The day before, when I had been sweeping, I had hurt my finger with a bamboo whisk from my broom and even this minute wound had been sufficient to make me uneasy. I recalled the poet whose death had resulted from pricking his finger with a rose thorn. The commonplace people about me would never die from such causes. But I had become a precious person and there was no telling what fateful death might not be in store for me. Fortunately my finger did not fester, and today when I had pressed on it I had only felt the slightest pain.
I need hardly say that I had taken every sanitary precaution prior to my visit to Gobancho. On the previous day I had gone to a chemist's in some fairly distant part of the city where I was not known and had bought myself a packet of rubber prophylactics. The powdery membranes of these objects had a truly powerless, unhealthy color. In the evening I had taken one of them out and tried it on. As my member stood there amid the other objects in my room-the Buddhist painting on which I had scribbled with a red crayon, the calendar from the Kyoto Tourist Association, the Buddhist texts for use in Zen temples which happened to be open precisely at the Butcho-Sonsho incantation, my dirty socks, the split straw-matting-it looked like some inauspicious image of the Buddha, smooth, gray, devoid of both eyes and nose. Its unpleasant form reminded me of the atrocious religious act known as “cutting the member,” which nowadays only remains in certain records that have been handed down from the past.
I entered a side street which was lined with paper lanterns. The hundred or more houses along the street were all built in the same style. It is said that if a fugitive from justice put himself in the hands of the boss who managed this district, he could easily be hidden. Evidently when the boss pressed a button, a bell would ring in each of the brothels and the criminal would be warned that the police were coming.
Each house had a dark lattice window at the side of the entrance and each had two stories. The heavy, ancient tiled roofs which extended into the distance under the humid moon were all of the same height. Dark-blue curtains with the characters Nishijin dyed in white hung over each entrance, and behind them one could see the madams of the respective brothels dressed in their white aprons and bending forward to observe who was passing on the street.
I did not have the slightest notion of pleasure. I felt as though the regular order of things had abandoned me, as though I had been separated from the ranks all by myself; and now I seemed to be dragging my weary legs through some area of utter desolation. The desire that lodged within me squatted down hugging its knees and showed me its sullen back. All the same, I thought, it was my duty to spend the money in this place. I should use up all the money that I had received for my university fees and thus I should give the Superior a perfectly reasonable excuse for expelling me from the temple. It did not occur to me that there was any peculiar contradiction in this thought; yet if this was my true motive, it meant that I must love the Superior.
Possibly it was still rather early for the crowds to visit the Gobancho. In any case there were curiously few people on the street. My wooden clogs echoed clearly in the night air. The monotonous voices of the madams as they called out to the occasional passers-by seemed to crawl through the moist, low-hanging air of the rainy season. My toes firmly clasped the thongs of my clogs, which had become loose. And these were my thoughts. Amid those multifarious lights that I had seen from the top of Mount Fudo on that night when the war ended, I must have been gazing at the lights of this very street.
In the place where my legs now led me Uiko must be waiting. At one of the crossroads I noticed an establishment callcd Otaki. I chose this place at random and went in through the blue curtains. Abruptly I found myself in a room with a tiled floor. Three girls sat at the opposite end of the room. They looked exactly as if they were sitting wearily waiting for a train. One of them was dressed in a kimono and had a bandage round her neck. The other two wore Western clothes. One girl was bending over; she had pulled down her stocking and was busily scratching her calf. Uiko was out. The fact of her being out put me at case.
The girl who had been scratching her leg looked up like a dog that has been called. The heavy white powder and rouge had been applied to her round, puffed-up face with the sort of harsh clarity that one sees in a child's drawings. Yet, though this may seem a strange thing to say, she looked at me with an expression that was truly well-intentioned. It was precisely the look that one might give to some fellow human-being whom one passes at a street corner. Her eyes showed not the slightest recognition of the desire that lay within me.
As Uiko was not there, it did not matter which girl I had. I was still moved by the superstition that any choice or anticipation on my part would mean failure. Just as the girls could not choose their customers, so it was better that I should not choose my girl. I must make sure that the terrifying concept of beauty, which makes people powerless to act, would not now intervene between me and my intention.
“Which girl would you like?" said the madam. I pointed to the girl who had been scratching her leg. The slight itching on that girl's leg—an itching which probably remained from the bite of one of the mosquitoes that was prowling about the tiled floor-was the bond that linked me to her.Thanks to that itch of hers, she would earn the right thereafter to act as a witness when it came to officially investigating my deed. The girl stood up and came over to me. She lightly touched the sleeve of my jumper. I noticed that her lips were turned up in a smile.
As I climbed the old, gloomy stairs to the second story, I again thought about Uiko. I thought about how she had gone out from this hour, from the world that existed in this hour. Inasmuch as she had gone away from this place, I should certainly not find her wherever I might look. It seemed as if Uiko had gone outside this world of ours to have a bath or something simple of the sort.
While Uiko was still alive, I had felt that she was able to go freely in and out of a double world of this kind. Even at the time of that tragic incident, just when she seemed to be rejecting the world, she had once more accepted it. Perhaps for Uiko death had been merely a temporary incident. The blood that she had left on the gallery of the Kongo Temple had perhaps been something like the powder that remains from a butterfly's wings when one opens the window in the morning and it instantly flies away.
In the center of the second story an openwork balustrade surrounded an area where the draught came up from the courtyard; a clothesline stretched from one part of the eaves to the next and on it hung a red petticoat, a few articles of woman's underwear, and a nightgown. It was very dark and the indistinct outline of the nightgown looked like a human figure.
A girl was singing in one of the rooms. The girl's song flowed along smoothly; occasionally it was joined by the discordant voice of a man. The song came to an end and there was a short silence. Then the girl started to laugh as if a string had been broken off.
"It's Haruko,,’ said the girl who was with me, turning to the madam.
"It's always like that,” said the madam, “always.” And she obstinately turned her square back toward the room from where the laughter was coming. I was shown into a tasteless little room. A sort of stand took the place of the usual alcove and on it someone had haphazardly placed an image of the lucky Hotei god and a figure of a beckoning cat. A detailed notice of regulations had been pasted on the wall and a calendar also hung there. The room was illuminated by a single, dim light bulb. Through the open window one could occasionally hear the footsteps of passers-by as they wandered through the streets in their seareh for pleasure.
The madam asked me whether I wanted to stay for a short time or to spend the night. The cost for a short visit was four hundred yen. I asked for some saké and some rice biscuits. The madam went downstairs to fetch what I had ordered, but still the girl did not come next to me. It was only when the madam returned with the saké and told the girl to sit next to me that she joined me on the straw mat. Now that I could observe her close at hand I saw that her upper lip had been rubbed so that it was slightly red. Evidently the girl
was in the habit of killing the time by rubbing and scratching not just her legs but all over her body. Then it occurred to me that this slight redness might be simply a smudge from her thick rouge. Please do not be surprised that I should have observed everything so minutely. Alter all, this was my first visit to a brothel and I was eager to seareh out proofs of pleasure in every item that met my eyes, I saw everything as clearly as in an etching; each detail was pasted in all its clarity at a fixed distance before my eyes.
"I've seen you before, Sir, haven't it" said the girl, who had introduced herself as Mariko.
"It's my first time, you know."
"Really? This is the first time you've been to a place like this?”
“Yes, the very first time."
"Yes, I suppose it is. That's why your hand is trembling.” It wasn't until she said this that I realized that the hand in which I held my saké cup was shaking violently.
“If that's true, Mariko,” said the madam, "you're in luck tonight, aren't you? ’’
"Well, I'll soon know if it's true or not,” said Mariko casually. There was nothing in the least sensual about the way she spoke, and I perceived that Mariko's spirit was disporting itself in a place that had no connection with my body or with her body, like a child that has been separated from her playmates. Mariko was wearing a light green blouse and a yellow skirt. I looked at her hands and saw that just her thumbs were painted red. Perhaps she had borrowed some nail polish from one of her friends and had painted her thumbs for fun.
Soon we went into the bedroom. Mariko put one foot on the bed roll, wnich was spread out on the straw matting, and pulled the long cord that hung from the side of the lamp shade. The bright colors of the printed cotton quilt showed up clearly in the electric light. A French-style doll was ensconced in the elegant alcove.
I undressed clumsily. Mariko put a robe of light pink toweling over her shoulders and skillfully removed her clothes underneath it. There was a pitcher of water by the bedside and I gulped down a couple of glasses. Mariko, who was facing the other way, heard the sound of the water.
"Oh, so you're a water drinker!" she said laughingly. When we got into bed and lay facing each other, she put her finger lightly on the tip of my nose and said: "Is this really your first time?" She laughed.
Even in the dim light of the bedside lamp I did not neglect to look. because the act of looking was a proof that I existed. Besides, this was the first time that I had ever seen another person's eyes so close to me. The law of distance that regulated my world had been destroyed. A stranger had fearlessly impinged on my existence. The heat of a stranger's body and the cheap perfume on its skin combined to inundate me by slow degrees until I was completely immersed in it all. for the first time I saw that someone else's world could melt away like this.
I was being handled like a man who is part of a universal unit. I had never imagined that anyone would handle me like this. After I had taken off my clothes, many more layers were taken off me—my stuttering was taken off and also my ugliness and my poverty. That evening I certainly attained physical satisfaction, yet I could not believe it was I who was enjoying that satisfaction. In the distance a feeling that had so far shunned me gushed up and presently collapsed. I instantly separated my body from the girl's and put my chin on the pillow. One part of my head was numb with cold and I tapped it lightly with my fist. Then I was overcome by the the feeling that everything had left me in the lurch. Yet it was not sufficient to make me weep.
After We had finished, we lay next to each other talking. I vaguely heard the girl telling me about how she had drifted to this place from Nagoya. But my own thoughts were all directed towards the Golden Temple. They were really abstract reflections about the temple, quite different from my usual sluggish, heavily sensual thoughts.
"You'll come here again, won't you?" said Mariko, and from her words I felt that she must be a few years older than I. Yes, she was surely older than I. Her breasts were directly in front of me and they were moist with perspiration. They were plain flesh, those breasts of Mariko's, and would never undergo any such strange processes as being transformed into the Golden Temple. I touched them timidly with the tip of my finger.
“I suppose these must seem strange to you,” said Mariko. Then she sat up in bed and, looking intently at one of her breasts, shook it lightly as if she were playing with a little animal. The gentle rocking of her flesh reminded me of the evening sun over Maizuru Bay. The way in which the sun had so quickly changed seemed to fuse in my mind with the quickly changing quality of the girl's flesh. And it comforted me to think that, like the evening sun which is presently buried in the many-layered clouds, the quivering flesh before my eyes would soon be lying deep in the night's dark grave.
The next day I visited the same shop and asked for the same girl. This was not only because I still had a good deal of money left over. The act, when I had first committed it, had seemed terribly poor in comparison with the ecstasy that I had imagined, and it was essential for me to try once more and to bring it slightly closer to my imagined ecstasy. One of the many ways in which I differ from other people is that the acts which I perform in my real life are inclined to end as faithful copies of what is in my imagination. Or, rather, I should say not imagination but the memory of my own well-springs. I could never get over the feeling that every single experience that I might enjoy in my life had already been experienced by me previously in a more brilliant form. Even in the case of a physical act like this, I felt that at some time and at some place which I could no longer remember-perhaps with Uiko-I had known a more violent form of carnal joy, a sensuality that had made my entire body seem numb. This provided the source of all my later joys, and indeed those joys were merely tantamount to scooping out handfuls of water from the past.
Truly I felt that at some time in the distant past I had somewhere witnessed a sunset glow of incomparable magnificence. Was it my fault that the sunsets which I had seen thereafter had always appeared more or less faded?
Yesterday the girl had treated me too much as if I were some ordinary customer and so on my visit today I took a book along in my pocket. It belonged to a collection and I had bought it a few days before at a second-hand bookshop. The book was Crime and Punishment by Bequaria. This work by an Italian criminal lawyer of the eighteenth century had turned out to be a sort of table d' hote dinner consisting of standard helpings of enlightenment and rationalism, and I had thrown it aside after reading a few pages. It occurred to me, however, that the girl might possibly be interested in the title.
Mariko greeted me with the same smile as yesterday. The smile was the same, but “yesterday” had not left the slightest trace. Her friendliness towards me was the friendliness that people show to a stranger they happen to glimpse at some street corner. Perhaps it was because this girl's body was itself like a street corner.
I sat in a little room with Mariko and the madam. We had some saké to drink and I was fairly skillful in my manner of exchanging cups according to the traditional custom.
"You turn the cup round properly when you hand it to your partner, don't you?” said the madam. “You may be young but I can see you know your etiquette!"
"But if you come here every day like this,” put in Mariko, "won't your Superior scold you?"
So they had seen through me, I thought; they knew that I belonged to a temple.
"Don't think I didn't catch on to that!” said Mariko, noticing my look of surprise. "All the young men nowadays wear their hair long in the Regency style. If you see a fellow with close-cropped hair like yours, you can tell at once that he belongs to some temple. We know all about them in houses like this. because this is where the men who've now become famous priests used to come when they were young. Well, what about having a song?" And abruptly Mariko started to sing a popular song about the various doings of some woman from the harbor.
Presently We went to the bedroom and I managed everything smoothly and with perfect ease in those surroundings that had n
ow become familiar. This time I actually felt that I had had a glimpse of pleasure; yet it was not the sort of pleasure that I had imagined, but merely the slovenly satisfaction of feeling that I was adapting myself to the conditions of carnal pleasure.
When it was over, Mariko gave me a sentimental lecture, which bespoke the fact that she was older than I. For a short while it had a rather chilling effect on me.
"I think it'll be better for you if you don't come too often to this sort of place,” Mariko said. "You're a serious fellow. I'm sure of that. You mustn't get taken up with this kind of thing, you know. You should be putting all your energy into your work. That's much the best thing for you. Of course I like having you come here to see me. But you understand why I'm speaking to you like this, don't you? I feel you're like my younger brother, you see.”
Mariko had probably picked up this sort of conversation from a story in some cheap women's magazine. Her words were not spoken with any particular depth of feeling. Mariko was simply concocting a little story, using me as the object and expecting that I would enter into the emotions that she had created. The ideal thing from her point of view would be that I should respond by bursting into tears.
But I did not do so. Instead, I abruptly snatched the copy of Crime and Puhishment from the bedside and thrust it under her nose. Mariko obediently turned over the pages of the book. Then without a word she put it back to where it had lain. The book had already left her memory.
I only wished that Mariko would experience some premonition from the fateful fact of having met me. I wished that she would come just a little closer to the knowledge that she was lending a hand in the destruction of the world. After all, this should not be a matter of indifference even to this girl. I became impatient and finally blurted out something that I should not have said: "In a month-yes, in a month from now there'll be lots about me in the papers. Please remember me when that happens.”