‘Indeed, indeed. Two grandchildren to look forward to.’ For a moment, he sat there smiling and nodding to himself. Then he said: ‘No doubt you remember, Ono, I was always far too busy improving the world to think about marriage. Do you remember those arguments we used to have, just before you and Michiko-san were married?’
We both laughed.
‘Two grandchildren,’ Matsuda said again. ‘Now, there’s something to look forward to.’
‘Indeed. I’ve been most fortunate as regards my daughters.’
‘And tell me, Ono, are you painting these days?’
‘A few watercolours to pass the time. Plants and flowers mostly, just for my own amusement.’
‘I’m glad to hear you’re painting again in any case. When you last came to see me, you seemed to have given up painting for good. You were very disillusioned then.’
‘No doubt I was. I didn’t touch paints for a long time.’
‘Yes, Ono, you seemed very disillusioned.’ Then he looked up at me with a smile and said: ‘But then of course, you wanted so badly to make a grand contribution.’
I returned his smile, saying: ‘But so did you, Matsuda. Your goals were no less grand. It was you, after all, who composed that manifesto for our China crisis campaign. Those were hardly the most modest of aspirations.’
We both laughed again. Then he said:
‘No doubt you’ll remember, Ono, how I used to call you naïve. How I used to tease you for your narrow artist’s perspective. You used to get so angry with me. Well, it seems in the end neither of us had a broad enough view.’
‘I suppose that’s right. But if we’d seen things a little more clearly, then the likes of you and I me, Matsuda – who knows? – we may have done some real good. We had much energy and courage once. Indeed, we must have had plenty of both to conduct something like that New Japan campaign, you remember?’
‘Indeed. There were some powerful forces set against us then. We might easily have lost our nerve. I suppose we must have been very determined, Ono.’
‘But then I for one never saw things too clearly. A narrow artist’s perspective, as you say. Why, even now, I find it hard to think of the world extending much beyond this city.’
‘These days’, Matsuda said, ‘I find it hard to think of the world extending much beyond my garden. So perhaps you’re the one with the wider perspective now, Ono.’
We laughed together once more, then Matsuda took a sip from his teacup.
‘But there’s no need to blame ourselves unduly,’ he said. ‘We at least acted on what we believed and did our utmost. It’s just that in the end we turned out to be ordinary men. Ordinary men with no special gifts of insight. It was simply our misfortune to have been ordinary men during such times.’
Matsuda’s earlier reference to his garden had drawn my attention in that direction. It was a mild spring afternoon, and Miss Suzuki had left a screen partially open, so that from where I sat I could see the sun reflected brightly on the polished boards of the veranda. A soft breeze was coming into the room, and with it a faint odour of smoke. I rose to my feet and went over to the screens.
‘The smell of burning still makes me uneasy,’ I remarked. ‘It’s not so long ago it meant bombings and fire.’ I went on gazing out on to the garden for a moment, then added: ‘Next month, it will be five years already since Michiko died.’
Matsuda remained silent for a while. Then I heard him say behind me:
‘These days, a smell of burning usually means a neighbour is clearing his garden.’
Somewhere within the house, a dock began to chime.
‘It’s time to feed the carp,’ Matsuda said. ‘You know, I had to argue with Miss Suzuki for a long time before she would allow me to start feeding the carp again. I used to do it regularly, but then a few months ago, I tripped on one of those stepping stones. I had to argue with her a long time after that.’
Matsuda rose to his feet, and putting on some straw sandals left out on the veranda, we stepped down into the garden. The pond lay amidst sunshine at the far end of the garden and we proceeded with care along the stepping stones that ran across the smooth mounds of moss.
It was while we were standing at the edge of the pond, looking into the thick green water, that a sound made us both glance up. At a point not far from us, a small boy of about four or five was peering over the top of the garden fence, clinging with both arms to the branch of a tree. Matsuda smiled and called out:
‘Ah, good afternoon, Botchan!’
The boy went on staring at us for a moment, then vanished. Matsuda smiled and began to throw feed into the water. ‘Some neighbour’s boy,’ he said. ‘Every day at this time, he climbs up on that tree trunk to watch me come out and feed my fish. But he’s shy and if I try and speak to him he runs away.’ He gave a small laugh to himself. ‘I often wonder why he makes the effort like that every day. There’s nothing much for him to see. Just an old man with a stick, standing by his pond feeding the carp. I wonder what he finds so fascinating in such a scene.’
I looked over to the fence again to where a moment ago the small face had been, and said: ‘Well, today he got a surprise. Today, he saw two old men with sticks, standing by the pond.’
Matsuda laughed happily and went on throwing feed into the water. Two or three splendid carp had come to the surface, their scales glistening in the sunlight.
‘Army officers, politicians, businessmen,’ Matsuda said. ‘They’ve all been blamed for what happened to this country. But as for the likes of us, Ono, our contribution was always marginal. No one cares now what the likes of you and me once did. They look at us and see only two old men with their sticks.’ He smiled at me, then went on feeding the fish. ‘We’re the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we’re the only ones who care now.’
But even as he uttered such words, there remained something in Matsuda’s manner that afternoon to suggest he was anything but a disillusioned man. And surely there was no reason for him to have died disillusioned. He may indeed have looked back over his life and seen certain flaws, but surely he would have recognized also those aspects he could feel proud of. For, as he pointed out himself, the likes of him and me, we have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever we did, we did at the time in the best of faith. Of course, we took some bold steps and often did things with much single-mindedness; but this is surely preferable to never putting one’s convictions to the test, for lack of will or courage. When one holds convictions deeply enough, there surely comes a point when it is despicable to prevaricate further. I feel confident Matsuda would have thought along these same lines when looking back over his life.
There is a particular moment I often bring to my mind – it was in the May of 1938, just after I had been presented with the Shigeta Foundation Award. By that point in my career I had received various awards and honours, but the Shigeta Foundation Award was in most people’s view a major milestone. In addition, as I recall, we had finished that same week our New Japan campaign, which had proved a great success. The night after the presentation, then, was one of much celebrating. I remember sitting in the Migi-Hidari, surrounded by my pupils and various of my colleagues, being plied with drink, listening to speech after speech in tribute to me. All manner of acquaintances called in to the Migi-Hidari that night to offer their congratulations; I even recall a chief of police I had never met before coming in to pay his respects. But happy as I was that night, the feeling of deep triumph and fulfilment which the award should have brought was curiously missing. In fact, I was not to experience such a feeling until a few days later, when I was out in the hilly countryside of the Wakaba province.
I had not been back to Wakaba for some sixteen years – not since that day I had left Mori-san’s villa, determined, but nevertheless fearful that the future held nothing for me. Over the course of those years, though I had broken all formal contacts with Mori-san, I had remained curious of an
y news concerning my old teacher, and so was fully aware of the steady decline of his reputation in the city. His endeavours to bring European influence into the Utamaro tradition had come to be regarded as fundamentally unpatriotic, and he would be heard of from time to time holding struggling exhibitions at ever less prestigious venues. In fact, I had heard from more that one source that he had begun illustrating popular magazines to maintain his income. At the same time, I could be quite confident Mori-san had followed the course of my career and there was every chance he had heard of my receiving the Shigeta Foundation Award. It was then with a keen awareness of the changes time had brought on us that I stepped off the train at the village station that day.
It was a sunny spring afternoon as I set off towards Mori-san’s villa along those hilly paths through the woodland. I went slowly, savouring the experience of that walk I had once known so well. And all the while I turned over in my mind what might occur when I came face to face with Mori-san once more. Perhaps he would receive me as an honoured guest; or perhaps he would be as cold and distant as during my final days at the villa; then again, he might behave towards me in much the way he had always done while I had been his favourite pupil – that is, as though the great changes in our respective status had not occurred. The last of these possibilities struck me as the most likely and I remember considering how I would respond. I would not, I resolved, revert to old habits and address him as ‘Sensei’; instead, I would simply address him as though he were a colleague. And if he persisted in failing to acknowledge the position I now occupied, I would say, with a friendly laugh, something to the effect of: ‘As you see, Mori-san, I have not been obliged to spend my time illustrating comic books as you once feared.’
In time I found myself at that spot on the high mountain path that gave a fine view of the villa standing amongst trees in the hollow below. I paused a moment to admire that view, as I had often done years before. There was a refreshing wind, and down in the hollow, I could see the trees swaying gently. I wondered to myself if the villa had been renovated, but it was impossible to ascertain from such a distance.
After a while, I seated myself amidst the wild grass growing along the ridge and went on gazing at Mori-san’s villa. I had bought some oranges at a stall by the village station, and taking these from my kerchief, I began to eat them one by one. And it was as I sat there, looking down at the villa, enjoying the taste of those fresh oranges, that that deep sense of triumph and satisfaction began to rise within me. It is hard to describe the feeling, for it was quite different from the sort of elation one feels from smaller triumphs – and, as I say, quite different from anything I had experienced during the celebrations at the Migi-Hidari. It was a profound sense of happiness deriving from the conviction that one’s efforts have been justified; that the hard work undertaken, the doubts overcome, have all been worthwhile; that one has achieved something of real value and distinction. I did not go any further towards the villa that day – it seemed quite pointless. I simply continued to sit there for an hour or so, in deep contentment, eating my oranges.
It is not, I fancy, a feeling many people will come to experience. The likes of the Tortoise – the likes of Shintaro – they may plod on, competent and inoffensive, but their kind will never know the sort of happiness I felt that day. For their kind do not know what it is to risk everything in the endeavour to rise above the mediocre.
Matsuda, though, was a different case. Although he and I often quarrelled, our approaches to life were identical, and I am confident he would have been able to look back on one or two such moments. Indeed, I am sure he was thinking along these lines when he said to me that last time we spoke, a gentle smile on his face: ‘We at least acted on what we believed and did our utmost.’ For however one may come in later years to reassess one’s achievements, it is always a consolation to know that one’s life has contained a moment or two or real satisfaction such as I experienced that day up on that high mountain path.
Yesterday morning, after standing on the Bridge of Hesitation for some moments thinking about Matsuda, I walked on to where our pleasure district used to be. The area has now been rebuilt and has become quite unrecognizable. The narrow little street that once ran through the centre of the district, crowded with people and the cloth banners of the various establishments, has now been replaced by a wide concrete road along which heavy trucks come and go all day. Where Mrs Kawakami’s stood, there is now a glass-fronted office building, four storeys high. Neighbouring it are more such large buildings, and during the day, one can see office workers, delivery men, messengers, all moving busily in and out of them. There are no bars now until one reaches Furu-kawa, but here and there, one may recognize a piece of fencing or else a tree, left over from the old days, looking oddly incongruous in its new setting.
Where the Migi-Hidari once stood is now a front yard for a group of offices set back from the road. Some of the senior employees leave their cars in this yard, but it is for the most part a clear space of tarmac with a few young trees planted at various points. At the front of this yard, facing the road, there is a bench of the sort one may find in a park. For whose benefit it has been placed there, I do not know, for I have never seen any of these busy people ever stopping to relax on it. But it is my fancy that the bench occupies a spot very close to where our old table in the Migi-Hidari would have been situated, and I have taken at times to sitting on it. It may well not be a public bench, but then it is close to the pavement, and no one has ever objected to my sitting there. Yesterday morning, with the sun shining pleasantly, I sat down on it again and remained there for a while, observing the activity around me.
It must have been approaching the lunch hour by then, for across the road I could see groups of employees in their bright white shirtsleeves emerging from the glass-fronted building where Mrs Kawakami’s used to be. And as I watched, I was struck by how full of optimism and enthusiasm these young people were. At one point, two young men leaving the building stopped to talk with a third who was on his way in. They stood on the doorsteps of that glass-fronted building, laughing together in the sunshine. One young man, whose face I could see most clearly, was laughing in a particularly cheerful manner, with something of the open innocence of a child. Then with a quick gesture, the three colleagues parted and went their ways.
I smiled to myself as I watched these young office workers from my bench. Of course, at times, when I remember those brightly-lit bars and all those people gathered beneath the lamps, laughing a little more boisterously perhaps than those young men yesterday, but with much the same good-heartedness, I feel a certain nostalgia for the past and the district as it used to be. But to see how our city has been rebuilt, how things have recovered so rapidly over these years, fills me with genuine gladness. Our nation, it seems, whatever mistakes it may have made in the past, has now another chance to make a better go of things. One can only wish these young people well.
Author biography
Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of six novels, A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Prize), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award, Premio Scanno, shortlisted for the Booker Prize), The Remains of the Day (1989, winner of the Booker Prize), The Unconsoled (1995, winner of the Cheltenham Prize), When We Were Orphans (2000, shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and Never Let Me Go (2005, shortlisted for the MAN Booker Prize). He received an OBE for Services to Literature in 1995, and the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998.
by the same author
A PALE VIEW OF HILLS
THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
THE UNCONSOLED
WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS
NEVER LET ME GO
Copyright
First published in 1986
by Faber and Faber Limited
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This ebook edition first published in 2009
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© Kazuo Ishiguro, 1986
The right of Kazuo Ishiguro to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN 978—0—571—24934—3 [epub edition]
An Artist of the Floating World Page 20