In due course, the glass in front of Hara was filled with beer.
Tsuda had been observing in silence; finally he realized that the matter of business that had brought him here had been concluded. Just then Kobayashi suddenly turned to him.
“His paintings are wonderful. Why don’t you buy one? He’s having a tough time right now. How about it? Why not have him bring some work to show you on Sunday?”
Tsuda was surprised.
“I don’t appreciate paintings much.”
“I don’t believe that, do you, Hara? Anyway, take some work and show him.”
“Certainly, if it’s not a bother.”
It was, of course.
“I’m someone with no appreciation for paintings and sculpture and that sort of thing. So if you don’t mind—”
The young man looked wounded. Kobayashi came to his aid at once.
“I don’t believe it. There aren’t many people with tastes as refined as yours.”
Tsuda had to force a smile.
“There you go again—stop mocking me.”
“I’m not mocking you; it’s a fact. I can’t believe that someone with an appreciation for women as keen as yours would just dismiss art. Any woman lover must also love art, wouldn’t you say, Hara? There’s no way you can hide that.”
Tsuda had arrived gradually at the limit of his forbearance.
“It seems you two have a lot to say to each other, so I think I’ll be on my way—Waitress. Check please.”
As the waitress rose from her chair, Kobayashi stopped her in a loud voice and turned back to Tsuda.
“It so happens Hara-kun has just finished something very special. He went to discuss a price with someone who said he wanted to buy it, and he happened to stop off here on his way back—it seems like a perfect opportunity—you should really buy it. The way I see it, he shouldn’t be selling to the kind of person who’s not ashamed to take advantage of an artist and bargains his price down as low as he can get it. So I volunteered to help him find an appropriate buyer and, to tell the truth, I suggested when we were talking on the corner that he should stop in here on his way back. So buy one, it’s nothing.”
“You expect me to agree to that before I’ve even seen the painting?”
“He’ll show it to you—didn’t you bring it back with you?”
“He asked for a little more time so I left it there.”
“You’re a fool. First thing you know, he’ll have wangled it for nothing.”
Hearing this, Tsuda sighed with relief.
[ 163 ]
THE OTHER two began an animated conversation about painting that excluded him. The talk was full of Western terms—some, like “Cubism” and “Futurism,” that he had heard before and others that were exotic-sounding and unfamiliar. There was no need to expel him from the conversation: finding nothing of any interest in what he heard, he had left through the gate on his own accord. But even where he stood, he felt a boredom that exceeded the ordinary, in addition to which there was something irking him more aggressively than boredom. From the beginning he had considered these two, Kobayashi in particular, dilettantes eager to wave the banners of new art. Observing them flaunt their sophistication confirmed his prejudice. When it began to appear to him that their objective might be expressly to make him regret his own ignorance on this head, he gave over the effort he had made to sit patiently and ventured to take his leave. Kobayashi detained him yet again.
“Another few minutes. I’ll leave with you.”
“No, it’s getting late.”
“I don’t see why you have to make anyone feel embarrassed. Or are you saying that waiting for Hara-kun to finish eating will reflect poorly on your status as a gentleman?”
Hara, who had placed some ham on top of a shredded lettuce salad and was just digging in with his fork, paused.
“Don’t trouble yourself about me.”
Tsuda responded appropriately and was rising from his chair when Kobayashi spoke as if to himself.
“What can he be thinking this occasion is for? He invites a man to something he calls a farewell dinner and then insults the guest of honor by leaving him alone at the table and going home—with people like this in the world, no wonder life is miserable.”
“That’s not what I intended.”
“Then stay for a while.”
“There’s something I have to do.”
“I have a little something, too.”
“If it’s the painting, forget it.”
“I’m not twisting your arm to buy it. Don’t be such a cheapskate!”
“Then whatever it is, get on with it.”
“Not with you standing over me. Sit down like a gentleman.”
Obliged to take his seat again, Tsuda took a cigarette from the pack in his kimono sleeve and lit it. Glancing at the ashtray, he saw that it was already full of Shikishima butts. He reflected briefly that there could be no more fitting memorial to this evening. Like the others, the cigarette he was about to smoke would be reduced in under three minutes to ash and smoke and a butt that would end up cold and useless in the ashtray—somehow, the thought was dispiriting.
“So what is your little something? I assume you’re not looking for another handout?”
“There you go again, sounding like a cheapskate.”
Gripping the right front of his jacket with his right hand, Kobayashi reached inside his pocket with his left. As though groping for something he fumbled in the pocket, his eyes never leaving Tsuda’s face. Out of nowhere, an outlandish question framed itself in Tsuda’s mind, a bizarre delusion wispy as the smoke from his cigarette.
Is this scoundrel going to take a pistol from his jacket? Does he intend to stick it in my face?
A minute foreboding whispered through him, his nerves trembling like slender branches in an invisible wind. At the same time, regarding as a spectator the scene in the melodrama he had perversely imagined, his mind dismissed it as absurd.
“What are you looking for?”
“There are a lot of things in here; I can’t just pull something out until I know it’s what I want.”
“It would be awkward if it turned out to be the money you stuffed in there before.”
“There’s no mistaking the money. The money isn’t dead paper, it’s alive. It jumps like a fish when I touch it.”
Talking nonsensically the while, he withdrew an empty hand.
“I can’t find it—how weird.”
Kobayashi thrust his right hand into his left vest pocket but produced only a soiled handkerchief.
“You’re planning to do magic tricks with that?”
Kobayashi paid no attention. With a serious look on his face, he stood, patted both hips at once, and then exclaimed “Here it is.”
From his hip pocket he withdrew a letter.
“I’d like you to read this. And since we won’t be seeing each other for a while, it has to be tonight. Please have a look while I wrap up with Hara-kun. It’s a bit long, but it shouldn’t be much of a bother.”
Extending his hand mechanically, Tsuda took the letter.
[ 164 ]
SCRAWLED IN pen on manuscript paper, it was more than twice the length of a normal letter. Moreover, though it was addressed to Kobayashi, the author was someone entirely unknown to Tsuda. When he had read the front and back of the envelope, he wondered what connection this could possibly have to him. But a kind of curiosity adjacent to his cold indifference beckoned him. Removing the ruled manuscript paper from the envelope, ten rows of twenty characters on each page, he read to the end without pausing.
I find myself already regretting having come here. I know you’ll consider me capricious, but my feelings originate in a temperament altogether different from yours, and there is little to be done about it. But before you think “Not again!” please listen to my lament. I was asked to look after the place for a while, until the reorganization of the bank should be settled, because it seemed imprudent to leave the women alone at night. The te
rms offered me if I accepted the invitation were irresistible: if I wished to work on my novel I should feel free to, if I wanted to go to the library I could take a lunch with me; in the afternoons I could study painting if I liked. When the bank was finally relocated to Tokyo I should have my tuition for the college of foreign languages, I needn’t worry about dealing with the house, my moving expenses would be provided, and so on. Obviously, I didn’t count on all of this, but I was convinced that a certain percentage was true. But when I got here I found that none of it was; it was all lies dressed up as truth. Not only is my uncle mostly away in Tokyo, but I am treated as a houseboy and have no time for anything but the chores I am assigned from morning to night. My uncle refers to me as “our house boy” even in front of guests when I am standing there. Every task, from buying a pint of sake to dusting and polishing the wooden floor of the engawa, falls to me. And I’ve yet to receive one penny. When the one-yen clogs I was wearing cracked, I was fitted out with a pair that cost twelve sen. Promising to give us some money on the morrow, my uncle moved the family into my sister’s house, but once they were there he didn’t breathe another word about money, so I am left without even a home to return to.
My uncle’s business is swindling. He has no money at all. He and my aunt are extremely cold and extremely stingy people. For some time after I arrived, I had to endure an empty stomach and would return to my sister’s house once every three days or so for something to eat. Sometimes when we had run out of provisions we were obliged to make do with yams and potatoes. But not my uncle and aunt. My aunt is an extremely disagreeable person. She is calculating about everything, interested only in appearances, and is inclined to poke into everything around her, which often enough includes me, so that I feel the sting of her busybody’s needle. As for my uncle, broke as he is, he drinks his sake. And when he returns to the country he carries on like a lord. But if you look beneath the surface you find nothing but surprises. He’s even involved in more than one lawsuit. He can never leave on a train without dashing off to a pawnshop to raise money for a ticket, or going to my sister’s place and wheedling from her what he needs to get by; it seems he feels he’s repaying the loan with what it costs him to board me.
My aunt must have been thinking all along that I’d be paying my way with my writing; when she catches me with my pen in hand she’ll take a dig at me, asking what I expect to earn by scribbling on a scrap of paper. Sometimes, by way of dropping a hint, she’ll wave an ad in my face from the help-wanted column in the newspaper, “Hiring clerks.”
All this is repeated endlessly until I lose all sense of why I ever came here. I find myself thinking strange thoughts. The bizarre, utterly formless life of this family and the constantly shifting miasma of their internal circumstances haunt me day and night and I feel as if I am lost in a terrifying dream. When I consider that no one could possibly understand my plight no matter how I explained it, I must conclude forlornly that I am living all alone in a world inhabited by demons. Sometimes I feel I shall go mad. Properly speaking, when I begin to suspect that I have already lost my mind, I become unbearably afraid. Not only does no ray of light reach me in the underground dungeon where I suffer, but I feel I no longer have hands or feet. I suppose I feel that way because even if I lift my hands or move my feet, I remain in pitch-darkness. I can appeal all I like, a thick, cold wall blocks my voice and prevents it being heard. In all the world there is only me. I have no friends, and even if I did it would make no difference. Who, after all, would have a mind capable of touching the feelings of a ghostly presence like mine? An excess of pain has prompted me to write this letter. I haven’t written expecting to be rescued. I know your circumstances. I haven’t the slightest desire to receive any sort of material aid from you. If some portion of my pain, reaching you, would only create in the compassion flowing in your veins like lifeblood a swell of sympathy for me, I would be satisfied. For that alone would place within my grasp a guarantee that I exist in society as a member of the human race. Is there, I wonder, no single ray of light that can reach the vast world of people from the darkness of this devil’s confinement? I begin to think not. A reply from you, or no reply, will determine my certainty of this.
The letter ended here.
[ 165 ]
JUST THEN the ash on Tsuda’s cigarette, which had lengthened to nearly an inch, dropped on the letter. Eyeing the powder scattered across the vertical and horizontal indigo ruling of the manuscript page, he became suddenly aware that until now he hadn’t moved the hand in which he was holding the cigarette. More precisely, his lips and hand at some point had forgotten the cigarette’s existence. Moreover, since finishing the letter and dropping the ash had not occurred simultaneously, he was obliged to acknowledge an interval of vacant time that had been sandwiched between the two events.
What could have accounted for that empty time? It was hard to imagine anything with less relevance to Tsuda intrinsically than this letter. He didn’t know the author. He had no inkling of the connection between the author and Kobayashi. As for the contents, the incidents described were so alien to his own position and circumstances they might have been occurring in another world.
But his observations didn’t end there. Something had startled him. Until now he had been wont to assume that the world was what he beheld in front of him, but just now he had been obliged abruptly to turn and look behind. He had halted in that attitude, his gaze fixed upon an existence opposite to himself. As he stared at that ghostly presence he was encountering for the first time ever, he cried out to himself Ah, this is a person, too! He saw in front of his eyes with blinding clarity the fact that someone at a vast distance from himself was if anything closely connected.
Here he stopped and circled. But he didn’t advance a single step. He went no further than understanding the meaning of the repellant letter in a manner that befitted him.
As Tsuda brushed the cigarette ash off the manuscript paper, Kobayashi, who had been in conversation with Hara, turned at once in his direction. Tsuda had caught a few phrases apparently intended to conclude their business.
“Don’t worry about it…. Something will work out…. You’ll be fine.”
He pushed the letter toward Kobayashi in silence. Leaving it on the table, Kobayashi spoke.
“You read it?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
Tsuda offered no reply. But he felt the need of ascertaining his companion’s intention.
“I don’t see why you had me read this.”
Kobayashi returned the question.
“You don’t see why I had you read it?”
“I don’t even know who the author is.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Let’s say that doesn’t matter; why should I care?”
“About the author or the letter?”
“Either one.”
“What do you think?”
Tsuda hesitated again. His hesitation was in fact evidence that the meaning of the letter had reached him. It was as if, to put it more clearly, his awareness that he had managed to interpret the letter in his own way was impeding his reply. Presently he spoke.
“In the sense you mean, they’re both irrelevant to me.”
“And what’s the sense I mean?”
“You don’t know?”
“Tell me what you think.”
“I’ve had enough of this.”
Tsuda wondered whether the letter wasn’t intended by Kobayashi to serve the same purpose as the painting. Perhaps he was trying to maneuver him into making a material sacrifice so that he could crow, “What did I tell you? You’ve surrendered after all.” To Tsuda that would amount to an affront beyond enduring. Then let him try, he bridled, let him threaten all he liked with a destitute ghost and see where it would get him. When he spoke, his resentment was audible in his voice.
“How about telling me outright what you were thinking. Like a man!”
“Like a man? Well??
?” Kobayashi began and, interrupting himself, added, “Fair enough, I’ll explain. Neither this man nor his letter, the contents of his letter, has anything to do with you. Not in the social sense—do you know what I’m saying? Let me also explain ‘social’ while I’m at it to avoid any misunderstanding. Out there in the profane, work-a-day world, you have no obligations where the contents of this letter are concerned.”
“Obviously not.”
“Exactly—no social obligation. But what if you expanded your moral vision a little and then had a look?”
“No matter how I expand, I’m not about to feel an obligation to put my hand in my pocket.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t, being you. But I’m guessing you will feel some sympathy.”
“Sympathy, yes.”
“That’s more than enough, for me. When you talk about sympathy, you mean you’d like to give some money. But the fact is you don’t want to spend any, and that leads to a battle with your conscience that creates anxiety. And with that I’ve achieved my goal.”
So saying, Kobayashi put the letter away and, withdrawing from the same pocket the yen notes from before, spread them on the table.
“Help yourself. Take what you need.”
He looked at Hara.
[ 166 ]
TSUDA WASN’T expecting this. Caught off guard and compelled to taste fully of the cynicism in the move, he felt his pulse began to hammer. In that instant an electric current of what would have to called hatred shot through his body.
At the same moment a suspicion flickered in his canny mind.
Have these two been in cahoots from the beginning, conniving to make a fool of me?
This thought, and their attitudes in conversation on the street corner, and Kobayashi’s behavior after showing up here, and Hara’s mien when he joined them, and the back-and-forth that had transpired subsequently—all this whirled and sputtered in Tsuda’s brain like firecrackers on a wheel, too fast to discern which was cause and which effect. Seeing the new ten-yen notes laid out neatly on the white tablecloth, Tsuda yelled involuntarily to himself: Is this the punch line of the farce this wily scoundrel has cooked up? Villain! You think I’ll let you have your way in this?