“You know, Oyone,” he resumed, “in this area it looks for all the world as though you can’t get anywhere without wearing high clogs. But in the flatlands downtown, it’s another story. Every street there is so dry that the air is full of dust, and if you’re wearing high clogs you feel like such a fool you don’t want to go anywhere. I swear, living way out here, we’re about a century behind the times.”
His complaint notwithstanding, Sōsuke did not look the slightest bit vexed. For her part, Oyone simply heard him out with about the same mild interest she might show in watching the cigarette smoke that hovered below his nostrils.
“You should tell that to Sakai-san,” she taunted him gently.
“Oh, right, and then I’ll get him to lower the rent!” he said, without, however, showing any inclination to visit the landlord.
The previous day, New Year’s Day, he had gone by the Sakais’ house early in the morning and, simply dropping off his calling card at the door, hastily retreated back through the gate before the master of the house could appear. On this second day, amidst the falling snow, there was no coming and going anywhere. On the third day, a maid came down around sunset with a message from the Sakais to the effect that they would be delighted if Mr. and Mrs. Nonaka, and “the young master, too,” were free to come spend the evening.
After the maid had left, Sōsuke asked suspiciously, “What do you suppose they have planned?”
“I’m sure it’ll be poem-cards,[68] with all those children,” said Oyone. “You should go.”
“It’s kind of them to ask: You should go. I haven’t played that game for ages . . . I’d be hopeless.”
“Neither have I. I wouldn’t be any better at it,” she said.
The couple showed no sign of reaching an agreement on who should accept this invitation. In the end they decided to make Koroku fulfill this obligation for all of them.
“Off you go, ‘young master,’” Sōsuke said to Koroku, who smiled thinly as he got to his feet. Sōsuke and Oyone were much amused by the conferral of this title on Koroku, and burst out laughing at the sight of the reaction it elicited when invoked by them. Leaving the holiday air of his home behind, after a transit of but a hundred yards, Koroku found himself seated in the lamplight of another festive household.
In the course of his visit Koroku removed from his sleeve pocket the beanbags shaped like plum blossoms that he had brought home the other night and, emphasizing that they came from his brother, presented them as gifts to the Sakai daughters. In exchange, he arrived back home with a small, unadorned doll (another end-of-the-year premium) stuffed into the same pocket. The doll’s forehead was slightly chipped, and on that spot a simple daub of black ink had been applied. In a thoroughly earnest manner Koroku announced that the doll, as he had understood, represented the Sodehagi character in the play by Chikamatsu.[69] The couple failed to grasp the resemblance between this doll and Sodehagi. Koroku himself had not, of course, had the faintest idea when first presented with the doll by Mrs. Sakai, who had then launched into a detailed explanation. When he still did not get the point, she had her husband write on a piece of paper, side by side, a line from the play and, in parentheses, the punning parody that was meant to be embodied by the doll: “Ah, this narrow hedge, like an iron block . . . (Ah, this callow wench, from crying pocked . . . ).”
Sōsuke and Oyone again broke into lighthearted laughter that befitted the New Year. “Such a clever gag,” said Sōsuke. “I wonder, who thought this up?”
“How would I know?” replied Koroku sullenly before leaving the doll on the floor and retreating to his room.
A few days later—it must have been the seventh—the same maid as before came in the evening bearing a message from the Sakais, which she faithfully recited to Kiyo just as she had been instructed: “If Mr. Nonaka should be at his leisure, he is kindly invited to come by for a chat.” Sōsuke and Oyone had lit the lamp and were just sitting down to dinner when Kiyo delivered this message. Sōsuke, rice bowl in hand, was commenting to Oyone about the New Year’s celebrations finally coming to an end. On hearing the message from the Sakais, Oyone looked at her husband and smiled.
“Yet another one of their gatherings?” Sōsuke wondered aloud. His eyebrows contracted peevishly as he set down his bowl. But on further questioning of the maid, who was waiting at the door, it emerged that no other guests had been invited; she also volunteered that Mrs. Sakai and the children would not be at home, having gone away to visit some relatives.
“Well, then, I guess I’ll drop by,” said Sōsuke, and left the house.
Sōsuke hated socializing. He was not one to turn up at any gathering, unless it was absolutely unavoidable. He did not cultivate personal friendships, either. He had no time for paying visits here and there. To this general rule Sakai was the sole exception. Sōsuke had even gone up to see him several times with no particular purpose in mind, simply to pass the time—with this man who, by contrast, was the most social person in the world. Even to Oyone, that the exceedingly gregarious Sakai and her reclusive husband should get together and converse freely seemed an astonishing phenomenon.
When Sōsuke arrived, Sakai said, “Let’s chat over here,” and led him across the sitting room, then down a corridor to a doorway that opened onto a small study. Hanging in the alcove was a scroll inscribed with only five characters, characters so large and intimidating, however, that they might have been written with a brush made of palm fronds. Below it on the alcove shelf stood an arrangement consisting of a single, magnificent white peony. The only other furnishings were a desk and some cushions, all laid out very neatly.
Standing just inside the darkened doorway, Sakai twisted a switch somewhere and, as soon as the electric light came on, invited Sōsuke in. “Just a moment,” he then said, as he lit the gas heater with a match. The heater was quite small for a room of this size. These preliminaries finished, Sakai offered his guest a cushion. “This is my private grotto,” he said. “When things start to get on my nerves, I take refuge here.”
Atop his thick, quilted cushion, Sōsuke himself felt a certain tranquillity. As the gas fire burned, all but inaudibly, a palpable warmth enfolded him from behind.
“In this room I am freed from all social contact: I can truly relax. Please stay here with me as long as you like. When you come down to it, this New Year’s business has gotten to be more trouble than it’s worth. Up until yesterday afternoon I was completely stretched. There just seemed to be no end to it. Finally, around noon today, I turned my back on the busy, everyday world. I felt sick and took to my bed—slept like a baby. I only woke up a short while ago, had a bath, ate something, smoked a cigarette . . . Then it suddenly dawned on me that my wife had gone off with the children to her relatives, and I was all alone. No wonder it’s so quiet, I said to myself. But then, all of a sudden I felt bored. What moody creatures we are! Still, no matter how bored I was, I couldn’t be bothered to go out to watch or listen to any more festivities, and the very thought of gulping down another New Year’s spread was frightening. Anyway, I felt like spending some time with someone very un-festive—no, that sounds rude . . . someone who has few connections with society . . . oh, that sounds even worse! Well, in a word, somebody like yourself who is above the world. And that’s why I sent the maid to invite you over.”
Sakai spouted all this in his usual smooth and voluble manner. Once in the company of this inveterate optimist, Sōsuke often forgot about his own past. At certain moments it had even crossed his mind that if he had stuck to the conventional path, he might have turned out to be a fellow rather like this.
Just then the maid slid open the narrow door; after offering Sōsuke a second, more formal welcome, she set before him a dessert plate that looked to be made of wood. Then she placed an identical plate in front of Sakai and withdrew without a word. On each plate sat one large steamed bean-jam-filled bun, the size of a child’s rubber ball, and beside it a toothpick about twice the normal size. Prompted by his host not to
let the bun get cold, Sōsuke noticed that in fact it had been freshly steamed, and admired the yellowish skin of this rare treat sitting on his plate.
“But they’re not really fresh, you know,” Sakai explained. “Actually, they gave me a few to take home at this place I went to last night, after I’d said, half joking, how delicious they were. At least they were nice and hot. These I just had warmed up so you could have a taste.”
Using his oversize toothpick, Sakai made a hash of his bun and began to munch on the shreds. Like the sycophantic women who aped in vain the alluring frown of Xi Shi,[70] Sōsuke dug into his own bun with the same abandon as his host.
While they were eating, Sakai brought up the subject of a peculiar geisha he had met at the restaurant the night before. Evidently, she was very fond of the Analects and carried a pocket edition[71] around with her all the time: on the train, out on the town, everywhere.
“Anyway,” he continued, “she told me about this one disciple, Shiro,[72] who is her very favorite. When I asked her why, she said it’s because he was honest almost to a fault. Whenever he learned something from the Master, he’d worry that he might be taught something new before he was able to put the first thing he learned to use.[73] Now I myself don’t know much about Shiro, and I wasn’t sure what to say, but I asked her if this wasn’t like falling in love with someone and then, before you could marry the person, worrying about falling in love with someone else just as nice.”
Sakai delivered himself of such anecdotes without a second thought. Judging from the casual tone he adopted in telling these tales, it appeared that, having frequented the demimonde more or less continuously all his adult life, he had long since become inured to the stimuli afforded by this milieu. Still, out of force of habit, he went on visiting his old haunts several times a month. When probed a little further on the subject, he replied that even he, who took most everything in stride, occasionally felt inured to physical pleasure and had to seek a balm for his spirit by retreating to his study.
Sōsuke, himself no stranger to the demimonde, did not have to feign interest in such stories; he responded, rather, in an undemonstrative, man-about-town fashion. It was this very nonchalance that piqued the curiosity of Sakai, who made as if to read into his guest’s very ordinary remarks traces of some possibly far from ordinary past. But the moment Sōsuke betrayed a hint of resistance to having his past explored further, Sakai changed the subject. He clearly did so not as some delaying tactic but out of deference to his guest’s reticence, such that Sōsuke took no offense at all.
In the course of the conversation Koroku’s name came up. Sakai turned out to have several novel observations to make about the young man, of a sort that would escape notice by an older brother. Expressing neither assent nor dissent, Sōsuke heard out Sakai’s characterization with considerable interest. Eventually Sakai formulated a question about Koroku: While the young man clearly had a head for complicated if impractical matters, was he not also rather naïve for his age, so like a child in the unselfconscious way he revealed his emotions? Sōsuke immediately concurred in this assessment. And yet, he went on to add, this was perhaps a quality that, regardless of age, clings to those whose education has been of the formal, academic variety, devoid of any socialization.
“I see your point,” Sakai said. “But then, take the opposite case. People who are well versed in the ways of the world but don’t have a head for books may seem more sophisticated, but they never really grow up. They’re the ones who cause more trouble.”
Sakai paused for a moment, then continued. “What about letting Koroku live with us as a shosei?[74] I suppose that might contribute to his socialization.” Sakai’d had no one in his employ ever since his previous shosei passed his physical for the draft and got himself sent to boot camp, about a month before the family’s pet dog was taken sick to the veterinarian’s, leaving the position vacant ever since.
Sōsuke was overjoyed at this fortuitous solution to the problem of what to do about Koroku—a solution that had spontaneously materialized, without any solicitation on his part, here at the beginning of this New Year. At the same time, not having dared for a long time to entertain any real expectations of goodwill and kind favors from the world, he was momentarily shocked into indecisiveness by Sakai’s sudden offer. But then, he judiciously realized, if he were able to place Koroku in this position very soon, with the money they would save on his keep, plus a modest contribution from Yasunosuke, he could fulfill his brother’s hopes for a university education. When Sōsuke revealed this plan to his host, holding back nothing, Sakai nodded as he listened, and then responded offhandedly, “Sounds just fine to me.” And so the matter was settled then and there.
Sōsuke should have called it an evening at this point. And in fact he did try to leave. But his host prevailed on him to stay for a while longer. The evening is young, he said, showing Sōsuke his watch to prove it. Sakai seemed very much at a loss for something to do. For Sōsuke’s part, if he were to leave now it would only be to go straight to bed. Sakai, settling back down again, lit up another strong cigarette. Eventually Sōsuke followed his host’s example and assumed a less formal posture on his soft cushion.
Returning to the subject of Koroku, Sakai observed, “Younger brothers can be a real bother. I’ve been saddled with one who’s nothing but trouble, so I know what I’m talking about.” He proceeded to describe how extravagant his brother had been in his college years, in contrast to his own simple, austere life as a student. Sōsuke inquired about the subsequent progress of this flamboyant younger brother, partly in the expectation of gaining another glimpse of the vindictive workings of fate.
“Adventurer!” This was the single word that exploded from Sakai’s mouth.
After graduation, Sakai went on, his brother had been hired on his recommendation by a certain bank, but all he did was complain that he wasn’t making enough money. After the Russo-Japanese War was over, ignoring Sakai’s efforts to dissuade him, he had gone off to Manchuria, declaring his intention to do something really big. Once there he got himself involved in—of all things!—some colossal scheme to transport soybean mash down the Liao River, a venture that went bust practically overnight. He was not a principal investor, but when all the accounts had been reckoned he emerged with a large debt. Not only could he not continue with this venture; its collapse inevitably spelled his personal ruin.
“What became of him at this juncture, I really didn’t know at the time,” Sakai continued. “But when I did finally hear from him again—well, I was in for a shock. This time he was off to Mongolia, wandering all over the place. As you can imagine I was worried about further trouble—after all, he seems to have an unlimited capacity for speculation. Still, so long as he was over there and I was over here, I could go on assuming that he’d get by somehow, and didn’t need to concern myself too much. He sent me the occasional letter, but all it would be about was how arid Mongolia is, so that when it gets hot they have to wet down the dusty roads with water from the open sewers, and when that runs out, they resort to horse piss, and so the whole place has this terrible stink—you know, that kind of thing. Oh yes, he did bring up money, but so what? With me in Tokyo and him in Mongolia, all I had to do was ignore his requests. As long as he stayed away there was no problem. But then, all of a sudden, who should turn up here in Tokyo, just before New Year’s!”
As though he had just recalled something, Sakai interrupted himself here and took down from the alcove pillar a decorative object from which dangled a handsome tassel. It was a short sword, one foot in length, wrapped in a silk brocade bag. The scabbard was fashioned from a green, mica-like material of exotic appearance and was encircled in three places by bands of silver. The blade was only seven inches long, and its cutting edge proportionately narrow. By contrast, the scabbard was very thick and took the shape of a hexagonal oaken club. Closer inspection revealed two slender sticks inserted through the hilt and running parallel to the scabbard; they were secured to the lat
ter by the silver bands.
“This is what he brought me as a souvenir—a Mongolian sword,” said Sakai, swiftly unsheathing the blade. From the handle he then pulled out the two sticks, which appeared to be made of ivory. “These are actually chopsticks. Evidently Mongolians wear their swords at all times, so whenever they chance upon a meal all they need to do is whip them out, slice the meat, then dig in with these chopsticks.” Sakai performed a spirited demonstration, sword in one hand, chopsticks in the other. Sōsuke studied the articles’ fine craftsmanship.
“He also gave me some of the felt they use to make their tents—it’s a lot like the pressed wool that antique rugs are made of.”
Sakai proceeded to describe the skill of Mongolian horsemen; the resemblance between the thin, rangy Mongolian dogs and Western greyhounds; and the steady encroachment on Mongolian territory by the Chinese—in short, everything he had heard from his brother on his recent return from that country. This was all quite new to Sōsuke, who took in each piece of information with genuine interest. As he listened his curiosity was piqued as to what Sakai’s brother was doing in Mongolia in the first place.
“Adventurer!” Sakai exclaimed again, with equal vehemence. Then he went on: “I have no idea what he’s doing there. He tells me he’s raising some kind of livestock—and that it’s been a great success, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe him. I’ve been taken in too many times by his empty boasts. As for the item of business that’s brought him to Tokyo, it sounds utterly preposterous. He claims he needs to borrow twenty thousand yen for ‘King’ something-or-other of Mongolia. And so he’s rushing around telling people that he’ll lose his standing over there if we don’t lend him the money. Needless to say, I was the first person he asked. Okay, say it really is the King of Mongolia, or he does put up vast tracts of land as collateral—how is anyone here in Tokyo supposed to collect the debt way over there if he doesn’t pay up? So I say no, and the next thing, my brother comes sneaking in to see my wife behind my back, and has the gall to tell her that with my attitude I’d never make it big.”