Then something strange came slithering across the sky—one of those long dragon lanterns they carry through the streets on the night of the lantern festival. Made of thin paper glued to a bamboo frame a good thirty feet long, it was painted in garish greens and reds, and it looked just like a dragon you might see in a picture. It stood out clearly against the daytime sky, lighted from within by candles. Stranger still, it seemed to be alive, its long whiskers waving freely. Xiao-er was still taking this in when it swam out of his view and quickly vanished.
As soon as the dragon was gone, the slender foot of a woman came to take its place. A bound foot, it was no more than three inches long. At the tip of its gracefully curved toe, a whitish nail softly parted the color of the flesh. In Xiao-er’s heart, memories of the time he saw that foot brought with them a vague, far-off sadness, like a fleabite in a dream. If only he could touch that foot again—but no, that would never happen. Hundreds of miles separated this place from the place where he had seen that foot. As he dwelt on the impossibility of ever touching it again, the foot grew transparent until it was drawn into the clouds.
At that point Xiao-er was overcome by a mysterious loneliness such as he had never experienced before. The vast blue sky hung above him in silence. People had no choice but to go on living their pitiful lives beneath that sky, buffeted by the winds that blow down from above. What loneliness! And how strange, he thought, that he had never known this loneliness until now. Xiao-er released a lengthy sigh.
All at once the Japanese cavalry troops with their red-striped caps charged in between his eyes and the sky, moving with far greater speed than any of the earlier images, and disappearing just as quickly. Ah yes, those cavalrymen must be feeling a loneliness as great as mine. Had they not been mere apparitions, he would have wanted to comfort them and be comforted by them, to forget this loneliness if only for a moment. But it was too late now.
Xiao-er’s eyes overflowed with tears. And when, with those tear-moistened eyes, he looked back on his life, he recognized all too well the ugliness that had filled it. He wanted to apologize to everyone, and he also wanted to forgive everyone for what they had done to him.
If I escape death today, I swear that I will do whatever it takes to make up for my past.
Xiao-er wept as he formed these words deep in his heart. But, as if unwilling to listen, the sky, in all its infinite depth, in all its infinite blueness, slowly began to press down upon him where he lay, foot by foot, inch by inch. Faintly sparkling points in the vast blue expanse were surely stars visible in daylight. No longer did he see shadowy images passing before him. Xiao-er sighed once more, felt a sudden trembling of the lips, and, in the end, let his eyelids slowly close.
3
A year had gone by since the signing of the peace treaty between China and Japan. One morning in early spring, Major Kimura, military attaché to the Japanese legation in Beijing, and Dr. Yamakawa, a technician on official tour of inspection from the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce in Tokyo, were seated at a table in the legation office. They were enjoying a quiet conversation over coffee and cigars in a momentary diversion from the press of their duties. Despite the season, a fire was burning in the wood stove and the room was warm enough to bring out perspiration. Every now and then, the potted red plum on the table wafted a distinctively Chinese fragrance into the air.
Their conversation centered on the Empress Dowager1 for a while but eventually turned to recollections of the Sino-Japanese War, at which point Major Kimura suddenly stood up and brought over a bound copy of a Chinese newspaper from a rack in the corner. Spreading it open on the table before Dr. Yamakawa, he pointed to the page with a look in his eyes that said, “Read this!” Dr. Yamakawa was startled by this sudden gesture, but he had long known that Major Kimura was a good deal more sophisticated and witty than the typical military man, and he expected to find a bizarre anecdote relating to the war. He was not disappointed. In impressive rows of square Chinese characters, the article said:
A man named He Xiao-er, owner of a barber shop on —— Street, served with great distinction in the Sino-Japanese War and was cited for numerous acts of valor. Following his triumphant homecoming, however, he tended to indulge in dissolute behavior, debauching himself with drink and women. At the X Bar last——day, he was arguing with his drinking companions and a scuffle broke out, at the conclusion of which he suffered a severe neck wound and died instantaneously. The strangest thing was the wound to the neck, which was not inflicted by a weapon during the incident. It was, rather, the reopening of a wound that Xiao-er had suffered on the battlefield. According to one eyewitness, a table fell over and the victim fell with it. The moment he hit the floor, his head fell off, remaining attached by only one strip of skin and spilling blood everywhere. The authorities are said to have serious doubts about the truth of this account and to be engaged in a determined search for the perpetrator, but since Strange Tales of Liaozhai2 contains the account of a man’s head falling off, can we say for certain that such a thing could not have happened to someone such as He Xiao-er?
Dr. Yamakawa had a shocked expression on his face when he finished reading the article. “What is this?” he asked.
Major Kimura released a long, slow stream of cigar smoke and, with a mellow smile, said, “Fascinating, don’t you think? A thing like this could only happen in China.”
“True,” Doctor Yamakawa answered with a grin, knocking the long ash on his cigar into an ashtray. “It’s simply unthinkable any place else.”
“There’s more to the story, though,” Major Kimura said, pausing with a somber expression on his face. “I know the fellow, Xiao-er.”
“You know him? Oh, come on, don’t tell me a military attaché is going to start lying on a par with a newspaper reporter.”
“No, of course I wouldn’t do anything so ridiculous. When I was wounded back then in the battle of —— Village, Xiao-er was being treated in our field hospital. I talked to him a few times to practice my Chinese. He had a neck wound, so chances are eight or nine out of ten it’s the same man. He told me he was on some kind of reconnaissance mission when he ran into some of our cavalrymen and got slashed in the neck.”
“What a strange coincidence! The paper says he was a real trouble-maker, though. We would have all been better off if a fellow like that had died on the spot.”
“Yes, but at the time he was a good, honest man, one of the best-behaved prisoners of war. The army doctors all seemed to have a soft spot for him and gave him extra-good treatment. I enjoyed the stories he told me about himself, too. I especially remember the way he described his feelings when he was badly wounded in the neck and fell off his horse. He was lying in the mud on a river bank, looking up at the sky through some willows, when he saw his mother’s apron and a woman’s bare foot and a sesame field in bloom—all right there in the sky.”
Major Kimura threw his cigar away, brought his coffee cup to his lips, glanced at the red plum on the table, and went on as if talking to himself, “When he saw those things in the sky, he began to feel deeply ashamed of the way he had lived his life until then.”
“So he turned into a trouble-maker as soon as the war ended? It just goes to show, you can’t trust anybody.” Dr. Yamakawa rested his head against the chair back, stretched his legs out, and, with an ironic air, blew his cigar smoke toward the ceiling.
“Can’t trust anybody? You mean, you think he was faking it?”
“Of course he was.”
“No, I don’t think so. I think he was serious about the way he felt—at the time, at least. And I’ll bet he felt the same way again the moment ‘his head fell off’ (to use the paper’s phrase). Here’s how I imagine it: he was drunk when he was fighting, so the other man had no trouble throwing him down. When he landed, the wound opened up, and his head rolled onto the floor with its long pigtail hanging down. This time again, the same things passed in front of his eyes: his mother’s apron, the woman’s bare foot, the sesame field in bloom
. And even though there was a roof in the way, maybe he even saw a deep blue sky far overhead. Again, he felt deeply ashamed of his life until then. This time, though, it was too late. The first time, a Japanese medical-corps man found him unconscious and took care of him. This time, the other man kept punching him and kicking him. He died full of regrets.”
Dr. Yamakawa’s shoulders shook with his laughter. “What a dreamer you are! If what you say is true, though, why did he let himself become a trouble-maker after the first time?”
“That’s because, in a way different from what you meant by it, you can’t trust anybody.” Major Kimura lit a new cigar and, smiling, continued in tones that were almost exultantly cheerful. “It is important—even necessary—for us to become acutely aware of the fact that we can’t trust ourselves. The only ones you can trust to some extent are people who really know that. We had better get this straight. Otherwise, our own characters’ heads could fall off like Xiao-er’s at any time. This is the way you have to read all Chinese newspapers.”
(December 1917)
GREEN ONIONS
I plan to write this story in a single sitting tonight in time for the deadline I’m facing tomorrow. No, I don’t “plan” to write it: I absolutely have to write it. So, then, what am I going to write about? All I can do is ask you to read what follows.
In a café in Jinbōchō, the used-bookstore neighborhood of Tokyo, there is a waitress named O-Kimi. They say she is only sixteen, but she looks more mature than that. And although the tip of her nose tilts up a little, her light complexion and limpid gaze definitely qualify her as a beauty. To see her standing in front of the player piano in her white apron, her hair parted in the middle and done up with forget-me-not hairpins, you would think she had stepped out of one of Takehisa Yumeji’s illustrations1 for a novel. Which seems to be one reason the café’s regulars long ago decided to nickname her “Potboiler.” She has other nicknames, too: “Forget-Me-Not” from her hairpins; “Miss Mary Pickford”2 because she looks like the American movie star; “Sugar Cube” because the café can’t do without her. Etc. etc.
There is another, older waitress who works at the café. Her name is O-Matsu, and her looks don’t begin to match O-Kimi’s. The two girls are as different as white bread and black bread, and the difference in what they earn in tips is also huge. O-Matsu is, of course, not happy about that, and as her dissatisfaction has mounted, it has led her to harbor some unkind thoughts.
One summer afternoon, a customer at O-Matsu’s table—apparently a student at the foreign language school—was trying hard to move the flame from his match to the tip of his cigarette. Unfortunately, the flame kept getting blown out by the powerful fan on the table next to his. O-Kimi happened by just then and stopped for a moment between the customer and the fan to block the breeze. It became clear that the student appreciated her thoughtfulness when, after managing to light his cigarette, he turned his suntanned face to her with a smile and said, “Thanks.” This happened just as O-Matsu, standing by the counter, picked up the dish of ice cream that she was supposed to carry to that table. She glared at O-Kimi and said, “You take this to him,” in a voice fuming with jealousy.
Complications like this happen several times a week, as a result of which O-Kimi rarely speaks to O-Matsu. She stations herself in front of the player piano, offering her silent affability to all the customers, who—because of the café’s location among the bookstores—tend to be students. To the furious O-Matsu, however, O-Kimi offers only her wordless triumph over the hearts of all these young men.
O-Matsu’s jealousy is not the only cause of their strained relationship, however. O-Kimi is also quietly contemptuous of O-Matsu’s lowbrow taste. She is convinced that O-Matsu has done nothing since graduating from elementary school but listen to naniwa-bushi, eat mitsu-mame,3 and chase after boys. But what of O-Kimi herself? What kind of taste does she have? To discover the answer to that, we should depart this bustling café scene for a moment and peek into a room over a beauty parlor at the far end of a nearby alley. O-Kimi rents this room, and this is where she spends most of her time when she is not waiting on tables at the café.
It is a low-ceilinged six-mat room. The western sun shines through its only window, from which there is nothing to be seen but tile roofs. A desk draped in printed cotton is set against the wall beneath the window. I call this piece of furniture a “desk” for convenience’s sake: in fact, it is just a worn old table with stubby legs. Atop this “desk” sits a row of books in hard Western bindings, which are also old-looking: The Cuckoo, Collected Poems of Tōson, The Life of Matsui Sumako, The New Asagao Diary, Carmen, and High on the Mountain Looking Down in the Valley.4 Next to these are some women’s magazines. Unfortunately, there is not a single volume of my stories to be seen. Next to the desk is a tea cabinet from which the varnish is peeling, and on top of that is a slender-necked glass vase in which is gracefully displayed an artificial lily that is missing a single petal. I’d guess that if the petal were still attached, the lily would still be decorating a table in the café. Finally, on the wall over the tea cabinet are tacked up a few pictures that seem to come from magazines. The one in the middle is Genroku Woman by our dear Kaburagi Kiyokata.5 The little one below and overshadowed by it is probably a Raphael Madonna or some such thing. Meanwhile, above the Genroku beauty, a woman sculpted by Kitamura Shikai6 is making lascivious eyes at her neighbor, Beethoven. This particular Beethoven, however, is just someone whom O-Kimi takes to be Beethoven. In fact, he is the American President, Woodrow Wilson, which is really too bad for old Kitamura Shikai.
This, then, should tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the artistically rich coloration of O-Kimi’s cultural life. And in fact, when O-Kimi comes home from the café late at night, she invariably sits beneath the portrait of Woodrow Wilson alias Beethoven, reads more of The Cuckoo, gazes at her artificial lily, and indulges in an artistic ecstasy far more steeped in sentimentalisme than even the famous moonlit-shore scene in the movie version of the Shinpa tragedy based on The Cuckoo.7
One spring night when the cherry trees were in bloom, O-Kimi was alone at her desk almost till the cock’s first crow, writing on page after page of pink letter paper. She did not seem to notice when one finished page fell under the desk. It remained there after the sun came up and she left for the café. The spring breeze then blew in through the window, lifted the sheet of paper, and carried it down the stairs, where the hairdresser’s two mirrors stood in their saffron cotton slipcovers.8 The beautician downstairs knew well that O-Kimi often received love letters, and she assumed that this sheet belonged to one of those. Out of curiosity, she decided to read it, but she was surprised to find that the handwriting seemed to be that of O-Kimi herself and that it was addressed to a woman: “My heart feels ready to burst with tears when I think of the time you parted from your dear Takeo.” Takeo was the hero of The Cuckoo! So O-Kimi had stayed up practically the whole night writing a letter of condolence to Namiko, the heroine of the novel!
I have to admit that as I write this episode I can’t help smiling at O-Kimi’s sentimentalisme, but my smile contains not the slightest hint of meanness.
In addition to the artificial lily, the Collected Poems of Tōson, and the photo of Raphael’s Madonna, O-Kimi’s second-floor room contains all the kitchen tools she needs to survive without eating out. In other words, these kitchen tools symbolize the harsh reality of her life in Tokyo. Yet even a desolate life can reveal a world of beauty when viewed through a mist of tears. O-Kimi would take refuge in the tears of artistic ecstasy to escape the persecutions of everyday life. In such tears she need not think about her 6-yen monthly rent or the 70 sen it cost for a measure of rice.9 Carmen has no electric bill to worry her; she only has to keep her castanets clicking. Namiko does suffer as she lies dying of tuberculosis, deprived of her beloved husband by her cruel mother-in-law, but she never has to scrape up money for her medicine. In a word, tears like this light a modest lamp of human love amid th
e gathering dusk of human suffering. Ah yes, I imagine O-Kimi all alone at night when the sounds of Tokyo have faded away, raising her tear-moistened eyes toward the dim electric lamp, dreaming dreams of the oleanders of Coérdoba and the sea breeze of Namiko’s Zushi, and then—damn it, “meanness” is the least of my sins! If I’m not careful, I could just as easily be swept away by sentimentalisme as O-Kimi! And this is me talking, the fellow the critics are always blaming for having too little heart and too much intellect.
O-Kimi comes home from the café late one winter night, and at first she sits at her desk as usual, reading The Life of Matsui Sumako or some such thing, but before she has completed a page, she slams the book down on the tatami-matted floor as if it has suddenly come to disgust her. She then turns sideways and leans against the desk, chin on hand, staring indifferently toward the portrait of Wils—uh, Beethoven—on the wall. Something is clearly bothering her. Has she been fired from the café? Has O-Matsu turned nastier? Has a decayed tooth begun to ache? No, the trouble now gripping O-Kimi’s heart is nothing so mundane. Like Namiko, like Matsui Sumako, O-Kimi is suffering from love. Who, then, is the object of her affections? Fortunately for us, O-Kimi is apparently going to remain quite still, staring at Beethoven on the wall, and so, in the interval, let me give you a quick introduction to the lucky man.
The object of O-Kimi’s affections is a young fellow named Tanaka, an unknown—let’s say—artist. I call him that because he writes poetry, plays the violin, paints in oils, acts on the stage, knows the Hundred Poets card game inside out, and has mastered the lute for the martial music of Satsuma.10 With so many talents, it’s impossible to say which is his profession and which are mere hobbies. As for the man himself, he has the smooth features of an actor, his hair glows like the surface of an oil painting, his voice is as gentle as a violin, the words he speaks are as well chosen as a poem’s, he can woo a woman as nimbly as he can snatch the right card in the Hundred Poets game, and he can skip out on a loan with the same heroic energy he brings to singing with his Satsuma lute. He wears a broad-brimmed black hat, inexpensive tweeds, a deep purple ascot—you get the picture. Come to think of it, Tanaka is a well-established type, two or three of whom are always scowling at the masses in any bar or café in the university district, in any concert at the YMCA or the Music Academy (though only in the cheapest seats), and at any of the more stylish art galleries. So if you would like a clearer portrait of young Mr. Tanaka, go to one of those places and have a look for yourself. I refuse to write another line about him. Besides, while I’ve been sweating over this introduction to Tanaka, O-Kimi has gotten up from her desk, has opened the shoji, and is now looking out at the cold moonlit night.
Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories Page 17