American Stories

by Nagai Kafu

  Who outside would have imagined that there would be such a huge hall in a place like this! All around the room, close by its walls, many tables and chairs were laid out, and at one corner there was an old, large piano. A huge man in a vest, his arms sticking out of a dirty shirt, is playing the piano, mopping his brow from time to time with one hand; sitting next to him, a skinny, hunchbacked man is playing the violin, exposing his pale profile, while men and women at the tables stand up in pairs and weave their way through the room dancing!

  None of them is dressed in a particularly notable way. Mingled with sailors in wide trousers, some men are wearing clean collars and neckties, as if they had smartened themselves up for the occasion, but fingers that look even thicker than a child’s arm and shoes with soles as thick as a horse’s hooves give away the fact that during the day they are the type that repairs roads or carries bricks.

  As for the women, they hardly look human, and it is difficult to tell if they are old or young. They have plastered their entire faces with white powder, with rouge on their cheeks, and there are even those who have lined their lower eyelids with eyeliner. Wearing worn-out crumpled skirts and shabby summer tops, they nevertheless must want to follow the city’s fashion, for they have put on narrow shoes with high heels, as if they were going on stage, and an excessive amount of fake diamond pieces glitter among their hair filled with false tresses that make it look as though the women were wearing wigs, as well as around their necks and on their arms and fingers.

  As the piano and violin played on, the sight of sailors and laborers embracing these women and dancing chaotically, as if in a frenzy, in a dim electric light that was yellow from the dust on the floor, the smoke from cigarettes, and the smell of alcohol, gave me an indescribable sensation of pathos, going beyond disgust or detestation— just like the time when, back home, I heard some singing and string music from a faraway pleasure quarter, somewhere near the dark village of Negishi.

  The dance music has stopped, and as men and women return to their respective tables, waiters in white jackets circulate among them to take orders; some sailors, already drunk and hardly able to stay on their feet, are still gulping down whisky, while some women are quaffing equally potent punch, sometimes banging on their tables and loudly ranting, using some of the basest swear words in the English language.

  I sat at a corner table, sipping beer alone, and cast my eyes around the strange scene that surrounded me, and then to the framed pictures hanging from dirty board-lined walls.

  There is a picture of four or five women together, perhaps professional football [sic] players, holding hands and standing, exposing their robust muscles from their fleshings; then next to it is a portrait of a demonic-looking boxer with both hands held before him in fighting stance; and on the opposite wall two or three pictures of uniformed firemen are hung, suggesting perhaps that this neighborhood is their ground.

  Suddenly a couple of women came and sat in empty chairs at my table, and when I, driven by curiosity, winked at them, which is a signal that is used only in this kind of society, they, apparently totally unconcerned about racial differences so long as they could make money, immediately pulled their chairs close to mine, and one of them asked, “Do you have a cigarette?” while putting her elbow on my shoulder.

  I gave her a cigarette and called to a waiter just walking by; the woman ordered a cocktail, but I don’t stand such drinks and so ordered another glass of beer, after which we carried on small talk while I paid the closest attention to them in order to learn more about their background. But I was getting nowhere. . . .

  “I don’t have any name. Just Kitty . . . Kitty the brunette is how they know me.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “My home? . . . It’s everywhere, every inn in New York or Brooklyn. . . .”

  “Have you got a beau?”

  As I asked, she started laughing and, saying, “Any chap with money is my beau,” abruptly kissed me on the cheek and started humming, rocking her head and shoulders right and left, “. . . will you love me in December as you do in May. . . .”

  Just then, another round of piano and violin playing drove people back to their dancing.

  The woman suddenly pulled my hand, which she was holding, and asked, “Tonight. It’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “What is it?” I responded, pretending not to understand what she was talking about, but then she became very cross and said, “You know, of course . . . I’m talking about a hotel.”

  I smiled but did not answer.

  “You don’t want to? I see,” the woman said and, hitching her shoulders a little, turned her face away and resumed her humming to the tune of the dance music.

  I was taken aback and watched her for a while, but soon she noticed a bunch of sailors at a distant table who were winking at her and hurried away without as much as saying a word to me, and was again gulping down some whisky.

  I was thinking that I must also be going when two musicians entered the hall from the opposite doorway.

  “It’s George, Joe the Italian!” shouted one of the waiters, seeing the mendicant musicians, while another man at a nearby table, looking like a local tough, accosted them.

  “You haven’t been here for a long time. Did you manage to get a fat job?”

  “Oh no, nothing big, we’ve been doing the countryside for a while.” So saying, one of them moved to the piano, sat down on an empty chair, took down a musical instrument called a banjo that he was carrying on a strap around his neck, and rested it against the wall, while the other, holding a small mandolin on his lap, greeted the pianist from a distance, without standing up. “How are things, boss?”

  “Just as usual,” answered the pianist, in rolled-up shirtsleeves and vest, in a husky voice. “Have a drink, anyway.”

  A waiter brought some beer over to a nearby table.

  “Great! Thanks.” The two Italians emptied their glasses, and the pianist said, very much with the air of a boss, “Don’t mention it. Luckily, we’ve got many customers. . . . Let’s hear that beautiful voice now.”

  The two Italians picked up their banjo and mandolin, stood erect by the piano, and began singing a Southern European popular song whose meaning escaped me.

  But the tune was very slow as in an Oriental song, and the voices with vibrato suggested a certain slight sadness, so that all were entranced, drunken sailors, prostitutes, workmen, as if they were listening to shinnai [music originally played at puppet theaters] at a pleasure quarter, and for a time a hush fell over the place.

  Here and there, five- and ten-cent silver coins were thrown on the floor as tips, so I too decided to be generous and took out a twentyfive-cent coin from my pocket. Actually, I would not have hesitated to give them fifty cents, even a dollar, if I had not wanted to keep from drawing attention.

  The sound of Italian words that mostly end with a vowel is so marvelously appealing to my ear, but on top of that, the appearance of these mendicant musicians with their crooked hats, torn velvet clothes, and bright red printed handkerchiefs around their necks, as well as their dark hair hanging over their foreheads in abundant curls, black eyelashes, thin moustaches, and their dark complexion baked by the warm sun of Southern Europe—all these somehow brought out a deep poetic inspiration in me, who have always longed for the southern country.

  The two finished singing, collected the silver coins, tips scattered all over the floor, and soon were approaching my table, so I seized the opportunity to ask, “Where in Italy are you from?”

  One of them looked up at me and answered in broken English, not in the least perturbed by the face of a different race, “From the island, the island of Sicily.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “It’s been only nine months. I came here thinking I would make some money, but I’m a rake by nature and love wine and gambling. But beyond that, what I like most is playing the banjo and singing. I’m not like those guys who come here from Northern Europe to earn money an
d work so hard, at the bottom of the earth or in the fire; a lazy bum is a lazy bum anywhere, you know, so I just go from place to place, singing like a bird. But I’ve been OK, thanks be to God; at least I don’t go hungry.”

  The dance music resumes. Once again, men and women dance along here and there in the smoke-filled room, like people in a dream world. The two Italians, having gathered all their tips, retreat to a corner table and drink two, three more glasses of beer.

  I had been confined to a roomful of impure air for so long that I decided to get up and cool off in the chilly air of the deep night. Farewell, strange people of midnight. . . . Good night. . . .

  (July 1906)

  Fallen Leaves

  Nothing is as fragile as autumn leaves in America. In September, although it is unbearably hot in the afternoon and people complain about the lingering summer, dew-soaked leaves of oaks, elms, lindens, and especially the large leaves of maples, which are like aogiri [Chinese parasols], begin to fall heavily and languidly in the evening, even when there is no wind, without even changing their summer colors.

  They touch me with a deeper sense of sadness than when fall is in the air everywhere and yellowed dead leaves fly about like a rainstorm in the chilly morning and evening wind. They somehow remind me of the premature death of a young genius.

  I sat down one evening on a bench near the pond in Central Park. How quiet it was on a weekday in contrast to the Sunday bustle. This is just about the time when everybody in this punctual country must be having supper. Sounds of carriages, cars, even of footsteps of people taking a walk have stopped, and only the squeaking of squirrels who have collected their last morsels of food can be heard way up in the treetops. The gray sky that seems to presage rain in the evening is darkening murkily and heavily as if it were dreaming. The surface of the water, which is as vast as a lake, is shining darkly like lead, while yellow gaslights have started flickering through the gradually fading shrubs surrounding the pond.

  From the tall elm treetops nearby, slender leaves are falling constantly in groups of three, four, five, or six. As I listen, it is as if I can hear the sound of leaves sliding down among other leaves. They must be whispering among themselves, luring each other toward their fall and destruction.

  Some land on my hat, others on my shoulders and knees. Still others fall on the far-off waters, even though there is no wind to lead them, and are carried farther and farther away by the stream.

  As I sat with my elbow on the back of the bench, thinking of this and that, I suddenly recalled the “Song of Autumn” by Verlaine.

  Les sanglots longs

  Des violons

  De l’automne

  Blessent mon coeur

  D’une langueur

  Monotone.

  Tout suffocant

  Et blême, quand

  Sonne l’heure,

  Je me souviens

  Des jours anciens

  Et je pleure.

  Et je m’en vais

  Au vent mauvais

  Qui m’emporte

  Deltà, delà

  Pareil à la

  Feuille morte.

  “The melancholy sound of violins weeping in autumn tears my heart. When the bells toll, I turn pale, sigh heavily, remembering the bygone days, and cry. Like a fallen leaf I wander here and there, carried by the wind of my ill fate.”24 This is not the first time that life has been compared to fallen leaves, but because of it it always touches me deeply. Especially as I recall my own state as a traveler. . . . Ah, how often, and in how many different places, have I watched fallen leaves buried in this foreign land.

  In the fall of the year when I arrived, it was on the Pacific Coast; the following year it was in the fields of Missouri, on the shores of Lake Michigan, and in the streets of Washington; and now this is already the second time with New York’s fallen leaves.

  Last year, when I saw falling leaves for the first time in this city, how arrogant, elated, and happy I was. I imagined that I had seen everything about the different social and natural conditions in all regions of the new continent and, unreasonably confident that I was about to observe life in this, the second largest city in the world, I would come near this pond every Sunday and watch the crowds of people walking.

  Soon all the leaves had fallen, cold blasts had broken tree branches, and snow had covered the grass completely—the season for art and social life had arrived.

  Seeing various kinds of plays, from Shakespeare and Racine to Ibsen and Sudermann, I felt as though I had taken in the classical and modern dramas of the whole world. I believed I appreciated and understood Wagner’s visions and Verdi’s craftsmanship. Not only that, I felt I was, had to be, one of the founders of the new musical drama that was bound to arise in Japanese society in the future. I heard symphonies played by orchestras and enjoyed the refinement and beauty of classical music and the unrestricted passion of modern romantic music; I admired the dissonance and formlessness of the unprecedented music of [Richard] Strauss. Furthermore, I often visited art museums and argued about Rodin’s sculpture and Manet’s paintings.

  Programs, catalogues, and newspaper clippings piled up on my desk, but even as I was sorting them out, the season changed; the once desolate treetops were now adorned with young shoots and blossoms, while people cast off their heavy coats and switched to light spring clothing. I followed their example and bought new clothes, new shoes, and new homburgs. But American fashion is that of a commercial country and therefore in poor taste. Just to demonstrate that I would never be influenced by American utilitarianism, I worked hard at finding the right way to groom myself and concluded that I wanted to look like the portrait of young Daudet when he wrote “L’amoureuse,” or even like Byron, so every morning I curled my hair and tied my wide cravat with a studied casualness.

  People would laugh at my folly, but I myself do not think I am either foolish or out of my mind. I read in a Boston paper shortly after Ibsen died . . . that Ibsen had an unsuspected weakness; apparently he enjoyed looking at himself in the mirror wearing the medal the king had bestowed on him, rumpling his white hair intentionally to give the impression that he never combed it.

  I won’t question if this is true or false. Whatever Western poets have done moves me to tears, and I cannot help but imitate them. So I too tilt my hat slightly, again in an intentionally offhand manner, carry a cherry walking stick in one hand and a book of poetry or some such thing under my arm, and, after scrutinizing myself thus standing in front of the mirror for a while, finally go out and proceed toward the park where people gather on spring afternoons. After walking around the pond, as usual, I always go up to the tree-lined avenue where the bronze statues of Shakespeare, Scott, Burns, and others stand side by side, sit down on a bench facing them, and leisurely smoke a cigarette.

  Then at some point, as soon as I slip into a reverie induced by the warm spring sun, I feel as though I had taken rank with these great poets of immortal fame. The muscles on both sides of my mouth loosen themselves to form deep dimples. Finally, I cannot help feeling embarrassed at myself and look around furtively, then notice the beautiful young leaves of the trees lining both sides of the avenue, the clear blue of the sky seen through the treetops, the deep, pleasant green of the grass spreading on both sides of the road like an ocean, and the soft, sweet fragrance of the flowers wafting from some unseen place. I must never have been so happy in my life.

  In front of my eyes, women wearing light dresses pass me ceaselessly, driving in carriages or on horseback, and they all appear to be smiling in my direction as they go by.

  Whenever I observe the smiling face of a very young, incredibly beautiful woman, I find myself daydreaming about a happy love affair. . . . I write something in elegant English, and a female reader wishing to meet the author visits me. We talk of life, of poetry, and finally of each other’s secrets. In due course, I am married and settle down in the country within one or two hours’ train ride from New York, perhaps Long Island or the New Jersey co
ast. It is a small painted cottage surrounded by cherry and apple orchards, and beyond the woods at the back of the house there is a pasture, and farther away we can see the ocean. On a spring or summer afternoon, at dusk in autumn or at noon in winter, I lie down on a couch by the window and doze off, exhausted from reading. Then I am awakened by the sound of piano music coming from the adjoining room, preferably something very gentle like a Liszt sonata, played by my wife. . . . At this point I awake with a start and find myself sitting on a bench, the cold evening wind blowing against my face.

  The spring of such daydreaming, then the summer have gone by and ah, it is already autumn, when watching the leaves falling and scattering is like recalling the lost love of bygone days.

  The leaves will soon be all gone. With the cold north winds, the theater and concert season will return. Street corners and train station walls will be adorned with theatrical posters and musicians’ portraits. But will it be possible for me to remain the same bold, outrageous, happy observer of the arts as I was last year? And, come spring, will I again be able to indulge in such ephemeral daydreams?

  Dreams, intoxication, illusions, these are our life. We perpetually crave love and dream of success but do not really wish their fulfillment. We merely pursue the illusions that appear as though they might be realized and want to intoxicate ourselves with this anticipation and expectation.