With a snort of amusement, Sakai turned to Sōsuke, whose face wore an oddly tense expression. “What do you say?” Sakai asked, “Would you like to meet him just this once? He goes around draped in baggy clothes trimmed with fur and all, and might be worth a laugh or two. I’ll be happy to introduce you. In fact, he’s coming to dinner the day after tomorrow. But you mustn’t let yourself get suckered into anything. If you just let him do all the talking and say nothing, you’ll be perfectly safe. It would be a lark.” Sakai was persistent in his invitation.
“Would it be just your brother who’s coming to dinner?” asked Sōsuke, weakening some.
“No, there’s some other fellow who came back with him from over there—he’s supposed to come too. His name is Yasui, I think. I haven’t met him yet, but my brother’s been very keen on introducing him, so that’s why I planned this dinner.”
Sōsuke went out Sakai’s gate that night with an ashen face.
17
THE UNION between Sōsuke and Oyone had dyed their existence a somber hue and reduced their presence, they felt, to mere wraiths that barely cast a shadow on the world. From one year to the next each lived with the sensation of harboring deep inside a frightening moral contagion, though neither one of them ever acknowledged this feeling to the other.
Early on, what weighed most heavily on their minds was the havoc their transgression wreaked on Yasui’s future. By the time their emotions had cooled down somewhat, the news reached them that Yasui, too, had withdrawn from the university. They naturally felt responsible for this damage to his prospects. Next a rumor reached them that he had returned to his native province; then a report that he was sick and confined to his bed. Each new tiding sent sharp pangs into their already burdened breasts. Finally, they received word that Yasui had gone to Manchuria. At the time, Sōsuke wondered to himself whether he had in fact recovered from his illness or whether this talk of his having gone to Manchuria was not simply a fabrication: The Yasui he knew was both constitutionally and temperamentally unsuited to places like Manchuria or Taiwan. Sōsuke did everything he could to find out the truth, casting his net of inquiry as widely as possible. Through certain channels he was able to ascertain that Yasui was indeed in Mukden and that, moreover, he was in vigorous health and very active in his business ventures. At this news, the couple turned toward each other and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well, it’s for the best,” said Sōsuke.
“It’s certainly better than being sick,” said Oyone.
From then on they avoided all mention of Yasui’s name. They could not even bring themselves to think about him. For it was because of them that Yasui had dropped out of school, returned to the provinces, and fallen ill; it was perhaps even because of them that he had fled to Manchuria. And yet no matter how painful their cumulative remorse, they were in no position to make amends for the wrongs they had done him.
At one point Sōsuke had asked Oyone, “Tell me, has any kind of religious faith ever touched you?”
After a simple reply in the affirmative, she turned the question back on him: “And you?”
Smiling dismissively, Sōsuke did not reply. Nor did he interrogate her about the particulars of her faith, which was just as well as far as she was concerned. Under the loose rubric of faith there were no elements that had coalesced and settled into any definite pattern for her.
In any case, the two of them had come this far without either sitting in a church pew or passing through a temple gate. At length they had found peace through that simple blessing of nature: the balm of time. Even as they continued to suffer pangs of conscience on occasion, these increasingly seemed to come from somewhere far away, too faint, too weak, and too disconnected from flesh-and-blood passions to qualify as either terrifying or excruciating. Finally, then, not having found God or encountered the Buddha, they focused their faith on each other. Their spirits locked together in an embrace, they began to form a protective circle around themselves. It was in this state of isolation that they had managed to find peace. Their lonely peace was complemented by a certain sweet sense of pathos. As much as they came to revel in their pathos, they were far enough removed from the realms of philosophers and poets to harbor any self-conscious need to proclaim aloud their good fortune in having achieved it. Their experience was therefore unalloyed in comparison to that of the writers and thinkers who must strive to describe states of this nature. Such had been the couple’s inner life up until the seventh day of this New Year, when Sōsuke was invited to the Sakais’ and heard the news about Yasui.
As soon as he returned home and was face-to-face with Oyone, who had been waiting for him beside the brazier, he startled her by saying, “I’m not feeling too well and I’m going straight to bed.”
“What is the matter?” She raised her eyes to meet his gaze. Sōsuke just stood there, stock-still. His behavior was so unusual that Oyone could not recall his ever having been in such a state. She suddenly stood up, looking as though assailed by some nameless dread, and almost mechanically proceeded to take bedding out of the closet and lay it out according to her husband’s wishes. While the bed was being made up, Sōsuke remained standing to one side with his hands thrust into his sleeves. The moment Oyone was finished, he threw off his clothes and burrowed under the covers. Oyone did not move from his bedside.
“What is the matter?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t feel very well. But if I stay put for a while I’m sure I’ll feel better.”
Sōsuke’s response came from under the covers. At the sound of his muffled voice a look of helpless pity came over Oyone’s face. She remained seated there, motionless.
“Go on back to the other room—I’ll call if I need you,” he said.
At length Oyone returned to the sitting room.
Alone, with his head still under the covers, Sōsuke lay there stiffly with his eyes shut. In the darkness he turned over and over again in his mind what he had heard from Sakai. Until the very moment it happened he could never have imagined that he would hear news of Yasui in Manchuria from the mouth of his landlord. Nor would it have occurred to him in his wildest dreams, prior to the conclusion of his evening with Sakai, that fate was on the brink of placing him side by side with Yasui, or perhaps face-to-face, at the table of this same host. As he lay there thinking back over the past few hours he was astounded, not to mention saddened, by the suddenness, the utter unpredictability, of this turn of events. Sōsuke had never claimed to be the kind of strong man who could be felled only by an abrupt, totally unforeseeable event such as this. He had no doubt that far gentler methods would have been sufficient to dispose of a weakling like himself.
From his brother, Koroku, to Sakai’s brother, on to Manchuria and Mongolia, then the return to Tokyo and Yasui—as he went back over and over again the flow of the evening’s conversation, Sōsuke was astonished by the sheer weight of chance. He made an anguished calculation of the odds of someone encountering such a rare, random event so perfectly designed to revive the most excruciating regrets from the past: one in so many hundreds—or thousands? His anger rose and his breath turned hot in the darkness under the covers.
The wound that had finally started to heal over the past few years began, suddenly, to throb to the point of burning. It seemed about to split open again, letting the poisonous air around him infect it without quarter. Perhaps he should tell Oyone everything so that she could share his misery. Yes, he would.
“Oyone, Oyone,” he called out.
She raced to his bedside and peered down intently at his face. He had poked his head out from under the covers. Her own face was illuminated in profile by the light from the next room.
“I want a glass of hot water,” Sōsuke dissembled, losing his nerve at the last moment.
The next day he got up at the usual time and ate his customary breakfast. As Oyone served him he noted, with a mixture of pleasure and pity, the look of relief on her face.
“You gave me quite a shock last
night,” she said. “I thought there was something really wrong with you . . .”
Sōsuke quietly sipped the tea in his cup and did not look up. He could find no words for a suitable reply.
From early that morning a dry, cold wind had been raging, snatching up many hats along with clouds of dust. Having ignored Oyone’s admonition to avert a fever by staying home all day, he boarded the usual streetcar; amidst the heightened roar of the moving carriage and the driving wind outside, he tucked in his chin and kept his gaze fixed narrowly straight ahead. On alighting at his stop, he traced a persistent whining sound to the wires overhead. Looking skyward he found a stolid sun shining more brightly than ever amidst this ferocious display of Nature’s power. The wind whipped coldly between his legs. To Sōsuke’s eyes the columns of swirling dust advancing toward the palace moat appeared as distinct as slanted sheets of rain when driven before the wind.
At the office he could not apply himself to his work. With a writing brush in one hand and his chin propped up with the other, he lost himself in unbidden thoughts. From time to time he idly scraped at the ink stone; he smoked with abandon; then, as if recalling something, he would look out the window. Wherever he looked the world still belonged to the wind. Sōsuke could think of nothing but going home as soon as possible.
When at last he arrived, Oyone studied his face anxiously.
“Did things go all right today?” she asked.
He had no choice but to say all was well, except that he felt a bit tired. He wasted no time in sitting down and warming his legs in the kotatsu, not budging until dinner was served. Meanwhile the wind died out, just as the sun set. In contrast to the daytime, the world now seemed completely still.
“My, what a relief that wind has stopped. The way it was blowing earlier in the day, it frightened me just to sit here like this.” Oyone spoke of the fierce wind as if it were an evil spirit and something to fear.
Sōsuke responded with composure, “It’s quite warm tonight, isn’t it? What a nice gentle start for the New Year.” Having finished dinner, he was smoking a cigarette when he said out of the blue, “Oyone, what do you say we take in a show at the theater?”[75] He rarely made such invitations to his wife, and she naturally found no reason to decline. Entrusting the care of the house to Koroku, who said he would rather toast some rice cakes than hear some old-style ballad-singing, the couple went out.
They arrived somewhat late and the theater was full. Room was made for them at the very back, where, in the absence of cushions, they sat as best they could, half kneeling. “What a mob!” “Well, it’s still New Year’s.” Whispering to each other, they surveyed the large hall packed closely with row upon row of bobbing heads. Those closest to the podium were shrouded in a fog of tobacco smoke. In Sōsuke’s eyes these serried rows of black-haired heads belonged to so many creatures of leisure, whose lives allowed them to frequent such places of entertainment where they would while away half the night. Each and every face he glimpsed aroused envy.
His gaze refocused on the podium, he tried to give all his attention to the jōruri ballad, but to no avail: It did not interest him. He stole a few glances at Oyone, who kept her eyes unwaveringly trained on the podium, seemingly oblivious to her husband. Sōsuke had to count her then among all these people who had aroused his envy.
At the entr’acte he turned to her and said, “Well, shall we leave?”
Surprised by such abruptness, Oyone asked, “You don’t like it?” When he made no reply, she said, in what sounded like an effort to appease him, “Well, I don’t really care one way or the other.” This solicitous response in turn renewed Sōsuke’s sympathy for his wife, whom he had been so determined to have join him for a night out. In the end he sat through the rest of the performance.
On their return they found Koroku sitting cross-legged next to the brazier reading a book, holding it from the top and against the light with no concern for the spine. The iron kettle had been left off the brazier long enough for the water to turn tepid. On a wicker tray remained three or four pieces of toasted rice cakes. Some soy sauce had found its way from the wire grating used for toasting to the dish on which it sat.
Getting to his feet, Koroku asked, “Did you have a good time?” The couple warmed themselves at the kotatsu for ten minutes and went to bed.
The next day brought Sōsuke scarcely any more peace. After work he boarded the usual streetcar, but once inside, he summoned up an image of Yasui and himself arriving at the entrance to the Sakais’ at more or less the same time, and he had to ask himself what sense it made to be traveling homeward so swiftly, as if to hasten the moment of this encounter. At the same time he wondered how Yasui had changed over the years, and even wished that he might, unobserved, simply catch a glimpse of the man.
Two nights earlier, Sakai had characterized his brother with the single word “adventurer.” The utterance now reverberated loudly in Sōsuke’s mind. Sōsuke enumerated various traits that might fall under this rubric: desperation and abandon; discontent and loathing; licentiousness and depravity; recklessness and ferocious determination. Then he tried to imagine to what degree such traits might pertain not only to someone like Sakai’s brother—who doubtless possessed one or another of them in some measure—but also to Yasui, who, as part of some joint enterprise, had joined the brother for the trip back from Manchuria. The “adventurer” that took shape in Sōsuke’s imagination was naturally cast in the most lurid colors possible within the range of connotations allowed by the term.
Having arrived at this distorted image of “adventurer” in which depravity was emphasized to the extreme, Sōsuke felt himself obliged to accept complete responsibility for Yasui’s deplorable transformation. He wanted to catch a single glimpse of the man as he approached the landlord’s house in order to form a general impression, however hazy, of his present character. He also wanted to console himself with the discovery that Yasui had not become as depraved as he feared.
Sōsuke searched his memory for a safe spot close to the Sakais’ house from which he could peer out at others without their being aware, but unfortunately could not think of one. Were Yasui to arrive after sundown, the same darkness that rendered Sōsuke invisible would also render unrecognizable the faces of those who approached the house.
In the meantime the streetcar had reached Kanda. Sōsuke was pained by the prospect of changing cars here and proceeding toward his destination. His nerves balked at so much as a single step in the direction of the place where Yasui was due to arrive. As he stood at the stop, his voyeuristic impulse to steal a glimpse of the man, which had not been strong to begin with, was thoroughly suppressed. He walked through the cold streets along with many other people; unlike them, he had no clear destination in mind. Lamps in the shops began to light up. The streetcars lit up as well. He entered a small restaurant that specialized in beef dishes and began to drink. He tossed back his first small bottle of saké in a daze. The second, he forced down his throat. Even a third failed to make him drunk. Nevertheless Sōsuke went on sitting there, leaning back against the wall and staring off into space with the look of one who was in fact drunk.
It was the dinner hour, and customers streamed in and out. Most of them consumed their meals in a perfunctory manner, quickly paid their bills, and left. As Sōsuke continued to sit in silence amidst this hustle and bustle he eventually came to realize that he had spent twice or three times as long there as anybody else; finally, unable to stay in his seat any longer, he got up and left.
Out in front of the restaurant both sides of the street received sufficient illumination from the shop lights for him to distinguish clearly the hats and clothing of each passerby beneath the eaves. But the light was too weak to brighten up the frigid expanse beyond. Oblivious to the glow of gas and electric lamps at each shop entrance, the night appeared as dark and vast as ever. Wrapped in a greatcoat dark enough to merge into this realm, Sōsuke walked on. He imagined that the very air he breathed turned gray as it made its way int
o his lungs.
With a constant clanging of bells, streetcars busily passed to and fro in front of his eyes; yet this evening the thought of boarding one of them did not so much as cross his mind. He had forgotten how to stride forward with a steady gait, in step with all those around him who moved purposefully along the street. He was a man without roots, he reflected, someone who resembled a manikin being jerked this way and that. He began to wonder, with a sense of mounting dread, about his future, what would become of him if this state of affairs persisted. From all his previous experiences in life he had taken one maxim most deeply to heart: Time heals all wounds. But the night before last that maxim, which he had made into his personal motto, had been completely shattered.
As he walked through the dark night he was overwhelmed by an urge to escape from his present mental state. Thoroughly weak, agitated, unstable, anxious; seriously wanting in courage and bereft of any largeness of spirit—this was how he came to see himself. Oppressed by something that weighed down heavily on his breast, all he could think about was what practical course he might adopt that would deliver him from his current predicament, the causes of which—his own sins of commission and omission—were at the moment quite detached in his mind from the delayed effect they had produced. For now he had no capacity to think about others, consumed as he was by concern for himself alone. Up until now he had made his way in a spirit of sheer forbearance. The time had now come for him to forge a new, active approach to life. Any kind of approach that could be glibly stated or passively absorbed simply would not do. It would have to be a way of life that would shore up the core of his being.
As he walked along he kept muttering over and over to himself the word “religion.” But with each repetition the word no sooner rang out than it died away, without any reverberation. This “religion” was an ephemeral word: It left no more trace than would smoke cupped in his hands once he had spread them open.