Quicksand

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  “I’m glad I’m not alone—I’d be scared to death!”

  Mitsuko sighed. “If you’re with someone you love, a lonely place like this is just right.”

  As long as I’m with you I could stay here forever, I thought to myself. Mitsuko was sitting with her legs stretched out; crouching there in the dusk beside her, I could see her beautiful face in profile, but it was too dark to make out its expression. Beyond the tips of her white tabi socks, silhouetted against the dim twilight sky, there was only the faint glint of the golden dolphins on the roof of the Great Buddha Hall.

  “It’s late. Let’s go back,” she said abruptly. By the time we had walked down the hill to the station, it was around seven o’clock.

  “I’m hungry—what about you?” I asked.

  Mitsuko seemed worried about the time. “I was supposed to be home early today. I didn’t tell anyone I was going to Nara.”

  “But I’m starved. If it’s already so late, what difference would it make?” And I dragged her along to a little steak house.

  “Doesn’t your husband complain when you’re late getting home?” she asked, as we were eating.

  “He’s used to it,” I said. “And I’ve already told him we’re friends.”

  “What does he think of that?”

  “I raved about you so much he even said we should have you over, he’d like to meet you.”

  “He sounds awfully good-natured.”

  “The fact is, that husband of mine just lets me do as I please; he never complains. He’s so good-natured he’s boring. . . .”

  Until that moment I hadn’t said a word to Mitsuko about myself, but then I told her everything: how I happened to marry, and all the trouble I had over my love affair, and even about how kind you were to let me ramble on and on about my problems, in spite of your being so busy.

  Mitsuko was astonished to hear I knew you.

  “Really, you’re a friend of his?” she said, and wondered if I wouldn’t bring her with me to meet you someday, since she loved your novels. Whenever I saw her she asked me to take her along next time, but somehow we never got around to it.

  Mitsuko was terribly curious to hear about that affair.

  “Oh? You aren’t seeing him anymore?” she asked, and when I told her I wasn’t, she said: “Why not, if it’s as romantic as all that? If I were you, I’d make a clear distinction between love and marriage.” And then: “Does your husband suspect anything?”

  “Possibly, but if he does he’s never mentioned it. At least it hasn’t caused any trouble between us.”

  “He’s very trusting!”

  “Actually, he treats me like a child,” I said. “That annoys me.”

  It was close to ten by the time I got home that night. “Pretty late, aren’t you?” my husband said, looking glum.

  He seemed so cheerless that I was a little sorry for him. Although I hadn’t done anything wrong, I felt a twinge of guilt when I saw that he had just finished dinner, after waiting such a long time for me. Of course when I was meeting my lover, I often used to come home after ten o’clock. But that was all in the past. So maybe he was a bit suspicious. Somehow I myself felt just the way I did in those days.

  5

  OH YES, and that was around the time I finished the Kannon picture and showed it to my husband.

  “Hmm, so this is a portrait of your friend Mitsuko? I must say, you’ve outdone yourself.”

  We were having dinner, and he had spread the painting out on the tatami mats and would glance at it between one mouthful and the next. “But is she really all that beautiful?” he went on doubtfully. “Are you sure it looks like her?”

  “Of course it does, or there wouldn’t have been such a fuss over it! Only, the real Mitsuko isn’t just an ethereal beauty; there’s something sensual about her. You can’t bring that out in a Japanese painting.”

  I had put a great deal of effort into the picture and couldn’t help thinking it had turned out well. My husband praised it lavishly. At any rate, from the time I began to study painting I had never worked so hard or with so much enthusiasm.

  “Why don’t we have it mounted?” he suggested. “Then when it’s ready you can ask Mitsuko over to see it.”

  The idea appealed to me, and I put it away, thinking I’d take it to a picture mounter in Kyoto to be done up handsomely. One day I mentioned to Mitsuko what I had in mind.

  “If you’re going to bother to mount it, how about working on it a little more?” she asked. “Of course it’s very nice as it is—the face is good—but the figure doesn’t seem quite right.”

  “It doesn’t? How is that?”

  “I can’t tell you in so many words.”

  She was being perfectly honest; there wasn’t the least bit of boastfulness in her tone, the least hint that she thought her own figure was better. But I could see that she felt dissatisfied.

  “Well, then, I hope you’ll pose in the nude for me sometime.”

  She agreed at once. “I don’t mind posing for you.”

  I think it was after school one day that she promised to come to pose at my house; the very next afternoon we left classes early and Mitsuko came home with me.

  On the way she said: “I’m afraid your husband will be shocked if he sees me standing there naked.” She seemed amused rather than embarrassed and glanced at me mischievously as if we were out on a lark.

  “We have just the place for it,” I told her. “It’s a Western-style room upstairs, where no one will see us.”

  When I took her up to our bedroom, on the second floor, Mitsuko exclaimed: “How absolutely delightful! And with such a stylish big double bed!” She plumped down on the bed and set the springs rocking as she gazed out at the sea.

  Our house is right on the beach, so we have a splendid view from that upstairs room. There are plate-glass windows to the east and south—in the morning it’s too bright to let you sleep late. When the weather is clear you can see beyond the pine forests across the bay, all the way to the Kishu Mountains and Mount Kongo.

  . . . Swimming? Yes, you can swim there. Along that part of the shore it’s dangerous—if you go too far out, the ocean floor drops off suddenly—but there’s a bathing beach at Koroen. In the summer it’s quite crowded. At that time it was still mid-May, and Mitsuko said: “I wish summer would come soon. I’d be over here every day to swim.” Then, looking around the room, she added: “When I’m married I want a bedroom just like this.”

  “You’ll have a much grander bedroom. A girl like you will marry into a rich family, won’t you?”

  “Yes, but once I’m married I expect I’ll feel like a bird in a gilded cage.”

  “I feel like that myself sometimes . . .”

  “But isn’t this a private sanctuary for you and your husband, as a married couple? Won’t he scold you for bringing me up here?”

  “Why should he object? You’re a very special visitor.”

  “Anyway, people say a couple’s bedroom is sacred. . . .”

  “Then it’s exactly the place to pose—a young girl’s body is sacred too. Hurry up and take your clothes off while the light is good,” I urged her.

  “Can’t someone look in from the ocean?”

  “Don’t be silly! What could you see from a boat offshore?”

  “Yes, but these windows . . . I’d like you to close them and draw the curtains!”

  Although it was only May, the sun was so brilliant it hurt your eyes, and all the windows had been thrown open. But with the windows shut tight, the room was soon hot enough to have us dripping with sweat. Mitsuko said she wanted some kind of white cloth to put on as Kannon’s robe, so I pulled a sheet from the bed. Then she went behind the wardrobe cabinet, took off her sash and kimono, let down her hair, combed it out straight and smooth, and draped the sheet loosely around her naked body in the manner of a Kannon bodhisattva.

  “Just look!” she said, standing before the mirror on the door of the cabinet, absorbed in her own beauty. “Now don�
��t you think you’ve got to touch up your picture?”

  “My, what an exquisite body!”

  No doubt I seemed to be accusing her, as if I wanted to know why she had concealed such a treasure from me all this time. I suppose the face in my picture was a good likeness, but it’s only natural that the figure wasn’t, since I had based it on Miss Y. Models for Japanese painting are chosen for their pretty faces, and Miss Y didn’t have an especially good figure—her skin, too, seemed rather rough and dark, almost muddy, so that to a trained eye it was as different from Mitsuko’s as ink from snow.

  “Why have you kept such a beautiful body hidden!” I asked reproachfully. “It’s too much! It’s just too much!”

  Somehow my eyes filled with tears. Embracing Mitsuko from behind, I nestled my tearful face against her white-robed shoulder, and we peered into the mirror together.

  Mitsuko seemed disconcerted.

  “Really, what has come over you?” she asked, as she saw my tears reflected in the mirror.

  “Anything so beautiful makes me want to cry,” I said, holding her tight. I didn’t try to wipe away my tears.

  6

  “THERE, THAT OUGHT TO DO,” said Mitsuko. “Now I’m getting dressed.”

  “No, no you mustn’t!” I shook my head petulantly. “Let me look at you some more!”

  “That’s ridiculous. I can’t just stay here naked like this, can I?’

  “Of course you can! And you’re not really naked! You’ve got to take this off—” As I spoke I snatched hold of the sheet that was draped around her, but she struggled to hang on to it, screaming: “Let go! Let go!” Finally I heard the sheet begin to tear.

  That drove me into a frenzy, and now my eyes filled with angry tears. “All right then, never mind! I didn’t think you were such a coward—this is the end of our friendship!” And I bit a fold of the sheet, sinking my teeth into it and pulling hard, tearing it all the more.

  “You must be crazy!”

  “I’ve never known anyone so cold! Didn’t we promise not to hide anything from each other? Liar!”

  At that moment I’m sure I did seem possessed. As Mitsuko told me later, I was glaring at her, deathly pale and trembling as if I had actually gone mad. And Mitsuko herself trembled as she stared silently into my eyes. She had abandoned the noble pose of the Willow Kannon and was standing there with one knee bent, the tips of her feet touching, her arms crossed shyly before her, looking pathetically beautiful. I felt a stab of pity for her, but when I glimpsed her plump white shoulders through the torn sheet I wanted to rip it off violently. Now I was really frantic and started stripping the sheet from her body. Faced with my determination, Mitsuko seemed to quail. She said nothing and let me do as I pleased. We stared unwaveringly into each other’s eyes with an almost hateful intensity. Then a smile at having finally had my way—a cool, malicious smile of triumph—came to my lips as I peeled off the remnants of the sheet. At last the sculptural form of a divine maiden was fully revealed, and my exultation changed to astonishment.

  “Ah, how maddening!” I cried, tears flowing down my cheeks. “Such a beautiful body! I could kill you!” As I spoke I grasped her trembling wrist tight with one hand and with the other drew her face near as I brought my lips toward it.

  Suddenly I heard Mitsuko cry out wildly. “Go ahead and kill me! I want you to!”

  I felt her hot breath on my face and saw tears streaming down her own cheeks. Locking our arms around each other, we swallowed our mingled tears.

  That day, though without meaning to hide it from him, I’d said nothing to my husband about bringing Mitsuko home with me, and he had waited in his office, thinking I would stop in on my way back from school. As time went on and I still hadn’t turned up, he telephoned home. “You might have let me know. I’ve been waiting all afternoon.”

  “I’m sorry, it slipped my mind—we came here on an impulse.”

  “Is Mitsuko still with you?”

  “Yes, but I expect she’ll be leaving any minute.”

  “Well, ask her to stay on a little while. I’ll be right along.”

  “Then hurry up, please.”

  That’s what I said, but in my heart I didn’t like the thought of his coming home. After what had happened in the bedroom that afternoon, a joyous feeling had welled up within me. What a wonderful day this had been! I was walking on air; the slightest thing was enough to set my heart beating like a drum. I felt that having my husband return would spoil that precious feeling. All I wanted was to be alone with Mitsuko, to go on being together. We needn’t even talk; I could simply gaze at her in silence. . . . Just to be there beside her gave me boundless happiness.

  “Listen, Mitsuko,” I said. “That phone call was from my husband. He says he’s coming home. What are you going to do?”

  “Oh dear, what should I do?”

  Mitsuko hastily began putting on her clothes. It was already five o’clock, two or three hours since she had draped herself in that sheet. “Is it all right for me to leave without seeing him?”

  “He’s been saying he wants to meet you. . . . Do you mind waiting a little longer?”

  Although I asked her to stay, the truth was that I hoped she would leave before he came home. I wanted the whole day to be a happy one; I didn’t want its beautiful memory marred by a third person. That was how I felt, so naturally I was out of sorts when my husband arrived. I must have seemed in a bad mood. Even Mitsuko had hardly anything to say, partly because of my attitude, partly because she was meeting him for the first time. Maybe she felt guilty too. All three of us seemed distracted and ill at ease, as if we were preoccupied with our own thoughts. That made me even more irritated at having been disturbed. I was very angry with my husband.

  “And how have you girls been amusing yourselves?” he asked, trying to start up a conversation there with Mitsuko.

  “Today we used our bedroom as a studio,” I put in dryly. “I wanted to improve my Kannon portrait, so I had Mitsuko pose for me.”

  “That’s giving your model a lot of trouble, isn’t it, when you’re not all that talented to begin with.”

  “Yes, but I was asked to, for the sake of the model’s honor.”

  “No matter how often you paint her, you can’t hope to succeed. Your model is much too pretty.”

  During that little exchange Mitsuko just giggled, looking down shyly. The conversation died, and she soon left for home.

  7

  I BROUGHT ALONG some old letters we sent each other in those days, if you care to look at them. There are lots more. I couldn’t possibly bring them all, so here are just a few you might find interesting. Please begin with the earliest ones; they’re more or less in order. I saved every letter from Mitsuko, and you’ll find some of my own among them too—I’ll explain later, but there’s a reason why she brought them back.

  (Author’s note: the letters that the widow Kakiuchi called “just a few” from their correspondence filled a silk-crepe parcel about ten inches square almost to bursting; the four corners of the cloth had been knotted together with difficulty. Her fingertips crimsoned as she pinched the hard little knot to undo it. What finally came pouring out was a flood of figured paper: all those letters were in envelopes adorned with coquettish, brilliantly colored woodblock designs. The envelopes were small, only big enough to hold a sheet of women’s letter paper folded in four, and they were decorated with evening primroses, lilies of the valley, tulips, portraits of beauties in the manner of Takehisa Yumeji, printed in four or five colors. I was somewhat taken aback at the sight. Doubtless no Tokyo woman would choose such garish envelopes. Even for a love letter, she would prefer something plainer. If you showed her such things, you may be certain she would disdain them as hopelessly vulgar. And a man who received a love letter in an envelope like that, supposing he was a Tokyo man, would surely take an instant dislike to the sender. In any case, the taste for that sort of gaudy excess is indeed typical of Osaka women. And when you think that these love letters wer
e exchanged by two women, they seem all the more excessive. Here I will only quote from several of them to illustrate the fervid emotional situation underlying this account, but it may be well to add a description of the stationery itself. In my opinion, the decorative aspect of the letters is sometimes even more revealing than their content.)

  (May 6, from Mrs. Kakiuchi Sonoko to Mitsuko. The dimensions of the envelope are 5 inches in length by 2¾ inches in width, with cherry and heart-shaped designs on a pink ground. There are five cherries in all, bright-red fruit on black stems. The hearts, of which there are ten, overlap vertically in pairs: those above are pale purple; those below, gold. The notched top and bottom of the envelope is also edged in gold. Ivy leaves printed in very light green cover the surface of the letter paper, over which ruled lines are drawn in silver dots. Mrs. Kakiuchi writes by pen, but the precision of her abbreviated characters shows that she must have had considerable training in calligraphy and no doubt excelled in the subject at school. Her writing suggests a softer version of the calligraphic style of Ono Gado—elegantly flowing, one might say, or, to put it less kindly, somewhat slippery and unctuous. It is singularly well matched to the design of the envelope.)

  Dearest Mitsu,

  Drip-drop, drip-drop . . . Tonight the gentle spring rain is falling. As I listen to it drenching the paulownia flowers outside my window, I sit here quietly at my desk in the glow of that red lampshade that you crocheted for me. Somehow it’s a gloomy evening, but when I strain to hear the raindrops run from the eaves I can’t help imagining that they’re whispering softly to me: Drip-drop, drip-drop . . . What can they be whispering? Drip-drop, drip-drop . . . Ah, yes! Mitsuko, Mitsuko, Mitsuko . . . They’re calling the name of the one I love. Tokumitsu, Tokumitsu . . . Mitsuko, Mitsuko . . . Toku, Toku, Toku . . . Mitsu, Mitsu, Mitsu . . . Before I knew it, I’d taken up my pen and was writing your name over and over on the fingertips of my left hand, from my thumb to my little finger, one after another. . . .