Vita Sexualis

by Ogai Mori

  At this time I graduated from the English Academy, the preparatory school for helping students enter the university, so I became a university student in the department of literature.

  After summer vacation I lived in a boardinghouse. Almost every night I went out with Koga and Kojima to some storyteller's hall. I got into such a bad habit that sometimes I couldn't fall asleep unless I had gone to one of these halls. After I lost interest in professional storytellers, I listened to the comic tales with their special emphasis on wordplay. And after having had my fill of these, I went to hear the female reciters of ballads. On the way back from the hall, we would feel hungry and stop at one of the noodle shops so that occasionally we happened to see some brothel pimps followed by quite a few streetwalkers. Some of those scenes under the street lamps were so scandalous that we instinctively shuddered. Even though the drivers of jinrikishas to the red-light districts told us "It'll be cheap," we never rode in them.

  Probably Kojima and I were the only virgins to graduate from the English Academy. And even after entering the department of literature at our university, we kept the moral sanctions of our triumvirate intact so that Kojima and I remained innocent.

  That year passed without any further events worth writing about.

  When I was seventeen . . .

  That year my father, through the kindness of a friend, became an official in the prison at Kosuge in Tokyo. My father had held a humble post in one government agency, but no position was vacant for him to be promoted to. Officers at the prison had an official residence, so if we lived there, we could rent our house at Mukojima. The monthly pay would also be slightly better. My father decided to make the move to Kosuge. So on Saturdays I went to Kosuge and on Sunday nights I returned to my boardinghouse.

  I was still under the moral sway of our triple alliance. Each time I returned to our house at Kosuge on Saturday, I passed through Torishinmachi. On the south side of the street immediately after turning toward Yoshiwara was a shrine surrounded by a stone wall. On the north side was a curio shop. The paper sliding screens of the shop were always half closed. Pasted in a corner of these sliding doors was a rectangular sheet of paper, and on it were the characters for "Akisada," written as if a sign painter had done them. Each time I went to Kosuge on my way there and back, I felt a joy in passing those sliding doors. And once when I saw a girl standing in the open space between the doors, I felt, for about a week, some undefinable satisfaction. When I found the girl wasn't there, I felt, for a week, a vague dissatisfaction.

  Probably she wasn't that much of a beauty. Her pinkish face, though, was as fresh as dew that has just emerged, her bright clear eyes with a charm impossible to describe. In her hair, just washed and set in the shimada style, was no red ribbon or ornament. During the summer she would have on a cotton kimono in a gay, lively pattern. In winter she was dressed in a kimono of common silk with a replaceable neckband. She always wore a clean apron.

  From that time until long past my graduation from the university—no, that's not so—until the day I went abroad two years after my graduation, this girl was quite definitely the heroine of my beautiful dream. Whenever the charm of spring or the loneliness of fall happened to bring on some tender emotion, the name Akisada unexpectedly escaped from my lips. Actually it was all quite foolish. Why? Because Akisada was no more than the name of the shop and of the emaciated old man occasionally seen inside wearing a blue apron. I didn't even know the young girl's name. But there was something mysterious about her. In the five years since I had come to recognize her, she had remained unmarried. In my own idle daydreams I didn't find this strange, but it was odd that she had stayed unmarried in real life. I even thought in this same beautiful dream of mine that she might be waiting for my jinrikisha to stop and for me to begin talking to her. However, I wasn't that much of a poet to actually believe in this dream. Many years later I happened to hear about the girl's real character. The chief priest of a temple in the neighborhood was sending her living expenses.

  Let me take this opportunity to relate one more little anecdote of the same sort. A girl about thirteen years of age lived next door to my father's official dwelling at Kosuge. She was taking lessons on the koto. Her koto mistress, who was living at Shitaya, was a woman called Sugisei, but because it was quite some distance away, one of her young female disciples would come to give the lesson in her place. On hearing the girl next door and the substitute teacher playing the koto, my mother got the impression that they made the same unpleasant sounds on the koto. One day, though, my mother heard a completely different sound. Let me put it this way: If the sounds she had heard up to then had a drowsy quality, the ones she was listening to this time had a beautiful melody, the quality of eyes opening wide from sleep. When my mother mentioned the difference to the girl's mother, she said the person performing this time was not a professional koto player. The girl, a disciple of the koto mistress Sugisei, was living on Gokencho. Because the substitute teacher was ill, this other girl had kindly consented to give the lesson. Eventually the girl who had played the koto so skillfully heard she had been praised by my mother, so she said she would come over to play for us some time.

  Afterwards she occasionally visited us so that at times I happened to meet her when I came home on holidays. Judging from the shape of her head, I suspected she had suffered from hydrocephalus during childhood. Her hair was somewhat thin, she was pale, and her lower eyelids were tinged purple. Still, she was quite strong-willed. She was a naturally endowed koto virtuoso. If she had wanted to establish herself as a professional, she would have been expelled by her koto mistress and might have set up her own special school.

  Having gradually come to be on good terms with my mother, the girl indirectly hinted, though actually quite boldly in a way, that she wanted to become my wife. When my mother said, "After my son graduates from the university, he will definitely study abroad, but depending on his rank at graduation, we don't know if he can do so at government expense," the girl replied, "If I have enough money, I'll give him all I have for his schooling."

  My mother was impressed by the girl's cleverness. And so she even made inquiries into the girl's background. Galled Orei, she was the daughter in a family descended from a samurai who had held a fairly high post, but after her father died, she lived with her mother in a rented house on Gokencho. Strangely enough, a young man who seemed to be her elder brother lived with them. Apparently he was too good-natured and was treated by Orei as if he were her servant. The fact was he had been adopted as a son-in-law to take the family name, but in spite of this, Orei did not want to marry him, so she had said to him, "I'll give you our house, and I'll go somewhere else and get married." We also heard her ambition was to have at least a university graduate as her husband. That was why she had singled me out.

  My mother wasn't pleased with the fact that this "elder brother" was living with the girl and her mother. I didn't especially dislike this clever, active girl, but because I had no interest in marrying that early, nothing came of the entire episode, falling through like water absorbed in sand.

  Of course this wasn't a sexual problem. It couldn't be called a love problem either. It was, so to speak, nothing more than a marriage proposal that happened to spring up and then fade away, and having remembered it, I decided to jot it down. I learned that Orei attained her desire to become the wife of a university graduate and that she was living somewhere in Yokohama.

  ***

  When I was eighteen . . .

  Something happened during summer vacation. Since the graduation exams were drawing nearer, I thought of going to some quieter place to study for them. Fortunately our house in Mukojima was empty as we hadn't been able to find a tenant. It occurred to me to go there and take my books with me. My mother would come for a few days and help me get set up. All she had to bring me were the necessary ingredients and I could do my own cooking. My mother told me she was doubtful it would work out.

  The man living next door to us, a gard
ener, heard us talking about it. He was on friendly terms with my father because whenever my parent wanted to grow something, he consulted with him. The gardener's wife was kind enough to make the following suggestion: They had a fourteen-year-old daughter called Ocho. Though she was big enough to look as if she was already about sixteen, she was really only a child. She couldn't even cook a decent meal. But she would probably be better than I would be. The gardener's wife said they would lend Ocho to me. My mother agreed. From the very first I was against the idea of having a girl around, but since I knew that Ocho, herself only a runny-nosed girl, had been trusted to carry a child on her back, I felt she'd be reliable and innocent, so I consented.

  Ocho came every morning and left in the evening. She was a plump girl with small eyes and a small nose on her large face. No longer did her nose run. She arranged her hair in the shimada style. Apparently because of her becoming my maid, she was willing to set her hair in this way, but the manner in which the small chignon of her shimada lay atop her large face was quite funny.

  During each meal she waited on me. As I watched her movements, I couldn't help thinking that unlike the meaning of her name she was by no means a butterfly but rather a moth. Without any intention of looking at her, I found myself doing just that. Under her slightly vertical eyebrows were her horizontal eyes so that the space between looked strangely limited. With her head bent and those eyes looking up at me, she seemed full of a love and respect which had something amiable and funny about it.

  She worked quite hard. I needed her only to serve my meals, and I didn't care at all what she did afterwards. When she came to ask me, "What should I make?" I said, "Anything will do, so whatever you make at home, make here." About two weeks passed in this way.

  One day Eiichi, who I had heard was living with some relatives that year, dropped in to see me. I was sick of reading my course books, so it was a real pleasure to talk to him, but he was quite depressed. I wondered why.

  "Something's wrong, isn't there?"

  "I'm not going to enter the undergraduate program at the university."

  "Why not?"

  "To be quite frank, I had thought of going back to my hometown without even meeting you. But when I went to say goodbye to my father and heard you were here, I simply wanted to see you and so I came."

  Ocho brought in some tea. Emptying his cup in one gulp, Eiichi continued his talk. His school expenses had not come from his father's pocket. They were from his uncle, who had a new shop on Kobikicho. Since his uncle's business had taken a downward turn, Eiichi felt more and more that he had to abandon his studies. He felt he would return to his hometown and become an elementary school teacher. However, even if he did become a teacher, he wanted to study something else on the side. Supposing he were to pursue his interest in European culture, not only was he lacking in background on the subject, but it would be equally difficult for him to buy the latest books in the field. As a temporary expedient, therefore, he had used the greater portion of the money his uncle had given him and had bought some Chinese classics. He would confine himself to his hometown and read these books.

  I couldn't help feeling moved. But I had no way of putting these feelings into words. If I offered him some meaningless words of consolation, he would not have hesitated to show his anger. All I could do was remain silent.

  Before long Eiichi said he was leaving. And then as he was about to stand, he quite suddenly began again.

  "The basic cause for my uncle's not being able to make a living is on account of my aunt."

  "What kind of person is she?"

  "She was his maid when he was single."

  "I see."

  "She won't ever bring herself to leave him. Though it's probably unnatural for a man to call on his wife for help in his business, it must be the greatest source of unhappiness in life to have a woman with an obscure background who insists on clinging to her mate, don't you think? Sayonara."

  Eiichi left that abruptly. It was with a stupid look of amazement that I gazed after him. Through the rattan blind hanging at the main entrance, I could see my friend as he went past the roofed gate. In his white cotton kimono and his straw hat, he was receding in the distance, his short black shadow cast in the afternoon sun along the bright shining road of Chinese hawthorne hedges.

  As his parting gift Eiichi had offered me an insinuating warning. I felt somewhat offended. It seemed to me there was no need to have anyone hear this kind of talk. At least it depended on the person he was revealing it to. For Eiichi, who was rather dense about everything when compared with myself, to speak in this way was, I felt, much too forward. Besides, had he meant to imply something about Ocho? Had I ever thought of her as a woman? If he thought I had, he certainly didn't know the person he was talking to. I felt as if he had made a grossly false charge against me.

  I turned to my desk and opened the book I'd been reading. But I still felt uneasy about Eiichi's remarks. I didn't care a straw about Ocho. But how did she regard me? Since she and I had almost never spoken to one another, I had no real memory of anything she had ever said. When I tried hard to recall whether she had ever said anything to me, I suddenly remembered what had happened that morning. I had gone out for a walk. As I was leaving, she was folding my mosquito net. When I realized I had been out thirty minutes and decided to return, I found her sitting absentmindedly looking off into space, the folded mosquito net still before her. I was quite surprised, for I thought she had put it away long ago. It occurred to me just then that she was becoming a little lax in her duties. I wondered what she had been thinking about during those thirty minutes. With these thoughts in mind I felt as if I had made some sort of discovery.

  From that time on I came to take much more careful notice of Ocho. I observed her with different eyes. When she served my meals, I paid special attention to her facial expressions. When I looked at her closely, I made the following observations: At the start of the meal she would be looking down, but occasionally she would glance at me. And yet of late she wouldn't look at me at all. Her attitude had definitely changed.

  Hitherto, when I took a stroll in the garden, I had never looked in the direction of the kitchen even if I happened to hear her puttering around inside, but I now found myself glancing that way as I passed. I would notice her standing perfectly still, staring off into space, her hands resting in the middle of whatever she had begun to wash. Apparently she was absorbed in something.

  As usual she would serve me my meals. My observant eyes gradually became sharper. Though she neither spoke nor raised her face, I felt some subtle influence of her delicate feelings. I felt as if her body were some physical substance storing electrical energy or something of the sort. Gradually I grew quite restless.

  Even while reading, if I happened to hear a sound from the kitchen, I wondered what Ocho was doing. If I called her, she came immediately. It was quite natural for her to come when called, but I felt she was really waiting for me to call her. When evening came, she would bid me farewell and go into the kitchen. Until she put on her wooden clogs and shut the back door, I would be straining to hear everything. I felt as if the entire procedure had lasted much too long. I wondered if she wasn't waiting for me to call her back as she was starting for home. My uneasiness was increasing by the minute.

  These were my feelings in those days. Eiichi Bito was not a sensitive person. But when he was living with his father or with his uncle, the atmosphere in those places was quite different from that of the house I was in. So even in the short glance he had taken of Ocho as she brought in tea, he might have discovered something strange in her behavior.

  One day my mother visited me. I told her I was thinking of returning to Kosuge because I was getting tired of Mukojima. "In that case," my mother said, "why didn't you send me a postcard?"

  "I was just considering sending you a letter," I said.

  Actually I had suddenly hit on the idea, thanks to my mother's visit. After begging her to have Ocho and her family put my things i
n order, I took two or three books and left at once for Kosuge.

  In the final analysis I ended up not knowing whether this change in Ocho's mind or nervous system had been brought about by love or sexual desire or even by the mere working of my own imagination.

  ***

  When I was nineteen . . .

  In July, I graduated from the university. On noticing my officially announced age of twenty, someone said it was rare for a person that young to be a university graduate. Actually I wasn't even twenty yet. I graduated from the university without finally having had an experience with a woman. That of course was certainly due to Koga and Kojima's influence. As for Kojima, though he was older than I was, he apparently hadn't had a woman yet either.

  For some time we had an excessive number of graduation parties. The Matsugen, a restaurant in Ueno, was popular among the students in those days. On one occasion all of us graduates invited our professors there for a party.

  We called in many geisha and apprenticed geisha from Sukiyamachi and Dobocho. That was the first time I had ever seen geisha at a party.

  Even now students who are about to graduate have parties in honor of their professors. But thinking back to the event of that time, I believe the behavior of both guests and geisha was different from what it is nowadays.

  When one becomes a university graduate today, he is shown neither any special favor nor any severe rudeness. In those days, though, I found that some geisha didn't even regard us graduates as human beings.

  I still have a clear recollection of the party that evening at the Matsugen. Each graduate, one by one, went over to exchange cups of sake with his professors, who sat in a row in front of the alcove. Some of the professors made it a point to come over to their students and, sitting down with their legs crossed, talk with them. The room came to take on the appearance of something wild and jumbled. As I was sitting in blank amazement, someone to my left offered a cup of sake under my very nose.