Teizaburō, the translator, still bristles with anger over your treatment. “How could the most prestigious university in Japan have severed its connection to the most distinguished Western writer of Japan?” your former student posed to Shigeyuki, the scribe, the last time they were both here at this Ōkubo house.

“Money,” Shigeyuki replied, his one-word answer uncharacteristically blunt. “The replacement, Sōseki Natsume, was hired as a lecturer for a fraction of Herun-sensei’s salary. Even we at the sleepy Institute had heard about the outrage.”

“Ah, not for long, not for long,” Teizaburō assured him. “The rumor is that Sōseki will ask for a pay raise or leave altogether. Who would have imagined that he would make a name for himself by writing a novel in the voice of a cat? Absurd and a fad is what I say, but he has published five more books since, each better received than the last. I, frankly, am astonished.”

“What would Herun-sensei think about this Sōseki?” Shigeyuki asked.

Neither had an answer. I think you would have liked the cat, Yakumo.

Without the university professorship, you no longer had a reason to go beyond the Ōkubo garden gate. Koizumi Yakumo at fifty-three sought refuge in the country inside. From your writing room, you looked westward, back toward the far shores of your youth, exhausted by the waves that had carried you away.

Pride had left your body, Yakumo. As with the men of the house of Koizumi before you, this was the same as your spirit departing. When pride had left Setsu at twenty-three, when it rose up and coiled toward the Matsue sky, the body that remained was no longer tied to the land, a winged maple seed afloat. For you, Yakumo, the body that remained was a husk, separated from the grain, weightless. Your back stooped. Your hair snowed. Your gait slowed. Your eye twitched. Your cheeks hollowed. Your mouth filled with blood. A burst blood vessel, Dr. Kizawa, the family doctor reported. Your voice silenced for months. Your daily walks lost to you as well.

The heart that belongs to Suzuko was already within this body by then, but the roundness of her was not yet visible to your eye, Yakumo. A fourth Koizumi, even if a son, no longer seemed a reason for celebration. But when Suzuko joined the household later that autumn, you held her in your arms and called her “Aba, Aba,” kissing her on both cheeks.

Foster Mother and I looked at each other, but we both held our tongues. Later, with Suzuko asleep in her arms, foster Mother worried that the misfortune could not be undone.

“It was Kazuo’s first word,” I reminded foster Mother.

“Yes, but—” she began.

“Iwao’s and Kiyoshi’s too,” I added.

“It was probably every baby’s first word in this country,” she said. “You know that is not why I worry.”