It was apparent that the telling of such anecdotes was Gidō’s way of trying to fortify Sōsuke against renouncing all further pursuit of this path as soon as he was back in Tokyo. He heard the monk out respectfully, but inwardly felt that this great opportunity had already more or less slipped away from him. He had come here expecting the gate to be opened for him. But when he knocked, the gatekeeper, wherever he stood behind the high portals, had not so much as showed his face. Only a disembodied voice could be heard: “It does no good to knock. Open the gate for yourself and enter.”
But how, he wondered, could he unbar the gate from the outside? Mentally he devised a scheme involving various measures and steps. But when it came to it he found himself unable to summon the strength to put his scheme into effect. He was standing in the very same place he had stood before even beginning to ponder the problem. As before, he found himself stranded, without resources or recourse, in front of the closed portals. He had been living from day to day in accordance with his own capacity for reason. Now to his chagrin he could see that this capacity had become a curse. At one extreme, he had come to envy the obstinate single-mindedness of simpletons for whom the possibility of discriminating among several options did not arise. At the other end of the spectrum, he viewed with awe the advanced spiritual self-discipline of those lay believers, both men and women, who abandoned conventional wisdom and did away with the distractions of analytical thought. It appeared to Sōsuke that from the moment of his birth it was his fate to remain standing indefinitely outside the gate. This was an indisputable fact. Yet if it were true that, no matter what, he was never meant to pass through this gate, there was something quite absurd about his having approached it in the first place. He looked back. He saw that he lacked the courage to retrace his steps. He looked ahead. The way was forever blocked by firmly closed portals. He was someone destined neither to pass through the gate nor to be satisfied with never having passed through it. He was one of those unfortunate souls fated to stand in the gate’s shadow, frozen in his tracks, until the day was done.
Just before his departure, Sōsuke, accompanied by Gidō, paid a brief visit to the Master to take his leave. The Master took them out onto the railed veranda of a room overlooking the lotus pond. Gidō went to the connecting room and returned with tea.
“It will still be cold in Tokyo,” the Master said. “When people leave after they’ve started to get the hang of it, they find that things go easier for them back home. But . . . well, it’s too bad.”
After politely thanking the Master for these parting words, Sōsuke exited the temple’s main gate, the one by which he had entered ten days earlier. The dense growth of cryptomeria, still locked in winter’s embrace, bore down on its tiles and towered darkly behind him.
22
REINSTALLED within the four walls of his house, Sōsuke cut a pitiful figure, even in his own eyes. For the past ten days he had simply doused his hair with cold water every morning and not so much as passed a comb through it. His face, of course, remained unshaven. Thanks to Gidō’s kindness, he’d had properly hulled rice to eat at every meal, but the side dishes had been limited to boiled greens, boiled daikon, and the like. His face had taken on a distinct pallor and was markedly more emaciated than before his departure.
At the temple he had become accustomed to endless pondering, and indeed felt something like ahen brooding her eggs. His thoughts no longer flowed in their normal, spontaneous fashion. There was, however, one subject to which his thoughts would quickly revert, that of the Sakai household. He was not so much concerned with Sakai as with his brother—the “adventurer,” as Sakai had memorably branded him—and with Yasui, now this brother’s friend, news of whom had caused him so much agitation before his departure. But Sōsuke lacked the courage to march up to his landlord’s house and take up the matter with him directly. He was even more loath to rely on Oyone in order to inform himself indirectly. During his retreat at the temple not a day had gone by without his praying that no word of Yasui’s presence would reach her.
Seated in the parlor of the house that had been his home for several years now, he said, “Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that train trips, even short ones, can be wearing . . . Did anything come up while I was away?” The expression on his face bore witness to the fact that even a short train trip was indeed too much for him.
For once Oyone was unable to produce the smile that she otherwise unfailingly showed her husband. At the same time, she could hardly tell him the honest truth—it would be cruel—that at this moment, just back from a place where he’d gone for the sake of his health, he actually looked worse than before.
“Well, even when the purpose is a rest cure, train trips will take it out of you,” she said, aiming for a brisk, light tone. “So when you’re finally home again you feel the fatigue. But just look at you, you’ve gone and let yourself go like some old codger! For goodness’ sake, go straight to the bathhouse and get a shave and haircut.” To drive her point home, she took a small mirror from the desk drawer as she spoke and held it up in front of him.
Listening to Oyone, Sōsuke felt as though a fresh breeze were blowing away the air of the Issōan. Now that he had left the temple behind and was home at last, he was once again his normal self.
“Has there been any message from Sakai-san?” he asked.
“No, nothing.”
“Not even a word about Koroku?”
“No.”
Koroku himself was not there, having gone to the library. Soap and towel in hand, Sōsuke went out.
When he showed up at the office the next day everyone inquired about his health. There were also a few comments to the effect that he looked a bit thinner, which to Sōsuke sounded like sarcasm slipping unwittingly out of his colleagues’ mouths. The one who toted around Maxims for Life asked only if things had gone well. Even this simple question caused Sōsuke a few pangs of conscience.
That evening he was grilled again about the details of his sojourn, with Oyone and Koroku taking turns.
“It sounds like quite a happy-go-lucky place,” said Oyone. “Imagine just popping out any time without having someone keep an eye on things.”
“How much do they charge per day?” asked Koroku. “It might be fun to take a gun there and do some hunting.”
It was Oyone’s turn again: “Still, it must get boring, if the place is as deserted as all that. I mean, you can’t just sleep all day, can you.”
“And the food there doesn’t sound very healthy—they really ought to serve something more nutritious,” offered Koroku.
As he lay in bed that night, Sōsuke resolved that tomorrow he would go up to the Sakais’ and in a roundabout fashion find out what he could about Yasui. If it turned out that the latter was still in Tokyo and could be expected to continue his visits up there, they would simply have to move somewhere far away.
The next day the sun rose to cast an unremarkable light on Sōsuke’s head; then set without incident in the west. At nightfall, he announced that he was off to Sakai’s for a while and went out the gate. He made his way up the slope without the benefit of moonlight. By the time he crunched over the gravel path, lit by gas lamps, and opened the back gate, he had built up his courage, telling himself how unlikely it was that he would run into Yasui right here, this very night. All the same, he went around to the kitchen door and did not neglect to ask the maid if her master had any guests with him at the moment.
“How nice to see you! It’s still cold, isn’t it?” said Sakai, in his usual high spirits. Sōsuke then noticed that there was a full complement of children in attendance, one of whom Sakai now called out to repeatedly as they continued their game of rock-paper-scissors. His opponent was a little girl who looked to be about five years old; on top of her head, perched like a butterfly, was a large red bow. She clenched her small hand in a fist that she thrust out with a competitive ferocity equal to her father’s. The look of total determination on her face, along with the contrast between her
tiny fist and her father’s comparatively monstrous one, was a source of general merriment among the onlookers. Mrs. Sakai sat watching from the other side of the brazier.
“Look, everyone! For once Yukiko’s beat him,” she said, smiling with delight and revealing her spotless teeth. In front of the seated children was spread out an extensive array of glass marbles—white, red, and deep blue.
“Yes, I’ve been vanquished at last,” said Sakai, sliding off his cushion as he turned to face Sōsuke. “Well, shall we retreat to the grotto once again?” he said, getting to his feet.
The Mongolian sword wrapped in silk brocade hung as before from the alcove pillar in the study. In a vase stood stalks of golden rape flowers that could not possibly have grown wild anywhere nearby. Fixing his gaze midway up the pillar, on the gorgeous colors of the brocade, Sōsuke said, “I see the sword is still here,” then scrutinized his host’s reaction with an intensity that he managed not to betray in his expression.
“Yes, I know it’s absurdly exotic. And what am I to do with that damn brother of mine who thinks he can soften up his elders with such frivolous gifts?”
“And how is the young prince lately?,” Sōsuke asked in an offhand manner.
“Oh, he finally went back a few days ago. Heaven knows, Mongolia is the perfect place for him. In fact, when I told him, ‘A barbarian like you doesn’t belong in Tokyo—you should get the hell out,’ he replied, ‘That’s just what I’ve been thinking,’ and off he went. No doubt about it, a character like him belongs out there beyond the Great Wall! Let him go digging around for diamonds in the sands of the Gobi desert—that’s just fine with me.”
“And his companion?”
“You mean Yasui? Naturally he went back too. When people get to that stage, they just can’t seem to settle down anywhere. And to think that, at least from what I heard, he was once at Kyoto University. I wonder how he could have changed so much.”
Sweat dripped from Sōsuke’s armpits. He had no desire at all to hear in what specific ways Yasui had changed or precisely how unsettled he might be. At the moment Sōsuke was busy congratulating himself on his miraculously good fortune in not ever having blurted out to Sakai that he had been at the same university. And yet the fact remained, Sakai had made one attempt to introduce him to both his brother and the brother’s companion on the night they had been invited for dinner. While it now appeared that by getting out of this invitation he had at least spared himself the humiliation of any such direct encounter, it was not inconceivable that in the course of conversation that night the host had made some passing mention of his name. Here Sōsuke felt a new appreciation for the comfort that an alias must afford those with a shady past. He was itching to ask Sakai if he had happened to mention his name in Yasui’s presence, but in the end he could not bring himself to go that far.
The maid appeared bearing a very peculiar dessert that rose up from a large flat plate. It consisted of a tinted gelatin mold the size of a standard tofu cake, sprinkled with sugar, with what looked like two goldfish suspended inside. The confection had been sliced and then carefully slid onto the plate in a manner that preserved the molded shape intact. Still brooding, Sōsuke glanced at it and simply noted to himself that the dish was a bit unusual.
“Do have a slice,” said Sakai while serving himself first, as usual. “Actually, we were invited to a silver anniversary celebration yesterday and they gave this to us to take home, so it should be full of good fortune. Why not eat a little piece and share a mouthful of happiness?
In the name of partaking of the anniversary couple’s felicity, Sakai gobbled one slice after another of the treacly confection, his cheeks bulging out each time. Here was a man in vigorous health, enviably full of gusto, for whom it mattered not whether he guzzled tea or liquor, whether he devoured rice or sweets.
“Not that there’s really all that much to celebrate about a couple’s living together for twenty or thirty years—long enough to have turned into a mass of wrinkles. But everything’s relative, isn’t it?” Sakai proceeded to steer the conversation in an odd direction. “Some time ago, I had an astonishing experience when I was passing by Shimizudani Park.”[93] He had the man-about-town’s practiced way of delivering his monologues, in which he coaxed his interlocutors along without exasperating them.
He explained that at the beginning of spring large numbers of frogs evidently hatch in a narrow, ditch-like creek that flows from Shimizudani to Benkei Bridge. As the frogs grow, noisily contending for space, hundreds, or rather thousands of lusty matings ensue there in the ditch. The mating pairs fill the ditch from Shimizudani all the way to the bridge, crowded side by side virtually on top of one another and blissfully absorbed in their acts of love, only to have passersby, street urchins and grown men alike, throw stones at the couples with deliberate cruelty, causing immeasurable slaughter.
“A veritable ‘mountain of corpses,’[94] as the saying goes. Since the casualties are all couples, it’s really quite pathetic. So just think of what goes on among all the creatures living in this world, when so many tragedies can be witnessed while strolling a mere two or three hundred yards through the park. If we consider a spectacle like that, don’t you think we can both feel fortunate? We certainly don’t have to worry that we’ll get stoned to death because somebody resents our having a spouse. And if, beyond that, we and our wives together make it safely to the twenty- or thirty-year mark, then we really should count that as a blessing. So you see, now, you really must take a slice of this for good luck.” So saying, the host ostentatiously seized a piece of the sugary mold with a pair of chopsticks and thrust it in front of Sōsuke, who received it with a wan smile.
Sakai went on indefatigably in the same fairly glib vein, and Sōsuke, in spite of himself, was to a point caught up in this current of chatter. Inwardly, though, he shared none of his landlord’s tendency to take such a sanguine view of things. When, having finally excused himself and left the house, Sōsuke looked up once more at the moonless sky, he discovered in the profound darkness an ineffable combination of pathos and horror.
He had come to Sakai’s tonight with one purpose in mind: to be relieved of his burden, no matter what the consequences. To achieve this aim he had overcome all feelings of shame and distaste and goaded his magnanimous, bluffhost into a one-sided chat. And yet he had failed to learn what he wished in anything like the detail he had been determined to. Nor had he mustered the courage to reveal to Sakai even a small corner of his flawed nature—indeed, he had not even gone so far as to admit to himself the need to do so.
Sōsuke, then, had emerged unharmed from beneath the storm cloud that had hovered so close overhead. But he was left with an ill-defined presentiment that from now on he would have to experience anxious times like this over and over, to some degree or another. It was destiny’s role to enforce this repetition; it was Sōsuke’s lot to dodge the consequences.
23
THE NEW month brought a relaxation of winter’s grip. And by the end of that month the rumored retrenchment in connection with the increase in civil servants’ salaries was by and large completed, at both the section and department levels. During this period the names of fired colleagues, some familiar, some not, would reach Sōsuke’s ears, and more than once he said to Oyone upon arriving home, “I could be next.”
To Oyone this sounded like a joke, but also as though her husband actually meant what he said. Every so often she could not help construing such words as an ill omen of the hitherto veiled future. Even in the mind of Sōsuke, the one who had spoken them, their meaning kept shifting like fleeting clouds.
When the new month arrived and with it the announcement that the unsettling retrenchment at the office was more or less over, Sōsuke, reflecting on his having been spared by fate, considered the result to be on the whole a predictable outcome. Then again, he saw it as quite a stroke of luck. Getting up from the table he looked down at Oyone.
“Well, it seems as if I’ve escaped,” he said, a dour
expression on his face.
His deadpan manner, neither happy nor sad, stuck Oyone as hilarious.
A few days later, Sōsuke received a five-yen raise. “It’s less than the twenty-five percent they originally proposed,” he said, “but that’s understandable, what with a lot of men out of a job and others whose salaries have been frozen.” He displayed considerable satisfaction at the raise, as though he had made off with a reward greater than he deserved. Naturally Oyone did not have it in her to find cause for complaint.
The next day Sōsuke found himself gazing down at a whole fish set before him, head and all, its tail curving over the edge of the plate. He inhaled the aroma of cooked rice, ruddy with the adzuki beans that had been mixed in. Oyone had made sure to invite Koroku, to this end dispatching Kiyo to the Sakais’ house, where he was now in residence.
“Well, well, what a treat,” said Koroku as he entered through the kitchen.
By now, plum blossoms could be seen here and there. Those that had been the first to open were already faded and half scattered. Mist-like rain began to descend. When it cleared, waves of humid air rose from the ground and from the rooftops steaming in the sun, reviving memories of springs past. On balmy days puppies gamboled about the oil-paper umbrellas set out to dry at back doors; heat shimmered off the glistening bull’s-eyes painted in their centers.
“Winter’s over at last,” Oyone said. “Next Saturday you really should go over to your aunt’s and settle things for Koroku,” she urged. “If you keep putting it off, Yasu-san will end up forgetting, you know.”
“Yes, I’ll definitely drop by then,” said Sōsuke.
Now that the Sakais had generously taken in Koroku, Sōsuke himself had volunteered to his brother that if at all possible, he and Yasunosuke would share in paying all of his additional expenses. Not waiting for Sōsuke to bestir himself, Koroku had broached the matter directly with Yasunosuke. His cousin consented to the plan, provided that Sōsuke went through the motions of making a formal request. And so Koroku achieved the desired outcome on his own initiative.
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