"Why?" she asked, looking up at me with wise black eyes.
I was caught between her glance and her innocent question, both as free of doubt as is the dew, and I was overcome with confusion. I could think of no answer to make. Until now I had felt a strong desire to shake this girl, who seemed to have gone to sleep within her peace of mind, to shake her till she awakened. But instead it was the gaze of her eyes that had awakened something that had been sleeping within me. . . .
It was time for Sonoko's younger sisters to go to school and they came to take their leave. The smallest sister barely touched my palm with her hand as she said good-bye, and then fled outdoors, carrying a crimson lunch box with a gold-colored buckle. Just at that moment the sun happened to shine through the trees and I saw her wave her lunch box high over her head.
Both the grandmother and mother had come along to see me off, so my parting with Sonoko at the station was casual and innocent. We jested with each other and acted nonchalant. The train came soon and I took a seat by a window. My only thought was a prayer that the train would leave quickly. . . .
A clear voice called to me from an unexpected direction. It was certainly Sonoko's voice, but accustomed as I had become to it, I was startled to hear it as a fresh, distant cry. The realization that it was Sonoko's voice streamed into my heart like morning sunlight. I turned my eyes in the direction from which it came. Sonoko had slipped in through the porters' gate and was clinging to the black wooden railing bordering the platform. A mass of lace on her blouse overflowed from her checked bolero and fluttered in the breeze. Her vivacious eyes stared widely at me. The train began to move. Her slightly heavy lips seemed to be forming words, and in just that way she passed out of my view.
Sonoko! Sonoko! I repeated the name to myself with each sway of the train. It sounded unutterably mysterious. Sonoko! Sonoko! With each repetition my heart felt heavier, at each throb of her name a cutting, punishing weariness grew deeper within me. The pain I was feeling was crystal clear, but of such a unique and incomprehensible nature that I could not have explained it even if I had tried. It was so far off the beaten path of ordinary human emotions that I even had difficulty in recognizing it as pain. If I should try to describe it, I could only say it was a pain like that of a person who waits one bright midday for the roar of the noon-gun and, when the time for the gun's sounding has passed in silence, tries to discover the waiting emptiness somewhere in the blue sky. His is the rending impatience of waiting for a longed-for thing that is overdue, the horrible doubt that it may never come after all. He is the only man in the world who knows that the noon-gun did not sound promptly at noon.
"It's all over, it's all over," I muttered to myself. My grief resembled that of a fainthearted student who has failed an examination: I made a mistake! I made a mistake! Simply because I didn't solve that X, everything was wrong. If only I'd solved that X at the beginning, everything would have been all right. If only I had used deductive methods like everyone else to solve the mathematics of life. To be half-clever was the worst thing I could have done. I alone depended upon the inductive method, and for that simple reason I failed.
My mental turmoil was so apparent that the two passengers who sat in the facing seat began eyeing me suspiciously. One of them was a Red Cross nurse wearing a dark-blue uniform, and the other a poor farm-woman who seemed to be the nurse's mother. Becoming conscious of their stares, I glanced at the nurse and saw a fat girl, with a complexion as red as a winter-cherry. I surprised her looking directly at me; to cover her confusion she began to coax her mother:
"Please, I'm so hungry."
"No, it's too early yet."
"But I'm hungry, I tell you. Please, please."
"Don't be so demanding."
But at last the mother yielded and got out their lunch box. The poverty of its contents made their lunch even more dreadful than the food we received at the arsenal. There was only boiled rice, heavily mixed with taro-root and garnished with two slices of pickled radish, but the girl began eating it with gusto.
Somehow the habit of eating had never before appeared so ridiculous to me, and I rubbed my eyes.Presently I realized that my point of view came from having completely lost the desire to live.
When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally decided it would be a ludicrous business. I had an inherent dislike of admitting defeat. Moreover, I told myself, there's no need for me to take such decisive action myself, not when I'm surrounded by such a bountiful harvest of so many types of death—death in an air raid, death at one's post of duty, death in the military service, death on the battlefield, death from being run over, death from disease—surely my name has already been entered in the list for one of these: a criminal who has been sentenced to death does not commit suicide. No—no matter how I considered it, the season was not auspicious for suicide. Instead I was waiting for something to do me the favor of killing me. And this, in the final analysis, is the same as to say that I was waiting for something to do me the favor of keeping me alive.
Two days after my return to the arsenal I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko. There was no doubt that she was truly in love. I felt jealous. Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love? . . .She wrote that after parting from me at the station she got on her bicycle and went to work. But she was so absent-minded that her fellow workers asked if she felt well. She made many errors in filing the papers. Then she went home to lunch, but as she was returning to work after lunch she made a detour by way of the golf course, where she stopped. She looked around and saw where the yellow camomile lay trampled just as we had left it. Then, as the fog dissolved, she saw the flanks of the volcano shining brightly with the color of burnt ochre, looking as though the mountain had been washed. She also saw traces of dark fog arising from the gorges in the mountain, and saw the two silver birch, like loving sisters, their leaves trembling as with some faint premonition. . . .
And at that very time I had been on the train, cudgeling my brain for a way to escape the very love which I myself had implanted in Sonoko! . . . And yet there were moments in which I felt reassured, surrendering myself to a plea of self-justification that, however pitiful, was probably nearest the truth. This was the plea that I had to escape from her for the very reason that I did love her.
I continued writing Sonoko frequent letters, and while I was careful not to say anything that might develop the matter further, at the same time I used a tone that would reveal no cooling off on my part. Within less than a month she wrote telling me that they were all going to visit Kusano again at the regiment near Tokyo to which he had been transferred. Weakness urged me to go with them. Strangely enough, even though I had resolved so firmly to escape from her, still I was irresistibly drawn to another meeting.
And when I did meet her I found that I had completely changed, while she remained just the same as ever. It had become impossible now for me to make a single joke. Sonoko and Kusano, and even her mother and grandmother, noticed the change in me, but they ascribed it to nothing more than my sincerity of purpose. During the visit Kusano made a remark to me which, even though spoken with his usual gentleness, made me tremble with apprehension:
"In a few days I'll be sending you a rather important letter. Be on the lookout for it, will you?" . . .
A week later I went to the house in the suburbs where my family were, and found his letter had arrived. it was written in that handwriting so characteristic of him, revealing in its very immaturity the sincerity of his friendship:
”. . . All the family is concerned about you and Sonoko. I have been appointed ambassador plentipotentiary in the matter. What I have to say is brief-I simply want to ask how you feel about it. Naturally Sonoko is counting on yo
u, and everyone else is too. My mother has apparently even begun thinking about when the ceremony should be. Maybe it's too early for that, but I imagine it would be all right to go ahead and fix a date for the engagement now. But of course we're only guessing. That's why I want to ask how you feel about it. The family would like to settle everything, including making arrangements with your family, just as soon as we hear from you. But I certainly don't mean to force you to take any step you're not ready to take. Just tell me how you really feel and I'll quit worrying. Even if your answer is no, I'll never hold it against you or be angry, nor will it affect our friendship. Of course I'll be delighted if it's yes, but my feelings won't be hurt even if it's no. What I want is your frank answer, freely given. I sincerely hope you'll answer without any feeling of compulsion or obligation. As your very good friend I'm awaiting your answer. . . ."
I was thunderstruck. I looked around, feeling that someone might have been watching me as I read the letter.
I had never dreamed that this could happen. I had failed to take into account the fact that Sonoko and her family might have an attitude toward the war markedly different from my own. I was a student, still under twenty-one, and working in an airplane factory ; moreover, having grown up during a series of wars, I had thought too much of the romantic sway of war. Actually, however, even during such times of violent disaster as these to which the war had now brought us, the magnetic needle of human affairs still remained pointing in the same direction as always. And up to now even I had thought I was in love. So why had I failed to realize that the everyday affairs and responsibilities of life went on even in wartime?
As I reread Kusano's letter, however, a strange, faint smile came playing about my lips, and at last a quite ordinary feeling of superiority rose in me. I'm a conqueror, I told myself. A person who has never known happiness has no right to scorn it. But I give an appearance of happiness in which no one can detect any flaw, and so have as much right to scorn it as anyone else.
Even though my heart was filled with uneasiness and unspeakable grief, I put a brazen, cynical smile upon my lips. I told myself that all I had to do was clear one small hurdle. All I had to do was to regard all the past few months as absurd; to decide that from the beginning I'd never been in love with a girl called Sonoko, not with such a chit of a girl; to believe that I'd been prompted by a trifling passion (liar!) and had deceived her. Then there'd be no reason why I couldn't refuse her. Surely a mere kiss didn't obligate me! . . .
I was elated with the conclusion to which my thoughts had brought me: "I'm not in love with Sonoko."
What a splendid thing! I've become a man who can entice a woman without even loving her, and then, when love blazes up in her, abandon her without thinking twice about it. How far I am from being the upright and virtuous honor student I appear to be. . . . And yet I could not have been ignorant of the fact that there is no such thing as a libertine who abandons a woman without first achieving his purpose. But I ignored any such thoughts. I had acquired the habit of closing my ears completely, like an obstinate old woman, to anything I did not want to hear.
The only thing needed now was to devise a way to get out of the marriage. I set about the task exactly as though I were a jealous lover scheming to prevent a marriage between the girl he loved and someone else.
I opened the window and called my mother.
The large vegetable garden was bright in the strong summer sunlight. Rows of tomatoes and eggplants lifted their parched leaves toward the sun, defiantly, sharply. The sun kept pouring its scorching rays thickly over the strong-veined leaves. As far as the eye could reach the dark abundance of vegetable life was crushed beneath the brilliance that fell upon the garden. Beyond the garden there was a grove of trees around a shrine that turned its face gloomily in my direction. And beyond that there was low land, across which electric trains passed unseen from time to time, filling the countryside with vibrations. After each heedless passage of an upthrust trolley pole the cable was left swaying lazily, flashing in the sunlight.
In response to my call a large straw hat with a blue-ribbon streamer rose from the middle of the vegetable garden. It was my mother. The straw hat my uncle was wearing—he was my mother's elder brother—remained motionless, bent over like a drooping sunflower, without once turning in my direction.
With her present way of life my mother's complexion had become somewhat tanned and I could see the flash of her white teeth as she moved toward me. When she was close enough to be heard, she called out to me in a high-pitched childlike voice:
"What is it? If you want to tell me something, come out here."
"It's something important. You come here a minute."
My mother approached slowly, as though protesting. She was carrying a basket heaped with ripe tomatoes. Reaching the house, she put the basket on the window sill and asked what I wanted.
I did not show her the letter, but told her briefly what it said. As I was speaking I forgot why I had called her; it may have been that I was chattering on simply to convince myself. I told her that whoever became my wile would certainly have a hard time living in the same house with my nervous and fussy father, and yet there was no hope of having a separate house in such times as these. Moreover, there would probably be all the difference in the world between the ways of our old-fashioned family and what I described as Sonoko's vivacious, easygoing family. And as for me, I didn't want the worry of taking on the responsibility of a wife so soon. . . . I gave all these various trite objections with a cool air, hoping my mother would agree and obstinately oppose any thought of my marrying. But she was as calm and indulgent as ever.
"That's a funny way to talk," she broke in, as though giving little thought to the matter. "So then, how do you really feel? Do you love her, or don't you?"
"Of course, I also—well--" I mumbled. "But I was not so serious as all that. I only meant it half in fun. Then she became serious and got me into deep water."
"Then there's no problem is there? The sooner you straighten it out the better for both of you. After all, the letter is only trying to find out how you feel about it. You'd better just send a plain answer—So I'll be getting back. Everything's all right now, isn't it?"
"H'm," I answered and gave a little sigh.
My mother went as far as the bamboo gate, around which corn was growing. Then she came running back nervously to the window where I was. Her expression now was somehow changed.
"Listen, about what we were just saying—" She looked at me with an odd expression, as though she were a strange woman looking at me for the first time, "—about Sonoko. You—she—if you've—well—"
Catching her meaning, I laughed and said:
"Don't be foolish, Mother." I felt as though I had never before laughed so bitterly. "Do you really think I did any such thing? Do you trust me so little?""Oh, I knew it. I just had to make sure." She resumed her cheerful countenance, hiding her embarrassment. "That's what mothers are for—to worry about such things. Don't worry. I trust you." . . .
That night I wrote a letter of indirect refusal, which sounded artificial even to me. I wrote that it was a very sudden thing and that as yet my feelings had not gone quite that far.
On my way back to the arsenal next morning, I stopped by the post office to mail the letter. The woman at the special-delivery window looked suspiciously at my trembling hands. I stared at my letter as she took it up in her rough, dirty hands and stamped it swiftly. I found comfort in seeing my unhappiness handled in such an efficient, businesslike manner.
The enemy planes had changed their targets now and were attacking smaller cities and towns. It seemed as though life had momentarily been delivered from all danger. Views favoring surrender had become fashionable among the students. One of our young assistant professors began making suggestive allusions to peace, trying to curry favor with the students. Seeing the smug bulge of his short nose as he gave voice to the most skeptical views, I thought: "Don't you try to fool me." And on the other ha
nd I also despised the fanatics who still believed in victory. It was all the same to me whether the war was won or lost. The only thing I wanted was to start a new life.
While visiting the house in the suburbs I was taken with a high fever, the cause of which was unknown. As I lay staring at the ceiling, which seemed to revolve feverishly, I muttered Sonoko's name continuously to myself as though it were a sacred scripture. When I was finally able to get out of bed I heard the news of the destruction of Hiroshima.
It was our last chance. People were saying that Tokyo would be next. Wearing white shirt and shorts, I walked about the streets. The people had reached the limits of desperation and were now going about their affairs with cheerful faces. From one moment to the next nothing happened. Everywhere there was an air of cheerful excitement. It was just as though one was continuing to blow up an already bulging toy balloon, wondering: "Will it burst now? will it burst now?" And yet from moment to moment nothing happened. This state of things lasted for almost ten days. If it had gone on any longer, there would have been nothing to do but go crazy.
Then one day some trim planes threaded their way through the stupid antiaircraft fire and rained propaganda leaflets down from the summer sky. The leaflets contained news of the surrender proposals. That evening my father came straight from his office to the house in the suburbs. He came in through the garden and spoke immediately, sitting down on the veranda.
"Listen," he said, "that propaganda is true." He showed me a copy of the original English text, which he had obtained from a reliable source.
I took the copy into my hands, but even before I had had time to read it I had already grasped the reality of the news. It was not the reality of defeat. Instead, for me—for me alone—it meant that fearful days were beginning. It meant that, whether I would or no, and despite everything that had deceived me into believing such a day would never come, the very next day I must begin that "everyday life" of a member of human society. How the mere words made me tremble!