The Three-Cornered World

by Sōseki Natsume

  'I suppose so. They seem to be on a boat.'

  'It's immaterial whether they are on a boat or the top of a hill; just take it as it's written. And before you ask why, as I can see you're going to, I'll tell you. It's because if you probe for these details you turn yourself into a detective.'

  'Ha, ha, ha, ha. In that case I won't ask.'

  'The average novel invariably reads like a detective's report. It is drab and tedious because it is never objective.'

  'Let's get on with the next instalment of objectivity. What happens after that?'

  ' "Venice sank lower and lower until it became scarcely more than a line stretching across the horizon. The line broke into a series of dashes as here and there a column rose up into the opal sky. Gradually these too disappeared from view, and were finally followed by the very highest belfry which had towered over all. It's gone, said the woman. Having left Venice she felt as free as the wind, but the knowledge that one day she would have to return gripped at her heart like a vice. The man and woman stared out at the darkening bay, watching the stars which were becoming more numerous every minute, and the gentle movement of the foam-flecked sea. As he held her hand, the man had the feeling that he had taken hold of a still quivering bow-string."'

  'That doesn't sound very objective to me.'

  'No, but you can listen to it objectively. Still, if you don't like it I'll skip a little, shall I?'

  'No, I don't mind it.'

  'Well, if you don't, I certainly don't.—Now let's see, where was I?—er—this part is rather complicated. It's very difficult to trans— I mean to read.'

  'Leave it out if it's difficult.'

  'All right, let's just pick out the best parts. "Just for tonight", says the woman. "Only one night? No, that's too cruel. We'll make it many, many nights."'

  'Who says that, the man or the woman?'

  'The man. If you remember, the woman doesn't want to go back to Venice, so the man says this to console her.— "As he lay there on the deck in the small hours of the morning, his head pillowed on a coiled halyard, the memory of that moment when he had clasped the woman's hand —a moment like a single drop of hot blood—swept over him in a great wave. Staring up into the darkness he determined that come what may he would save her from falling into the abyss of a forced marriage. Having decided this he closed his eyes.—"'

  'What happens to the woman?'

  ' "The woman wandered along the road in a daze, as though she had no clear idea of where she was going. Like one who has been spirited away through the air, only unfathomable mystery . . . ." It becomes rather difficult to read after that. Somehow it doesn't make a complete sentence—"only unfathomable mystery"—There doesn't seem to be a verb.'

  'Who needs a verb? It's perfect as it is.'

  'Hm?'

  Suddenly there came a deep rumbling, followed by the creaking and groaning of every tree on the mountainside. As we turned instinctively towards each other, I noticed that the solitary camellia spray which was in a small vase on my desk was swinging to and fro. 'Earthquake!' gasped the woman in a frightened whisper, and relaxing her formal kneeling posture, she sank sideways into a sitting position and rested her arms on the desk. Slowly our two bodies moved closer together. At that moment with a staccato beating of wings a pheasant flew out of the nearby bamboo thicket.

  'A pheasant,' I said looking out of the window.

  'Where?' asked the woman relaxing still more and leaning her body against me. Our faces were now almost touching, and I could feel the breath coming from her delicate nostrils lightly brush against my moustache.

  'Objectivity, remember?' she said firmly, and quickly sat upright again.

  'Of course,' I replied promptly.

  Outside, the spring rainwater which filled a hollow in one of the rocks had been goaded into drowsy motion by the earthquake. Since, however, the tremors which passed up through the rock had set the body of water moving as a whole, the surface remained unruffled save for a filigree pattern of lightly etched lines. The impression this gave was one of passive activity, so to speak. The reflection of wild cherry blossoms which had hitherto bathed in the pool undisturbed was now spreading and contracting, writhing and squirming in sympathy with the ripples. What struck me as extremely interesting, however, was that in spite of all its contortions it was still clearly recognisable as cherry blossom.

  'That's delightful,' I said. 'It is pretty and it has variety. To be attractive motion must be just like that.'

  'If only people could ride the blows of life in that fashion, they would be secure however much they were pushed around.'

  'That would only be possible if they were detached and objective.'

  'Ha, ha, ha, ha. You really do love objectivity, don't you?'

  'You're not exactly averse to it yourself. That business of the wedding gown yesterday . . .' I began accusingly.

  'Will you give me a nice present?' she asked suddenly in a coaxing voice.

  'Why?'

  'Well, you said you wanted to see me in my bridal gown, so I put it on for you specially.'

  'Who, I did?'

  'I was told that a certain artist who had come across the mountains was kind enough to make such a request to the old lady up at the tea-house.'

  I could not think of any appropriate reply to this. The woman went on with scarcely a pause for breath.

  It's a waste of time to put oneself out to be obliging to someone as forgetful as you, isn't it?' she said, her voice filled with derision and bitterness. This was the second shaft in quick succession which she had released at point-blank range. The tide of battle was gradually turning against me, and J found it difficult to see how I was going to make up so much lost ground.

  'And yesterday evening in the bathroom, that was also out of kindness then,' I said rallying slightly to meet the crisis.

  There was no answer.

  'I'm terribly sorry. How can I make it up to you?' I pressed on as much as I could, but with no effect. The woman just sat there with a far away expression on her face, staring at the scroll which had been written by the abbot Daitetsu. At length—

  'Bamboo sweeps across the stairs,

  But no dust rises

  For 'tis but a shadow.'

  She murmured the words softly to herself, and then turning to face me again she said, 'What did you say?' as though she had suddenly remembered that I had spoken. She asked the question in a deliberately loud voice, but I was not going to fall for that trick.

  'I met the abbot earlier on,' I remarked demonstrating the same 'passive activity' as the pool of water which had been disturbed by the earthquake.

  'The abbot of the Kankaiji temple? He's fat, isn't he?'

  'He asked me to paint a Western style picture on a fusuma. Those Zen priests do say the most ridiculous things, don't they?'

  That's probably why they get so fat.'

  T met a young man too.'

  'I expect that was Kyuichi.'

  'Yes, that's right.'

  'You seem to know him very well.'

  'No, I don't know anything about him except his name. He's a rather taciturn person, isn't he?'

  'No, he's just shy. He's still only a boy.'

  'A boy? He must be as old as you.'

  'Ha, ha, ha, ha. Do you think so?—He's my cousin you know. He just came to say good-bye because he's off to the front.'

  'Is he staying here?'

  'No, he's at my elder brother's place.'

  'Oh, so he came here especially to have tea?'

  'He prefers plain warm water to tea. It would have been better if my father hadn't invited him, but he would do it. I expect Kyuichi was dreadfully bored. I would have let him go before it finished if I'd been at home, but. . . .'

  'I heard from the abbot that you'd gone out somewhere. He wondered whether you were on one of your lone walks.'

  'Yes, I was. I took a stroll down by the Kagami pond.'

  'I'd like to go there too.'

  'Yes, you must go and se
e it.'

  'Is it a good place for painting?'

  'It's a good place for dying.'

  'I have no intention of dying yet a while.'

  'I have. Perhaps very soon.'

  I looked up sharply, thinking this too forthright a joke for a woman to make. I was surprised to find, however, that she was serious.

  'Will you paint a beautiful picture of me floating in the water?—Not in any pain you understand—but floating easily and peacefully in my eternal rest.'

  'What!?'

  'Aha! That startled you. Go on, admit it. That startled you, didn't it?'

  The woman slid gracefully to her feet, and having walked the three paces to the door, paused on her way out to look back at me with a trace of a smile hovering about her lips. For a long time I just sat there gazing vacantly into space.

  I went down to have a look at the Kagami pond. The path behind the Kankaiji temple dipped between cryptomeria trees into the valley beneath. Here it forked, and both branches skirted the perimeter of the pond before climbing the opposite hillside. The area around the pond was covered with a thick scrub of variegated bamboo. Indeed, in some places this grew up so densely on either hand that it became almost impossible to proceed quietly. The water was visible between the trees, but never having been there before, I had no idea how far it extended in either direction. I walked on, and presently was able to see that the pond was smaller than I had imagined, being less than a quarter of a mile in length. It was extraordinarily irregular in outline, and here and there down by the water's edge there were many natural boulders. The constant outcrops which thrust forward into the waves formed an unsymmetrical contour which could scarcely be called pond-shaped.

  The valley was filled with hundreds of trees of many different kinds, some of which had not as yet put forth their spring buds. In some places, where the branches were sparse enough to allow the spring sunshine to stream through in undiminished glory, there were even plants and flowers sprouting up beneath the trees. Among these I caught an occasional glimpse of the pale form of a miniature violet. In Japan, violets always give the impression that they are dozing. By no stretch of the imagination could one call them 'a flash of divine inspiration* as did one Western poet. It was just as my thoughts reached this point that I realised I had stopped walking. I decided to remain where I was until I grew bored with the place, and considered myself very lucky to be able to do so. If I had done such a tiling in Tokyo I would either have been run down immediately by a tram, or moved on by a policeman. In the city they are unable to tell the difference between a law-abiding citizen and a vagrant. Moreover, they pay enormous salaries to detectives who are the biggest rogues of all.

  I eased my law-abiding buttocks down on to the cushioning grass. One could remain in such a place as this for five or six days without the fear of anybody making a complaint. That is the beauty of Nature. It is true that if forced Nature can act ruthlessly and without remorse, but on the other hand she is free of all perfidy, since her attitude is the same towards everyone who harasses her. There are any amount of people with the ability to judge without fear or favour between Iwasaki and Mitsui,1 but only Nature could, with icy indifference, set at nought the might of all the princes since time began. Her virtue is far beyond the corrupting reach of this world, and she looks down with an absolute impartiality from the seat of judgment which she has established in infinity. It is a much wiser policy to plant acre after acre of orchids and lead one's life in solitude encompassed by their sheltering stems, than to surround oneself with the hoi-polloi and so court the same pointless misanthropic disgust as befell Timon of Athens. Society is forever holding forth about fairness and justice. If it really believes these to be of such importance, it might do well to kill off a few dozen petty criminals per day, and use their carcasses to fertilize and give life to countless fields of flowers.

  I felt somehow that my thoughts had become too serious. After all, I had not come down to the Kagami pond merely to make adolescent observations on life. I took out a cigarette from the packet of Shikishima in my sleeve, and struck a match. I felt the match-head rasp against the box, but I could see no flame. Nevertheless I held the match to the end of my cigarette and inhaled. It was not until finally saw the smoke coming out of my nostrils, however, that I became aware that the cigarette really was alight. A tiny wisp of smoke rising from the matchstick in the short grass, formed a long-tailed dragon which went rapidly to join its ancestors in eternity. I slithered slowly down to the water's edge. The grassy bank which had served me as a cushion ran right on into the natural pond, but I managed to stop just in time to save my feet from a tepid soaking. Having come to a halt, I squatted there staring into the water.

  The part of the pond near where I was sitting was not very deep, and on the bottom I could see long slender tendrils of weed which looked as though they had given up the ghost. This is the only phrase I can think of which describes their appearance. The pampas grass up on the hill knew how to attract and yield to the touch of the wind, but this weed was waiting for some sign of affection from a flirtatious wave. Lying submerged in water which was obviously not going to move in a hundred years, it had preened itself and struck a pose waiting for the time when it too could play the coquette. It had waited in vain through an endless succession of days and nights, its long unsatiated desire to love expressed in the tip of every stem, until now it led a paralysed existence, unable to die.

  Picking two handy stones out of the grass, I stood up. Out of kindness I threw one of the stones at the patch of water directly in front of me. As I did so two bubbles came gurgling to the surface, but disappeared immediately. Those two words, 'disappeared immediately', kept echoing around in my brain. Peering down into the water, I saw that about three strands of weed had begun to move sleepily, and I was just about to cry out, 'You've been noticed,' when a muddy cloud rose up from the bottom and hid them from view. 'May your soul rest in peace.'

  I flung the next stone resolutely out into the centre of the pond where it made a dull 'plop'. The imperturbable water, however, took not the slightest notice. I had now grown tired of throwing stones, and leaving my colour-box and hat where they were, I walked off a few yards to the right up a gentle incline.

  I was now standing beneath the spreading branches of a large tree, and suddenly felt cold. Over on the far bank camellia bushes bloomed among the shadows. Camellia leaves are too deep a green, and have no air of light-hearted-ness even when seen in bright sunlight. These particular bushes were in a silent huddle, set back five or six yards in an angle between the rocks, and had it not been for the blossoms I should not have known that there was anything there at all. Those blossoms! I could not of course have counted them all if I had spent the whole day at it; yet somehow their brilliance made me want to try. The trouble with camellia blossoms is that although they are brilliant they are in no way cheerful. You find that in spite of yourself your attention is attracted by the violent blaze of colour, but once you look at them they give you an uncanny feeling. They are the most deceitful of all flowers. Whenever I see a wild camellia growing in the heart of the mountains, I am reminded of a beautiful enchantress who lures men on with her dark eyes, and then in a flash injects her smiling venom into their veins. By the time they realise that they have been tricked it is too late. No sooner had I caught sight of the camellias opposite than I wished I had not done so. Theirs was no ordinary red. It was a colour of eye-searing intensity, which contained some indefinable quality. Pear blossoms drooping despondently in the rain only arouse in me a feeling of pity, and the cool aronia bathed in pale moonlight strikes the chords of love. The quality of camellia blossoms, however, is altogether different. It speaks of darkness and evil, and is something to be feared. It is, moreover apparent in every gaudy petal. These blossoms do not give the impression that they are flattering you, nor do they show that they are deliberately trying to entice you. They will live in perfect serenity for hundreds of years far from the eyes of man in the shadow
of the mountains, flaring into bloom and falling to earth with equal suddenness. But let a man glance at them even for an instant, and for him it is the end. He will never be able to break free from the spell of the enchantress. No, theirs is no ordinary red. It is the red of an executed criminal's blood which automatically attracts men's gaze and fills their hearts with sorrow.

  As I stood watching, a red flower hit the water, providing the only movement in the stillness of spring. After a while it was followed by another. Camellia flowers never drift down petal by petal, but drop from the branch intact. Although this in itself is not particularity unpleasant since it merely suggests an indifference to parting, the way in which they remain whole even when they have landed is both gross and offensive to the eye. If they continue like this, I thought, they will stain the whole pond red. Already the water in the immediate vicinity of the peacefully floating blossoms seemed to have a reddish tint. Yet another flower dropped and remained as motionless as if it had come to rest on the bank. There goes another. I wondered whether this one would sink. Perhaps over the years millions of camellia blossoms would steep in the water and, having surrendered their colour, would rot and eventually turn to mud on the bottom. If that should happen, then they might imperceptibly build up the bed of this old stagnating pond until in thousands of years time the whole area would return to the plain it had been originally. Now a large bloom plunged downwards like a blood-smeared phantom. Another fell, and another, striking the water like a shower of pattering raindrops.

  Wondering how it would be to paint a beautiful woman floating in such a pond as this, I walked back down to the water's edge. Here I smoked another cigarette, and fell to musing once more. Suddenly the words which O-Nami at the hotel had said to me jokingly came flooding back into my mind, and I felt as though my heart were a raft that was being pitched and tossed by great waves. Suppose I painted her floating in the water beneath those camellias, with blossom after blossom dropping on her from above. I wanted to create the impression that the camellia blossoms would continue to fall, and the woman remain floating there throughout all eternity, but I was not sure that this would make a good picture. According to Laokoon—but who cares about that? Providing that a painting expresses the desired feeling, it makes not the slightest difference whether or not it conforms to any principles. I knew, however, that it was going to be no easy task to express so non-human a concept as eternity while using a human subject. First and foremost was the problem of the girl's face. I wanted to use O-Nami's face, but her expressions were all wrong. Her look of suffering would be so overpowering that it would destroy the whole effect, while her outbursts of immoderate gaiety would be even worse. Thinking that perhaps I ought to use someone else's face, I ran through all the women I knew counting them off on my fingers, but none of them was satisfactory. O-Nami was the most suitable after all, yet there was something lacking. That much I realised, but since I could not put my finger on the deficiency, it was impossible to make the appropriate alteration to her expression as I pictured it in my mind. If I added jealousy, the feeling of uneasiness would be too strong. What about hatred? No, that was too violent. Anger? No, that would completely shatter the harmony. I dismissed bitterness because, with the exception of the poetic bitterness of love, I consider it too vulgar. Having thought over various other possibilities, the answer suddenly dawned on me. I had forgotten that there exists among the many emotions one called compassion. It is unknown to the gods, and yet it is the very emotion that can elevate man to near-deity. There was not a trace of compassion in O-Nami's expression; that was what was missing. The instant I saw a flicker of this emotion pass across her features roused by some momentary impulse, I would be able to complete my picture; but when or even if that time would come I had no way of knowing. Her usual expression was only a faint mocking smile accompanied by a frown which showed a burning determination to win at all costs. This by itself was useless to me.