American Stories

by Nagai Kafu

  I no longer had the desire or the leisure to look for other scenic sights on the island. Every day, I would stand on the same spot and gaze at the same bay and floating grass plot without becoming bored; after a while, as it would steadily grow darker all around, and even the whiteness of the boats that had remained visible till the last moment would disappear from sight along with the darkening water, it would be the quiet, bright summer night of June. . . . In America, twilight comes and goes fast.

  Ah, the summer nights of June! What a world of imagination, of fantasy! As the days have grown hotter, there are so many mosquitoes around, but at the same time innumerable fireflies flit about all across the fields and the forests like a rain shower. Evening tides sob at the roots of the thick growth of reeds, while the leaves of water willows and maples whisper in the night breeze. Amid the constant songs of crickets and frogs, the chirping of some unknown little bird can be heard. The air is filled with the scent of wild grass, which seems to be trying to grow as much as possible during the night. As a wanderer, I might someday encounter summertime in Switzerland or a winter evening in Italy, objects of every poet’s dreams, but I thought I would never forget such a sight as the summer evenings in Staten Island. That is because right now, as I behold the sleeping ocean in front of me and the restful woods in the back, bury myself halfway in the tall wild grass, look up at innumerable stars in the infinite sky, eavesdrop on nature’s every whisper, and especially watch fireflies’ tremendous blue showers of fire, I feel, with a strong sense of mystery and ecstasy, as if I am no longer on the North American continent where winter is approaching but am wandering under the skies of the “Orient,” the dreamland of the poets of the so-called Decadent School.

  It was on the evening exactly a week after I moved to this island. As usual, I watched the floating grass plot in twilight to my heart’s content and then walked aimlessly along the path in the grass, without realizing that I was heading home, and came to the foot of the hill.

  It may have been because of the weather. The fireflies were glowing bluer than usual, the stars were shining equally brightly, and the scent of the wild grass was still more fragrant; and I felt more than ever, oh, this truly is a delightful summer night! It was as if there were on this earth neither a winter nor a storm when flowers wither, neither death nor despair, nothing, that all there was for my body and soul was to be intoxicated by the ecstatic sensation of summertime. . . . At the same time, feeling an urge to sleep comfortably in the wild grass covering the whole area as long as possible like a hare or a fox, I leaned on my cane and looked up at the distant, star-filled sky all over again. . . . At that very moment, suddenly, from the single house atop the hill, the sound of piano-playing and a young woman’s singing could be heard. . . .

  Anyone can imagine immediately how strongly this moved me. I was instantly all ears, but the sound of the piano vanished like dripping dew, and the song too halted and then stopped abruptly, suggesting that someone was softly singing just a short passage to kill time; the bright and quiet summer evening returned. All I could hear now was the singing of insects and the croaking of frogs.

  Oblivious to the mosquitoes swarming around me, I stood still on the grass for a long time and even sat down to gaze at the house on the hill. No matter how long I waited, there was little chance I could hear the song again. Suddenly, the light from the window seeping through the trees went out, followed by the barking of a dog a couple of times, and then I heard the sound of the small gate of the fence being opened with a quiet click.

  Awakened from my dream now, somehow I felt extremely tired and, deciding to go home quickly and go to bed without doing anything, I walked hurriedly over the hill and followed the winding grass path; then suddenly I recognized a pure white form moving just four or five ken [twenty-four to thirty feet] ahead. . . . It was the retreating figure of a small woman. Despite the dusk, the light from the summer night’s sky, the shining stars, and the glow of fireflies enabled me to discern her clearly, from her thin fingers occasionally waving a Japanese-made fan to chase away mosquitoes, to her white dress and even her white cloth shoes. There are times when minute details can be distinguished all the more clearly in darkness or haziness.

  As the grass path turned, the woman disappeared once, becoming hidden in the wild grass, which was taller than she, but then I could hear her humming some tune, and to my great surprise, she stopped in front of the house where I was staying.

  Startled, I stopped four or five ken away. The woman, not noticing it, called out “Ho! ho!” in a young, high-pitched voice as if in jest, to which the landlady inside shouted in a loud voice, “Come in,” informality being the characteristic of American life. The woman did not enter but said she preferred to be outside in summertime despite the mosquitoes and sat down at the entrance of the porch, fragrant with climbing honeysuckle blossoms.

  This woman indeed was the person who had been singing, Rosalyn whom I can never forget, try as I might.

  But when I was introduced to her by my landlady, I never suspected that things would develop this way—indeed, I did not even think we would be able to become good friends. That was because my experience those years had shown me how difficult it was to engage in a conversation with an American woman that appealed to my taste. They are too cheerful and their ideas too wholesome to engage in serious talk about the arts or the problems of life, so even when I was introduced from time to time to another woman at a new place, I made it a policy not to follow this up and expect a genuine conversation or a pleasant chat, except merely to practice my language and to observe human nature.

  So with Rosalyn, whom I met for the first time that evening, I was prepared as usual, as a matter of a young man’s courtesy toward a young woman, to talk about automobiles I detested, about churches, or about anything else. But from the very beginning, I was surprised to be asked if I liked the opera, and she went on asking more questions about Puccini’s Madame [sic] Butterfly, about Madame Melba who had returned to the United States for the first time in four or five years and had once again enraptured American audiences, and about Strauss’s “Simphonia Domestica,” which had been performed for the first time that spring in the United States. Such questions were so unexpected that not only were my former resolutions forgotten, but I was almost driven to tears of joy as if I had met a friend I had known for a hundred years.

  I have to admit that I do like Western women. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to discuss Western art since ancient Greece under a Western sky, by Western waters, with a Western woman, and in a Western language, be it English, French, or any other. In other words, it was precisely because I had expected so much of American women that I had developed curious misconceptions about them.

  Because the discussion was too sophisticated, and also because it is customary in this country for [an older person like] a mother or a teacher to leave young people alone to their conversations so as not to interfere with their interests, the landlady went out to the back of the house toward the chicken coop, ostensibly to check some noise.

  Our conversation soon shifted to topics such as Japanese women’s life, fashion, and marriage, and I asked Rosalyn casually if she believed in staying single, as typical of an American woman.

  She seemed to take strong offense at being included among the unexceptional “typical” category and said, with a brief dramatic gesture of her hand, “I am not single as a matter of principle, but I think I shall probably end my life unmarried. But that won’t be because of something negative, so I won’t be like a despairing, pathetic, and depressed French widow or, for that matter, a narrow-minded, mean old maid of America. Though I was educated in America, I grew up in England till I was five, and both my parents are of ancient, pure English stock. English people smile as they fight till they fall. So even if I remain single for the rest of my life, I shall be like this till I die, a tomboy.”

  She finished, and her words contained a strong tone characteristic of the English language and
at the same time sounded as if they were pregnant with an indomitable English determination. But as I looked at Rosalyn’s frail, small frame, I deeply felt an indefinable sadness, all the more because her tone was intense. It may have been because the night, though it was still summertime, was so beautiful and quiet.

  Soon it was my turn to respond to her questions about my beliefs. But what I have are not so much beliefs, assertions, or opinions as dreams, imaginings uttered in a delirium—in my heart, it was all dreams.

  I answered that I greatly abhorred marriage. This is because I am disappointed in all reality. Reality is my greatest enemy. I long for love, but rather than hoping for its fulfillment, I instead pray that it fails. At its moment of fulfillment, love disappears like smoke, so I hope to spend my whole life just dreaming of true love by means of unattainable or lost love—this is my wish. “Miss Rosalyn,” I asked, “do you know the story of Leonardo da Vinci and la Gioconda?”

  The landlady returned to the porch with glasses of chilled water from the well in the rear, so Rosalyn and I shifted our topic as if conspiring, but soon, as the opportunity arose, Rosalyn stood up and asked what time it was. She was told it was already past eleven o’clock.

  But the landlord, who had gone to a card game called poker held by the villagers early in the evening, had not yet returned. As I was the only man in the house, it would be my duty to take her home. I held a small lantern that the landlady had lit for me in one hand and lightly supported Rosalyn’s arm as we followed the grass path that led to the beach. . . .

  Ah, is there such a marvelous role in real life, not just on stage? After I came to America, I had often walked with a young woman, at night or during the day, but tonight for some reason I felt strangely agitated, as if this were my first experience.

  Was it because the already quiet evening on this island was even quieter in the small hours? Was it because the sound of the leaves on trees and of grass rustling every now and then as if a shower were coming was strangely eerie? Was it because the chirping of insects and the croaking of frogs resounded with such indescribable clarity in the starry sky that I was forcefully driven by the consciousness that, in the entire universe now, just the two of us, Rosalyn and I, were awake? I can never explain the reason. I was simply desperate lest she should become aware of this indefinable agitation of my heart. Worried that the lantern I was carrying in one hand might expose my face as it shed light on the uneven path, I deliberately looked upward as we walked.

  Rosalyn too kept silent and steadily went up the sloping road at a rather quick pace. The roof of her house became visible above the tall overgrown grass, but as soon as we reached the top of the hill, suddenly before us opened up the huge sky, expanding spectacularly; although the surface of the water was too dark to see, numerous lighthouse beacons could be observed here and there within the inland sea, while far away, near Sandy Hook, which empties out to the Atlantic Ocean, the reflection of the searchlight shining upon the dangerous strait all through the night could be seen. Behind us and just below us the summer village’s clumps of trees lay, all dark.

  I halted unconsciously and heard her say, as if talking in a dream, “Beautiful night, isn’t it? I love to watch the lights on the sea [sic].” To me, these words sounded like nothing but a most agreeable, rhymed verse.

  How should I respond? I simply nodded and hung my head down, but then she hurriedly pulled at my sleeve and said, “A bird is singing. What is it, could it be a robin?”

  Indeed, a thin and high-pitched gentle tune, like the sound of a flute, broke off and started again.

  This time I did not hesitate and gave a decisive answer—it must be the “nightingale” Romeo heard on the night of his secret rendezvous. I had heard that in America there was no Nightingale [sic] or Rossignole [sic] that sang at night, but now that we were actually listening to that gentle tune, it had to be the same bird that appeared in poems.

  Actually, even though Rosalyn had grown up in this country, she did not know the name of the bird, but we decided without much argument that this must be “the bird Romeo heard” and wanted very much to hear another cry or two, but it seemed to have already flown away somewhere.

  I accompanied her up to her house, which was just a couple of steps down from the top of the hill, on the right-hand side of the road, and shook her hand for parting and said “good night” across the fence that encircled a large lawn and flower garden. Thus I took leave of her and returned home.

  When I awoke the next day, the events of the previous night seemed as if they could only have been a dream. For it was too poetic, too beautiful to have actually happened. At the same time, I felt strangely empty that such a thing would never happen again in my life.

  At lunchtime, even before I asked, the landlady told me a great deal about Rosalyn. Her father was a businessman from Britain and, after coming to the United States with his family, left Rosalyn in a religious boarding school and went to South Africa, to the Cape Town area, where he accumulated a sizable fortune, and returned home seven or eight years ago. Then he built a country house in the present location and retired there. So Rosalyn had grown up practically out of the reach of her parents, and perhaps for that reason was of a strong yet solitary disposition; she had not made particularly close friends and always made up her own mind independently, instead of consulting her parents or anybody else, and never appeared lonely or sad.

  After finishing my meal, I went as usual to the shade of the cherry tree to open Mallarmé’s prose poems, which I had started reading two or three days earlier, and then, as my interest was drawn to them, gradually forgot all about the previous night’s events, about world affairs, and about my own situation and, noticing only the shadows of the trees lying on the grass and the dazzling sunlight falling upon the road, all I felt was the beauty of the summer. Only toward evening, the time for me to take a walk, did I realize that in order to go to see the floating grass plot that night I would have to take the road that passed in front of Rosalyn’s house.

  I wanted to see her, yet I didn’t want to see her; my mind was confused as I walked on the usual grass path, but before I reached the top of the hill, I heard Rosalyn singing like a lark—“Hallow! here I am! [sic]”—amid wild grass that was beginning to grow dark like smoke. She told me that she was going to visit my landlady again this evening (she didn’t openly say she was coming to see me).

  So we talked again that night till late, and like the previous night I escorted her back up to the fence of her house, walking on the night road with a lantern in one hand and once again listening to the singing of the unknown night bird; but then the following morning I ran into her unexpectedly on the village main street, where she said she was going to the post office, and we walked together in step under the parasol she held over us.

  Given that it was such a small village with few roads, where the timing of my walks did not vary much, it soon developed that practically every day I would meet her at least once somewhere. As a result, when it happened that it continued to rain for about two days, making it impossible to go out and chance across Rosalyn anywhere, I felt so lonesome and couldn’t stand being alone at night, listening to the sound of the rain beating on the roof of the farmhouse—although this may have been due to the fact that I had never heard anything resembling the sound of a quiet rain during the two years I lived in New York. Every night before going to bed I would look up at the stars in the sky from my window and secretly pray for good weather the following day so that people would be able to take a walk.

  As I hoped, the dry summer weather brought fine days, except for some occasional passing showers during the day. Above all, the moon rose at night. I had never watched the new moon grow bigger and bigger every night as regularly as I did this year, this summer.

  Ah! Looking back now, I loathe precisely this moonlight. If only there had been no moonlight, no matter how lovely the summer nights of June with the evening birds, the chirping of the insects, the fragrance of the grass,
or the rustling of the leaves, I . . . Rosalyn . . . the two of us would never have so heedlessly come to kiss each other.

  I would probably have to leave America before the island’s green leaves turned yellow and then red. I had already confided this to Rosalyn. On another occasion, I had told Rosalyn that I would like to have a blond friend as a long-term pen pal, as a memento of my four years living in America . . . to which she responded, laughing, that she would send me letters written in the difficult new Rooseveltian spelling. So it must be concluded that from the beginning the two of us were fully aware of our respective positions and circumstances and were merely enjoying each other’s pleasant company during these lovely summer evenings.

  Yet alas, the summer nights were too lovely for young people merely to enjoy each other’s company. The moon, from the time it was like a thread, every night without fail cast its gentle light upon our shoulders as we talked and lured our souls, spontaneously and without our knowledge, into the faraway dreamland.

  I really would not like to say that I did not have strong willpower. For I was conscious to the very end that I could never love Rosalyn, that, however I might have felt at the bottom of my heart, I should never confess it to the young woman.

  We spent one evening watching the full moon till past midnight, discussing inconsequential topics, for instance, Rosalyn saying that in America they say the moon shows a human face, I responding that in Japan we see a hare standing there, and both of us trying to determine which view was more correct. On the following day, I received a communication from home sooner than expected, making it imperative that I depart for Europe within two weeks, without waiting for the fall to arrive. I mentioned this situation quite coolly and casually, almost without hesitation, as if I were just going away to New York City for fun.