-way district of Kamakura. To get to any of the fashionable spots-the billiard rooms and ice cream parlors and such things-I had to take a lengthy walk through the rice fields. A rickshaw ride would cost me a full twenty sen sen. Still, a number of new summer houses stood in the area, and it was right next to the beach, making it wonderfully handy for sea bathing.

Each day I went down to the sh.o.r.e for a swim, making my way among soot-blackened old thatched country houses. An astonishing number of men and women always thronged the beach, city folk down from Tokyo to escape the summer heat. Sometimes the crowd was so thick that the water was a tightly packed ma.s.s of black heads, as in some public bathhouse. Knowing no one, I enjoyed my time alone amid this merry scene, lying on the sand and leaping about up to my knees in the waves.

It was here in this throng of people that I first came upon Sensei. In those days two little stalls on the beach provided drinks and changing rooms, and for no particular reason I took to frequenting one of them. Unlike the owners of the grand summer houses in the Hase area, we users of this beach had no private bathing huts, so communal changing rooms were essential. People drank tea and relaxed here, or left their hats and sun umbrellas in safekeeping; after they bathed, they would wash themselves down at the stall, and attendants would rinse their bathing suits for them. I owned no bathing clothes, but I left my belongings at the stall whenever I went into the water, to avoid having anything stolen.

CHAPTER 2.

When I first set eyes on Sensei there, he had just taken off his clothes and was about to go in for a swim, while I had just emerged from the water and was drying off in the sea breeze. A number of black heads were moving around between us, obstructing my view of him, and under normal circ.u.mstances I probably would not have noticed him. But he instantly caught my attention, despite the crowd and my own distracted state of mind, because he was with a Westerner.

The Westerner's marvelously white skin had struck me as soon as I came in. He had casually tossed his kimono robe onto the nearby bench and then, clad only in a pair of drawers such as we j.a.panese wear, stood gazing out toward the sea, arms folded.

This intrigued me. Two days earlier I had gone up to Yuigahama beach and spent a long time watching the Westerners bathing. I had settled myself on a low dune very close to the rear entrance of a hotel frequented by foreigners, and seen a number of men emerge to bathe. Unlike this Westerner, however, they all wore clothing that covered their torso, arms, and legs. The women were even more modest. Most wore red or blue rubber caps that bobbed prettily about among the waves.

Because I had so recently observed all that, the sight of this Westerner standing there in front of everyone wearing only a pair of trunks struck me as quite remarkable.

He turned and spoke a few words to the j.a.panese man beside him, who had bent over to pick up a small towel that had fallen on the sand. His companion then wrapped the towel about his head and set off toward the sea. This man was Sensei.

Out of nothing more than curiosity, my eyes followed the two figures as they walked side by side down to the water. Stepping straight into the waves, they made their way through the boisterous crowd gathered in the shallows close to sh.o.r.e, and when they reached a relatively open stretch of water, both began to swim. They swam on out to sea until their heads looked small in the distance. Then they turned around and swam straight back to the beach. Returning to the stall, they toweled themselves down without rinsing at the well, put on their clothes, and promptly headed off together for some unknown destination.

After they left, I sat down on the bench and smoked a cigarette. I wondered idly about Sensei. I felt sure I had seen his face before somewhere, but for the life of me I could not recall where or when.

I was at loose ends and needing to amuse myself, so the following day I went back to the stall at the hour when I had seen Sensei. Sure enough, there he was again. This time he came along wearing a straw hat, and the Westerner was not with him. He removed his spectacles and set them on the bench, then wrapped a small towel around his head and set off briskly down the beach.

As I watched him make his way through the crowd at the edge and start to swim, I had a sudden urge to follow him. In I strode, the water splashing high around me, and when I reached a reasonable depth, I set my sights on him and began to swim. I did not reach him, however. Rather than return the way he had come, as he did the previous day, Sensei had swum in an arc back to the beach.

I too swam back, and as I emerged from the water and entered the stall, shaking the drops from my hands, he pa.s.sed me on his way out, already neatly dressed.

CHAPTER 3.

The next day I went to the beach at the same hour yet again, and again I saw Sensei there. I did the same the day after, but never found an opportunity to speak to him or even to greet him. Besides, Sensei's demeanor was rather forbidding. He would arrive at the same time each day, with an unapproachable air, and depart just as punctually and aloofly. He seemed quite indifferent to the noisy throng that surrounded him. The Westerner who had been with him that first day never reappeared. Sensei was always alone.

Finally my chance came. Sensei had as usual come striding back from his swim. He was about to don the kimono that lay as usual on the bench, when he found that it had somehow gotten covered in sand. As he turned away and quickly shook it out, I saw his spectacles, which had been lying on the bench beneath it, slip through a crack between the boards and fall to the ground. Sensei put on the robe and wrapped the sash around his waist. Then, evidently noticing that his spectacles were missing, he quickly began to search for them. In a moment I had ducked down, thrust my hand under the bench, and retrieved them from the ground.

"Thank you," he said as he took them.

The next day I followed Sensei into the sea and swam after him. I had gone about two hundred yards when he suddenly stopped swimming and turned to speak to me. We two were the only beings afloat on that blue expanse of water for a considerable distance. As far as the eye could see, strong sunlight blazed down upon sea and mountains.

As I danced wildly in place there in the water, I felt my muscles flood with a sensation of freedom and delight. Sensei, meanwhile, ceased to move and lay floating tranquilly on his back. I followed his example and felt the sky's azure strike me full in the face, as if plunging its glittering shafts of color deep behind my eyes.

"Isn't this good!" I cried.

After a little while Sensei righted himself in the water and suggested we go back. Being physically quite strong, I would have liked to stay longer, but I instantly and happily agreed. The two of us swam back to the beach the way we had come.

From this point on, Sensei and I were friends. Yet I still had no idea where he was staying. On the afternoon of the third day since our swim, he suddenly turned to me when we met at the stall. "Are you planning to stay here a while longer?" he asked.

I had not thought about it and had no ready answer. "I don't really know," I responded simply.

But the grin on Sensei's face made me suddenly awkward, and I found myself asking, "What about you, Sensei?" This was when I first began to call him by that name.

That evening I called on him at his lodgings. I say "lodgings," but I discovered it was no ordinary place-he was staying in a villa in the s.p.a.cious grounds of a temple. Those who shared the place, I also discovered, were not related to him.

Noticing how he grimaced wryly when I persisted in calling him "Sensei," I excused myself with the explanation that this was a habit of mine when addressing my elders. I asked him about the Westerner he had been with. The man was quite eccentric, he said, adding that he was no longer in Kamakura. He told me a lot of other things about him, then remarked that it was odd that he, who had few social contacts even with his fellow j.a.panese, should have become friends with such a person.

At the end of our conversation I told him that I felt I knew him from somewhere but could not remember where. Young as I was, I hoped that he might share my feeling and was antic.i.p.ating his answer. But after a thoughtful pause, he said, "I can't say I recall your face. Perhaps you're remembering somebody else." His words produced in me a strange disappointment.

CHAPTER 4.

At the end of the month I returned to Tokyo. Sensei had left the summer resort long since. When we parted, I had asked him, "Would you mind if I visited you from time to time?" "Yes, do," he replied simply. By this time I felt we were on quite familiar terms, and had expected a warmer response. This unsatisfactory reply rather wounded my self-confidence.

Sensei frequently disappointed me in this way. He seemed at times to realize it and at other times to be quite oblivious. Despite all the fleeting shocks of disappointment, however, I felt no desire to part ways with him. On the contrary, whenever some unexpected terseness of his shook me, my impulse was to press forward with the friendship. It seemed to me that if I did so, my yearning for the possibilities of all he had to offer would someday be fulfilled. Certainly I was young. Yet the youthful candor that drew me to him was not evident in my other relationships.

I had no idea why I should feel this way toward Sensei alone. Now, when he is dead, I understand at last. He had never disliked me, and the occasional curt greetings and aloofness were not expressions of displeasure intended to keep me at bay. I pity him now, for I realize that he was in fact sending a warning, to someone who was attempting to grow close to him, signaling that he was unworthy of such intimacy. For all his unresponsiveness to others' affection, I now see, it was not them he despised but himself.

Needless to say, I returned to Tokyo fully intending to visit Sensei. Cla.s.ses would not resume for another two weeks, so I planned to visit him during that time. However, within two or three days of my arrival in Tokyo, my feelings began to shift and blur. The city's vibrant atmosphere, reviving as it did all my stimulating memories, swept away thoughts of Kamakura. Seeing my fellow students in the street gave me a thrill of excited antic.i.p.ation for the coming academic year. For a while I forgot about Sensei.

Cla.s.ses started, and a month or so later I slumped back into normalcy. I wandered the streets in vague discontentment, or cast my eyes around my room, aware of some indefinable lack. The thought of Sensei came into my mind once more. I wanted to see him again, I realized.

The first time I went to his house, he was not home. The second time was the following Sunday, I remember. It was a beautiful day, with the sort of sky that feels as if it is penetrating your very soul. Once again Sensei was out. I distinctly remembered him saying in Kamakura that he was almost always at home. In fact, he had said, he quite disliked going out. Having now found him absent both times I called, I remembered these words, and somewhere inside me an inexplicable resentment registered.

Instead of turning to go, I lingered at the front door, gazing at the maid who had delivered the message. She recognized me and remembered giving Sensei my card last time, so she left me waiting while she retreated inside.

Then a lady whom I took to be Sensei's wife appeared. I was struck by her beauty.

She courteously explained where Sensei had gone. On this day every month, she told me, his habit was to visit the cemetery at Zshigaya and offer flowers at one of the graves. "He only went out a bare ten minutes or so ago," she added sympathetically.

I thanked her and left. I walked a hundred yards or so toward the bustling town, then felt a sudden urge to take a detour by way of Zshigaya myself. I might even come across Sensei there, I thought. I swung around and set off.

CHAPTER 5.

I pa.s.sed a field of rice seedlings on my right, then turned into the graveyard. I was walking down its broad maple-lined central avenue when I saw someone who could be Sensei emerging from the teahouse at the far end. I went on toward the figure until I could make out the sunlight flashing on the rim of his spectacles. "Sensei!" I called abruptly.

He halted and stared at me.

"How . . . ? How . . . ?"

The repeated word hung strangely in the hushed midday air. I found myself suddenly unable to reply.